Death by Devil's Breath Page 7

  “He didn’t exactly say when he’d be here,” I told her.

  “But he was there. At the Showdown.” She stuck out her bottom lip. “I didn’t see him.”

  “Jack’s a busy guy.”

  “Yes. Of course he is. Busy.” She popped out of her chair. “Always so very busy. Even so, I know he adores hot peppers. Oh yes, I haven’t forgotten that. I thought for sure he’d be there for the Devil’s Breath judging.”

  “Which is why you decided to enter one of his old recipes.”

  Bernadette stopped mid-gush. Her dark eyebrows rose just a fraction of an inch. “You were poking around my cooking table.”

  “I’ve got a nose for tequila and Jack Daniel’s.”

  She wrapped her hands around the high back of the wooden chair. When she pushed the chair back under the dressing table, her knuckles were white. “You always did.”

  “Jack’s recipe, the one with the molasses and the tequila in it, it’s good stuff,” I told her. “But Karl Sinclair is a pro, and Brother William has God on his side. And then there’s Tyler York. I don’t know what his deal is, but he could have won big-time just for being the shiniest contestant. You think you actually had a chance to win?”

  “I won the regionals, didn’t I?” Like electricity, her question crackled in the air between us.

  “But maybe you didn’t care if you won the national title. Maybe all you cared about was being at the Showdown. About seeing Jack again.”

  The dressing area next to Bernadette’s was empty, and I leaned back against the table and crossed my arms over my chest. “Maybe you were hoping Jack would get a taste of the chili and then he’d notice you.”

  A tiny smile playing around her mouth, she slid me a look. “But now he doesn’t have to taste my chili to notice me. He’s already noticed me. Of course he noticed me! That’s why he sent you around to see me.”

  “Sure. Of course. And to find out if you saw anything as far as the murder, of course.”

  Before she had a chance to reply, a guy with a cigar hanging out of one corner of his mouth stuck his head into the room. “Two minutes, Bernie,” he said, and I knew I was going to lose her if I didn’t act fast.

  “He knows you didn’t do it, of course,” I said, stepping into her path when she pushed away from the dressing table. “Jack says he knows there’s no way you’d ever kill anyone.”

  “He knows that if my chili was poisoned, all the judges would have gotten some of it.”

  “Exactly what I . . . what Jack was saying,” I said, and I bit the inside of my mouth to keep myself from thinking how much I hated to agree with her about anything.

  “And if my chili was poisoned . . .” Bernadette laughed. “Hell, if there was poison in my chili, I would have had a great big serving of it delivered right to you.” Still chuckling, she reached into the corner and grabbed a long pole with a bent top.

  “You’re Little Bo Peep!” I said.

  Bernadette’s smile was sleek. “Oh, you always were a smart one.”

  My smile equaled hers. “I still am.”

  “And I—”

  “Come on, Bernie,” the man with the cigar called out. “Your music’s starting and the regulars are waiting.”

  When she whipped by me with that pole in her hand, she made sure it banged into my shoulder.

  I would say I didn’t take any of this personally, but of course, I did. What I didn’t do was waste any time. As soon as Bernadette was out of the room, I closed in on her dressing table.

  I’m not sure what I thought I’d find, but when I didn’t find anything, I was disappointed anyway. My arms crossed over my chest, I spun around, and leaned back against the table, considering my options.

  As far as I could see, Bernadette hadn’t left a purse for me to look through. Or a phone lying around so I could check her calls. In fact, the only other thing there was to check . . .

  My eyes landed on the closed closet door, and with one more look toward the main door of the dressing room to make sure none of the dancers was on her way back in, I pushed away from the table and headed that way.

  I opened the door, flicked on the switch on the wall to the left—

  And just about swallowed my tongue.

  Sure, there were costumes in Bernadette’s closet. Sparkly, trashy costumes of all sorts. They were hung from a pole on the wall to my left. But there was also a shelf built into the wall opposite the door, and on it, three small battery-operated candles flickered in red glass holders. There was a bunch of flowers there, too, fresh enough that I imagined she replaced them every day, along with a cheap gold bracelet, what looked to be some kind of herbs wrapped in cheesecloth, and—

  My legs felt as if they’d been weighed down with lead, and I forced myself to take a step forward.

  And seven photographs, all framed.

  Big photographs, little photographs, some that were good quality and others that looked as if they’d been printed off the Internet.

  Each and every one of them was of my dad, Texas Jack Pierce.

  CHAPTER 6

  “But you’ve got to help, Nick. Don’t you see?”

  I don’t know why I bothered to ask; it was obvious he didn’t.

  And just as obvious that it was my job to make sure he did.

  I was back at the Showdown. Behind the cash register of the Chili Palace/bordello while Sylvia went out to grab a late afternoon lunch. Lucky for me, I’d seen Nick walk by just a minute before. Not so lucky for him, he noticed me jumping up and down and windmilling my arms and came inside to see what was up.

  I had already told him once, but he obviously didn’t get it so I repeated myself. “She’s got an altar in her closet, Nick. An altar to my dad!”

  When he strolled by, Nick had been busy (catch the irony, please) sipping a cup of coffee and he set the cup on the counter, where Sylvia had arranged an artsy display of dried peppers, alternating small, round, red tepin peppers and Thai chilies with orangy Bird’s Eyes and nearly black Aji Pancas.

  “So?” Nick asked.

  “So?” I was glad there were no customers around. It was probably best for business if they didn’t see the look I aimed in Nick’s direction. “Candles? Flowers? Pictures? You think that’s normal?”

  Nick had changed out of the charcoal gray suit that had been stained by the Devil’s Breath that morning. He was dressed in a killer navy suit, a white shirt, and a tie that featured splashes of navy and red against a background that reminded me of waves on a stormy sea. Yes, he looked delicious. More like a GQ cover model than head of security for a traveling chili cook-off show. That didn’t mean he wasn’t the most boneheaded man this side of the Mississippi.

  “Okay, so it’s not exactly normal,” he said with a lift of those Greek god shoulders. “That doesn’t mean—”

  “But it might.” I emphasized my point by hopping up and down. “Don’t you get it? The woman’s crazy! She’s obsessed! She’s a crazy woman who’s obsessed and she’s obsessed with my missing father. She’s so obsessed, I’m thinking she might have had something to do with it!”

  “It?” His eyebrows rose just a tad. “And the ‘it’ you’re referring to is—”

  “Is Jack missing. Is Jack kidnapped. Is Jack—”

  No, I wouldn’t say the word. I wouldn’t even think it.

  “She’s obsessed,” I repeated instead, and slapped a hand against the counter to emphasize my point. “Hey, I see the news. I know people who are obsessed with people sometimes do weird things to the people they’re obsessed with.”

  “Except that your dad was in Abilene when he disappeared and this Bernadette lives here in Vegas.”

  “And there aren’t any roads between here and Abilene.” This, it should be pointed out, was a shrewd bit of logic.

  One Nick ignored.

  I screeched m
y opinion while I went to the back of the room and scooped up the Chili Chick costume I’d left on a chair when I ducked out to talk to Bernadette. As soon as Sylvia came back from lunch, I’d get into the costume and start dancing again. But until then . . .

  Well, until then, I had the Palace to mind.

  A group of middle-aged women trooped in, oohing and ahhing, looking around, and asking questions. Big points for Nick. While I took care of them and rang up their sales, he didn’t take the opportunity to run.

  In fact, once the ladies were gone—shopping bags with Jack’s face on them in hand—he said, “So tell me about Jack and Bernadette. What’s the connection?”

  I refused to let him see how relieved I was that he’d finally seen the light and come to the realization of how important this might be. I’d been looking for Jack since the moment Tumbleweed called and told me I had to get to the Showdown because Jack was missing. And I’d gotten absolutely . . .

  My shoulders drooped.

  Nowhere.

  No one had seen Jack. No one had talked to him. The cops back in Abilene insisted there was no sign of foul play, and though Gert, she of the too-cute dishtowels and crockery at the shop next door, had thrown out a couple tantalizing hints that she might know something, she wasn’t talking. In fact, she insisted she couldn’t.

  Now—finally—I felt as if we might be on the verge of finding out something, and just imagining that Bernadette might be the break I was looking for made me feel as if I’d pop right out of my skin.

  So Nick wouldn’t notice and accuse me of being too imaginative or too optimistic or just too plain stupid to know not to get all excited about something it might not be any use getting excited about, I reorganized the bags of peppers and jars of chili powder the women had messed up in their buying enthusiasm. “Bernadette worked at the Showdown. A long time ago. That should be some kind of clue right there. It was a long time ago.” I looked at Nick over the bottles of cumin, paprika, and oregano I’d stacked in a Sylvia-worthy tower. “Anybody who holds a torch for a guy that long—”

  “Oh, come on.” Nick leaned a forearm on the counter and smiled at me over a display of Thermal Conversion. It’s one of our most popular chili powders simply because it’s a middle-of-the-road sort of spice. Not too wimpy, not too hot.

  That is, until that smile zipped through the air between us. I swear, the SHU (that’s Scoville Heat Units, the scale used to measure the spiciness of a chili pepper) went up a couple thousand points in every single jar of Thermal Conversion.

  “Are you telling me there are guys you forget?” he asked. “Just like that?”

  I wasn’t sure where the conversation was headed; I only knew it was a direction I didn’t want to go. Heat or no heat—and believe me, when Nick looked at me that way, there was plenty of heat—we were talking about Jack. About finding Jack. And finding Jack was the main reason I was traveling the chili circuit. Well, that, and getting away from the creditors who were all over me like ants at a picnic once Edik drained my bank account and maxed out my credit cards.

  “I don’t think fifteen years qualifies as just like that. And it’s been about fifteen years. You think she would have moved on by now, don’t you?”

  “Like you would.”

  I grabbed a bag of tepin peppers and winged it at him. Too bad Nick had such good reflexes. I aimed for his stomach, but he caught it in midair. “We’re not talking about me,” I reminded him. I shouldn’t have had to. “We’re talking about a woman who knew my dad fifteen years ago and still has pictures of him surrounded by candles.” Remembering the altar in the closet, I shivered. “Sheesh! Some of the pictures looked like they’d been taken back in the day. But some of them looked like they’d been printed off our website. Come on, Nick, admit it. That’s downright creepy.”

  Nick tossed the bag of tepins back to me, and I caught it and set it where it belonged. “So back in the day . . . Bernadette and Jack were an item?”

  I didn’t like the way the tepins were stacked so I removed the bag I’d just put there, rearranged the ones below it, and set the last bag on top. “Bernadette was nuts about Jack back then,” I told Nick. “Obviously, she’s still nuts about him.”

  “And he . . .?”

  When that group of customers came in, I’d been forced to lay the Chili Chick costume on the counter so I could take care of them. Now I picked it up again and cradled it in my arms. “Well, he’s not nuts about her. I can tell you that. How can he be when he hasn’t seen her in fifteen years? And when he’s missing?”

  “Not what I meant and you know it. I meant back when she worked at the Showdown. Was Jack as crazy about Bernadette as she was about him?”

  “No one’s as crazy as Bernadette.” I scooted to the back of the bordello. If Sylvia was punctual—and believe me, Sylvia is always punctual—she’d be back in just a couple minutes, and I wanted to be ready when she arrived. I sidestepped into a tiny storage room behind the bar to slip on my fishnet stockings, then reached out to grab the chili. I stepped into the costume, hauled it up and over my head, and walked over to Nick so he could do up the zipper at the back of the chili.

  “Maxie.” After he zipped, Nick leaned in close and I caught a whiff of his aftershave. I’ve never been to a tropical island, but if I had been, I imagined this was what it smelled like, all sun-kissed and rummy and dripping with undertones of hot night air and cool sea breezes. “You know what I mean,” he said. “And you’re avoiding my question. When Bernadette worked for the Showdown, how did Jack feel about her?”

  “Jack was Jack!” I threw my hands in the air. No easy thing now that my arms were sticking out of the chili. “Jack was . . .”

  I twitched my shoulders. I shivered. My back itched, and didn’t it figure, now that I was encased in red chili, that itch was impossible to scratch.

  “Jack was . . .” Nick did his best to lead me back into the conversation.

  I moaned. And believe me, it had nothing to do with what we were talking about. A feeling like a thousand little pinpricks scooted up my back. The costume had never chafed me before, and I danced a little circle pattern, and when I ended up facing the way I’d been facing when I started, I saw Nick watching me, the left side of his mouth pulled into an expression I wouldn’t exactly call a grin.

  “You can’t expect my help if you refuse to talk about it,” he grumbled.

  “It’s not that.” I jumped around and tried to slap at my back, but with the way the costume came down to just below my hips, it was nearly impossible. Desperate to relieve the prickling, I scooted over to the wall and rubbed my back against it, but that didn’t work, either. In fact, it only made the itching worse.

  I squealed and hurried back over to Nick. “Take it off!” I demanded.

  He glanced down at his suit. “Take it—”

  “Oh, stop being such a goof!” I gave him a boof on the arm. By now the itchiness had spread down my stomach and over my hips. My eyes watered. My voice burbled when I turned my back on Nick. “Unzip the costume and get it off! Hurry! I’m dying in here!”

  He unzipped, and I shot forward and peeled out of the chili. When I did, a shower of powder hit the wooden floor.

  “What the hell!” Nick looked from where I was hopping like a jumping bean on a hot sidewalk to the sprinkle of brownish dust on the floor. He dipped a finger into the powder, then instantly brushed it off. “It’s itching powder. I saw bags of it down in the gift shop. You know, gag gifts. I was looking for something I could send my nephews.”

  “Well, it’s no gift!” I waved my arms up and down.

  “You’d better not.” Nick put a hand on my shoulder when I started to scratch. “Your skin is red and irritated.” He lifted the back of my purple shirt and peeked. “It’s even worse on your back and your neck. Something tells me scratching it will only make it worse.”

  “Well, I’ve got to do s
omething!” I wailed. Tears streamed down my cheeks and mixed with the itching powder on my face. “Nick, it hurts!”

  “Right.” He kicked the costume to the back of the bordello, but just as he went up front to shut the door and put out the Closed sign, Sylvia walked in. She had a bag from one of the hotel shops in one hand and an iced green tea in the other.

  “Hi, Nick!” Didn’t it figure, she noticed the gorgeous hunk and completely ignored her half sister, fidgeting and crying in the corner. “What brings you here?”

  “Maxie needs help.” Nick zigzagged around Sylvia and headed in my direction. “Someone’s—”

  “Someone?” Sure there were tears streaming down my face, and my skin felt like it was on fire. That didn’t stop me from pointing a finger at Sylvia. “That was a sick prank.”

  Sylvia clicked her tongue. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But why . . .” She gave me a careful look. “Why are you so red?”

  I jumped up and down and waved my arms. “I’m itching to death!” I wailed. “Because you . . .” Another pointed finger that she completely ignored. “You’re a sneak, Sylvia. And I won’t let you get away with this. I’ll get even.”

  She closed in on me, her golden brows low over her eyes and her gaze on the welts on my neck. “You think I did that to you?” Sylvia tsked her opinion. “You don’t know me very well.”

  “I do know you very well. That’s just—” The itching on my back intensified and I screeched. “The costume was right there.” I swung my finger away from Sylvia and toward the back of the bordello. “You had all morning to mess with it.”

  “Because you were gone all morning, and most of the afternoon doing I don’t know what.” The way she nodded made her golden hair gleam in the overhead lights. “I may have been justified wanting to get even since you abandoned me and left me to do all the work all day, but I didn’t do it, Maxie, I swear.”

  Nick stepped between us. “And right about now, none of it matters. You . . .” He looked at Sylvia, then at the front door, where a group of loud-talking women had just stepped in. “You have customers. And you . . .” Before I had a clue what he was about to do so I could make sure he didn’t, Nick twirled me around and shooed me toward the door. “The only thing that’s going to help you is a long shower. I’m taking you back to the RV. Now.”