Death by Devil's Breath (10 page)

He unzipped, and I shot forward and peeled out of the chili. When I did, a shower of powder hit the wooden floor.

“What the hell!” Nick looked from where I was hopping like a jumping bean on a hot sidewalk to the sprinkle of brownish dust on the floor. He dipped a finger into the powder, then instantly brushed it off. “It’s itching powder. I saw bags of it down in the gift shop. You know, gag gifts. I was looking for something I could send my nephews.”

“Well, it’s no gift!” I waved my arms up and down.

“You’d better not.” Nick put a hand on my shoulder when I started to scratch. “Your skin is red and irritated.” He lifted the back of my purple shirt and peeked. “It’s even worse on your back and your neck. Something tells me scratching it will only make it worse.”

“Well, I’ve got to do something!” I wailed. Tears streamed down my cheeks and mixed with the itching powder on my face. “Nick, it hurts!”

“Right.” He kicked the costume to the back of the bordello, but just as he went up front to shut the door and put out the
Closed
sign, Sylvia walked in. She had a bag from one of the hotel shops in one hand and an iced green tea in the other.

“Hi, Nick!” Didn’t it figure, she noticed the gorgeous hunk and completely ignored her half sister, fidgeting and crying in the corner. “What brings you here?”

“Maxie needs help.” Nick zigzagged around Sylvia and headed in my direction. “Someone’s—”

“Someone?” Sure there were tears streaming down my face, and my skin felt like it was on fire. That didn’t stop me from pointing a finger at Sylvia. “That was a sick prank.”

Sylvia clicked her tongue. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But why . . .” She gave me a careful look. “Why are you so red?”

I jumped up and down and waved my arms. “I’m itching to death!” I wailed. “Because you . . .” Another pointed finger that she completely ignored. “You’re a sneak, Sylvia. And I won’t let you get away with this. I’ll get even.”

She closed in on me, her golden brows low over her eyes and her gaze on the welts on my neck. “You think I did that to you?” Sylvia tsked her opinion. “You don’t know me very well.”

“I do know you very well. That’s just—” The itching on my back intensified and I screeched. “The costume was right there.” I swung my finger away from Sylvia and toward the back of the bordello. “You had all morning to mess with it.”

“Because you were gone all morning, and most of the afternoon doing I don’t know what.” The way she nodded made her golden hair gleam in the overhead lights. “I may have been justified wanting to get even since you abandoned me and left me to do all the work all day, but I didn’t do it, Maxie, I swear.”

Nick stepped between us. “And right about now, none of it matters. You . . .” He looked at Sylvia, then at the front door, where a group of loud-talking women had just stepped in. “You have customers. And you . . .” Before I had a clue what he was about to do so I could make sure he didn’t, Nick twirled me around and shooed me toward the door. “The only thing that’s going to help you is a long shower. I’m taking you back to the RV. Now.”

*   *   *

Don’t ask me how Nick knew I needed a little pick-me-up, but when I got out of the shower, I found him sitting on the bench behind the driver’s seat of the RV. There was a can of Coke open on the table in front of him, and when he saw me, he poured it over ice and told me to sit down and drink.

“Better?” he asked.

I took a long glug of soda. The bubbles tickled my throat, and I nodded. Just like Nick had instructed me before I showered, I’d put the clothes I’d been wearing into a garbage bag and I swept the bathroom floor and rinsed down the shower really well to make sure that none of the itching powder still lingered. I’d hauled the garbage bag out of the bathroom with me, and I pointed to it.

“You going to take it and collect evidence?”

I guess the way he raised his eyebrows should have told me everything I needed to know.

“Come on, Nick.” I slapped the table. “That’s got to be a crime. Sylvia—”

“It wasn’t Sylvia. She was clueless.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Sylvia’s always clueless.”

“Well, this time, clueless in a good way. I don’t think she’s the one who put the itching powder inside your costume.”

“Then who—”

His shrug said it all. “The costume was out all day, right? While you were . . .”

I timed my next glug of soda just right so that I didn’t have to answer him, but when I was done and he still waited, I grumbled. “Doing stuff,” I said. It was all he needed to know. “Like talking to Bernadette and finding that creepy altar.”

“But you haven’t explained why you were talking to Bernadette.”

He was bound to ask sooner or later. Good thing I realized that and had already come up with an answer. “Like I said, she used to work at the Showdown. We’re old friends.” It was the second time that day that I’d allowed the lie to slip past my lips. This time, I washed it away with caffeine, cola, and bubbles. “I saw her at the contest, but what with Dickie dropping over dead and all, I didn’t have time to say hello. So I went to find her.”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t say it like he believed it.

I pretended he did.

While I’d showered, Nick had found the bag of Chips Ahoy! I saved for chocolate emergencies and he grabbed one cookie for himself and pushed the package across the table toward me. “I decided not to get that itching powder for my nephews,” he said.

“You think?” I grabbed two cookies and chomped them down. “That stuff should be illegal. I still . . .” I jiggled my shoulders. “I feel like I’ve got a sunburn.”

“No worries.” Apparently while I was washing away somebody’s idea of a sick joke, Nick had been a busy boy. He’d ducked out and gone to Creosote Cal’s gift shop, and now he grabbed a plastic bag from the seat next to him and reached inside for a bottle of aloe lotion. He handed it across the table to me.

“Thanks.” I popped open the bottle and smoothed the lotion over my arms and legs, sighing as it soaked in and relieved the sting.

“The rest of you, too.” Nick grabbed the bottle, then crooked a finger to tell me to come over to his side of the bench.

“You’re not going to—”

“Stop being a baby!” He grabbed my hand and tugged me nearer, and I had no choice but to slide across the bench, get up, and sit down next to him. It was that or lose my fingers. “Turn around,” he ordered.

I twirled on my butt so that I was at a right angle to the table. When I got out of the shower, I’d put on a fresh pair of khaki shorts and one of the T-shirts we sold at the Palace. It was the green of an unripe habanero and there was a caricature of Jack on the front, a wide grin on his face and a halo of colorful chili peppers circling his head.

“Come on.” Nick poked me in the back. “Pull it up.”

I’m not a prude. I mean, not like Sylvia. And I’m certainly no stranger to guys’ attempts (sometimes successful, sometimes not) to get me into bed. That didn’t explain the sudden knot of emotion that blocked my breathing. Or the way my heart pounded against my ribs.

“You shy?” Nick asked.

“No.” I couldn’t talk the talk and not walk the walk, so I pulled my T-shirt up to my armpits.

And waited.

One heartbeat. Two. Three.

When I finally looked over my shoulder to see what he was up to, I saw Nick staring at my bare back, the bottle of lotion in one hand.

“Well, are you going to do it or aren’t you?” I asked him.

He snapped out of his daze. “You’re not wearing—”

Too bad he was looking at my back or he would have seen the way I rolled my eyes.

“You try putting on a bra when your skin’s red and itchy. And since I’m red and itchy . . .”

“Oh yeah. Sure.” He opened the bottle, and I heard the burping noise it made when he squirted lotion on his hand. “It might sting,” he warned.

It did.

The second the lotion touched my skin, I winced and I would have moved away if Nick’s other hand didn’t settle on my shoulder to hold me in place.

“It will only take a minute,” he assured me, and I guess he was probably right, but in that minute when his fingers smoothed the lotion over my irritated skin and his hand slipped over my ribs and down to my waist, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Although according to Sylvia, that’s not where I’m going when I die.

For all I knew, Sylvia was right. About how I’d spent my life wasting my talents and my time. About how I always chose the wrong guys to fall in love with and how I did whatever I could to dodge work and how I didn’t listen to her when she was generous enough to offer advice.

Right about then, I honestly didn’t care.

Not about anything but the cool touch of the lotion against my irritated skin.

And the smooth sweep of Nick’s hand.

And the heat that built inside me like the lava in some Pacific island volcano.

“Done.” Nick’s voice snapped me out of my stupor. “I’ll let you . . .”

When I sat up and turned, he pointed to the front of my T-shirt with the bottle of lotion.

“Yeah. Sure.” I snatched the bottle out of his hand and stood, and like it was on fire, Nick popped off the vinyl-covered bench and raced for the door.

“I’ll take . . .” He grabbed the garbage bag with the Chick costume in it. “And I’ll see you later and . . .”

And what, I’d never know.

Nick hotfooted it out of the RV as if that devil Sylvia said was waiting down below for me was right on his heels.

CHAPTER 7

The Chili Chick was trashed.

Well, the costume was, anyway, although with the way the day was going, the wearer of the costume was thinking it might not be a bad idea.

On the plus side, the nice folks in the hotel who took care of things like the blackjack dealers’ cowboy outfits and the waitresses’ pseudo-Western leather shorts and vests said they’d clean up the costume for me.

On the downside, they promised they’d have the Chick back in business in no time.

No time too soon, I hoped.

Firmly holding on to the excuse that I could not possibly work because the Chick was out of commission, I neglected to return to the Palace and instead headed out to find Yancy Harris.

The why was a no-brainer. Back when Reverend Love announced that she’d seen Yancy sprinkling a mysterious white powder into a bowl, nobody seemed all that surprised to think he’d put poison in Dickie’s chili.

And that made me plenty curious.

Both about Yancy and about the people who were all too eager to point an accusatory finger in his direction.

As it turned out, though, Yancy was not scheduled to appear at Creosote Cal’s that Thursday night so I had no choice but to put on my saddest face and stop in at the HR Department. I had, after all, I told the receptionist with tears in my eyes, been there for Dickie’s sudden and unfortunate demise and Yancy and I planned to get together to share our feelings about the traumatic event. Just as I hoped, the receptionist was a softie and only too glad to help.

Yancy’s home address clutched in my hot little hands, I headed out to a neighborhood of single-story homes, rock-and-sand front yards, and scrubby landscaping.

Not exactly what I pictured when I thought of a Vegas headliner.

Then again, Yancy wasn’t exactly a Sin City legend.

I knocked on the security bars on Yancy’s front door and gave him plenty of time to answer. The guy was blind, after all, and I figured it would take him longer than most folks to get around. No answer, and after a couple minutes of standing there tapping my foot, I tried again.

Still no answer, and I grumbled a curse for letting my cab leave and dug my phone out of my purse to call for a pickup.

I put it right away again when I realized that I still heard tapping. This time, it wasn’t my foot.

I bent my head and followed the sound, along the front of Yancy’s white adobe and to the side, where a fence far taller than me ringed his backyard.

Again, I heard the sound, a tap, and from here, I could also hear that it was followed by a gentle swish.

Then another tap. Another swish. Another tap.

Curious, I tried to look through the slats in the fence, but they were positioned in a way that made that impossible. My only solution was to pull over a nearby planter and climb. One foot on either side of a long-dead geranium, I stretched and squinted and craned my neck.

Yancy, sans dark glasses, stood at the far end of the yard putting golf balls into a little plastic cup.

Tap, and the golf ball sped toward the cup, where it landed with another tap.

Again. And again. And again.

The supply of balls gone, Yancy spun the club like a drum major’s baton and sauntered across the yard, gathered up the balls, and tossed them in a pile. His back to me, he lined up to hit the balls back in the other direction.

For a few seconds, I was paralyzed with surprise. That is, until I decided my eyes must surely be deceiving me. The only way to find out for sure was to see more—better. I braced my forearms on the top of the fence and pulled my weight up. I am not by anyone’s definition a big woman, but let’s face it, hauling bags of chili peppers doesn’t exactly qualify as manual labor and I have never been one to waste my time working out. Maybe I should have. Maybe then my muscles would be toned, and I wouldn’t have gotten a cramp in my arm that made me wince. All it took was that one moment of relaxing my grip on the fence. I slipped.