Revenge of the Chili Queens (26 page)

The words penetrated through the layer of terror that
wrapped around me like a clammy hand. The voice was familiar, and finally listening—and hearing—I froze. Too afraid to turn around and see that I was wrong, too afraid not to turn around and never know, I pushed away from my attacker, spun on the buttery leather seat, and sucked in a breath.

“Jack!” I stared across the foot of space that separated me from my dad, Texas Jack Pierce, and questioned my eyesight and my sanity. But then, the interior lighting of the limo was dim and my eyes were suddenly hot with tears. I leaned closer for a better look. “Jack?”

“Yup, it’s me, darlin’!” He opened his arms to me and we came at each other and he crushed me in a hug. “Sorry to cause you conniptions, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t have you worryin’. I had to talk to you.”

I pushed myself away from him. Jack was a big man: big shoulders, big voice, big ideas. The top of his head brushed the roof, and there was a white ten-gallon hat—that same ten-gallon hat I’d seen on John Wesley Montgomery, the president of Consolidated Chili—on the seat next to him. I gulped in a breath to steady myself, but let’s face it, there was no way that was going to work. My dad had vanished after a Showdown in Abilene months before, and since then, I’d been searching for any clue that would point to where he’d gone and what had happened to him.

And now, this.

And the
this
I’m talking about didn’t make even a little bit of sense.

“You’re not John Wesley Montgomery!” I said.

Jack laughed, and just like that, all the fear and anger
that had built inside me melted. Jack’s laugh, his boisterous nature, and his never-ending supply of optimism had gotten me over every bad thing life had ever thrown at me. Every one but the one that hurt the most—the one where I had spent months not knowing what had happened to him and worrying every minute of every single day.

I smiled like a fool.

That is, right before I burst into tears.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry.” He pulled me into another hug. “I think maybe you’re a little mad at me.”

“A little?” I soaked his dark suit coat with tears. “I thought . . . I thought . . .” There was no way I could admit the truth, not if I wasn’t looking into his eyes, so I pushed away and said the words I’d refused to say—even to myself—since the day I got the call that he was missing. “I thought you were dead!”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He patted my hand. “There was nothing else I could do. I shouldn’t even be talking to you now, but—”

Remember what I said about how all my anger melted away? Well, it had. At least for a couple minutes. That is, until it reared its head and washed over me like a tsunami.

“What do you mean you shouldn’t be talking to me?” I demanded. “What do you mean by disappearing and letting me worry and having me think the worst? What were you thinking? Or maybe you weren’t thinking. Maybe you were so busy with some woman that—”

His baritone laugh cut me short. “Not a lady. Not this time. This time, it was all about chili.”

Chili.

Consolidated Chili.

John Wesley Montgomery and Consolidated Chili.

I’d like to say that the pieces fell into place, but the way they swirled and whirled through my head, nothing made sense. “You’re . . . you’re using the name John Wesley Montgomery? And you’re the president of Consolidated Chili?”

He chuckled. “Ain’t that a kick in the head! I’m walkin’ in the tall cotton. Got me a limo and a driver and fancy office and a seven-figure salary!”

My throat closed over the outrage that boiled up inside of me. “Consolidated Chili?” I looked at him hard and knew that the Jack Pierce I had known and adored all my life would read my mind and know exactly what I was getting at. For the first time, he didn’t, and I gasped. It was like I was looking at a familiar face but didn’t know the person behind it. “You . . . you put chili in a can!”

“Well, not me personally, sweetheart. I got a few thousand people who work for me who take care of the details.”

“But . . .” Again, my eyes filled with tears, and this time, relief and happiness had nothing to do with the waterworks. “But it’s canned chili!” I wailed.

“You see, that’s just the problem.” Jack slapped a hand against the empty seat next to him. “I knew you’d be fit to be tied. That’s exactly why I dragged my feet telling you the truth. I knew the way you love chili, you’d go up like a bottle rocket. But then, that’s always how you deal with things, ain’t it?” His chuckle was deep and long; he didn’t hold any of this against me. As a matter of fact, I knew it was just another reason he loved me.

“I admit,” he said, “that’s why I was as afraid as a grasshopper to talk to you. I knew you’d get all swole up, and I didn’t want to see you mad. I tried to make myself fess up a couple times. You probably saw the limo over at the Showdown. But dang it, Maxie, I just couldn’t get up the nerve. I guess I just didn’t want to see the disappointment in your eyes. I knew it wouldn’t be that way with Sylvia, and I was right. Sylvia, she understood.”

Those last three little words turned my world upside down. My stomach clenched and froze. I couldn’t catch my breath. “S-S-Sylvia knew? She knows? She knows you’re all right? She . . . she knows you’re here? You . . . you talked to Sylvia? First?”

Jack has a heart as big as all of Texas, but that doesn’t mean he’s a sucker. Or naive. He lowered his chin, puffed out his cheeks, and gave me the look I’d seen a thousand times before, mostly when Sylvia and I were kids and going at each other as only half sisters can. Part of what sparkled in his dark eyes was understanding. He was her dad, after all. He knew how annoying Sylvia could be. But don’t think I had Jack wrapped around my little finger. He adored me and I knew it, but sometimes, he just wouldn’t take any nonsense. Even from me. Sure, he was a pushover when it came to his two daughters, but he was a pushover who wouldn’t tolerate stupidity.

“It was only just tonight I talked to Sylvia,” Jack said. “Just a little while ago. I had to talk to her first. She’s the oldest.”

I was offended to the bone and pulled my hand away from Jack’s and wrapped my arms around myself. “The
only reason Sylvia’s traveling with the Showdown is so that she can use your recipes and publish a cookbook.”

He didn’t look especially hurt by the news. Or surprised. “I figured as much. It’s kind of nice, really, that she thinks so much of my cookin’.”

“Your cooking?” I practically choked on the words. “Sylvia doesn’t think about anybody but Sylvia. She didn’t even care when I got her off a murder rap!”

“Back in Taos!” Jack slapped his knee. “You showed some spunk there. That’s for sure. I always knew you were the smart one.”

I should have basked in the glow of the compliment. I would have, back in the day. Right about then, I was so busy sitting there with my jaw flapping, I didn’t have time to feel anything but outrage. “You knew? All along? You knew what was going on and you didn’t—”

“I couldn’t. As much as I wanted to. But I did keep tabs on you two. You bet I did. Where do you think that bail money came from when they had Sylvia in jail?”

I remembered the night I’d found five thousand dollars in the RV, money I used to spring Sylvia from the clink. “It was Gert Wilson, wasn’t it? She’s the one who’s been helping you out all along. She told me—”

“She told you exactly what I told her she could tell you. Nothing more, nothing less. Don’t blame her. She’s a good woman.”

I had spent a lifetime hearing Jack talk about his women. In his book, they were all dolls and babes and honeys. They were good for a laugh and he romanced each and every one of them like no other guy could. Once
in a while one of them—like Bernadette Kromski, who’d I’d run into on our recent trip to Las Vegas—got a little closer than the rest and threatened Jack’s free-and-easy lifestyle and the individualism he valued so much. In all that time, with all those women, I don’t think I’d ever heard his voice warm the way it did when he mentioned Gert.

“You and Gert—”

“Too soon to say,” he told me, and this, too, was weird, because with Jack, too soon was never soon enough. “We’ll see what happens down the road. For now—”

“For now, you’ve got plenty of explaining to do. Why are you using the phony name?”

“Well, I couldn’t risk hurting the business at the Palace, could I? And if Jack Pierce suddenly started running the largest canned chili manufacturer on the planet—”

“I can’t believe it.” My stomach clenched and I pressed a hand to it. “I can’t believe you’d do such a thing. Canned chili is against everything you ever taught me. It’s wrong!”

“It is. It’s also mighty profitable.”

This did not sound like the Jack I knew, either. Jack cared about quality, not net income. He cared about carrying on hundreds of years of chili tradition and creating a spark of interest in chili and peppers and spices everywhere he went. It had worked with me; I’d bought into the lifestyle and the love of chili, body and soul. So what was he telling me? And what did it all mean?

It didn’t make any sense. None of it. I needed more time to process, and more information.

“What does all this have to do with you disappearing,
anyway?” I asked him. “Why are you suddenly John Wesley Montgomery?”

“Lawyers.” Jack’s mouth twisted. “Non-compete clauses and secrecy clauses and enough legal hoo-ha to fill a convoy of semis. I shouldn’t even be talking to you now. Revealing who I really am violates my contract with Consolidated. But there’s no way I could have you and Sylvia here in San Antonio and not get in touch. I knew I couldn’t get too close. I knew I shouldn’t talk to you. That’s why I had Dom following you.”

“You? You told Dom Laurentius to—”

“Keep an eye on you. Sure. Shoot, he was on the payroll. Figured I might as well make him earn his salary. I wondered how you two were getting along, and I’ll tell you what, from what I’ve seen myself and what Dom told me, it’s worked out right as rain. You and Sylvia make a pretty good team. I knew you girls could do it. I knew you could put aside your differences and—”

“Don’t get carried away,” I told him. “You’re not the one who’s been working with Sylvia!”

Jack’s grin lit up the interior of the limo. “She’s got a good head for business. She keeps the books shipshape, doesn’t she? And there’s nobody better when it comes to orderin’ and working with suppliers.”

He was right, and it stung more than I wanted to admit. “And me?” I asked him.

“You? Oh, Maxie, don’t you get it? All that stuff about price points and economics and the best return on the dollar . . . sure, it’s all important. Without paying attention to all that, a business would sink like the
Titanic
. But you
know it and I know it, the Palace is about more than that. It’s about the chili. It always has been. And you . . .” He beamed me a smile the likes of which I hadn’t seen since I graduated from high school and he admitted he was extra proud because he had spent the first seventeen years of my life convinced I’d end up in jail before I ever had a diploma in my hot little hands.

“You’ve got the soul of the Chili Chick! All those years ago when I first thought of the Chick, I never imagined there would be one woman who would embody her to perfection. But you do, Maxie, honey. You do. And I couldn’t be any prouder.”

It was almost enough to make me forget that he had talked to Sylvia before he talked to me.

Almost.

“I still don’t get it,” I admitted. “You and Consolidated Chili? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t. It wouldn’t. Except that when they waved that big, fat salary under my nose . . . well, I’ll tell you what, darlin’, after years on the road with the Showdown, the thought of ridin’ high and settlin’ down in this kind of comfort was too good to pass up.”

I swallowed the sour taste that rose in my throat. “You’ve gone over to the dark side?”

“Thought you’d see it that way.” He gave my knee a pat. “Sylvia, she looked at it from a financial point of view. She saw the benefits. But not my Maxie. You look at things with your heart.”

“Not possible,” I insisted. “Ask anybody. I don’t have a heart.”

He wagged a finger at me. “You’ve got the heart of a Pierce and don’t you let anybody tell you that’s not true. You’ve got a fierce determination, too, and you’ve got all the imagination and the cleverness and the resourcefulness you need. Some of that stuff came from your mother, by the way. I won’t take credit for it all.”

He settled back, and for a couple minutes, I listened to the smooth purr of the limo engine and tried to make sense of everything that just happened.

“So back in Abilene, Consolidated Chili offered you the job and—”

“They’ve been after me for years,” he said. “They’d come sniffing around now and again, and every time, I told them to get lost. But you know, they really did make me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“But it’s wrong! Chili in a can is—”

“Against the very laws of nature. Oh yes, I do know that. But I got to thinkin’, you know, about folks who aren’t lucky enough to ever come to a Showdown and try all the different chilies and all the different peppers and the spices and the sauces. All those folks who never have a chance to eat really good chili. And I decided that if we could give them that experience right there in their own homes . . . well, then chili in a can wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? Not if we put really good chili in a can.”

It was a terrific plan.

But . . .

“That really good chili you want to can, you could have helped the company develop the recipes. You’re the best chili cook in the whole world!”

“Thank you, darlin’.” He smiled, but let’s face it, the compliment didn’t come as much of a surprise. Jack
was
the world’s best chili cook and he knew it. “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve had to tone down some of my favorites. That one with the scorpion pepper, that little bowl of flaming madness I came up with when we were visitin’ Omaha, you remember that one?”

I did, and my mouth watered at the very thought.

“That didn’t work.” Jack grinned. “Every time we put a label on a can, the heat of the chili would cause it to peel right off!”