Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (7 page)

The breakfast burrito lay heavily
in her stomach as Beau drove away and Sam let herself into the house. Beau had
spent the time dispatching a couple of deputies to cruise the area a few times
a day. Meanwhile, her phone had vibrated twice during their meal and she knew
there was no escaping the obligation; it would be best to deal with the calls
before her workday at the bakery began. She sat at the table with a notepad and
started listening to messages.

Auguste Handler: “Ms. Sweet, I
understood that your group planned to use only the ballroom? Your associate now
informs me that you also need the garden area. The fee will be different, you
understand. Call me, please.”

Harvey Byron: “Sam, what’s this
all about? I’m supposed to sell ice cream outdoors, with no access to
electricity to keep my refrigeration running? Call me ASAP.”

An unknown female voice: “Ms.
Sweet, this is Farrel O’Hearn in Santa Fe. My assigned vendor location at Sweet
Somethings simply will not do. Please call me with a reassignment.”

Marc Williams: “Sam, sorry to
bother you. You asked for updates on Aunt Sarah’s condition, and I just wanted
to let you know they’ve taken her into surgery. No need to call back. I’m going
to my hotel for some sleep. I would like to speak with you later, if possible.”

Auguste Handler: “Ms. Sweet, I
haven’t heard from you yet. A wedding party wants the garden. Since our
contract calls for only your use of the ballroom . . . Please call me. Soon.”

Rupert: “Sam . . .? Where are you?
Pick up? Carinda Carter is driving me nuts!”

Carinda: “Sam, hi. Just wanted to
let you know that I’ve got everything under control. No worries whatsoever.
Talk to you soon. Bye.”

Sam dropped her pen and held her
head in her hands.

“I hate dealing with
people
!” She moaned it so loudly that
Nellie the border collie came over and laid her chin on Sam’s thigh. It’s okay,
the dog seemed to say.

“Nellie, it’s not okay. This
stupid chocolate fair is going to drive me insane.”

She glanced over the names again.
There had to be a way to prioritize them. Since Auguste Handler had the power
to completely shut them down, she hit the redial button beside his name.

“Ms. Carter said she was on your
committee and that she was in charge of organizing the vendor booths,” he said
after Sam basically asked what the hell was going on. “She came by, probably a
half-hour after you left. Sketched out both the garden and ballroom layouts and
said the festival would be needing both locations after all. To accommodate
that I will require another five hundred dollars.”

Sam willed her voice to stay calm.
“Okay, first, Carinda Carter was not put in charge of the vendor booths.”

“But—”

“I don’t care what she said. We’re
taking the ballroom, that’s it.”

“So I can let this wedding party
use the garden on Sunday?”

“Yes. And if you should hear from
Carinda Carter again, don’t discuss anything with her. Refer her back to me.
Please.”

He seemed a little put out about
all the extra communication, but he wasn’t the only one. She dialed Harvey, who
seemed among the least antagonistic in his message.

“Check your email, Sam. She drew
up a diagram of the hotel, marked off spaces and told each of us where our
booths would be. I didn’t know she was supposed to do that. I specifically said
on my application that I would need to be near an electrical outlet.”

“I know, Harvey. I had no idea
Carinda was doing this. I have another map and you are definitely near a wall
plug.”

Relief was evident in his voice
when he thanked her and hung up. She dialed Rupert next—might as well leap
right back into the drama.

“What’s going on?” she asked
innocently enough.

“Didn’t the committee meet only
two days ago? How is it that Hurricane Carinda managed so much damage so quickly?”
From the high tone in his voice, Sam could picture him striding around his
writing room.

“I’m getting calls from all over.
Farrel O’Hearn, who thinks her you-know-what doesn’t stink has expressly forbid
Carinda from contacting her, for any reason. And I’m the one who got the
earful.”

“What’s she done?”

“In Farrel’s words, ‘I’ll bring
this festival down if my booth isn’t the first one people see as they walk
through the door.
I
studied at Ecole
au Chocolat, the finest school in
Paris
.
There is
no one
who will either make
or break your little county fair the way I will’.”

Sam had to laugh at the way Rupert
captured the accent and intonation of the voice she’d heard in O’Hearn’s
high-toned message.

“Is she really that important?”
she asked.

“I’d say she’s semi-important.
She’s a Santa Fe snob and could probably badmouth us among that crowd. However,
I know a lot of that same group and, believe me, I can play tit-for-tat with
the best of them.”

“Okay, well, let’s don’t go there
yet. I can do something to appease her, I’m sure.”

“You don’t have to suck up, Sammy.
I can deal with Farrel O’Hearn.”

“For now, don’t do anything.
Please, Rupe, you don’t know how full my hands are at this moment.”

He grumbled a little but agreed to
let it go. Sam looked at her diagram, shuffled a couple of things and penciled
Farrel O’Hearn into one of the center spaces. When she called, the woman tried
the high-handed approach and Sam let her rant for a good three minutes before
informing her that the site diagram had been sent by mistake. When O’Hearn
heard the booth number of her new spot she gave a grudging thanks, as if the
prime location was her due all along, and hung up. Sam scratched a heavy line
through her name on the phone call list.

Her next call wouldn’t be fun but
it was important to address quickly. Carinda sounded a little surprised by
Sam’s abrupt tone and agreed to meet her at Sweet’s Sweets at one o’clock.

“Do not contact any vendor or
committee member until we’ve talked,” Sam said. She punctuated the request by
hanging up.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this!
Managing people and
coordinating an event were definitely not her forte. For a moment she thought
fondly back to the days when all she had to do was bake the occasional birthday
cake for a kid’s party and then go break into a house or two, easy work that
she could perform by herself.

She dialed Kelly next. “I’ll be at
the bakery in about twenty minutes. Can you set aside some time to meet me
there and help with something?”

Another flash from the past, the
time not that many years ago when she could measure her daughter’s reliability
in nanometers. Thankfully, they had come a long way since.

Kelly apparently heard the van
drive up because she stepped out the back door of Puppy Chic before Sam got out
of her vehicle.

“Hey, thanks. Riki was okay with
your taking a few minutes off?”

“No prob. She’s bathing an Irish
Setter, which will take her longer than this job will take us.”

Sam led the way directly to her
desk and pulled up an extra chair.

“Okay, here’s my diagram of the
floor plan. I’ve marked the ones I’ve assigned already. If you can take this
stack of applications and find the ones with special requests—like if they
require electricity or can’t be near the windows or something like that. We’ll
assign them first and then fit everyone else in. Try not to put similar
products right next to each other. We’ll have battles if all the cookies are in
one section and all the cakes in another. Space them out.”

“Got it.”

Within twenty minutes they had a
workable plan that included the promises she’d made earlier.

“Now, Kel, if you can scan this
and email it out to all the vendors, I will be eternally grateful. If none of
them get back in my face we’ll officially deem it a miracle and your place in
heaven is assured.”

Kelly laughed and took over at the
computer keyboard.

Sam took a moment to check in with
each of her employees and assure herself that there were no bakery disasters
lurking unseen. Her molded chocolates from last night were waiting safely in
the cooling racks; she got out the last of the small decorative boxes and began
creating assortments. The remaining ones could be sold individually.

“All done,” Kelly said a few
minutes later, on her way out the back door. She snagged a brownie from a tray
that Julio was about to carry to the front.

Sam smiled. “Thanks.”

“Oh! I meant to tell you, Mom, I
met up with Sarah Williams’s next door neighbor—one of the ladies who was
helping with the decorations? We went to Sarah’s, where they’d been working
together and I loaded everything into my car. I’ll take it all to the hotel
when we get ready to set up.”

“You’re a peach.”

Kelly’s eyebrows pulled together.
“I have to say, the place was pretty messy. For Sarah, I mean. That time I
stopped by to give her a ride—I tell you, the lady could have won some kind of
good housekeeping award. This time there were drawers and cabinet drawers
hanging open . . . not at all tidy.”

Hm. Sam agreed with Kelly’s
assessment of Sarah’s housekeeping style and this was not normal. Marc must
have had a hard time locating those insurance documents. She waved Kelly out
the back and went back to work.

She’d boxed about half of the
chocolates when the familiar roar of a truck sounded outside the door and the
brown-uniformed UPS guy peered in.

“Several big cartons for you, Sam.
Where shall I put them?”

Big cartons? She hadn’t ordered
anything recently.

“I better take a look,” she said,
wiping her hands on a towel and following him out to the alley.

At the back of his big, square
truck sat three boxes that were taller than she, all with the
Qualitätsschokolade
logo. What on
earth—?

The driver was looking at her
expectantly.

“Uh, wow . . .” There was no way
they would fit inside the bakery without being in everyone’s way. Her own booth
tables and display cases were already taking a huge amount of space. The barn
at home came to mind. But without dismantling the shelving inside her bakery
van she couldn’t use it to transport them. She would have to go home for her
pickup truck. She chewed at her lip for a moment.

“I guess just leave them here in
the alley for now, right by my door. I’ll think of something.” Something that
didn’t involve curious thieves or an overeager garbage truck driver.

“For their size, they aren’t too
heavy,” said the driver as he manipulated a hand truck under the edge of one.
The carton threatened to tip as he struggled to wheel it. “Just bulky.”

Sam signed for the delivery then
pulled out her phone and dialed Beau.

“Where are you right now?” she
asked.

“At my desk, catching up on
department paperwork.”

“Want a break from it?” She
explained her dilemma. “I can run home and get the truck myself, but I’ll still
need help maneuvering these things.”

“Tell you what. I’ll drive home
and get your truck, bring it back and help you.”

“Really, I didn’t mean for you to
take that much time . . .”

“It’ll give me the chance to take
a peek at what’s going on out that direction, see how many more buses and vans
have shown up.”

She hung up, hoping he wouldn’t
become too distracted before they could get these boxes out of the alley.
Meanwhile, Becky needed worktable space for a large multi-tiered cake so Sam
rushed back inside to get the rest of the molded chocolates put away.

Beau’s expression seemed a little
grim when he pulled up forty-five minutes later. He gripped one of the large
cartons and practically flung it into the bed of Sam’s truck.

“Wait, Beau! You’ll strain
something lifting like that.” She rushed to his side and together they picked
up the next one.

“What’s the matter?” she asked,
feeling slightly winded after keeping up with his long strides.

“Nothing, I hope. But there’s a
steady stream of old vans, beater cars and other junk vehicles traveling the
road toward our place. There must be well over a hundred camping out on
Mulvane’s property by now.”

Oh boy.

They placed the third big carton
into the truck and she climbed into the passenger seat. He drove carefully
through the back streets of town, keeping an eye on the bulky boxes. When they
came to the red light at Camino de la Placita, they counted twelve more
vehicles that clearly belonged to the hippie enclave.

“And this isn’t counting the ones
driving in from other directions, coming out of Colorado and across the western
part of the state.”

She could see why he wasn’t
terribly happy about the visitors. “Did old man Mulvane know there would be so
many?”

“I have no idea. My guess is that
the lure of their money overshadowed any details he should have asked for.”

“So, is there some way to overturn
that contract he signed?”

“Well, the process would involve
getting a restraining order or a stay against them, while we try to prove that
Mr. Mulvane wasn’t competent to enter such an agreement. I would have to give
some proof of why he might be considered incompetent. Best I could hope for
would be a sympathetic judge who might put them off for awhile.”

They had joined the slow-moving
line of traffic now. It really was sounding complicated.

“In Colorado, the neighbors had no
luck in overturning the contract last year. The Flower People most likely will be
gone before we could complete the process.”

“Maybe they’ll only stay through
the weekend.” She worked toward a hopeful tone but remembered that he’d said
these guys often remained for months. It wasn’t looking like a great start to
the summer.

At their turnoff, Sam noticed that
he’d left his department cruiser parked near the road, in plain view of the
passing traffic. It was probably one reason the line of cars moved along at a
crawl. He drove the truck up the driveway and past the house, backing up to the
double-wide barn doors where they both hopped out and quickly stashed the boxes
against the front of an unused horse stall.