Tres Leches Cupcakes (6 page)

The lack of new details was frustrating and Sadie reviewed the order of events over and over again. Details began to rise to the surface of her memory—things she wanted to make sense of. Why were the bodies there? Why had Margo been so upset? And then there was Shel. He’d kept digging and discovered the second body even after Bill told him to stop.

Pete didn’t know anything more about the case than she did, and Agent Shannon, Sadie’s contact from the Bureau of Land Management, had told her via one phone call—the first time Sadie had even heard the woman’s voice—to be patient. Ho boy, being patient was not Sadie’s strong suit. But she didn’t dare go around the BLM to ask for information from the police. She didn’t know how the jurisdictions worked.

To keep her mind and hands occupied, she’d been baking like a madwoman, freezing most of what she made for a later date, something that was a bit odd to her because she liked the process of cooking her favorite items as much as eating them, so freezing simply denied her the pleasure of creation later on. Still, she needed to stay busy, and baking was her old standby. She should really take up some hobbies other than cooking and investigating murders.

At least Pete was coming to visit this weekend, after he finished some training he was heading up in Denver. Sadie couldn’t wait to see him. But the weekend felt so far away.

Sadie wondered if she’d go back to the dig at all—D&E had sent out a form e-mail explaining that they would be in touch when and if the dig reopened. As much as Sadie hated the actual work, she missed having purpose—and a dual purpose at that. The last nine names on her list remained unresearched, waiting, like everyone else, to see what would happen next.

“Well,” Caro said after Sadie had voiced her concerns about whether or not she’d go back to the dig site, “I told Lois I’d help her with her booth at the Fiesta. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind an extra set of hands if you don’t go back.”

“That would be fun,” Sadie said, transferring the dulce de leche bars she’d made that morning to a clean plate.

Lois was Caro’s good friend and the owner of her own cupcake catering business. For the second year in a row, Lois had a booth at the upcoming Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque—an annual hot air balloon festival that Sadie had heard about, but never actually been to. Sadie loved the idea of helping Lois with her cupcakes, but she knew if she never resolved her questions about what had happened at the dig, she would remain frustrated. She wanted more than newspaper articles.

“I’m going to run some errands,” she said, making sure the plastic wrap was good and tight around the plate. She’d decided to talk to Margo for a variety of reasons, but mostly because Margo was the one person from the dig that Sadie felt connected to. Finding that body together had made them into an unexpected partnership.

“I’ll come with you,” Caro said as she started gathering up the bills she was sorting.

Sadie hurried to talk her out of it as gently as she could. “Well, after the library I was going to stop at Margo’s. She’s the woman I worked with at the site that last day. She was really upset about everything. I want to make sure she’s okay.”

“Oh,” Caro said, reading between the lines. “It would probably be awkward if I came, wouldn’t it?”

Sadie made a regretful face. “Probably. Sorry.” While waiting to be cleared to leave the site that night, Margo had smoked her way through half a pack of cigarettes while Sadie came up with a hundred things to talk about in hopes of keeping Margo at least a little bit distracted. It hadn’t helped much. Seeing all the graves open had devastated Margo. It was as though the bodies were her own people—despite her Caucasian ancestry—and she took the fact that they weren’t being properly removed as a personal failure. At the same time, once she got over the initial, intense shock, she seemed a bit embarrassed by her reaction. Sadie hoped that her impromptu visit wouldn’t be too unwelcome.

“That’s okay,” Caro said, trying to be a good sport. She fanned the bills back out on the table. “You know where she lives?”

“Background check,” Sadie said with a casual shrug. Didn’t everyone do background checks on their acquaintances? Granted, Sadie hadn’t done a full report on Margo yet, but it had taken less than five minutes for her to find the address. Like Kyle Langley, Margo had her own place—she was easy to find. “I won’t be gone very long—maybe an hour. I could stop and pick up the tortillas for the Tostadas Compuestas. You still wanted to make that tonight, right?”

“That’d be great. I’m almost out of Monterey Jack cheese, too, if you don’t mind.” The chili con carne was already simmering in the slow cooker, filling the house with the most delectable smell.

Sadie assured her she didn’t mind, but by the time she was on the road, her eagerness to talk to Margo had moved to the top of Sadie’s list of errands. The library and the Mexican market weren’t going anywhere.

Margo’s duplex was on the other end of town, so it took a good ten minutes before Sadie pulled up in front of the very basic adobe structure. Caro had shown her some traditional adobe in the restricted section of the city where everything had remained authentic, but the majority of the “adobe” was made of a stucco-type material.

Parked in the driveway on Margo’s side of the duplex was a 1970s model Land Cruiser with faded green paint and some stickers on the back window: “Bark Less Wag More,” which Sadie didn’t understand, and a familiar blue “Coexist” sticker.

Sadie took a breath, hoping to calm her nerves as she focused on her objectives: first, make sure Margo was all right, and then see if she could answer some of the questions Sadie couldn’t ask anyone else. Just talking to someone else invested in the dig would be a relief.

Sadie reached the front door and knocked rather than ringing the doorbell. No one came to the door, but Sadie was sure Margo was home since her Land Cruiser
was
in the driveway. She knocked louder, and this time heard movement from inside. Several seconds later, the doorknob turned and the door began to open. It stuck slightly before being yanked all the way open. Margo looked as though she’d just woken up despite the fact that it was almost noon. Her hair was down, but tangled, and she wore mismatched sweats.

“Hi, Margo,” Sadie said, giving a little wave with her free hand.

“Sarah?” Margo said, using Sadie’s undercover name. She lifted a hand to her hair as though she could fix the damage. “What are you doing here?”

“I just thought I’d stop in and see how you were,” Sadie said, feeling her instincts kick in. “And I brought you some dulce de leche bars,” she said, holding out the plate.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Margo said, looking embarrassed. Sadie knew they were both thinking about Margo’s reaction at the dig site. “I’m all right.” Then she looked at the plate that Sadie had extended toward her. “I sure did like those, though.”

Sadie smiled even wider. “I was also hoping you might have some info on the dig. I haven’t heard anything other than what’s been on the news.”

Margo finally reached for the plate. “Do you want to come in? I mean, it’s a mess, but if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Sadie lied as Margo pulled the door open all the way and ushered her inside.

Besides the stale and thick stench of long days of chain smoking, there were piles of clutter everywhere. Clothes, books, magazines. Things weren’t piled in a hoarding kind of way, just in an “I don’t care” attitude that often plagued people who lived alone. Though to a far lesser degree, Sadie herself had fallen victim to that same attitude once her children had moved out. Luckily, she’d nipped that particular bad habit in the bud. Margo’s house was a testament of what a good decision it had been for Sadie to cure herself years ago.

Margo closed the door, but had to really push to get it to snap back into the frame, making the whole apartment shake slightly. “I left the door open one night and it rained—the water warped the entryway.” She waved toward the parquet flooring near the door, which was warped, dull, and lighter in color than the rest of the floor that was mostly covered with a large area rug in need of vacuuming. “The warped boards catch the door.”

“Wood floors are tricky,” Sadie said, trying to ignore the puffy pillows of dust and hair accumulated by the baseboards. “Can you sand it down?”

“Maybe,” Margo said with a shrug. “I haven’t tried. Don’t know how long I’ll be here, and I already broke a window lock so I won’t be getting my deposit back, whether I fix it or not.”

Margo turned toward the small kitchen with the plate of treats, placing it on top of the dish drain, which was the only space free of dishes, pop cans, and miscellaneous papers. “I guess I fell asleep on the couch,” she said, reaching up to scratch her head. “When I’m not waking up at three a.m. my body tries to make up for all the sleep it’s missed over the years.”

“No problem,” Sadie said, holding her purse with both hands in front of her.

Margo lifted a corner of the plastic wrap and snuck part of one of the bars, popping it into her mouth and then nodding in approval before wiping her sticky hand on her sweatpants. One pant leg was pulled up to her knee.

“So did you get called back, then?” Margo asked as she came back into the living room.

Sadie pivoted to follow her across the room. “Called back?”

“Yeah, to the site? Thursday?” Margo sat on the couch, waving Sadie into the recliner.

“I didn’t get a call,” Sadie said, sitting down on the very edge of the chair. It was gray velour, but it had several stains that Sadie wasn’t going to take chances with. A 1980s style green-and-pink nylon jacket was thrown over the back. Had she missed the callback from D&E, or had they just not called her?

“Oh, well, Bill said it would be a light crew called in to finish it up. You probably didn’t get called back ’cause you’re so new.”

“It probably didn’t help that I told Bill to leave the graves alone.” Sadie knew that hadn’t been one of her best career moves.

Margo shrugged in agreement. “That whole thing was a disaster,” she said, her voice somber. “He should have listened to you. We all should have. If the graves weren’t all opened up, I think we could have convinced the police to bring the bodies up more delicately—maybe even keep some of us on to help.” She leaned forward and picked up a package of cigarettes lying on the coffee table, tapping one out of the cellophane package before seeming to remember she wasn’t alone.

“Do you mind?” she asked, lifting the cigarette slightly in one hand and fingering her lighter in the other.

Sadie did mind, sort of, but it was Margo’s house and Sadie wanted to get to know her better so she shook her head. “But you’re okay?” she asked, reflecting back on Margo’s reaction at the dig. “You seemed pretty upset at the site.”

Margo put the cigarette between her lips and waved away Sadie’s question. “I’m a purist,” she said, the cigarette bobbing up and down as she talked. “To me, the fact that these bodies are a thousand years old makes no difference. Anyone would be horrified if someone took a crowbar to their grandma’s casket in hopes of finding a wedding ring on her corpse, but somehow
these
people are just bones.” She shook her head and flicked her lighter, going almost cross-eyed as she lined up the flame and the cigarette. She inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly, and Sadie watched her shoulders relax.

“I’ve never met anyone who takes it as seriously as you do,” Sadie said, wondering why that was so. Though she didn’t think Margo was hiding anything, her attitude still seemed extreme.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one,” Margo said after exhaling and leaning back against the couch. “Me against the world of ‘archeology for profit.’ At what point do the
people
not matter anymore? How long do they have to be in the ground before no one cares?”

All kinds of religious answers came to Sadie’s mind, about what happens when people die and what the purpose of life was, but she’d no sooner considered taking the conversation in that direction when Margo sighed and looked up with a change-the-subject smile. “It sure is weird, though, isn’t it? Fresh bodies buried in an ancient site.”

Sadie nodded. “Really weird.” She had to keep her hands together in her lap so as not to start straightening the cluttered coffee table. Margo leaned forward to tap off her ash in a coffee mug. Sadie had to repress a shudder; every time she saw someone do that, she imagined accidentally drinking cigarette ash.

“Did you ever see the other body?” Margo asked.

“Just what you and I saw together at the very start. The paper speculated that they were illegals,” Sadie said. “If that’s the case, the families couldn’t report their deaths for fear of deportment, right?”

Margo frowned. “Yeah, maybe.”

The smoke in the room was getting thick, and Sadie felt the urge to cough but cleared her throat instead.

“It’s too bad you’re not going back on Thursday.”

Sadie was embarrassed all over again. “Yeah. Do you know anyone else who was called back to the crew?”

Margo shook her head. “I’m not tight with anyone on the crew,” she said, then straightened. “Although I have Langley’s number. I guess I could ask him.” She riffled through a bunch of junk on the coffee table before excusing herself to her bedroom—which was also a mess from what Sadie could see through the doorway—and returning a minute later with her phone.

“Isn’t Langley the guy who dug into that grave? The one you almost beat with a shovel?” She knew he was, but she didn’t want to seem too familiar with the crew and risk blowing her cover. Mostly, she was surprised that Margo was friends with him. They certainly weren’t on good terms at the dig last Thursday.

Margo nodded, scrolling through her phone. “My Cruiser broke down a couple of weeks ago. Langley towed it to a repair shop—he’s got a sweet truck—and he drove me to work for the next couple of days while they were fixing the starter. Ah, there he is.” She started typing on her phone, then pushed a button and set the phone aside.

“Are you still mad at him?” Sadie asked, wondering what Margo’s text message had said.

Margo narrowed her eyes. “Furious,” she said, quick and sharp. “But if he’s on the crew too, I want to know.” She glanced at her phone. “Assuming he’ll even reply to my text.”