8 Sweet Payback (20 page)

“I brought a little overnight bag
and decided to get a room in Taos for the night, visit the galleries, do a
little shopping. On my way back, I’d like to stop in Sembramos. Helen Starkey
and I were fairly close in our elementary school days. I should pop in and see
her,” Althea said. She turned to Beau when he joined them. “I doubt I can tell
you anything more but if you have any questions, here’s my cell number.”

She walked to a small red car and
got in.

“Very forthcoming,” Beau said, as
they walked toward Camino de la
Placita
, where they
would each turn toward their respective jobs. “I don’t know that we learned
anything much about Angela Cayne, other than she went through a wild spell,
more so than most anyone else has said.”

“Heather Gisner might know, more
than anyone else, about what the girls were up to but we sure didn’t get any
firm leads on finding her.”

“Yeah.” Beau stared up the street,
jingling the change in his pocket. “I was hoping we’d get something useful on
that.”

“At least you have feelers out. If
Althea thinks of anything or can lead us to someone else, I’d bet that she
will.”

Beau agreed. “Meantime, I think
I’ll drop in on the deputy who assisted Orlando Padilla on Angela’s case, Roy
Watson. He retired a few years ago but he may remember something. And I’m
trying to get an appointment with one of the defense attorneys. See if they had
evidence that wasn’t allowed in court or anything like that. I’m sick of
feeling like I’m on a dead-end street, everywhere I turn.”

Chapter
23

Beau walked into his office to
find a message slip. William Gravitz. He didn’t recognize the man’s name but he
knew the firm. Tanner, Gravitz and Ortiz had been the court-appointed firm for
Starkey and Rodarte. He carried the message to his office, closed the door and
dialed.

“I pulled the case records when
you called earlier,” Gravitz said. “Our senior partner, Charles Tanner, felt
very good about the recent reversal of the verdict. Even with a pro-bono case,
you want to do your best for the clients.”

Beau had to wonder if he still
felt good about it, considering both defendants were now dead.

“I came into this case after the
fact,” he told the lawyer. “And now that the court has overturned the ruling,
it’s up to my department to reopen the case and find Angela Cayne’s real killer,
in addition to finding out who killed Starkey and Rodarte. I thought I’d see if
your office had information that I never got. I’d rather not go through getting
subpoenas and warrants, if you know what I mean.”

“Being that our clients were
cleared of the charges and couldn’t be retried, even if they were still alive,
I don’t see why that would be a problem. I’m sure the families want answers.
I’ll have to clear it with the partners, of course.”

Beau expected that he would need
to check back in a few days, but Gravitz simply put him on hold. He came back
within five minutes, saying that Beau could stop by their offices. Obviously,
the lawyers had already discussed this before Gravitz’s call this afternoon. Beau
said if it was all right he would run by and get the files now.

“I didn’t include the trial
transcripts,” the young-looking Bill Gravitz said, as he had Beau sign for the
four boxes of papers. “That would have been another eight boxes. What we have
here is the evidence we obtained in discovery and the confidential interviews
with our clients. As I mentioned earlier, you’re only getting those because both
men are now deceased.

“We took statements from a lot of
other witnesses. I also included our private lab report, which showed the
murder weapon was not the same piece of rope originally connected with Jessie
Starkey. If only that had come in before the conclusion of the trial. It took
us six years of persistence to get it admitted and get those men free.
Sometimes the politics of the justice system make me want to scream.” He rubbed
at his close-cut hair, then sighed. “Anyway, it’s all here.”

Beau picked up the first of the
heavy boxes. Thank goodness for small firms who understood that subjecting
everyone to months of formal requests for records wouldn’t serve anyone at this
point. They all knew that Jessie and Lee had protested their innocence all
along, and that Jessie’s so-called confession had been obtained under duress.
The zealous prosecutor in the case had been an unfortunate match for Beau’s
over-eager boss.

He loaded the boxes into the back
of his SUV and decided to take them home where he would have more time to read
through them than at the office with phones ringing and deputies in and out all
day.

There, he stacked the boxes beside
the dining table, which was still spread with the pages of the murder file he
and Sam had been going through. Since the law files were technically only on
loan from Gravitz, he had to be careful not to intermix the reams of paper. It
took only about fifteen minutes of attempting to balance an open file folder on
his lap before he decided to dig up an old folding table he knew was stashed
around the place somewhere. He rummaged through a storage closet, found it and
wiped off several years worth of dust; he was setting up the table when he
heard Sam’s bakery van in the drive.

“Hey there, handsome Sheriff,” she
said, dropping her backpack onto an armchair.

Beau looked down and realized he’d
forgotten to change clothes, and now his uniform was all dusty.

“I don’t mind,” she said, coming
toward him for a hug. “I’m probably covered in flour and sugar myself.”

Sam glanced at the new collection
of boxes. “What’s all this?”

He explained how he’d taken
advantage of the cooperation from the attorneys. “Since we are technically
working a cold case, I figured it would be better to keep this out of my
office. Plus, this way we can cross-reference their stuff with ours.”

“You think there will be discrepancies?”

“There are bound to be. Law
enforcement works with the prosecution to catch and put away criminals. Defense
lawyers get the defendant’s side of the story, usually a very filtered version,
but sometimes these guys will spill their guts to their attorney.”

“And you can use that?”

“If their client were still alive
or if they refused to release it to me, no. But if anybody in the Starkey
family raises a fuss, I’m going to point out that we
are
trying to catch their son’s killer. I think they will go along
with that. Now, as to what can be admitted into court testimony . . . that’s
something else. We still need evidence.”

Sam ran her fingers over the
folder tabs in the open boxes. So much paper—where to start? Beau had picked up
one that seemed to contain the attorney’s initial interviews with Jessie. Sam
opted for a folder with Angela’s name on it. The sheets inside were photocopies
of something handwritten, pages small enough that each sheet of copy paper
showed two pages side by side. She began to read.

It only took a few seconds to
realize that these were the writings of a teenage girl. By the way they were
dated and the casual tone, this was a diary.

“Beau, we didn’t come across any
of this in the department file, did we?” she asked, holding out the small sheaf
of papers. “Could this be Angela’s diary?”

He scanned the top page, thinking
furiously.

“What would the defense team be
doing with this?” Sam asked.

He bit at his lower lip while he
put his thoughts together. “A personal item belonging to the victim could
have—would have—been collected by our department, either at the crime scene or
perhaps in her home. Anything relevant to the case, that is, if the prosecutor
intended to use it in court, has to be passed along to the defense team as well.”

“So, Jessie or Lee couldn’t have
given this to the lawyer?”

“Not likely. The fact that it’s a
copy, not the diary itself, would indicate that most likely our department
collected the diary and then made the copies for the lawyers.”

“But you didn’t come across the
actual diary, right?”

“There are still boxes of stuff
back in our evidence room. It should have been passed along to the prosecutor
before the trial.”

Sam nodded. “Just checking. Can I
go ahead and read some of it? See if there’s anything that could be a clue?”

“Anything. Definitely.”

Sam leafed through the pages and
soon discovered that Angela wasn’t regular in her journal writings. Dated
entries skipped around all over the place, and many of them weren’t dated at
all. Sam had been the same way, herself, as a teen. She owned a small diary and
had usually only turned to it when life became dramatic or heartbreaking. The
mundane details of everyday life in high school just weren’t that interesting. She
began reading the pages in front of her.

I can’t think! I don’t know what to do!!! They say it’s my fault.
Molly’s gone—it’s my fault!!! I should have died—I wish I had!!!!!
The
writing was shaky, the emotion apparent.

Evidently, a grief counselor had
given Angela the book and suggested that she write in order to work through her
feelings about the accident. Sam wondered if Althea Brooks had talked with her
niece during this time.

Dr. Jones keeps asking me to think back to that night, to remember what
Molly and I did. The police asked if we were drinking—no! I told them we don’t
drink. They don’t believe me!! We had Cokes at Molly’s house, really sweet
ones—I think they had vanilla or something. Her dad was there—he watched us. He
can tell them!

A few entries later:
I guess Molly’s dad did tell them we weren’t
drinking. But still, that judge said I have to lose my license for a year. I
don’t care. I never want to drive again.

Poor girl. To have her high school
world come crashing down, her best friend gone.

Dr. Jones wants me to get out more. I should see my friends again.
Molly’s dad keeps wanting me to come over and talk. I should be nice to him. He
lost his whole family, at least I have mine. When people say things like that I
feel worse than ever. I don’t want to leave my room. Can’t they all just leave
me alone?

A dated entry indicated that
Angela was still working with the counselor several months later.
Molly wanted to leave with her mom, when we
were in ninth grade. I should have let her. Why did I beg her to stay with me?
Dr. Jones says it’s normal for somebody to want her best friend to always be
there. But if I could of let her go. She might be in Kansas now but she’d be
alive.

Kansas. That might be a clue to
Heather’s plans. Sam noted it, to ask Althea.

Maybe I could even go visit. But now . . . I just want to kill myself.

Uh-oh. Had Angela’s counselor
known about this? Sam riffled through the pages, seeing that the writing
continued. Whatever transpired immediately after the accident, Angela was still
alive—until three years later. And when she did die, it wasn’t by her own hand.
Sam blew out a breath and blinked back tears.

She caught Beau staring at her and
told him what she’d just read. “I wonder why this didn’t come up in court?”

He gave her a weak smile. “Sad as
it was, there was nothing really to connect Angela’s trauma of the car accident
to her own death, years later.”

She nodded. True. But what if, in
her later writings, Angela had revealed something? Had she remained depressed
all that time? Sam continued reading.

The entries continued in the same
vein until one brought Sam up short.
My
wrists are healing. When I woke up in the hospital last week I was SO mad!! I
really wanted this pain to be over. But my mom . . . the look on her face. Matt
said mom cried for three days. I have to stop this, feeling sorry for myself.
Dr. Jones has said it—I need to get on with my life. I don’t know how. But I’ll
try.

Sam had to get up and walk around.
She went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. She’d had her own unhappy
moments, growing up in a town where she didn’t fit in, eager to get away the
minute she could. But never anything like this. And she’d raised a daughter who
was basically a happy-go-lucky kid, a little flighty as a young woman but
overall well-adjusted. No wonder the Caynes simply had to get out of this area
after Angela was murdered. It was one painful trauma after the other for that
poor family. She took a sip of the tea and went back to her reading.

A couple of almost-empty pages
followed Angela’s heartfelt admission that she needed to turn her life around.
A few doodles—daisies and puffy-lettered versions of her name—seemed to
indicate a brighter mood. When the written entries resumed it was with a more
mature hand, and the date indicated that Angela was now nineteen.

He says he loves me!! He wants us to go away together, to be married! I
can’t believe it!! I don’t know . . . he’s older. I don’t know what my parents
would say.

The next entry:
I haven’t slept with him yet. It doesn’t
seem right. He really wants me and I feel special when he buys me things. But I
think my parents would freak out if I tell them.

Sam checked the date. This was
getting close. Angela would turn twenty in May. She would be murdered in June.

Chapter
24

Sam dropped the diary pages. A
chill passed over her and the lukewarm tea did nothing to dispel it.

“There was a man, Beau. Near the
end of Angela’s life. Did that ever come up in the investigation or trial?” She
folded the stapled pages back so he could read the last one. “Someone older. If
it was Jessie Starkey, I can see why she would be worried about telling her
parents. The teacher dad and the accountant mom weren’t likely to approve of a
tattooed rebel with a drug habit.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that.”
He read the words on the diary page, then stared off into space. “I don’t
recall this being brought up during the trial, but someone recently told me
that Jessie had his eye on Angela.”

He handed the diary pages back to
Sam and crossed to the other table, touching pages until he came to the stack
that contained the sheriff’s interviews with Jessie Starkey.

“Let’s see . . .”

“Or Lee Rodarte? Could he have
been the older man?” Sam asked.

“He was involved with Sophie
Garcia at that time; they had a baby together. But, nothing’s impossible. Why
don’t you grab those sections over there—his interview questions—see if there’s
anything about a personal relationship with Angela at the same time.”

They read silently for several
minutes. Sam shook her head over Rodarte’s Q&A. The sheriff had asked him
very little, aside from denigrating his alibi. Mainly, he’d tried his best to
get Lee to corroborate Jessie’s confession and implicate himself in the
process.

Beau took his time with Jessie
Starkey’s interrogation, reading every question and every answer. “I don’t see
where they ever specifically asked if he had a romantic interest in Angela
Cayne. They asked if he knew her and he responds, ‘yeah, sure, seen her
around.’ ”

“That doesn’t exactly sound like a
man in love.”

“Or one trying to cover up the
fact that he’s been wanting to get into a younger woman’s pants.”

“I wish we had a video of that
interview. It would tell a lot if Jessie blushed or turned away as he answered
the question.”

“Yeah, well. We have them now, but
the cameras and recorders didn’t get purchased for our department until pretty
recently.”

A crooked lawman’s way of giving
himself room to twist the truth, at his convenience? Sam had heard way too many
Sheriff Padilla stories.

“So, assuming it was Jessie
Starkey who was coming on to Angela, could the interrogators have used his
interest in the victim to get him to confess?”

“That, darlin’ could be the big
question. I’ll keep reading. The frustrating thing about transcripts like these
is that it’s routine to ask the same questions over and over. It could take me
awhile to get to that point in the file.”

“And if the love interest wasn’t
Jessie, it could have been anyone,” Sam reminded. “The boyfriend might have
showed up while her parents were gone. Wouldn’t Angela have told him that other
family members were home? Maybe she agreed to sneak out and meet him later?”

“Or, maybe he came in, got
insistent that things go further. She resisted, he got angry.”

Sam nodded, acknowledging that
either scenario could have happened.

“The sad thing is that we will
probably never know. I just wish Matt Cayne hadn’t been wearing his earphones
that night.” Beau set down the transcript sheets. “I never did get the chance
to drop in on Roy Watson today. Maybe that’s good. We know a lot more now. I’ll
plan to go by his place tomorrow.”

Sam put the diary pages back into
the box where she’d found them.

“Meanwhile, my lady . . .” Beau
held his hand out to her. “I have other plans for you and me.” The wiggle in
his eyebrow said it all.

* *
*

Sam awoke the next morning to
bright sunlight from the window where she’d forgotten to draw the curtains the
night before. Beau’s arm was around her, his unshaven face rubbing against her
shoulder, a contented sigh coming from him when she rolled over. She stroked
his bristly whiskers and kissed him. After too much time in crime files where
the worst of human nature came out she’d needed last night’s reminder that
there were gentle and loving men in this world. He returned her kisses,
urgently, and it was another hour before they reluctantly decided it was time
to get to work.

“I’ll be at the bakery, unless you
need me to go along with you,” she said giving her lips a swipe of gloss at the
bathroom mirror.

“As long as dispatch or the
night-duty men don’t spring something new on me, I think it’ll be business as
usual. We’ve had no trouble in Sembramos for a couple of nights.”

“Which is almost scary, isn’t it?”

“I just hope things have calmed
down there for good.”

Sam gave him another lingering
kiss, then picked up her bakery jacket and headed out. The sunny spring morning
only added to her good mood and she found herself humming as she pulled up to
the back of the bakery.

Inside, Julio had already finished
trays of muffins, scones and some of the new ultra-cinnamon bear claws that
he’d introduced a month ago. A coffee cake sat on the worktable, waiting to be
cut into generous pieces, and Becky was piping “Happy Birthday, Isabelle” onto
a pink lemonade cake.

Sam took a little teasing from
Becky about the rosy look in her cheeks and, out front, Jen commented that
married life was certainly agreeing with the boss. Before Sam could think of a
comeback, the phone rang and Jen handed it to her.

“Is this Samantha Sweet?” a female
voice inquired. “I got your name from Mary Raintree. She said you have an
unusual artifact that may have ties to the Craft.”

The moment Sam figured out it
wasn’t a recommendation for their pastries, she broke in. “I’m sorry, but that
item Mary referred to—it’s gone. I gave it away already.”

This intense interest in the
wooden box was becoming too much. When Mary offered to put Sam in touch with
someone who might have known Bertha Martinez, Sam hadn’t expected calls from
all these youngsters. She walked back to her desk and rummaged for the note
where she’d written Mary’s number.

The explanation again—that she no
longer had the box, so never mind about sending any more referrals—and she hung
up with only a twinge of second thoughts. She might be cutting off the
possibility of reaching one of Bertha’s friends who could give her some useful information.
And, too, if the witch Mary had the power to detect a lie, she may have seen
right through Sam’s story.

“How should I approach this job?”
Becky asked, pulling Sam’s thoughts back to the real world as she held up a
sketch Jen had made for a customer who wanted a dozen cupcakes to resemble
giant strawberries.

Sam studied the drawing,
envisioning the supplies they could put to use. “Bake the cupcakes in red paper
liners, for a start. Then I’m thinking red decorating sugar over red icing.
They’ll really sparkle that way. And edible leaves and stems of—”

Jen stood in the doorway, waving
for Sam’s attention. She reminded herself that it was good to be needed. “A
lady to see you,” Jen said. Then,
sotto
voce
, “I don’t think this one’s a nutcase.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Becky said, turning
back to the cupcake order. “I’ve got enough to get started.”

Althea Brooks stood at the display
case, glancing up when Sam walked in. “My goodness, you’ve got a fantastic shop
here! If this had been here when I lived nearby . . . Anyway, it occurred to me
that I never asked the sheriff if he needed a photo of my sister, for the
search. I guess what really reminded me of it was that I had a strange
encounter last evening.”

Sam felt her eyebrows rise. “What
kind of encounter?”

“I walked around the plaza
yesterday afternoon after we talked, you know, browsing the shops a little. Found
a cute pair of sandals. When I came out of the shop a man on the sidewalk came
to an abrupt stop and stared at me. He said, ‘Does your old man know you’re in
town?’ I’m afraid I had no clue and I stammered out something about how he’d
mistaken me for someone else. Well, then as I walked back to my car I got to
thinking, I’ll bet he thought I was Heather.”

“Really?”

“We look enough alike that I
suppose it’s possible, especially if it’s someone who hasn’t seen her in years.
That, and the way I’ve started coloring my hair, just a shade lighter than it
used to be.”

She pulled a photo out of her
wallet. “This is almost fifteen years ago, so you have to take into account
that both of us have aged. A little.” A chuckle.

Sam gave the photo a quick glance.
Heather did look very familiar. The sisters had the same facial structure—high
foreheads, prominent chin, straight nose. Heather’s hair was nearly the exact shade
of Althea’s, and even the cut was similar. She imagined present-day Heather
would look much as Althea did now.

“The man who saw you, he said
something about ‘your old man.’ I assume he wasn’t talking about your father.”

“He was about my age. I would assume
he’s a friend or acquaintance of Linden’s. Someone who has known him a long
time, if he knew Heather.”

That made sense. “Can Beau keep
this picture?”

At Althea’s hesitation, Sam added
that she was sure he could scan it or make a copy and get the original back to
her. Althea said that would be fine.

“There’s something else I wanted
to ask you,” Sam said, “something that came up last night.”

A customer walked into the shop,
so Sam nodded toward the door. Out on the sidewalk they could talk more
privately.

“We came across something in the
legal paperwork, a mention that Heather might have gone to Kansas. Does that
make sense?”

Althea made a little face, her
mouth twisting as she thought. “Not really. We have no relatives there, if
that’s what you mean. Maybe a friend from her school days? I suppose if she was
planning to leave Linden she could have put out some feelers about jobs. It was
before the days where most applications are done online . . . but she might
have mailed out some resumes or something.”

“What type of work was she likely
to apply for?”

“Well, she wasn’t really qualified
for much beyond some basic secretarial skills. She’d married so quickly after
high school that she never got a degree. And believe me, she’d never have
managed as a housekeeper or nanny.” She backtracked a little. “Not that she
wasn’t a great mother . . . but raising someone’s else’s children wouldn’t have
appealed to her. She never could understand what I loved so much about
teaching.”

“I suppose by now she may have
gone back to school and become qualified for nearly anything,” Sam said, musing
aloud.

“But back then? No, I can’t think
what would have drawn her specifically to Kansas.”

Besides this supposed ‘other man.’
Neither of them said it.

Sam pocketed the photo, promising
to take good care of it, and took Althea’s card with her mailing address. She
watched Althea get into her car before walking back inside, where she found
Becky in a mad search for red sugar.

By the time Beau called, near
noon, she was ready for a lunch break. Remembering the photo of Heather Gisner
in her pocket, she told him she would come by his office and they could go from
there to eat.

“Sure, no problem,” Beau said when
Sam handed him the wallet-sized picture. “We should enlarge it so we have something
to send out to other departments as we make inquiries.”

He carried the little photo to one
of the deputies, with an aside to Sam that this guy was the best in the office
with computers.

“We can’t go really large without
losing clarity,” the man said, “but I’ll get you the best image I can. Just
take a minute or two.”

Sam and Beau stood by and watched
the computer do its thing, Heather’s face coming up a quarter-inch at a time on
the screen in front of the deputy. When the full image was displayed, Sam felt
a wave of dizziness. She blinked her eyes. No wonder both Althea and Heather
looked familiar to her—this was the woman she’d seen in that eerie vision, the
night of the lightning storm.