Revenge of the Chili Queens (7 page)

“Well, at least this time, the bad news isn’t just ours. Too bad for those Chili Queens people, though. That woman, the one who’s in charge—”

“Eleanor Alvarez.”

“Yes, Eleanor. She’s the one. Ruth Ann tells me that you told her that Eleanor was plenty upset last night.”

I knew this for a fact, but all wasn’t doom and gloom. “Folks paid their money to get in, so the literacy organization will still collect a hefty chunk. And we took in plenty of extra tips and donations besides. Even though people were mostly only throwing in loose change and ones, Sylvia says our tent alone brought in an extra two hundred dollars.”

Loose change and ones.

The words bounced around inside my head, and I
remembered what the cop at the crime scene had said the night before. The victim had seventeen dollars and seventy-five cents in his pockets. All in change and small bills.

“That’s nice that people were willing to donate even more,” Gert said, drawing me out of my thoughts before that idea had a chance to bounce to any sort of conclusion. “Now if only the police can figure out who killed that poor man.”

“Speaking of him . . .” Although most people who know me would say it isn’t possible, I can be subtle when it suits me. Subtly, I stepped toward the metal filing cabinets where all the Showdown records were kept. Well, as subtly as a giant red chili can. “We need to figure out who he was.”

“We?” Gert didn’t say this the way Nick might have, the word tinged with contempt and suspicion. In fact, color rushed into her cheeks. “Are you sure it’s smart to investigate again?”

“It’s not like I’m staking out some dive bar, waiting for the perp,” I told her. “I thought I’d just do some . . . recon. Yeah, that’s all I have in mind. I’m sure the cops are going to come around and question Ruth Ann and Tumbleweed. You know, about who the dead guy was, when Tumbleweed hired him, how they found him, where he lives. You know, all the usual background information.”

“Just like on those police shows on TV.” Gert glanced over at the file cabinets where Ruth Ann kept all the pertinent paperwork. “You’d like to get a look at the files first.”

I sidled closer to the metal filing cabinets. “It can’t hurt anything.”

Gert looked over her shoulder toward the door. “And if Ruth Ann asks?”

“You know she’d let me look,” I said, even as I pulled open the nearest file drawer. “Ruth Ann can’t say no to me.”

“Well . . .” Gert may have talked the talk, but I couldn’t help but notice that when it came to walking the walk, she couldn’t resist. She glanced over my shoulder to get a look at the files. “There’s one marked
Chili Queens Event
,” she said, snatching it out of the drawer and flipping open the file. “It looks like permits, and agreements with the unions who put up the lights, and notifications to the police. I bet all those details were handled by Eleanor Alvarez and her committee. The way I heard it, the only thing Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann were in charge of was . . .” Her fingers fluttered over the file folders. “Yes! Here, the entertainers.”

She took the file back to Ruth Ann’s desk with her. “Tumbleweed told me he did all the hiring, but none of it was done in person. I’ll bet that’s why he didn’t recognize that poor man. You know, last night, when the police asked him to look at the body.” Gert’s brows dropped low over her eyes. “Poor Tumbleweed, he was pretty shaken up by the time he got back here last night.” Her shoulders twitched. She slapped the folder down on the desk and flipped it open. “We’ve got to do whatever we can to help out Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann. They’re dear people,” she said. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

It wasn’t easy reading, I mean, what with that mesh screen in front of my face and the fact that the Chick had to bend over in a pretty much not-so-bendable costume
to get a gander at that file folder, but I made a valiant effort.

“Mariachi band,” I said, skimming over the first employment contract Gert pulled from the file. “Guitar player.” My hopes rose when I saw the second contract, then plummeted right back down when I realized that particular application had a picture of the guitarist along with it. It was the man who’d played the lovely flamenco music I’d heard wafting across the plaza during the event, not our dead strummer.

“Harpist.” I remembered this musician, too, tucked away in a corner closest to the entrance to the Alamo. “Maracas player, drummer, violinist.” I grumbled my way through the rest of the employment contracts. “There have to be more.”

Just to be sure, Gert checked the file cabinet again.

“Not a one,” she told me. “And you know Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann wouldn’t misplace anything like that. They’re too careful when it comes to Showdown business.”

I’m not sure what we hoped to accomplish, but for a few moments, the two of us stood side by side and stared down at those employment contracts.

“What does it mean?” Gert finally asked. “Why isn’t there a contract for that poor, murdered man?”

Honestly, I couldn’t say. Not for sure, anyway. But . . .

“If you ask me,” I told her, “it means he didn’t belong there.”

“You mean, he was just posing as a musician?”

“It’s what I told Nick last night. Mr. Hot Guitar Player was trying to fit in, pretending that he was working there.”

“But why?” Gert asked.

This, I couldn’t say, either, not for certain, but it didn’t take much of a leap of faith to figure it out.

“He didn’t belong but he wanted to look like he did,” I mumbled, mostly to get the facts straight in my own head. “To me, that means the man had some sort of secret.”

“It is just like in the cop shows on TV,” Gert gasped.

And maybe she was right. I couldn’t say, but I sure intended to find out.

With that in mind, I told Gert I’d see her later and headed back outside. Maybe an hour of dancing in the glaring Texas sun would heat up my brain and get it working.

Or maybe I wouldn’t have to wait that long.

Not far from Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann’s trailer, my attention was caught by a familiar pale face.

Detective Anita Gilkenny, and she was walking toward where Nick was standing in the shade of the awning over the entrance to the spacious setup where—when she wasn’t manning the desk for Ruth Ann—Gert sold her chili-themed dish towels, coffee mugs, aprons, and jewelry.

It probably goes without saying, but let me just mention here that it’s a little hard to be unobtrusive when one is encased in a giant red chili.

It’s no wonder I had to duck behind the nearest food truck and make my way from behind a row of vendors to where Nick and the detective chatted. I sidled between Gert’s tent and Jorge LaReyo’s tamale stand just in time to hear Nick’s rumbling baritone when he responded to something Gilkenny said.

“You’re a smart guy,” Gilkenny replied. “You know this doesn’t look good.”

“It doesn’t look like anything.” With my chili butt as flat as it was able to get against Gert’s tent, I couldn’t see Nick, but I could well imagine the look on his face. I wondered if Detective Gilkenny would survive the icy onslaught. “It isn’t anything more than I said it was last night. I didn’t know the guy.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as it’s possible to be. But then, by the time I got called to the scene, it was late, the light was blinding, and our victim, he wasn’t exactly at his best.”

There was silence for a few moments, and I pictured Gilkenny eyeing up Nick like just another perp.

I guess I was right, because I heard him growl from deep in his throat.

“What if I told you . . .” Gilkenny’s voice dropped, and I inched a little closer, my head cocked so my ear was closer to the mesh panel. “What if I told you we ran the dead man’s fingerprints and made an identification?”

I didn’t have to see Nick. I knew him well enough. I could picture him crossing his arms over that chipped-from-granite chest. “That’s your job. I’m glad you were successful.”

“If I told you our victim’s name, maybe that would jog your memory.”

“I don’t see how,” Nick said. “I’ve never been in San Antonio before. I don’t know anyone here.”

“Dominic Laurentius. Unusual name, isn’t it? The kind that sticks with you once you hear it.”

Stony silence from Nick, and oh, how I wished I could see him. Maybe then I’d have an idea what was going on behind that gorgeous face of his.

From what I’d seen of her, I wouldn’t peg Anita Gilkenny as the type who lost her cool too easily, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. I heard her groan. “Come on, Falcone. You’re not dumb, and neither am I. You know where this is headed. Dominic Laurentius, our victim. He was ex LA police. Just like you.”

•   •   •

Ex LA police.

Of course, on the face of it, that didn’t mean a thing. I mean, a whole bunch of people are probably ex LA police, right? And it’s got to be a huge department. Not everyone knows everyone.

But not everyone knows Nick Falcone like I do, either, and I knew him well enough to read through the response he
didn’t
give Gilkenny. Unfortunately, at that very moment, Tumbleweed’s voice blared over the loudspeakers set up throughout the fairgrounds as he announced that the day’s first judging was scheduled to start (homestyle chili—that is, chili that’s made with any combination of ingredients and can include beans and pasta). Nick gave Gilkenny the “gotta work” excuse. She told him—in a no-nonsense, not friendly sort of way—that they’d for sure talk later.

That gave me some time to poke my nose further into the mysterious death of Dominic Laurentius.

With that in mind, I dragged myself back over to the Palace. Literally. When I got there, one stiletto off and in my hand, I braced my other hand against the front counter, listed to the left, and breathed so hard that not
even Sylvia could fail to hear the signs of my distress from inside the Chick.

“Gotta . . .” I gulped down a breath. “Gotta sit down,” I moaned. “The medic, over there at the first aid tent . . .” I glanced in the general direction. “When I fainted the first time . . . she said it’s . . . heatstroke for sure. It’s the costume. Too . . . too hot.”

To Sylvia’s credit, she didn’t exactly buy into the story. I mean, it’s not like she raced around to the front of the Palace, offered me an arm, and guided me to a bottle of icy cold water. But she didn’t call me a liar, either. At least not to my face. Had her memory been better and had there been fewer customers waiting for service, she might have taken the time to recall a similar incident back in St. Louis years before when a cute boy wanted to take me to McDonald’s for a burger and I was scheduled to work the Palace.

That time, I’d developed a sudden and terrible case of the flu.

“I’ll be back after I cool off,” I told her, and before she could start putting two and two together, I dragged around to the back of the Palace where she couldn’t see me, then raced to our RV and got out of the Chick costume.

I knew exactly what my next move should be. Research. I needed to do some serious research and find out what Nick and this Laurentius guy might have in common. I mean other than both of them being former LAPD cops.

The trick, of course, was where to begin.

It only took me a few minutes to figure it out.

It took a little longer than that to get over to the nearest public library.

“Wasn’t it all just horrible!” The woman behind the front desk waved a hand in front of her face. “I mean, it wasn’t like I was there or anything, but I mean, really, a murder at a reading fund-raiser! It’s all anyone here at the library can talk about today, and it’s not something you can just put out of your head, is it?”

It wasn’t, but I didn’t bother to mention that what little sleep I’d gotten the night before was punctuated with dreams of red Sharpies and broken guitars.

“It must have been awful,” the librarian went on to say. “First all the excitement of the fund-raiser and so many wonderful people who support reading. Then . . .” She’d been standing behind the desk, and she dropped into her chair. “That poor, poor man. Have the police arrested anyone?”

“They might have a suspect,” I told her, all the while thinking what I didn’t want to be thinking—from the way I heard Gilkenny talking back at the Showdown, I was afraid that suspect might be Nick. “That’s why I need your help.”

I explained my dilemma, and just as I’d hoped, the woman pitched right in. Before I knew it, she had a page open on her computer and I was standing by her side and we were both looking through old newspaper articles about Detective Dominic Laurentius.

“Seems like he was quite the hero,” the librarian said, skimming an article about an armed robbery and what Laurentius had done to stop it. “What a shame that a man with that kind of reputation has to die such a violent and tragic death.”

I didn’t say
Whatever
, because it would have been insensitive and I was grateful for her assistance, but let’s face it,
none of this was very helpful. I flicked a finger at the computer monitor, urging her to get to the next article.

Honestly, I was kind of sorry when she did.

There it was. Not exactly live and in color, but in color and on the screen right in front of my nose.

The blood drained from my face and down to my toes and my stomach lurched when I looked at the photograph of handsome Detective Laurentius that had been taken three years earlier. He was sans guitar, of course, and along with his partner, he was being honored for bravery at a banquet given by some civic organization.

“Well, that picture must have been taken in happier times,” Eleanor said. She pointed to the article that accompanied the photograph. “This story is about a serious altercation between Laurentius and that partner of his. It must have been really something, too, because it says here that after a department review, they both resigned from the police force. And listen to this! Laurentius, he had to give in his resignation from his hospital bed. Seems that partner of his beat him up really bad.”

Yeah, that partner of his.

Again, my gaze traveled to that banquet picture taken in happier days that showed Detective Laurentius standing with his partner.