8 Sweet Payback (18 page)

“Linden Gisner told me he’d
originally named this house Heathermoor, after his wife. From the bitterness of
his tone, I guess he changed that. Still, I wonder when the construction was
actually finished.”

“Is that another search you want
me to do?”

She looked at him and couldn’t
tell if he was being serious.

“I’m teasing you!” he said. “That
is, unless you really need to know.”

She gave his arm a tiny jab. “You
don’t have to take
everything
I say
so seriously. Besides, I doubt it’s relevant.”

“Do you ever get strange feelings
in this place, darlin’?” They had stepped into the wine cellar, where she’d
pointed out the rows of specially built racks and the bricked walls that made
the room feel like an underground vault, even though true cellars and basements
were rarely included in New Mexico homes and this wine room was on the ground
floor.

“Strange feelings?” The hair on
her neck rose a little, just because he’d said it.

“Like a chill. I didn’t notice it
in the other rooms, but this wine place . . . it’s got me wanting my jacket.”
He shrugged off the feeling. “Probably just because there are no windows, like
there are everywhere else.”

He led the way out without another
word about it and Sam chalked it up to exactly what he’d said. The wine cellar
was
chillier than the rest of the house.

“So, even though I was supposed to
log in my visit today, how about if I don’t say anything about it to Delbert
and just pretend I never saw those dirty windows,” she said as they got back
into the cruiser.

“Hey, that’s the way I’d play it.”
His grin reassured her that he hadn’t truly been spooked inside the house.
“Look, if all is quiet in Sembramos this morning, I could get back to the
office and start work on those searches we talked about. Want to come along? I
could teach you how to do it.”

One of these days Sam was going to
have to get back to her bakery business. She trusted her employees implicitly,
but she hadn’t even put in enough time this week to count the money or get it
to the bank. On the other hand, she always loved being included in Beau’s work.

“We can put in the preliminary
search data and then will need to wait for answers. It doesn’t just pop up on
the computer screen in five seconds like it does on TV.” He smiled at her.
“That way, you can get to the bakery with the whole afternoon to do what you
need to.”

How
did
he read her mind like that? It was probably what made him a
great lawman.

Chapter
21

Beau looped through Sembramos,
pointing out the Starkey house where the back half of it still lay charred in
the sunlight; no sign of cleanup or reconstruction yet. He showed Sam the old
Rodarte place and where the Cayne family had once lived, and where Sophie
Garcia lived now. Average, small homes, all of them. Everything in the little
farming community was modest, middle class. She wondered again at Linden
Gisner’s
decision to build the mansion on the hill outside
town. Rather than going to Albuquerque or Dallas or somewhere a house that size
might fit in, he obviously preferred to be the big fish in the little pond. It
fit with what Sally Cayne had said about him. Sam put the thoughts aside and
directed her attention to the passing countryside, where the overnight rain had
done wonders already in greening the native grasses.

At the department, things were
quiet in the squad room. Beau told her he’d let several deputies take a day off
after working the night patrols in Sembramos. With Jessie’s funeral past them
and Lee’s friends and family away in Albuquerque for that service, he hoped
things would settle down permanently for the little town and for his men.

Sam watched over Beau’s shoulder
as he accessed the law enforcement databases and initiated searches for Heather
Brooks and Heather Gisner. Some matches to the surname Brooks came up
immediately but he explained there was no way to know which of them might be
the lady they were looking for, not without further information. He entered the
tidbits they did know—prior addresses in New Mexico, the marriage to Linden
Gisner, known relatives that included Molly Gisner.

“We’ll expand this to include
motor vehicle records. We could potentially get hundreds of hits on driver
licenses and car registrations, and that makes narrowing it down even more time
consuming. We can also try for passport information through the State
Department, but then we’re talking about needing a stronger official reason for
the search.”

Sam could see why he’d said they
wouldn’t be getting quick answers. Her thoughts drifted to the bakery.

“I’ll drive you over, if you
want,” he said.

“That’s okay. The walk will do me
good.” It was only about six blocks and once there she could use her bakery
van, which she’d left at the shop so Becky could make deliveries all week.

She hiked the strap of her pack
onto her shoulder and set off, following the sidewalk rather than cutting
through the plaza and its maze of alleys and narrow side streets. When she
walked in the front door of Sweet’s Sweets, Jen looked up in surprise.

“Oh, hey, Sam. I didn’t see you
drive up.”

Sam gave the quick explanation,
taking in the sales room with a glance. “Things look good here. No
emergencies?”

“All under control,” Jen said with
a smile. “I’ve been putting the daily receipts in your desk drawer.”

“Thanks.” Sam walked into the
kitchen, surprising Julio and Becky too, and after a few minutes to catch up on
the status of the orders, she sat down at her desk.

Not surprisingly, every question
the gang couldn’t answer had ended up as a sticky note on the glass of Sam’s
computer monitor. She pulled them off and sorted them by duties: phone calls to
return, cake design questions, and miscellaneous things such as bills to be
paid. Surely she hadn’t actually thought she could be away for days at a time
without accumulating a backlog of sorts. She quickly handled the phone calls
and stacked the bills into a pile to deal with later. She’d just reached for
the zippered bank bag where Jen had been stashing cash, checks and register
tapes when the intercom rang.

“Sam? A lady on line one. She says
it’s not bakery business.”

“Ms. Sweet, hi. I’m a friend of
Mary Raintree. She gave me your name and said you had an interesting magical
implement. She, um, thought I might be of help in identifying it for you.”

It took Sam a moment to make the
connection that Mary Raintree must be the witch she’d met at Java Joe’s. She
stuttered a response to the female voice on the phone.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Oh. I’m Zenda. I’m a friend of
Mary Raintree.”

Yeah, you said that.

“Anyway, I’d love to take a look
at that box.”

Sam’s inner antennae went on
alert. Had she used the word magic with Mary? She was pretty sure she hadn’t
told the witch about any of the box’s powers. And hadn’t she asked Mary to call
her and pass along names of anyone who might have known Bertha Martinez, not to
simply give out her name randomly. So, how had this Zenda found her, if not
through Mary?

“I can come by your shop,” Zenda
said. “I know where it is.”

Sam had a flash memory of how
easily Kelly had found addresses and locations by using her phone. Another
memory, of the chocolatier who’d worked in her shop, the odd man who’d warned
her of the box’s power and that there could be dark forces in the world, other
people who would want to take the box from her. A frisson of fear raced up her
spine.

Zenda repeated her offer to come
by and the silence while she waited for an answer hung in the air. Something
told Sam this wouldn’t be a good idea.

“This week isn’t good for me,” she
said. “And I don’t have the box with me anyway.”

Zenda seemed a little put out. She
said she would check back and hung up before Sam could tell her not to bother.

Damn. She should have been firmer,
told the woman she wasn’t interested in meeting. This Zenda was far too pushy
and the whole conversation had left Sam feeling uneasy.

“Becky, do we have any deliveries
this afternoon?” Sam asked, stuffing all the receipts and money back into the
bank bag.

“Nothing until day after
tomorrow,” Becky said, not taking her eyes off the flowers she was piping onto
a white layer cake for the sales case up front.

“I’m going to take the van then.”
Suddenly, Sam felt the need to get out of there.

She grabbed her pack and the bank
bag, headed out the back door and got into the van. Her eyes wouldn’t stay
still, glancing behind her and checking her mirrors as she drove down the alley
and watched for traffic.

I can come by your shop. I know where it is.

Sam turned right, opting to go out
of her way in hopes of spotting someone who might be following her. She merged
into the traffic on Paseo del Pueblo Sur, passing the fast food places and the
turnoff to the high school, pulling into the Wal-Mart parking lot and circling
it before getting out in traffic again, this time northbound toward home. As
far as she could tell there wasn’t a single car that had made the whole trek
with her.

By the time she reached the north
end of town and got out into open country she was certain that she wasn’t being
tailed. She also felt a little foolish for her concerns. This Zenda was
probably just an over-eager newbie witch who wanted to get hold of a magical
artifact.

But, I swear I never mentioned to Mary that the box had magical
properties.
She tried to remember the whole conversation with the witch at
Java Joe’s. She had only described the box to Mary as an artifact and that she
was interested in learning about its history—she felt sure of it. Other than
telling the woman that she’d heard Bertha Martinez was a
bruja
, she didn’t think she’d brought up magic at all. And now this
Zenda comes forward, saying she wanted to see the ‘magical’ box. She didn’t get
that information from Mary.

Sam parked beside the log house,
went inside and immediately locked the door behind her. Upstairs, she picked up
the box from the bathroom vanity and carried it to the bedroom, burying it
under a pile of sweaters on the closet shelf. It wasn’t a secure hiding place
but at least the box was out of sight until she got a chance to think of
something better.

The chocolatier,
Bobul
, had warned her, and his words came back now.
Miss Sam, be careful. Bad people will do
anything to take box away.

She stopped abruptly in the middle
of the bedroom. If someone wanted this box badly enough, and if they went to
the trouble to look up Sam and come for it, they wouldn’t be coming here. This
house, the phone and all the utilities were listed in Beau’s name. She’d only
lived here six months. The place they would track Sam would be to her old
house, where Kelly lived alone now.

She pulled her cell phone from her
pocket and hit her daughter’s number.
Okay,
don’t scare her. Stay calm.

She managed to make it sound as if
she’d received a persistent sales call and was concerned that the woman would
come by the house as she warned Kelly to keep her doors locked and her
valuables hidden away.

“Mom. Seriously? Don’t you think I
do that already? I lived in California before I came back home, remember?”

“I know, I know. I just . . . I
got a creepy feeling from this caller. Please do your old mom a favor and don’t
answer the door to anyone you don’t know. It’ll make me feel better.”

Kelly chuckled over the ‘old mom’
reference but agreed to be watchful. By the time Beau got home, around six, Sam
had calmed down by adding up her bakery receipts and putting a chicken
casserole in the oven for dinner.

“Got something for you,” Beau
said, planting a kiss on top of her head as she stood at the kitchen sink,
washing vegetables. He held out a slip of paper with a name and phone number on
it.

“Althea Brooks?”

“Heather
Brooks’s
sister.”

“How’d you get that?”

“Well, while the database searches
were returning bunches of names it would take me months to track down, I used
the old noodle. Remembered that Heather Brooks grew up in Sembramos, checked
through school records. Although she’s in her forties now, they actually do
keep stuff that far back, at least in this school. I looked up her registration
information and came up with the fact that she had a sister, just a couple
years older. So, that put me on a search for Althea Brooks. She still lives in
New Mexico.”

Sure enough, the area code was
familiar.

“Farmington. She’s been there ever
since she left here. Which is part of what made it easier to locate her. If
she’d moved around a lot, it could have gotten a whole lot more complicated.”

“So, did you call her?”

“Tried to. No answer. That’s why I
brought this home.” He stuck the little yellow tab to the front of a cupboard
door and sneaked a carrot out of the bunch Sam was about to chop for the salad.

After dinner, Beau suggested they
try Althea Brooks again. Sure enough, this time she answered.

“This is Sheriff Cardwell in Taos
County. I wonder if I might take a few minutes to ask you a couple of
questions.”

To Sam, Althea sounded hesitant
over the speaker. “Is this about what I saw on the news earlier in the week?
The problems in Sembramos?”

“Indirectly, yes.” He gave the
quick rundown about why he had reopened the Angela Cayne murder case. “In
talking to Sally Cayne she mentioned that your niece, Molly, was Angela’s best
friend. We’re trying to locate your sister to see if we can get some additional
background.”

“I don’t know what I can tell you,
Sheriff. Heather’s done a good job of hiding. I even hired a private
investigator once but he didn’t come up with anything.”

“Tell me about when she left. What
was going on at the time?”

“You need more background before
it will make much sense,” she said. “Unfortunately, I’ve got somewhere to be
this evening so I need to go.”

“Would it be possible for us to
meet?” Beau said. “Can you come to Taos?”

There was some hesitation at the
other end. “I work all week, teaching special needs kids at a charter school.
It would be a day-long trip to drive out there . . .”

Beau and Sam waited, sensing there
was more.

Althea seemed to come to a
decision. “I have to drive to Dulce tomorrow. We’re required to make a home
visit to each student’s parents, and I’ve got one whose home is way out there.
It’s Highway 64 the whole way. I suppose I could drive on over to Taos. I would
get there around noon. I really would like to find my sister and you’re the
first lawman to show much interest in helping.”

“I’d really appreciate that, Ms.
Brooks.” Beau clicked off the call, after repeating his thanks and reiterating
the time and place they would meet.

“Since she’s already tried to find
her sister, years ago, I wonder whether we’ll have much luck,” Sam said as they
settled on the couch with their after-dinner coffees.

“I don’t know. But maybe she can
fill in some gaps in the time leading up to Angela’s death. As she said,
there’s a lot of background we don’t know.”

Sam pondered that. “But the big
gaps still come down to the night Angela disappeared. Who would have reason to
kill a twenty-year-old girl who, by all accounts was pretty popular? And, other
than revenge from someone who believed Jessie Starkey and Lee Rodarte were
unfairly released from prison, who would have come after
them
all these years later?”

“Revenge fits so well with both
men—one shot in the woods, the other struck in the head and kicked. That’s
anger, pure and simple. One of these days I’ll manage to break the alibi of
someone in the Starkey clan and probably someone else close to Lee Rodarte, and
I think those two deaths will be solved. Somebody up there knows who did it and
one day that person will drink a little too much or they’ll be unable to keep
quiet.

“That still doesn’t tell us
whether Starkey and Rodarte really were unfairly released, or whether Angela’s
killer is still running around free. Gut feeling tells me it’s the latter.”

“So . . . let’s take another look
at the file.” Sam carried their cups to the kitchen for refills and they spent
the next two hours reviewing their previous timeline and adding to it from the
bits and scraps of interrogation questions.