Sweets Forgotten (Samantha Sweet Mysteries Book 10) (16 page)

“That fits with her story, all
right.”

“Okay, let’s see here … I’ve got
an unknown male who took the elevator to the ninth floor then walked toward
Zack’s room. Again, can’t say for sure if he went into 933 or 935 but he didn’t
stay long and he never returned all night. Not exactly the movements a guest
would make.”

“Can you tell if he used a
keycard or did Zack let him into the room?”

“Can’t tell. It’s those damn
little alcoves.”

“I assume you don’t recognize
him?”

“No, dammit. He’s wearing a hat
with a fairly wide brim. I think he’s aware of the camera because he keeps his
head down so there’s never a clear look at his face.”

“What about stature, gait?
Anything familiar there?”

“I’m gonna have our film
technician copy and send you this short clip. You know these people better than
I do. Maybe you can tell.”

The lead seemed skimpy—after all,
a guy walking down the hall in a hotel could be anybody in the world—but Beau
agreed to take a look.

The tow truck hauling Jo
Robinet’s Lexus arrived just then, followed by Lisa in her Suburban. By the
time the luxury car was offloaded, Beau had received a message from Taylor with
thirty seconds of video attached. He watched it while Lisa pulled a stack of
evidence envelopes from her kit and began earnestly gathering bits and pieces
from the interior of Jo’s car. She would use sticky tape to pluck up hairs,
fabric fibers, skin cells—anything that could later be used to tie the
occupant(s) of the car to the case.

On the video, Beau understood
Taylor’s frustration at not being able to see what went on within those little
alcoves. They were no more than twenty-four inches deep, but a person and his
actions disappeared from camera view the instant he stepped toward any of the
guestroom doors. The man in the hat was no exception. There was no way to say
positively that he even entered the room. He could have been standing in the
alcove, although it was unlikely, for the full five minutes he vanished from
view. Instead, Beau gave his attention to watching the man walk down the
corridor and back, memorizing the way he carried himself. Something about him seemed
familiar.

Chapter
17

Sam handed bowls to Zoë who
ladled them full of her hearty stew, so fragrant with onions and meat that it
nearly made Sam’s knees buckle.

“It’s just the two of us? Where’s
Darryl?” she asked, carrying one of the hot bowls to Zoë’s large round kitchen
table.

“Bowling.”

“Seriously? Darryl?” Sam had a
hard time picturing the tall, white-bearded contractor in a bowling alley. He
was much more mountain-man than beer-and-fries and bowling shirts.

“There’s a new guy on his crew
for this house they’re building now who invited him. Darryl likes him and
agreed to this before he really thought it through. He’ll have a backache in
the morning.” Zoë brought spoons and napkins to the table and topped up their
wine glasses.

Sam blew the steam that was
wafting off the stew and scooped up a spoonful of the combination of pork,
tomatoes, chile and potato.

“I suppose you heard about the
big surprise at Zack Robinet’s funeral today,” Sam said, waiting a moment for
the stew to cool.

“Um, no … But I’m guessing
there’s a story. Funerals and surprises don’t generally go together.”

“Remember Jane, who’s been doing
chocolates for me at the shop?”

Zoë turned her palms up, a tad
impatient at the switch in topics. Sam laughed and told her about the ugly plaid
coat and wig. “I tell you, I was completely shocked when someone called her Jo
Robinet.”

“No! Wow.” Zoë had set her spoon
down. “So, this Jane who’s been in your shop all week … Did she really have
amnesia at all?”

“She says she did. Says she only
began to remember things in detail the night before the funeral.”

“Do you believe her? I guess I
should ask, does Beau believe her?”

Sam shifted a little in her
chair.

“Come on, you guys didn’t fight
about this, did you?”

“Oh, no. It got a little tense
but no fight.” Not really.

“So where on earth did Jane, uh,
Jo learn so much about chocolate? I gather that Zack Robinet’s wife wasn’t a
candy shop owner here in town or you would have already known about her.”

“That goes back to her childhood.
Her father was a chocolatier somewhere back east.”

“So she’s still working for you?”

“Yeah. I mean, she’s fantastic
with the chocolates and has some really creative ideas for a special order
we’re doing right now.”

“And Beau doesn’t see her as a
suspect in her husband’s death? The papers are full of the story of sex and
drugs and all kinds of creepy stuff.” Zoë looked a little sideways at Sam,
questioning the sanity of her keeping Jo on at the shop.

“He’s ruled her out completely.”
Well, Sam
hoped
by now it was
completely.

“If you say so.” Zoë passed a
basket of tortillas and turned back to eating her stew.

Sam’s phone rang and the readout
said it was Kelly. Perfect timing for a change of subject. She apologized to
Zoë and took the call.

“Hey, sorry I missed you
earlier,” Sam said. “What’s up?”

“Not much. I wanted to let you
know that Jen dropped off your bank deposit with me when she left the bakery
this evening. I’m going out, so I can either leave it here at my house for you
to pick up or bring it to work in the morning.”

“That’s okay,” Sam said. “Just
bring it when you come to work. I’ll break away sometime in the morning and get
the money to the bank.”

She clicked off the call and
looked up to see Zoë watching from the corners of her eyes.

“What?”

“You said ‘that’s okay’ but it
didn’t really sound so nonchalant as you wanted it to. Kelly’s still being coy
about the new guy?”

 
“She is, and I have a sneaking suspicion …
something I don’t want to admit even to myself.”

Zoë gave a long stare. “What on
earth would that be?”

The barrier broke. “I think the
new boyfriend is Julio Ortiz, my baker. And I keep having these creepy thoughts
about his past trouble with the law and the tattoos and the loud motorcycle. Am
I horrible, or what?”

Zoë smiled indulgently. “Okay,
for one thing, Kelly hasn’t even indicated that she’s very serious about this
new guy. But with you it’s something more—are you talking about prejudice? You
think you’re prejudiced against Julio? That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.
I’ve known you twenty years, Samantha Sweet, and I’ve never seen a scrap of
prejudice in anything you do. You hired the man, you trust your business to
him. Is he the picture you had in your mind for a future son-in-law? Probably
not. But as you’ve told me yourself, he’s a nice guy who has been nothing but
hardworking and honest. There are clean-cut guys out there who don’t have that
going for them.”

Sam immediately thought of
everything Jo Robinet had told her about the horrible secrets within her
marriage. Yes, Kelly could do a lot worse than Julio.

*
* *

Beau handed Lisa the final
envelope, which contained a numbered sample of human hair taken from the
headrest of the Lexus. He hated forensics. Well, he loved it when a DNA sample
or distinctive carpet thread connected the impossible dots in a case and
allowed him to make an arrest that would stand up in court. He hated the part
where a team had to spend hours collecting, bagging, and labeling those
samples. Revise that: he hated the part where he was on that team. He thanked
heaven for people like Lisa who thrived on the details. For himself, he’d
rather be out in the field, putting clues together and tracking down bad guys.

Since viewing the video from the
Albuquerque hotel it was all he could think about. Although Ray Belatoni might
be too stocky, both Belatoni and Donny Vargas fit the general height and build
of the man in the hat. And he knew of one place where he could go to observe
both of them: The Scoreboard.

He saw Lisa to her vehicle and felt
pleased that she was excited to get back to her small lab and start running
tests. Of course, most of their evidence would have to be sent to the state
crime lab in Santa Fe and would fall into a system that was way overloaded.
Contrary to what people wanted to believe from television, lab tests rarely led
directly to a quick arrest. They could, however, be invaluable in verifying
whether Beau’s own footwork in finding and bringing in the right suspect had
paid off.

Lisa drove away and Beau got into
his cruiser. He was halfway to the sports bar when he remembered he was still
wearing the suit he’d worn to Zack Robinet’s funeral this morning. Maybe that
was a good thing. Being out of uniform would allow him to walk a little more
unobtrusively into the bar.

He parked his cruiser at the edge
of the crowded parking lot, rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt and did a
quick job of brushing off the dust his pants had acquired during the inspection
of the Lexus. Running his fingers through his hair he decided he fit the part
of a guy having a beer after work well enough.

Ray Belatoni was behind the bar
again. He recognized Beau and remembered his preference for a Dos Equis. Beau
took a stool near the end and made sure he could see most of the room in the
mirror. Krystal and two other overly made-up girls were again at the corner
table, this time with some locals who were most likely friends rather than
clients. Donny Vargas was one of them. They had been watching one of the big
screens across the room but once Vargas made eye contact with Beau, the
laughter at the table grew a little more raucous.

Showing me how unconcerned you are?
He sipped his Dos Equis,
realizing Sam would tease him about being as cool as the suave guy from the
commercials. The idea put a little smile on his face.

Belatoni seemed in constant
motion, checking on his patrons or clearing empty glasses. Beau thought of the
video again but couldn’t place the bar owner as the man in the hat. His way of
moving behind the bar was entirely different from a guy walking down the
corridor in a hotel and there wasn’t an easy way to compare. As for Vargas, he
was sipping some type of amber liquid from a heavy glass, a beverage that
probably wouldn’t send him to the men’s room for a long time, so Beau was unlikely
to observe the way he walked for awhile yet. He memorized each of the men’s
facial features as he finished his beer.

It was nearing ten p.m. by the
time he paid his tab and walked out to the cruiser. Sam was probably home in
bed by now so he didn’t follow his first impulse to call her. Most of the
televised games would be over soon, so odds were The Scoreboard would empty out
and he could be home at a reasonable time. He got in his vehicle and moved it
across the street where the shadow of a big cottonwood might help conceal the
fact that he was watching the bar.

His luck held. Donny Vargas,
Krystal and one of the other girls came out about fifteen minutes later. Beau
had used the time to review the hotel video on his phone but it wasn’t a lot of
help. He could not definitively say that Vargas was the man in the hat.

An hour later, six cars remained
in the lot at The Scoreboard and Beau had a feeling Ray Belatoni would not
leave until the last customer had spent his money. He decided to pack it in for
tonight.

At home, Sam was fast asleep. He
brushed his teeth and undressed as quietly as possible and snuggled in beside
her. When daylight brightened the north-facing window, he discovered Sam gone
and a slip of paper propped against his alarm clock.

You worked late, so I bought you some extra sleep,
her note said.
Although he normally would have been up before dawn to tend to the ranch chores
and get to his office well before the day shift began, he appreciated her
thoughtfulness. Obviously, he’d needed the rest.

While he showered, dressed in his
uniform and went to the barn to scoop oats for the horses, he thought again
about his little surveillance mission last night. Still no answers. He would
check with Lisa to be sure she’d obtained all the evidence she needed, then he
supposed he could release Jo Robinet’s vehicle.

*
* *

Sam counted the pieces of
chocolate for Stan Bookman’s unconventional order. Allowing for a little
breakage in handling and those that were not quite perfect, she and Jane had completed
about half of what they would need. She sat back against the edge of the
worktable, holding her first mug of coffee between her palms and contemplating
the candy. What more could they do to make the assortment unique?

Her eyes drifted to the shelf
above the stove. In a small tin box were three little cloth pouches, each
containing granules of a special powder. Sam had no idea what they were; the
chocolatier, Bobul, had given them to her. The magical ingredients gave Sweet’s
Sweets something no other chocolate shop could duplicate. Whatever they were,
they made her candies irresistible. Sam was half afraid to put the enchanted
powder into a full box of candy. She supposed a person might overdose on the
stuff somehow. But if a few of the pieces contained Bobul’s secret ingredients
… there was no way Mr. Bookman’s wife wouldn’t flip out for them.

She quickly set her mug aside.
She would have to work fast to perform the act before anyone else arrived.
Julio was due in ten minutes. She pulled a container from the storage shelf, a
now-cold block of chocolate Jo had cooked and tempered on Saturday. They’d run
out of time before she could pour it into molds, but since chocolate could be
re-melted and tempered it was no problem. Sam tipped the block into a pan with
a low flame and reached for the tin above.

The mixture had just begun to
melt nicely when she heard Julio’s motorcycle in the alley. Quickly, she took a
pinch from the red cloth pouch. Then the green. Then the blue. The chocolate
foamed upward for a millisecond, then settled into gentle bubbles. She replaced
the tin on the shelf as the back doorknob turned.

“Good morning, Sam,” Julio said,
removing his leather jacket and rubbing his hands together.

She thought again of her
conversation last night with Zoë and felt a rush of warmth toward him. He
smiled, washed his hands and began pulling ingredients from the fridge for the
early morning breakfast pastries. Not a trace of secrecy in his demeanor. Sam,
herself, felt more guilty for sneaking special ingredients into the chocolate
than Julio exhibited right now. She pushed the thought aside and checked her
candy thermometer.

By the time Jo arrived, Sam had
divided the dark chocolate into a couple of smaller batches and was adding
cream to one.

“Oh, I do love milk chocolates,”
Jo said. “I know the trend these days is toward dark, but if it’s done right
milk chocolate just takes me right back to childhood.”

Sam found herself smiling with
similar pleasant memories.

“Now that you’re remembering a
lot more, I’d love to hear about your past. Where did you learn your
chocolate-making techniques?”

“Ah, now that goes back to my
grandfather,” Jo said, tying an apron over her spotless baker’s jacket.

Sam’s phone rang, interrupting
the story. She signaled for Jo to hold that thought. The call was from Beau.

“Good mornin’ darlin’,” he said.

She could tell the extra sleep
had really helped.

“I have some news for your new
employee,” he said. “We can release her car today. Would she like me to bring
it by? Save her having to take the bus or depend on you.”

Sam posed the question to Jo
whose face registered mild panic.

“I don’t know, Sam. What if Ray
Belatoni is still after me? He knows the Lexus.”

“Beau, she needs to think about
it awhile. Do you need to deliver the car right now?”

“Soon,” he said. “I’ll come by
when I can break away, let’s say midday. We can talk about it then.”