Death by Devil's Breath Read online

  “What my background has to do with all this . . .” She spun toward the wings then changed her mind when she saw the phalanx of cops waiting there. The reverend raised her chin. “Dickie Dunkin was not blackmailing me.”

  “But he sure was thinking about it, wasn’t he, Reverend? You doll!” I gestured toward the reverend and looked at the audience. “She’s a doll, isn’t she, folks? That Reverend Love, she’s a real doll!”

  “You sound like that ridiculous Dickie,” she snorted. “The man was so stupid, he—”

  “Not so stupid that he couldn’t figure out about the dolls,” Nick put in. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and flapped it open. “Linda Green,” he read from the paper, “once indicted in Nebraska for running a work-at-home craft scheme.” He looked over the paper at the reverend, whose face was now the same color as her suit. “You took their money, all those women who wanted to work out of their homes. You took their money and then you told them their work wasn’t good enough.”

  “And that sent Dickie’s mother over the edge.” I don’t think I needed to remind her, but I did anyway. With scumbags, it’s always a little fun to rub it in. “She went crazy because of you. And when Dickie figured out the connection, he wanted you to pay up or he wasn’t going to shut up.”

  “It wasn’t the money!” Reverend Love stomped a foot and her voice ricocheted against the ceiling. “I didn’t care about the money. But if he told anyone, if he ruined my reputation and my business . . .” I don’t think she realized her hands had curled into fists until she glanced down at them, and by that time, it was already too late. There was a cop stationed on either side of the reverend, ready to escort her away.

  * * *

  We had lots of disappointed brides and grooms on our hands, and I guess from the point of view of true love, happily ever after, and all that other fairy tale crap, that was sad. The good news was that while some of those eager-to-be-happy couples hurried right out to find a wedding chapel to accommodate their ready-to-be-married mood, others rolled with the punches and stuck around Deadeye. The Showdown would be leaving Vegas the next morning so it was fine with me if those folks wanted to fill the Palace, to talk and to buy. The more they took away from our shelves, the less I had to pack.

  “I can’t believe it,” Sylvia said in response to the rundown Nick and I gave her of everything that happened in the auditorium.

  “It is a little disheartening,” Nick mentioned. “What with her being a reverend and all. You’d think someone like that would have better ethics.”

  “It’s not that.” Sylvia shook her head. “I don’t believe . . .” Her wide blue eyes swiveled my way. “Maxie, you were actually smart enough to figure it out?”

  Unfortunately, two vampires, a nun and a priest, and two astronauts walked in, and I promised myself I’d set Sylvia straight later.

  Those customers were just the beginning of a little mini-rush, and for the next half hour or so, Sylvia and I helped with everything from choosing spices to explaining that the myth about how eating peppers protects against poisons wasn’t true. Ask Dickie. When we were done, the cash register was a little fuller (hurray!) and I was whooped. Crime fighting is hard work, and eager to relax, I scurried over to the red velvet fainting couch.

  That was where I found the Chick!

  “The Chick is back! The Chick is back!” Suddenly, I wasn’t so tired anymore. I scooped the costume into my arms and danced around the Palace with it. Right when I kick-stepped my way to the front counter like a Rockette, Sylvia darted from behind the cash register.

  “It’s about time!” She yanked the costume out of my hands. “I was beginning to get really worried.”

  Sure, it was great that Sylvia was as excited as I was to see the Chick again, but it was also a little surreal. In all our years on the road with the Showdown, she’d never once volunteered to dance as the Chick, not even that summer back in Minneapolis when I had the chicken pox. Now she held up the costume and spun around, her eyes gleaming.

  Weird.

  I guess the look I shot at Nick told him what I was thinking, because he gave me a shrug.

  My surprise turned to astonishment when Sylvia stepped into the costume and tugged it so that it covered her head.

  “Really, Maxie.” Her voice was muffled from inside the Chick. “It’s a good thing those people in the costume department gave this thing a good cleaning.” I heard a grunt and the Chick twitched. Sylvia’s arms disappeared into the body of the costume. Another grunt, a funny half turn, and Sylvia popped the costume off and let it slide to the ground. Her nose was wrinkled when she said, “It smells like chili powder in there.”

  “Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I love it so much and—” As if they’d been sliced by an experienced chef, my words were cut in half.

  But then, that’s when I saw that Sylvia was holding a folded piece of paper torn from a spiral-bound notebook.

  My stomach bounced into my throat, then plummeted again and landed with a thump.

  “Jack’s recipe!” I darted forward, but it’s not for nothing that Sylvia exists on seaweed and tofu. Turns out eating healthy foods makes her pretty darned fast.

  She tucked the recipe behind her back and scooted out of my reach. “It was the one place I knew you’d never look for it,” she crooned. “So who’s the smart one now, Maxie?”

  Fortunately, she didn’t give me a chance to answer. Grinning, Sylvia slipped out of the Palace, Jack’s secret recipe for the greatest chili in the world clutched in her hot little hand.

  “Your mouth is open.”

  I’m not sure how long I’d stood there stunned before Nick came over and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “She didn’t,” I stuttered. “She c-couldn’t.”

  He gave me a friendly pat. “You’ll get it back.”

  “I’ll wring that perfect little neck of hers.”

  Since I’d already started for the door, I guess he was justified in slipping an arm around my shoulders. “We’ve already had one murder here this weekend,” he reminded me. “Let’s not have another one.”

  “All right. Okay.” I shook off his arm. “I’m fine. I’m not going to kill her. Promise.” I looked up at Nick and grinned. “At least not until we leave Vegas.”

  I guess he thought I was kidding, because Nick smiled, too.

  “Sorry to interrupt!”

  The voice came from the doorway, and we both spun that way and saw Bernadette poke her head into the Palace. She glanced at where the Chick lay on the floor. “We’re good?” she asked.

  I grabbed the costume and held it to my chest. “We’re good. Thanks for taking care of her.”

  Like it was no big deal, Bernadette waved a hand. Even so, I didn’t fail to catch the look she gave the Chick. Or the fact that her eyes misted over.

  “I’m going to . . .” She poked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ve got to be at work in an hour, and I really need to get going.”

  “Except . . .” I moved forward, my arms extended. “I was kind of wondering if maybe you had a few minutes to help me out.”

  * * *

  “This is going to completely ruin your reputation.”

  I ignored the tiny shiver that scooted over my shoulders and down my arms when Nick purred in my ear, and gave him a sidelong glance to prove it.

  “Only if you tell.”

  He crossed his heart with one finger. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “And if anybody asks?”

  Like me, he looked out the window of the bordello to the dusty main street of Deadeye. “I’ll swear I don’t know a thing.”

  “Good enough for me,” I told him.

  “Really?” He pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest, and side by side, we watched the Chili Chick do her dance routine outside the Pala
ce, and I’ll admit it, she was plenty good. The taps, the swishes, the graceful movement of arms and legs. Honestly, I could see why Jack had fallen under her spell all those years before.

  Maybe I was imagining it, I mean what with the mesh front on the costume that made it hard to see inside, I really couldn’t be sure, but I swear, when the Chick whirled and looked in my direction, I saw Bernadette smile. She knew what I knew: I couldn’t give her Jack. Not here, not now. But for these few moments, she could be the Chili Chick again.

  Too Chicken for Devil’s Breath?

  Not everyone loves hot chili as much as Maxie does. If you’re looking for something kinder and gentler, give this chicken chili a try. It’s especially good topped with fresh avocado, sour cream, and a sprinkling of cheddar cheese.

  ½ pound bacon, cut into small pieces

  5 medium yellow onions, chopped

  1 bulb garlic, chopped

  ½ bunch celery, sliced

  1 red, 1 yellow, 1 orange, 1 green pepper, all diced

  3 medium to hot yellow Hungarian peppers, chopped

  1 (4.5-ounce) can chopped green chilies

  2 (28-ounce) cans whole tomatoes, chopped

  5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed

  salt and white pepper to taste

  optional spices: garlic salt, shallot salt, and poultry seasoning

  Fry up the bacon and drain on paper towels. Sauté the onions in the bacon grease. Add the chopped garlic to the onion and let the onion-garlic mixture cool.

  Transfer to a large soup pot. Add the celery, peppers, green chilies, and tomatoes.

  In the original frying pan, brown the chicken cubes in a little of the bacon grease. Transfer the chicken to the soup pot. Add salt to taste. Sprinkle in white pepper.

  Taste and add other spices of your liking, including garlic salt, shallot salt, and poultry seasoning.

  Simmer, uncovered, for about an hour.

  Turn the page for a preview of the new League of Literary Ladies Mystery . . .

  The Legend of Sleepy Harlow

  Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

  I wish I could say that the worst thing that happened that fall was Jerry Garcia peeing on Marianne Littlejohn’s manuscript.

  Jerry Garcia? He’s the cat next door, the one whose bathroom habits have always been questionable and whose attention is perpetually trained on the potted flowers on my front porch.

  Except that afternoon, that is.

  That day, Jerry bypassed the flowers and went straight for the wicker couch on the porch, the one on which—until the phone rang inside the B and B—I’d been reading Marianne’s manuscript because she wanted one more set of eyes to take a look at it before she sent it off to the small academic press that specializes in local history. Yeah, that was the couch where I’d left the pages neatly stacked and—this is vital to the telling of the story—completely dry and odor-free.

  Jerry, see, had motive, means, and opportunity.

  Jerry had mayhem in his kitty cat heart and at the risk of sounding just the teeniest bit paranoid, I was pretty sure Jerry had it out for me, too.

  It was the perfect storm of circumstance and timing, and the results were so predictable that I shouldn’t have walked back out onto the porch, taken one look at the puddle quickly soaking through Marianne’s tidy manuscript pages and stood, pikestaffed, with my mouth hanging open.

  Jerry, it should be pointed out, could not have cared less. In fact, I think he enjoyed watching my jaw flap in the breeze that blew from Lake Erie across the street. But then, Jerry’s that kind of cat. He leapt onto the porch railing, paused to give one paw a lick, and looked over his shoulder at me with what I would call disdain if I weren’t convinced it was more devious than that.

  A second later, he bounded into the yard and disappeared, leaving me to watch in horror as the liquid disaster spread. From the manuscript to the purple and turquoise floral print cushions. From the cushions to the wicker couch. From the couch to the porch floor.

  Oh yes, at the time, it did seem like the worst of all possible disasters.

  But then, that was my first October on South Bass Island and I had yet to hear about the legend.

  Or the ghost.

  And there was no way I could have imagined the murder.

  * * *

  “Visit from Jerry?”

  I didn’t realize Luella Zak had walked up the steps and onto the porch until I heard her behind me. I shrieked and spun around just in time to see her eye the smelly disaster.

  “I was only gone two minutes,” I wailed. “I swear. It was only two minutes.”

  “And Jerry managed to stop by.” Luella is captain of a fishing charter service that works out of Put-in-Bay, the one and only town on South Bass Island. She’s short, wiry, and as crusty an old thing (don’t tell her I said that about the “old”) as any sailor who plied any of the Great Lakes, but when she stepped nearer to have a look at the mess, she wrinkled her nose.

  “I hope those papers were nothing you planned on keeping,” Luella said.

  The reality of the situation dawned with all the subtlety of a dump truck bumpety-bumping over railroad tracks, and I shook out of my daze and darted to the couch. Before I even thought about what it would do to my green sweatshirt and my jeans, I scooped up the pile of yellow-stained pages and shook them out.

  “It’s Marianne’s manuscript,” I groaned. “Marianne asked me to look for typos and—”

  Luella didn’t say a word. In fact, she ducked into the house and a minute later, she was back with a garbage bag in hand.

  “We can’t.” Cat pee dripped off my hands and rained onto my sneakers, but still, I refused to relinquish the soggy manuscript. “We can’t throw it away. I promised Marianne—”

  Careful to keep it from dripping on her Carhartt bib overalls, Luella snatched the bundle away from me and deposited it in the bag. “Marianne can reprint it.”

  “But if I tell her to do that, I’ll have to explain—”

  “So what, you’re going to take this back to her?” Luella hefted the garbage bag. “And you think she won’t notice the stains? Or the smell?”

  My shoulders drooped. “I think I need to find a way to tell her I’m really, really sorry.”

  “I think . . .” Luella thought about clapping a hand to my shoulder, and I could tell when she changed her mind because she made a face and backed away. But then, I was standing downwind. “I hate to tell you this, Bea, but I think that you smell really bad.”

  I didn’t doubt it for a minute, but really, there were more important things to consider. “Poor Marianne. All that work and all that paper and now she’ll need to do it all over again. Printing out an entire book takes a lot of time.”

  “Marianne wrote a book?” The instant I looked her way, Luella was contrite. “Oh, it’s not like I’m doubting how smart she is or anything. She’s a good librarian. But Marianne doesn’t exactly strike me as the type who’d have enough imagination to write a book.”

  “It’s history. Island history. I didn’t get more than a couple pages into it, but I know it’s about some old-timer, Charles Harlow.”

  “Sleepy!” Luella laughed. “Well, that explains it. Word is that Marianne’s family is distantly related. I’d bet a dime to a donut she devotes at least one chapter to trying to disprove that. Sleepy has quite a reputation around here, and it’s not exactly politically correct for the wife of the town magistrate to be related to an old-time gangster and bootlegger.”

  “I dunno.” My shoulders rose and fell. “I mean about the gangster part. I never got that far. I’d just started reading and then the phone rang and then—”

  “Jerry.” Luella shook her head. “Chandra really needs to do something about that cat.”

  “I’ve been saying that for nearly a year.”

&
nbsp; “We’ll talk to Chandra,” Luella promised. “Next Monday at book discussion group. And as far as Marianne, maybe if you just explain what Jerry did—”

  I dreaded the thought. “She’s so proud of her book. You should have seen her when she brought the manuscript over here. She was just about bursting at the seams.” My stomach swooped. “She asked for one little favor and I messed up.”

  “Not the end of the world. She’ll reprint, you’ll reread—”

  “Inside the house.”

  “Inside the house. And then—”

  And then three black SUVs slowed in front of the house and, one by one, turned into my driveway.

  “You’ve got guests coming in today?” Luella asked.

  I did, a full house, and what with the manuscript disaster and fantasizing about the ingenious (and completely untraceable) demise of a certain feline neighbor, I’d forgotten all about them.

  “Go!” Luella shooed me into the house. “You go change. And a quick shower wouldn’t hurt, either. I’ll let your guests in and get them settled and tell them you’ll be with them pronto.”

  Okay, so it wasn’t exactly pronto, but I did manage what I hoped was a less smelly transformation in record time. When I was done, curly, dark hair damp and in a clean pair of jeans and a yellow long-sleeved top (dang, I didn’t even make the Jerry Garcia and yellow connection until it was too late!), I lifted my chin, pasted a smile on my face, and strode into my parlor.

  Straight into what looked like the staging for D-Day.

  Two women, two guys. Another . . . I glanced out the window and counted the men on my front porch. Another four out there. Each one of them carried at least two duffel bags or a suitcase or a camera of some sort, and each one of those was plastered with bumper sticker–variety labels. Black, emblazoned with icy blue letters: EGG.

  “Welcome!” I tried for my best innkeeper smile and thanked whatever lucky stars had made it possible for Luella to take a few moments and swab down the front porch; through the window, I saw that the floral cushions were missing from the couch and the water she’d splashed on the porch floor gleamed in the autumn afternoon sunshine. “I’m Bea, your hostess. You must be—”