Sweet Masterpiece
The First Samantha Sweet Mystery
By Connie Shelton
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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
Cupcake illustration © Makeitdoubleplz
Fiction Categories:
Mystery/Female Sleuth/Romantic Suspense/Paranormal Mystery/Cozy 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 s
ilent 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.