The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (22 page)

“It’s all facts,” I reminded her. “And you have a new chapter to write. Thanks to the letters, you’ve got information that no one else has ever known, not since Carrie Wilder bundled up their love letters and Sleepy’s badge and hid them in one of the old storage rooms at the winery.” I glanced around at the small crowd. “See, Sleepy really did leave a treasure. The letters and his badge. That was his treasure.”

“Letters?” David’s mouth puckered. “Not exactly the stuff great stories are made of.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, young man,” Luella told him. “I’ll tell you what, Bea, that’s the most wonderful and romantic story I’ve ever heard. Imagine, Sleepy and Carrie Wilder. Congratulations, Kate.” She put a hand on Kate’s arm. “You’ve not only got a new ancestor—you’ve got one who’s a hero!”

Jacklyn didn’t even bother to stifle a yawn. “Terrific little story, but really, we’ve got a lot to do tonight.” She scraped her chair back from the table. “So if this doesn’t have anything to do with us—”

“But it does,” I told her. “You see, Sleepy has everything to do with Noreen’s murder.”

What’s the old saying about being able to hear a pin drop? I don’t know about that, exactly, but I can say that in the silence that descended, I could clearly hear the whoosh of the ceiling fan above my head and the clink of glasses when Aaron poured a couple more beers for the ghost getters and the waitresses delivered them to the tables. I let the silence settle.

“Noreen Turner,” I told them all, “was a complete and total phony.”

“There’s a big surprise,” Jacklyn grumbled.

“Not fair.” Big points for Liam for defending Noreen’s honor. “Okay, so the chick could be annoying—”

“And obnoxious,” David added.

“And high-and-mighty,” Rick said.

“And as crazy as all get-out,” Dimitri said. “But what does that have to do with Sleepy?”

“It has to do with Sleepy because a leopard—or, in this case, a camouflaged ghost getter—doesn’t change its spots. Dimitri, you remember how Noreen stole your research for her magazine article—”

“I’ll say.” Dimitri slugged down the rest of his beer and chinked the empty glass against the table.

“Well, that’s the whole point,” I told him. “You see, Noreen was exactly what so many of you told me she was. She wanted to make a name for herself in the paranormal world. And she was willing to do anything to do it. Even if it meant stealing the plans for a new piece of equipment and then naming it after herself: the Turner Plasmometer.”

“No, no, no!” Liam sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s not possible. I showed you the plans. I told you, they were Noreen’s.”

“Actually, they were Ted Fywell’s.” I pivoted just a bit to my right. “Isn’t that right, Fiona?”

The kid clutched her hands together on the table in front of her. “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.” I glided closer. “Because you know the story of Ted Fywell. The fire at his home a couple years ago . . . You knew about that, right? In that fire, Ted thought he lost the plans for a new invention of his, the Fywell Plasmometer.”

Fiona frowned. “Why would somebody lie about a thing like that?”

“There’s been a lot of lying going on,” I said. “First from Noreen. I think she’s the one who stole those plans. And she set the fire, didn’t she, Fiona? So that Ted would think the plans had burned up. Then when word got out that Noreen had produced the Turner Plasmometer . . .”

Fiona dropped her face in her hands, and when she looked up again, her cheeks were stained with tears. “He thought the plans were gone. He didn’t think they’d be stolen. Then Noreen took credit and”—she sobbed—“it broke his heart.”

“Wait a minute!” Dimitri popped out of his chair. “You mean Noreen didn’t invent the plasmometer?”

“The plans should have been your first clue,” I told him. “The erasures? The crayon? The spilled coffee? Honestly, do you think Noreen would have let any of that get by her?”

Dimitri’s dark brows veed over his eyes. “We just thought—”

“That she was a genius,” Liam squeaked. “That’s how geniuses work.”

“That’s how Ted Fywell worked,” I told him. “And you knew that, didn’t you, Fiona? Just like you knew that Ted committed suicide and it was all Noreen’s fault.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Her hands flat against the tabletop, Fiona stood. “It’s just something I read about. Just something that told me what kind of person Noreen really was. It doesn’t mean I did anything. I never even knew Ted Fywell.”

I didn’t think she’d make this easy.

I reached over to the bar and picked up the picture of Ted Fywell I’d printed from a story about him on the Internet.

“Then explain this.” I showed the picture to Fiona, and the ghost getters gathered around to see what I was talking about.

David pointed. “He’s wearing Fiona’s stone necklace.”

“No,” I corrected him. “She’s wearing his. Because Ted Fywell . . .” I had other photos, and I passed them around. “In every photo Ted Fywell’s taken in the last few years, he’s been wearing that gorgeous howlite necklace you have on now, Fiona. That’s why you wore it in the first place, am I right? So Noreen would see it. So she would know why you joined the group.”

Fiona’s shoulders dropped. “She never even noticed.”

Dimitri took the photo of Ted out of Fiona’s hands. “So what’s the story?” he asked. “Fywell and Fiona—there’s no connection.”

“Do you want to tell them, Fiona?” She clamped her lips shut, so I told them instead. “Fiona kept her original last name, but she was Ted Fywell’s stepdaughter. When she realized what Noreen had done, she joined the group and tried to get Noreen to admit that she stole the plasmometer plans. She wanted Ted to get the credit he deserved for the plasmometer. Right, Fiona?”

She nodded, and tears streamed down her cheeks. “I didn’t come here to kill her,” she sobbed. “But then Noreen . . . Noreen asked me to dress up as Sleepy Harlow and meet her at the winery so we could shoot a phony video. And then Noreen . . .” Her words were nearly lost beneath the sound of her tears. “When we got ready to shoot the video, Noreen said the plasmometer was junk. Junk! It was Ted’s dream. He killed himself because she stole the plans and the credit. And Noreen said it was junk. I couldn’t help myself. I was so mad. All I could think was that Noreen had ruined Ted’s life. And my mother’s life. And my life, too. I loved Ted like he was my real dad. And I got so mad, I just picked up that plasmometer and . . .”

She didn’t have to finish. I remembered that flash of video I’d seen and the look on Noreen’s face right before the plasmometer came down on her head.

Hank moved forward, and I knew he was going to put handcuffs on Fiona. I stopped him with a look. “One more thing,” I said. “You had the Sleepy costume. You’re the one who we’ve seen on the island. The headless ghost.”

She nodded. “I heard about the legend and the treasure. I thought it was a real treasure, you know. Not just some stupid letters. I thought I could find it, and I figured if people thought there was a ghost, they wouldn’t come looking for me.”

Levi moved over to stand at my side. “That’s why you were on Middle Island that day. That’s why you couldn’t let us see it was you.”

“Yeah,” Fiona grumbled.

“But wait!” Chandra had been deep in thought, and now she got up and walked over to where we stood. “Fiona couldn’t have done it. She was at my house at the time of the murder. She was playing a CD of chanting and burning incense and—”

When Hank put Fiona’s hands behind her back and slapped the cuffs on her, the kid shot Chandra a look that was acid. “Just because the music was playing didn’t mean I didn’t start the music and light the incense, then leave,” she said. “Some people!” She snorted. “Some people believe anything!”

*   *   *

By the time Hank took Fiona away and the ghost getters cleared out to do their Halloween thing, it was late. I promised Marianne I’d bring copies of Sleepy’s and Carrie’s letters over to her the next morning, and she and Alvin left. Chandra couldn’t pass up the opportunity to celebrate her favorite day of the year in proper fashion. She’d brought her witch outfit with her, and her makeup, too, and, gloriously green, she headed to the park for the party and took Kate and Luella with her. I told them I’d catch up to them later and, one by one, blew out the candles on the tables in the speakeasy and told Aaron and his crew they could close up and go to the party, too.

“Good work!” Levi told me when we got outside. “If you hadn’t made the Fywell connection, the truth never would have come out.”

“I’m glad it did.” It was chilly, and I hadn’t brought a coat. I chafed my hands up and down my bare arms. “I’m going to go home and change.”

“And then come back to the park?”

I would have liked to tell Levi no, but there was a little thread of hope that ran through his words that made the unspoken invitation impossible to resist.

“I’ll drive you,” he said.

We were quiet all the way home.

“So?” He stopped his Jeep in my driveway and turned to me. “You’re lost in thought. Sorry that our Sleepy is as big a phony as the Headless Horseman?”

“Kind of,” I admitted. “Not that I ever believed in him or anything. It’s just that”—I got out of the car and started for the house, and Levi walked at my side—“it was a great story, wasn’t it? And now . . .” The candle in my glowering pumpkin guttered in a cool, sharp breeze. “Well, it’s kind of fun to believe in fairy tales, isn’t it?”

We climbed the steps. “You can come in,” I told Levi. “I’ll get a coat and a hat and—”

My attention was caught by movement on the other side of the street, and I stopped and hurried to the porch railing for a better look.

“Do you see what I see?” I asked Levi.

And I knew he did, because he couldn’t manage to say a word.

Instead, he slipped a hand in mine, and together, we watched a shadow outlined by the moonlight glinting against the water. It was a man. And he didn’t have a head.

“It’s just our imagination,” I told Levi.

“Absolutely.”

“And it can’t be real.”

“No, it can’t,” he said.

A moment later, the wind blew and the trees rustled, and the shadow was gone.

Still, we didn’t move. We stood there staring at the lake and wondering what we’d just seen.

And Levi kept hold of my hand.

If you enjoyed this book, try a taste of

CHILI CON CARNAGE

The first book in Kylie Logan’s Chili Cook-off Mysteries

Available in paperback from Berkley Prime Crime

  1  

“W
ho died and left you boss?”

It was one of those what-do-you-call-its, a rhetorical question, so really, Sylvia shouldn’t have given me that know-it-all look of hers. Eyes scrunched, head tilted slightly forward, she looked me up and down, and her top lip curled when she said, “Since when does the giant chili pepper get to ask the questions?”

Okay, so I hadn’t picked the best of all possible moments to confront her, I mean, what with her wearing crisp khakis and a jalapeño-colored polo shirt with the Texas Jack logo over her heart and me in a giant red chili pepper costume that covered my head and body all the way down past my hips.

She looked neat and professional—as always—with her honey-colored hair pulled back in a ponytail, and far cooler than I was feeling with the sun of a New Mexico September beating down on me. But hey, Sylvia might be a neatnik and taller than me by a head, but no way was she ever going to look as good as I do in fishnet stockings and stilettos.

Just so she wouldn’t forget it, I shuffled said stilettos against the blacktop of the parking lot behind where we’d set up Texas Jack Pierce’s Hot-Cha Chili Seasoning Palace. It was the day before the opening of the Taos Chili Showdown and though technically I didn’t need the practice, I did need an excuse not to have to help Sylvia stick labels on spice jars. Rehearsing the routine I’d use to attract the crowds that would begin arriving the next morning was as good an excuse as any. While I was showing off my dancing talents (not as artistic as they were enthusiastic), I gave Sylvia the I-have-better-legs-than-you grin. Too bad she couldn’t see it, what with my face being covered and all.

“The Chili Chick gets to ask the questions,” I reminded her, stopping to catch my breath, “because the Chili Chick is equal partners with you in this little venture. Which means the Chili Chick has equal say. Which means my original question stands. Who died and left you boss?”

Sylvia rolled those sky-blue eyes of hers like she always does when I get the best of her and she refuses to admit it. Which is all the time. “All I did was change the prices on a couple of our most popular products,” she said. “All-Purpose Chili Cha-Cha, Global Warming, and—”

“Thermal Conversion. Yeah, I know. You changed the prices. And I didn’t know anything about it until I showed up this morning and started setting up the stand. You have an awful short memory, Sylvia. When we took over, we agreed—”

“To make all decisions jointly. Yes, I remember.” I guess that didn’t mean she had to like it, because those perfectly bowed lips of hers puckered. “I decided to make the change last night because I was going through the books and realized we were missing out on a gold mine. Those are our biggest-selling items, and by jacking the price up just a tad, we can increase our profit margin by—”

Since she couldn’t see me yawn, I made enough noise to let her know what was going on inside my Chili Chick costume.

“See?” She tossed her head. “I knew you wouldn’t be interested. Which is exactly why I didn’t bother to tell you. Besides, you weren’t even here last night.” Her lips thinned. “You knew there were seasonings to mix last night, Maxie. Tomorrow’s the first day of the cook-off and we always do our best business in the first few hours. But instead of helping, you ran off. With that loser Roberto, right? You left me high and dry and I had to stay up well past midnight. I had to do everything. All by myself.”

She was right. I’d bailed. And truth be told, Roberto hadn’t been worth it. Not that he wasn’t cute. And marginally sexy. It’s just that any guy who thinks drinking überquantities of tequila is the way to a girl’s heart isn’t exactly my type.

I was actually all set to apologize until Sylvia added a little singsong, “And you didn’t come in until what was it, three this morning?”

Apology forgotten, I propped my fists on my hips. Well, not exactly on my hips since my hips were camouflaged by the red chili. “So in addition to being the one who makes the decisions and doesn’t tell me, now you’re my mother?”

Oh, that stung her. Just like I hoped it would. I knew it for sure because Sylvia’s slim shoulders shot back a fraction of an inch and her chin came up. The word mother always does that to Sylvia. But then, talking about mothers makes her think of my mother. And thinking about my mother makes her think about how my mother stole her father from her mother.

Got that?

Sylvia and I, see, are half sisters. We share the same father, the aforementioned Texas Jack Pierce, and we have mothers who are as different as . . . well, as Sylvia and I are.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I reminded her, “but I happened to have a date last night.”

“With Roberto.” No one could do a tongue click quite like Sylvia. But then, she had a lot of practice. “I told you when he signed on, that roadie’s up to no good. Honestly, I thought you’d be smarter about men. I mean, after All You’ve Been Through.”

The capital letters are my addition, though I swear, if it was humanly possible to speak in upper case, Sylvia would have mastered the skill by now. Like she didn’t like talk of mothers in general and mine in particular, I was not exactly thrilled when she dropped the whole All You’ve Been Through thing.

Which is, of course, exactly why she mentioned it.

“We were talking about you raising prices,” I said, and since my teeth were clenched, I hoped she could hear me from behind the red mesh that covered my face so I could see out of the chili and customers couldn’t easily see in. “We weren’t talking about Edik and what happened back in Chicago.”

“No, but maybe we should.”

Uh-oh. There it was. That sympathetic look. The tender, understanding voice. Before I could back away, Sylvia grabbed my hand and dragged me closer. She liked to do this when she was playing big sister. Well, big half sister. I liked to resist because, let’s face it, she didn’t really care. All Sylvia wanted to do was remind me what a mess I’d made of my life back in Chicago. That, and the fact that she’d never in a million years be stupid enough to make the same mistakes I had.

“You’ve got to work through this problem of yours, Maxie,” she insisted, and then before I could point out the obvious fact that there was no problem and, therefore, no chance of working through it, she went right on. “You keep getting involved with guys who are all wrong for you. Obviously Edik—”

“Was hotter than a habanero and great in bed.” I knew she’d get all pinch-faced on me when I said this.

Which is exactly why I did.

Sylvia is an attractive woman. When she’s not as puckered as a prune. “He also stole how much from you? Fifty thousand dollars? And left your credit rating a shambles. Honestly, Maxie, if you can’t see that Roberto’s going to do the same thing—”

“He’s not. Because I’m not going to give him a chance.” This much was true. Rather than admit I’d already decided I was never going out with Roberto again, I added, “Roberto’s good for a few laughs. Nothing else.”

“Like the nothing else you were doing until three o’clock this morning?”

“Like I said, a few laughs.” It was easier than explaining about the tequila and the bar and the fight and the cops. It was also easier than even trying to begin to explain what I knew in my heart: With Edik, I’d learned my lesson. Oh yeah, he was firecracker hot, and as drop-dead delicious as any rock band lead guitarist in the western hemisphere. But Edik was a creep who thought of Edik first, last, and always. I’d caught on a little too late, but believe me, I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Because there was no way, no how, I was ever going to let myself fall in love again. Not madly, completely, and totally in love. Not like I’d been with Edik.

“Listen . . .” If I wasn’t wearing the Chili Chick costume, I would have scraped a hand through my dark, spiky hair. The way it was, all I could do was pat the side of the giant chili pepper. Something told me it didn’t have the same effect, and no way did it express the sort of frustration I always felt when Sylvia pretended that she was the loving big sister (okay, half sister) and I needed her guidance to find my way through the minefield that is my love life. “I can take care of myself,” I reminded her.

Her smile was so brittle, I waited to hear the crack. “Yes, and you proved that back in Chicago, didn’t you?”

I bit the inside of my mouth. It was that or the long line of vendors around us who were getting their booths ready for the next day’s opening festivities would hear a string of profanity hotter than any chili mix in the great state of New Mexico.

“What happened in Chicago was a mistake,” I said.

“You admit it?”

“Of course I admit it.” My arms stuck out the side of the costume (the better to wave folks toward Texas Jack’s stand), and I threw my hands in the air. “What, you want me to say it wasn’t? That I liked being taken to the cleaners by the man I loved?”

Sylvia’s golden eyebrows dipped over her eyes. “Did you? Love him?” There was that annoying note of compassion again. Like Sylvia might actually know what it’s like to get her heart broken. Thirty-two years old and honest, I was pretty sure she was still a virgin. It was the only thing that could possibly explain how tightly wound she was. “I’m sorry, Maxie. I never thought—”

“Whatever.” The perfect all-purpose response, and delivered at the right moment, too. The PA system that had been set up in the parking lot of the fairgrounds hosting the cook-off buzzed and crackled, and Bob Tumbleweed Ballew, our organizer and emcee, announced that there would be a vendor meeting that evening precisely at six o’clock. Since there was a vendor meeting precisely at six o’clock the night before every Showdown, it pretty much went without saying, but hey, there wasn’t one of us among the couple dozen vendors following the chili circuit who would ever mention it. Tumbleweed liked making announcements, and listening to him was way better than listening to Sylvia. I guess she knew it. She huffed into the Palace.

I decide to practice a little more.

Arms waving, hands beckoning, feet moving to the only routine I remembered from a long-ago tap class that thankfully proved to my mother once and for all that I was not made for the stage, I dance-stepped my way to the front of our booth just the way I would do the next day when the Showdown opened.

“Lookin’ good, Chili Chick!” This from Tumbleweed, who came out of the trailer where he and his wife, Ruth Ann, handled all the admin work that went into the Showdown. He stopped long enough to beam a smile at me. “Just you wait until tomorrow. There’s not a cowboy in New Mexico who will be able to resist you, sweetheart!”

I didn’t take offense. After all, Tumbleweed was at least seventy and I’d known him since back when I was a kid and I spent my summers traveling the chili circuit with Jack (and, unfortunately, with Sylvia, too). In fact, Tumbleweed was Jack’s best friend, the one who’d called me when—

Even inside the clumsy costume and standing in the blazing sun, I shivered.

“Hey, not losing heart, are you?” Like I said, Tumbleweed and I had been friends a long time; he knew exactly what I was thinking. He pressed my hand. “We’re going to find him, honey.”

“I know.” I did. Deep down in my heart I knew we were going to locate Jack, who’d been missing for nearly six weeks now. Tell that to the lump of emotion that blocked my throat and made it impossible for me to swallow. “But no one’s seen him, Tumbleweed, and—”

He chuckled and waved away my worries as if they were nothing more annoying than the brown ambush bug that flew out of the flowering shrubs near where we were standing and did a flyby between us. “I know Texas Jack and you know Texas Jack.” He grinned and winked. “We both know he’s got an eye for the ladies and a taste for adventure. He’ll be back, honey. And when he is, he’s gonna be as happy as a hornet in honey to see what you two girls have done to keep the business going.” Tumbleweed slid a look over to the stand where Sylvia was putting the last-minute touches on the catering trailer we hauled around behind our RV.

Not that there was a whole lot to do. The Palace was only seven by fourteen—smaller than a lot of the trailers the other vendors and chili cook-off contestants used. It had a wide concession window at one end and inside, a stove, fridge, worktable, and shelves where we displayed our wares. Jack being Jack, he didn’t allow the trailer’s small size to stymie business. The Palace was painted chili pepper red and the sign above it—the one that featured Jack’s smiling face—was impossible-to-miss yellow with alligator-green lettering. The Palace was flashy. Some people said it was trashy. I thought it was beautiful, and I loved it like no other thing on Earth.