Revenge of the Chili Queens (15 page)

“What?” Nick asked again, and who could blame him, since I was gawking at him like he’d grown another head. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you staring at me?”

I shook myself out of my stupor. Thinking of Nick as a murderer was as unworthy of me as thinking of myself as some sort of shrinking violet. Never going to happen. On both counts.

“You? Want my help?” It was so far out of the realm of possibility, I didn’t even consider it. Instead, I grabbed a couple more bowls and filled them with the traditional, not-too-spicy, just-meaty-enough, forget-the-beans chili I’d made to tempt the taste buds of the crowd that was there that Thursday evening to raise money for the San Antonio Symphony. “Whatever kind of joke you’re playing, I’m not interested.”

“I’m serious.”

“And I’m Mother Teresa.”

“Hardly. Though in that outfit . . .”

I had decided I was sick of the long black skirt, and that night, I was wearing a white pencil skirt that went
down past my knees and a sky blue blouse. It might not have been exactly true to the Chili Queens and the late 1930s, but it wasn’t exactly Calcutta, either.

I gave Nick a narrow-eyed glare. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”

“Nothing.”

“But I look like Mother Teresa.”

“You don’t look like Mother Teresa. You’ll never have a halo. It’s just that these long skirts you keep wearing . . .” He looked me up and down. “I guess I’m just used to seeing you as the Chili Chick. You know, the costume and the stockings and the heels.”

A couple days earlier I would have pounced right on this and asked if he liked what he saw when he looked at the Chili Chick. That night, the words were smothered by the sand that suddenly filled my mouth. To cover, I filled a few more bowls of chili.

“I’m not kidding about the help,” Nick said, taking a bowl out of my hand and passing it over to Sylvia, who then handed it to an elderly man in a tux. “I talked to Sylvia, and she said—”

“I don’t need Sylvia’s permission to do anything,” I reminded him.

“Which is why I didn’t ask her permission. I just told her I’d like to borrow you for a while.”

“It’s not a problem.” Sylvia was apparently paying more attention to the conversation than I realized, because she joined right in. “Ginger and Teddi aren’t all that busy tonight.” She glanced around at the mostly elderly people in their diamonds and their tuxes and their gowns. “This
isn’t the kind of crowd that patronizes drag queens. Ginger’s going to come over here and help while Teddi keeps an eye on things over at their tent. You can go.” Sylvia made a little shooing motion. “You’ll only think of some excuse to go off on your own and leave me here with all the work, anyway, so you might as well go with Nick.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I might as well go where with Nick?”

He put a hand on my shoulder “We’ll talk about it once we leave here.”

When he gave me a little nudge, I locked my knees. “I might as well go where with Nick?”

He puffed out a breath of annoyance and moved in close. This was a good thing, because it allowed me to breathe in the heady scent of his aftershave. Woodsy with hints of leather, but believe it or not, it wasn’t the divine aroma or even the heat of his breath tickling my ear that distracted me. It was what he whispered.

“We’re going to Dom’s apartment.”

I knew if I moved, his lips would be dangerously close to mine. I dared to turn my head, anyway, so I could look him in the eye when I asked, “Are we supposed to be there?”

“Nope.”

“Do the cops know we’re going?”

“Nope.”

“Are we going to have to break in?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“Why?” I asked him.

“Why are we going there? It’s a chance for us to look around and see what we can find out. I’m sure the cops
have already checked out his apartment, but I knew Dom pretty well. I might spot something they’ve missed.”

“Not that why. Why me? Why are you asking me to go along? Are you finally ready to admit that I’m a pretty darned good investigator?”

Nick put a hand to the small of my back and prodded me out of the tent. “Actually, I want a witness,” he said. “You know, so if word gets out that I was there, somebody’s got my back who can say that I didn’t tamper with anything.”

•   •   •

Okay, so it wasn’t much of a compliment, and not the best reason for inviting me to tag along on this foray to Dom’s apartment, and it sure wasn’t the most romantic invitation a girl had ever gotten to leave a fund-raiser long before the event was over with a guy who was the guy she’d been dreaming about.

But hey, the idea of breaking and entering at a murder victim’s apartment . . .

There wasn’t a chance I could resist, and Nick knew it.

I settled into the passenger seat of his black Audi and waited until he pulled out in traffic before I said anything. The plan, see, was to catch him off guard.

“So did the cops ever tell you how long Dom was dead before I found his body?”

He took my question at face value, and I couldn’t fault him for that. I can look pretty innocent when I put my mind to it. “From what I heard, it wasn’t too long. Maybe thirty minutes or so.”

I thought back to Monday night, from the time
Read with the Chili Queens
wrapped up until Sylvia and I were done with cleaning up our tent and I took that walk to look for Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann. As near as I could tell, that would have been somewhere around eleven.

“So where were you at ten thirty that night?” I asked Nick.

He shot me a look that might have been longer and more lethal if the idiot in front of us wasn’t driving twenty miles an hour because he was texting and if Nick didn’t have to do some pretty quick maneuvering to get around him. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Just covering my bases.”

“And you think I’m one of your bases.”

“I think you’re one of the suspects. The cops do, too. Otherwise that Detective What’s-Her-Name wouldn’t keep hanging around. Unless she’s hanging around for other reasons?”

I gave him time to tell me I was wrong—about either scenario—and when he didn’t, I decided to nudge the subject slightly in another direction.

“You never finished telling me why you beat up Dom back in Los Angeles.”

“Not technically true.” Nick’s expression might have been mistaken for a smile if his teeth weren’t clenched so tightly together. “I didn’t finish telling you the story because I never started telling you the story.”

“So maybe you should.”

“It’s a pretty boring story.”

“I doubt that. Nothing that ends in hospitalization and resignation can be all that boring. Besides, here we are,
stuck in a car together. I’m not doing anything else. And you’re not doing anything but driving. You might as well talk, and I might as well listen.”

“It’s not going to prove I killed Dom. That is what you’re looking for, isn’t it? Proof that I killed him?”

I swear, if he wasn’t driving, I would have punched him right in the nose. Since that violent avenue wasn’t available, I slapped the leather armrest instead. “Are you that dense? Really? I’m not trying to prove you killed Dom; I’m trying to prove you didn’t kill Dom! Why else would I have wasted so much time this week on Tiffany the beauty queen?”

“The girl who couldn’t have done it because of her bad arm?”

I grumbled my opinion of the fact that Nick had picked up on this pertinent bit of information and never shared. “I want to believe you, Nick,” I told him. “But if I don’t know all the facts—”

“The fact is that Dom and I were partners on the LA force for three years,” he said. “We worked well together. We were tough, but fair. I thought he was my friend.”

“Friends don’t beat up friends.”

“Friends don’t steal friend’s wives.”

It took a couple seconds for the sense of this to sink in. When it did, I turned as much as I was able in the confines of my seat belt so that I could see Nick better. “You were married?”

“For like a second and a half.”

“And Dom . . .”

“Dom and Nichole—”

“Wait!” Yes, we were talking about a serious subject, but really? I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Nick and Nichole? You’re kidding, right?”

“It gets worse. Her family called us Nicky and Nicki.”

“Sweet.”

“Too.”

“What was she like?”

Since we were stopped at a red light, he had a chance to give me a sour look. “That’s not what we’re talking about.”

“We’re talking about Dom and how he stole your wife and—” I didn’t like it one bit, but I couldn’t deny it; my stomach soured. “Wife or ex-wife?” I asked Nick.

“Definitely ex.”

I hoped he didn’t notice when I let out a breath of relief. “So you and Dom were partners. And you and Nicki were married and she was . . . ?”

“Cheating on me.”

“Which wasn’t what I was going to ask. Not yet, anyway. I need some background so that I can understand the whole thing better. What was she like?”

He slapped the steering wheel in frustration. “She was like the woman I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with!” he said.

“What does she do for a living?”

“Really?” Nick rolled his eyes. “I got in the car with the Chili Chick and now I’m sitting with Dr. Phil?”

“I’m curious.”

“You’re nosy. And none of this matters. Nicki is the office manager for a cosmetic surgeon. There, you satisfied?”

“What does she look like?”

“She’s a blonde.”

“You like blondes.” I hoped my disappointment didn’t ring as loud in Nick’s ears as it did in my own.

“She’s tall.”

And I’m a shrimp.

“She’s smart.”

I wasn’t willing to go there so instead I said, “But not smart enough to resist those dreamy eyes of Dom’s.”

Nick made a face. “Did he have dreamy eyes?”

“You were partners for three years and you never saw that his eyes were dreamy? What kind of cop were you?”

“Not that kind of cop.”

“Well, he did have dreamy eyes. But dang, what was that Nichole chick thinking? You have dreamy eyes, too.”

For the first time since we’d started the conversation, the barest of smiles relieved Nick’s thunderous expression. “Do I?”

I pretended that smile didn’t sizzle through the space that separated us and heat me inside and out, and kept my voice light when I told him, “I suppose some people might think so.”

“Well, Nichole was one of those people, but obviously, she has a pretty short attention span.”

I didn’t even know Nichole and I thought she was crazy. I’d met Dom, and while his eyes were plenty dreamy, he didn’t even begin to compare with Nick. Especially if he was the kind of sleazebag who would fool around with his partner’s wife.

“I guess I can see why you were mad at Dom,” I said.

“I was. Mad enough to request a transfer out of homicide. I couldn’t partner with him anymore.”

This, I understood. “You know all that only makes you look guiltier.”

“I know.”

“And you’ve told the cops?”

“I’ve told them.”

“And that detective . . .” I didn’t need to remind myself that she was a blonde. “What does she say?”

“She says the same thing I say. If I was going to kill Dom, I would have done it back when I walked in from work early one day and found him in bed with Nichole. I wouldn’t have waited this long. And I couldn’t possibly have known he was here in San Antonio. After I left the police force, I never heard another word about Dom. Not until Monday night, anyway.”

“Unless even after all that time you were still mad. Or jealous. Or if you still care about your wife.”

“My ex-wife, and believe me when I tell you that after what she put me through, I no longer care.”

This, too, I understood, because I’d had the same sort of reaction when I found out what Edik did to me. Sure, it hurt like hell, but that wasn’t because I wanted to get back together with him. After what happened, my hurt was all about betrayal. Just like Nick’s must have been.

Still, I understood that there was a huge gulf between that sensible little voice in your head that tells you you’re better off and that hollow feeling in the pit of your gut, the one that tells you that it’s going to be a long, long time
before you meet someone who can hug you so tight, it will put all your broken pieces back together again.

“Do you miss her?” I asked Nick.

“Not anymore.”

“Do you miss the police force?”

“Like hell.”

“Are you sorry you beat up Dom?”

Nick barked out a laugh. “Not even a little. And speaking of Dom . . .” He slowed at the entrance to an apartment complex and turned down a driveway lined with blooming roses. “We’re here.”

Just thinking about what we were up to caused a crazy beat to start up inside my rib cage. I sat up and looked around.

The apartment complex that Dom had once called home was a series of four-story, light-colored stone buildings. Each unit included a balcony. Nick pulled up and parked outside the clubhouse. I couldn’t help but notice that he kept far away from the nearest streetlight.

“Dom lived in the clubhouse?”

“It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for us to park right in front of his building, would it?” He locked the car, and instead of starting off down the sidewalk, he grabbed my hand and pulled me behind the building.

“We’re staying in the shadows,” I said.

“Let’s just say that we don’t want to be too obvious.”

“And how exactly are we going to break in without being too obvious?”

He didn’t have an answer to this. In fact, he didn’t say
another word until we’d walked all the way to the last building in the complex.

“Third floor,” Nick said.

I glanced up. It wasn’t late, and light shone through the windows of most of the apartments.

“We’re not climbing the balconies, are we?” I asked him.

“Don’t have to.” Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out a key.

“Let me guess. Detective Gilkenny.”

For this brilliant bit of observation, I got a sour look. “Don’t be ridiculous. I told you, the cops don’t know we’re here.” He stuck the key in the front door and we went inside.

“Then how—”