Bitter Sweet (17 page)

“Sadie Gray made Marshall her
executor. He signed the nursing home admission papers as such. I was able to
find out that much. Lila Coffey had named another executor, a longtime friend,
but he was in a car accident and since he was unable to serve, Lila’s husband
Ted took over as executor to her estate.”

“Oh man, what a tangle. And I’m
still confused about whether Marshall Gray is who he claims to be or is he
really Joe Smith, the lawyer?”

“I haven’t quite gotten that far.
Still checking.”

It ended up being a restless
night for Sam, going to bed with all that fresh information in her head.
Pictures of Ted O’Malley and Marshall Gray kept zipping through her dreams, and
at one point the voice of Bertha Martinez spoke. The old
bruja
told Sam to trust no one, to rely on the magic box to provide answers. She woke
with a headache.

The wooden box sat benignly on
her dresser, minding its own business. Sam stroked its lid for a few seconds,
like petting a kitten, but decided she could best put the dreams out of her
mind by taking a shower and immersing herself in bakery business.

She had just put the second batch
of cranberry almond scones into the oven when the shop’s phone rang. She
grabbed it up before she realized they weren’t officially open for business for
another hour.

“Samantha Jane, I’ve texted you
six
times about the wedding plans and you never answered.”

I sent you the date—give me a
breather here.
“Hello, Mother. Good morning to you too.”

“Honey, I
know
you’re
busy. I just need to know what your
colors
are.”

Sam’s eyes rolled toward the work
table where three wedding cakes stood in various stages of readiness, sugar
cookies awaited decorations, and two large pans of brownies needed icing before
they could go out to the displays.

“I haven’t given it much thought,
Mother. A few dozen other brides and their wishes have to come first.”

“Well you don’t have to get
snippity
with me,” Nina Rae said, sounding pretty snippy
herself. “Your sister and I have dresses to buy.”

Sheesh. Even Zoë as matron of
honor wasn’t getting this worked up over what to wear.

“Anything will be fine, Mother. I
know how you love shopping but you have a closet full of gorgeous clothes. Just
grab anything.”

“Samantha, it has to be
new.
I would
never
wear something to your wedding that’s been
seen
before.”

Whatever.
“Mother, I’ll
have to get back to you on that question. This is really a crazy day. Give my
love to Daddy.” She made a kissy noise and hung up. The woman was going to
drive her crazy before this was all over.

She turned to the pan of ganache
that Julio had just finished, picked it up and began spreading it over the
brownies, smoothing it repeatedly in an effort to banish her mother’s
obsessiveness from her mind. Becky had begun piping bright green, pink and
yellow lines and whorls on the sugar cookies. Things truly were under control
here, Sam reminded herself.

One of these days she would pull
the folder of ideas she’d collected from the first time she and Beau made their
wedding plans. They would need some revision—a Valentine theme wasn’t quite
going to work in September—but it should be something she could pull together
quickly once she had a little break from the demands of all the other brides and
their
mothers.

“Shall I take these out front?”
Becky asked, setting her pastry bag aside. The sugar cookies.

“Sure, anytime. Julio, the
brownies can go too—if you’ll sprinkle them with chopped walnuts first?”

He nodded and Sam turned her
attention to the wedding cake orders. She tackled the hardest one first—three
tiers, ivory with hand-piped ivory lace. It was enough to make her cross-eyed
and she gave a deep sigh when she piped the final trim in place two hours
later. It went to the fridge so the buttercream wouldn’t become too soft, then
she started assembling a traditional white-on-white with pale pink roses. Four
small cakes formed the base for a sixteen-inch tier that would sit on all of
them, topped with Grecian columns, a twelve-inch tier, more columns and an
eight-inch finale with a spray of netting and ribbons at the very top.
Traditional, but big. By the time she’d stacked the layers, her shoulders were
screaming for a break. She left her tools in place so Julio wouldn’t toss them
into the dishwater, thinking she was finished, then she stepped out front for a
cup of coffee.

Jen’s attention focused on three
women at the counter who seemed unsure about what they wanted. Sam headed for
the beverage bar, automatically straightening and wiping up spilled sugar,
deciding on tea instead of coffee. She unwrapped a bag called Ginger Spice and
turned back to face the room while it steeped.

At the curb a tan car had just
come to a stop and Renata Butler stepped out. Their last exchange had become a
little testy and Sam was glad to see she hadn’t lost a customer. She put on a
bright smile and greeted the Russian émigré personally.

“Hi, Sam.” She seemed cheery. “I
need some cookies for a little church gathering tonight.”

“We can take care of that,” Sam
assured her.

While Renata looked over the
selection in the display case, Sam inquired about her new husband.

“Jimmy is wonderful,” Renata
said. “I still feel very lucky that I met him.”

Jen boxed the cookies and Renata
handed her some cash.

“Renata, could we talk for a
minute?” Sam asked, walking alongside as the customer headed toward the door.

“Certainly. But I cannot spend
too much time. I have an appointment with my attorney.” She opened the door and
the two of them stepped outside.

Sam felt a chill, even though the
air was hot and dry. “Attorney?”

“He is coming to our condo. Since
I am married, a few documents must be changed. It is only standard things.”

“I know this is personal,” Sam
said. “But was this your idea? Changing your, uh, documents?”

Renata gave her a long stare. “My
husband is also changing his will. We will be together for our whole lives. We
want everything to be in order.”

How to ask whether the new
husband was the one who suggested the changes . . .? Sam took a different tack.

“I’m getting married myself, in a
few months, so I suppose I should do the same. Who is your attorney?”

“I have his card, somewhere.”
Renata reached for the small bag that hung from her shoulder and pulled out a
card. “Here it is. Keep it. I can get another.”

Sam looked at the card. Joe
Smith. Name and phone number but no address. She willed her jaw not to clench.

“Mr. Smith . . . does he have
gray hair?”

“I actually haven’t met him yet.
Jimmy went to see him yesterday. He made my appointment for me and brought me
the card.”

“Renata—I don’t know how to say
this. I know of two other women who were referred to Joe Smith. They both
changed their wills. They both ended up dying very shortly afterward.”

“So it was a good thing they made
their papers up to date.”

“That’s not really what I’m
saying. In each case, their husbands inherited large amounts of money.”

Renata shrugged. “And if the
husband died, the wife would inherit. Is that not the way it works?”

Sam took a breath. “Both of these
women already had money. We think—their friends think—that the men might have
planned their deaths.”

Renata looked as though she
didn’t understand the implication.

“Just be careful.” Sam pleaded.

A man’s voice called out,
“Renata?”

The redhead turned, one hand on
her car door. “Oh, Pastor Red. How lucky you see me here. I bought the cookies
for tonight. Would you like to take them now?”

The slender man walked over to
the car and reached for the box of cookies. He had strawberry blond hair, thin
on the top, and was dressed all in black. Sam wondered how he could handle the
summer heat in those dark pants, shirt and jacket. He said hello to Renata then
turned to Sam.

“Oh, is this your shop?” he said.
“I’ve seen it here and often thought about stopping in.”

“Yes, it’s mine. Samantha Sweet.”

“Nice to meet you. Ridley
Redfearn. I’m pastor at the Fellowship of Good Works church.”

For the first time, Sam became
aware of a murky pink haze around him.

She froze. It had been awhile
since she’d seen such an aura around someone. And Ridley Redfearn—she knew she
had seen that name somewhere.

Redfearn was talking but the
words blurred behind the hum in her ears. She became aware that Renata had
excused herself and opened her car door. The preacher was saying goodbye. He
made a comment about the cookies, how good they would be. A thousand thoughts
flew through Sam’s head but she couldn’t think of a way to phrase a single
question. She merely nodded as he walked past her shop and got into an old
Toyota parked beyond Ivan’s bookshop.

Renata drove away, barely giving
Sam another glance.

Redfearn’s Toyota was out of the
lot when Sam looked that direction again.

She stepped into the shade of her
own awning, wondering about the strange vision.

Beau’s phone rang and rang, and
Sam was sure it was about to go to voicemail when he picked up.

“Sorry,” he said. “Crazy here.”

“I think there might be another
woman who’s been targeted by those guys,” she blurted out.

He paused, waiting for more.

“And I met that preacher, the one
whose card I found at Lila’s house. He’s the one who married Renata and James
Butler.”

“Wait, who are we talking about
here?”

She had to go back and fill him
in, forgetting that he didn’t know Renata or James Butler or the crazy story
about how they met through a psychic who undoubtedly was a fake.

“I’m getting the feeling that
there’s not a genuine person left in this whole town,” she said. “Everybody
we’ve come across recently seems to be pretending to be someone else.”

“And you suspect this preacher is
a fake too?”

“The Fellowship of Good Works?
What kind of church is that? Remember how I told you once that I could see
auras around people sometimes? Well, this guy’s was strong. Murky . . . well,
you don’t care about the colors. But I picked up a very deceptive feeling
around this man.”

She could hear papers shuffling
in the background.

“I’m looking up that church of
his. Not listed in the local directories.” His voice trailed off. “. . . and I
don’t see that they have a business license. Even non-profits are required to
have one. Did he touch anything we could get prints from? Something in your
shop? If I had that I could see if he’s got a record.”

“No, he never came inside. I’ll
give it some thought,” Sam said. “If I hope to stop Renata from making a big
mistake, I’ll need to stay in her good graces. Maybe I can figure out a way to
do both.”

Two things that put off nearly anybody, Sam
had discovered over the years, were to criticize their spouse or express
skepticism about their religion. And here she was, about to do both with Renata
Butler. She stewed over it as she walked back inside, but no immediate answer
came to mind and she was able to lose herself in sugar flowers and chocolate
fondant for the next few hours.

As the finished orders
disappeared out the front door or went into the fridge for storage, the
conversation with Beau kept poking at her. He needed Ridley Redfearn’s
fingerprints to find out if the man was in any criminal database, and Sam
happened to know where both Renata and the pastor would be that very evening.
Well, not
exactly
where they would be but she could find out.

“Becky, can you and Julio handle
the cleanup?” she asked. Without really waiting for an answer, she grabbed up
her backpack and headed out to her van.

In Taos’s version of rush hour
traffic it took her ten minutes to get home, then another five to change her
shirt, brush through her short hair and swish on some blusher. Leaving the
brightly decorated bakery van behind, she got into her pickup truck and drove
to Renata’s condo complex where she parked at the north end of the lot with
Renata’s
tan Mercedes in view. Getting to the street would
take Renata the opposite direction from Sam’s truck.

The key here was to find out
where this barely-existent church was located and to figure out how on earth
she might get Pastor Redfearn’s fingerprints without his knowing it.

Ancient cottonwoods bordered the
condo property, alleviating some of the summer heat but even with all her
windows down Sam’s face glistened with perspiration after only a few minutes.
She wished Renata had dropped some hint about what time this evening function
was to take place. But even if she had known, Sam didn’t dare count on her
quarry waiting until the last minute to leave. She was lucky to have found
Renata at home and better not lose that advantage.

An hour passed at a snail’s pace.
At least the sun had now sunk behind the buildings and the air stirred often
enough to make it bearable. Sam fanned herself with an old take-out menu that
she’d found on the floor and occupied her mind with the reminder that she
better decide on an accent color for her wedding, just to get her mother off
her back. She found herself thinking of colors that she knew Nina Rae would
wear—it seemed easier to do it that way than to get into a long discussion of
why her chosen color would never work. She glanced at her dashboard clock
approximately every three minutes.

“This is ridiculous,” she fumed.
About the time she was ready to dash away to find the nearest place to get an
iced beverage, she became aware that Renata’s car was in motion.