Sweet Hearts (22 page)

“Can I go with you?”

“You sure about that? These
aren’t really fun calls.”

“I know. But I consider her a
friend, and I’m thinking she might like to have someone nearby when she gets
the news.”

“It would be a big help to me,”
he admitted.

Sam excused herself to change out
of her bakery clothes. Beau was right—this wouldn’t be an enjoyable stopover.
After putting on jeans and a warm sweater she picked up the wooden box. A few
minutes with it on her lap, the familiar tingle of warmth in her hands, and she
felt ready to go.

Beau smiled widely as she emerged
from her bedroom. “Darlin’, you look absolutely beautiful.”

She heard that a lot after
handling the box.

He pulled her toward him and when
he touched her hand he laced his fingers through hers and drew her close for a
kiss that sent quivers through her. The moment might have stretched into an
afternoon, but Sam reminded him about Marla.

“We can take both of our
vehicles,” she suggested as they walked out the back door. “I think I’ll need
to stay with her awhile.”

Marla’s car sat alone in the
driveway when they pulled up out front. Sam saw a curtain at the living room
window move aside, and the door opened before they’d reached the porch.

Marla sensed their mission. Sam
could see the mixture of anticipation, dread, hope, despair.

When Beau began his official
line, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to inform you . . .” Marla crumpled.

“No, not my Tito,” she whispered,
both hands trembling as she raised them to her temples. Her chocolate eyes left
Beau’s face, traveled to Sam’s, moved back again.

“Let’s go inside and sit down,”
Sam suggested.

Beau followed, made sure that
Marla was comfortably seated on the sofa and didn’t have more questions for
him, then he left. Sam knew that Marla probably had a million questions; she
just hadn’t yet thought how to verbalize them.

“Is Jolie at school?” Sam asked.

Marla gave a numb nod.

“I should wait with you until she
comes home. I mean, I will if you want me to.”

Sam glanced down at her hands,
which were still pink from the effects of the wooden box. She reached over and
took Marla’s hands in hers. Warmth moved through her arms and into her friend.
Sam saw a small rush of energy come to Marla.

“I need to let people know. Make
some calls.” Her gaze darted around, looking for something, but Sam held fast
to her hands. “Where’s the phone? Where’s my address book?”

“Give me a few minutes to warm
your hands,” Sam said. “It will help.”

Marla submitted but she didn’t
relax. “Father Joe. I need to tell Father Joe.”

“I’ll get you the phone and the
numbers in a minute,” Sam said.

But when Sam let go of Marla’s
hands, fatigue immediately set in and her friend slumped against the back of
the sofa.

“Here, let’s cover you up and I’ll
find your things,” Sam said, pulling a knitted afghan from the recliner chair
across the room and draping it over Marla’s lap and legs.

“I can’t be lying around and
resting,” Marla protested. “There will be arrangements to make. I’ll have to
plan his funer—” Her voice broke.

“Marla, there are some things
that the authorities have found out.”

How much to tell? Sam couldn’t
decide what was best. Did a mother need to know that her son had done
undercover work for drug enforcement? That he’d been murdered? That now his
body would need to be exhumed and brought home? As she thought about it, Sam
sat beside Marla and tried to work her healing touch once more, but the magic
effects weren’t working. The bad news and her own health problems were pulling
Marla down, as surely as a rip tide pulls a person farther from the shore.

Sam took Marla’s hands again and
began the healing touch, running her hands up to the elbows and back, hoping to
impart energy to the stricken woman. Then she began to speak. Only the basics,
she decided. Tito had died two years ago, near Washington DC. It would probably
be possible to bring his body back, give him a burial at home. There was no
point in going into detail, no point in further upsetting her friend.

When the phone rang it was almost
a relief. Sam patted Marla’s arm and went into the kitchen to answer. It was
Diane Milton, and it took only the briefest explanation before the neighbor
insisted on coming right over. Sam put in a quick call to the number she found
on a refrigerator magnet from St. Mark’s and gave the short version of the
story to Father Joe.

By the time she returned to the
living room, Diane was coming through the front door. The neighbor crossed the
room immediately to Marla and began reassurances that she would pick up Jolie
from school. Sam remembered the twelve-year-old’s wise look, her matter-of-fact
approach to the DNA test, and knew Jolie would probably be able to accept the
death much more stoically than her grandmother had.

Within minutes, other neighbors
showed up—Joy, Deborah, and Jorge. They surrounded Marla, offering the kind of
love that comes best from relatives and long-time friends. Sam realized that
her own time could be better spent finding out more about Tito’s last days and
making sure law enforcement would search for his killer. She gave Marla’s hand
a last light touch and left.

Outside, the weather mirrored the
mood in the Fresques home—dismal.

*

Without a better plan, Sam headed
toward Sweet’s Sweets. A government SUV sat out front and when she entered
through the back door, Becky informed her that someone wanted to see her.

An agent of some kind, she knew
from his clothing and posture when she saw him standing near the beverage bar.
Probably in his forties. Blue suit, white shirt, striped tie, dishwater-blond
hair, and gray eyes that scanned a room in continual sweeps. He turned toward
her as soon as she entered the sales room.

Sam froze. She’d met this man.

“Ms Sweet? Rick Wells.” He
extended his hand and she saw the dawning of recognition in his expression. He
covered quickly. “Jonathan Ernhart may have told you that I’d be calling?”

Now Sam remembered what had been
nagging at her. The familiar sounding name . . . Ernhart’s mention of an Agent
Wells with the DEA.

“Can we talk somewhere?” His gray
eyes darted toward the sales counter where Jen was helping two ladies.

The kitchen was no more private.
“Let’s walk,” she suggested.

Outside, the clouds were growing
thicker by the minute and a brisk breeze shook the bare-limbed branches
overhead. Wells made small talk until they crossed the street and entered the
slight shelter of the plaza.

“So. Your auditing position with
Bellworth is past history and you misled me the other day? Or you’re not an
auditor at all.”

“I’m DEA, have been since college.
I worked with Tito Fresques, as his contact in Albuquerque during the time he
worked at Bellworth. Other agents have similar positions to his and my auditor
job is a cover, to provide a means for us to make contact. Jonathan told me
that you’ve become close to Tito’s mother and that you were assisting the local
authorities in the search for him. Before it was confirmed that his body was
located.”

“That’s right. But I don’t know
what I could tell you.” Clearly, the government agencies had more information than
she did.

“I wonder if Mrs. Fresques ever
mentioned the name Javier Espinosa?”

Sam thought hard. “In what
context? Was he a friend of Tito’s?”

“More of a business contact.
Espinosa works for one of the top kingpins in drug trafficking from Mexico.
Tito traveled there quite a bit and had infiltrated the Diablo Rojo gang in
Juarez.”

“Espinosa doesn’t seem like the
kind of guy he would tell his mother about, does he?” Sam asked.

“Probably not. But we have reason
to believe that his wife knew the name, and some of his co-workers at Bellworth
were aware of it.”

Sam stayed quiet, wondering why
Tito would have mentioned the name of this drug runner. If he was any good at
his DEA job that should have remained a secret.

“At this point, I think Mrs.
Fresques is more concerned that her son’s body be brought back here to Taos for
a proper burial,” Sam said. “I’d like to be able to tell her where he’s been
all these years, why he wasn’t able to contact his family. She would appreciate
that.”

“We at DEA have a lot of missing
gaps in that story, ourselves.”

Sam looked at him but he didn’t
seem inclined to say more. They had arrived at the shady side of the plaza and
the breeze whipped alongside the buildings. Sam zipped her heavy coat closed
against it but Wells, in his business suit, had no such protection. He began
walking faster and Sam had a hard time keeping up with his long stride. When
they reached the sidewalk in front of Sweet’s Sweets, the agent turned toward
his vehicle.

“Now that Tito’s body has been
positively identified,” Sam said, “I guess the investigation will focus on
finding his killer.”

Wells seemed momentarily wary.

“Jonathan Ernhart told me he’d
been murdered.”

“I didn’t realize he’d released
that information.”

“I haven’t told Tito’s mother,”
Sam said. “She’s in very fragile health. She hasn’t asked how he died, and it
would probably be best to avoid telling her. At least not in detail.”

“Certainly.” He pulled the
driver’s door open.

She walked back into the bakery
as he pulled away, her mind going in a dozen directions, puzzled at what
exactly the DEA agent had hoped to learn by talking to her. Surely he didn’t
drive all the way up here from Albuquerque for chitchat. He was probably
planning to stop by and see Marla. Was her warning not to upset the sick woman
going to carry any weight with him?

She fished in the pocket of her
slacks for her cell phone. A call to Marla’s house got Diane Milton on the
phone. She quickly explained that a former co-worker of Tito’s might show up
and it only took a small hint that his visit might upset Marla to put Diane in
full mama-lion protective mode.

“I’ll just tell him that she’s
resting and can’t have company.”

“That’s probably best,” Sam told
her.

Feeling reassured that Marla
wouldn’t be unduly upset by the agent’s visit, Sam shed her coat and surveyed
her desk. With the crazy pace of the past few days, she’d let paperwork and
receipts stack up. Now she spent some time organizing and filing, paying some
bills, and planning for the coming week.

Jen had placed two new orders on
the desk, birthday cakes. Sam set them aside until she could clear her head
well enough to come up with original ideas for them. Her assistant had also
left a sticky-note asking whether the handmade chocolates would become a
regular feature.

Sam walked over to the shelf
where she’d stashed the canister with Bobul’s little spice packets, lifted it
down and took it to her desk. The small bags appeared to be every bit as full
as when he’d handed them to her, despite the fact that she’d taken from them
regularly. More of the magic?

She quickly tucked the packets
back into the metal container and set it aside. She would have to think about
whether to make the delectable chocolates part of the everyday fare or to save
them for holiday seasons. And, she would definitely have to work on revising
her formulas, to curb their power.

She plucked the sticky note from
her computer screen and headed toward the sales room.

“Jen, I think we’ll hold—”

The bells on the front door
tinkled and in stepped Felicia Black.

Sam stopped in her tracks. It
wouldn’t be businesslike to say “What the hell are you doing here?” but she
certainly felt like it.

“Samantha!” The brazen redhead
lengthened her name so that it took about five minutes to utter. “I’m so sorry
that you couldn’t make it to the party.”

“Really.”
Is that why you
invited my fiancé but not me? Is that why you lied to him, why you told people
you were here in town to get him back? Is it why you sent him candy that you
knew would cause him to be attracted to you?

In the interest of not coming
across as a completely insane maniac in front of her employee and the three
other customers in the shop, Sam ground her teeth together. The nerve of this,
this slut!

Felicia’s gaze scanned the sales
counter. “No more of those chocolates? Too bad. They were yummy. I had two
boxes of them for the party guests and I’ll tell you, I think a few new
romances began that night.”

Like you hoped would happen
with Beau?

She breezed over to the beverage
bar, the silver fox coat flapping open to reveal a tight red dress that barely
skimmed her thighs. Sam watched her pour a mug of coffee and doctor it heavily
with low-fat creamer and fake sugar.

Jen met Sam’s eyes, with a
question. Sam edged behind the counter and whispered in her assistant’s ear:
“No chocolates for her, whatsoever. And charge her double for that coffee.” Her
wicked grin let Jen know that Sam wasn’t kidding.

She’d turned toward the kitchen
when Felicia raised her voice again. “Sam, dear. I’d love for you and I to have
lunch sometime. We really should be friends.”

Sam smiled.
When hell freezes
over.
“Oh? I’d have thought you would be on your way by now. Doesn’t
New York need you or something?”

Felicia completely missed the
sarcasm. “They do. But I’ve told my agent that I plan to take a few more weeks
off. Next shoot is in Rio, but they’re holding it until I’m ready.”

Shooting seemed like the perfect
way to deal with Felicia. Unfortunately, the other woman thought Sam’s genuine
smile was for another reason.

“So, then, lunch tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. Beau and I
have other plans.” Sam swept the curtain aside and stomped into the kitchen.
Her heart was beating way too fast and her mind raced with all the
should-have-saids that came to her after the fact.