“Shocking news from Taos County this evening . . .” The newscaster’s voice held a somber tone as the pictures began to flash on screen. Beau leading Kevin Calendar out of the hotel in handcuffs. How had the media gotten hold of this so quickly? She watched until the story had run out of facts and the journalist began to repeat himself. So far, all they had for sure was that a young volunteer in the Tafoya campaign had been arrested.
The picture switched again and the voiceover promised live coverage of the governor-elect’s speech, right after the break.
Sam turned it off and left the suite.
In the ballroom the mood was frenetic. A band played rock music with a heavy beat and the mesmerized crowd were waving their arms overhead, swaying and chanting to the tempo. She stood to the side, near one of the massive carved doors.
From the front of the room, a cheer went up, moving through the huge ballroom like a tsunami. Carlos Tafoya stepped from behind a curtain, waving widely and smiling his familiar grin. He took the podium and let the cheers go on for a full three minutes.
When he finally raised his hands, signaling for silence, Sam was likely the only one in the room who noticed the faint whiteness around his mouth, the haunted look in his eyes. If anyone else noticed it was undoubtedly, after all, because the man had just lost his loving wife this past week, the woman with whom he’d planned to share this moment.
“Good evening, New Mexico!” Carlos shouted, and the speech was on.
Sam watched, amazed that he pulled it off. His wife dead, his son going away in handcuffs less than an hour ago, and himself in danger of being pulled into the whole mess. Somehow, she knew the man before this room tonight would come away unscathed, although his unsuspecting son might very well never be free again. A plea bargain—Kevin’s life for an admission of manslaughter—it wouldn’t be the first time something like had happened in northern New Mexico.
As Carlos went on, reiterating his promises for the state, Sam closed her eyes, working to regain a bit of the energy that had flowed out of her during the evening. When she opened them again, she saw Sandy Greene, the reporter, watching her.
An image popped into Sam’s head—Sandy standing near a door, listening. On the door, some lettering: Suite A. The reporter’s rapt attention to the male voice ranting behind the closed barrier of wood. Suddenly Sam knew exactly how the story had become the startling ‘news flash’ heard round the wires.
A chill crept over her arms and she wanted nothing more than to be out of there. During one of the louder outbursts from the crowd, Sam opened the tall, heavy door beside her and stepped out into the corridor. At the front desk she asked them to call a taxi.
By nine o’clock Sam was drifting off, wrapped in her fleece robe with a mug of hot chocolate on the table beside the sofa. She’d switched on the television to catch the results of a few other races—congressional seats were at stake, along with some legislators. The Albuquerque station continued to rehash the little bit they knew about the arrest of Kevin Calendar but it wasn’t much and even the newscasters were tiring of saying the same things and showing a picture of the outside of the Taos jail, quiet and dark this time of night. Across the bottom of the screen, they ran results of the county races and she noticed that Orlando Padilla had, indeed, been re-elected sheriff by a landslide.
She heard the kitchen door close and Kelly called out.
“Beau isn’t home yet,” she told Sam, “but Iris is snug in her bed and I wasn’t needed so I decided to come home. What was the story on the radio about Taos County and the new governor? I only caught a bit of it.”
Sam filled her in on the basics, leaving out everything having to do with witchy predictions, colored auras and the fact that Kevin had tried to attack her before Beau brought him down. There are some things a daughter doesn’t need to know.
Kelly said goodnight and Sam headed for her own room, after checking the doors and turning out the lights. She had no idea how much time had passed, only that she was in a complete blackout sleep, when the phone rang.
She felt around for the bedside phone and mumbled a sleepy hello.
“You meddling bitch!”
Chapter 26
Sam came instantly awake.
“Can’t believe how you, you slimy bitch . . . how you messed me up.” The words were slurred and the voice was definitely Orlando Padilla’s.
“Sheriff, what’s going on?”
“You know, you—”
“No. Stop just a minute. I don’t know. What are you talking about?” Her thoughts tried to wrap themselves around his accusation. He’d been nowhere near the Tafoya victory party tonight.
“Marg . . . Margaret is going to leave me, and it’s all your fault.”
Ah, the affair with Elena Tafoya was about to come to light. “How is it my fault, Orlando?”
“You just . . . just . . . I don’t know what you said to her.”
His words became more sloppy and rambling as he went. Her denials that she’d said anything at all to his wife went unheeded. Sam couldn’t make any sense of how he thought she was involved and she finally gave him a quick goodbye and hung up the phone.
It rang again almost instantly but she hung up again when she realized that Padilla wouldn’t give up. She left the receiver off the hook and tried hard to get back to sleep, but she couldn’t get her mind to settle down. Would he come to her house? Would he take out his anger on Beau? Might he even become abusive with Margaret?
Obviously, his brief affair with Elena was about to come to light and here was a guy who didn’t want to face the consequences. Sam grumbled a little and rolled over once more, falling asleep—finally—sometime near dawn.
Wednesday morning she gave herself over to the luxury of burrowing into the quilts for an extra hour. With Becky back at the bakery today, both of the younger women had persuaded Sam not to come in early. After the drama of last evening and the interruption to her sleep, it didn’t take a lot of will power to let herself sleep in.
Somewhere around nine she began to feel hungry. She pulled on a robe and placed the receiver back on the phone, then went to the kitchen for cereal. The morning television shows were full of talk about the election results, with more and more connections between Carlos Tafoya and Kevin Calendar coming out by the hour. Sam planted herself in a corner of the sofa and crunched on her breakfast as she watched.
The newly elected governor stood before a blue background in some office somewhere, taking questions from the press. In short, it looked like he was taking the tired old “It was inappropriate behavior” line, admitting that he’d once (he made it sound like sometime in a previous life) had an extramarital affair and that there was a child with this other woman. About the time he was getting into the equally tired line about “getting on with the business of the state” Sam’s phone rang.
“Hey you,” said Beau. “You doing okay this morning?”
He sounded haggard, and admitted that he’d not slept all night when Sam asked how he was.
“Kevin actually admitted quite a bit before Carlos showed up with a lawyer for the kid.”
“I’ve just been watching the spin version on TV,” she said. “No doubt he’ll not lose his public support, once he’s fed them the old boys-will-be-boys routine and expressed just enough remorse.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that. When we questioned him, Carlos actually did seem horrified that Kevin took it as far as he did. Apparently, Jean had kept her son in the dark all these years—made up some story about a father who left when he was an infant. She finally broke down last year and told him the truth. Once he found out who his real father was, Kevin
“Seriously? At twenty, this young man thinks they’ll just go back in time and become a happy little trio?”
“Well, no one ever said the kid didn’t have issues. A lot of them. And it didn’t help that Carlos played along, letting Kevin believe that he would leave Elena and marry Jean.”
Sam shook her head. What a mess.
