Death by Devil's Breath (15 page)

She backed out of the room and shut the door.

“Now do you believe me?” she asked. “No way I killed Dickie. Heaven help me, I loved the man, and I know he adored me. What man wouldn’t?”

CHAPTER 10

“I’ve got to leave.”

No
hello, nice to see you, glad you’re back
.

But then, that’s not Sylvia’s style.

The moment I walked back into the bordello, she slid out from behind the cash register and left a long line of customers with purchases in their hands, who automatically looked my way.

At the door, she called over her shoulder, “See you later.” And that was that.

The next hour was a blur of chili spices, peppers, and questions, and believe me, I am not complaining. When it comes to the Palace, slammed is a good thing.

But by the time I took care of all those customers and restocked the shelves, I was whooped. I’d brought a box of Hostess Twinkies from the RV and tucked it in the back room for just such an emergency, and convinced I needed a surge of sugar, I headed that way and—

Stopped cold.

The Chili Chick was exactly where I’d left her, draped over a chair in the storage room, but one look, and I knew something was wrong.

Yellow.

There was something bright yellow on the Chick.

I lifted the costume and my heart gave two mighty thumps. That is, before it stopped completely.

Someone had spray-painted a message on the Chili Chick in Day-Glo yellow.

Bitch
.

As if the word were as flaming as the color of the paint it was written with, I dropped the costume and backed out of the room, Twinkies forgotten. I would have kept right on backstepping if I hadn’t bumped into something that felt more like a brick wall than solid flesh.

Nick.

His hands clutched my shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

The itching powder, the gunk on my shoes, that sleek knowing smile on Bernadette’s face when I saw her out on the main street of Deadeye a little earlier . . . I could deal with all that, and I had, in my usual way. I was pissed, and ready to rumble.

But this . . .

There was something about seeing the Chick herself vandalized, something that deep down inside felt like a sacrilege so personal and so devastating, it took my breath—and my voice—away.

Like it had rusted shut, I worked my jaw up and down a couple times before I could get any words out. “Wrong? Somebody . . .” I made a sharp motion toward the back room and the vandalized costume, and fortunately, Nick got the message. He stepped in there, and when he came out again, his lips were pressed into a thin line.

“What did you see?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been busy. We had plenty of customers. And before that I was . . .”

I was what, investigating? Something told me mentioning that wasn’t the best way to get Nick’s sympathy. “I had the costume on earlier today and it was fine,” I told him instead. “Well, except for my shoes being slippery.”

“Which explains your knees.”

There was something about knowing that Nick was giving my legs a careful look that shook me out of my daze. “First the itching powder! Then my shoes were messed with! Now this!” I threw my hands in the air. “Don’t you get it, Nick? Somebody’s out to get me. And I know exactly who it is!”

“Could it be because you’re poking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

If this was a legitimate question, I would have answered it honestly. The way it was, the tone of Nick’s voice told me he wasn’t as interested in finding out what I’d learned in regards to the investigation as he was in reminding me that I didn’t have the experience—or the smarts—to be investigating in the first place.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Somebody doesn’t like me,” I grumbled.

To which, let’s face it, Nick had no right to smile. “You’re really hard to like.”

He didn’t give me a chance to level him. “Go.” This time when he put his hands on my shoulders, he spun me toward the door. “Go find Sylvia so I can ask her what she might have seen. And don’t worry about sales,” he added because he knew that was exactly what I was worried about. “If customers come in, I’ll tell them to come back a little later.”

With no choice, I headed out, and though Creosote Cal’s isn’t nearly as big as some of those mega-hotels over on the Strip, it wasn’t exactly easy finding Sylvia in a place filled with one-armed bandits, an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant, and a pool shaped like the skull of a steer, complete with gigantic horns on the shallow end. I finally located her in the coffee shop. Notice I said
located.
No mention of talking to her.

That was because the moment I saw who she was with, I stepped out of her range of vision so I could watch.

Sylvia and Tyler York, Mr. Shiny Devil’s Breath Contestant, sat across from each other at one of the two-seater tables along the far wall. Sylvia’s hands were clutched ever so daintily around her coffee cup. Tyler’s eyes were on her. But then maybe, like me, he was trying to figure out which of them sparkled most brilliantly in the glow of the overhead lights.

Tyler spoke.

Sylvia laughed. Even from where I stood peeking out from behind a phony wood pillar, I could hear the silvery sound. Tyler slid his hand across the table and squeezed hers.

Sylvia and Tyler York?

It took a few moments for me to process the thought and only a few after that to decide it was a terrible, awful, horrible situation. If Sylvia and Tyler ever got together—I mean really got together—they’d produce children who would be so shiny, they’d glow in the dark.

Thank goodness, before the idea had a chance to fully form, Sylvia pushed back from the table. I knew she’d see me right away when she walked out of the coffee shop, so I ducked around a corner and into the gift shop, where I stationed myself behind a rack of Creosote Cal hoodies. A funny sort of lump in my throat, I watched Sylvia walk across the lobby and back toward Deadeye with an uncharacteristic spring in her step.

I swallowed around the painful knot at the same time I asked myself what it was all about. It wasn’t possible that I was actually feeling affection for Sylvia, was it? That I was touched to see her happy?

Or maybe it was the other side of the coin that had me suddenly feeling as if I’d swallowed a cotton ball.

Maybe seeing Sylvia happy and smiling with a guy as wholesome as Tyler only served to underscore what was wrong with me: I’d spent my love life brushing aside the shiny guys, the ones who were too good to be true, the guys who were steady and reliable. Instead, I’d made a play for the bad boys—every single time—and those bad boys had lived up to their reputations and my expectations. They’d left me alone and brokenhearted. Every single time.

Maybe the pang I felt when I saw Sylvia and Tyler together was nothing more than good old-fashioned jealousy.

The thought slammed into me right between my heart and my stomach, and still considering it, I watched Tyler, chin up and arms swinging, leave the coffee shop. The gift shop was directly across from the hotel registration desk, and there was a young woman with long auburn hair standing over there. The moment she caught sight of Tyler, her expression brightened. She met him halfway, and he slipped his arms around her and gave her a long and very sloppy kiss.

What had been confusion about my feelings of jealousy and longing vanished in an instant, replaced by an anger so overpowering, I didn’t even realize I had stomped out of the gift shop until I was in the lobby. “Two-time my sister, will you?” I growled, only by the time I did, I realized that Tyler and the redhead, their arms linked around each other’s waists, were already on their way out the front door of the hotel.

A woman possessed—though what possessed me, curiosity, jealousy, or some kind of crazy devotion to Sylvia, I couldn’t say—I followed them outside, and when they hopped into a cab and it sped away, I flagged down another waiting taxi, jumped in, and delivered the classic line, “Follow that car.”

We were in Vegas; the driver never questioned my motives or my sanity.

A short time later, Tyler’s cab slowed in front of a gleaming (was I surprised?) white building with a steeple on one end and what looked like Rapunzel’s tower on the other. There was a new sign just being installed over the front door, a gigantic red neon heart, and it swayed on the ropes and pulleys that held it.

“Love Chapel.” I burbled out the words on the end of a
harrumph
of disgust. “What’s that lousy, weasely two-timer doing at Reverend Love’s wedding chapel?”

“Biggest chapel in town,” my cab driver informed me. “They do a bunch of weddings, every single day.”

“Well, they better not be doing one with those two!” I slammed out of the cab and marched inside. The main hallway was a gleaming (there’s that word again) maze of mirrored walls, giant fake flower arrangements, and blush carpeting. My footsteps muffled by the plush, I followed the sounds of voices, turned a corner, and found Tyler and the redhead, lip-locked.

“What kind of lowlife are you?” I pointed one shaking finger in Tyler’s direction. “How can you do this to my sister?”

The couple broke apart and Tyler looked from the redhead to me. “Meghan is your sister?”

“Not her!” There was no way to deal with the anger that pounded through me other than to tug at my spiky hair. I tugged away. “Sylvia. How can you do this to Sylvia?”

Some of the shine went out of Tyler’s expression. “Sylvia from the chili cook-off?”

“Oh, that’s just great! That’s very sweet! One minute you’re making eyes at Sylvia—”

Meghan slipped her hand from Tyler’s grasp. “You were making eyes at some other woman?”

“I was not!” Tyler’s denial echoed along the hall of mirrors. He scraped his left hand through his hair and curled his right hand into a fist. “This woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Meghan, darling. You’re the one I’m here to marry.”

“You’re getting married? Now?” The news was like a slap in the face and I flinched. “But what about Sylvia?”

“Sylvia . . .” Tyler pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “What on earth makes you think that Sylvia and I—”

“You were talking to her.” I threw an arm out in the general direction of Creosote Cal’s. Maybe. I actually wasn’t sure where we were in relation to Creosote Cal’s, but if nothing else, I figured the gesture underscored our little melodrama. “You were sitting in the coffee shop, and the two of you, you were chatting and—”

Tyler’s laugh cut me short. “And do you always make wild assumptions about people just because you happen to see them together? Sylvia and I . . .” He turned to Meghan and took both her hands in his. “Sylvia’s the one I told you about,” he said. “The cooking chick. You know, the one I’m doing the job for.”

Good thing this made sense to one of us. When Meghan smiled, Tyler gave her a peck on the cheek. “You’d better go finish getting ready,” he crooned. “Soon-to-be Mrs. York.”

Giggling, she scampered down the hallway and disappeared into a door marked
Brides Only.
It was going to take a little more than that to get rid of me.

I stepped back, my weight against one foot. “Explain,” I demanded.

Tyler did. “Sylvia, she’s your sister, right?”

“Half sister,” I corrected him.

“Well, I can’t believe she didn’t tell you. The whole thing about me being a chili contestant—”

Before he could say another word, the truth dawned as bright as Tyler’s smile. “You’re a phony!”

“I’m an actor.”

“And Sylvia hired you—”

“To pretend I’m a chili chef.” Tyler nodded. “Only the recipes I’ve won the regional competitions with—”

“They’re Sylvia’s recipes.” My jaw flapped. “She . . . you . . .” I shook my head, hoping to order my thoughts. “You and Sylvia aren’t—”

“Involved?” Tyler threw back his head and laughed. “Not hardly! Sylvia is the most straitlaced, uptight, inflexible, hidebound—”

It was all true, but that didn’t keep me from growling, “That’s my sister you’re talking about!”

“Well, your sister and I are not romantically involved,” he told me in no uncertain terms. “We never have been. We never will be. Meghan and I are getting married today.”

“Then why were you holding Sylvia’s hand?” I asked. “Back at the coffee shop.”

Tyler reached into his pocket and pulled out a check. The signature was Sylvia’s. “I wasn’t holding Sylvia’s hand, I was getting the last of what she owed me, and we were trying not to be too obvious about the payoff. You know, in case any of the Showdown people were around. I’ll say this much for your sister—she agreed to pay me in full for this last gig, even though the contest was canceled. So . . .” He tucked the check back where it came from, turned, and walked away. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get married now.”

My head spinning, I stood in the center of the hallway and stared at my own dazed reflection in the mirrors that surrounded me. As far as I knew, there was actually no written rule about how a Showdown vendor couldn’t enter one of the competitions, but I’d bet any money that Sylvia realized if she entered, she’d never win. Not in a million years. Sylvia, see, has a reputation. What was it Tyler said? Straitlaced, uptight, inflexible, hidebound? Sylvia was all those things, and everyone who ever got close to the Showdown knew it. It was no surprise to me that she was also a little sneak. If Tyler won a few cook-offs using Sylvia’s recipes, she could take advantage of the publicity and talk up how she’d taught him everything he knew, and once he made a name for himself on the chili circuit, she could piggyback off his fame and publish that cookbook she’d always wanted to write. A cookbook that would, no doubt, feature Jack’s famous—and currently missing—recipe as its centerpiece.