Death by Devil's Breath (16 page)

It was so devious a plan, it made me see red, and I turned on my heels to leave the chapel so I could go back to Cal’s and have it out with Sylvia. That’s when I caught sight of a door with a tasteful brass plaque on it:
Reverend Linda Love
.

Chili judge, I reminded myself, and there when Dickie (literally) bit the big one.

The thought knocked up against my anger and nudged it out of the way. Maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage something useful out of the fiasco that was my visit to the Love Chapel.

I knocked and was ushered into an outer office by a middle-aged woman in a neat, and a little over-the-top, pink suit.

“The reverend is officiating at a wedding,” she told me. “If you like, you can wait in her office.”

Linda Love’s office was bigger than my apartment back in Chicago. It featured a tasteful mahogany desk that was about a mile wide, with a matching ceiling-high bookshelf behind. There was an Oriental rug in shades of red and deep green on the floor, and framed photos on the walls. I strolled over to take a gander.

Reverend Love with her hands out in blessing over a newly married couple, an Elvis impersonator at her side.

Reverend Love standing between a bride and a groom both dressed in purple, a black-caped vampire looming behind them, his arms out and his fangs bared.

Reverend Love with marrying couples decked out like aliens, and some in Renaissance costumes, and others in gangster gear complete with toy tommy guns.

From the photos, I moved to look over the bookcase, but there wasn’t anything there nearly as interesting as aliens or vampires. She’d been awarded a crystal bowl from the local Chamber of Commerce for congeniality. She’d matted and framed her minister’s license and had it set up on an easel next to a tasteful bouquet of red and white fabric flowers.

It was all pretty ordinary and just what couples would expect to see when they came to sign up for what a framed poster on the opposite wall said could be a Standard, a Special, or a Theme Wedding Package.

In fact, the only thing that struck me as interesting was the one thing on the bookshelf that seemed out of place.

It probably goes without saying that I am not the doll type. I never was, even as a kid. Skateboards were more my thing. And bikes, and softball. Fistfights and football. Even so, I will admit that the doll propped against a fat book was way cute.

She was a foot tall, and not scary like so many of those dolls that are meant to look realistic. This one was completely made of fabric, from her skinny little stuffed legs and arms to her big round head. Her dress was pink satin and she wore a black felt scarf and beret. Her brown hair was made out of felt, too, strips of it sewn close to her head to look like a bob, and she had rosy pink cheeks (also round dots of felt) and a sweet little bowed mouth.

I couldn’t resist; I had to play with her. She wore a white cotton petticoat under her dress, and I fluffed it and noticed that there was a name embroidered in powder blue on the inside. Curious, I turned to the light to read the lettering and saw that there were, in fact, two names.

“Noreen Pennybaker.” I read the name that flowed along the hem of the petticoat in slanting stitches that made it look like a signature. Above that in blocky, more childlike letters were the words
Tout Sweet
.

Finished looking the doll over, I set her back where I’d found her, but before I could turn around, I heard a voice behind me, “Cute, isn’t she?”

Reverend Love crossed the office, her footsteps silenced by the thick Oriental rug.

“I’m glad you knew better than to touch her,” she said. “This doll is very special to me. She was handmade for me by my Aunt Louise, and I’m afraid I’m a little overprotective. I’d hate to see anything happen to Tout Sweet.”

The reverend slipped behind her desk. “You look familiar so I know we’ve met. You’re . . . Maxie!” Her eyes lit when she got the name right. “You were at the Showdown. Are you looking to schedule a wedding?”

“Wedding?” The word barely made it past the sudden clog in my throat. “Oh, no!” For the second time in as many minutes, I backed away, this time from the very thought. “I just happened to be here. On account of Tyler and Meghan.”

The reverend smiled. “Cute couple. I’m sure you’re very happy for them.”

“You betcha!” She hadn’t invited me, but I took the chair across from her desk. “I figured as long as I was here, I’d ask you about the other day. You know, about Dickie.”

Her smile dissolved and she puckered her lips.

“Did you know him?” I asked.

The reverend’s shrug was as elegant as the steel gray suit she wore with tasteful pearls and a white cami. “Everyone in Vegas knows . . . er . . . knew Dickie,” she said when she sat down. “He was quite a character.”

“And now he’s dead and someone murdered him.”

The reverend opened a desk drawer and brought out an eight-by-ten glossy. “He just did a wedding here,” she said, sliding the photo across the desk to me. “I haven’t even had a chance to have the picture framed yet.”

I studied the photo that showed a grinning Dickie in a pink-and-black-plaid sport coat standing with a middle-aged couple. “Dickie was a minister like you?”

Reverend Love laughed. “Oh, my goodness, no! But like so many people, this particular couple wanted to make their wedding ceremony different and distinctive. They were both fans of Dickie’s so—”

“Dickie had fans?”

Her smile was mischievous. “That’s the rumor. My own personal opinions aside, we are a full-service chapel. So when this couple asked for Dickie, I got them Dickie. He wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but hey, who am I to judge?”

“He sure got on people’s nerves. But Dickie liked you.” I cocked my head, thinking. “At the show the night before the cook-off started, and that morning when Dickie died . . . he was nasty to everyone else, but he said you were a doll. A doll!” I glanced over the reverend’s shoulder. “Like Tout Sweet!”

I don’t know if the reverend got the joke. She folded her hands on the desk. “Believe it or not, Dickie Dunkin was a smart businessman. He knew which side his bread was buttered on. Of course he went out of his way to be nice to me. This is the biggest and most successful chapel in Vegas. He knew if I was going to hire him to appear at comedy wedding services—”

“Then he had to stay on your good side and then he’d get the jobs, and a little publicity while he was at it.”

“Exactly.”

“Whoever sells the most tickets this week and appears with you at the big wedding ceremony on Sunday, that person will get publicity, too.”

“And let me guess, Dickie claimed he was going to win.”

“Hermosa and Osborn and Yancy . . . they all claim they’re going to win,” I told her.

The reverend’s eyes went wide. “You don’t think that the silly contest had anything to do with—”

“I can’t say. I do know there are plenty of people who didn’t like ol’ Dickie.”

“Oh, come on! I know there were people who didn’t appreciate Dickie’s sense of humor, and I can certainly understand why. He could be pretty scathing. Not to mention insensitive and insulting. But I can’t imagine there are people who would take that shlock act of his so seriously that they’d want to kill him. Maybe wring his neck!” She grinned, but only for a moment. Then her mouth settled into a hard line. “But murder? No, not murder.”

I weighed the advantages of letting her in on Dickie’s dirty little secret against keeping it to myself and decided that I might find out more—and possibly cultivate a useful ally—if I was aboveboard. “There was obviously somebody who really wanted Dickie dead because we both saw him do a header into the Devil’s Breath. I can’t say for sure at this point, but I think it might have been one of the people he was blackmailing.”

The reverend opened her mouth in astonishment, but before she had a chance to say a word, her phone buzzed. She flinched and picked up the receiver. “Is it time already?” she said, then nodded.

“I’ve got Tyler and Meghan’s wedding to take care of,” she said, and when she stood, her message was clear.

I got up and moved to the door.

“You’ll be at the wedding on Sunday?” the reverend called after me.

I was already at the door so I pretended I didn’t hear her. Me, watch dewy-eyed suckers get hitched? I’d sooner eat an entire pot of Sylvia’s flavorless chili.

I was still mulling over the unsavory thoughts of both weddings and Sylvia’s cooking when I walked outside and got out my phone to call a cab.

I can’t say if it ever arrived.

Because then, as I stood there waiting under that gigantic neon red heart, I heard a snap. And a screech. And a whoosh.

Automatically, I looked up, and what I saw made my stomach leap into my throat.

That gigantic red heart was headed for the sidewalk at lightning speed.

Right at me.

CHAPTER 11

Here’s the thing about having a crisis:

When it happens (and the way things were going, it seemed to be happening pretty regularly), most people can’t wait for someone to show up and fuss over them and hold their hands.

But when it happens to me, I’d rather just be left alone. I can handle things. On my own. I don’t need someone else butting in.

Especially when it turns out that someone is Nick.

The moment the curtains draped around my little cubicle in the ER swept aside and he swept in, I groaned.

“What the hell!” Nick marched over to the bed and sized up the situation with one pinpoint look at me propped up in bed and the blood-soaked bandage on my left arm. “What have you been up to?”

Like I said, I didn’t want coddling. But a little understanding would have been nice.

Maybe that was why even my gritted teeth didn’t stop me from adding a note of sickening saccharin to my voice. “Maxie, you poor thing! I came as soon as I heard the news. You must be in terrible pain. Let me get you a sip of water.”

Dumbfounded, he stared at me for a couple seconds before he got the message. “Oh.” There was a glass of ice water with the straw in it on the table next to my bed and Nick grabbed it. “You want a drink?”

I did. Desperately. I’d been alone in the little curtained cubicle ever since the paramedics scooped me up off the sidewalk in front of the Love Chapel and dumped me here, and that was . . .

I glanced around but there weren’t any clocks, and I wondered how long I’d been waiting for the doc who was supposed to stitch up the wound caused by the shattered glass from the fallen heart sign. My sense of time was warped, but then from the looks of things, I’d lost quite a bit of blood. I was woozy. Shaky. Thirsty. And more than a little scared.

I wasn’t about to admit to any of it. Especially not to Nick.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

He dropped into the chair next to the bed, and even though I didn’t ask for it, he put the glass of water up to my mouth and stuck the straw between my lips. “Drink.”

When the cool water hit the back of my parched throat, I closed my eyes and sighed.

“You’re not going to pass out, are you?”

I opened my eyes to find Nick’s face only inches from mine. “You okay?” he asked. “Do you have a concussion?”

I would have pushed him away if I’d had the energy. Instead, I shook my head. “How long have I been here?”

“I don’t know. I got the call . . .” Nick sat back and plucked his phone out of his pocket to check the time. “About twenty minutes ago.”

I wasn’t sure exactly where the hospital was in the scheme of Vegas geography, but believe me, when we arrived for the Showdown and I drove the RV with the Palace towed behind it through town, I got a sense of Vegas traffic. Twenty minutes? No matter where he’d come from, Nick must have moved like a bat out of hell.

I was still in shock from the whole incident. That would explain why my throat clogged and my eyes watered.

“All I did was walk out of the wedding chapel,” I said.

“I know. I heard.” Nick was on my right, and he rested his elbows on the bed and leaned forward. “Reverend Love told me.”

I didn’t have to ask. He filled me in on the details.

“She told me you came to see her at the chapel. To ask about Dickie. Believe me . . .” For just a moment, his eyes darkened to the color of a stormy sea. “We’ll talk about that later. For now, what’s important is that Reverend Love remembered you from the Showdown. Then again, she was pretty shaken up. I mean, by that sign coming down.”

“She wasn’t the only one.”

A smile touched Nick’s lips. He had the good sense to control it. “Since she didn’t know who else to call, she got ahold of me.”

Was I supposed to say
thank you
? Something told me it was how most people would have handled the situation. People like Sylvia. Rather than be accused of acting anything like her, I decided a middle-of-the-road reaction was called for. “That was nice of Reverend Love.”

A smile darted over Nick’s lips. “She’s a caring woman and she was plenty worried. She said she was about to start a wedding ceremony when she heard the crash and she ran out and saw the sign and you, sprawled out on the sidewalk. She’s the one who called 911, and she waited there with you until the paramedics arrived. I told her I’d call her after I found out how you were.”