Revenge of the Chili Queens (5 page)

I guess that’s why I wasn’t sure I was seeing what I was seeing even when I saw it.

I froze in my tracks and peered into the darkness, letting my eyes adjust to the play of light and shadows.

And that’s when I knew my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.

It was Mr. Hot Guitar Player, all right.

He was sitting butt to ground with his legs splayed out in front of him.

His guitar was smashed to smithereens, the pieces of painted wood on the ground all around him.

Except for the strings. Those were wrapped tight around his neck.

CHAPTER 3

Sylvia has Nick on speed dial.

In the past, just thinking about her cradling her phone in her hot little hands and his number stored somewhere in its little cyber brain has annoyed me no end, mostly because I’ve always speculated about why she’d need to call him—and fast—and wondered if she did call, if he’d pick up.

That night, though, I was glad for the speed dial. The way my hands were shaking, I never would have been able to use my phone and call Nick myself.

I did, however, insist on talking to him once I raced back to our tent and had Sylvia make the call. When Nick answered, I heard laughter in the background, the clink of glasses, rattling ice cubes, and blaring music. I’m no expert, but it sounded like a Broadway show tune.

There was no use telling him I was sorry to interrupt whatever he was doing, because it wouldn’t have made any difference and he wouldn’t believe me, anyway, so I cut to the chase.

“We’ve got another body.”

After Taos and Las Vegas, he knew I wasn’t joking. He told me to stay put, and he called the local cops. He timed it just right. By the time Nick got back to Alamo Plaza from wherever he’d been off to, the boys in blue were with him.

I led them to where I found the dead guitarist, and since nobody said I had to leave, I stepped back and watched two cops bend over the body while another couple set up a bank of generator-operated spotlights.

As much as I hate to admit it, there are times I wish I wasn’t so darned curious about things like murder.

This was one of them.

If I hadn’t been so intent on seeing what the cops were going to do and what they might find, I wouldn’t have seen what the glaring spotlights revealed: Mr. Hot Guitar Player didn’t look so hot anymore.

Those dark, luscious eyes of his bulged out of his head. His mouth was twisted open. But it was the look of his neck that would haunt my nightmares from now until forever. The strings of his broken guitar were twisted tight around it. They cut into his skin and left a thin, bloody necklace, as if someone had measured him for a new shirt and drawn out the circumference of his neck with a red Sharpie.

“Maxie.”

When Nick called my name, I jumped and tore my gaze from the body and the blood and the broken guitar.
He motioned me over to where he was talking with a blonde wearing a dark suit.

“This is Detective Anita Gilkenny. She’d like to know how you knew the deceased.”

Since my shrug didn’t explain, I was forced to spell it out. “I didn’t. He stopped over at our tent earlier this evening. He said he’d be back for chili. But he never showed. Not until—”

My words dissolved in a rush of memory.

The guitarist running up to me late in the evening and blurting out something about Senora Loca.

And security.

The guitarist had asked for security and had run the other way when he saw Nick.

The realization settled into my brain and my throat went dry and my blood went cold and my mind reeled, and it’s no wonder why. If the guitarist was in trouble, I could see him coming up and asking for security.

But I didn’t understand why he didn’t stick around. Or why he’d blanched at the sight of Nick.

Like he knew him.

While these thoughts raced through my head, I took a second to flash a look at Nick, but whatever was going on behind that chiseled face and those remarkable blue eyes of his, there was no hint of it in his expression. He glanced at the corpse, his face a mask.

I glanced at the corpse.

And thought of a million questions.

All of which I’d ask him when Detective Anita Gilkenny wasn’t around.

No big surprise, Detective Gilkenny had questions of her own. “Until . . . ?” She looked at me hard. Her eyes were blue, too, but not the intense shade of Nick’s. Hers were pale and streaked with gray, like an old bruise, and her complexion was pasty white.

“Until the end of the evening,” I said. “That’s when I was leaving and I walked over here and—”

“Do you know his name?” the detective asked.

I gave Nick a chance to speak up. He didn’t.

“I guess Mr. Hot Guitar Player doesn’t cut it, huh?” I asked the detective. She didn’t think it was funny. But then, if there was one thing I’d learned in the course of the murder investigations I’d been involved with, it’s that detectives are not exactly the laugh-riot types.

“I have no idea,” I said, just as a uniformed officer over by the body called out, “No identification on him. And seventeen dollars and seventy-five cents in his pockets. All in change and small bills.”

Detective Gilkenny scratched a line about all this in a little notebook. “If you didn’t know him,” she asked, “why were you looking for him?”

“I wasn’t. I was looking . . .” I remembered the little trail of Consolidated Chili giveaways; I’d left them all on a table back in our tent when I went to find Sylvia and her phone, but I didn’t bother to mention it. There was no use explaining—again—how the very idea of
corporate
and
chili
in the same sentence offended me to the core of my being and how I thought it was my duty to ditch the horrible souvenirs before they could taint anyone’s opinion of real chili.

“I was looking for Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann,” I said. “We were supposed to go out and get something to eat.”

“And that’s when you found the body.”

Since Gilkenny was the one who made the comment, I didn’t bother to look at Nick, even though I could feel those blue eyes of his on me.

“That’s when I found the body.”

“And the victim . . .” As if I could actually forget about the body over there in the glare of the spotlights, the detective looked that way. “He never came back to your tent for that bowl of chili he said he wanted?”

“Our chili is really good. His loss, huh?” I asked the question of Nick and got nothing but stone-faced silence in return.

“No,” I turned away from Nick and told the detective, because it was, after all, the truth. “He never came back for his bowl of chili.”

“And you don’t know who he is.”

“Like I said, not a clue.”

“And you don’t know anything about him.”

I didn’t, did I? And yet . . .

I looked past Nick and the detective to where the body still lay, avoiding another look at the man’s face and this time concentrating on the pieces of the shattered guitar scattered on the ground around him.

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t know how to play the guitar,” I said.

Nick raised his eyebrows. From him, that’s pretty much the equivalent of jumping up and down and asking what in the world I’m talking about. I wondered if it was
because he thought my question was crazy. Or if it was because he knew I was right on the money.

Detective Gilkenny wrote another line in her notebook. “You said you didn’t know the man. What makes you think he wasn’t a musician?”

“There were plenty of musicians here this evening,” I pointed out. “You heard them, Nick. There was a whole mariachi band that played for a little while. And there were strolling musicians all night long. But this guy . . .” I told myself not to do it, but I couldn’t help it. Once again, I glanced at the dead man’s face. “He wasn’t playing music. He was just hitting the strings. You know, strumming.” As if I had a guitar in front of me, I brushed my fingers over the imaginary strings. “He wasn’t playing music. He was pretending to play music.”

Gilkenny made another note and grumbled, “So maybe he didn’t really belong here.” She glanced over at me. “Did he seem to know anyone?”

This, I couldn’t say. I mean, I had seen him talking to the beauty queen at the Consolidated tent. And to the lady from the Women’s League. But that didn’t mean he knew them, did it? In fact, the only one he seemed to know was Nick.

But that was Nick’s business, not mine, and so far, he was keeping his mouth shut. This, of course, was plenty intriguing, and believe me, I intended to ask him about it. Later.

“He knew who I was,” I said, thinking back. “At least he knew my name.”

Gilkenny’s straw-colored eyebrows did a slow slide up her forehead. “So you did know him. Otherwise, how would he have known your name?”

Oh, she was thinking just the way I was thinking. Only not about the person I was thinking it about.

That person stepped forward, and he pretty much said what I would have said, only coming from me, I was afraid it would have sounded a little too conceited. Poor Detective Gilkenny was as plain as I was flashy. There was no use making her feel any less attractive.

“Maxie has something of a . . .” I knew Nick didn’t really need to think about it, so when he cleared his throat, I think he was just trying to soften the blow. “A reputation. You know, with chili lovers,” he said so the detective didn’t get the wrong idea.

It was true, and since that reputation was chili expert, chili lover, and Chili Chick, it was a reputation I was proud of.

“It’s her job to promote her dad’s spice and seasoning business,” Nick added. “So lots of people know her.”

“Like this guy.” The detective nodded. “What did you talk about?”

“He asked how business was. He said he’d heard our chili was good. He said he couldn’t wait to see me in my Chili Chick costume. Small talk.”

Before the detective could ask anything else, a woman came around the corner, the same woman I’d seen having an intense discussion with the victim not too long before. Then, I’d seen her only from a distance, but up close, I saw that my initial impression was right on the money. And money was exactly what I was talking about. She was tall, lithe, and gorgeous, and her clothes screamed quality.

But money or not, nothing could soften the blow of
seeing a body. She took a gander and her jaw pumped like a piston.

“Oh no!” she groaned. “It’s true. A body! Here at
Read with the Chili Queens
. What are we going to do?”

If you asked me, what she was going to do was faint, and I guess Nick saw it coming, too, or maybe he was just looking for an excuse to get close to this fashionable and gorgeous woman; he raced forward, cupped the woman’s arm, and braced her against his side. There was a folding chair nearby that hadn’t been put away by the cleanup crew yet, so I slid it over and Nick set the woman down in it.

“Oh no. Oh no!” She fanned her face with one hand, her Texas accent as heavy as the night air. “This can’t be happening. It’s terrible. Think of the publicity. It’s going to be awful. Our reputation is going to be ruined!”

“You work for the literacy organization?” the detective asked before I could.

The woman shook her head. “I’m Eleanor Alvarez. Our San Antonio Women’s League isn’t in charge of the literacy group that’s getting the funds from tonight’s event; we’re in charge of the entire event. The whole Chili Queens week. And now . . .” She gulped. In a ladylike way, of course. “There was talk over at our tent. Someone said the police were here and that there was a body. I didn’t think it could possibly be true. Oh my.” She lifted one trembling hand to brush the tears from her cheeks, and the sapphire ring she wore winked at me in the glare of the lights. “It’s terrible.”

“Did you know the man?” Gilkenny asked her.

“Him?” Her question came out as a squeak when Eleanor
looked at the body. “I saw him earlier this evening. You know, walking around and playing his guitar. I might have . . .” She sniffled. “Yes, I think I even talked to him. You know, asked how things were going and how he was enjoying the evening. That sort of thing.”

“But you don’t know his name.”

Eleanor shook her head. “The musicians were hired by the people from that Chili Showdown that’s in town. I’m sure someone there will know him. Our organization was just in charge of logistics. You know, getting all the charities lined up, handling their mailing lists, making sure things run smoothly each night.” She grimaced through a fresh cascade of tears. “Well, I guess none of that matters. I’m sorry. I’m blabbering. I can’t seem to help myself. This is just so awful. And so shocking.”

“You’re doing fine.” Since no one else seemed worried about the poor woman’s mental state, I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

I guess maybe I shouldn’t have, because it was apparently a signal to Nick that I should be officially in charge of Eleanor.

“Maxie will take you back to the main tent,” he told her. “You sit down over there and get a drink of water. An officer will come by in a bit and get your contact information.”

Don’t think I didn’t notice that this was Nick’s subtle way of getting rid of me. I shot him a look he ignored and helped Eleanor out of her chair.