Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (10 page)

Rupert, having taken over nearly
everything to do with their Swiss sponsor, looked a little miffed but once
Carinda set out to take drink orders Sam pacified him with the reminder that at
least now she wasn’t right in his face. He grumbled a little but soon became
distracted again as he and Kelly hung bunting across the front of the judges’
table. Sam remembered that she’d been about to call Sweet’s Sweets so she
stepped out to the corridor where it was marginally quieter.

Near the garden door there was a
steady stream of foot traffic, people whose arms were laden with boxes as they
came indoors, empty as they went back for more. She edged closer to the less-crowded
lobby, ducking aside as Harvey rushed past as if he didn’t see her standing
there.

“Julio has everything loaded into
the van,” Becky told Sam. “He can break away from here as soon as his cinnamon
rolls come out of the oven.”

“Perfect.” Sam remembered that she
and Beau had tentatively talked about getting together for lunch, but there was
no way she was getting out of here now.

She gave him a quick call,
declining his generous offer to bring her a sandwich. She’d barely had time to
make the phone call—when would she manage a chance to eat?

“I hope to be out of here close to
six o’clock,” she said. “All vendors were instructed to have their setup done by
then.”

“Good luck with that,” he said
with a little chuckle. “When does everyone in a group of people actually follow
what they’re told?”

She let out a sigh; he was so
right.

She wandered back into the
ballroom, spotting Harvey Byron’s portable freezer bin with the striped awning
above and logo for his shop, Ice Cream Social. A woman with long blonde hair
stood near it, her back toward Sam at the moment. She apparently spotted
Carinda across the room because she called out her name and headed toward the east
end of the room, but when Sam scanned the crowd, Carinda had vanished again.

Just as well. Sam really hoped to
avoid the prickly woman for the rest of the day, if possible. Sweet’s Sweets
was right next to Harvey’s Ice Cream Social booth and she headed that direction.
On the other side of her spot, a woman stood in the open space looking a little
lost.

“I’m Nancy Nash,” the woman said
after Sam introduced herself. “I didn’t realize we had to bring everything.
Everyone else has such nice decorations and stuff.”

“Well, you don’t have to go fancy
with it, but it was explained in the instruction sheet we sent out when your
application was approved. I’m sorry, I don’t remember what your product is.”

“Oh, well, I don’t have a shop or
anything. I decided to enter my famous chocolate-covered strawberries.”

“Ooh, that sounds really good.”

“Well, my family loves them. I
never tell the kids how really easy they are to make.” Nancy raised both hands
to her temples, pressing with her fingertips and squeezing her eyes shut. “Ow.”

“Are you okay?”

“The hum. It’s so
loud
right now.” She opened one eye.
“You don’t hear it?”

The Taos Hum. Sam had heard
of
it for years—she’d never actually
heard the sound itself. Despite the efforts of scientists to capture it, no
definitive proof had surfaced to their satisfaction. Meanwhile, those who
claimed to hear the sound described it, variously, as a swarm of bees, a low
diesel engine or a faraway locomotive. At the moment, all Sam could hear was
the clamor of voices in the crowded room.

She gave a rueful smile and shook
her head. “I guess I’m not one of the sensitive ones.”

“It can be anything from annoying
to excruciating. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy, like I want to hit
something,” Nancy said, lowering her hands. “There, it’s fading now.”

Sam’s phone rang before she was
forced to comment. Julio had arrived in the unloading zone and needed help to
get the van cleared in his allocated fifteen minutes. Sam hurried away to round
up Kelly and Rupert and they rushed out through the garden.

When they arrived back at the
booth with their first load—two tables carried by Rupert and a Plexiglas
display case, which Sam and Kelly managed between them—Nancy Nash gave their
setup a critical eye, said “oh, my” and left.

“Apparently she thought the
organizers provide everything or that somehow tables and booths can magically
grow out of the floor,” Sam said to Kelly.

“Or, like nearly everyone, she
just didn’t read the instructions.”

Julio arrived with a second
display case. Sam had found the covered displays at a wholesale place. They
weren’t nearly as nice as the antiques with curved glass in the shop, but she’d
found them attractive enough for the times when she might sell her baked goods
from another location. As if she would
ever
want to go through this again.

By the time she and Rupert had
unfolded the table legs and righted them, Kelly came back with a box containing
cloth table skirts in the shop’s signature purple tones. She quickly draped
both tables, positioned them and the two women set the display cases in place.
Rupert and Julio each carried in another carton—it seemed to require a hundred
items, from pens to credit card processing machine to bags and tissue paper for
handling the food.

“I better move the van, Sam,”
Julio said. “Call us if we’ve forgotten anything.”

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard
him say,” Kelly whispered after Julio walked away.

“He’s a man of few words, for
sure. But he makes up for it with his knowledge in the kitchen.”

“I better get back to the dais,”
Rupert said. “I’m trying to come up with chairs for the judges, something more
comfortable than the standard-issue metal ones the hotel brought first.” He
hurried away.

“And, I’ll bet he doesn’t want
anyone getting into the chocolate samples,” Kelly said. “I sneaked one—they are
amazing.”

“Speaking of chairs . . .” Sam
jotted a note. “I hadn’t even thought of it, but there might be lulls when a
chance to sit down will feel really good. We’ll bring a couple of the bistro
chairs from the shop tomorrow.”

Her thoughts were interrupted by a
female shriek. Sam stared around the area; the sounds of an argument rose from
the far end of the room, near the kitchen door.

What now?
she thought, hurrying toward what was quickly becoming a
full-blown fight.

“—on the same aisle as
her
!” The speaker stood facing Carinda
Carter with her arms folded tightly beneath an ample chest, her blue eyes
flashing and blond hair standing up in spikes that may have been even more
rigid than originally intended.

“Ms. Ferguson, please calm down.
We can sort this out.” Carinda sounded, for once, like the voice of reason.

Sam recognized the chef from
Chatsworth’s, a local restaurant that prided itself on high-end desserts that sold
for as much as the entrees.

“Danielle, hi. What’s the
problem?”

“Farrel O’Hearn. She’s
always
a problem. Had I known she would
be here, well, I would have suggested to Chatsworth that we skip the whole
tawdry event.”

“What’s the matter? Can’t handle
the competition?”

Sam spun around to find that
Farrel O’Hearn had walked up behind her.

“Ladies—keep it civil, all right?”

“I’m sure whatever Chatsworth
Bingham has you cooking up, it won’t bring too much shame on this
tawdry
event. There’s no way it will
beat my entry. I can promise you that.”

“Ladies—watch your words. We’re
doing this festival for charity. Please keep that in mind.” Sam started to
order Farrel back to her own booth but the redhead had turned away.

“Witch! I intend to win this
thing—at all cost—and she’d better get used to the idea. Who assigned me this
spot anyway?” Danielle demanded.

Carinda shot a triumphant look
toward Sam. “
She
insisted on doing
the booth assignments.”

As if Carinda herself would have
known that these two women were arch rivals.

“Carinda . . . don’t you have some
other duties at the moment?”

This time the look was a glare.
Carinda muttered something about why was she bothering to put up with this
bunch and stomped across the ballroom where she apparently thought she had an
ally in one of the vendors whom she had admitted to the festival at the last
minute.

Sam stared after her for a moment.
Again, the reference to not being here long. With any luck, Carinda was one of
those summer people who came for a few months and would leave Taos behind in
the fall. Heaven forbid that she become a regular volunteer at every event in
town. The rest of the populace would be ready to move away if they had to deal
with her much longer.

Danielle Ferguson seemed to be
waiting for an answer to her question.

“Where in the room would you like
to be?” Sam asked, scanning the space for possibilities. Nearly all the other
vendors were already here and at least partially set up. Moving one of them
would not go over well. “My booth is over there, the one with the Sweet’s
Sweets sign. I’ll switch with you if it makes a difference.”

Danielle’s eyes widened. “You’re
practically right across the aisle from
her
—no
way!”

“We’ll refund your fee if you want
to withdraw—there’s a waiting list for spaces. Otherwise, I expect peace and
quiet from everyone. You and Farrel are more than five booths apart, but you
have to make nice.”

Danielle considered for a minute.
Clearly, her boss at the restaurant would not be happy if his was the only
high-class establishment in town not represented. She grumbled a bit but went
back to the task of setting up her display. Sam turned toward Farrel’s end of
the aisle. The redhead was laughing a bit too heartily at something Rupert must
have said, showing off for Danielle that she wasn’t bothered in the least.

“Excuse me? Do you know where I
might find Carinda Carter?” The tall, blonde woman looked somewhat familiar but
she had spoken to Danielle so Sam started to walk away.

“Whoever that is,” said Danielle.
“Sam?”

“She was just here a minute ago.
Now she’s right over—” Sam started to point across the room but she didn’t see
Carinda anywhere. “Hm. Well, she has to be around.”

The woman headed toward the row of
booths by the windows, while Sam stewed. Most of the Sweet Somethings banners
still needed to be hung, along with setting up the ticket table and making sure
the pamphlets and ballots were in the right places. Why was it that when the
real work began Carinda always seemed to dash out to do something more
important?

Chapter
9

By six o’clock Sam felt dead on
her feet. She never had caught up with Carinda Carter so she, Kelly and Rupert
had hung all the banners and completed the final preparations. Danielle
Ferguson was the last of the vendors to leave, still carping about the fact
that Farrel O’Hearn was allowed in the competition—she wasn’t local, after all.
Sam had the distinct feeling this all went to some desperate need on Danielle’s
part to win the top prize. The blonde had as much as said so. Frankly, she was
sick of the whole bunch of them and glad that she wouldn’t have an entry in the
contest.

Beau was on his way out the door
when she arrived at home.

“Hey you.” He pulled her close.
“You look like a girl who doesn’t want to cook dinner.”

She nodded against his chest, her
cheek scraping on his badge.

“If you want to ride along with me
while I have a little talk with the hippie dude I’ll take you out for the
dinner of your choice afterward.”

A shower would have felt good but
not having to stress over the meal felt better. She followed him to his
department cruiser. The ride out to the highway, taking the next turn and
pulling in at the Mulvane property took all of four minutes, just long enough
for Sam to begin feeling drowsy in the passenger seat.

Beau parked next to one of the
blue buses, the one that had been there from the beginning.

“Want to come with me or wait
here?” he asked.

She looked toward the bus and saw
three kids with ratty yellow hair staring at her from the windows. No way would
she fall asleep under their careful scrutiny.

“I’ll go along.” She unclipped her
seatbelt and got out, watching as Beau asked at the bus door for someone named Moondoggie.

Seriously?
Those nicknames hadn’t faded away after the sixties?

The braless woman whose hair was
identical to her kids’ pointed toward an open spot where a bunch of
white-painted stones formed a circle about thirty feet in diameter. “He’s in
the middle,” she said.

Moondoggie had a neatly trimmed
beard and a fringe of dark hair surrounding a shiny bald pate. Without the
white tunic, loose white pants and sandals he could have put on a business suit
and fit in at nearly any corporate office in the country. Sam wondered if
perhaps he did just that after his summer sojourn each year.

He watched as they approached,
hands clasped together at his waist. When Beau said hello, Moondoggie pressed
his palms together and gave a little bow.

“Greetings. Welcome to the Summer
of Peace encampment.” His soft voice had a smooth quality that really did
convey a tone of tranquility.

Beau nodded. “I’m touching base
because Mr. Mulvane is concerned over the number of vehicles on his land. He
says there are a lot more people in your group than he was led to believe.”

“The movement is an ever-changing
thing. Those who follow our vision of peace upon the entire planet are a
growing segment of the population. We welcome any and all who seek to live in
accord with their fellow beings.”

Beau looked around. “Yeah, I get
that. How long do you plan to stay?”

“The arrival of Midsommar—what you
might call the summer solstice—portends many great earthly and heavenly events
this year. Our gathering will focus on the auspicious confluence of the
solstice, a lunar eclipse, and the juxtaposition of Scorpio and Taurus in the
heavens. We intend to bring together the amazing energy of the universe with
the global desire for harmony. With that sort of movement, we believe we can
achieve world peace, if only during the moments of the eclipse.”