Bitter Sweet (18 page)

She cranked the Silverado to life
and coasted toward the driveway where the tan Mercedes had just made a right
hand turn. By the time Sam’s truck reached that point, the Mercedes was
disappearing around a bend in the road. She pressed the gas pedal to catch up.
Keeping her quarry in sight on the curvy road was tricky. At last she came to
the straight stretch approaching the plaza, then realized that she might get
caught by the traffic light and lose Renata altogether. She had to take a
chance and catch up with her.

Fortunately, the other woman
didn’t seem to be paying attention to the big truck behind her. They turned
south on Paseo del Pueblo Sur and wound past the small plaza shops and fast
food places, with Sam trying to stay a couple of vehicles back. After two or
three miles Renata signaled and turned west, toward an area that Sam remembered
as consisting mostly of small warehouses and car repair shops. She certainly
didn’t remember any churches out this way. Perhaps Renata had changed her mind
and was going somewhere else entirely.

The one small SUV which had
separated them turned off at a self-storage unit and Sam began to feel
conspicuous in her big red truck. Surely Renata would notice she was being
tailed. Sam dropped back a block and slowed way down.

Renata swung into a paved parking
lot and pulled up to a metal building, the type of industrial looking thing
that might normally house a workshop or warehouse. Three other cars sat
outside, including Redfearn’s battered old Toyota. Sam cruised past, noting the
hand-lettered sign that proclaimed it to be the Fellowship of Good Works.
Looked like God’s riches hadn’t quite bestowed themselves upon this little
group as yet.

In her rearview mirror, Sam saw
two other vehicles turn in. She pulled into the parking lot of a welder’s shop
about a block farther west, turning so she could watch the meager congregation
gather.
Now what?

She needed to get a fingerprint
from Redfearn and it seemed the easiest way would be to lift one from his car.
Surely the door handle would be loaded with them. A great plan until she
realized she hadn’t exactly come equipped. No powder, no tape—how was she going
to accomplish her goal?

She chafed with indecision.

Call Beau and have him send the
lab tech? The Toyota wasn’t likely to move for awhile. She pulled out her cell
phone and dialed his number. It went to voicemail immediately. He’d said he was
super busy.

Although the crime scene team
were technically on call twenty-four-seven, Sam knew that they normally worked
regular office hours. Calling someone away from their dinner or family time,
just to take prints from an old car, from a man they didn’t have on their
suspect lists, wasn’t going to win her any points with Beau’s staff.

She chewed at a cuticle that
tasted faintly of almond extract.

C’mon, Sam, do something.

Grabbing the gearshift lever she
put the truck in motion. It appeared that the little congregation was complete.
Eight cars sat in the parking lot. She steered the big pickup into the lot and
coasted past the Toyota, turned it around and braked, reaching for pen and
paper. The sounds of guitar music floated out the open door, a tune and voices
that were nothing like she’d ever heard at the First Baptist Church in
Cottonville
, Texas.

She eyed the door handle of the
Toyota but didn’t see any viable way of taking prints from it. The sky was in
the last stages of twilight and deep shadows blanketed the parking lot so she
got out to get a better look at the license plate on the pastor’s car. She’d just
finished jotting down the number when the music stopped.

A man appeared in the doorway of
the building.

“I thought I saw someone pull
in,” he said in a jovial tone. “Come, sister, join us!”

Sam felt her facial muscles
freeze.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I didn’t
mean to interrupt.”

“No child of good intention ever
interrupts. We welcome you into the loving arms of our little group.”

Oh boy.

“Please, child, come inside and
join the fellowship.” Child? He was at least ten years younger than she.

Her mind flitted in a hundred
directions. Initial response: Run. Run fast and far. But her pulse slowed a
little and she reminded herself that they couldn’t kidnap her or brainwash her
in a few minutes time. And she had a mission: Get Ridley Redfearn’s
fingerprints. Thoroughly uncomfortable, she worked up a smile and walked toward
the man who’d spoken to her.

“We are sharing some wonderful
music and a few refreshments,” he said.

She noticed that he slipped a
cigarette pack into the pocket of his suit coat.

“How nice,” she said,
sidestepping the arm he’d intended to slip around her shoulders.

The man, who introduced himself
simply as Bill, ushered Sam inside where part of the metal building had been
partitioned into a plain room, about twenty by twenty feet. Some colorful
lengths of cloth had been draped across the wall behind a skimpy pulpit of wood
that resembled a music stand more than anything else. Folding metal chairs
faced it. Overall, the room had a just-finished, hollow feel to it.

Two young male guitar players with
longish hair were just picking up their instruments after the short break. When
they stared toward the back of the room, the people in the chairs turned to do
the same. Renata gave her a funny look but Sam only countered with the
brightest smile she could muster. The rest of the little congregation were
probably high-
schoolers
and one or two of their
grandmothers. Ridley Redfearn’s stare was more pointed. A hazy blue aura hung
around him and Sam watched it darken to the color of a stormy sky. She edged out
of his view and took a seat in the back row. She amused herself by counting the
rows of chairs and calculating that there were forty, only thirteen of which
had actual human bottoms in them. Three out-of-tune songs later she could tell
that she was the only one dying to get out of there.

Deciding he should always leave
the crowd wanting more, Redfearn stood up, thanked the guitarists, and promised
refreshments in just a moment. Sam almost got to her feet but the pastor had
squeezed his eyes shut and raised both hands toward the stained ceiling tiles.
She watched as everyone in the tiny congregation, including that Bill who’d
dragged her in here, raised their faces to the same unseen entity, closed their
eyes and turned their palms upward. When the rambling prayer was over—it surely
only
seemed
like twenty minutes later—the aura around Redfearn had
fuzzed out to a mild gray.

As the crowd stood, Sam edged to
the side of the room. Renata was the first to beeline her way to Sam’s corner.

“Hello, Samantha. I did not
realize you knew of our church.”

Sam feigned surprise at seeing
the Russian and spent a half-second coming up with a plausible response. She
reached into the depths of her pack and pulled out the flyer she’d been
carrying ever since the day at Lila’s.

“Oh, yes, I’ve been very curious
about this, uh, church,” she said. “If I’d known there would be refreshments, I
could have contributed.”

That seemed to remind Renata of
something and she murmured a few words as she headed for the food table, where
she opened the box of cookies she’d picked up at the bakery that afternoon. One
of the other ladies was starting to pour iced tea into bright plastic cups,
asking folks whether they preferred it sweetened or not. Apparently the red
cups meant one thing and the yellow ones another.

“I thought I recognized you.”
Ridley Redfearn’s voice startled Sam and she bumped his arm when she jerked.
She spun to find herself staring directly into his sandy eyebrows. “Renata’s
friend from the bakery, right?”

“Um, yes. That’s right.” The
brochure in her hand fluttered in explanation, but she decided what the hell.
She didn’t owe him anything.

A young woman who might have been
barely out of high school approached the pastor with one of the red cups.
“Pastor Redfearn,” she said shyly, “sweet tea, just the way you like it.”

“Thank you, Darla. How nice of
you to remember.”

The girl blushed furiously.

Sam used the few seconds that his
attention wandered to sneak over to the table and pick up a cookie, one that
obviously came from another bakery. It never hurt to scope out the competition.
She watched the pastor as he worked the room.

He rarely got a sip of his iced
tea, as someone was almost always talking to him. Eventually she saw him set
the cup down on a windowsill as he offered a hug to one of the grandmotherly
women. Sam edged her way between him and the cup, acting like she was eyeing a
plate of brownies.

Once Redfearn had moved slightly
farther into the room and she saw that he wasn’t looking, she picked up the cup
by the rim as if it were her own. At one point he looked around, clearly trying
to figure out what he’d done with his drink but since it was impossible to tell
them apart he didn’t have a clue. Sam worked her way to the door as
conversation flowed around her, edged out into the cool night air and
fast-walked toward her truck. Dumping the sweet tea on the ground she set the
cup in one of her drink holders and got the heck out of there.

“I can get the answer on the
vehicle right away,” Beau said when Sam took him the Toyota’s plate number and
the pastor’s drinking cup the next morning. “Fingerprints, especially if
there’s nothing on file in New Mexico, will take a bit longer. State crime lab
is totally backed up but sometimes I can pull a favor for a simple search with
a buddy in Albuquerque. APD has a lot better computers and software than we
do.”

He slipped the cup into an
evidence bag and set it on his desk.

“Missed you last night,” he said,
edging near for a kiss on her neck. When he added a tiny lick to the edge of
her ear, a pleasant shiver shot through her.

“I think you’re changing the
subject,” she teased. Goosebumps raised on her arm as he ran his index finger
down her arm, from shoulder to fingertips. “The DMV?”

“One vehicle search coming up,”
he said. It took a few keystrokes and some muttering on his part, something
about how he usually talked the desk officer into doing these things, but
finally the screen showed the record for the plate number she’d given him.

“Nineteen ninety-eight Toyota Camry,
purchased from Bob Brown Motors in Santa Fe on April 29. It’s one of those
corner used car lots where the old trade-ins go to be sold real cheap. You pay
cash or sign up for exorbitant interest rates. It’s registered to Ridley
Redfearn, 421 Pacheco Drive, Santa Fe.”

He opened a new screen and
entered the street address. It didn’t exist. “Addresses on Pacheco Drive end in
the three hundred block. It’s a very short street.”

“I knew there was something
completely hokey about that guy,” Sam said.

“It could be that. It could be
someone at the DMV made a typo when they input his data.” He clicked back to
the DMV site and filled in a few blanks. “Doesn’t have a New Mexico driver’s
license . . . If he moved here from another state he should have gotten that changed
over as soon as he established residency. Then again, if he’s using a fake
address, maybe he has no intention of permanently moving here.”

Sam thought about that. “I
definitely got a sense of transience about the guy. That whole church
thing—very new, very . . . non-permanent.”

The hand lettered sign, the metal
building in an industrial area, the conversations among the little congregation
which had made her think a lot of them were there for the first time. Renata
had said Redfearn performed their marriage ceremony but Sam didn’t get the
feeling that either she or James Butler had known the pastor very long. Nothing
about it felt quite kosher, but she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what made it feel
all wrong either.

“I guess I better get back to the
shop,” she finally said. “Let me know when you hear anything about the
fingerprints from that cup?”

He stood and pulled her close. “I
will do it.”

“Shall I come out to your place
tonight?” She threw a little seductive edge into the question and he
immediately agreed.

“Cases or no cases,” he said,
“I’m ready for a night alone—with you.”

“We’ve both been working long
hours. I’ll be there at six-thirty, with steaks.”

“I’ll be there at six,
preheating some things.” He leered. “The grill first.”

She raked her fingernails down
the front of his shirt, wishing she had long,
unchipped
nails. No matter. His nipples tightened at her touch.

“You better quit that or I’m
locking this office door and closing the blinds,” he said.

“You’re right—we do need a night
at home together.” She backed away and blew him a kiss from the doorway.
“Later, Sheriff.”

It turned to be quite a bit later
before either of them thought about suspects or fingerprints. Sam arrived at
the ranch with the promised sirloins from the market and two slices of decadent
amaretto cheesecake from her shop, to find that Beau had not forgotten his
earlier promise to lock themselves away. He pulled her into the house, stashed
the food in the fridge and said he felt like a shower before dinner. The shower
turned out to be
au
deux
, and in the following
thirty minutes they never made it past the bedroom door.

Another quick shower, shorts and
tshirts donned, and she followed him into the kitchen.

“I drove past Sadie Gray’s house
when I left the shop,” Sam told him while she chopped vegetables for a salad.
“Figured I needed to make my weekly report to Delbert Crow, plus I guess I had
some tiny hope that Marshall might have left another clue or two behind.”