Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery (2 page)

“Have you called the police?” he asked.

“The Sheriff’s Department, actually. We’re
just outside the town limits here. Well, I just dialed 911
and—”

“Fine, fine.” She heard papers rustling, as
if he were looking in the procedures manual for an answer. What
could this be listed under—discovery of dead body on premises? “Ms.
Sweet, it will be all right. Just wait there until the authorities
arrive. I’m sure they can handle it. If the sheriff needs to speak
to me, I’m at my office all day.”

Sam paced the front porch, unable to make
herself go back into the house with the dead woman. A Sheriff’s
Department SUV, an ambulance and a private car arrived within
minutes of each other. The man in the private car introduced
himself as the county’s Field Deputy Medical Investigator before he
bustled into the house.

The lean guy who unfolded himself out of the
SUV walked over to her. “Ms. Sweet? Deputy Sheriff Beau Cardwell.”
There was definite Southern in the accent and the way he said her
name made it sound like an invitation to dance a waltz. The last
guy she knew named Beau was way back in her teen years in Texas,
but that was a whole other story involving a girl with lusty
hormones and a football player whose kiss would send any good girl
off the deep end. She firmly shut
that
image out of her
head.

The deputy was staring at her.

Awkward moment. “Uh, yes. I’m Samantha Sweet.
Just call me Sam.”

He sent a lopsided grin her way, as if he’d
just read her mind.

“Okay. Sam.” He cleared his throat and
flipped open a small notebook.

At the back of the ambulance, two EMTs
snapped on latex gloves and yanked out a gurney, which they wheeled
toward the house.

“The mortgage on the house was government
guaranteed and was in foreclosure,” Sam told the deputy. She gave
the basics of how she’d gotten inside. She told him the old woman
had spoken to her very briefly and died while she’d stepped outside
to summon medical help for her. Remembering the woman’s warning,
she didn’t mention the wooden box although she felt a little funny
about that.

“Do you know who she was?” Sam asked.

“Bertha Martinez. She lived alone.” He
scratched notes as he talked. “We think there’s a grandson in
Albuquerque. He may have been the one who talked her into signing a
mortgage to get some cash out of the property. Can’t imagine why
she would have done it otherwise. Place has been in her family for
a couple hundred years. She refused to go to a care home when her
neighbors recommended it. I’d been out here several times, but
never could convince her. Last five years or so she used to chase
me off. Met me on the porch with a shotgun a couple times.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A real sad thing. Local stories ran
wild. Some say she was a witch, some just held that she was crazy.
Got old and sick but never would see a doctor. Just wanted to be
left alone, I guess.”

“USDA sends me to clean out abandoned places
so they can be sold. I’ve never had one where anyone was still
living in the house. I’m sure they thought she’d moved away or
already died.”

He wrote on his forms, filling out the
address of the property and noting what she’d just told him.

The M.I. came out of the house, stuffing his
stethoscope into the black bag he carried. “Natural causes, old
age,” he said. “Albuquerque OMI will confirm that and issue the
death certificate at the morgue.” He got into his vehicle and drove
away.

“So, what should I do?” Sam asked Deputy
Cardwell. “Ordinarily, the owners have taken away whatever they
want and I just clean the place up.”

“Can it wait a day or two? Give us time to
remove the body, do a quick check of the house to be sure nothing’s
out of order. Make one more run at finding the grandson. Maybe you
could come back on Thursday?”

“Sure, no problem. I’ll leave a sign-in sheet
on the kitchen counter. Anyone who comes in is supposed to sign it
and state what they’re doing here.” She hoped following that bit of
protocol would satisfy Delbert Crow.

Cardwell didn’t look especially happy about
complying but he nodded.

She retrieved her tool kit from the kitchen,
found a house key in a dish near the front door and, after
verifying that it worked in the lock, placed it in a lockbox and
went out to her red Silverado.

The day was still young—not quite noon. Sam
drove through town, past Wal-Mart and the movie theater and turned
right on Kit Carson Road, at the plaza. Zigzagged a couple of
blocks south and east to her little lane. Her house felt cool under
the shade of the huge cottonwoods that grew everywhere in this part
of Taos. She went into the bathroom and washed her face and hands
thoroughly, eager to rid herself of the morning’s disturbing
experience. A brush taken to her hair only made the graying, short
layers stick out in all directions with static electricity. Giving
up on that, she went to the kitchen and made a quick sandwich from
leftover ham and decided she could still earn a little money today,
even though one of her jobs was on hold.

She grabbed the wide platter of chocolate
puppy-dog cupcakes she’d made earlier and headed out to Mysterious
Happenings, the bookstore where the Chocoholics group met to solve
mysteries, and gorge. They liked to choose a mystery novel, read up
to the final chapter, and then meet to guess at the ending. They
read the ending of the book together and then there was some kind
of prize for whoever came closest to figuring it out. One of the
members, a British born little slip of a thing, always seemed to
come away with either the prize for eating the biggest quantity of
the evening’s chocolate treats or for figuring out the mystery. As
a female who had always carried about thirty pounds more than she
wanted, Sam had no idea how Riki managed to stay barely above the
weight of a Doberman.

A bell tinkled over the bookshop door when
she entered, balancing the tray of cupcakes and squeezing past a
display rack of jigsaw puzzles.

“Madame Samantha!” The bookshop owner, Ivan
Petrenko, spread his arms wide and stepped from behind the counter.
“Is looking most fabulous today!”

When he made statements like that, Sam was
never sure if the flirtatious man was talking about the cupcakes or
her.

She held up the tray. “Dogs. To go with this
week’s theme.”

“
Da
, how
tres bien
!” Ivan’s
curious mixture of English, French and Russian came—according to
local legend—from the fact that he’d defected from the Soviet Union
with his wife’s ballet troupe on a trip to Paris. The more
outrageous versions of the story held that he’d worked in a diamond
mine, apprenticed with a Cordon Bleu chef, waited tables in New
York and finally come to New Mexico where he’d opened the bookshop
ten years ago. As far as a timeframe for all this, Sam had no idea.
He looked about forty, but that was a lot of living to cram into
those few years. Although skeptical about a lot of Ivan’s story,
she had to admit that he was a colorful guy.

“Thanks, Ivan,” she said as he handed her the
check for the cupcakes. “Another treat for next week?”

“
Absolutement
. Using your judgment,
please.”

She left the shop, careful to hide the fact
that she was nearly laughing aloud.

Next on her list was a property north and
west of town, somewhere off Highway 64 toward the little crossroads
town of Tres Piedras. Her paperwork mentioned that the place might
need mowing, so she stopped back by her house and hitched up her
utility trailer with lawn mower and the assortment of rakes, hoes
and other gardening tools that were a requirement for a lot of
these abandoned properties. She cruised through town and found the
place about twenty minutes later, where a collection of a
half-dozen small homes sat on plots of scrubby land, no more than
an acre apiece.

A short drive led to the weathered wood frame
house, which she entered by drilling the lock. No messing with
picks on this one—she had a spare lockset in the trailer and it was
a lot quicker this way. Replacing the damaged lock took only a few
minutes.

This place was clearly abandoned, for which
she was glad, after this morning’s surprise. Although some pieces
of furniture remained and there were papers and junk everywhere,
the rooms had that hollow feel and neutral smell of a place that
hadn’t seen human habitation in awhile. Lucky me, she thought.
Sometimes the first thing that hit when she walked in the door was
eau de rotten meat, especially in a place where the fridge was full
and the power had been cut off.

Although the kitchen was messy, the power was
still on—probably an oversight by the rural co-op—and a glance in
the fridge revealed that it was empty but for a ketchup bottle and
a chunk of fuzzy blue-green cheese.

Sam put the requisite sign-in sheet in the
kitchen and spent a few minutes making a list of projects: gather
trash, sort possessions, then start cleaning. She could probably
fit the trash in her truck and trailer, avoiding the need to hire a
rolloff. At the back door she scanned the yard. The half-acre
property had mainly been left wild, native sage dominating. But
someone had gone to the trouble of planting grass around the house,
and there were flower beds against the walls, a garden of sorts. An
ancient swing set, rusty and obviously unused, sat in the middle of
the grassy area, and she could tell that one of her first duties
would be to mow. The stuff was a foot tall in places.

A glance at the sky revealed clouds towering
in the distance, over Taos Mountain. The area would likely be in
for a shower, which might vary from a few sprinkles to a
full-fledged downpour. Since lightning could also be a factor it
would be smart to attend to the mowing first.

Back at the pickup truck and utility trailer
that she’d left out front, Sam unloaded the lawn mower, topped off
the gas, and rolled it to the back. Bless it, the mower started on
the first pull and she worked her way across the yard, finding her
zone, taking pleasure in the neat rows of cut grass in her wake. It
wasn’t until she reached the far north edge of the grassy area that
she realized part of the lawn was missing. Bare earth rose in a
hump. A glint of white paint caught her eye and she stopped the
mower. At one end of the mounded earth stood a small wooden cross
with no markings. She walked over to it. A grave.

Chapter 3

The hair on her arms rose. Curious. And
spooky.

According to the paperwork the owner, Mr.
Riley Anderson, had abandoned the house less than six months ago.
To Sam, the grave didn’t look much older than that. What sad or
morbid secrets had Anderson left behind?

Lightning cracked, no more than a mile away
and Sam scurried to steer the mower under the protective cover of
the carport beside the house. A thousand thoughts crowded her head,
not the least of which was: What the hell! She had no idea whether
a grave on private property was legal or not but figured she better
report it.

As the first large raindrops splatted on the
driveway, she pulled her cell phone from her jeans pocket and
dialed.

“Delbert? Sam, again. You’re not going to
believe this.”

He clearly didn’t want to deal with any more
dramatics. After listening to several longsuffering sighs, she
suggested that he not worry about it—she would call the
authorities, herself. Again.

The 911 operator, after hearing her fuzzy
description of what she’d found, didn’t seem to consider it a true
emergency—as in the lights-and-sirens variety—but she did connect
Sam with Sheriff Orlando Padilla’s office.

Sam repeated her explanation about the
gravesite and asked whether the sheriff might want to take a
look.

“Sorry, he’s out on a call,” the dispatcher
said. “Can you hold for a minute?”

Sam held, watching fat raindrops as they
picked up speed, plopping off the hood of her truck, filling the
air with the scent of wet dust.

The dispatcher’s voice came back on the line.
“I tried both radio and his cell phone, but he’s up in the ski
valley, probably out of range. I left a voice message.” She paused.
“It might take awhile for him to get back to me.”

Sam gave her cell and home numbers—didn’t
mention that the sheriff’s department had already responded to one
call from her today. She debated waiting for him but it could be
hours. She didn’t want to stand around in the pouring rain, staring
at the grave but from this morning’s instructions by Deputy Beau
she figured she better not work indoors either. She tapped an
impatient toe as heavy raindrops saturated the freshly cut lawn. It
seemed to be tapering off. She dashed for the front door, gathered
her tools and locked the newly installed lock.

The strange events of the day were wearing
her down; she thought of her friend Zoe, who operated a homey
B&B with her husband Darryl. The rain had slowed to a drizzle
and blue sky began to show in the west. This was usually how New
Mexico rainstorms went. Sam pushed her mower up into the utility
trailer, backed the little rig around and headed into town,
envisioning a cup of tea and some good conversation to smooth over
the afternoon.

She’d just reached the intersection of
Highway 64, when her cell rang.

“Samantha Sweet? This is Beau Cardwell. Two
bodies in one day? I have to say, that might be some kind of
record.”

She couldn’t tell if he was irritated or
joking so she quickly explained about finding the grave and how
she’d quit mowing the minute she found it. “Is it legal to bury
someone on private property?”

“With a permit, usually it’s fine,” he said.
“But since the place was abandoned, it might be smart for me to
check it out. Don’t touch anything until I can get some
answers.”