Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery by Connie Shelton

and grill
hamburgers and she made a heck of an ice cream sundae. And that got
her a job as a camp cook.
    Sam made more money than she could have ever
dreamed of, and she met a blue-eyed charmer named Jake Calendar. By
that October, when it became obvious that it was going to stay
nighttime for the next five months and when she got her fill of
trudging out in the snowy dark of the line camp to puke into a
latrine every morning, Sam decided that another change was in
order. She never told Jake about the baby that would arrive the
next summer. She just took the company shuttle to Anchorage and
spent a little of her earnings on a plane ticket. She still
couldn’t face the idea of heading back to flat, Baptist Texas so
she landed in Denver. Longer days, but not a whole lot warmer. She
bought a used Jeep and headed south, determined not to let the
mountains out of her sight. When she landed in Taos, New Mexico,
she stopped.
    Kelly arrived on a beautiful May morning and
it was scary to see that the child had the same brilliant blue
eyes, curly brown hair and charm-you-out-of-anything ways as her
father.
    Those blue eyes fixed on Sam now, as she
walked into the kitchen.
    “Mom! Hi! Surprise!”
    “Kelly. What are you doing here?”
    She’d made herself right at home. Dishes were
piled in the sink, smeared in red sauce from the spaghetti Sam had
left in the fridge a few days earlier. Through the door to the
hall, she saw a large black suitcase on the bed in the guest room.
A guest room now. At one time it was Kelly’s and she still
obviously felt entitled.
    “You look great, Mom. Have you lost
weight?”
    Hardly. But that’s the kind of charmer Kelly
was. She had an amazing ability to ignore criticism and just plow
forward with a sunny outlook and a batch of compliments. That
cheery disposition got them through her teen years without a death
in the house.
    Sam plopped her pack on the counter and
washed her hands at the sink.
    “What time did you get in?” she asked. “You
should have told me you were coming. I would have made dinner.”
    “Oh that’s okay,” Kelly said. “I found
something.” As an afterthought she asked if Sam had eaten anything
and offered to warm the rest of the pasta. The tea kettle was hot
and so Sam pulled mugs from the cabinet and dunked teabags for both
of them.
    “So, you got a few days off?” she asked, once
they were settled at the table.
    “Well, that’s the thing.”
    I’m in trouble , Sam thought. “What
‘thing’?”
    “You know how I’ve been stressing over
Deborah lately.”
    Kelly’s supervisor truly did sound like the
office witch at the mid-sized corporation where she’d been working
her way up the ladder.
    “This week was the pits. She’s been on my ass
for two weeks, but it got to be more than her usual PMS or
whatever. She has it in for me, Mom. I can’t handle her
anymore.”
    They’d had this discussion by phone quite a
few times. Kelly swore she’d discussed Deborah’s behavior with
company management, that everyone else in the department agreed
with her, but that nothing ever changed. Sam had been sympathetic
but was getting the uneasy feeling that tea and sympathy wasn’t
what Kelly was after now.
    “I’ve quit,” she said.
    “Quit? A seventy-thousand a year job, and
you’ve just quit?”
    “It’s not like there aren’t better jobs, Mom.
I’m getting my résumé out there.”
    How many places could have possibly received
her résumé since, what, Friday? All sorts of thoughts went through
Sam’s head—mainly, how was Kelly going to pay back the cash she
taken. Unemployment money wasn’t an option if she’d just walked
out. And there certainly wouldn’t be any golden parachute.
    Kelly got up and went to the cookie jar,
helping herself to the last of the butter cookies. “Don’t stress
over this, Mom. Something great is going to come through.”
    Sam rinsed her mug and put the dirty dishes
into the dishwasher, refusing to guess at why Kelly