Sweets Galore: The Sixth Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (24 page)

Chapter
20

Sam walked into the shop where her
mother had disappeared, wondering what could possibly be taking so long. She
found a middle-aged clerk standing near the north wall, arms out at her sides,
scarves of four different colors draped over them.

“I just can’t make up my mind,
Samantha. What do you think?”

“I think any of them would look
great on you, Mother.”

“They’re not for me—well, maybe
just one. I’m getting one for you, one for Kelly, and one for Rayleen. Which
colors go right for each of you?”

Sam had never been much good with
scarves but there was no sense declining the gift. She chose the one she
thought Zoë would most like. The blue-green weave would look nice with Kelly’s
eyes and she pointed it out, but she didn’t have a clue about her sister. Nina
Rae quickly narrowed it down and finalized her purchase.

“Now I suppose we’d best be
getting back to your daddy. He’ll be wanting his favorite lunch for when he’s
sick—I guess you call that ‘comfort food’—a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato
soup. I bought everything back there at the grocery so I’ll get home and make
it for him.”

They arrived at the house to find
Howard on the sofa with a sports channel on television, watching something that
appeared to be a rerun of an old Super Bowl. A bowl of peanuts and glass of
Coke sat on the coffee table, and he had the volume up so loud that he didn’t
immediately realize they had walked in.

“Hi, Daddy, we’re home,” Sam
called out, in time for him to settle back into the cushions before Nina Rae
could catch him pumping his fist at the screen.

“I’m making your favorite lunch,
Howard. Don’t go spoiling it with that junk food.”

Sam crossed to the sofa and placed
the back of her hand against his forehead. “You seem to be feeling better.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
“Did you ladies have a nice morning out?”

Sam imagined that he purposely
made his voice a little weak. Nina Rae went on about how much trouble they’d
had finding all the right cold medications, reminding Sam that getting the
parents back home to Texas needed to be a priority if she wanted to keep her
sanity.

“I hope we don’t have to get you
to a doctor out here,” Nina Rae said. “I’m not sure our insurance would cover
it.”

“We’re not in a foreign country,
Mama. And I’m not all that sick.”

Insurance. Sam’s mind zipped off
in another direction while her parents kept up their habitual wrangling.
Doralee Calendar had mentioned Jake’s insurance. Was she still the beneficiary?
Could that be the real reason she’d come to Taos to wheedle Jake out of going
through with the divorce? And, since she hadn’t been able to talk him out of
stopping the divorce, maybe she’d decided there was more than one way to get
that insurance money.

Sam went upstairs where she
puttered for a few minutes, making the bed and tidying the master bath, trying
to decide what she might do toward solving her predicament. She held the wooden
box close to her chest, hoping some answers would miraculously appear. Outside,
Nellie and Ranger let out their happy-barks and a glance out the window told
her that Beau was coming up the driveway. She dashed down the stairs.

“Hey,” he said, pulling off his
Stetson with a sweep. “You girls are back from town. It was on my way back so I
thought I’d stop in to see how you’re feeling, Howard.”

Sam thought her father looked as
if he’d give anything to reverse the clock forty years and go to work for
Beau’s department. The two men chatted for a few minutes; Beau told a funny
story about one of his traffic arrests before he stood up to leave again.

“I’ve thought of something else we
should check out,” she said, walking with Beau out to the front porch. Her dad
had finished his cheese sandwich and settled back on the couch, while her
mother returned to wiping counter tops in the kitchen. She told him about
Doralee and the insurance.

“I can certainly do some checking
on that,” he said. “At the very least we can probably find out if their divorce
was completely finalized and whether Doralee was still named as his
beneficiary.”

“Can I come along? I feel
completely useless here, dusting the furniture and pacing the floor.”

“I’ll put you to work making phone
calls,” he warned.

“I’d love it.”

“Better bring your vehicle, in
case I get called out and can’t get back until late.”

Twenty minutes later Sam settled
opposite Beau at his desk. He’d already been pecking away at his computer keys,
once in awhile stopping to jot down a name or phone number.

“I had a thought,” she said.
“Earlier, when I saw Doralee at the police station, she had a bunch of
documents with her. It didn’t click with me then, but I remember seeing the
logo for General Assurance Life. I’ll bet that’s the policy.”

“They aren’t going to give you any
information. An unrelated party.”

She bit at her lip. “I could say
that Jake is my daughter’s father and ask if she’s one of the beneficiaries on
the policy. She won’t be, but maybe they’ll tell me who is.”

He looked skeptical. “You can’t
answer any of the security questions they’re bound to ask.”

“Okay, how about this? I’ll call
Tom Calendar and have him do it. He’ll know enough of Jake’s personal data that
he can get through the questions. Legally, if the Doralee divorce was final,
Tom probably is next of kin.”

“Hey, it’s worth a try.”

She talked to Tom for a few
minutes while Beau continued to pull data from the computer.

“He says he’ll be glad to find
out,” she said.

“Come look at this.” Beau turned
his computer screen toward her. “Recognize this guy?”

She stared at the hard face. The
blond man who’d approached Jake on the plaza while Sam was talking to him.

“Anthony
Kozark
,”
Beau said.

Sam recalled the few words she’d
overheard. “I tell you, he sounded ominous when he made that remark about Jake
getting a bad taco. In context, I could sure take that as a reference to
poison.”

Beau tapped at his notepad with a
pencil. “I can’t rule it out. But that seems pretty risky. It doesn’t take a
lot of cyanide to be fatal. And once the victim is dead, well,
Kozark
certainly wouldn’t get his money then.”

“Unless he thought Jake had
already gotten the money from me . . . Jake might have told him that. Once they
knew Jake was dead they could easily be the guys who ripped my house apart
looking for it.”

Beau picked up the phone and Sam
listened to his end of the conversation. An old contact of his in Las Vegas,
whom Sam had met a few months back, said he would stake out Tony
Kozark’s
known haunts and pick him up for questioning.
Toward the end of the conversation Beau uttered an “ugh” and made a face.

“What was that last bit about?”
Sam asked as soon as he set the phone down.

“
Kozark’s
nickname in Vegas—The Nail.
Wanna
know why?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Because he’s been known to use a
nail gun to teach lessons to those who don’t pay up. It’s his signature
tactic.”

“Nail gun? My god!”

“Yeah.
Ruskovik
says last year they found some guy with his, um, private parts nailed to a wood
floor. Says it’s usually just fingers or wrists. But none of the victims will
talk, much less testify in court, so the police have never been able to
officially pin any of the attacks on him.”

Sam felt a little queasy. “Oh wow.
I almost feel like Jake was lucky.”

“He might have agreed with you on
that. Anyway, I’m liking this
Kozark
less and less.
Poison doesn’t seem like his style.”

Sam nodded, trying to blur out the
vision of the nail gun. Her phone rang.

“Hi, Sam. Tom Calendar here. I
have some information for you. General Assurance looked up Jake’s policy. The
insurance is for three hundred thousand and Doralee is listed as sole
beneficiary.”

“Even if the divorce was final?”

“He hadn’t changed it—so yeah, I
guess so.”

Sam thanked him and clicked off
the call. She passed the information along to Beau.

“So it looks like the person who
ends up better off with Jake dead really is Doralee,” he said, tapping the
pencil again. “I think I’d like to have a little chat with her. She’s at the
Taos Inn?”

Sam nodded.

“Let’s go.” He strapped on the
heavy belt that made his uniform complete—sidearm in holster, spare magazine,
nightstick and cuffs. The sight of it made Sam not mind her extra ten pounds
quite so much.

The department cruiser covered the
few blocks easily, other cars seeming to melt off to the sides of the road as
Beau came up on them. He pulled into the hotel’s parking lot and rolled up to
the front door.

Amazing how much more cooperative
desk clerks became when the county sheriff made the request, Sam thought. The
fortyish woman eyed Beau appreciatively and nearly fell over herself to get the
information he wanted.

“Ms. Calendar was in room
one-nineteen,” she said after a few taps at her keyboard. “But she checked
out.”

“When? I just saw her this
morning.” Sam blurted it out without thinking.

The clerk looked to Beau and
realized he expected an answer to the question.

“Just before noon.”

Sam looked up at Beau and he
nodded toward the big double entry doors. They walked out.

“So Doralee is getting away,” Sam
said. “She’ll go back to California, walk into that insurance office, and
collect.”

“She might be rightly entitled,
Sam. But if not at least we can slow her down.”

He flipped on the lights and
siren, getting them back to his office in half the time. He whipped into his
assigned parking slot and keyed the code for the back door. At his desk he
picked up the file he’d locked into a drawer and flipped it open. In a moment
he’d punched in the number for General Assurance Life.

“Without a court order, I’m not
sure this will stick,” he whispered to Sam while he waited on Hold. “But it
might keep Doralee from cashing a check before we can put together the rest of
the evidence.”

No kidding. Put a shred of doubt
into an insurance company’s files and you were bound to see delays.

His attention snapped to the
telephone. “Yes, this is Sheriff Beau Cardwell in Taos County, New Mexico . .
.”

Chapter
21

“I need to get to the bakery and
see how things are going,” Sam said after Beau had finished the call.

She aimed an air kiss his
direction and went out to her truck, zipping her jacket against the cooling
afternoon air. The wind had picked up and the clouds were definitely darkening.
She felt a sense of relief that they’d figured out a way to stop Doralee from
cashing in on Jake’s death, but random thoughts still nagged at her.

Why didn’t Doralee go right back
to California after killing Jake? Why wait around town and try to claim his few
personal possessions if she had a $300,000 payout coming? But still, she was
their most viable suspect.

Sam made the turn onto Camino de
la
Placita
and slowed for traffic at the next
four-way stop. A grey fuzz appeared near the hood of her truck.

Two figures.

She blinked and they were gone.
Two phantom-like figures had appeared to her in Jake’s hotel room. She
distinctly remembered them. What did they mean?

She squeezed her eyes shut to get
the vision back but a horn beeped behind her. She moved ahead until her turn
came and she went through the intersection. A block later she was at Sweet’s
Sweets, pulling into her customary spot in the alley behind the shop.

“Hey there,” Becky said when Sam
walked in. “Didn’t expect to see you today.”

Sam took a moment to ask how each
of them was doing and to check the stack of order forms. Two new wedding cakes
and five birthday parties. Jen had done a good job of noting details and
providing sketches; she would surely be able to handle whatever came through
the door while Sam and Beau were away.
If
they ever got away.

Out front in the sales room, the
display cases were appropriately depleted. By late afternoon Sam liked to see a
couple dozen cookies and no more than two or three big desserts— assorted pies
or cakes; the after-school kids and a few busy moms who needed a quick dessert
would finish those off. A big part of their success depended on everything
being made fresh every day and Sam and her crew prided themselves on estimating
their needs for each day of the week. She wiped up a few spills from the
beverage bar while Jen sold chocolate chip cookies to three girls in Catholic
school uniforms.

“Shall I tally up the drawer or do
you want to?” Jen asked. She hit a key on the register to show Sam the sales
for the day.

“Looks good. You guys don’t seem
to need me around here.” She chuckled and gave Jen a pat on the shoulder. “I
better get back to the house and see what my parents are up to. You can go
ahead and write up the deposit and get it to the bank tomorrow, if you don’t
mind.”

Jen nodded, turning to the sound
of the little bells at the front door. Sam registered a middle aged woman whose
eyes seemed intent on the one remaining apple tart. She turned back to the
kitchen just as her phone vibrated in her pocket.

“Got a second?” Beau asked. “I
heard back from
Ruskovik
in Las Vegas. It doesn’t
look like
Kozark
could be our guy. He was back in
Vegas the day Jake died.”

“But I saw him—”

“Southwest Airlines had him
leaving Albuquerque on a noon flight that put him into Vegas before two p.m.”