Bitter Sweet (19 page)

“And, did he?” Beau seasoned the
steaks and picked up the lighter.

“No, darn it.”

He held up a finger to indicate
one minute, while he ducked outside and lit the gas grill. When he came back
Sam could tell he was itching to tell her something.

“What?” she asked as she pulled
plates from a cupboard.

“Well, I wasn’t going to spoil
the mood earlier . . .” Pleasure before business, for once. “But I finally
found some additional info on your Marshall Gray.”

She crossed her arms, letting him
know that dinner wasn’t proceeding until she knew what he’d found.

“Okay, remember the Dallas police
had questioned him? So I finally got the chance to look at the transcript of
their interviews and the background info they dug up. Gray was born in Wichita
Falls, Texas, but the family moved to Albuquerque before he started school. He
attended up through high school there, then left the city. College was at
UTEP.”

The El Paso campus was a favorite
of kids from the area because of its proximity to the border town of
Juarez—easy place to find booze and sex. It was a shady town, even in the ’60s,
but not as truly dangerous as today.

“Did he live in Texas after that
or come back to New Mexico, I wonder?”

“Looks like he moved around a
lot, didn’t really settle. Work history is really sketchy. He describes himself
as an entrepreneur, and he tried to portray a certain ‘citizen of the world’
sophistication. The FBI and Dallas PD didn’t buy it. They came up with multiple
marriages, always followed by a move to a new state.”

“So, he’s pulled these scams with
other women in the past?” Sam gathered silverware and condiments as she talked.

Beau shrugged. “We don’t know.
The Feds were finding out whether they could hold him for Sadie’s death and
absconding with her money. It turned out they couldn’t, and there were no other
open charges from his past.”

He took the steaks outside and
Sam finished setting the table while he watched the grill.

“So, can we find out more?” she
asked once they’d started eating.

“I’ll try. It’s not like Gray has
an actual police rap sheet. Either he kept out of trouble or he managed to stay
on the move well enough to stay off the radar. Remember, we’re talking about
the late ’60s, early ’70s—police departments weren’t computerized back then.”

Sam nodded. The whole puzzle was
staying stubbornly out of their grasp. And she had to remind herself that
perhaps Marshall Gray had done nothing wrong.

“What about those fingerprints
for Ridley Redfearn?” she asked. “Any news on them yet?”

He shook his head. She remembered
what he’d said earlier about the state crime lab being backed up, and that
information on the preacher wasn’t exactly a priority.

They cleared the table and
carried their cheesecake and coffee out to the back deck. A billion stars made
crisp points in the black sky and the air felt cool and refreshing against her
skin. She decided to give herself over to the summer evening and leave
everything else for another time. When Beau leaned across the settee to nuzzle
her neck, forgetting became pretty easy.

*

As always, their alarms went off
way too early, but after allowing themselves the luxury of two taps on the
Snooze button, Beau dressed and went outside to tend to the horses and Sam
drove to the bakery.

She was deep into the morning’s
routine when Jen interrupted to say that Zoë was on the phone.

“Hey there,” Sam said, wiping her
sugary hands on a towel. “What’s up?”

“Just thought I’d throw a little
business your way. I’ve got a big group coming in tomorrow, a family reunion of
folks from Oklahoma. The ones we can’t house here are staying in hotels but
I’ll be making breakfast for the whole crowd. It would be a big help if I could
get the pastries from you. Four dozen assorted muffins and scones? Maybe some
coffee cake?”

“Sure, no problem. I can deliver
them later, if you like. Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

“Thanks—it really would help.
There’ll be a glass of iced tea waiting when you get here.”

Sam told Julio to double the
batches on some of the pastries and he began to measure ingredients into the
big Hobart without batting an eye. When she arrived at Zoë’s that afternoon, a
stack of boxes in her arms, the promised refreshment did, indeed, appear,
complete with fresh mint from Zoë’s garden.

“Wow, I needed that,” Sam said
after the first couple of sips. They had taken seats at the tiled counter.

“Do I detect that someone missed
her normal bedtime last night?” Zoë teased with a wiggle of her eyebrows.

“Well, yeah. Beau and I had a lot
to talk about. I can’t remember, did I mention that one of my properties
belonged to a woman who recently died? Now Beau is investigating some weird
connections to it.”

“I keep thinking about Lila
Coffey. Did her house ever become one of your jobs?”

“No, this is another one. But
eerily similar. The husband, Marshall Gray, cleaned the place out—and the
woman’s bank accounts—just days after she passed away.”

“Marshall Gray . . . Why does
that name sound familiar to me?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know.” She
gave a quick description. “Maybe you’d met Sadie? She was somewhat older than
he is.”

“No, that’s not it. This is like
a name from the really distant past.” Zoë squinted her eyes nearly shut as she
thought about it. “High school?”

“Seriously? You remember him?”

“My friend Nancy Gray had an
older brother . . .” Zoë stood up and headed for the living room. “Hold on. Let
me check something.”

She came back with a stack of
large, bound books and when she set them on the counter Sam saw that they were
yearbooks from an Albuquerque high school. Zoë hopped back up on her stool.

“Nancy’s brother was older, and I
remember at twelve I thought he was
so
handsome. We were still in middle
school when he left for college,” she muttered, flipping pages.

“So he wouldn’t be in your
yearbooks.” Sam didn’t quite grasp the connection.

“These are Darryl’s books. He’s
nine years older than me, and he and Marshall were probably there at the same
time.”

The pages turned one at a time
now and she finally stopped and jabbed a finger at one of the black-and-white
photos. “There.”

It was the standard senior
student photo of the day. Boys wore tuxedos and girls had matching V-necked
drapes that made anyone look attractive despite the outlandishly large
hairstyles. Sam stared at the one Zoë indicated.

His hair was dark then but Gray
combed it in a similar style as now. Sam tried to mentally remove the current
jowliness
and facial creases. The eyes were key—they looked
very similar.

“Nancy and I had sleepovers a lot
back then. You know the kind where you sit up all night and giggle over boys. I
guess she spotted my schoolgirl crush on her brother because she loved to dish
out all the dirt on him. One time he gave his class ring to someone but Nancy
knew he was seeing two other girls at the same time. Eventually, he got one of
the girls pregnant. Nancy and I were shocked and a little fascinated by that
fact. I don’t remember how it all turned out. Marshall moved away about then,
maybe to college.”

“Did the family originally come
from Texas?”

Zoë pursed her mouth. “Yeah, now
that you mention it, I’m pretty sure they did. I lost touch with Nancy after
graduation and heard that she died a few years later. Too young.”

“Would there be other family
members in Albuquerque?”

“Only their parents,
if
they’re
still living,” Zoë said. “There weren’t any other siblings.”

A light breeze carried dust
whorls across the street and in the distance the haze of
woodsmoke
still covered the hills. Today, she could smell it. Sam carried Darryl’s
yearbook with her, hoping that Beau might confirm whether the picture was the
same Marshall Gray. Perhaps he could use some information from the book in
tracking Gray.

She thought about phoning Beau,
but since his office was on the route back to the bakery she decided to drop
in. Finding a parking spot for her van along the narrow street outside the
civic offices was always a joy, but she managed to spot another car leaving and
zipped right into its place.

Beau was on the phone, winding up
a conversation when she tapped at his door. He replaced the receiver and
stretched an arm to encircle her shoulders.

“Hey there, what’s up?”

“The usual. But I might have
found us some more information on Marshall Gray.” She held out the yearbook.
“Zoë was a classmate of his younger sister and remembered some stories about
him.”

She flipped to the marked page
and pointed. “The difference between age eighteen and fifty-something makes it
a little hard to know but I think it’s him. Zoë said his parents might still be
in Albuquerque.”

“That might be a good lead,” Beau
said. “If only I had something to charge him with. We think he married Sadie
for her money. We have no evidence that he killed her to get it.”

“I know.” Sam let the book slap
shut, feeling the letdown of the unsolved mystery. It probably really was
coincidence that she’d come across two elderly women who’d married younger men
and then died rather suddenly. She wanted it to be that simple but something
way inside kept telling her there was more to it. Woman’s intuition, or just
her stubborn streak?

“Zoë asked me about Lila Coffey
again. Is there any news about the lying creep who married her?”

“Ted O’Malley seems to have
vanished. Las Vegas PD doesn’t have anything new. They don’t have the manpower
to keep watching Debbie’s house, but if Ted is back in their city he’s staying
very low-key. I don’t have enough of a case against him to put him on any
national watch lists. Bigamy, especially when the second wife is now deceased,
just doesn’t warrant a lot of attention when there are murders, rapes and drug
cases to be worked.”

Sam’s mood dipped again. “Yeah, I
know.”

Too bad they hadn’t found
anything to suggest that one person had killed both women. A nursing home
serial killer on the loose might at least garner a little bit of law
enforcement interest. Beau’s phone rang and Sam told him she needed to get
going anyway.

Back at the bakery things were
quiet for a change. The display cases in the sales room were appropriately
depleted. Kelly stood at the counter chatting with Jen, her shirt front a bit
damp from the last dog-bath she’d given at Puppy Chic.

“Hey, Mom. How’s things?”

Sam responded halfheartedly.

“If you’re coming home tonight,
I’ll treat us to pizza.” Kelly held up her folded paycheck. “Jen, you want to
come along?”

Jen glanced toward Sam. “I better
not. I’ve got some things . . .”

Better things to do than hanging
out with your boss who was clearly in the dumps. Sam put on a smile. “Sorry, I
don’t mean to be such a downer. A pizza sounds great—and you girls would
definitely cheer me up.”

“Okay then,” Kelly said. “C’mon,
Jen. Our house, six-thirty?”

Sam reached into her pack and
pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, which she handed to her daughter. “I’ll spring
for the wine.”

Kelly turned to leave.
“Excellent! All I have to do is finish brushing out a cocker spaniel and I’m
done for the day.”

She gave Sam a quick hug and
wiggled her fingers at them as she flounced out the door.

Jen and Sam exchanged a smile.
“She keeps me young,” Sam said with a roll of the eyes.

Two hours and two glasses of wine
later, Sam had to admit that her earlier funk had been useless. Sadie Gray and
Lila Coffey were gone, bless their souls, and there wasn’t anything anyone
could do about that. She had met Sadie once and knew Lila only through Zoë’s
recollections. Both of the husbands had acted suspiciously, but they’d now
vanished off the radar and there was nothing she could do about that either.

“I think I’m just on overload
right now,” she admitted to Kelly and Jen. The three of them were sitting on
her living room floor with their backs against the sofa, the open pizza box on
the coffee table. They grabbed the final three slices from the box. “Too many
new people have crossed my path in the last couple weeks. Between that and the
crush of work at the shop . . .”

“You need a break, Mom,” Kelly
said. “Why don’t you and Beau just run off and get married and take a honeymoon
trip for about a month?”

“Yeah, and have fifty brides
storming the shop? When I’m the first line of defense?” Jen said. “At least
give me some warning so I can call in sick that week.”

Sam popped the last bite of crust
into her mouth. “Hey, you guys are good—I mean, I have a wonderful crew—but I’d
never do that to you. Becky and Julio are great back there in the kitchen, but
my jumping ship with no notice . . . no way.”

“Oh, thank you!” Jen said,
dramatically draping herself over Sam’s shoulder.

Sam patted her head. “Someone’s
had enough wine, I think.” She gently plucked Jen’s arms from around her neck.

The younger woman blushed a
little. “I better go potty.”

She straightened her legs and
made it to her feet. Sam realized she better stand up too before her limbs forgot
how to do it. She ignored the crackling in her knees and picked up the empty
pizza box and carried it to the kitchen.

“Mom, what’s this book?” Kelly
asked, nodding toward the yearbook Sam had left on the kitchen table.

Sam was in the middle of the short
version of the story when Jen came back.

“My mom’s got this very same
book,” she exclaimed. “I always got a kick out of looking at the old-school
hairstyles and those crazy poses of the drama class.”