Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery

Sweet Masterpiece

The First Samantha Sweet Mystery

By Connie Shelton

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 Connie Shelton

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and
retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.
In other words, if you copy and share this book with anyone else
you are in violation of international copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. Although the author and publisher have made every
effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information
contained in this book we assume no responsibility for errors,
inaccuracies, omissions or any inconsistency herein. Any slights of
people, places or organizations are unintentional.

Book layout and design by Secret Staircase
Books

Cover image © Robertas Pezas

Fiction Categories:

Mystery/Female Sleuth/Romantic
Suspense/Paranormal Mystery

Chapter 1

Chocolate icing shot out of the pastry bag as
Samantha Sweet tested the consistency of her newest batch. The
ridges held shape. Perfect. She picked up a triple-chocolate Kahlua
cupcake and proceeded to pipe a thick base of chocolate buttercream
on it. On top of that, a smaller cone, which she built up then
tapered to form a snout. Two perky ears. Switching to a small round
tip she quickly added short fur and watched as the cupcake became a
shaggy puppy’s head. White chocolate eyes with dark chocolate
irises. White chocolate tinted pink for its tiny tongue.

Sam smiled at the happy little face she had
created. Set him down and started another. The order was for the
Tuesday night book group and local chapter of Chocoholics
Unanimous. Every detail, right down to the dogs’ collars, had to be
chocolate, and Sam enjoyed matching the theme of the weekly treats
to that of the book they were reading, in this case a story
featuring a dog walker. Unlike typical ‘anonymous’ twelve-step
groups, this bunch celebrated their addiction. They reveled in the
utter enjoyment of all things chocolate. There was absolutely no
intention of overcoming their mutual habit. Sam wasn’t
complaining—the weekly order gave a nice boost to her fledgling
little home business. And someday . . . a shop . . . Sweet’s
Sweets.

She added the final touches to a schnauzer,
then covered the bowl of chocolate cream and put it in the fridge.
Chided herself as she licked a gob of the frosting from her
finger—where did she think those extra pounds came from? She ran
hot water and detergent into a bowl and tossed all the implements
into it to soak until she could get back.

She had to break into a house and she was
running late.

Sam rechecked the address, debated hitching
up her utility trailer and decided against it. This wasn’t supposed
to be that big a job. The pickup should handle it fine.

The house turned out to be a flat-roofed
adobe with traditional two-foot-thick walls, on the south side of
Taos. She backed into the driveway, a long one that led to the back
of the place. Getting out, she circled the whole house, checking
doors and windows for anything inadvertently left open. She
couldn’t remember how many times she’d gone to a huge effort to
pick a lock or drill a deadbolt, just to find out that the back
door was unlocked all along. Talk about frustrating.

No such luck this time. The traditional
blue-painted doors were all buttoned up tight. She pulled out her
tool bag and analyzed the lock on the back door. They were almost
always less beefy than front doors, for some stupid reason. And
that held true at this place. Rather than drill the lock, which
then required that she replace it before leaving, she decided to
see if she could pick this one. One of these days she would see
about getting one of those little triggered pick guns, but at the
moment all she could afford were standard picks, which take two
hands and a lot of patience to operate. It was nothing like it
looked in the movies, she quickly discovered when she began this
line of work.

She worked the picks for close to five
minutes before feeling the telltale release of the tumblers. Blew
out a breath. That was another part of success at this—seemed like
you had to be holding your breath to make it work. She grabbed the
doorknob and got that tweaky feeling in the gut, that uncertain
what-lies-behind-this-door question, each time she entered a
strange house.

She’d envisioned a recalcitrant homeowner,
refusing to leave, shotgun in hand, or maybe a wall-high stack of
newspapers ready to topple onto her. Everyone’s read about some
weird old man who had a house full of them. But none of that had
happened to her, yet.

Breaking into houses for a living—all
perfectly legal and sanctioned by the U.S. government. The USDA
hired folks like Samantha to clean and maintain abandoned
properties where the homeowner defaulted on their loans. Sadly,
there were a lot of them these days.

She noticed that a thin crust of dirt covered
the door and all the glass panes on this side of the house,
remnants of New Mexico’s famous “mud storms” where blowing dirt and
a small amount of rain combined to coat every surface with a haze
of brown. Sam actually liked this part of the job, assessing the
situation and imagining how good it would look after she’d applied
Windex and hot water. The knob twisted in her hand and the door
swung open with a hellish creak. A little oil would take care of
that. She brushed her hands on her jeans and stuffed the lock tools
back into her canvas bag, leaving it sitting just inside the back
door. Flipped on the lights. At least the power had not been cut
yet.

Here’s where the surprises usually showed up.
In this case the kitchen was remarkably untrashed—sometimes
kitchens were a nightmare. A few crusted dishes sat in the sink but
the table was clear, trashcan still had its top firmly in place,
and no roaches scurried away. No noxious odors from the fridge. She
would come back to that.

She walked through a doorway into a
living/dining L and saw that the home still contained furniture.
Three doors opened off a short hallway—a little pink bathroom was
visible but the other two doors were closed. A starter home for a
young family, certainly adequate for a retired couple. She’d seen
quite a few similar, and it wasn’t a whole lot smaller than her own
place on Elmwood Lane.

In the living room an ancient sofa looked
like prime real estate for dust mites and a round coffee table held
several red pillar candles with hard wax drips down their sides.
Dusty-looking bundles of dried herbs lay among the candles, and an
open book sat on the sofa, as if the reader had simply gotten up in
mid-chapter and planned to return. The rest of the room was
cluttered with a lifetime’s accumulation—shelves held stacks of
magazines and cheaply framed photos of children in 1940s attire. An
old fashioned wooden radio had cobwebs lacing its speaker and
trailing between the knobs.

Sam wandered through the room, trailing her
fingers across the fringe on the shade of an old floor lamp. Then
she heard a thump.

The hair on her neck rose.
I’m getting too
old for this.

She searched for a weapon of any kind. The
floor lamp looked heavy but completely unwieldy. She edged back to
the kitchen and pulled the biggest wrench, a crescent only ten
inches long, from her tool kit.

“Hello?” she called out.

The thump came a tiny bit louder this
time.

“Hello? USDA caretaker. Anyone here?” She
tiptoed into the hallway, her steps silent on the worn saltillo
tile.

This time she swore she heard a moan. No way
this could be a good thing. She should call 911, she thought, even
as she reached out to the first closed bedroom door and turned the
knob.

The smell of illness and old-person emanated
from the room as soon as the door opened. Sam held her breath for a
moment. The place was so dim she had a hard time finding the source
of the sound. A wooden bed took up most of the space, while a high
dresser on the far wall and a nightstand cluttered with bottles,
drinking glasses and wadded tissues filled the rest of the space.
Crumpled blankets created waves on the surface of the bed and it
took her a moment to realize that a tiny, shriveled woman lay under
them.

Another moan, barely above a whisper.

“Ma’am?”

A thin hand fluttered upward. Sam stepped
closer to the bedside.

“I’m sent here by the USDA,” she said. “I’m
supposed to clean up the house, but I’m sure they didn’t realize
anyone was living here.”

The toothless mouth opened and a sound
emerged, something like a piece of cellophane being crushed and
then ripped. The old woman wiped at her forehead and made some more
throat-clearing noises. Finally, words emerged. “Not . . . for . .
. long.”

“What? Can I do something for you?” Sam
reached for one of the water glasses on the nightstand but the
clawlike hand waved her away.

“I have . . . something . . .”

Sam leaned in a little closer, and the woman
cleared her throat noisily. She jammed a tissue at the scrawny
fingers and stepped back. When the woman spoke again her voice was
noticeably stronger.

“I have something for you,” she said.

“I don’t think you even know me, ma’am.”

The birdlike woman raised up on one elbow and
her tiny eyes lost their blurry look for a moment. “I know . . .
you were meant to come here . . . today. You are to possess the
secret.”

What on earth did
that
mean?

She fell back against her pillows, clearly
tired from the effort.

“Quickly, girl. The bottom . . . drawer . . .
in the dresser.”

“You need something from the dresser.” Sam
turned toward it.

“A wooden box. Bottom drawer . . . look . . .
under . . .”

Sam went over to the dresser, stooped
clumsily, and fumbled at the cheap brass handles, pulling it open.
It seemed to be stuffed full of cloth—bedding, knitted items and
such.

“Get . . . the . . . box. Under—” The words
caught in her throat.

Sam glanced up at the sick woman. She lay
against the pillow, eyes closed, breathing shallowly through her
mouth. Sam dug through the fabric, feeling for anything that might
be the box she wanted. In the back left corner she felt a hard
surface and pulled at it.

It was about the size of a cigar box, with a
crude metal clasp and a lumpy, carved surface. She picked it up and
went back to the old woman’s side.

“Here you go. Here’s your box.”

The eyelids fluttered but didn’t really open.
“No . . . for you.”

“Me? Are you sure?”

From somewhere deep inside, the ancient woman
called up the strength to raise her head again. “The box has . . .
special powers. It holds . . . many truths.”

Sam stared at the ugly, lumpy thing. “What’s
in it?”

The old head fell back to the pillow.
“Quickly . . . take it. Put it in a safe place.”

Sam stood there, uncertainly, wondering what
the woman was telling her.

“Now, girl. Take it.” A labored breath. “No
one must know.”

The lady needed medical attention but the
poor thing wouldn’t be satisfied until she thought Sam had taken
the box to a safe place.

“I’m going to call an ambulance for you. I’ll
put this in my truck for safe keeping.” Sam’s voice shook, worried
that the woman would go into cardiac arrest at any second.

The pained expression on the old woman’s face
relaxed. The answer seemed to satisfy her.

“Okay, just rest. I’ll have some help here
for you soon.” Sam patted the woman’s shoulder, shocked to feel
sharp bones under the papery skin. She rushed outside.

But by the time she’d put the box on the
backseat of her truck and returned to make the 911 call, the old
woman was dead.

Chapter 2

In her fifty-two years, Sam had never been
alone with someone recently deceased and standing by the bed gave
her the willies. She stepped outside and dialed her USDA
contracting officer’s number. She’d never met Delbert Crow in
person but she imagined a gray-haired fussy bureaucrat who was a
year or two from retirement. At times he was so by-the-book that he
drove her crazy with details; other times she got the impression he
didn’t want to be bothered, that he couldn’t wait to be out on his
fishing boat on a lake a hundred miles from nowhere. Somehow she
had a feeling that finding a dying woman at one of her properties
would be something he’d want to know about.