“Sam, let’s dash back out there. To Cantone’s house? Please?”
She unlocked the truck. “Oh, Rupert, I’ve got all those cookies to bake . . .” And she wanted his help. She would get that a whole lot easier if she didn’t send him into a pout. “All right, but just a few minutes, okay?”
He seemed as delighted as a kid going to the carnival. The Anderson/Cantone place was only about fifteen minutes away. Sam was surprised to see that it was just a little past noon, anyway. She’d accomplished a lot already today so it shouldn’t matter that they take a quick side trip.
Rupert was beaming as she unlocked the door to the simple wood frame house. While he clearly regarded this as a near-shrine, knowing that his beloved artist had lived here, Sam merely saw it as sad, that such a respected man had ended up unable to pay for even this worn-down abode.
He headed straight for the front bedroom, where they’d found the art supplies and where the mural was painted. Even with it gone and the wall patched, Rupert seemed to sense the essence of the artist at work in the cramped space. Sam, meanwhile, went to the kitchen, updating her sign-in sheet, making sure that she’d left everything in order for the pending sale of the place.
At once she sensed something different. What was this greenish, powdery stuff on the wall near the table? And there—more of it near the sink. She’d wiped down the counter and table with disinfectant cleaner. She could see her circular wipe marks in dried swirls of green. No way she left it like this. She checked the back door. Still locked tight.
“What’s going on?” Rupert asked, peering around the doorjamb.
“Huh?”
“You cursed. I heard you say ‘what the f—’ all the way down the hall.”
“Look at this!” She pointed to the table. “I didn’t leave all that green stuff.”
“Uh-huh. Sam, there’s no green stuff.”
“Right there!” She flicked her fingers toward the wall. “And there. Powdery stuff on the wall. Swipe marks on the table.”
He was staring at her blankly.
“Stop it! No teasing.” She laughed but it came out sort of shaky. “Rupert, you’re scaring me. You do see this.” She wiped her finger across it and some of the green came off. She held it up to him.
“Honey, I see a table and a kitchen that looks perfectly clean. You’d never leave a mess behind in one of your places. You clean like the devil when you do these jobs.”
Sam felt like she’d been whacked. What the hell was going on? She rubbed at her eyes and blinked hard. The green stuff was still there. And her good friend was looking at her like she’d just sprouted horns.
“I want a third opinion.” She pulled out her phone and dialed Beau. No answer on his cell. Sam stopped herself. How crazy would it sound, trying to explain this to him?
Rupert was watching her from the doorway.
“You. Keep out of this,” she grumbled. He flinched and slinked away.
She stomped across the kitchen and flung the door open. It closed behind her, a lot more firmly than she’d intended. She strode over to the gaping hole in the back corner and stared into the empty grave for a good ten minutes. Maybe she was going crazy. Maybe not. But snapping at her friends wouldn’t solve anything.
She took a deep breath and headed back to the house.
Refusing to look closely at the kitchen walls, Sam went back to the bedroom where Rupert was sitting on the bed, looking like a whipped puppy. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” She sat down beside him.
“And I shouldn’t have doubted you. That’s not what friends do.” He took her hand.
“So, we’re good?”
“We’re good.” He patted her hand and gave it a light squeeze. “Want some help with those cookies?”
“Absolutely. I’ll just recheck all the locks first.”
He went out to the truck while Sam made the rounds, ignoring the green powder in several places. She rinsed her fingers at the kitchen sink and the substance came right off. So strange.
She drove back home, still shaky over the fact that she was seeing things other people couldn’t see, hoping that it wasn’t some alien concoction from the Planet Whatever.
Chapter 12
By two o’clock Rupert and Sam were up to their elbows in cookies. He’d completely moved past the earlier little tiff and pitched in with his practiced ease in the kitchen. As Sam mixed each new flavor of dough he operated the press and filled cookie sheets with neat rows of butter cookies, chocolate spritz, butter-mint whirls and more. She shuffled them in and out of the oven and onto cooling racks. As he worked up the final batch she prepared decorator icing and began piping a variety of tiny summer flowers onto the cooled ones. She loved to see how many different styles she could come up with, customizing every order so the customer always received a surprise.
A tap at the kitchen door caught her attention. Zoe turned the knob and came in.
“Hey. You guys must be way into your own zone,” she said. “I knocked at the front door twice. Figured you had to be here since your truck is out front.”
Sam gestured toward the counters and table, which were covered with racks of cookies at various stages of completion.
“Quick question and I’ll leave you alone,” Zoe said. “Can I borrow your truck tomorrow, for the day? Darryl’s just informed me that he’s working and needs his truck, and I have some furniture to take to the library’s garage sale fundraiser. I told them I’d also help haul away anything that doesn’t sell by five o’clock. They donate it to the homeless shelter.”
“Ooh. I have to get all these cookies delivered to Santa Fe.”
She leaned against the counter, wheels turning. “How about we trade vehicles? Can you fit all the cookies into my Subaru wagon?”
“That’ll work.”
“Let’s just trade keys now. Sounds like we’ll both be done by early evening and we can switch back then.”
Sam wiped frosting off her hands, fetched the truck keys from her backpack and got Zoe on her way. The rest of the baking operation went smoothly and she was surprised to see that it was only four o’clock as she started clearing the mixing bowls and putting the utensils to soak in the sink.
“You, girl, sure know how to roar through an order,” Rupert commented, plopping into one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m beat.”
She stared around the room. They’d accomplished an amazing amount of baking in a short time, and the results were stacked everywhere. “Thank goodness for triple-decked racks,” she said. “This kitchen is so inadequate.”
“Hey, you’ll get your shop. My offer still stands.”
He’d generously proposed to loan Sam the money to properly open Sweet’s Sweets. She had to admit that it was tempting to take him up on it. But she also knew that opening a retail store was a risky thing. There would be a lot of expenses that she couldn’t foresee, and she’d feel better if she could at least foot most of the bill herself, without the worry of repaying a loan. A flash of irritation, again, at her daughter for helping herself to the savings Sam had so carefully accumulated. She suppressed it and turned on a flame under the tea kettle.
“I think we can spare a few of these little beauties and have ourselves a proper tea,” she told Rupert, handing him a plate.
He chose an assortment of the cookies and she poured them each a cup of Earl Grey.
Sam woke up Sunday morning feeling satisfied. After she’d taken Rupert home—he swore that the cookies had given him renewed energy to get back to his writing—she’d pulled out disposable platters and carefully arranged the cookies in two nice displays, topping them with plastic covers. They’d made a couple dozen extras, just in case, and she made up a few sampler baggies. It never hurt to throw in a few gifts along the way.