Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

and Beau’s boots
stomped across the room. She told Rupert goodbye and walked into the living
room.
    “What’s up?” Sam asked when she
saw Beau standing by the wide French doors that faced the back deck.
    “I can’t believe it!” He stared
into the deepening dusk. “Old man Mulvane is letting them in—just like that!”
    “Them?” Sam’s mind hadn’t quite
left the Killer Chef scene.
    “And he wasn’t even going to tell
me! I found out because Max Rodriguez called awhile ago, when I was making the
salad for dinner.”
    “I’m afraid I’m not really putting
all this together,” she said, standing beside him and leaning into his field of
view.
    “Sorry.” He took a deep breath.
“Okay, you know that the property bordering us on the west is Max’s. The sixty
acres to the east belongs to old man—uh, Bruce—Mulvane.”
    She nodded, although she’d barely
met either of the ranchers.
    “So, Mulvane just gave permission
to the Flower People to use his land this year. Last year, up near Del Norte,
Colorado, over a thousand of them showed up and stayed two months; they overran
several neighboring farms and did so much damage that the landowners are still
trying to get restitution. That will never happen—these are the free-love,
free-everything types who don’t think anything should cost money. It’ll be a
miracle if they don’t cut our fences and ruin the grazing land the horses need.”
    “Why on earth would Mulvane agree
to this?”
    Beau shook his head and paced
across the room. “I was over there just now . . . I’ve been hearing that he’s
slipping a little.” He tapped the side of his head. “Thought I could talk him
out of it, but he had a contract.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah, they may be
anti-establishment, but somebody in that group knows a bit about legalities.”
    “What can you do about it?”
    “I don’t know, but they’ll
probably start showing up this weekend.”

 
 
    Chapter
4

 
    Sam had no trouble waking up
Thursday morning at four-thirty. Beau had tossed and turned all night long. She
spent the morning at Sweet’s Sweets, going into high gear. While she cooked,
tempered and molded chocolate pueblos and flavored creams, Becky and Julio
worked to stock the shop for the next two days. Next week they would be baking triple
batches of cakes, brownies, cookies and cheesecakes.
    “If the festival doesn’t bring in
huge crowds, we’ll have inventory to last until Christmas,” Becky said as she
helped Sam box up the chocolates.
    “I sure hope not. I won’t exactly
be able to sell these as fresh beyond next week. We might have to brace
ourselves for an all-time big sale.”
    “It’ll work out. Don’t worry.
Everyone in town loves your recipes.
They will turn out in droves.”
    Speaking of droves, Sam thought of
Beau’s concern over cattle getting into his alfalfa fields if the invading
hippies should break down the fences. She knew he’d planned to go to the
courthouse this morning to see what he could legally do to keep them out. And as
long as her mind was on the subject of out-of-control situations, she
remembered that her unharmonious committee was set to meet at Carinda Carter’s
apartment this afternoon. She let out a sigh and tried to envision a day,
somewhere in the future, where all this drama would be a thing of the past.
    Carinda had emailed her address to
everyone—a small set of duplexes on a quiet side street not far from Sam’s old
house where she’d lived for nearly thirty years before marrying Beau and moving
out to his ranch. Sam parked in one of the outer slots marked for visitors,
noting a few other familiar vehicles. She tucked her burgeoning file folder
under one arm and picked up the bakery box of sugar cookies she’d brought along
in hopes of keeping everyone happy.
    The eight units formed a square
around a neatly landscaped patch of ground with colored lava rock for ground
cover and xeriscape plantings, some of the few things that were