Death by Devil's Breath (24 page)

“The local cops are serving a search warrant for Jarret’s hotel room,” Nick said. “If there’s anything to find—”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

He put a hand on my elbow and led me back into the bar. “What, and miss out on all the fun of you going after Jarret?” He ordered two beers and slipped back into the booth we’d gotten out of only a short while earlier, and since his hand was still clasped on my arm, I ended up sitting next to him. The adrenaline that had peaked in my confrontation with Jarret drained out of me, and the drama of the last couple hours smothered me like fog. When the beers finally arrived, I barely had the energy to lift my glass.

“Maybe we’re just wasting our time,” I grumbled. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Dickie’s murder and the dolls aren’t even connected. Maybe—”

The detective we’d seen earlier out in the lobby walked into the bar, looked around, and spotted Nick. He bent over and said something close to Nick’s ear.

“What?” I asked when the detective was gone. “What’s going on?”

He took a sip of his beer. “What’s going on is that it looks like you were on to something after all. They found another one of those rag dolls in Jarret’s hotel room.”

“Hah!” Suddenly, I wasn’t so tired anymore. I toasted myself with my glass and drank down half my beer. “So I was right. Jarret did conk me on the head and steal the dolls.”

“That’s not all.” Nick finished his beer. “They found something else in Jarret’s room, too. A jar of what looks to be the same poison that killed Dickie Dunkin.”

CHAPTER 16

“So Dickie died because of a bunch of dolls?”

We were back at the Palace, and (big surprise) Sylvia had gone back to the RV to put up her feet and relax for a while. That left me and Nick to talk over everything that had happened at the hotel across the street.

After what the cop back there had told Nick, I knew the answer to my question about Dickie and the dolls, but that didn’t keep a shiver from skipping over my shoulders. “That’s just . . . Any murder is creepy, but being murdered because of a bunch of dolls . . .”

“Doll.” Nick had volunteered to help restock shelves and he was holding a cardboard box full of small packages of dried peppers so I could set them out. “It was one doll,” he said. “That’s all the police found in Jarret’s room. I mean, besides the jar of what could be desiccated datura. Just one more of those rag dolls.”

“Impossible.” I finished with the dried African Bird’s Eye peppers and moved on to the Aji Amarillo and the Aji Panca. From there I’d restock the Aleppo peppers, the Anaheims, and the Anchos. Yes, it was Sylvia’s idea to arrange the peppers on the shelves in alphabetical order. No, I was never going to tell her it was a good one, even though it did make it easier to find what we were looking for. There are some things that are better off left unsaid between half sisters. “There was more than just one doll in that trunk, Nick. Plenty more. Why would Jarret have only one?”

When he shrugged, the box in Nick’s hands bounced up and down. “He hid them? He sold them? He packed them up and had them shipped somewhere? The local cops will find out. You can be sure of that.”

“But just one doll . . .” I turned to Nick, bags of peppers pressed to my chest, their wonderful, spicy scent tickling my nose. “Jarret told me that selling off the dolls individually wouldn’t be as profitable as selling them as a collection.”

“So maybe he sold them as a collection.”

“Except for one.”

“We could speculate forever. Jarret liked that particular doll and wanted to keep it for himself. Or maybe he promised it to his favorite niece. What’s even more likely is that he had a buyer who wanted that doll specifically and offered him some whopping amount for it. There are a million different reasons he might have hung on to that one doll.”

“And I know someone I can ask about it.” I dumped the peppers in my arms back into the box they’d come out of and marched to the door. “Sylvia will be back in a couple minutes. Why don’t you—”

Nick stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

“You’re not going anywhere alone.”

“Don’t be goofy.” I would have yanked away from the hand he put on my arm, but his grip was way too tight, and besides, having Nick hang on to me wasn’t the worst experience I’d had since I got to Vegas. “I’m just going to see Reverend Love,” I told him. “She has one of the dolls, so if anyone knows more about them, it will be her.”

“And you remember what happened last time you went to see her, right?”

My smile should have told Nick that I could easily counter his objection. “Theoretically I didn’t go to see her. I went to follow Tyler and find out why he was two-timing Sylvia, only he wasn’t, but I didn’t know that until I talked to him. And I just talked to Reverend Love as a sort of afterthought, you know, because she was one of the Devil’s Breath judges and I figured I should talk to her as long as I was there. So technically—”

“Technically . . .” Nick grabbed the
Closed
sign and propped it in the window before he walked me outside and shut the door behind us. “You’re not going anywhere. Not without me.”

The look I gave him was more simper than smile. “Even to a wedding chapel?”

Nick rolled his gorgeous baby blues. “Heaven help me, it’s the one and only time I’d ever even think of it. Yes, to a wedding chapel, Maxie. You and me.”

*   *   *

The last time I’d been to the Love Chapel, I’d waited in the reverend’s office, but when Nick and I got there, there were pieces of scaffolding and piles of tarps stacked outside the office and the smell of fresh paint wafted from behind the closed doors.

“So . . .” We sat side by side on a bench next to neat mounds of paintbrushes and rollers, drop cloths and blue painter’s tape, waiting for Reverend Love to finish what her secretary called the Deluxe Renaissance Hand-Clasping (complete with a horse-drawn carriage out front). With a guy like Nick, I knew better than to pry because it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Still, I couldn’t help myself. There was something about the hushed atmosphere, something about all those yards and yards of plush carpeting at our feet and the mirrors that gleamed from the walls. There was something about the chapel, something that made a weird idea pop into my head.

Maybe it was the remnants of all the promise and possibilities the place had seen over the years that still echoed within its walls.

Or maybe, like the shingles virus that never leaves the body, the leftover vibes of weddings past stick around so that they can rear their ugly heads and leave the poor suckers who suffer from them miserable.

I gave Nick a look out of the corner of my eye. “Did you ever think about getting married?”

His sidelong glance was just as fleeting. “You?”

I had. To Edik. When he was the be-all and end-all of my universe. Which was all of the two years, three months, and four days we were together and did not—in any way, shape, or form—include the last two weeks of our so-called relationship when I found out what a cheatin’, lyin’ weasel he was.

“Nah.” When I shuddered, I hoped Nick thought it was because the very idea of marriage gave me the heebie-jeebies rather than that even four months after our epic and very ugly breakup, reliving the Edik disaster still made me feel weak in the knees and sick to my stomach. “You?”

He didn’t answer right away, and that didn’t surprise me. Nick is not exactly Mr. Chatty. I guess that’s why I was surprised to see his shoulders rise and fall. “I have thought about it,” he said. “A time or two.”

“But you’ve never—”

“Nah. Never the right time. Never the right person.”

I sighed. “Amen to that.”

“But if the right person came along—”

“Really?” My nose wrinkled, I turned on the bench to get a better look at Nick. “What about the Showdown?”

Whatever he’d expected, I guess it wasn’t this, because Nick raised his chin. “You can’t possibly think I’d make a crucial life decision based on—”

“What?” I was already on my feet and I glared down at him. “Based on what you think is some stupid little traveling show full of stupid people who care about stupid things like making sure the people who come to the show have a good time, and buy excellent products and can show off their cooking skills and—”

“Well, I’m guessing you two aren’t my next bride and groom.”

I twirled around when I heard Reverend Love behind me. The way my voice bounced against the mirrors that lined the hallway and my fists on my hips told her pretty much all she needed to know about Nick and my relationship.

When she looked from one of us to the other, the reverend’s smile was sleek. “Since it’s obviously not a wedding, what can I do for the two of you?”

“We’re here about your doll,” I told her before Nick could, even though he stood up to say something. “We want to see it.”

For a moment, the reverend narrowed her eyes, then a smile broke through the confused expression. “The doll in my office! The one you saw the other day when you stopped by to talk to me.”

“That’s the one.” Nick edged in front of me. “We were hoping you could tell us something about it.”

The reverend folded her hands at her waist. “If you’re interested in dolls, I hear there’s a collectors’ convention in town. There are probably plenty of dolls there you could buy, and probably plenty of people who know far more than I do about collecting and history and such.”

“We don’t care about that.” I stepped to my left to angle myself in front of Nick. “We care about your doll. It might be tied to a—”

“We’re interested in the doll’s background,” Nick butted in. “We saw one that was similar at the collectors’ show and the guy who’s selling it claims it’s valuable, but he doesn’t know much about the history of the doll. We wondered if it could possibly be worth what he’s asking and thought you might be able to help.”

“So you’re looking to buy.” Reverend Love’s gaze slid from Nick to me and her smile froze. “How sweet.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Anything for Maxie,” he said, and honestly, the reverend would have had to be an idiot to miss the irony in his voice.

Maybe she was. Or maybe she, too, was so overwhelmed by the happily-ever-after sense of the place that, after all these years, she couldn’t think straight.

I wasn’t sure if it was the idea of doll collecting or the one about being in love that bothered me more; I only knew that even when I shivered, Nick didn’t remove his hand.

“Like I told you . . .” Reverend Love checked the Rolex on her left wrist. “I have another wedding starting in just a couple minutes. Cavemen.” The reverend laughed. “Who am I to question what paying customers want?” She looked my way. “Like I told you the other day, Maxie, the doll was given to me by my Aunt Louise. She made it especially for me for my tenth birthday.”

“We don’t think so.” I kept talking, even though Nick squeezed my shoulder. “We think someone else made the doll.”

The reverend’s expression clouded. “But I’ve had it all these years and . . .” She shook her head. “Are you telling me that Aunt Louise lied to me about my doll?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Nick said.

She inched back her shoulders. “Well, I can’t see why it matters to anyone but me. If there’s another doll like it over at that doll convention, maybe the person who made it used the same pattern Louise did. Or maybe both Louise and this other person saw a similar doll somewhere, and both of them decided to make a copy of it. If you love the doll you saw at the show . . .” The reverend glanced from me to Nick. “If you’re looking to make Maxie happy and the doll is important to her, that’s all that matters, not where it came from or who made it. Why do you care about my doll?”

Before I could tell her, Nick squeezed again.

“If we could just see it,” Nick suggested.

The reverend took another look at her watch before she offered us a smile. “I wish I could help you, but I am in something of a hurry. Besides, the doll is in storage along with everything else in my office. The painters will be done in a couple days. If you’d like to come back then, I’ll be happy to show you the doll.”

The reverend turned and walked toward a group of people in Flinstone-esque garb who’d just entered the chapel. Honestly, if I wasn’t so busy considering everything she’d just said, I would have gone over and offered my opinion of the faux saber-toothed tiger print the bride wore.

“I bet she’d be happy to show us her doll,” I grumbled and turned toward the nearest exit. “Did you catch the vibes, Nick? It took everything she had not to tell us to get lost. She doesn’t want us to see that doll.”

“Convenient that she just happens to be painting,” he said when we stepped outside.

“But why—”

“The reverend is a smart woman. She knows it’s none of our business.”

“But if she has nothing to hide—”

“It’s still none of our business.” Nick got his phone out of his pocket. “But it might be interesting to the local cops. I’ll call the detective in charge of the case.”

“And maybe . . .” We stepped to the front of the chapel and I looked up at where that red neon heart once dangled over the sidewalk. Chicken? Maybe I am. Or maybe I just have the brains not to want to go somewhere I’ve already gone before. Like back to the ER with a needle and thread going through my arm.