Revenge of the Chili Queens Page 11

  As crazy as this seems, I think this was news to many of the women up there onstage. A couple of them actually looked like they might burst into tears. Tiffany, it should be noted, was not one of them. Her chin was high, her shoulders were steady in a brave-little-soldier pose, and I wondered if she was trying to convince Eleanor, or herself.

  “So what are you going to do?” Eleanor asked no one in particular. “You’re going to be gracious, that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to be grateful, too. You are all winners and you know it. And you’re going to act like winners. No matter what. Now, let me see you be winners. What are you going to do when that girl standing right there next to you is named Miss Consolidated Chili?”

  Miss Hotter than a Chili Pepper down at the end of the row clapped. It was a slow, tentative sort of sound that picked up steam when one beauty queen after another joined in.

  From my vantage point, I watched smiles that started out just as tentative blossom on every single face as the women put their hands together and applauded for all they were worth.

  Well, except for Tiffany.

  Eyes narrowed, I studied the odd way Miss Texas Chili Pepper applauded. She didn’t bring both her hands above her waist the way everyone else did. She kept her left arm at her side and brought her right hand to it down near her hip.

  If anyone else noticed or if anyone else cared, no one pointed it out. I wasn’t sure I cared, either, but I did think it was a little odd.

  Odd got odder when Eleanor had the girls do the next role-playing exercise.

  “Now,” she said, “let’s see what y’all are going to do if you win!”

  A couple of the women squealed. One put a hand to her forehead like she was going to faint. Another one jumped up and down.

  Eleanor shook her head. “Well, that’s all well and good, but it’s going to be mighty distracting for the people down in the seats,” she said. “So watch me, and do what I do.”

  Eleanor stepped back, sucked in a breath like she was plenty surprised, and put her hands on either side of her open mouth.

  The beauty queens followed suit.

  Except for Tiffany, who brought only her right hand to her face.

  The pieces fell into place, and my mouth fell open, too, but not because I was surprised or because I’d been named Miss Consolidated Chili.

  More like I’d just realized how stupid I’d been.

  “Darn!”

  I plunked back in the plush theater seat and gave myself a figurative kick in the pants.

  I’d been blind and oh, so wrong about the one person I wanted to be oh, so right about.

  • • •

  The rehearsal lasted another hour and a half, but believe me when I say I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Walk this way. Move this way. Next will come the talent competition.

  I heard all the instructions that came from the middle-aged women who took over for Eleanor and whose job it was to direct the logistics of the show; I just didn’t care.

  My one and only theory of the crime had been shot down in flames, and I was a little busy stewing.

  And trying to figure out how I could prove if I was right. Even though I knew I was. And didn’t want to prove it.

  By the time the beauty queens cleared the stage so they could freshen up before their evening duties back at Alamo Plaza, I knew what I had to do. I trailed backstage, keeping an eye out for Tiffany when I cruised past the dressing rooms where female chatter oozed from every nook and cranny.

  She didn’t leave with the first group of queens.

  Or the second.

  Fine by me. That gave me a chance to look around. The main auditorium of the fairgrounds is used for concerts and shows of all kinds, and like most theaters, there were things lying around backstage like ropes and ladders and miles of wires. There were a couple beanbag-sized sandbags anchoring the ropes near the red velvet curtains, and I grabbed one and hefted it in one hand.

  Perfect!

  I stepped back in the shadows and waited.

  Lucky for me, Tiffany was the last one out of the dressing room, and she was all alone when she walked out with her right hand looped around the handle of that rolling purple makeup case of hers. I had plenty of elbow room to step forward, call out her name, and lob the sandbag at Miss Texas Chili Pepper.

  It hit her in the left side and plunked on the floor.

  “Darn!” I stomped one sneaker-clad foot. “Darn, darn, darn!”

  Maybe Tiffany wasn’t as dopey as I thought she was, because she looked at the sandbag on the floor and went as pale as a ghost. “What are you doing?” she demanded. That is, right before she looked around to make sure there wasn’t anyone near to overhear us, and then hurried over so she could hiss at me. “What’s wrong with you? What are you trying to prove?”

  I retrieved the little sandbag and tossed it back where I found it. “I should have seen it right from the start,” I told her. “I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.”

  She swallowed hard, and now that she had a couple seconds to think about it, she lifted her chin and sucked in her bottom lip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the way you hand out crappy souvenirs. I’m talking about the way you threw your water bottle into the recycling bin in the motor home yesterday. You set the bottle down on the counter, Tiffany.” A pretend bottle in my hand, I demonstrated. “Then you slid the drawer open, dropped the bottle in and shut the drawer.”

  “We all need to be more environmentally conscious,” she said. “We owe it to Mother Nature, and to the generations of children who—”

  “Yeah. Right. Whatever.” I stepped back, my weight against one foot, and looked her over. “What does the environment have to do with the way you . . .” I let my mouth drop open and slapped my hands to my face in one big, exaggerated, I’ve-won-the-pageant move.

  “You can’t tell me the way you only put one hand to your face has anything to do with how much of a tree hugger you are.”

  Tiffany’s shoulders shot back. “I have my own style.”

  “You have a left arm you can’t use.”

  She tried to counter my accusation—her eyes squinched and her jaw worked up and down in silent protest. I nearly felt sorry for her. And when she realized there was no story she could make up that would satisfy little ol’ me, Tiffany’s eyes filled with tears.

  “What do you want? Do you want money? Is that why you’re doing this to me? Do you want money not to tell?”

  Honestly, at that point, I wished I was really as hard-hearted as some people think I am. It would have been fun to toss out a figure—say, five hundred a month—and watch Tiffany squirm. But hey, in spite of what Sylvia might say, I’m not anywhere near that heartless. Well, not most of the time, anyway.

  I glanced at Tiffany’s left arm. “What happened?”

  Automatically, her right hand went to her left arm in a protective little move. “A riding accident. When I was thirteen. I was already involved in pageants, and my mother and I, we didn’t see any reason not to continue. I mean, why shouldn’t I? I’m still just as beautiful as I ever was, right? I’m still just as talented. And I’m pretty good at covering up. I can compensate. You know? But if anyone finds out . . .” Again, Tiffany looked all around and peered into the backstage shadows, just to make sure we were alone.

  “I can’t let anybody find out,” she burbled. “Then they’d know . . .” A single tear slipped down her cheek. “They’d know I’m not perfect!”

  For me, the road less traveled is the high road. Since I’d already chosen it, I kept my feet firmly in place. “Your secret is safe with me,” I told her. “But as it turns out, this is really good news for you.”

  She sniffled. “It is? How can it be?”

  “Don’t you get it? Dom, he was sick the night he died thank
s to your chili practical joke. That meant he was weak and shaky and that whoever killed him wouldn’t have had too hard of a time sneaking up on him and overpowering him. But it still took two hands to wrap those guitar strings around his neck.”

  Tiffany pouted. “I told you I didn’t do it.”

  “And I finally believe you. But darn . . .” I kicked at the nearest coil of heavy black wires. “You know what this means, don’t you? You were my best bet, and since there’s no way you could have killed Dominic, I have to start my investigation all over again.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “I need your help.”

  This was not something I was used to hearing from Nick, so I guess I could be excused when I spun around from the table where I was dishing up chili and gave him an openmouthed look worthy of a beauty pageant winner.

  “What?” he asked.

  I shook myself out of my temporary paralysis. Or at least I tried. See, this was the first time I’d seen Nick since the day before, when Sylvia admitted that she didn’t have any designs on him. And even if she did, it wasn’t like I was going to back off just because Sylvia wanted to get up close and personal with Nick. I mean, really, there was a time when if I found that out, I would have dated him whether I liked him or not, just to get her goat.

  Still, somehow, knowing my half sister had left the door wide open for me to swoop in and make my move on Nick bushwhacked me. It was crazy and pretty ridiculous. It was downright nuts that I suddenly felt nervous and self-conscious and just a little shy with a guy I’d known a couple months and had never been skittish around before.

  Or maybe my sudden case of the jitters had something to do with the fact that my best murder suspect had washed down the drain and I might at that very moment be looking into the (really nice blue) eyes of a killer.

  “What?” Nick asked again, and who could blame him, since I was gawking at him like he’d grown another head. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you staring at me?”

  I shook myself out of my stupor. Thinking of Nick as a murderer was as unworthy of me as thinking of myself as some sort of shrinking violet. Never going to happen. On both counts.

  “You? Want my help?” It was so far out of the realm of possibility, I didn’t even consider it. Instead, I grabbed a couple more bowls and filled them with the traditional, not-too-spicy, just-meaty-enough, forget-the-beans chili I’d made to tempt the taste buds of the crowd that was there that Thursday evening to raise money for the San Antonio Symphony. “Whatever kind of joke you’re playing, I’m not interested.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “And I’m Mother Teresa.”

  “Hardly. Though in that outfit . . .”

  I had decided I was sick of the long black skirt, and that night, I was wearing a white pencil skirt that went down past my knees and a sky blue blouse. It might not have been exactly true to the Chili Queens and the late 1930s, but it wasn’t exactly Calcutta, either.

  I gave Nick a narrow-eyed glare. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But I look like Mother Teresa.”

  “You don’t look like Mother Teresa. You’ll never have a halo. It’s just that these long skirts you keep wearing . . .” He looked me up and down. “I guess I’m just used to seeing you as the Chili Chick. You know, the costume and the stockings and the heels.”

  A couple days earlier I would have pounced right on this and asked if he liked what he saw when he looked at the Chili Chick. That night, the words were smothered by the sand that suddenly filled my mouth. To cover, I filled a few more bowls of chili.

  “I’m not kidding about the help,” Nick said, taking a bowl out of my hand and passing it over to Sylvia, who then handed it to an elderly man in a tux. “I talked to Sylvia, and she said—”

  “I don’t need Sylvia’s permission to do anything,” I reminded him.

  “Which is why I didn’t ask her permission. I just told her I’d like to borrow you for a while.”

  “It’s not a problem.” Sylvia was apparently paying more attention to the conversation than I realized, because she joined right in. “Ginger and Teddi aren’t all that busy tonight.” She glanced around at the mostly elderly people in their diamonds and their tuxes and their gowns. “This isn’t the kind of crowd that patronizes drag queens. Ginger’s going to come over here and help while Teddi keeps an eye on things over at their tent. You can go.” Sylvia made a little shooing motion. “You’ll only think of some excuse to go off on your own and leave me here with all the work, anyway, so you might as well go with Nick.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I might as well go where with Nick?”

  He put a hand on my shoulder “We’ll talk about it once we leave here.”

  When he gave me a little nudge, I locked my knees. “I might as well go where with Nick?”

  He puffed out a breath of annoyance and moved in close. This was a good thing, because it allowed me to breathe in the heady scent of his aftershave. Woodsy with hints of leather, but believe it or not, it wasn’t the divine aroma or even the heat of his breath tickling my ear that distracted me. It was what he whispered.

  “We’re going to Dom’s apartment.”

  I knew if I moved, his lips would be dangerously close to mine. I dared to turn my head, anyway, so I could look him in the eye when I asked, “Are we supposed to be there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do the cops know we’re going?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are we going to have to break in?”

  “You’ll see when we get there.”

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “Why are we going there? It’s a chance for us to look around and see what we can find out. I’m sure the cops have already checked out his apartment, but I knew Dom pretty well. I might spot something they’ve missed.”

  “Not that why. Why me? Why are you asking me to go along? Are you finally ready to admit that I’m a pretty darned good investigator?”

  Nick put a hand to the small of my back and prodded me out of the tent. “Actually, I want a witness,” he said. “You know, so if word gets out that I was there, somebody’s got my back who can say that I didn’t tamper with anything.”

  • • •

  Okay, so it wasn’t much of a compliment, and not the best reason for inviting me to tag along on this foray to Dom’s apartment, and it sure wasn’t the most romantic invitation a girl had ever gotten to leave a fund-raiser long before the event was over with a guy who was the guy she’d been dreaming about.

  But hey, the idea of breaking and entering at a murder victim’s apartment . . .

  There wasn’t a chance I could resist, and Nick knew it.

  I settled into the passenger seat of his black Audi and waited until he pulled out in traffic before I said anything. The plan, see, was to catch him off guard.

  “So did the cops ever tell you how long Dom was dead before I found his body?”

  He took my question at face value, and I couldn’t fault him for that. I can look pretty innocent when I put my mind to it. “From what I heard, it wasn’t too long. Maybe thirty minutes or so.”

  I thought back to Monday night, from the time Read with the Chili Queens wrapped up until Sylvia and I were done with cleaning up our tent and I took that walk to look for Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann. As near as I could tell, that would have been somewhere around eleven.

  “So where were you at ten thirty that night?” I asked Nick.

  He shot me a look that might have been longer and more lethal if the idiot in front of us wasn’t driving twenty miles an hour because he was texting and if Nick didn’t have to do some pretty quick maneuvering to get around him. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Just covering my bases.”

  “And you think I’m one of your bases.”

  �
�I think you’re one of the suspects. The cops do, too. Otherwise that Detective What’s-Her-Name wouldn’t keep hanging around. Unless she’s hanging around for other reasons?”

  I gave him time to tell me I was wrong—about either scenario—and when he didn’t, I decided to nudge the subject slightly in another direction.

  “You never finished telling me why you beat up Dom back in Los Angeles.”

  “Not technically true.” Nick’s expression might have been mistaken for a smile if his teeth weren’t clenched so tightly together. “I didn’t finish telling you the story because I never started telling you the story.”

  “So maybe you should.”

  “It’s a pretty boring story.”

  “I doubt that. Nothing that ends in hospitalization and resignation can be all that boring. Besides, here we are, stuck in a car together. I’m not doing anything else. And you’re not doing anything but driving. You might as well talk, and I might as well listen.”

  “It’s not going to prove I killed Dom. That is what you’re looking for, isn’t it? Proof that I killed him?”

  I swear, if he wasn’t driving, I would have punched him right in the nose. Since that violent avenue wasn’t available, I slapped the leather armrest instead. “Are you that dense? Really? I’m not trying to prove you killed Dom; I’m trying to prove you didn’t kill Dom! Why else would I have wasted so much time this week on Tiffany the beauty queen?”

  “The girl who couldn’t have done it because of her bad arm?”

  I grumbled my opinion of the fact that Nick had picked up on this pertinent bit of information and never shared. “I want to believe you, Nick,” I told him. “But if I don’t know all the facts—”

  “The fact is that Dom and I were partners on the LA force for three years,” he said. “We worked well together. We were tough, but fair. I thought he was my friend.”

  “Friends don’t beat up friends.”

  “Friends don’t steal friend’s wives.”