Bitter Sweet by Connie Shelton Page B

Marshall
Gray before the day is over.”
    “That’s okay. It’s better to
learn the truth and then to get this guy if he’s guilty.” She watched Beau back
his cruiser out and hit the lights and siren. When he got in a hurry, he really
could move.
    She picked up a fast-food burger
and took it back to Sweet’s Sweets with her, feeling a tingle of anticipation
along with a sense of being out of the loop. She hoped Beau would keep her up
to date as the afternoon went on, but knew that mainly he just had to do his
job.
    Hoping to find answers about
Sadie Gray’s death were one thing, coming back to a bakery backed up with
orders was another and, as Sam discovered when she walked in the door, the more
urgent.
    “Two more weddings for this
weekend,” Becky said, pointing toward the new order forms Jen had laid on Sam’s
desk.
    Sam stared at the pages, feeling
a little out-of-body as she forced her mind away from Sadie’s death, the empty
house and the whole drama unfolding as Beau and the Dallas police tried to stop
Marshall Gray from leaving the country. No matter what else was going on in the
world, these brides would truly believe that their weddings were the most
important events on earth, and Sam knew that the cakes better be done right.
    She spread out the order forms
for the coming week, calculated her supplies of sugar, butter and flour and
called her wholesaler for more. After tallying the number and sizes of layers
to be baked, she made up task lists: what to bake on what day, what colors of
each type of icing to make, and how to fit all the custom orders into the flow of
the normal work day. In twenty minutes she felt that she had a better handle on
it— if she could figure out how to invent a forty-eight hour day.
    She cranked up the big mixer and
began dumping in eggs, sugar and flour, lining up cake pans and filling the
large bake oven with as many as she could do at a time. Tomorrow’s cakes went
into the fridge, everything for the day after into the freezer. As long as she
could keep track of the constant flow of what-went-where on each day, it would
all come out right.
    “And how soon do you plan to get
more help?” Becky asked as Sam emptied four more pans and began to mix another
batch of batter.
    She really couldn’t sustain this
pace and wait until autumn for help to arrive. She knew it but wasn’t sure when
she could pause long enough to hire and train someone else.
    “An option, if I might offer it,”
Becky said, not looking up from the icing rose she was forming on a flower
nail. “I know a guy that worked at a commercial bakery in Albuquerque. He’s a
buddy of Don’s from high school. Just lost the job in the city and came back
here until he figures out what to do next.”
    “Does he want to stay in Taos
permanently?”
    “No idea. But he has family here
and it might work in with his plans.” Becky set the current flower on a tray
and started another.
    “Give him a call. If he can run
the Hobart and follow a recipe he would be a big help. It would free me up for
decorating. If he would wash pans and do the occasional delivery he would be a
lifesaver.”
    Becky laughed. “You’ll have to
negotiate all that with him.” She carried her tray of roses to the fridge and
picked up the phone. With a call to her husband to get his friend’s number,
followed by another, she’d set up an appointment for Julio to be at the bakery
in an hour.
    “I hope that was okay,” she said
to Sam. “He seemed eager to come by. Hopefully, you can interview while you
decorate . . . this chocolate ganache is a little beyond my expertise.”
    When a noisy motorcycle rumbled
up to the back door and a muscular man with tattoos up the back of his neck and
a cotton ‘do-rag’ around his shaved head stepped into the bakery, Sam almost
negated the whole idea. But he had a pleasant smile and an honest look in his
deep chocolate eyes. He smelled clean and spoke softly. No one said bikers
couldn’t be