Sweet's Sweets: The Second Samantha Sweet Mystery

mouth so Beau could swab it. He clipped the container shut and put it in his pocket.

“Would you rather answer my questions privately?” he asked Kevin, giving a nod toward one of the closed doors.

“He can speak in front of us,” Carlos said. Jean had not uttered a sound so far, Sam noticed. Kevin nodded agreement.

Convenient, she thought, that Kevin wouldn’t be able to say anything that his influential father wouldn’t know about.

“Okay then,” Beau said. “Shall we sit down?” He ushered Kevin toward the other end of the large room, to a dining table of heavy, carved pine. Pulling out one of the four chairs he didn’t give the dark-suited young man much choice but to sit down. Carlos began pacing the floor, glancing now and then at the TV set which was muted now. Jean had begun to chew at her nails, Sam noticed as she parked herself in a side chair near a large armoire-bar setup.

“Now, Kevin, I need to ask you where you were a week ago Saturday, the night Elena Tafoya died.”

Kevin stared at the grain on the wooden table. “Uh, I think I was out with friends.”

“I’ll need their names.” Beau pulled out a small notebook and pen, poised to write.

“Uh, I really don’t remember who all was there.”

“Just a name or two?” Silence. “Okay, then, where did you go? A bar, restaurant?”

“A restaurant. I don’t remember which one.” As Sam watched, a dark blue haze formed around Kevin’s face.

“You know for sure that you went out that night, but you don’t remember anyone you were with or where you went?” Beau laid the notebook on the table and tapped his pen against it.

“No! I don’t!” Kevin’s voice rose in agitation. The blue haze became murky, then began to turn red. “I don’t have to explain anything to you! And I don’t give a shit what you think!”

His eyes were wild now, as he stared at the faces around the room.

His mother bit furiously at her thumbnail, tears forming in her eyes. She glanced up at Carlos—quick, nervous little pointed looks—but he didn’t notice.

The politician’s attention darted between the numbers rolling along at the bottom of the television screen and the situation with Kevin.

“I am not a bad person!” Kevin screamed. He jumped up, sending his chair flying.

Beau was on his feet, almost in a blur, facing down his suspect with a firm stance. But Kevin was quick, too. He bolted toward his father.

“You promised! You said we would be a family. You and me and Mom, and we were going to move to Santa Fe—together. But you had her! Nothing was going to work right as long as she was around.”

“Kevin, I—” Carlos stepped forward, reaching toward his son.

Kevin shook him off, continuing his rant. “You told me you were filing for divorce. You said you had some kind of evidence on your wife and that she would let you go without a fight. But when I got there that night, she was there, all cozy and comfy in her robe. She wasn’t moving out—she wasn’t leaving you! You liar!”

“You went to their house that night?” Beau asked. His stance was alert as he watched Kevin shaking his fists at Carlos.

Spittle formed on his lips as he shouted. “I went to get some papers for the campaign. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. She’d been at that bakery thing, that party. Then I thought she would go to somewhere . . . wherever she was supposed to be living because you were divorcing her. But she was there!” His skin had turned the same muddy red as the aura Sam had seen when his mood began to turn.

“Kevin, what did you do?” Beau’s voice was icy calm.

The young man turned on him, staring with crazed eyes. “She said she would get the campaign papers, and then she went into the study. I saw some hiking boots near the front door . . .”

Sam saw the whole ugly picture unfolding. The bootlace around Elena’s neck as she bent over a desk, her body being dragged into the bedroom, her lovely cashmere scarf around her neck and then draped over a heavy beam at the ceiling.

Kevin suddenly turned his attention on Sam. “How do you know that?” he hissed.

Had she spoken aloud? She glanced at Beau and saw that he seemed just as bewildered by the comment as she.

Movement caught her attention and she turned just in time to see Kevin lunge at her.

Chapter 25

In a flash, Beau leapt across the open space and threw an arm around Kevin’s neck. Sam watched, amazed, as he did some kind of kick that took Kevin’s legs out from under him. Pinned to the floor, Kevin flailed until Beau got handcuffs on him. Without a glance at anyone else in the room, Beau keyed his shoulder mike and called for backup.

Keeping a knee in the middle of Kevin’s back, Beau looked up at Sam. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Her voice came out a little on the shaky side, but Kevin hadn’t actually touched her.

Beau kept an eye on Carlos, watchful in case the older man should attempt to free his son, but the politician seemed to be more concerned with himself.

“I didn’t know anything about any of this,” he swore to Beau.

Jean was openly crying, sobbing into her hands, her body a limp blubbering mass on the sofa.

Carlos turned to face his son. “I can’t believe—” he stammered. “Kevin? Why would you— Elena?”

Beau recited Kevin his rights, finally eliciting agreement that the young man understood what he was being told, even as he continued to spew invectives at both Beau and Carlos.

Sam stood with her back to the wall, stunned at the show going on before her. Kevin’s red aura was fading to a dull burnt orange now; Jean was surrounded by a white fog; Carlos’s was a bright lemon yellow. She didn’t know what any of it meant and was glad when a deputy arrived to take Kevin away. Jean followed quietly, hardly speaking to Carlos, murmuring something about being with her son.

Carlos continued to plead ignorance of the whole thing, even as he watched his son being hauled away in handcuffs and his former lover nearly becoming a zombie in her own confusion. He poured himself a half-glass of scotch at the bar and stood at the window, gazing down at the parking lot as he downed it in three gulps.

Beau pulled Sam aside. “I’ll be tied up with the paperwork for awhile . . . He glanced at Carlos on the other side of the room.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Sam said. “This hotel, the victory party downstairs . . . it’s exactly where he wants to be right now. I’ll call down to the ballroom and get some more of his entourage to come up. We’ll keep an eye on him.”

“I wonder how many other people know anything at all about what happened,” he said as he left.

Indeed, Sam thought, looking toward the politician who was now sitting on the sofa in front of the television set, cupping a fresh glass of scotch in both hands.

“Look at those numbers,” he said, smiling widely, looking around the room as if he were only now realizing that everyone else had left.

Before his little group gets here, Sam thought, maybe I can get some more information out of him.

“Carlos,” she said gently, waiting for a commercial break on the TV. “Kevin said that you’d promised that you and he and Jean would be a family. I guess that was pretty important to him.”

He shrugged. “Kids need to hear certain things. It’s what I do, Sam. I tell people what they want to hear. I had no idea Kevin would ever take his desire that far.”

Voices sounded at the door just then and Sam opened it.

An hour later, with the election a certainty. Tafoya’s campaign manager suggested that it was time for him to go down to the ballroom and give his speech. Sam stayed behind in the suite as the rest of them left. She needed a few minutes of silence before being overtaken by the tidal wave of excitement downstairs.

A bright yellow banner across the television screen caught her attention and she un-muted the sound.