Revenge of the Chili Queens Page 18

And what about Eleanor and that hunky guy I’d seen her talking to? Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought a thing of it (other than to be jealous) if not for the fact that he looked like . . . somebody. Somebody I’d seen? Somebody I knew? Somebody who might be somebody who was mixed up in murder? What with all the wrackin’, my brain was getting tired.

  Then there was the mysterious John Wesley Montgomery. If he knew the truth was going to come out about how he’d sent Dom to pilfer those recipes so he could condemn them to a can, he had every reason to want to keep Dom quiet—permanently.

  It was hotter than blazes that night at Alamo Plaza, but still, a cold chill snaked up my back, and automatically, I glanced over my shoulder, then toward the Consolidated Chili tent. There was no sign of that shiny black limo I’d seen cruising the fairgrounds earlier or of Montgomery, and that was too bad. I needed to talk to the man. I would talk to him, I promised myself. And I’d get to the bottom of what he knew about Dom and why he was hanging around the Showdown and if he was the one who’d tried to kill me earlier in the day.

  Just thinking about my close encounter of the bovine kind made another shot of iciness crackle up my spine and across my shoulders. I shrugged it away, or at least I tried, and since it was better to keep busy than to imagine all sorts of strange—and possibly deadly—scenarios that involved me and that black limo and how Montgomery didn’t want anyone to know about his underhanded business dealings, I kept busy getting the tent ready. Sylvia would be at the plaza in just another hour with the chili she’d made for the night’s event.

  Vegetarian chili.

  My stomach protested at the very thought.

  What was the woman thinking? Carrots, zucchini, bulgur wheat, and corn? My plans that night were to grab dinner in someone else’s tent.

  And now that I thought about it, it was never too early to start.

  Eating or investigating.

  With that in mind, I strolled over to Martha and Rosa’s tent and was glad to see their slow cookers were already plugged in and steaming away.

  “Chili!” I announced as soon as I stepped foot in their tent. “I’m starving.”

  Rosa was closer to the slow cookers, and she had a bowl ready for me lickety-split. As soon as I sat down, Martha set another bowl of chili at my elbow. Since Rosa’s was right in front of me, I dug into her chili first and sighed with delight when the first mouthful set off a barrage of delicious firework sensations on my taste buds.

  Like with so many really good chilies, the taste intensified the longer it was on my tongue.

  Then it exploded like a Molotov cocktail.

  As if I’d been kicked by that rodeo bull, I sat up like a shot. My eyes streamed tears. My cheeks turned so hot, I could only imagine that they were the color of the matching fire engine red aprons Martha and Rosa wore that night. My tongue swelled to two times its normal size—I swear it did—and every last centimeter of it felt as if it had been painted with molten lava.

  “Wow!” Understatement, but even I—who love my chili hot—could not think of a word that was anywhere near appropriate to describe the spiciness. Dragon’s breath might do it. But only if dragons had learned to split atoms.

  I sucked in a long breath in the hopes of cooling my tongue, and when that didn’t work, I waved both hands, frantically motioning toward where I saw some packets of crackers on a nearby table.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Martha asked.

  “Crazy girl.” As if that was something right up there with a terminal diagnosis, Rosa shook her head. “Poor crazy girl.”

  I sucked and motioned some more, and Martha got the message. Or maybe she just finally noticed the tears that streaked my cheeks.

  It wasn’t until I polished off three packages of crackers and one of those short little cartons of milk that Martha said she’d brought along to put in her coffee that I was able to breathe. A few more crackers and I could finally talk. Except all I could say was “Wow.”

  Rosa screwed up her face. “Gringos! They can’t take a little heat.”

  “Little?” I put a hand to my chest, grateful to feel my heartbeat, because I swear, this chili was hot enough to stop it cold. “I love spicy chili. But that . . .” With one finger, I pointed at the offending bowl. “You’ll kill somebody with that!”

  Rosa, it seems, was not willing to take my word for it. She grabbed a spoon from a nearby place setting and dipped it into my chili. I guess she found out what I was talking about, because as soon as she swallowed, her ears turned red and her eyes popped open.

  “Ay, caramba!” There were a couple packages of crackers that I hadn’t eaten, and she grabbed them and wolfed them down. Even then, she was breathing hard when she asked, “What happened to my chili? It tastes like there’s too much lumbre pepper. Too, too much. But I added only two peppers.” She pointed toward each of the three slow cookers on the left side of the table. “Only two peppers to each pot.”

  “Two peppers per pot! But those . . .” Martha gasped. “Those are my pots of chili! And I, I added two lumbre peppers per pot. Oh no.” She dropped her face into her hands. “This is bad. This is very bad. Rosa, what were you thinking?”

  “Me?” I guess that shot of spice put a little extra oomph into Rosa’s step. She was up in Martha’s face before I knew it, standing on tiptoe so that she could glare right into Martha’s eyes. “You told me my pots were the ones on the left.”

  “I told you your pots were on the right,” Martha said from between clenched teeth. “Right, right, right.”

  “Left.”

  “Right.”

  I popped out of my chair and squeezed between them to make sure this didn’t come to blows. “It looks like we have some work to do,” I announced and, in response to their stunned expressions, added, “You can’t serve chili that hot. Not at a fund-raiser. We’ve got to get it toned down.”

  “Crushed pineapple.” Rosa stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. “It cuts the heat and blends nicely with the chili. No one will ever know it’s there.”

  “Cider vinegar.” Martha settled her weight back against one foot. “The acidity counteracts the heat.”

  “Oh fine. Great.” Disgusted, Rosa threw her hands in the air. “It’s not your chili. You should just tell me how to fix it. You’re the one who ruined it in the first place.”

  “I didn’t ruin it,” Martha growled. “I’m not the one who added the extra lumbre. And I told you, I told you as soon as you got here, your chili is in the pots on the right.”

  “Left.”

  “Right.”

  “Ladies!” I put out both hands. Yeah, like that would stop them if they decided to plow right through me and go at each other. “We don’t have time for this. And we don’t have time to go grocery shopping.” I glanced around the tent and saw what I was looking for. “Follow me,” I told them.

  They did, and I didn’t even need to turn around to see it. I could hear the stomp of their footsteps as they trailed over to the serving table.

  “This is Martha’s chili.” I spooned up some of the chili from the pots on the right, and believe me, I took a careful taste. It had some zing—and a nice kick from the beer she used in the stock—but it wasn’t anywhere near as nuclear as Rosa’s. “Okay, good.” I pointed. “That empty pot,” I told Martha, who went and got it for me. “And now, we combine.”

  Really, it was like I asked them to strip to their skivvies and pole dance in front of the Alamo.

  Martha’s mouth dropped and stayed open.

  Rosa’s jaw went up and down like a plunger. “You want to mix?” she stuttered. “My chili and . . .” Her eyes wide, she looked at Martha. “My chili with hers?”

  “My chili mixed with . . .” I was pretty sure Martha was going to have a heart attack, so when she dropped into the nearest chair, I didn’t stop her. Instead, I grabbed the empty pot from her, an
d since neither woman was in any shape to move, I started ladling. I filled the pot halfway with Martha’s chili, then filled it the rest of the way with Rosa’s and mixed, and when I was done, I tasted. The chili still had a kick, but not a fatal one.

  “Done.” I brushed my hands together. “You two can take care of mixing the rest of it. There will be no chili-induced deaths here tonight.”

  “And no authentic chili,” Martha grumbled. “Not like my grandmother’s.”

  “Not like my grandmother’s,” Rosa muttered. “She’s turning over in her grave. I know this for a fact. She’s thinking of her chili and her brave and noble ancestors and she’s—”

  “Please!” Martha threw back her head and groaned. “It’s my ancestors who are offended. And who can blame them? Combining our chilies, it’s an offense to nature. Like . . . like . . .”

  “Like putting your family recipes in a can?”

  Just as I hoped, this reminder of their common outrage settled both of them down. Martha let out a long, slow breath. Rosa took a seat next to her.

  Now that they weren’t going at each other and I had their attention, I looked from one woman to the other. “Any word from Montgomery?” I asked. “About Dom and your recipes?”

  Martha sniffed.

  Rosa snorted. “Not a peep. That no-good gringo . . .”

  “Now, Rosa!” Martha wagged a finger at her. “We had that talk, remember, and you—”

  “Said that not all gringos are bad. Yes, yes, I remember. But Montgomery is. Him and his factory and his cans and his chili. Him and his underhanded employees.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “So what do you think? Is Montgomery underhanded, too? Underhanded enough to kill?”

  I guess neither of them had thought of this before, because they both gasped, and while they were caught off guard, I closed in for the kill (bad pun, but it pretty much says it all).

  “Or did you two do that?” I asked them.

  Rosa fussed with her apron. “I told you. I tried to scare that Dom. I chased him with the knife. He deserved it.”

  “He did.” Martha nodded. “But that doesn’t mean Rosa killed him.”

  “But you might have,” I suggested to Martha.

  “She didn’t,” Rosa assured me. “She didn’t, and I didn’t.”

  I let a bit of silence settle between us. The better to let the ladies have some time to think about what they were telling me before I finally asked, “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  It was Martha’s turn to fuss. With her apron. With the rings she twisted around her finger. She stared at the ground. “The police know we’re telling the truth. If they believe us, you should, too.”

  “I’d love to. But why should I? You admit that you were out to scare Dom. Rosa, you chased him with that knife toward the end of the evening. Right before he came over to my tent looking for Nick. And after that, how do I know what you two did? You might have waited until the fund-raiser was over. You might have wanted to make sure there was no one around. Dom wasn’t feeling good thanks to that spiked chili Tiffany gave him. He was weak. He was helpless. Then you two—”

  “No.” Rosa shook her head.

  “Absolutely not.” Martha mirrored the gesture.

  “You weren’t here? You weren’t hanging around?” I asked them.

  Martha hung her head.

  Rosa turned ashen.

  “Nobody is supposed to know,” Rosa mumbled.

  “Know what?”

  “We don’t want word to get out,” Martha said.

  “About what?”

  The two ladies exchanged looks. Both of them nodded.

  “We could have had a disaster here tonight,” Martha said. “If you hadn’t tried our chili . . .”

  “And thought to mix our two chilies together . . .” Rosa added.

  “It could have been embarrassing. And bad for business.” She patted Rosa’s arm. “Both our businesses. The least we owe you in return is the truth.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat down. “So . . .” I looked first at Martha, then at Rosa. “Somebody tell me what happened.”

  Martha sighed. “We were leaving the plaza on Monday night and—”

  “And I was minding my own business,” Rosa said.

  Martha snorted. “You started it.”

  “Did not,” Rosa insisted.

  I waved them into silence before they could get into it again. “So you were already leaving the plaza on Monday night when . . . ?”

  “She started it,” Rosa said.

  “Did not.” Martha stuck out her bottom lip.

  And I just about screamed. “What happened?”

  The women exchanged looks and Martha gave Rosa a nod.

  “We were on our way to our cars,” Rosa said, “and one thing led to another and—”

  “And we had it out with each other,” Martha finished the sentence.

  This did not seem unusual to me. From what I’d seen of the women earlier on Monday night and again here this evening, having it out with each other was second nature. Unless—

  “It got physical?”

  They both nodded. “And we . . .” Martha’s cheeks shot through with color. “We got arrested.”

  “Both of you?” The question squeaked out of me. While Martha nodded in response to it, Rosa dug under the serving table for her purse.

  “Here.” She shoved a photograph at me. It was a police mug shot that showed Rosa with her hair mussed and her lipstick smeared.

  “I’ve got one, too,” Martha said. “The police officer, the one who took us in, he eats at both our restaurants. He said we should keep those pictures around and look at them once in a while. You know, just to remind ourselves that if we don’t change our ways, we could end up in serious trouble.”

  “And you didn’t want anyone to know!” It made perfect sense, so I didn’t need them to confirm or deny.

  “Bad for business,” Rosa said, anyway. “And those nice police officers, they did us a favor. They lost the paperwork. They said, you know, that they didn’t want to see us go through the public humiliation of, you know, a trial and the publicity and how it might hurt our restaurants.”

  “Which explains why you two were so chummy the next day.” I nodded. “You did learn your lesson.”

  “We’re trying,” Rosa said. “Now if this one . . .” She tipped her head toward Martha. “If she’d learn to tell me which slow cookers are really my slow cookers—”

  “And if this one . . .” Martha motioned toward Rosa. “If she’d keep her peppers out of my chili . . .”

  It was as much of a truce as I could ever expect.

  I left the two of them to sort it out.

  CHAPTER 17

  What with being shocked with a stun gun and having my head stuffed in a pillowcase, nearly being trampled by a bull, and almost going up in flames thanks to Rosa’s incendiary chili, it was a long, long Friday, and by the time it was over, all I wanted to do was drag back to the RV, put up my feet, and have a little well-earned R&R.

  Lucky for me, Sylvia went to bed as soon as we got back from the fund-raiser. That left me alone, and that meant I could indulge in one harmless pleasure that I knew she’d object to and another that I was pretty sure she’d put up a fuss about.

  Her loss.

  Because I’ll say this much, that DVD that we found in Dom’s apartment, the one I just happened to . . . er . . . forget to leave behind when we raced out of there, that DVD was just the kind of eye candy a girl deserves at the end of a long, trying, and nearly deadly day.

  Male models. A dozen or so different ones in the first thirty minutes of the DVD that I had a chance to watch. All of them gorgeous. All of them strutting their stuff in front of the camera and showing off abs and pecs and glutes—and other things.

 
Oh yeah, Sylvia would have gotten all prudish about it. And then probably watched it sometime when I wasn’t around. She also would have lectured me about fats and carbs and blah, blah, blah, if she knew my dinner consisted of Twinkies and a beer.

  Hey, Twinkies have plenty of redeeming nutritional value, not the least of which is sugar and empty calories, beer is perfectly appropriate at the end of a stressful day, and the naked guys . . .

  I had just finished sighing as I checked out the six-pack on the dark-haired hunk currently on the TV screen when there was a tap on the door. I paused the video, scooped up the Twinkie wrappers I’d dropped around the chair where I was sitting, and went to answer.

  “Nick!” When I stepped back to let him climb the three steps up into the RV, I dropped the Twinkie wrappers behind the coffeemaker on the built-into-the-wall counter in what passed for our kitchen. I might not care what Sylvia thought of my food choices, but I was too tired to explain my eating habits to Nick. “What’s up?”

  “I thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing.” Nick is a tall guy with wide shoulders, and believe me, our RV is nowhere near as large or as elegant as the one Consolidated Chili was using to accommodate the beauty queens. With him standing next to the table and the two benches that flanked it, the RV seemed smaller than ever, like there wasn’t room for both of us, and not nearly enough air.

  That, at least, might explain why I felt a little light-headed.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him. “I was just—”

  He glanced at the TV screen and groaned. “You stole the DVD from Dom’s apartment?”

  The beer gave me courage. The sugar gave me enough energy to sound convincing when I protested. “What are you talking about? It’s not the same DVD. It’s—”

  “The same DVD.” Nick went over to the TV and tapped the screen. “Same background, see?” He poked a finger behind that hunky model toward a fairly ordinary (so how did he recognize it in the first place?) background of a bed covered with a white quilt and the powder blue chair beside it. “Same walls. Same—”

  “Not the same guy. We didn’t see this one when we watched the DVD at Dom’s. See?” I pointed, too. Only not at the background, the white coverlet, or the blue chair. “Believe me, I would recognize this guy if I saw him before. In fact—”