Revenge of the Chili Queens (9 page)

I knew the answer to my next question would tell me a lot, so I paid close attention to Nick’s expression when I asked, “Was it worth it?”

Of course he didn’t give me the satisfaction of a flinch. Or a grimace. Or even a groan.

“What exactly are you trying to prove here, Maxie?” he shot back.

My temper snapped. “Oh, I dunno. Maybe it would be nice to prove that you’re not the one who smashed ol’ Dominic’s guitar, then wrapped the strings around his neck and pulled them tight enough to slice through his windpipe. But then, I guess I’m the glass-half-f type. Always looking for the bright side of a situation.”

“Maybe you should just mind your own business instead.”

“Really?” I propped my fists on my hips. “What were you thinking, Nick? You lied to me. Heck, you lied to the police. You said you didn’t know Dominic. You think they don’t already know what I know?”

“They know.” Nick ran a hand through hair the color of Vermont maple syrup, and though he did his best to hide the reaction, I noticed that just a little bit of the starch
went out of his shoulders. “I went into the station this morning and saw Gilkenny. I told her everything.”

“And she said . . . ?”

“They already knew most of it. Of course they already knew.” He puffed out a breath of annoyance. “I used to interview suspects and wonder how they could sit there and tell bald-faced lies, then when it came to be my turn . . .” There was something about a helpless shrug from a macho guy like Nick that was especially pathetic. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It was stupid. I told Gilkenny it was stupid.”

“And she told you she agreed.”

One corner of his mouth pulled tight. “She did, and she was right. We’ve cleared the air. She knows everything now.”

“Great. So now she knows you once beat up your partner so bad, you put him in the hospital. How do you think that makes you look?”

“It doesn’t matter how I look. It happened, and I can’t change it. That doesn’t mean I killed the guy.”

“It looks like it does.”

Those intense blue eyes of his snapped to my plain brown ones. “You think I killed Dom?”

“Does it matter what I think?”

“I had no idea he was in San Antonio. Not until you called me last night and I came back here and saw the body.”

“Except . . .” I’d almost forgotten! I sucked in a breath. “When he saw you last night, he hightailed it in the other direction. He recognized you right away.”

“Obviously. And he didn’t want to see me any more than I would have wanted to see him.”

“I didn’t tell the cops about that because I wanted to talk to you about it first.”

“Not to worry, I told them. And I told them I had no idea Dom was here in town.”

That didn’t make me feel much better. “You told them that Laurentius came looking for you? You’re making it look worse and worse for yourself.”

“What do you want from me, Maxie? First you tell me I should have told the police the truth; now you say it should only be part of the truth.”

“But you’re digging yourself a bigger hole!”

“I didn’t kill Dom.” Nick’s voice snapped with authority. “You can believe me or not. The police can believe me or not. But it’s true. I never saw him last night, not until he was already dead.”

“All right then.” I balled my hands into fists and pressed them to my sides, the better to contain the desperation and anger that built inside me like steam in a teakettle. “If you didn’t do it, then we need to figure out who did.”

“No, we don’t need to figure out anything. You don’t need to figure out anything. I’ll take care of it.”

“But I can help. Really, Nick. You know I can. Look what I’ve already found out. I found out who the victim was and how he used to be your partner and how you put him in the hospital. And now the cops know all that, too, and you know they’re going to glom on to you as a suspect and they’re not going to look any further. If the two of us are working our own angle—”

“I don’t need to work an angle; not when I didn’t do it.”

“Okay, not an angle then. That’s not what I meant,
anyway. I mean if the two of us talk to some people and see what we can find out, we’ve got a better chance at uncovering the truth. And with two of us, it will go faster.”

The way his brows dropped low over his eyes, I knew he was trying to find a way to dispute this, but in the end, he really couldn’t. He puffed out a breath of surrender. “I’ve already done some digging,” he said. “But so far, I haven’t come up with much.”

“Teddi’s worried about something,” I told him. “You know, the drag queen. We need to figure out if she knew Dominic. She’s jumpy and nervous and she wore a housedress tonight.”

When Nick shot me a look, I figured it was easier just to keep going rather than to explain. “And I saw one of the beauty queens give Laurentius a bowl of chili last night. Too bad he wasn’t poisoned, huh? That would make things nice and easy. I saw him talking to Eleanor Alvarez, too. You know, the woman in charge of the whole shebang. She says they were just chatting, but I’ll tell you what, whatever they were talking about, she didn’t look happy.”

“That’s all good.” Nick nodded, confirming this to himself.

“But really, Nick, I think the first thing we need to do is figure out what Dominic was doing in San Antonio in the first place.”

“I did some digging of my own, and I’ve already got that covered,” he said. “Dom was working security. For Consolidated Chili.”

CHAPTER 6

Lucky for me, Nick got a call just then. Something about some drunk guy over near the entrance to the fund-raiser who was trying to get in and rescue all those dogs he heard barking. Thank you, drunk guy. I didn’t have Nick tagging along when I made my way over to the Consolidated Chili tent.

I got there just in time to see the butt of the guy in the very nice suit and the very big ten-gallon cowboy hat when he got into the back of that sleek black limo of his.

“That’s John Wesley Montgomery, right?” I asked a woman standing nearby. “He’s some big shot, huh?”

“The biggest,” she told me. “There’s a lot of money in canned chili.”

And a lot of sodium, too, I suspected, along with a
long list of chemicals and other ingredients that were never intended to be consumed by man or beast.

John Wesley Montgomery couldn’t see me, but I made a face at the limo, anyway, as a way of showing my solidarity with real chili lovers everywhere.

Then I got down to business.

I looked over the crowd of jeans-clad animal huggers enjoying heaping bowls of Consolidated Chili’s products and dodged a couple beauty queens who were insistent (in a very nice and toothy way, of course) about shoving hokey souvenirs at me. It wasn’t until after I was the proud owner of four cardboard coasters, two bottle openers, and one of those rubbery jar openers that was shaped like a can and had the word
Consolidated
emblazoned across it that I found the beauty queen I was looking for, the one I’d seen giving Dominic Laurentius a bowl of chili the night before. I made a beeline for her.

This particular night, she wasn’t looking so beautiful. Oh, she had on a very short, very tight black dress. Just like she had the night before. And she still wore that corny sparkling tiara and the satin banner across her chest that proclaimed her
Miss Texas Chili Pepper
. And that big hair? It was just as blond and just as big, and every single hair of her amazing shoulder-length flip was exactly in place. How it stayed that way when the humidity pressed around us like a smothering pillow, I can’t say.

No matter. She looked as perfect as a beauty queen could.

But I knew the telltale signs when I saw them—Miss Texas Chili Pepper had been crying. The tip of her nose
was just the teensiest bit red. So were her eyes. Me? Jump to conclusions? All the time! I jumped for all I was worth.

“Hey, too bad about that murder that happened here last night, huh?”

Whatever she was expecting from the woman in the cheap wig and the long black skirt, it wasn’t this. She actually flinched before she could hand me a red pen that said
Consolidated Chili
on it in bright yellow lettering.

I tucked my hands behind my back, the better to send the message that I could not be bought with Consolidated’s pieces of silver. “You knew him?” I asked her.

“Him?” Nobody does I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about quite as well as a beauty queen. Not that I knew that many beauty queens, of course, but they aren’t all that different from those oh-so-cool girls back in high school who had all of Daddy’s money, Mommy’s credit cards to use at the mall, and every boy in school after them because there’s no guy in the world who can resist a conquest, especially when it comes along with perky breasts, a perfect smile, and a don’t-touch attitude.

Phony eyelashes batting, Miss Texas Chili Pepper mustered up all the attitude she was able. “Who on earth are you talking about?”

“The guy who was murdered about fifty yards from here last night? Over near the porta-potties? Don’t tell me you don’t know about it, because if you don’t, you’re the only one in San Antonio who hasn’t heard the news. It’s all anybody around here can talk about.”

Right hand to cheek. “Oh, that man.”

Like she thought that lame gesture was enough to
distract me? News flash: that sort of tactic didn’t work on an old pro like me; I’d used it myself plenty of times.

I kept my eyes on her face to better gauge her reaction. “You were talking to him here in your tent last night. You handed him a sample of chili.”

She had green eyes, like a cat’s, and she rolled them ever so innocently, her Texas drawl suddenly as heavy as the muggy night air. “I talked to a whole lot of folks last night. It’s my job. My duty. You know, as Miss Texas Chili Pepper.”

“How did you know him?”

“A dead person?” Her eyes went wide. “I didn’t. I mean, I may have spoken to him. After all—”

“It’s your duty. Yeah. Whatever. So some guy you didn’t know but talked to once got killed and you’ve spent the day crying?”

Her shake of the head might have been more convincing if she didn’t sniffle at the same time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your image, for one thing. What are people going to think if they see Miss Texas Chili Pepper has a red nose?”

“Is it? Red?” Don’t asked me where she stashed anything in a dress that formfitting, but she reached into a pocket, pulled out a compact, and took at gander at herself in the little mirror. She winced, set the compact down on the nearest table, and bent closer so she could peer into the mirror at the same time she powdered her nose.

“I’m allergic,” she said once she was done. “You know, to cats and dogs and such. And with so many animals here tonight . . . well, what’s a poor girl going to do?”

“Not attend animal fund-raisers?”

Her smile was tight. Oh, how she pitied me! “We all have a duty to our world and the poor, innocent creatures that inhabit it,” she said. “Even if it’s sometimes painful. Allergies or no allergies, my own needs aren’t as important as those of the poor animals that suffer out on the streets of cities all across this great country. They need to be housed and fed. They need medicine, and most importantly, they need plenty of love. I can’t help deliver that message if I’m home and avoiding my duty.”

“Looks to me like all you’re delivering is pens with the Consolidated Chili name on them.”

“Would you like one?” When she held out a pen to me, her smile was as wide as the dome of stars above our heads.

“I’ll pass,” I told her. “Besides, rather than a pen, I’d like the truth.”

“The truth?” That lifted chin, those thrown-back shoulders . . . it all might have been more convincing if not for the fact that her bottom lip quivered. “The truth is that I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have people to greet.”

She glided away, reaching into the sparkling bag she had hung over one shoulder for the booty, and handing out pens left and right.

“Jar opener?”

The question brought me spinning around, and I found myself nose to jar opener with a very tall woman with inky hair. She, too, was in a formfitting dress and was wearing the requisite tiara and sash. It said she was
Miss Texas Triangle
.

“No thanks,” I told her. “You already gave me one.”

“Oh, come on, take another one.” She shoved the rubbery opener into my hands. “We’ve got oodles of them, and you can always use a jar opener.”

“What I could really use is the lowdown,” I said.

“About Consolidated Chili? Why, it’s the largest manufactured chili company in the world! Did you know that? I did not, not until that wonderful Mr. John Wesley Montgomery talked to us all before last night’s event. The largest in the world. I’ll tell you what, that just impressed me no end. Doesn’t it impress you no end?”

“No end,” I assured her. “But what I’d really like is the lowdown on her.” Since I had my eyes on Miss Texas Chili Pepper, Miss Texas Triangle couldn’t miss who I was talking about.

“She’s upset,” I said.

“Has been all the while we’ve been here tonight,” Miss TT told me.

“She says the sniffling and the red eyes, it’s because she’s allergic to dogs.”