Revenge of the Chili Queens (11 page)

Not like, say, Nick was.

Had anyone been hanging around behind the scenes, they would have heard a sigh whoosh out from behind the mesh at the front of the Chick costume. This was not the usual sigh I sighed when sighing about Nick. That one was all about plain ol’ unadulterated lust, and this one . . .

I thought about what Nick had said, about how he wasn’t the one who killed Dom.

And then I thought about how he’d once beat up Dom so bad, Dom ended up in a hospital.

And I wondered if I was being played for a fool again.

Another sigh, and I knew all this thinking and sighing was getting me nowhere. It was time to get to work. I pushed off from the RV and headed out front.

Or at least I tried.

Before I made it even as far as the back door of the Palace, two strong arms went around my chili and held me in place.

“Hey!” I yelled and squirmed. I gasped and strained to take a look out of the mesh and over my shoulder to see who had hold of me, but let’s face it, in a giant chili constructed of canvas and wire, that was nearly impossible.

And what was really annoying was that something told me that the person hanging on to me knew it, too.

Those two strong arms tightened around the Chick, and before I could scream or call out for help, my feet were off the ground. That’s when my attacker braced me against a muscular chest and started spinning.

The scenery beyond the mesh whirled in front of my eyes.

The side of the RV.

The back of the Palace.

The tires of the RV parked next to ours.

The side of the RV.

The back of the Palace.

I gulped and tried my best to remember the spotting technique I’d learned in a long-ago dance class. Stare at one place. Find it again. Keep from getting dizzy.

It didn’t work for me then, and it sure didn’t work now. My stomach swooped, and I was pretty sure I was going to upchuck the Twinkies that had been my breakfast.

Around and around, my head spun along with the slice of scenery I saw when I dared to look beyond the mesh.

I flapped my arms and tried to elbow my attacker in the stomach, but I missed by a mile and ended up stabbing nothing but air.

As quickly as it started, the spinning stopped.

“Mind your own business,” a gravelly voice that definitely belonged to a man growled close to my ear.

And just like that, my assailant loosened his hold.

My stilettos slammed back down to the ground, but by then, my legs were rubber. I crumpled face-first in a heap of canvas and wire and mesh and nausea, my knees bloodied from where I landed in the gravel. I managed to brace my hands in the grit and push myself up, but looking around was another thing altogether.

I grunted and spun and landed on my chili butt. I cursed and rolled and managed to get to my side.

By that time, my attacker was gone and I was all alone.

Moaning, I flopped down on my back, my legs spread out, my arms flung out to the sides, and my breath coming in gulps that burned my lungs and heated up the inside of the Chick.

I couldn’t move, and after a minute or two of struggling, I didn’t even try. I lay there like a chili lump, staring up at the cloudless Texas sky and wondering what the heck just happened and who the heck had just threatened me.

That’s exactly where Sylvia found me.

She bent over far enough to peer beyond the mesh at me. From my vantage point, all I could see were her big blue eyes.

“I’m up front working my fingers to the bone,” she grumbled. “And here you are, taking a nap. Honestly, Maxie, don’t you ever do anything useful?”

•   •   •

Call me superstitious.

Go ahead, see if I care.

When I finally hoisted myself up off the ground and dragged into the RV, I peeled out of the Chick costume and refused to put it on again that day.

No way was I going to take the chance of being bushwhacked again.

Sans costume and wearing denim shorts and a chili pepper red shirt with Jack’s face embroidered above the heart, I stayed busy and worked the Palace the rest of that day. Yes, Sylvia was suspicious about my sudden burst of diligence, and honestly, I can’t say I blame her. Even when I tried to explain what had happened there behind the Palace earlier in the day, she didn’t quite get it.

“Well, I can see why some people would want you to mind your own business,” she said. We were restocking shelves, and she handed me a box that contained individual packages of dried peppers and reminded me to be sure I put them out alphabetically. “But I can’t think of anything you’ve done lately that would make someone threaten you.” She gave me a piercing look. “Or have you done something?”

“Scouts honor.” I held up a hand, three fingers folded down and two extended, as if to prove it. “I’m hardly investigating at all.”

“Investigating!” She combined a sniff and a harrumph
into a new and altogether demeaning sort of sound. “You know better than to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“I know if I didn’t, you’d still be in jail back in Taos,” I reminded her.

Big points for Sylvia; she didn’t dispute this. Instead, she propped the cardboard box she was holding against one hip and, thinking, pursed her lips. “So if someone told you to mind your own business, maybe you’re minding their business.”

This was an observation convoluted enough to be worthy of me, and Sylvia must have known it because she made a face. “What I mean is, someone must want you to back off. Because maybe you’re getting too close to the truth.”

Of course I’d come to this same conclusion sometime between when I landed on my chili butt on the ground behind the Palace and when Sylvia had been gracious enough to offer me a hand to help me to my feet. “The only person I was looking at as a serious suspect was a woman,” I told her. “And the person who grabbed me . . .” I relived the scene. “Definitely a man.”

“And you don’t have any men in mind?” Her eyes were the same color as the Texas skies above us, and she rolled them for all she was worth. “You know what I mean. I mean, I know you always have men in mind and they’re always the wrong kind of men and obviously a murderer would definitely be the wrong kind of man. So are any of your suspects men?”

I debated about telling her what I was thinking, but in the end, talking out my worries seemed a better plan than
keeping them all hidden inside, nibbling away at my brain.

“Nick knew Dom,” I said.

“The victim.” Sylvia nodded. “Did Nick know him well enough to hate him?”

I thought about how they were former partners and about how Dom ended up in the hospital. “Yes.”

“Do you think Nick killed him?”

“Why do you have his number on speed dial, anyway?”

Honestly, those were not the words I planned to have come out of my mouth, and just listening to them, I cringed. The last thing I needed to do with Sylvia was show any kind of weakness. If I did, it would be the hungry lion and the injured wildebeest scenario. I’d just revealed myself as a limping wildebeest, and I waited for her to pounce and devour me.

Instead, she finished stacking a fresh row of Thermal Conversion, flattened the box the jars had come out of, and set it in the pile of cardboard we’d take to Tumbleweed’s trailer for recycling.

“It’s not what you think,” she said.

“You don’t know what I think.”

A tiny smile played its way around her mouth. “Give me some credit, Maxie. I’ve known you nearly thirty years. Of course I know what you think. You think Nick and I—”

“Do you?”

“Have a thing going? With Nick?” There was another box of spice jars sitting on the floor of the Palace waiting to be unpacked and put out on display, but she didn’t bend
to retrieve it. Instead, she cocked her head and studied me. “You like him.”

This was not something I was going to discuss. Not when Sylvia might be about to reveal what I thought she was about to reveal.

I chewed on my lower lip.

Sylvia picked up the box of spice jars and slit it open with a box cutter. “He’s a good man,” she said. “Not that I know him very well or anything, but you can tell that sort of thing, you know?” Apparently, she remembered who she was talking to, because she added, “Well, maybe you don’t know. You’ve never been very good at figuring out who the good guys were and who the stinkers were. Nick . . . well, I can tell, he’s one of the good ones.”

This wasn’t news to me. Tell that to the chunk of ice that suddenly formed in the pit of my stomach.

“You and Nick . . .” I did my best to make it sound like it didn’t matter, like this was good news and I was happy for her. To tell the truth, maybe I was. If Nick and Sylvia had a relationship, that meant I could put him out of my mind once and for all.

Of course that didn’t explain the sudden hollow feeling that settled itself somewhere between my heart and my stomach.

“You and Nick, you’re—”

When Sylvia squealed with laughter, I didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence.

“Come on, Maxie. You know me better than that!” She smiled in the way she often did when she was doing her
best to be understanding and I was doing my best to pretend I didn’t notice. “He’s not my type,” she said.

“So you’re not—”

“In a relationship? I don’t need some bang-bang, shoot-’em-up type. You know that, Maxie. I like people and relationships and situations that are—”

“Boring?” I ventured.

She didn’t hold this against me. At least not too much. “I was thinking more like stable,” Sylvia said. “Nick’s not my type.”

Since I couldn’t exactly explain the funny little splurt of hope that tangled around my heart, I tried not to be too obvious when I said, “So you’re not—”

“We’re not,” Sylvia assured me. “Not now, not ever.”

“Then why—”

“Is his number on speed dial on my phone?” She set down the box of spice jars so she could fold her arms over her chest and give me one of those big-sister looks of hers that she’d been practicing on me for years. Maybe she was finally wearing me down. As far as I could remember, it was the first time I didn’t resent it. “I figured I’d better keep Nick’s number handy,” she said. “You know, in case you get in trouble.”

Arguing with her was second nature. Only this time, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

•   •   •

In most towns we visit, we start our Chili Showdown on Thursday night and go all the way through the weekend, but because of the fund-raisers on Alamo Plaza all week,
Tumbleweed had decided on a different schedule here in San Antonio. I wasn’t complaining. A few more days of cook-off fun is always good by me.

But the new schedule presented a new set of problems, namely, how to bring in customers who were used to this sort of an event on weekends, not Wednesday afternoons.

Leave it to Tumbleweed to come up with an answer.

That afternoon, we’d be holding the cook-off contest for chili verde.

By the time Sylvia and I finished stocking the Palace shelves, the fairgrounds was already teeming with eager contestants and verde fans. Verde, see, has a following all its own, its proponents as fanatical as the chili lovers who favor more conventional chili.

In the world of chili cook-offs, chili verde—sometimes called Colorado Green Chili—can be made with any meat and green chili peppers, but absolutely no beans or pasta. My own favorite version was an old recipe of Jack’s that I’d kicked up a notch by adding Anaheim peppers instead of poblanos to the heavenly mixture of pork, fresh tomatillos, cumin, and heaping portions of our own Thermal Conversion spice, but I’d seen dozens of cooks around the country add their own touches, from shredded cheese to cornmeal, lard to limes. There’s nothing ordinary about verde, and nothing I enjoy more than watching the competition unfold.

With that in mind, I was all set to head over to the main fairgrounds building where the judging was about to begin when a very weird thing happened.

Well, come to think of it, it was two very weird things.

Martha and Rosa strolled by.

“Is that . . . ?” Sylvia was setting out a new load of brown paper shopping bags with Jack’s picture on them, and she stopped and stared. “What are they doing here?”

A nugget of information dislodged itself from the logjam of my mind, and I remembered something I’d seen on the flyers Tumbleweed had sent out to advertise the event. “Martha and Rosa . . . !” In a move worthy of a beauty queen, I slapped a hand to my cheek. “I never put it together. Not until right now. They’re judging chili verde.”

“Together?” Sylvia leaned to her left so she could look around me to where the two women walked down the midway side by side.

Together we watched them stop at Gert Wilson’s setup and admire a set of yellow dish towels with tiny red chilies on them.

Martha said something to Rosa.

Rosa laughed and picked up a gigantic coffee cup with the words
Everything’s Bigger in Texas
written across the front of it.

I sucked in a breath. “She’s going to clunk her,” I told Sylvia. “Rosa’s going to use that coffee cup as a weapon.”

“Or not,” Sylvia told me, watching Rosa set down the cup and go on to examine Gert’s display of chili earrings, chili pepper–shaped evening bags, and funny T-shirts with things on them like peppers wearing sombreros, or the words
Capsaicin Junkie
, or my own personal favorite, the one with a picture of a fire-breathing dragon and the words
Monster Hot.

Now that I knew Sylvia didn’t have her eye on him,
maybe I’d wear that one the next time I saw Nick and see if he got the message.

Unless he was in jail, where the message might not have been all that appropriate, anyway.

I batted the thought away just in time to see Rosa bend close and say something to Martha. Martha’s laughter streamed across the midway.

“Weren’t they the ones who were at each other’s throats the other night at the plaza?” Sylvia asked me.

“You got that right.” I watched Tumbleweed greet the two women and escort them to the main building for the judging. “And if you ask me, the fact that they’re suddenly getting along is more than just a little suspicious.”