Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery (7 page)

“Can you handle it on your own?” he asked. He
sounded genuinely concerned. “I could come out there later, if you
want me to.”

Now she
really
felt dumb. Nothing like
being such a girl that she had to have the big old deputy sheriff
with her before she could face down a dead snake. “No, that’s okay.
I was just startled. I can do it.”

She put the phone back in her pocket and
noticed that the rain had already slowed.
I can do it, I can do
it.
She kept saying it as she walked back inside, convincing
herself as much as anyone.

Sunlight broke through the clouds, giving a
whole new perspective to the house, as she walked through the
living room. The rooms she’d cleaned were nice and bright, and the
main bedroom felt quite benign now that Bertha’s personal
belongings were gone. With a square of late-afternoon sun on the
floor, even the red room showed itself to be what Beau had
described, a dusty collection of old things. Sam took up a broom
and swept the white stones and bundled herbs into a harmless pile.
The stiff snake went into a garbage bag. It was a little creepy,
picking it up, but she handled it just fine. She dropped the black
candles—so dusty that they were nearly gray, in the clear light of
day—into the same bag with the snake. All of it went out to the bed
of the pickup.

A stack of books in one corner showed titles
pertaining to native American symbolism and beliefs, herbal
treatments and such. Two of them specifically addressed witchcraft
but even they didn’t seem nearly as ominous now. She whipped the
dust off of them with a cloth and carried the stack out to join the
other books in her truck. There. All done. Alive to tell about
it.

Alive and hungry. She locked up and headed
off to meet her destiny at KFC.

Zoe stopped by around seven. Sam had showered
off her coating of dust and whipped up the batter for her special
lighter-than-air white cake. With raspberry and truffle cream
filling, and her secret fresh-coconut frosting, the triple layer
torte would be the highlight of the ladies luncheon for the Taos
Heritage Foundation tomorrow. The three layers went into the oven
and she sat at the kitchen table tallying her hours for the two
properties she’d cleaned this week. It would add up to a decent
amount and she hoped to bank at least half of it in her special
account for the opening of Sweet’s Sweets.

“Hey there! Knock-knock.” Zoe called through
the screen door and opened it at the same time. “Any more weird
things happen today?”

Which? The artist’s sketchbook hidden in the
wall at the Anderson place, or the witchy room at Bertha
Martinez’s? Sam started to give the condensed version when Zoe
spotted the carved wooden box at the other end of the table. Life
had been nothing but weird this week.

“Oh, is this it?” Her eyes grew wide and she
reached for the box.

“Careful. That thing is . . .” Sam wasn’t
sure quite how to describe it.

“Possessed?” Zoe joked.

“I don’t know. It’s got something.”

She turned it over in her hands but didn’t
open it.

“I brought you some more strange stuff. I’ll
get it out of the truck in a minute.” Sam hadn’t bothered to
deliver any of the collected junk from today’s haul. “Some antique
bottles with herbal
whatever
in them, some books on herbs
and even a volume or two on witchcraft.”

Zoe set the box down as if it was suddenly
too hot to hold.

“Sam . . . do you really think that old woman
was a
bruja
?”

“Never thought about it until I came across
that red room at her house. I don’t . . . I don’t know much about
any of that stuff, but aren’t the
brujas
of Spanish
tradition more . . . um . . .”

“They were often consulted for their healing
powers.” She raised a foot and wiggled her toes.

“No. Forget it,” Sam protested. She did
not
get hexed somehow by that old lady.

“The stories go every direction,” Zoe said.
“A lot of them seem to combine tales from all sorts of
tradition—shamanism, Catholicism, voodoo. Many people believe
brujas
are shape-shifters. They can become an animal like a
coyote or an owl.”

“Or a snake?”

Chapter 9

The oven timer went off just then and Sam
jumped up to check her cake layers. By the time she pulled them out
and turned off the oven, Zoe was antsy to go. She’d left Darryl
with the impression that she was bringing home ice cream and she
still had to deliver on that promise. Sam poured her a little jar
of fresh raspberry filling to use as a topping and they walked out
to the driveway together. Sam retrieved the boxes of books and
medicine bottles from the back seat of her truck and Zoe headed
off, happy with her new treasures.

Sam watched her taillights retreat down the
quiet lane, thinking how glad she would be to offload the rest of
Bertha Martinez’s stuff, with stops at the thrift shop and the
county landfill. Her glance slid sideways to the trash bag that
held the stuffed snake. Shape-shifter indeed.

Cake layers occupied her mind for a few more
minutes, as she removed them from the pans and laid them out on
cooling racks. While they cooled she blended the truffle cream
filling for one of the layers, and cooked the raspberry syrup down
until it was thick and spreadable for the other layer. The best
thing about baking was that little tasks like grating fresh coconut
were the perfect way to relax and escape all of the day’s other
stresses. Before she knew it, she had more than double what she
needed for the coconut frosting. Into the fridge, it would be there
for something else.

While the layers cooled completely, Sam
brought her laptop computer to the table and did a little research
on the artist, Pierre Cantone. A search brought up at least a dozen
websites devoted to his work and she knew this was more than she
could absorb that night. She bookmarked the ones that seemed most
interesting and turned back to assembling the torte before
exhaustion overtook her.

Sam woke up early, probably because she’d
completely crashed around nine o’clock. Today would be a busy one
and that, too, contributed to the fact that she was staring
wide-eyed at a clock which said it was 5:38.

Over coffee she took up her research on
Pierre Cantone where she’d left off last night. The artist, born in
1937, raised in Provence, was best known for the amazing quality of
light and shadow that he brought to an otherwise-fuzzy
impressionistic style. He’d come onto the art scene when Picasso
was grabbing all the attention with cubism, just a young wannabe
when tastes were moving away from the style so popular a generation
earlier. But Cantone ploughed onward and garnered, if not critical
praise, popular attention. The elite called him a hack but buyers
flocked to him. By the time Picasso died in 1973, Cantone was at
the top of his game. Then tragedy struck.

His lovely wife Adele and their two children
died in a train derailment, the only three fatalities when hundreds
of other passengers escaped nearly unscathed. It crushed Cantone.
Ranting against the world for the gross unfairness of it, he took
to drinking heavily and he stopped painting. A corrupt business
manager may have raided the successful artist’s life savings—no one
seemed to know. The man disappeared, leaving Cantone living alone
in a squalid New York tenement, in poverty.

At some point the Frenchman met a woman,
another artist who raved about the art scene in New Mexico. Georgia
O’Keefe was living there. Perhaps Cantone would be newly inspired
if he were to meet the great lady artist. The record was never
clear on whether this woman was a lover or simply a friend with
Cantone’s best interests at heart, but she did carry enough
influence to convince him to give New Mexico a try. He moved to
Santa Fe and lived in the guesthouse of a patron. But, sadly, his
work was never the same and he barely produced enough to live on.
Then he vanished.

Sam followed other links in the search but
everything written about Cantone seemed to agree. No one knew where
the artist went after a dozen or so years in Santa Fe. He’d either
died ignominiously or simply dropped out of public life. Since
then, of course, his remaining known works had skyrocketed in
value, with several of them bringing high six-figures at auction.
She studied photos of the paintings and felt her pulse quicken. The
little mural they’d found was certainly in the same style, and yet
it was not a duplicate of any of Cantone’s known works. Had she
found Cantone’s mysterious hiding place? And where was he now?

She would probably never know the answers,
but she’d drained two cups of coffee by this time and was antsy to
get on with the day. By nine a.m. she was on her way to the
landfill with the bags of trash from the Martinez place (never so
glad to see something thrown away as when she tossed the snake bag
over the edge). The few useful items went to the thrift shop on her
way back into town and she popped back by her house to pick up the
raspberry torte and deliver it to the Taos Heritage place just as
the women were beginning to arrive for their luncheon.

Declining a half-hearted invitation to stay
for their lunch and presentation (really, did they want her here
fresh from the landfill?), she picked up a sack of tacos at Taco
Bell and headed back home. They were going to the soggy side by the
time she finished unloading the truck—no sense in cleaning herself
up twice. She washed her hands of the dust and carefully placed
Pierre Cantone’s sketchbook out of harm’s way on the kitchen table.
Beside Bertha’s old wooden box, the two items looked like a pair of
artifacts from another era.

Sam downed three tacos without blinking and
chided herself for not being a more conscious eater. How was she
ever going to lose the spare pounds? She crushed the paper sack
with the two remaining tacos and threw them in the trash, like that
would make any real difference before tonight’s dinner with Beau
Cardwell. But as long as she was feeling a little bit virtuous she
also poured out the soda she’d bought and drew a glass of fresh
water from the tap.

The phone rang and she flinched. Zoe would be
happy to lecture her on the evils of fast food and too much sugar,
eating habits being the one source of contention between them, but
a glance at the caller ID told her it was Rupert instead. Now there
was a man who would never give you a hard time about calories. In
his mind butter is one of the essential food groups.

“Hey Rupert, what’s up?”

“Honey, I got twenty-three pages written
today, which is a real miracle because I can hardly concentrate on
work. Esteban sent some photos of the mural to New York and they
are
very
excited. I mean,
very
. He’s crating up the
painting today and shipping it out for authentication. If we have a
real Cantone here, it’s going to be such a boost for Taos. I mean,
that’s proof positive that he lived here, right
here
in our
little town.”

Considering that several famous artists and
writers lived here over the years, it’s not like this one thing
would put Taos on the map. But it would still be exciting news.

“I read up a little, this morning, but
Cantone’s history gets blurry at the end. No one seems to know
where he went or what he did. If he’s still alive, he should get
the mural back, or get the money when it sells. And if he’s not
living, I wonder if there are relatives. Maybe there’s a will.” Sam
had to pause for a breath. “Do you know of any way to find
out?”

“I’ll ask around in the art community. If
Cantone lived here for awhile, maybe someone in town knew him.”

Sam hung up, feeling a little guilty that
she’d not told Rupert about the sketchbook. It was certainly a
treasure and further evidence that the mural was genuine. But
somehow she didn’t want to talk about it quite yet. Meanwhile, she
was still curious about the body buried on the property. Was it
Anderson, the homeowner, or was it the younger man who’d lived with
him? And how did he die? She shook off the thoughts. It might have
been someone else entirely, and even though the grave looked fresh
to Sam maybe it wasn’t; maybe the burial happened years ago.

So, what to do with the sketchbook in the
meantime? She gathered it, and the wooden box, and carried them to
her bedroom. Since no one knew of the existence of the sketches,
she decided she could get by with stashing the book between her
mattress and foundation. That wasn’t going to be good enough for
the long term and she would probably have to end up either turning
it over to the authorities or renting a safe deposit box at the
bank. But for now, it would do.

The puff-textured wooden box sat on the
bedspread, staring at her. She placed her hands on the sides of it.
The wood was cool to the touch, the cabochon stones dull in color.
She closed her eyes and ran her hands over the smoothly rounded
mounds of the quilted sections. The surface immediately warmed.
Whoa. Her eyes popped open; her fingers tingled.

Did she imagine it, or were the stones
brighter? The blue, red and green pieces were nearly glowing. The
wood surface also seemed different, with a golden patina to it, a
softer, nicer color than the previous sickly yellow. When Sam
brought it home she thought she would work on it with some polish,
but now it shone as if she’d already done that. She looked at her
hands. Did body oils have the ability to polish wood? Nah. Not like
this.

She wiped her hands on the tail of her shirt
and picked up the box. Maybe it would look nice on the dresser. She
could use it as a jewelry box. She set it in place and stepped back
to admire it. Yes. That was a good spot for it. She lifted the lid.
The stiff hinges creaked, as before, but as she closed and reopened
it a couple of times they loosened considerably. Soon, the lid was
operating as smoothly as if she’d just applied oil.