Sweet Hearts (4 page)

The Fresques house sat amid a
cluster of parked cars, a small adobe with a pitched metal roof. Bare-limbed
cottonwoods and elms surrounded the place and a small yard with brown grass and
mulched flower beds stood out front. A driveway ran beside the house but it was
blocked by two vehicles, one being the older sedan Marla Fresques drove
yesterday. Four other cars sat along the road, pulled out of the traffic lanes
onto the verge of short, tan mountain grasses. Sam slowed, hoping for a parking
spot with minimal distance to carry the large cake board, but another vehicle
had come up impatiently behind her. She edged her van to the right at the first
open spot. The other car passed and pulled in just ahead of hers.

“Oh, that looks good,” the woman
from the car said, staring.

Sam wasn’t sure whether she was
referring to the bakery themed artwork on the van or to the cake that Sam was
pulling from the back.

“Could you use a hand with that?”
the lady’s husband asked, stepping forward.

“Sure.” Although Sam had loaded
the rectangular board into the van alone, it would certainly be easier with
some assistance.

The man placed his hands at the
right intervals under the board for perfect balance and lifted it easily to his
shoulder. In his pressed jeans, western shirt and string tie, he looked the
type who was accustomed to managing heavy loads and coming to the aid of women.
Sam sent him a polite smile.

“Hard to believe it’s ten years
now,” the woman said conversationally as the three of them walked toward the
house. “Poor Marla, just waiting so patiently.”

“You’ve known her since—”

“She was a wreck. Well, she and
Tricia both. Can you imagine? Their little girl was still a toddler. Tito
supported them well. It was a blow to be left alone like that.”

The husband skirted the two cars
in the driveway, obviously heading for the back door of the house, so Sam and
the wife followed along.

“And then, Tricia dying so young.
Cerebral hemorrhage—it was
so
sudden . . . well, little Jolie was very
lucky to have her grandma to take her in.”

The woman stepped ahead and
opened the back door for her husband. He edged sideways to get through the
doorway and Sam followed, wanting to be sure there was a secure place to set
the cake.

Marla Fresques stood in the
kitchen, her sad eyes scanning the room and she perked up when she saw Sam and
the cake.

“Oh, Samantha, it is beautiful!
Exactly as you described it to me.” She gave a quick hug to the woman who’d
walked in with Sam, then directed the husband to carry the cake through a swinging
door to a dining room.

Sam followed along, helping Marla
move a few cups and plates aside to make space at one end of the dining table.
Checking it over, she adjusted the angle and quickly wiped a tiny smudge of
frosting from the paper-covered board.
There
, she thought.
It looks
good
. She turned to Marla to ask about a cake knife, but the hostess was
halfway across the room, her attention snagged by someone else. The other
couple, too, had blended into the crowd in the adjoining living room.

Sam wandered back toward the
kitchen. Surely it couldn’t be too hard to rummage around for a knife and cake
server without bothering the hostess. She could see to it that the cake was
ready to serve and then make a quiet exit out the back.

“. . . only a matter of weeks.
You know how doctors are about telling you anything, really.”

Two women in very similar dark
dresses stood at the far side of the room, near a doorway that probably led to
a small pantry. Sam sent a little smile their direction but pretended to be so
busy that she wasn’t noticing their conversation.

“Jolie doesn’t know yet,” the
shorter woman said in a low voice.

Sam spotted a wooden block with
knife handles sprouting from it. She pulled a couple of them before finding the
one that would work best for the cake.

“When is Marla going to tell her?
She can’t wait until the last minute.”

Doctors? A matter of weeks?
Was Marla critically ill?

Someone else walked into the
kitchen just then and the women headed toward the rest of the party. With a
cake server and the knife in hand, Sam followed.

“Sam, thank you,” Marla said,
intercepting her. “I was just on my way—”

Sam set the utensils on the
table, unsure what to say.

“Oh, here’s my granddaughter.”
Marla reached toward a girl of about twelve, circling her shoulders with a
loving arm. “Jolie, this is Ms Sweet from the bakery, Sweet’s Sweets. She made
this beautiful cake for us.”

At an age when a lot of girls
began testing their boundaries, dressing goth or piercing their body parts,
Jolie seemed like a grandmother’s dream. She wore a perky little dress of
something blue-swirled and silky that kept her slim, budding body childlike.
Her long, dark hair was drawn back at the crown with a little cluster of silk
flowers. She smiled shyly at Sam, her teeth white and straight in her caramel
complexion.

“Hi, Jolie, nice to meet you.”

“You made this?” the girl said,
looking at the cake.

“Yeah. Maybe you’d like to learn
how sometime?”

Jolie sent another of her
hesitant smiles toward Sam, then she spotted two other girls across the room.

“Go ahead,” Marla said. “You can
take Jenny and Sarah to your room.”

“She seems like a good kid,” Sam
said.

“She is. I’ve been really lucky.”
Marla’s eyes misted over and she blinked to clear them. “Her dad went missing
when she was only two. Then her mom died when she was five. They lived in
Albuquerque, and I hadn’t gotten much time with Jolie until then. Suddenly, she
had no one else, so I brought her here.” She cleared her throat. “She’s such a
sweet girl.”

Sam thought of the conversation
in the kitchen but it didn’t seem like her place to ask.

“You can stay awhile, can’t you?”
Marla asked. “Father Joe already gave us a private blessing. Now we’re ready to
start serving the food. I’d love to introduce you to everyone, along with the
cake.”

Intruding on someone’s family
time didn’t feel right, but Marla seemed to sincerely want her there. Her
hostess took hold of Sam’s arm and pulled her into the living room where she
proceeded with a flurry of names. Sam would do well to remember half of them,
but she tried. The couple who had helped bring the cake inside were Joy and
Bill; neighbors from the houses on either side were the two women she’d
overheard talking in the kitchen, Diane and Deborah; another couple introduced
themselves as Jorge and Camille. The priest, Father Joe, gave her a warm
handshake. Someone offered her a glass of wine and then Marla’s voice rose
above the conversation for a moment to announce that the meal was ready. Jolie
and her friends had come back, eager to be first in line for the food.

Platters and bowls crowded the
table, except for the end where the cake sat, filled with homemade
dishes—tacos, posole, enchiladas plus beans and salads and more. Sam stood
aside, feeling like an extra, letting the others fill their plates first.

“Go, Sam, eat,” Marla urged.

“After you.” She touched Marla’s
elbow and edged her toward the serving line. She noticed that the other woman
took only tiny spoonfuls of the salads and a scant dipperful of the beans.

“Saving room for the cake,” she
said when she caught Sam noticing her small portions.

Sam scooped enchiladas onto her
own plate, wondering again about the conversation in the kitchen.

Someone else pulled Marla aside
at that moment. She gave the newcomer a bright smile and went along. Sam found
a spot to sit at one edge of the living room. She watched Marla interact with
her guests and decided she’d probably misinterpreted the earlier conversation.

“Sad, isn’t it?” The voice beside
her was Camille, if Sam recalled correctly. “The way Marla keeps hoping Tito
will come home.”

“She told me she believes he’s
alive and well somewhere,” Sam said, remembering Marla’s comments yesterday in
the bakery. “Can’t she find out where he is and contact him?”

Camille shrugged. “She tried. She
reported him missing. I don’t think the police treated it very seriously. And
then she hired some investigator. But that didn’t work out either.”

Sam stared at a spot on the
carpet. Maybe Beau would know something about the case.

“It was really hard when Tricia
died. Tito’s wife,” Camille said. “Gosh, she was so young. It just didn’t seem
right. That little girl, all alone. She seemed so lost.”

“Marla really loves her, doesn’t
she?”

“Jolie is all the world to her
now.”

Someone tapped on a glass and
Marla’s voice again rose to get everyone’s attention. “We have a lovely
memorial cake for Tito,” she said. “And I want to introduce you to the talented
baker who made it.”

Sam blushed as all eyes turned to
her.

“Samantha, would you do the honor
and cut the cake?”

She nodded and made her way to
the table. Within minutes she’d handed out dessert plates to nearly everyone.
Jolie and her friends held back.

“I want one of the big roses,”
Jolie said.

At choruses of “Me too!” Sam
worked out ways to make cuts that gave each girl a slice of the cake with a
whole rose on her plate. They wiggled with delight and headed back to Jolie’s
bedroom with their treasures.

The other guests began to
surround Sam when she went back to the living room with a small slice of the
red velvet cake, and she found herself explaining what kind of shop Sweet’s
Sweets was and giving directions to the place. Several of Marla’s friends
promised to come by and others talked about upcoming birthday orders. By the
time she caught sight of Marla again, Sam realized the crowd had thinned.

“I think I’ve overstayed a bit,”
she said when Marla walked up to her.

“Oh, nonsense, Sam. Everyone was
delighted to meet you.”

Sam looked at the ruins of the
meal. Most of the serving bowls were gone, taken away by whoever brought them,
but there were the remains of the cake alongside splotches of spilled food on
the tablecloth.

“Let me stay and help you clean
up,” she offered.

Marla started to defer but Sam
could see that she was tired. Through the doorway to the kitchen she could see
the two neighbors scraping plates and loading them into the dishwasher.

“With several of us working on
it,” Sam said, “it’ll only take a few minutes.” She headed toward the table and
began carrying the remaining dishes to the kitchen. A platter from a cupboard
provided a good place for the leftover cake, and Sam expertly cut it into
pieces, arranged them on the platter, and set the messy cake board aside to be
taken away.

Diane finished wiping the counter
tops and Deborah had put detergent into the dishwasher and started the machine.
Sam lost track of them for a few minutes and when she looked again, they were
saying goodbye to Marla who had stretched out on a couch in the living room,
looking worn out.

“Is there anything else I can do
for you, Marla?” Sam asked, as the two neighbors walked out the front door.

“Not really,” Marla said with a
weak wave of her hand. “Unless you’d like to sit and have a cup of tea.”

Sam truly felt more like going
home and putting her feet up, but something about Marla’s demeanor made her
pause.

“Tea would be nice.” Sam
remembered seeing a kettle somewhere in the kitchen, and she went back to fill
and heat it.

“I’m sorry to be so lazy, making
you do everything,” Marla said. “I just don’t seem to have a bit of energy
right now.”

“It’s been a big day,” Sam said.
She glanced toward the short hall that led to the bedrooms. “Does Jolie need
anything?”

“She went home with Sarah to
spend the night. That’s Diane’s daughter. Even though it’s a school night I
don’t mind. They’ll walk to the bus together in the morning.”

Marla pulled a crocheted afghan
over her legs and picked at the edge of it.

“Sam? Could I ask you something?”

The kettle sent out a long,
screeching whistle. “In a second, you sure can.” Sam hustled to the kitchen and
spent a minute organizing two cups of tea.

“Here we go. This will relax
you.” She set the delicate china cups on the coffee table and pulled an
armchair in close for herself.

“Sam, you know the sheriff pretty
well, don’t you? I mean, I’ve heard that you—”

Sam smiled. “We’re getting
married, actually.”

Marla brightened. “That’s nice.
I’m happy for you.”

“But I have a feeling that isn’t
the real question you wanted to ask me, is it?”

Marla sipped from her cup, buying
time. “No, it isn’t. I need to find Tito, and I need to do it now.”

“Ah. Someone at the party said
that you’d filed a missing persons report when he first disappeared.”

“I did. And nothing came of it. I
called the sheriff’s department here in Taos, but since Tito and Tricia lived
in Albuquerque at the time, I think they pushed the case off to the Albuquerque
police. But he was here in Taos when it happened, and I thought they should
have done more.”

“And this happened ten years
ago?”

“Yes. Late August. Tito, Tricia
and Jolie were here for a family weekend. Tito went to the store for some beer
and he never came back.”

“What did the sheriff’s people
say?”

“It got ugly. They said he
probably went off with some woman from his work. Tricia was devastated. She
couldn’t believe it and neither could I. I still don’t. Tito wasn’t like that.
He served in the Navy, became an electrician, he had a good job and provided a
good life for his family. He loved the outdoors, hiking, fishing—things like
that. He wasn’t a cheat. And he would have never left little Jolie. He loves
that baby.”