Sweet Hearts (17 page)

“What you need is to put other
people’s attitudes out of your head. Just do what
you
want to do. You
and Beau are great together, and it doesn’t matter if anyone else has an
opinion on what you should do.”

“How’d you get to be so smart?”
Sam asked.

Kelly shrugged. “Had a mom who
let me learn things the hard way, by doing it wrong and then figuring out how
to get it right.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, moving to California for a
few years didn’t hurt. You didn’t get the chance to watch me make all those
mistakes.”

Sam reached an arm around Kelly’s
shoulders and pulled her close. When she let go she said, “Do you suppose that
all this wisdom comes from the fact that we’ve finished a whole bottle of wine?”

They broke into giggles again.

*

Sam felt slow as a slug when she
woke up for her early morning start at the bakery. This would be one of their
biggest days of the year, the day before Valentine’s; she needed to get a
strong start, and the pizza dinner still sat like a rock in her stomach.

The bakery felt chilly, as it
always did on Monday mornings when the ovens had not been fired up for two
days. She reset the thermostat in the sales room, brewed a pot of coffee and
started her routine. Muffins, scones and crumb cakes went into the oven
quickly. She raided the big walk-in fridge, pulling out enough heart-shaped
cakes and Valentine themed cupcakes to fill the glass display cases.

Cathy had made a double batch of
sugar cookie dough on Saturday, leaving it wrapped in plastic to chill. Sam
pulled it out now and began rolling and cutting out hearts. Four dozen muffins
came out of the oven and she checked the scones that were cooling on one of the
racks. She loaded a huge tray with the warm pastries and balanced it on her
shoulder as she pushed through the curtain to the sales room.

Three cars sat outside, lights
off, engines idling, women sitting in them. Two other customers waited at the
door, holding their coats tightly closed against the chilly dawn. Sam set her
tray down on the back counter and rushed to unlock the front door.

“We aren’t really open yet but
come on in. We can’t have you freezing out here.”

“Do you have those chocolates you
were selling last week?” one of the ladies asked.

Sam glanced at the three boxes
near the register and realized she might have a rebellion on her hands if
that’s what all these customers had come for.

“Help yourselves to some coffee,
and I’ll have more goodies out very soon,” she said.

She quickly filled the sales displays
with breakfast pastries and fancy cupcakes. While the customers browsed, she
dashed to the back for a couple of the decorated cakes, speed dialing Jen’s
home number on her cell phone as she walked.

“Help! Is there any way you can
get here now?” Sam looked at the wall clock and saw that it was still an hour
before their regular opening. “I’ve got five customers out front already.”

“On my way.” Bless her for not
questioning or whining. Sam made a mental note to be generous with some bonuses
this week.

During the fifteen minutes it
took for Jen to arrive, Sam sold two boxes of chocolates, a Valentine cake, and
nearly three dozen muffins and scones. The town’s sweet tooth seemed insatiable
this morning.

“Wow,” said Jen, peeling off her
coat as she walked through the door.

“Yeah. I’ve got more cakes in the
kitchen but haven’t had a half second to go get them. And I need to be putting
cookies in the oven.”

“Go. I can handle this.”

“When that final box of candy
goes, tell anyone else that we’ll have more by three o’clock this afternoon.”

At least the rest of the crew
should be arriving any minute, Sam thought. She carried two more holiday cakes
out to the display cases while making up a task list in her head. Becky and
Sandy could bake and decorate dozens of cookies. Cathy could keep the supply of
breakfast pastries going and, hopefully, would also be able to wash utensils
quickly enough that the bakers wouldn’t get hung up for lack of a spatula or
cookie sheet. Sam’s own time best be spent on the chocolates.

She quickly reviewed the day’s
special orders, making sure they’d not missed something. Five proposal cakes
were to be picked up Tuesday morning and Sam located them all, finished and
ready, in the fridge. She had two wedding cakes to deliver today and two more
tomorrow; Becky would fill and ice the latter two and Sam would decorate them
in the morning. She closed the door to the walk-in and headed back to the
stove.

Dark chocolate became smooth as
silk in the double boiler pan, under her touch. As she started to add the
pinches of Bobul’s special spices, she took slightly smaller portions. Maybe
she’d been a little too generous with them on Friday, that crazy day filled
with romantic overload.

“How’s this?” Becky asked,
pulling Sam’s attention toward the worktable where she had stacked the six
tiers of their largest wedding cake.

It was a tricky one, requiring
different shaped layers in odd combinations. A half-inch off center and they
risked the whole thing becoming unbalanced and toppling. Sam set the pan of
chocolate aside while she double-checked Becky’s measurements and gave the cake
a little jiggle to be sure it would hold.

“Perfect. Dirty ice it and make
sure at least three of us are helping before you try to move it to the fridge.”

“Absolutely. I’ll bet this thing
weighs seventy-five pounds.”

At the other end of the table,
Sam set out her molds and began carefully pouring dark chocolate from the hot
pan. While the candy cooled, she enlisted Cathy’s help in carrying one of the
other wedding cakes from the fridge. It was smooth-iced in ivory buttercream
and a box beside it held the array of lavender, deep purple and blue flowers
that the bride had ordered. Sam took a deep breath and got to work with her
pastry bag, piping the borders and trim, then placing flowers and adding tiny
touches of dots and leaves.

“One down, one to go,” she said.

Out in the alley she opened the
back of her van and her assistants helped to place the three-tiered confection
inside. Sam locked the van with a sigh.

Today’s second delivery went to a
couple who’d designed their cake together. A big chocolate tier at the bottom,
with middle and top layers of vanilla and lemon poppyseed respectively. Becky
had already covered the tiers with fondant and Sam hoped she’d followed the instructions.

The pale green fondant made an
easy background for molded Victorian filigree, basketwork, and bundles of
lilies, daffodils and strawflowers. By the time Sam had finished creating the
cascades of foliage, the piece looked like a gigantic basket of spring flowers.
She stepped back to check her work.

“It’s marvelous, Sam. I’ll take a
copy of it for my own.” Riki Davis-Jones, the dog groomer, had come up behind
her without Sam ever noticing.

“Thanks.” Sam studied her petite
neighbor for a minute. “Is this new guy already getting that serious?”

Riki’s laughter tinkled like
small silver bells. “He might be, but I’m not. Not yet anyhow.” She held up a
small wrapped package. “I just stopped by to bring you something.”

“What’s this?” Sam turned the
burgundy-wrapped box around.

“Just to say thanks for helping
out the other day. With the wet-dog melee.”

“Oh, gosh, that was nothing. Had
to keep my kid from getting into a bind.”

“Well, it was nice of you. And
this is nothing much.”

Sam wiped her hands on her apron
and ripped the paper off. The box contained a packet of English tea, the real
stuff, which Riki often brought back from trips to visit her parents in
Manchester.

“I love this,” Sam said. “In
fact, I think I will love some of it right now.” She glanced at the clock. She
could spare fifteen minutes before setting out to do her cake deliveries. “Join
me?”

“Can’t. Kelly has been bathing
the mutts all morning, now I’ve got the clipping.” Riki nodded toward the
packet. “Enjoy!”

Before Sam had spooned the loose
leaves into a tea ball, her cell phone rang.

“Hey, darlin’, how about lunch?”
Beau sounded cheerful, which probably meant that his new deputy was actually
doing whatever Beau had assigned him today.

She told him about the two cake
deliveries. “If I could get them to the customers soon, that would be a big
load off my mind. Maybe lunch after that?”

He named a place and she worked
out the route in her head so she could get there before he’d starved to death.
She abandoned the idea of a relaxing cup of tea.

“Give me a hand with this?” Becky
asked as Sam put the phone away.

The multi-tiered cake was ready
for refrigeration. They commandeered both Sandy and Cathy and the four of them
carefully maneuvered it across the room and safely onto a shelf, then they turned
their attention to the Victorian flower basket and transported it to the van
for delivery. Sam looked at the orders for the two cakes in the cargo section.
Both were going to hotels for their respective wedding receptions. She could
get help from the kitchen staff so she sent her own workers back to their
duties here.

Leaving Sandy with instructions
for unmolding and boxing the chocolates, she grabbed up her jacket and
backpack. In the van, she let it idle for a couple minutes while she leaned
into the seat cushion and let herself unwind. She’d been on the go for nearly
eight hours already.

Both deliveries were north of the
shop, so she rolled to the end of the alley, ready to turn left. The nose of
the van had barely cleared the edge of the curb when a low-slung car roared out
of the side street. Sam hit the brakes hard. An impression of a shaved head
with tattoos running down the guy’s neck, and the whir of red low-rider
screamed out of sight around a curve two blocks farther down.

“Watch out, you jerk!” she
shouted at the flash of taillights.

But her more important concern
was behind her. Something had made a sickening sliding noise back there. Sam
turned, expecting to find the worst—a pile of cake and frosting.

Sweat broke out on her forehead
as she peered behind her seat. A ruined cake at this point would be a calamity
from which it would take the rest of the day to recover, by the time they
baked, iced and redecorated. Two broken cakes would mean working late into the
night and possibly being late for one or both deadlines. And forget any other
plans for the day.

The ivory-and-purple themed one
looked all right. She’d wedged it with blocks and its position seemed stable.
The Victorian green had slid, coming up against the blocks around the other
cake, and something didn’t look right. Sam slowly backed up the alley toward
her shop, stopped carefully and got out.

Opening the van’s back door she
surveyed the damage. One section of the cake had brushed against the shelving
on the side of the cargo compartment. She gave it a careful turn and checked.
Several of the sugar-paste flowers were crushed.

Dashing back inside she called
out, “Becky!” probably louder than necessary.

Her assistant started, squirting
red piping gel across two heart-shaped cookies.

“Do we have any spare flowers
from that Victorian order? I need two stargazer lilies and about three
daffodils.”

“Oh my god, what happened?”
Sandy’s tone got everyone worried and within a minute they’d crowded around the
back of the van. Becky rounded up enough extra flowers and Sam brought out a
pastry bag of icing she could use as glue to secure the replacements. She
worked quickly, ignoring the fact that it was freezing outdoors and her hands
wanted to shake while she removed the damaged bits and carefully arranged the
new ones.

“That was a lot easier than it
could have been,” she said with a sigh as she handed over the discards and
closed the van door.

She wanted to track down the punk
in the red car and give him a lesson in safe driving, but there was no time for
that. Practically holding her breath she negotiated the back streets to each of
the delivery sites. It wasn’t until both cakes were safely in the hands of
someone else that she let herself relax.

By the time Beau arrived at the
tiny restaurant near his office, Sam had mentally rehashed the close call
enough times that she was ready to drop it.

He greeted her with a kiss to her
temple and picked up his menu before his rear had hardly hit the seat.

“Crazy today,” he muttered,
looking over the selections. “Is there some weird phase of the moon happening
or something? There have been more traffic violations than I can shake a stick
at. My officers can barely keep up with them.”

Sam opened her mouth, then closed
it again. No point in telling him about the one that didn’t quite happen. They
ordered green chile stew from a genderless server who had shaggy burgundy hair,
a silver ring through the lip and wore all black.

“I went to visit Marla Fresques
yesterday and she had me bring those cards she’s been receiving from Tito.”

Beau gave her a long look. “She
thinks
they’re from her son.”

“We would know for sure if we had
fingerprints from them . . .”

“Sam, I haven’t had a spare—” His
voice sounded so tired.

She counted to three. “That
wasn’t the point I started to make anyhow. What I wanted to say was that I
actually paid attention this time to where and when the cards were mailed. I
made a list.” She pulled it from her pack. “And, although Marla gave me the
impression that she’s been receiving these cards all along, the postmarks
stopped two years ago. If Tito went into hiding ten years ago, he
really
went deep underground more recently.”

Beau looked politely at the list,
but she could tell he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Strictly speaking,
from a law enforcement point of view, she couldn’t fault him. The case was old,
the evidence flimsy. No one even knew if there’d really been a crime committed
or if it had happened in his jurisdiction. But the fact that the sheriff
couldn’t pursue this didn’t make it any easier on Marla Fresques. And poor
little Jolie would soon find herself in a foster home unless her father could
be found.