Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery (19 page)

The envelope she’d taken from Bart
Killington’s house.

Chapter 22

Sam pulled the envelope from her pocket and
stared at it. So much had happened in the hours since she’d been
there, she’d completely forgotten to mention it to Beau. Of course,
telling him about it would open another set of questions about how
she’d gotten it. Maybe better to wait.

Beau’s comments about both tying the plant
residue to the nephew and verifying it as the cause of Cantone’s
death made her realize that simply finding evidence did not prove a
crime. She would have to find some kind of proof that the one-page
will she’d located was not the real one. Something more than her
own simple intuition.

She laid the envelope on her dresser.

Back at her computer, Sam saw that she’d
received a reply to one of her emails about a van for sale. It
turned out that one was in Albuquerque and while she didn’t relish
a five-hour round trip drive to go see it, she didn’t want to rule
out anything either. She sent a reply thanking them for the info
and saying she’d consider it.

Movement in the front yard caught her eye and
she saw a man circling her truck. She stepped outside to talk to
him and he readily offered about half of what it was worth. When
she showed him the printout she’d gotten online with the values, he
went away a little grumpy. Feeling somewhat discouraged she went
back inside to find that she’d missed a call from Rupert.

When she called him back he said that he’d
heard from Carolyn Hildebrandt, the art rep in Santa Fe, wondering
whether Mrs. Knightly was still interested in Cantone’s work.
Although the painting they’d looked at was going out to New York
today, she could show them some other pieces.

“I’d say, considering what we spotted in Bart
Killington’s house,” Sam said. She didn’t tell Rupert about her
little breaking and entering caper the other day. You never knew
what would end up in one of his books.

“So, would you like to become Mrs. Knightly
again and run to Santa Fe for the day?” he asked.

She considered it for about half a second.
The drive down to the capital was getting old. Plus, what would
they really learn? She already knew that Hildebrandt and Bart were
close, and she was pretty certain that Bart’s stash of Cantone
paintings were the real thing, art that he’d taken from the
artist’s Taos residence. She begged off, using her caretaker job as
an excuse.

Rupert grumbled a little and she suspected
that he’d secretly wanted to take the day off from his writing. But
like most professionals, he was pretty good about disciplining
himself to devote a certain number of hours a day to his craft, and
like it or not he sometimes needed for his friends to not enable
his lazy streak. He said as much before ending the call.

Well, thought Sam, I guess I could say the
same for myself. Can’t very well nag Rupert about not working if I
don’t do the same. As she placed her gold hoop earrings into the
lumpy wooden box she had a thought. If the box seemed to give her
an energy boost, why not use that to her advantage?

She picked it up and held it in her arms,
close to her body. Again, warmth surged from the wood and the
yellowish surface began to radiate golden light. The stones glowed
more brightly than she’d ever seen them. She quickly set the box
back on her dresser, her heart pumping. The power of the thing
unnerved her.

She stared at it for a couple of minutes.

You might be playing with fire, Sam.

Shaking her hands to dispel the tingly
feeling in them, she began to back out of the bedroom. Then
something green caught her eye.

The envelope containing the purported
will.

The entire surface of the envelope was
covered in smears of the greenish, powdery substance. The same
thing Sam had seen in Cantone’s kitchen, the stuff Rupert swore he
couldn’t see.

She picked it up and gingerly opened the
flap. Inside, the single sheet of paper also had green marks on
it.

Bart Killington was definitely connected to
the green dust now.

She dropped the envelope on the dresser and
grabbed up the telephone.

“Beau, there’s something weird going on
here.”

While he went through a whole bunch of “are
you okay?” kind of stuff, she gathered her thoughts. Working at
sounding rational, she told him about taking the envelope from
Killington’s house and how she’d found powdery green marks on it,
just like those at the house that she suspected to be
deathcamas.

“It ties the nephew to the poisonous
plant—don’t you see?” she insisted.

Beau took a long breath. “It ties a green
substance to both the envelope and the kitchen of the house, Sam.
First, we’d need a lab analysis to verify that the green is from
deathcamas. And, we still don’t know that the uncle didn’t pick
those plants himself and carry them into the house. He might have
sat at that kitchen table to write out the will.”

Sam bristled. How could she explain the
feeling she got when she touched that envelope?

“Sam, it doesn’t prove any kind of foul play
by the nephew. Don’t you see that I wouldn’t have anything at all
that I could take to a prosecutor? I’m in my office today,” he
said. “Bring me the envelope with the will and I’ll see what kind
of tests we can run on it. Maybe we can get someone to analyze the
signature, if nothing else.”

Fifteen minutes later, she’d hopped in her
truck and was on her way downtown to the Sheriff’s Department. All
the way there, she debated what to say. In the end she decided the
whole truth was the only way.

“Can we talk privately?” she asked as soon as
he appeared.

“Sure.” He ushered her out into a small
courtyard. They sat on concrete benches in the shade.

She laid out the whole story, starting with
the day that Bertha Martinez had given her the wooden box. “The
rumors you heard about her being a witch. I’m beginning to think
maybe they were true,” she said. “How else can I explain the weird
stuff that’s been happening to me ever since I got that box?” He
leaned back, letting her finish the story.

She told him that she’d not noticed the green
marks in the Cantone house that first day—probably because she’d
hardly touched the box—but on other occasions when she’d actually
rubbed her hands over the box she’d been almost hyper-aware, seeing
the green residue.

“That’s what happened this morning, Beau. The
day I found this envelope I hadn’t handled the box. Today, after I
touched it, the marks became as clear as anything.”

“And you still see them now?” he asked,
holding it up.

“Yes! They’re almost brilliant green.”

To his credit, he didn’t laugh and he didn’t
freak out and leave her sitting there. He shook his head slowly and
she felt disheartened. He noticed her expression. “Sam, it’s not
that I don’t believe you. I know you to be honest and sincere. It’s
just that this isn’t something we can use to build a case. The
prosecutor would laugh me out of his office,
if
Sheriff
Padilla even let me go that far. And even the worst defense
attorney would tear the case to shreds.”

He was right of course. She knew that.

“But you could build a case based on lab
proof that the poisonous plant toxin was in the house and on the
will. And I’ll bet it’s the same plant toxin the lab showed in
Cantone’s body. Please, Beau, please come out there with me. I’ll
show you where it is and you gather the evidence.”

She felt his hesitation. “What?”

“I’m supposed to be working on this other
case now.” He lowered his voice. “Padilla is already hassling me
about this. It’s an election year. He’s a political animal and he
knows his chances of being re-elected hinge on people’s perception
that crime is under control. If a death can be ruled an accident
and quietly filed away, that’s how he wants it. If a case gets sent
to the prosecutor, it better be a damn strong one—something that
makes Padilla look good.”

“But surely he doesn’t want people getting
away with murder! If we could get the evidence . . .”

He gave a thin smile. “It would be a start.
But as I’ve told you before, we would have to prove that the nephew
administered the poison and we’d have to prove intent to kill his
uncle.”

“But at least it’s something,” she said. “I
can’t stand the idea of that poor old man dying such a horrible
death and this greedy nephew burying him in a hidden grave and
walking away with a fortune.”

“I agree about that,” he said. “The whole
thing really stinks.”

He stood up and they walked back to the
office. “Okay. An hour, tops. I’ll say it’s my lunch break. Let me
get a lab technician to come with us. The other thing we have to do
here is make sure that there are more than just the two of us
gathering this evidence. You’re already going to have some
explaining to do about how you got that envelope from Killington’s
house. And if all the evidence comes from my girlfriend, that’s
another thing a defense attorney will jump on like a dog on a
bone.”

Girlfriend?

He’d picked up the phone and punched a
two-digit intercom extension. “Lisa, can you take your lunch break
now? I need you to bring your lab kit and come with me. Five
minutes, my office.”

While they waited for Lisa, Beau stared at
the envelope Sam had handed him.

“You still see green all over this?” he
asked.

“You don’t? Nothing at all?”

“It looks like a white envelope and the page
inside looked like plain old paper,” he said. “Sam, I’m so sorry I
can’t verify it for you.”

She gave a dispirited shrug. What else could
she say? She didn’t want this ability to see and feel things that
no one else could experience, and she knew they couldn’t be
expected to believe her just because she said so. She suddenly
realized that her life would never be the same, as long as she
possessed that damned wooden box.

Chapter 23

Beau followed her red truck out the county
road and up to the Cantone property. Sam waited as he and Lisa got
out of his cruiser, then she unlocked the front door and led the
way into the house. The place smelled of loneliness. She tried to
imagine how it must have been when Cantone first moved in. Had he
immediately set up his work area and begun some new paintings? Had
the house held a vibrancy because of the old man’s creative energy?
If so, it was gone now.

“Take your time and tell me each place we
should test,” Beau said.

Sam wondered how much of her story he’d
explained to Lisa on the way out here. The tall girl with cropped
dark hair and pale skin didn’t comment on anything. She set the lab
kit down on the living room floor and opened the lid, busying
herself by pulling out some bottles and swabs. A stack of small
evidence envelopes went in one pocket of the apron she’d put
on.

Sam walked slowly through the living room,
finding one semi-circular green mark on an end table.

“Here,” she said. “It’s about the size and
shape that a wet drinking glass might make.” The green was much
more vivid than what she’d seen on the envelope with the will in
it.

Lisa took a clean swab and ran it over the
area Sam indicated, then placed the swab into one of the little
envelopes.

They moved on into the dining room, but Sam
didn’t spot any marks there. The kitchen was just as she’d left it
the last time—green swipe marks on the table and countertop. Faint
traces showed near the drain, and Sam remembered washing dishes
there, running quite a lot of water down the drain as she cleaned
the place. She was amazed that any residue was left at all, she
told Beau.

On to the bedrooms. In Cantone’s room she
didn’t find any trace of the green. A glance toward the open closet
reminded her that she still needed to get some paint and cover the
drywall patch where they’d cut the small mural out. In the second
bedroom her pulse quickened.

“Beau, it’s all over the place in here.”

“Do any of them look like fingerprints?” Lisa
asked. “Point those out to me.”

Bless the girl, Sam thought. She didn’t
question.

Sam spotted green prints at the light switch
and on the back edge of the door. Lisa quickly pressed fingerprint
tape over them and lifted them off.

“Here’s something that could be a handprint,”
Sam said. “Well, part of one.”

She showed them the area and Lisa lifted that
as well.

“Some of the smudges on the furniture are
blurry. Probably my fault. When I cleaned the house I dusted
everything.” She looked up at Beau. “Sorry. I didn’t see the marks
that first day.”

“It’s okay. You’re finding some good stuff
now. We’ll be able to compare the prints in various parts of the
house with what’s on the will. At least connect those.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get very good prints from the
body because of decomposition. But we can certainly get them from
the nephew.”

He asked Sam to go through the entire house
once again, paying attention to anyplace she hadn’t noticed
earlier. On the back of the kitchen door she saw the clearest
prints yet, a full palm print and fingers that wrapped around the
edge of the surface. As if someone had pulled the door closed as he
left.

While Lisa packed up her lab kit, Sam asked
Beau if he thought the information was valuable to solving the
case.

“First off, the lab will test to verify this
is the fatal poison. That way, if the prints are Bart Killington’s
we can tie him to the poisonous plant. That’s something. I’m going
to have to find a plant expert who can give us an idea whether
there is enough of the substance here to be fatal. If not, all Bart
has to do is claim that yes, he picked some of the plants and then
came inside and touched a variety of places in the house.”