Chili Con Carnage (19 page)

“I won’t be gone long,” I promised Sylvia even though I was sure she already had visions of jasmine bubbles dancing in her head and she probably didn’t care. “I’m going to go talk to Alphonse one more time.”

“But what are you going to say to him?” she asked.

I admitted I had no idea and headed for the door. “Maybe I’ll just cut to the chase,” I told her. “Maybe I’ll just come right out and accuse him of the murder and see what happens.”

• • •

My back was pressed to the wall.

My eyes were wide with terror.

My breaths came hard and fast, but nobody could hear the staccato sound of me hyperventilating.

Not when Alphonse’s chain saw was whirring just three feet in front of me.

“You must have misunderstood me,” I yelled. A waste of time because Alphonse wasn’t listening. His jaw set and his eyes gleaming with bloody murder (Yikes! The very thought turned my knees to mush), he revved the engine and the saw spun faster and louder, the silver chain swirling around and around in a sort of hypnotizing vortex that nearly sucked me in.

That is, until I saw the saw him move a step closer.

“I never said—”

Alphonse poked the chain saw at me and I screamed, ducked, and darted to my right. We were in the workshop behind his adobe house on the fringes of Taos and there weren’t any nearby neighbors. Not that it mattered. Even if there were, they wouldn’t have paid any attention, would they? It couldn’t have been unusual to hear Alphonse’s chainsaw whizzing away inside his workshop.

Screams. That would be unusual.

I let out a scream at the top of my lungs.

It was lost in the noise of the chain saw.

Hoping to appease him, I held out both hands, but not too far since I wasn’t sure how fast a big guy like Alphonse could move while holding a chain saw. “I was just shooting the breeze,” I yelled. “I didn’t really accuse you of anything.”

But, of course, I had.

Alphonse had been pretty surprised to see me when I showed up at his door, but hey, except for the fact that he apparently had murderous tendencies, he wasn’t a bad guy. When I expressed an interest in his work, he showed me around back to the workshop. And when I tried to engage him in conversation that might lead to talk of Puff’s murder . . .

Well, I guess that’s where I made my first mistake.

With each of his footfalls shaking the room like the passing of a giant, Alphonse closed in on me. I ducked behind a chair and the saw came down and cut into the back of it. Wood chips sprayed around me like shrapnel and I screamed and covered my head.

It took him a second to get the saw out of where it was snagged in the chair back, and I took the opportunity to pop to my feet and steady myself against a table heaped with wood scraps. I grabbed a piece of wood about as long as a ruler and as thick as a Polish sausage and winged it at Alphonse.

I missed and the piece of wood clattered to the floor.

Too freakin’ terrified to take my eyes off him, I groped around behind me until I felt my hand close around another hunk of wood. This one was thicker than the last one, and I grabbed it and hefted it in both hands like some awesome martial arts expert in a movie.

When Alphonse and I had been talking, I’d never come right out and said the word
murder
, or even mentioned Puff’s name for that matter, but it hadn’t taken me long to realize that my conversation with Alphonse was going nowhere. Mistake number two. I was tired and frustrated, and I’d let down my guard.

“I know about your connection with Roberto,” I’d told Alphonse, sure to leave out the part about the little blue pills because, come on, I wasn’t there to embarrass the guy. “And I know what else you’ve been up to.”

Yes, I’d actually said it. Just like that. Like some private eye in some old black-and-white movie. “I know what else you’ve been up to.”

I was hoping that one leading yet unspecific phrase would get Alphonse to talk about Puff, and maybe get him to mention his alibi for Saturday night.

Instead . . .

Instead, he’d turned around, and when he turned back again, he had the chain saw in his hands and murder in his eyes.

He still did.

Even as I stood there, my heart hammered and my blood pumped and my all-too-short life flashed before my eyes. That’s when Alphonse took another step forward.

Thanks to the table, I couldn’t step back, but I did manage to slide to my right. It was a long way to the door and I’d have to get by Alphonse to make it, but the way I saw things, it was my only chance.

Or maybe not.

At the same time I pulled in a breath for courage, ready to make a run for it, car lights crawled up the drive and skimmed the wall. Alphonse saw them, too, and surprised to have another visitor, he spun toward the door.

Adrenaline is a funny thing. Paralyzed one second, I shot forward the next, and gripping that piece of wood like there was no tomorrow, I whacked Alphonse over the head.

By the time I heard a car door slam and Nick raced into the workshop, Alphonse was crumpled at my feet. I guess the chain saw had some sort of safety switch because as soon as he went down like a stone and it hit the floor, the engine cut off.

“What the hell—”

I didn’t give Nick a chance to finish. I jumped from foot to foot—blame it on the adrenaline—and pointed at Alphonse with the piece of wood still in my hands.

“He tried to kill me. With a chain saw!”

Big points for Nick, this statement might have been a tad odd, but he didn’t question it. In fact, he picked up the saw and deposited it on the other side of the room, then slipped a pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket. (Nick carried handcuffs? I filed that interesting bit of trivia in the back of my mind and promised myself I’d ask him about it one of these days.) By the time he turned Alphonse over to tuck his hands behind his back and slap the cuffs on, the big guy was groaning like . . . well, like someone had hit him over the head with a slab of wood.

Like a drunk afraid of what would happen to his head if he let in too much light, Alphonse’s eyes inched open and I swear they were still spinning. He made a move to get up, and whether it was because he was dizzy or he realized his hands were cuffed, I don’t know, but he gave up without a fight and fell back against the wooden floor. “That crazy bitch . . .” Alphonse’s words floated like his unfocused gaze. “She . . . hit me.”

I stepped forward. “I was defending myself. I just came to talk to the guy,” I explained to Nick, “and he came at me with the saw.”

“Wasn’t going to hurt . . . just wanted . . . to scare. I had to . . . had shut you up.” Alphonse struggled to sit up and when he finally did, he propped his back against the wall. His head fell back, and a trickle of blood snaked over his bald head from the spot where wood met skull.

My stomach flipped, and I dropped the piece of wood.

“You said . . .” Alphonse ran his tongue over his lips. “You said you knew . . . what I was up to. Had to . . . had to shut you up.”

Nick already has his phone out, all set to dial the local police, but at this, he hesitated. He stood near Alphonse’s feet, the better to level him with a look. “Are you confessing, Mr. Rettinger?”

Alphonse didn’t exactly shake his head. It was more like it dipped from side to side, like his neck wasn’t strong enough to hold it up. “Yeah. I did it. Just don’t let . . .” When he looked at me, his eyes were crossed. “Don’t let that crazy lady near me again.”

I just about whooped with triumph. “You did it? You killed Puff?”

Alphonse’s eyes cleared. His jowls trembled. “Killed? Hey!” He looked to Nick for support. “I didn’t kill . . . didn’t kill nobody. You’ve got to believe me. I never said—”

“You said you did it.”

Alphonse groaned. Little by little, he came out of his whack-induced daze and the reality of everything that happened dawned. And not in a good way.

“I didn’t kill nobody,” he said, and he looked at Nick. “And I wasn’t going to kill her. I just need her to shut up . . . and leave me alone. When she said . . .” His tongue darted out from between his teeth and over his lips again and call me a softy, but I hated to see the guy suffer. There was a bottle of water on a nearby workbench, and I uncapped it and held it to Alphonse’s lips.

“I thought she was here to shake me down,” he said when he was finished drinking. “You know, on account of how she knew. About the wood.”

Over Alphonse’s prostrate form, Nick and I exchanged glances and with a barely perceptible nod, he gave me the go-ahead for what I was planning on doing, anyway.

“I do know about the wood,” I said, lying through my teeth and wondering what the hell we were talking about. “So why don’t you just tell Nick here the whole story. If you’re straight with him, maybe he can cut you a break.”

I think Nick was actually going to do something stupid like mention that he had no official authority, but Alphonse didn’t give him a chance. He sagged against the wall. “The wood,” he said, looking over at the table and the stacks of logs beyond. “The wood I use for my sculptures. It’s Gambel oak. From a protected forest up near Wind Mountain. It’s where those Mexican spotted owls . . .” He hauled in a breath. “That’s where those bird live and heck, who cares about the stupid owls. The wood is great for carving and . . .” The enormity of his position crashed down on him. “Shoot, if the feds find out, I’m going to have to pay some huge, freakin’ fine, huh?”

“You’ll be lucky if that’s all that happens to you.” Nick dialed the phone, spoke briefly to the person on the other end, and ended the call.

When he stepped away from Alphonse, I followed him and he put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Automatically, I looked down. My arms and legs were still attached. The way the night was going, I figured that was good news. I picked wood chips out of my hair. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Except—”

Remember what I said about adrenaline and how it makes you do funny things? A wave of it hit like a tsunami and my knees buckled and my stomach did a one-eighty. I grabbed hold of Nick and held on for dear life, one thought cascading through my head.

“I almost got turned into sushi? Because of Mexican spotted owls?”

It cost us thirty bucks to park the RV and the Palace for one night in a shabby-enough-to-make-Sylvia’s-top-lip-curl campground about six miles east of Taos. We could have gotten a better rate if we paid for a full week, but until we talked to Sylvia’s attorney and found out if she was allowed to leave the state, one day at a time seemed like the way to go.

That taken care of, I called the same taxi company that had taken me to Alphonse’s studio on Monday night, Sylvia and I got dolled up, and we headed to Carter Donnelly’s hotsy-totsy fund-raiser.

Yes, yes . . . I know. Carter and I had not parted on the best of terms, what with me asking him about his connection to Puff’s murder and all. But hey, I hadn’t stopped looking for answers and besides, I had two five-hundred-dollar tickets in my hot little hands and Carter did owe me dinner. I was still plenty steamed about the chicken and Cotija sandwich he’d walked off with.

No big surprise that the taxi dropped us at a drop-dead-gorgeous spa where a couple fountains trickled their welcome out front, a couple guys in tuxedos held the doors open for us, and a host of well-dressed Taos A-listers milled around the lobby.

I was glad I’d chosen to wear the sleeveless black number cut up to here and down to there that I’d once bought in honor of Edik and his band’s appearance at a gig at the Hard Rock in Chicago. The looks I got from guys told me it was the right decision.

The room where the main event would take place—and in front of TV cameras, too—had a wide counter with mirrors above it so when Carter worked his culinary magic, all one hundred of us big-time rollers could see what he was doing. According to the woman who welcomed us to what she called an “exclusive and exciting event,” when Carter finished preparing each course, we’d get a taste.

“As long as it’s not sushi,” I grumbled to Sylvia and I didn’t need to explain why. Twenty-four hours later, and I was still getting the heebie-jeebies when I thought about Alphonse and that chain saw of his.

“Good thing Nick just happened to stop by looking for you last night,” she said. “And good thing you told me you were going to Alphonse’s so I could tell him where to find you. Only why . . .” No way this was the first time this had occurred to her, but Sylvia acted like it was. Sugary sweetness. That’s exactly what she was. Oh yes, and dying of curiosity, too! “Why would Nick stop to look for you, anyway?”

Why, indeed.

According to what he had told me while we waited for the local cops to come and haul Alphonse away and I was shaking like a leaf in a windstorm and feeling so close to being sick I actually ran outside twice, Nick had stopped by the fairgrounds to look for me because he knew I was going to poke my nose somewhere it didn’t belong and he wanted to be sure that wherever that somewhere was, he could swoop in like a superhero and save my life.

I was not buying this explanation and, in fact, I told Nick so. This was after my second trip outside, and by that time I was feeling a little more confident, even if I wasn’t any less shaky.

“Admit it, Nick,” I said with a little gleam in my eye designed to make him wonder if I was serious, “you came by because you can’t live without me.”

I thought it was as funny as hell until reality hit and I wondered if maybe he’d come by because he knew Sylvia was back, and he was really there to see her.

Suddenly, it wasn’t so funny after all, and I was feeling sick all over again.

A full day after my near-death experience at the end of Alphonse’s chain saw, and it still wasn’t funny.

I slid a look over to where Sylvia sat looking like some European princess in an icy white suit and pink crystal jewelry, and I panicked when I realized that when the lights came on, she’d twinkle like a homecoming queen. I’d chosen seats in the last row for a reason: I wanted to keep an eye on Carter and not be seen. Luckily, a fairly broad man and his equally wide wife took the seats directly in front of us, and just in time, too. When Tessa, Carter’s sous chef, did a last-minute check of the set and brought out bowls of perfectly cut-up veggies, there was no way she could see us.

“Looks like she hasn’t walked out on him yet,” I told Sylvia. I’d already explained how Tessa had been on my suspect radar, briefly, when I’d thought Carter might have been on the wrong end of a very bad joke that had Roberto’s body as the punch line. “She’s plenty mad at Carter,” I reminded Sylvia. “On account of how he promised her a TV show of her own and then he changed his mind.”

“Shhh.” When Carter walked out, Sylvia poked me. “They’re starting.”

What I discovered over the next few hours was that taping a TV show is as exciting as watching cement dry. We sat for more than an hour watching Carter go through the motions, and all we had to show for our efforts was a very small plate of a very weedy salad. “You think he’s ever going to get that soup finished?” I asked Sylvia.

She’d just finished praising the salad as “artistic,” whatever that means, and she shot me a look. The next instant, she remembered that we were supposed to be new best friends. “He’s working on it,” she said, except that wasn’t exactly true. While Carter stood back with his arms folded over his very clean apron, Tessa was running around the set like Ms. Pac-Man with a ghost on her tail. She brought out a bowl of chopped celery and Carter peered into it and nodded his approval. She presented a bowl that contained chunks of carrots and rutabaga, and he gave that his thumbs-up, too. Tessa disappeared, the cameras rolled, and—thank goodness—ten minutes later we had a shot-glass-sized taste of soup.

Through all this, Carter was his usual self. Confident, charming, and a heck of a lot sexier than I ever imagined a chef could be. He was a showman, and he proved it with every wave of his hand. “Main course!” Carter’s smile was infectious. I saw the folks in the front row nod in response. “Stuffed veal breast!”

There was a refrigerator the size of our RV behind Carter and he went over there and brought out a roast all ready to get popped into the oven. I hoped it was just for show and there was already one in there cooking, but before I could do the math on how long a veal breast took to cook, Carter waved a hand over the roast.

“You’ll notice I’ve tied it,” he said. “That’s so the roast keeps its shape, and also so the stuffing doesn’t fall out. If you tie your roasts, they’ll also cook more evenly.”

He popped the roast in a pan and took the pan over to a nearby oven.

“Looks delicious,” Sylvia whispered.

Only I wasn’t listening. There was something about that roast that looked familiar and sparked a memory of soldiers standing in a row.

A couple seconds later, the light dawned, and I sat up like a shot. “Sylvia!” I whispered and grabbed her arm right before I slipped out of my seat “I’m going backstage to wait for Carter Donnelly!”

• • •

I never did get a chance to try the veal breast, the roasted vegetables that went along with it, or the potatoes Carter insisted were “down-home comfort food” even though the recipe called for baby squid tentacles, caviar, and some variety of olives I’d never heard of.

Maybe it was just as well. By the time the taping was over and Carter stopped into a room with soft terra-cotta colored walls for a couple minutes of downtime before he needed to go mingle with the masses, my stomach was jumping like a hooked fish. Squid tentacles wouldn’t have helped.

“You.” He stopped just inside the door and eyed me with something very much like suspicion. “What have you come to accuse me of now?”

“Not a thing. Honest!” I held up one hand, Boy Scout style, as if that would prove it. “As a matter of fact . . .” I don’t play games. It doesn’t suit me and it’s a waste of time, but sometimes, even the most confirmed non-game-player has to make an exception. When I closed in on Carter, I made sure I did it nice and slow so he had plenty of time to notice the low-cut dress and the killer stilettos (recently returned from the Taos police) I usually wore with my Chili Chick costume. “I stopped by to thank you for the tickets, and to invite you over to the Palace tonight. I thought a little late-night chili might be just the thing after you’ve worked so hard.”

“You want to serve me chili?” He was skeptical but interested. Oh yeah, I noticed the way he skimmed a look from the top of my head to the heels of those stilettos and back again. He was plenty interested. “Why?”

“I did sort of accuse you of Puff’s murder. And hey . . .” I leaned in nice and close. “As far as I’m concerned, nothing says I’m sorry like a bowl of hot, spicy chili.”

He tried not to smile, but hey, Carter is a guy, and he just couldn’t help himself. He saw the possibilities, just like I hoped he would. “You’re not going to accuse me of murder this time?” he asked.

“Cross my heart.” I did, and watched him watching me when my finger skimmed my breasts. He was so busy that he missed what my other hand was doing.

That one was behind my back and my fingers were crossed.

• • •

Carter brought champagne and I mean, really, I had to give the guy credit. Seedy campground, middle of nowhere, and there we were in the Palace. Even so, he still thought of champagne. I let him open it while I dished up two steaming bowls of what was left of the chili I’d made a couple days earlier. Leftovers, tacky? Not at all!

Years ago, Jack had taught me that nothing could make a bowl of leftover chili take on a new twist like adding a few peppers that weren’t in it the first time around. Words to live by. When I heated up the chili, I threw in a little bit of Naga Bhur Jolokia (also known as ghost chili), one of the hottest peppers on the planet. I’d promised Carter hot and spicy, hadn’t I? It was time to deliver.

“I’m glad you decided to come.” I pointed to the stool across the table from where I sat, and he poured champagne in paper cups and sat down. “I thought you were mad at me.”

He took a sip, nodded his approval, and drank a little more. “I was. It’s not every day a man of my standing gets accused of committing a murder or of dealing in . . . what did you call them? Magic beans?”

I blew on the chili on my spoon. I’d already tasted the concoction while I was warming it, and I knew it was spicy enough to take the paint off walls. Fine by me. I liked my chili with a nuclear kick.

Carter? Not so much. He took one taste and his cheeks shot through with color. “Wow.” He blinked, took another drink of champagne and blinked some more. “Wow.”

“Sorry, no baby squid tentacles.” I had considered the possibility—briefly—and decided it would be a waste of perfectly good chili. “But there are some of Puff’s beans in the chili. Jack bought a huge amount of them earlier in the year, and now, I’m glad since whoever torched Puff’s trailer . . . well, they made sure there wouldn’t be any beans left. Or any magic beans. It really was a brilliant way to get rid of any evidence.”

Carter rolled his eyes. “You said you didn’t invite me here to accuse me of anything.”

“And I’m not. Honest.” I spooned up another delicious bite of chili and popped it in my mouth. “I’m just curious, that’s all. About what you said about your restaurant.”

Carter’s smile was tight. “You mean about how successful it is.”

“I mean about how it almost went under a few years ago. You told me that. You said you’d turned things around and I just wondered, that’s all, if channeling Puff’s product through your restaurant—”

“That’s it.” Carter popped off the stool, and for a second I thought he was going to walk out. I prayed he wouldn’t take the champagne with him. I couldn’t read the label since it was in French, so I couldn’t say for sure what kind it was, but the stuff was mighty tasty. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this again. I didn’t kill Puff, you got that?”

“Okay. All right. Relax.” I tapped a hand against the table, inviting him to sit back down. “I believe you. But like I said, there are a lot of loose ends, and I’m just trying to tie them all up. Tie them up . . .” Over the rim of my paper cup, I kept my eyes on Carter. “You know, like you tied up that veal roast.”

“Magic beans and veal roasts.” He either was truly confused or he was a great actor. Guess which one I was betting on? “You really are talking crazy. Maybe something in my dinner tonight didn’t agree with you.”

“Weeds never agree with me, but that doesn’t matter since I didn’t have much of a chance to eat, anyway. I was too busy thinking.”

Carter dropped onto his stool and dared another bite of chili. This time he didn’t flush quite as much. He set down his spoon, the better to give me his full attention. “The chili’s hotter than Hades, but I’m actually enjoying it. So let’s just get this over with, then I can settle back and finish eating and you can share your recipe. It’s the least I deserve for playing what’s looking more and more like a game. You spent the evening thinking. I bet you can’t wait to tell me what you were thinking about.”

“Exactly.” I pointed his way with my spoon. “Here’s the deal. Puff killed Roberto. But I’m guessing you already knew that. I’m guessing you already know why, too. Roberto was involved in an illegal business. He and his cronies were making fake pharmaceuticals. You know, those little blue pills some guys take to jazz up their love lives. Puff knew it because Puff bought the pills from Roberto, and Roberto tried to blackmail him about it.”