Revenge of the Chili Queens Read online

  “Well, they should.” I hoped my smile was especially dazzling in the icy LED light. “The world would be a better place. Besides,” I added, “even if you did keep notes about what you ate and what you liked at various restaurants, you’re not going to bring along the menu the next time you go to that restaurant. So why keep the menus? And why hide them under your T-shirts?”

  “All right.” I was shocked that he admitted there was any merit in my argument, but the way Nick crossed his arms over his chipped-from-granite chest told me he didn’t like it. “So what’s your theory?”

  “Maybe he wanted to make his own chili and, you know, have it taste like his favorites. So he wrote down what he thought and—”

  “And not any of the ingredients. Which aren’t listed on the menus, anyway.”

  He was right, and like him, I didn’t especially like it. “Whatever!” I said with a wave of one hand. “Since we can’t ask Dom, I guess we’ll never know.”

  “I wish we could ask him who killed him,” Nick grumbled. He raked the beam of the flashlight around the room one more time, then pointed it toward the doorway. “Let’s see what else we can find.”

  Dom had used a second bedroom as an office, and seeing a desk covered with papers and a laptop computer, Nick cheered right up. “See if you can find an appointment book,” he said.

  “Yeah.” I headed to the desk. “Maybe Dom was scheduled to meet the killer after the fund-raiser.”

  “That would be a little too easy, wouldn’t it?” There was a gooseneck lamp on the desk, and after he’d crossed the room and closed the mini blinds, Nick flicked it on.

  “Told you he had good taste.” I fingered the sheet of paper on the desk closest to where I stood. It had been printed out from a website and was an ad from a Porsche dealership. “One hundred forty-five thousand? For a car?” The words stuck in my throat. “Who has that kind of money?”

  “Let me see that.” Nick plucked the paper out of my hand and put it closer to the light for a better look.

  “Here’s another one,” I said, sliding another printed Porsche ad closer. “This one’s only one thirty. A deal, huh?”

  “Interesting.”

  Since Nick mumbled the word, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking to me, but that didn’t stop me. I leaned closer for a better look at the ad. “Why?” I asked him.

  He set the ad down exactly where it had come from. “Because I did a little digging. And I happen to know what kind of money Dom made over at Consolidated. No way he could afford a car that expensive.”

  “So maybe he was saving up,” I suggested. “Or maybe he was just dreaming.”

  “Maybe.”

  Nick moved on, but since Dom’s emails and personal files on the computer were password protected, he got nowhere there.

  I didn’t have much better luck looking through the desk drawers. I found the usual utility bills and credit card receipts, but nothing that would help us figure out who killed Dom, or why. In fact, the only even mildly interesting thing I found was a single DVR case at the bottom of a drawer.

  “What do you think?” I asked Nick, waving the case in front of his nose. “Maybe there’s something juicy on it.”

  “Maybe not,” he reminded me, but he grabbed for the case, anyway, opened it, and stuck the DVR in the drive of the laptop. I moved to stand next to Nick so I could see the screen.

  “Wow!” When the DVD started up, I couldn’t help myself. The video was of a hulking gorgeous guy with dark hair and flashing eyes who wasn’t wearing anything at all.

  “Stand back a little farther from the camera,” a muffled voice said from out of the frame. “Turn left. Now turn right.”

  The guy did exactly as he was told, and believe me when I say I watched every move.

  “He’s cute,” I told Nick, who did not have a chance to reply because a flash like sunlight glinting against a glacier filled the screen and the picture flickered off, then came on again.

  This time, there was another good-looking guy on screen. This one was slimmer than the first, and his golden tresses caressed shoulders as bare as the rest of him.

  “He’s cute, too,” I said, though truth be told, I wasn’t exactly looking at his face. “Do you think Dom was gay?”

  With a grumble, Nick ejected the DVR from the computer, and there was acid in his voice when he asked, “You do remember the story about Dom and Nichole, right?”

  I did. “But then why—”

  The words stopped dead in my throat when I heard a sound from the living room. One that told me we weren’t alone.

  “The front door,” Nick mumbled. “Somebody just walked in.”

  “Somebody . . .” My heart beat double time, and my feet were flash frozen to the spot. I glanced toward the door and swallowed hard.

  Nick turned off the desk lamp. “Come on,” he whispered, and he handed me the DVD and its case so I could put it back where I found it.

  “Come . . . on?” I couldn’t help myself. I kept staring at the doorway, waiting for a police officer—or a whole darned SWAT team—to come charging through. “Come on, where?”

  “Shhh!” He grabbed my hand, slipped his fingers through mine, and tugged me toward the doorway. He paused there for a moment, hardly breathing, listening. Over the noise of my pounding heart, I heard footsteps. They were moving our way.

  Keeping a tight hold on me, Nick dashed out of the office and took me along with him into the bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” I rasped.

  Nick didn’t answer. But then, he was busy over at the window. A second later, he slid open the door that led onto the balcony and tugged me outside with him.

  “Over the side,” he said.

  I looked from the railing that ran around the edge of the balcony to Nick, then back to the railing. “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t have time to kid.” He threw one leg over the side of the balcony. “I’ll drop down to the balcony one floor below, then I’ll help you down.”

  “But, Nick, I—” There was no use arguing; he was already gone. I heard a thump when he landed, and a grunt. I glanced over my shoulder toward the bedroom. Like us, the person who’d just come into the apartment had brought a flashlight, and I saw its beam rake the wall out in the hallway.

  “Come on!” Nick called up to me softly. “Get a move on!”

  I swallowed hard and pivoted, my back to the scenery and the garden and that slim bit of swimming pool I could see from up there. After one deep breath for courage and another because hey, it might be my last and I might as well get all the air I could, I put one leg over the railing, found my footing, and dragged my other leg over the side.

  My hands were so tight against the railing, my knuckles were white. But when I saw the beam of the flashlight again just outside the bedroom door, I dropped.

  Just like he promised, Nick was on the balcony below to break my fall.

  I oophed into him and knocked him backward just as we heard the sliding door in Dom’s apartment open, and he wrapped his arms around me and dragged me closer to the building and farther from the edge of the balcony.

  Above us, we heard the sounds of footsteps, as the person who’d come into the apartment after us paced the balcony.

  I held my breath. Which actually wasn’t all that hard, considering that Nick’s arms were around me and he was just about squeezing the life out of me. I squirmed and he lost his footing. Together, we plopped back against the window of the second-floor apartment.

  A light flashed on in the bedroom, and Nick didn’t waste a second. He didn’t so much point to the railing as he hauled me to it, and again, he dropped over the side and urged me to do the same.

  The sliding door of the second-floor apartment whooshed open just as I dropped down on the ground-level patio.

  I barely had time to catch my breath b
efore we were off and running. Forget the brick walkway! We crashed through a bed of roses, and I yelped when thorns dragged against my bare legs. We zipped around a park bench or two, zigzagged around a burbling fountain, and made our way to the back of the building next door. It wasn’t until we were safely behind it that Nick stopped. Good thing, since I was pretty sure my lungs were about to burst.

  I pressed my back against the building and drew in a dozen breaths of the humid night air, waiting for my heart to explode. When it didn’t—when it finally settled down from a headlong race to a bumpety canter—I dared to peek around the corner of the building toward Dom’s.

  It was already dark and nearly impossible to see, but in the glow of the light that flowed from the bedroom of that second-floor apartment, I knew one thing: there was a person on the third-floor balcony outside of Dom’s bedroom.

  I could feel his eyes on me.

  CHAPTER 12

  “What have you two been up to?” Sylvia’s gaze assessed my skirt—ripped at the hem from where it had gotten snagged on a rosebush—and Nick’s tie—stained with some unnameable something and the knot hanging loose—and her eyes lit. “When you said you needed to borrow Maxie for a while, Nick, I thought it had something to do with working on the murder investigation. I didn’t know you two would be—”

  “No way!” I blurted out.

  “We didn’t!” Nick said at the same time.

  And why both of us got red-faced was anybody’s guess.

  “Right.” Sylvia’s smile was angelic and her words were singsongy. “I guess what happens in San Antonio stays in San Antonio.”

  “Unless nothing happens in San Antonio,” I told her.

  “Right.” She crooned the word one more time before she moved over to the table where four slow cookers simmered with my mild-enough-for-the-symphony-crowd chili. “You can tell me all about it,” she said, as if I ever actually would if something really happened. Which it didn’t. “Over here.”

  Sylvia didn’t so much motion me closer as she screwed up her face and tipped her head in a weird sort of gesture designed to make me leave Nick’s side and go over to where she was standing.

  “Nothing happened,” I told her again.

  “So why don’t you come over here . . .” There was that weird look again. When Sylvia scrunched up her eyes like that, she reminded me of a gnome. Okay, yes, a pretty blonde gnome, but a gnome nonetheless. “And tell me all about it.”

  “All about nothing?”

  “Over here.”

  I rolled my eyes and grumbled my opinion of this nonsense right before I told Nick I’d see him later.

  All in all, that was far superior to discussing what hadn’t happened between us.

  Even though Sylvia was pretty sure it had.

  “You’re way off base,” I told her once Nick was gone. “Nick and I didn’t—”

  Her squeal of laughter cut me off. “Of course you didn’t! If you did, you wouldn’t have come back. I mean, come on, Maxie, I know you well enough to know that if you and Nick were . . .” Her cheeks turned a color that matched her summery pink dress. “Well, let’s just say that I’m pretty sure you’d take advantage of the situation and the last thing you’d be thinking about was work. You’d be gone all night. And you’d leave me here to do all the heavy lifting. Just like usual. But that’s not what matters!” Her words vibrated with excitement, and she sidestepped closer.

  “That’s not what I need to talk to you about,” Sylvia said in a stage whisper.

  For this, I was grateful. I mean, about how she didn’t want to talk about the nothing that had happened, not about how there was nothing to talk about to begin with, though come to think of it, maybe I was grateful for that, too. Anyone who knows me knows I have no small measure of self-esteem, but something told me I didn’t want to get into any situation that would make Nick draw comparisons between me and the beautiful and vivacious Nichole. It was the same something that told me I could never measure up.

  I twitched the thought away. “What’s up?” I asked Sylvia.

  Her gaze slid to the tent next door. “I didn’t want Nick to hear. Not until we decide what to do. It’s . . . Teddi.” She mouthed the name more than said it. “I’ve been keeping my eye on him . . . er . . . I mean her. Ginger was right.”

  My heart dropped down to my stomach. “About the tips? About Teddi stealing them? Dang! I hate when I find out bad things about people I thought were good.” I glanced over my shoulder toward Ginger and Teddi’s tent. Right now, they were both busy dishing up chili, and from where I stood, I could see that their tip jar was about one third full.

  I checked out our crockery bowl. It overflowed with tips.

  “What did you see?” I asked Sylvia.

  “Exactly what Ginger thought I’d see. Ginger . . . he . . . she was busy talking up some of the patrons over there toward the front of their tent. That’s when Teddi came up behind the table and . . . well, there’s no getting around it. I saw her with her hand in the tip jar. She scooped out a bunch of bills and a bunch of change and stuck it all in her pocket.”

  “A bunch of bills and a bunch of change . . .” Once again, my mind traveled back to Monday night and the scene of Dom’s murder. He’d had a bunch of bills and a bunch of change on him at the time he was killed.

  “It’s almost like Dom had his fingers in the tip jar, too,” I said, not particularly to Sylvia, but because talking about the puzzle made it seem more manageable. I shook away the thought to concentrate on an even more pressing matter. “Have you told Ginger yet?”

  Sylvia put a hand on my shoulder. She likes to do that when she’s about to tell me she’s doing something for my own good, and she proved my theory once again when she said, “You know Ginger better than I do, and you’re better at this sort of thing, anyway, and it will be a good way for you and Ginger to bond. You do like Ginger, don’t you? That’s why I thought I’d leave it up to you to break the news. Go on. Go over there and talk to her.” Her nudge had a little too much oomph in it.

  My feet dragging, I headed to the tent next door.

  “What on earth happened to you?” When she looked me over, Teddi’s mouth twisted into what was clearly a critique of my ripped skirt. “You look like what the cat dragged in.”

  I guess it was better than looking like Mother Teresa.

  Rather than point this out, I looked over Teddi’s outfit—the same dress she’d worn on Tuesday night covered by the same apron decorated with drawings of kitchen appliances—and I had to defend my honor. “Look who’s talking,” I said, and though I tried, I just couldn’t help myself. I thought about what Sylvia had just told me, about the tip jar and Teddi stealing from it. I thought about what the news was sure to do to Ginger. And I couldn’t keep the acid out of my voice. “That’s the same outfit you wore the other night. You and Ginger, I thought you were all about style and fashion. You look so yesterday!”

  Her lips puckered. “Not for long,” she crooned. “You just wait and see.”

  Before I could ask her what she meant, a customer showed up for chili, and I left Teddi to it and cornered Ginger. There was no way to soften the blow, so I didn’t even try.

  “You were right,” I told her.

  It took a second for her to make sense of what I said, and as soon as she did, her dark eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t want to be.”

  “I didn’t want you to be.”

  Her lashes were long and luxurious, and when she darted a look at Teddi, they brushed her tear-stained cheeks. “She’s probably been doing it all week. That would explain why we haven’t taken in nearly as much as you and Sylvia. Not that you don’t deserve it for working as hard as you are,” she assured me, a hand on my arm. “But you know what I mean.”

  I did, and she didn’t need to apologize. “What are you going to do?”

  Ginger pulled i
n a shaky breath. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to her. But not here. We don’t need a scene. My goodness, we’ve had enough drama around here already this week, haven’t we? It’s such a shame.” She swiped a hand across her cheek. “We’ve always gotten along so well, and we’ve raised a lot of money at events like this for worthy causes. Now here I am wondering if Teddi’s been skimming off the top for years. I hate to think that we’ll end up bickering like Rosa and Martha.”

  Rosa and Martha.

  I remembered the menus we’d found at Dom’s and the way some of the dishes were circled.

  And then I remembered that the last time I saw Rosa and Martha, they weren’t bickering at all.

  In fact, they were fast friends.

  I wished Ginger luck and told her if she needed reinforcements when she talked to Teddi, I’d be around, then since Sylvia was busy and couldn’t see me, and she thought I was over at Teddi and Ginger’s tent handling the dirty work, anyway, I zipped across the plaza to Rosa and Martha’s tent.

  “You.” Martha barely spared me a glance. “You come to cause more trouble?”

  “Me?” I gave Martha a careful look, sizing her up and wondering if she could have been the shadowy figure I’d seen on Dom’s balcony. “All I did the other day was show up to try your chili. And to hear your stories, of course. You know, about the Alamo and your ancestors.”

  The starch went out of her shoulders, and a tiny smile played around her full lips. “They were heroes.”

  “So were the Chili Queens. In their own way, I mean. They got an entire town eating chili, talking about chili, and now all these years later, we’re still celebrating chili. Just like you do over at La Cocina de Martha. I’m thinking about stopping in one of these days. Just so I can try your different dishes. What do you recommend?”

  “All of them, of course.” Martha handed a bowl of chili to a dowager type in a sparkling gown before she wiped her hands against her white apron. “We don’t serve anything at the restaurant that isn’t first class.”

  “Maybe not, but there have to be some dishes that appeal to people and others that don’t. Chili ala Martha, I hear that’s one of the favorites.”