Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (18 page)

She headed toward the dais to
remind Rupert and Bentley that tomorrow’s schedule would be tightened; rather
than being open from ten in the morning to five p.m., it would close with the
finale announcement of the prize winners at two o’clock. She had no sooner
passed that info along than her phone rang. When she saw who it was she
detoured to take the call at the quiet end of the corridor.

“Hey, darlin’,” said Beau. “Just
checking in. Are you getting out of there anytime soon?”

“I’ll make it happen. I’m anxious
to hear about the rest of your day.”

“I left Ben to finish questioning
witnesses. I’m still trying to locate next of kin for Carinda Carter and there
hasn’t been a minute all day to break away and get by her apartment to look for
names. So, what I was thinking is that if I can swing by and pick you up, we
could do that together and I’ll take you out for your favorite enchiladas at the
Taoseño.”

It was too good an offer to pass
up and Sam told him she could be ready in fifteen minutes. She scurried back to
her booth, jotted quick notes about the products they’d run out of (telling
Beau she would have to go to the shop and bake tonight was unwelcome news she
would save for later), then she sent the girls home and was waiting in front of
the hotel when Beau pulled up, right on time.

Chapter
15

“Hey there,” he said with a small
romantic leer to his voice. “I am so ready to get this day finished and go home
to relax.”

She broke the news about having to
bake some more; his hopeful expression faded.

“Just one more day of this,” she
said, “and I promise—we will have some time together.”

He put the cruiser in gear and
steered around the small cul-de-sac hotel entrance.

“It’s not your fault. I’ll still
have this murder case to work on, not to mention keeping order among the
children of love and brotherhood.”

“They giving you fits?”

“Only moderately. Today was some
kind of big Peace In or something. My uniformed men reported that they all sat
on the ground in a big circle and chanted most of the day. It was almost
harmonic sounding. The thing that’s driving Mr. Mulvane to call us all the time
is that there are just so
many
of
them—more than a thousand at this point.”

“So he’s getting a taste of what
his generosity has brought him.”

“No good deed goes unpunished, you
know.” He turned onto Paseo del Pueblo and headed south.

Sam didn’t have to wonder if that
statement also pertained to volunteering for committees. She couldn’t wait for
this long ordeal to be over.

“You’ve been to Carinda’s
apartment,” he said. “Let me know where to turn.”

She spotted the turnoff about ten
minutes later and directed him to the side of the building nearest Unit 6.

“I’ll let the manager know what
we’re doing here,” Beau said, scanning apartment numbers as they walked into
the small courtyard. He handed Sam a set of keys, apparently from Carinda’s
purse.

Sam walked to Carinda’s front door
and unlocked it, pausing before going inside. Beau returned a couple minutes
later and handed her a pair of latex gloves. The unit felt hollow and stale,
despite the fact that its occupant had been here only yesterday morning. A
trash can in the kitchen held packaging from a boxed microwavable
breakfast—scrambled eggs and sausage—and the one dirty fork and orange
juice-crusted drinking glass in the sink attested to the fact that this had
probably been her last meal.

“The manager wants the place
emptied by the end of the month. He’s got someone from a waiting list ready to
take it on the first,” Beau said, glancing around at the cheap furnishings.
“Doesn’t seem like a lot of personal stuff here, does there?”

Sam truly looked at the place for
the first time. Without Carinda’s room-filling personality the place had the
blandness of a two-star motel room. Commercial grade couch and armchair flanked
a coffee table and end table of cheap material. The one lamp seemed like
something that had come with the furnished apartment rather than an item Carinda
would have chosen. A TV stand didn’t even attempt to mimic the other wood
laminates. A vanilla-scented candle stood in the center of the coffee table; that,
and some DVDs under the new-looking television were the only touches the
management probably had not provided. Not a single personal photo, no art or
handmade pillows or throws.

“It really feels temporary,
doesn’t it?” she said.

“Yeah.” He was busy rummaging
through the contents of the shelf under the TV. “These movies are rentals. Goes
along with your theory that she was only staying for the summer.”

“Maybe she really only settled
into the bedroom. I’ll check.”

The same generic furniture here—double
bed with a plain headboard, one nightstand and a dresser that semi matched each
other. The rumpled bedspread showed flashes of the sheets beneath, all of which
looked like a bed-in-a-bag set that most likely came from Walmart. A discarded
white sweater lay across the end of the bed and a pair of white sandals had
been kicked off in the corner by the one window.

The dresser top contained a
clutter of girly-stuff: a puddle of silky lingerie which turned out to be three
pairs of bikini panties with lace edging; a drinking glass held a clutch of
makeup brushes, two with shades of blusher, two smaller ones with residue of
the gold eye shadow Sam recognized as Carinda’s shade. Plastic trays of the
same blusher and eye shadow, three tubes of lipstick sprawled among the others.
On the floor beside the dresser sat a half-full plastic laundry basket; in it
Sam recognized the blouse Carinda had worn during the set-up phase of the
festival.

Beau stood in the doorway.

“I haven’t looked into the drawers
yet,” Sam said, pulling open the top one.

He told her he would take the
bathroom while she worked the dresser.

Only two drawers held anything at
all—more underwear and a few pairs of socks in the first one, three sweater
twin-sets and two folded tank tops in the second. The other two held dust balls
that easily dated to the previous tenant. Sam moved on to the closet.

A dozen hangers held pants,
blouses and one light jacket. Below them, on the floor, were walking shoes,
black flats, and two pairs of heels that happened to go along with the colors
of the clothing, which all fit the blue/yellow/orange color palette. Sam remembered
that Carinda was wearing a blue dress when she died.

Also on the closet floor was a
large, wheeled suitcase. Giving it a quick estimate, Sam would guess that all
the clothing she’d come across so far would easily fit into it.

“It really looks like Carinda
arrived in town with one suitcase of clothing and made a quick trip to Walmart
to flesh out the décor of the apartment,” Sam said when Beau emerged from the
bathroom.

“It’s pretty sparse in there,
too,” he said, holding up a zippered makeup bag similar to the one Sam used for
her own things on short trips. “I’ll ask the manager whether she signed a lease
or had this place month-by-month.”

“I haven’t spotted a letter, an
address book, or any type of personal memorabilia.” Sam lifted the white sweater
from the bed and started to fold it.

“Ah-so,” Beau said in a Charlie
Chan imitation. “What’s this?”

In the folds of the bedspread,
under the spot where the sweater had been, lay a cell phone.

“She didn’t have the phone on her
when she was found?” Sam asked.

He shook his head. “And there
wasn’t one in her purse. I guess I was so distracted that I failed to think
beyond what was there, to consider what wasn’t.”

“Well, there’s no landline in the
apartment, so it makes sense that this is her only one.”

He was already tapping buttons.

“Battery’s almost dead. I may have
to charge . . .” His voice trailed off. “Hmm. Recent calls. In the two days
before she died there are six outgoing and two incoming. Four are local. Ha—one
of them is to you.”

Sam had talked to Carinda so many
times during the planning and setup of the festival, she couldn’t honestly
remember who had called whom in those last couple of days.

“Here’s one that I believe is a
New York area code . . .” he tapped at the screen.

“Which fits with her driver’s
license. She would have been calling someone back home.”

He listened intently for a minute
then ended the call. “It’s a law firm. Hanover, Somebody and Somebody Else. I
didn’t catch all of it. Recorded message states their hours and Saturday
evening at . . .” He glanced at his watch. “Nearly eight p.m. Eastern time is
outside their work day. I’ll have to call again on Monday.”

He stared at the little screen.
“Dang, battery just died. See if we can locate the charger for this thing, or
I’ll have to find a generic one.”

Sam rummaged in the drawer of the
nightstand—also remarkably sparse—and found what he needed.

“So, what do you suppose her story
was?” she asked Beau after they had locked the apartment. “She bragged about
who she knew as if she’d been here a long time.”

He started the cruiser and backed
out of the small space where he’d parked. “Wilson—the manager—says she paid a
month at a time. When she rented the place she said she was waiting for her
household things to arrive and had to have an apartment until she closed on the
sale of her new place here.”

“But we didn’t find anything at
all about a real estate purchase.”

“No, we didn’t. The one suitcase
and rental car suggest that she never planned to be here all that long.”

“It would fit with the remarks she
made, about not putting up with all of us. She never really intended to stay.”

“Odd though. Why join a committee
and get so involved? It just doesn’t fit with someone planning to move away
quickly.”

“Or with someone hiding out.” Sam
didn’t know why that thought had popped into her head, but now that she’d said
it she couldn’t quite let go.

“What if she was? Hiding out, I
mean. Getting away from someone back East. Maybe she was in trouble with the
law there. It could explain why she had a lawyer.”

“A reputable lawyer would
recommend that she go back and turn herself in for whatever she was accused of.
He would then be able to represent her in court and work to get her out of the
jam.”

“And when was the last time you
had a suspect who would have done that? Especially if she was guilty?”

He tilted his head in
acknowledgement. The Taoseño appeared on the right and he pulled into the
restaurant’s full parking lot. They stood in the vestibule for a few minutes
until their turn came for a table. Sam ordered the chicken enchiladas—since
Beau had earlier put that picture into her head—and he went for the burrito
special.

“What other reasons could Carinda
have had for joining the festival committee?” Sam mused after she’d taken a sip
from her water glass. “Maybe there was someone in town she wanted to keep an
eye on . . . one of the committee members or one of the vendors.”

“Any idea which?”

“No, not at all. She didn’t seem
to form any friendships. If anything, it was the opposite. She managed to
either tick them off or hurt their feelings. I chalked it up to her just being
one of those people who isn’t very good at social interaction.”

“Well, Garcia didn’t seem to come
up with anyone who both hated Carinda and had the opportunity. Nearly everyone can
be accounted for.”

“Farrel O’Hearn and Danielle
Ferguson were both away from the ballroom at the time of the murder.”

“We called them in this morning,”
he said. “Apparently, they had a little row of their own. Questioned
separately, they each gave nearly identical accounts, so I tend to believe that
they alibi each other.”

Sam pondered it all. She was
missing some vital clue, almost certainly. No one really liked Carinda Carter,
but she couldn’t think of anyone with enough hatred to stab the woman. As
Garcia had said, it took a lot of rage to do that. She finished her meal, then
chided herself for not being more mindful of the amounts she was eating.

Beau pushed his own empty plate
aside and reached over to take her hand.

“I don’t know where you were just
now,” he said, “but don’t worry about it. We will figure out what happened.”

She gave him a thankful smile. It
was nice to have someone else do the worrying. He drove back to the Bella Vista
and pulled alongside her van in the parking lot.

“I won’t stay at the bakery late,”
she promised. “A couple of hours to bake a torte and a few trays of cookies and
brownies should do it. I can go back in the morning to ice them.”

“If I can help you . . .”

The offer was generous but Sam
knew she could finish more quickly on her own than if she had to stop and give
instruction or help him find his way around the kitchen.

“You’ve had a long day already,”
she told him. “By the time you take care of the horses and feed the dogs, I’ll
probably be there.”

She arrived at her shop, giving a
quick look up and down the alley, half expecting to see Bobul again. No sign of
him, of course. Inside, she switched on lights and turned on the oven, moving
as automatically as she had in the early days before hired help, when she had
to prepare enough baked goods in the pre-dawn hours to open the shop for the
breakfast crowd. The routine was familiar and comforting; she found her mind
wandering back over the events at the festival as she took eggs and butter from
the fridge and measured flour and baking powder.

Friday morning, things had been
crazy—no doubt about that. Most of the vendors had been busy with final setup,
getting their product readied for sale. Since several of them were also
committee members—herself and Harvey, especially—most of the organizational
work had fallen to Rupert, Kelly and Carinda. Bentley Day had arrived at the
hotel but had not yet shown up in the ballroom. Carinda had gone to search for
him . . . Bentley’s moves as told to Beau by the celebrity chef and the hotel
bartender were somewhat different and Sam’s own memory of the sequence of
events was already becoming fuzzy.