Bitter Sweet (10 page)

“Ugh, I feel like a jerk for
bringing up the house payments at a time like this,” she said to the empty van
as she pulled into the alley behind the pastry shop.

“Sam, did you remember that there
are two wedding consultations this afternoon?” Jen said, the moment she walked
in the door. Sam quickly forgot all about the Grays.

“God, no. I mean, yes, I had
forgotten. Is one of them here now?”

“Actually, they’re both here.
You’re thirty minutes late for the first one, and the second one came early.”

And you didn’t think to call
me?
But she didn’t say it. Becky was feverishly working on a birthday cake,
and judging from the noise level out front Jen had her hands full too. She should
have remembered her own appointments.

“Give them samples of the cakes
and assure them I’ll be out in one minute,” Sam said with a sigh. Could this
week not get any more crazy? She washed her hands and slipped into her baker’s
jacket and picked up the portfolio of design ideas. She would have to pass on
the trip to Vegas with Beau. It was insane to think she could get away. She
took a deep breath and walked into chaos.

While Jen patiently waited on
each of the seven customers that hovered near the display cases, Sam sized up
the consultations waiting at two of the bistro tables.

Two brides, two entirely
different ideas about weddings. Sam knew it the moment she looked at them.
Monique Ramirez sat with her mother at one table, sampling the white cake with
buttercream frosting—conservative, Catholic—this would be a traditional church
wedding and Sam would bet on a traditional, and huge, cake. Since, technically,
they were to be the second appointment, she left them with the photo portfolio
and more cake samples.

Stacy Jones and boyfriend, decked
out in black leather with metal studs sticking out of almost every surface,
amazing multi-colored tattoos decorating most of the skin that the leather
didn’t cover, spiked hair (hers purple, his blue). Sam couldn’t hazard a guess
as to what their cake would be, but wasn’t terribly surprised when they asked
her to replicate the Harley that sat in front of the shop. She walked out with
them and snapped a lot of photos, assured them they would love the finished
cake, and went back inside thinking
ohmygod
,
what have I agreed to?
At least the wedding was a month away.

When the second bride and her
mother left, Jen sent a sympathetic look toward Sam. “Busy isn’t exactly a
strong enough word, is it?”

“Thanks for covering with them
until I got here.” Sam brewed herself a cup of tea and collapsed into one of
the bistro chairs. “I guess I better get more help in here. It seems we just
aren’t going to have a lot of lulls in business.”

“And that’s a good thing.”

“That’s a very good thing,” Sam
agreed. “Let’s call a quick meeting while there’s no one demanding our
attention.”

She carried her tea into the
kitchen and Jen followed. Becky looked up briefly from the terra cotta colored
flower pot cake that she’d topped with crushed chocolate cookie ‘dirt’ and
started filling it with sugar flowers that waited on the drying stand.

“What would you say if we hired a
baker and maybe another decorator?”

Becky’s look of relief was all
the answer Sam needed.

“Jen, if you’re interested?”

“No decorating for me,” Jen said.
“It isn’t that I wouldn’t love to be able to do that, but you know me. I’m four
left thumbs and I’d really rather interact with the customers anyway.”

“Fair enough. How about if I
train you to do the consultations—you probably know ninety percent of it
anyway, from watching what I do. And when the front is busy either Becky or I
will always be here.”

Except when you’re off solving
some mystery or another
, she reminded herself.

“I’d love that,” Jen said. “I
always like to hear about the ideas the customers have.”

“But you have to be ready to
bring them back to reality, too. Sometimes they want something that’s
impossible to make out of cake.”

“You’ll coach me on that, right?
I would have never guessed about the Harley.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. Jen can handle the front
most of the time and a lot of the consultations. Becky, I’d like to teach you
some more decorating techniques. If we get past the summer crunch and have a
quiet spell this fall, would you be interested in taking a master decorator
course? There’s a great school in Chicago.”

Becky’s face lit up. Of course, the
prospect of a couple of weeks away from husband and kids might be part of the
allure.

“If we add a kitchen helper who
can also pinch hit at the front counter, that would be a plus. And, if we had
someone who did nothing but bake it would free up a lot of our time for
decorating.”

“Kind of like we did last
Christmas?”

“Exactly.” Almost exactly. The
better of the two extra workers didn’t want to stay past the holidays and the
one who would have stayed had such a needy personality that on a full-time
basis she would have driven Sam crazy. “We’ll take our time hiring and find
just the right people.”

The front door chime sounded and
Jen put her smile on and headed that direction. Becky inserted the final tulip
blossom into the flower pot and raised her eyebrows toward Sam.

“It’s gorgeous.” Sam put her
hands on the stainless steel work table. “You know, I am really proud of the
work you’re doing here.”

“Thanks.” Becky sent a shy smile
her way and turned to box up the cake and start on the next.

Sam spent the next hour at the
computer, placing a supply order, then checking the baking and delivery
schedule. The next time she looked up, both Jen and Becky were saying goodnight
and Sam realized she better get home too.

The next morning she woke at her
usual four-thirty and went through the rote motions of dressing, driving to the
bakery, mixing up the first batches of batter—those tasks she could practically
do in her sleep now. By the time the girls came in she was well into her
special zone, piping strings and flounces on a wedding cake. When her phone
buzzed it took her by surprise.

“Ms Sweet?” She couldn’t place
the male voice immediately, not until he introduced himself as Marshall Gray.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Gray. I’m so sorry
I had to call you about the house again. I know it’s a bad time for you.”

He mumbled a reply.

“I just needed to let you know
that my supervisor said they had no record of those payments you made last week
and the date has been set to auction off the house. I’d hate to see you lose
the place.”

He seemed distracted by voices in
the background.

“Mr. Gray? Can you call Mr.
Crow’s office again and get this straightened out? He wants me to come out
there later today and make the place ready. You would have to move out.”

She felt badly about pushing him
and wondered if he had somewhere else to go—friends or family, or enough money
to fend for himself. His work and Sadie seemed to be his life, according to her
caregivers.

“I will take care of it. There
are other, um, arrangements to be made right now.”

The funeral, of course. Sam felt
a stab of guilt as she hung up. She dialed Delbert Crow and passed along the
skimpy information.

“Sorry, Ms Sweet. You’ll still
need to get out there today. I’m sending a photographer out tomorrow to get
pictures for the auction brochure. If you don’t hear otherwise from me by three
o’clock this afternoon, that place better be sale-ready by tomorrow.”

She dialed Gray’s number back
again, got the voicemail cue, left the message that three o’clock this
afternoon was the absolute deadline. Jamming her phone back into her pocket,
she found that her creative mood had vanished.

Becky had caught Sam’s half of
the conversations. “Why don’t you go on, Sam? I looked through the orders
yesterday afternoon and I think I can handle most of them. We’ll get this
wedding cake into the fridge and you can finish it tomorrow. It’s not due for
delivery until the next day, right?”

Sam resigned herself to switching
modes—from culinary creator to charwoman. But she knew Delbert Crow wasn’t
going to leave her alone until she got his job done. She cruised home in the
decorative bakery van, traded it for her pickup truck containing yard gear and
cleaning supplies.

As she pulled up in front of the
Gray house, she noted the absence of a car. Marshall Gray must be downtown
taking care of those arrangements he’d mentioned. The weeds in the driveway
were larger now so she got out the sprayer and covered them with something that
was supposed to get rid of them in twenty-four hours. Stowing the sprayer, she
decided to tackle the house next. She could at least tidy the rooms enough for
photography by stashing loose items inside the closets and making sure the
kitchen surfaces were clean. A kitchen usually sold a home, she figured.

But once she’d retrieved the key
from the doorframe and let herself inside, Sam stared in amazement. The rooms
were completely empty.

She wandered through the house.
Not a stick of furniture remained, not a single personal item, not a shirt or a
hanger. The fresh food she’d found in the refrigerator was completely gone, as
if it had never existed in the first place. Aside from some monster dust balls
in the corners and dingy outlines where items had sat on the kitchen counters,
there wasn’t a whole lot of cleaning for Sam to do. She stood in the middle of
the kitchen and looked around, getting a
Twilight Zone
feeling about the
stark changes in the house.

Sadie Gray passed away only
yesterday, but to completely empty this house would have taken longer than a
mere twenty-four hours. And that was providing that Marshall Gray had a moving
team here on a moment’s notice. No, he’d been at it far longer than a day or
two. Which meant that his promises to pay the mortgage and all his talk about
the couple’s loving times together in this house were all a complete crock.
He’d been planning this all along.

Sam pulled out her phone and
dialed Beau.

“I don’t know what it is these
days with empty houses and older women,” she began, “but I’ve just had another
weird experience.”

She told him about the state of
the house, even though she’d just spoken with Marshall Gray that morning and
he’d acted like he was going to take care of the paperwork with the USDA.

“So, what do you want to do?” His polite way
of saying
why are you calling?

“I have a strange feeling about
this. Can you do that thing you did before and check on Sadie Gray’s bank
accounts? I just can’t let go of the feeling that he’s done the same thing Ted
O’Malley did and cleaned out everything.”

“If you get any answers right
away, you can call my cell. I’ll be at the Gray house a little longer.”

She made sure the phone was set
to vibrate and slipped it into her pocket, then retrieved her vacuum cleaner
from the truck and started to work making the carpets and window sills neat.
One thing about an empty house—it took a lot less time to clean than one filled
with furniture and the clutter of a lifetime. When Beau called back, nearly an
hour later, she was giving the kitchen counters a final swipe with disinfectant
spray.

“Same thing,” he began. “Mrs.
Gray’s bank accounts were closed on Friday. The husband, whose name was jointly
on everything told the banker that they were moving out of state.”

“Really. Four days before his
wife died. As if he knew she would soon be gone.”

“Exactly.”

“The manager at the nursing home
told me Sadie Gray was in good health, physically. Her problems were mental. I
witnessed it when I visited her. She moved around well, seemed pretty
energetic.”

“I better go make a few official
inquiries. Starting with the nursing home,” he said.

“I want to go with you. I’m
finished here at the house. I could meet you at Casa Serenita in fifteen
minutes.”

“Give me thirty. There’s some
other paperwork on my desk that I have to get assigned out to a deputy.”

Sam made a final pass through the
house, checking that it would be up to Delbert Crow’s “picture perfect”
standards, then stowed her cleaning supplies in the truck. She placed the house
key in an official USDA lockbox and surveyed the yard. Most of the plantings
looked all right. She took clippers to a couple of the junipers that bore some
residual winter frost damage, decided everything else could stand as it was.
She ended up arriving at Casa Serenita ahead of Beau but decided to wait in the
truck until he came.

Martha Preston was her usual
courteous self when they had seated themselves in her office.

“I’m sorry to say that death in a
nursing home is not an unusual occurrence,” she said. “I’m sure you understand
that.”

“But Sadie was physically
healthy,” Sam said.

Preston gave a sympathetic look.
“There can be hidden conditions. At that age you really never know.”

Beau spoke up. “Can you tell us
about Mrs. Gray’s death? The certificate says natural causes but can you fill
us in on the circumstances?”

“It was late afternoon. She’d
been napping after her husband’s visit earlier in the day. A staff member went
to see if she wanted to come to the dining room for dinner. It’s not
mandatory—residents can have a tray sent to their rooms if they’d prefer.” She
ran her hands over the cover of the folder sitting in front of her on the desk.
“The orderly discovered Mrs. Gray had passed away in her bed, as if she were
sleeping peacefully.”

“You said that her husband had
been to visit that day,” Sam said.

“Yes, around lunch time. He often
brought flowers and came to eat with her. They would chat and sometimes he
brought outside food, just to give her some variety. As long as the doctor
doesn’t have the patient on a restricted diet, that’s allowed.”