Death by Devil's Breath (7 page)

“But a crazy artist came after me with a chainsaw!” I reminded her. “And I had to break into a dead guy’s apartment. And there was the dead guy’s girlfriend, the one who was gunning for me and—”

“And this is Tumbleweed.”

Did she hear the sigh of surrender from inside the Chili Chick?

That would explain why Ruth Ann’s expression brightened just a bit. “Oh, Maxie, honey, I knew I could depend on you.”

“I didn’t say I was going to do it.”

“You didn’t have to. All you had to do is think about Tumbleweed. Just like I did. He’s no spring chicken anymore. And the stress . . . Oh, Maxie!” Even though there was a smile on her face, there were tears on Ruth Ann’s cheeks. “We’ve got to leave town with a clean reputation. That will make Tumbleweed feel better. We can’t . . .” She gulped down a breath. “We can’t let anything happen to him.”

Inside the Chick costume, my shoulders drooped, but Ruth Ann couldn’t see that, not with the infrastructure of wires and mesh that allowed the red canvas to hold its chili shape. “I can’t promise anything,” I said.

Her fingers dug into my arm. “Just knowing you were trying would cheer me right up.”

“I don’t know any of the players.”

“That doesn’t matter. If I know you’re out there talking to people and looking for motives and digging for the truth, that would make me feel so much better!”

“I can’t let Nick find out.”

Ruth Ann could be as sweet as spring roses, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a cagey ol’ girl. Her mouth pulled into a smile and she narrowed her eyes to give me the sort of penetrating look she used to aim my way back when I was a teenager and she suspected I’d pinched a can or two of the beer in her fridge (which I usually had). “You’re not afraid of Nick, are you?”

The very thought felt like a kick from a mule. My shoulders shot back and my chin went up. “No, I’m not afraid of him, but—”

Ruth Ann didn’t wait to hear what was bound to be a pretty wimpy defense anyway. She gave me a wink. “You can handle him, Maxie. I know you can. I mean, when it comes to investigating. And other things.”

Oh, I was pretty sure I knew what other things she was referring to, but before I could squelch the sudden heat that boiled through my blood or ask for confirmation, Ruth Ann sauntered away.

“Great, you just promised Ruth Ann you’d investigate.” Good thing I was encased in the chili so nobody could hear me mumble to myself. “Now what are you going to do?”

I wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, I knew I couldn’t do it at the bordello.

To make it look like I was actually working the job I was supposed to be working, I ducked into the bordello and grabbed a stack of Texas Jack Pierce’s Hot-Cha Chili Seasoning Palace flyers, then I headed down the dusty main street of Deadeye, handing flyers left and right to everyone who happened to so much as glance at the giant chili. I knew the auditorium was off-limits—at least through the main doors—so when I got over there, I looked around for what might be another way in. I found it in the form of a door painted to look like the entrance to a mine shaft with a sign hanging from it that declared,
Do Not Enter
.

Just as I hoped, the door opened directly backstage.

I closed it behind me and took a couple cautious steps forward.

As far as I could see, there was no one around and, now that Dickie’s body had been removed and the cops were gone, no one out front, either.

I headed for the stage.

And stopped in an instant.

The moment anyone heard the sounds of my stilettos rapping against the wooden floor, Security was bound to come running.

And Security, I didn’t need.

I slipped off my shoes and, dangling them from one hand, slid across the floor in fishnet-stockinged feet.

Except for the fact that Dickie’s body was gone and all the chili—including the bowls the judges had been sampling—had been packed up and carted away to be tested, nothing looked different than it had when I waited backstage for the cops to talk to me. Now, I stood in the center of the stage, imagining what I’d seen earlier that day, before the cops arrived, before Dickie took a header into the Devil’s Breath.

“The Great Osborn, Hermosa, Yancy . . .” Standing in front of the judges’ table, I let my gaze move left to right, picturing where each judge had been seated. “Reverend Love, Dickie. And the scuffle between Dickie and The Great Osborn . . .”

That had taken place right at center stage, between the judges’ table and the tables where the contestants did their cooking.

My stockings sliding against the slick floor, I made my way over to the cooking space, but like the judges’ table, nothing looked different to me. Brother William’s cooking area was neat and well organized. Karl Sinclair’s included a life-sized poster of him hanging from the front of the table. Tyler York’s makeshift kitchen was as shiny as Tyler himself, and still curious about him, I gave it a closer look. Every pot looked brand-new. Every pan, like it had just come out of the box. Every spoon and spatula and knife gleamed. Shiny. Like Tyler.

Finally I looked at the space that belonged to the woman with the dark hair. Unlike Tyler’s, her area was dotted with grease and spotted with tomato sauce. Her spoons looked as if they’d put in years of service. And the smell . . .

I stopped in my stocking-foot tracks, sniffing the air around the woman’s cooking space.

“Blackstrap molasses and . . .” I pivoted, carefully taking another whiff, and breathed the words “Jack Daniel’s.”

I darted to the other side of the table and looked through the woman’s stored supplies and found exactly what I knew I’d find—a bottle of tequila.

“Tequila, molasses, Jack Daniel’s.” I really didn’t need to review the evidence, but I couldn’t help myself. In all my years on the chili circuit, I’d known only one person who used all three of those ingredients in his chili—my dad, Texas Jack Pierce.

And eight weeks earlier, Texas Jack Pierce had fallen off the face of the earth.

Don’t ask me what I was looking for, but even that little bit of a shaky connection made something that felt like hope blossom in my heart. I riffled through the rest of the woman’s supplies and, in the end, found myself right back where I started. There was no sign that she knew Jack, and nothing that indicated that the woman might know anything about his disappearance.

Annoyed at myself for getting carried away, I gave an empty pot under the table a little kick.

And stopped cold.

A thump from backstage told me I wasn’t the only one poking around.

Careful not to make a sound, I headed that way.

There was a hallway behind the stage, and I peered around the corner, only to find a man looking into the open door of one of the dressing rooms.

It was Dickie’s, and while he was still busy carefully poking his head past the crime scene tape strung over the doorway, I closed in on him.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

The man jumped and spun to face me, his back to the wall outside the dressing room.

He was fifty or so with hair that must have once been sandy and now was a washed-out shade of mouse. He had a wide nose, a weak chin, and very small hands. I noticed them right away because they flew around him like butterflies on a caffeine high.

“Um . . . what . . . hey, how are you?” He must have realized he was way too jumpy because the man hooked his thumbs into his belt buckle. It was big and silver and there were turquoise chips in it. The Southwestern theme went along with his jeans and his black shirt with red stitching.

“Who are you?” I asked him.

The man scratched a hand behind one ear, and call me crazy, but I would swear he didn’t think it was all that unusual to have a conversation with a giant red chili. Then again, we were in Vegas.

“George,” he said. “George Jarret. I was just looking for . . .” His gaze darted to the dressing room. “I was just checking to see if Dickie was around.”

If George Jarret hadn’t heard the news, he was the only one in Vegas. “Are you a friend?” I asked. “Or maybe a fan?”

“Fan. Definitely. I’m a fan.” Jarret ran his tongue over his lips. “I mean, the guy’s a comic genius, right? I see his show every time I’m in Vegas, and I thought if I stopped by, I might catch him when he was rehearsing. I thought . . . well, I thought maybe Dickie would give me an autographed picture of something.”

“Or you figured nobody would be around and you could pick up a little souvenir now that the news about Dickie is out,” I suggested.

Jarret stepped away from the wall and backed a few steps down the hallway. “News? I hope nothing bad has happened to Dickie.”

I wondered if he could pick up on my nonchalance, I mean what with the costume and all. “I’d say murder qualifies as something bad.”

“Murder?” Another couple steps and Jarret was almost all the way to the door opposite the one I’d come in. “Dickie’s . . . Dickie’s dead?”

“As a doornail.”

“Oh. That’s too . . .” And before he could say what it was too much of, Jarret turned and raced out the door.

Curious, I took a moment to peep into Dickie’s dressing room, too, and I have to admit it wouldn’t have bothered me—I mean even knowing the guy who’d recently used it to don the tasteless clothing for his tasteless shows was dead—if not for the fact that there was a stack of eight-by-ten photographs of Dickie looking up at me from a nearby table.

He was smiling, and the autograph scrawled on the top picture said, “Keep up the laughs.”

Poor Dickie sure wasn’t laughing now.

Convinced there was nothing of any interest in Dickie’s dressing room, I went the other way, and as it turned out, my timing was pretty bad. Just as I got backstage, the main door of the auditorium swung open and a couple uniformed cops walked in with the chili contest contestants. Something told me they wouldn’t be happy that I’d been poking around, and I ducked behind the curtain.

“It’s all been checked and dusted for prints,” one of the cops told them. “So you can go ahead and pack up and get your stuff out of here.”

Karl Sinclair walked in first. “Which means no contest,” he grumbled.

His sentiment wasn’t echoed by either Tyler York or Brother William, who followed behind. The dark-haired woman, I noticed, never moved a muscle. She toed the line between the outside entrance and the auditorium like she’d been flash-frozen, and her eyes wide, she glanced around.

“You can come in,” the cop said and waved an arm. “It’s time to clean up your stuff and clear out.”

I’m pretty sure the woman wasn’t listening. Her gaze landed on the spot onstage that was still sprinkled with Devil’s Breath chili, and her skin paled.

“Come on, miss,” the cop said, louder this time, and when she still didn’t move, he raised his voice. “Bernadette, are you listening? You can come in now, Miss Kromski!”

The name slammed into me like an out-of-control cement truck, and it was my turn to freeze. Well, except for my heart, which started a cha-cha of epic proportions inside my chest, and my brain, which whirled with the possibilities (all of them bad) of this sudden turn of events.

Now everything made sense! The death ray looks. The woman’s knowledge of the basic ingredients in one of Jack’s all-time best recipes.

The last time I’d seen Bernadette Kromski was at a Showdown when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, and since I hadn’t put on an inch since and I’d always worn my dark hair short and spiked, I suppose it was easy for her to identify me.

But it was no wonder I hadn’t recognized her from the get-go. Back then, she was a big-breasted, long-legged goddess, and though she was still plenty tall, the years had added a few pounds and rounded her shoulders. I’d bet anything her chestnut hair was natural and the golden tresses I remembered her with came straight out of a bottle.

Bernadette Kromski!

When I gulped, I hoped the cops didn’t hear me.

See, I suddenly knew why she looked like she wanted me to go up in a puff of smoke—Bernadette Kromski hadn’t forgotten and neither had I. We were archenemies!

CHAPTER 5

Bernadette Kromski is Evil Incarnate.

I do not use those capital letters lightly.

She is devious. She is underhanded. She is nasty.

And I knew if I was going to look into Dickie Dunkin’s murder, I’d have to start with her.

After all, it was her chili that Dickie had been eating when he went from alive to deceased.

And then, of course, there is the whole Evil Incarnate thing.

Finding Bernadette once she’d packed up her cooking pots and left Creosote Cal’s wasn’t all that tough. A little shmoozing in the admin building (aka the blacksmith shop) with Ruth Ann and I had my hot little hands on the contestants’ info. According to her entry application, Bernadette lived right there in Vegas and worked at a little place not too far away known as Bibi’s Bump and Grind.

Like I expected anything else?

I lied through my teeth and told Sylvia I was going to get something to eat, peeled out of the chili costume, and headed out to streets as hot as a Naga Viper pepper. Bibi’s was pretty much what I expected, a low-slung brick building with a neon sign above the door where a bouncer read the newspaper and didn’t look like he was too particular about who he let in.