Chili Con Carnage (16 page)

“Oh no! I never—”

“You told me that if I wanted to prove Sylvia didn’t kill Roberto, I should do something about it.”

“I meant you should think about it.” Nick scraped a hand through his hair. “I meant you should make a list of who didn’t like Roberto. Or who didn’t like Sylvia and might want to frame her. I didn’t mean you should go off half-cocked talking to people you shouldn’t be talking to and maybe getting yourself in serious trouble.”

“Which I haven’t done.”

“Which is just because you’re lucky.”

“Which doesn’t mean if I go right on doing it, I won’t be just as lucky.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “That’s a really stupid idea.”

“Then I guess I’m living up to your opinion of me.”

“I never said you were stupid.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Look . . .” Whatever he was going to say, Nick chewed over the words for a couple silent moments before he rubbed his hands together. “I just wanted to talk to you. That’s all. About . . .” Apparently he was smart enough to know that rehashing what we’d already talked about wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He knew that I knew that he knew we’d just start into it again, so he cleared his throat and changed the subject. “I also wanted to tell you that I talked to the local cops this morning. They checked Puff’s phone records. You were right. He was the one who called Roberto’s phone last night.”

“So I’m not stupid.”

“You’re not. But that doesn’t mean you’re smart.”

I’d already whirled around in an attempt to get inside the Palace so I could slam the door in his face when Nick grabbed my arm and turned me back to face him. “I didn’t mean you’re not smart as a person. I just meant . . .” Two could play the stare-down game, and I won this particular round. He dropped my arm and adjusted his sunglasses. “You’re not a professional. And you’re not experienced. If you go poking that pretty little nose of yours where it doesn’t belong, somebody’s likely to chop it off.”

It was an automatic response; I put my hand on my nose.

Until I thought about what Nick said and a tiny smile tickled the corners of my mouth. “Is it pretty?”

“Is what pretty?”

“My nose?”

“If you say so.”

I grumbled. “You’re the one who said it. Only now you’re going to deny it.” I didn’t give him the chance to. “Never mind,” I said. “At least we know we were on the right track. Puff wanted that phone because he knew about the video. He had a reason to kill Roberto.”

Nick nodded. “The local cops tell me the DEA has had their eyes on Puff for a while, but they could never prove anything because they could never catch him actually dealing.”

“Because whatever the drug was, he was selling it along with his beans.”

Another nod. “It makes sense. The problem isn’t figuring out what he was selling, but who was buying.”

“Maybe it’s not so much of a problem after all.” Before he could figure out what I was up to and dodge out of my way, I grabbed Nick’s hand and dragged him toward the front gates of the fairgrounds. Once we got there, and I realized I was still holding on to him, I dropped his hand like it was on fire and simply led the way.

Big points for him. He didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he fell into step beside me. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“To talk to a suspect,” I informed him.

“Someone you’ve talked to before. Which means you’re not going to learn anything now that you don’t already know.”

I shot him a look. “I will if he sees I’ve brought along reinforcements.”

Nick got it. Or if he didn’t, at least he didn’t say anything. Together, we passed by the artists just setting up their wares outside of the Showdown.

Lucky for us, Alphonse Rettinger was an early riser. When we arrived, he was just getting his chain saw out of his truck.

Alphonse’s eyes landed on me and behind his beard, his lips thinned. That is, until he took a look at Nick.

Cop.

Nick didn’t have to say a word. As usual, he was wearing a dark suit (not exactly the normal way for a security guy to dress, but nothing was normal about Nick), and nothing screams cop like that. And of course, there was the stubborn chin, the attitude, the steely look.

Alphonse set down the chain saw. “What can I do for you folks?” he asked.

Nick took the lead. “Just wondered how much you know about what happened here last night,” was all he said.

Alphonse’s gaze automatically traveled to the front gates of the fairgrounds and beyond, to where Puff’s trailer used to sit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come on. You must have heard about the fire.” This was me, trying my best to follow Nick’s cool and collected lead and finding it impossible since it was so obvious Alphonse was playing games. When all the big guy did was stare at me, I decided on a little detour. “It’s all kind of weird, don’t you think? I mean, arson here at the Showdown and somebody dying in the fire. And all right after your friend Roberto was killed.”

Alphonse’s beard twitched. “He was no friend of mine.”

“But you knew him well enough to fight with him at El Rancho,” Nick reminded him.

“So what?” Alphonse was a whole head taller than Nick and just about twice as wide. He looked down a nose that had been broken a time or two and had the lumps and bumps to prove it. “That don’t mean nothing.”

“He’s right.” I was pretty sure Nick didn’t appreciate this comment from me and before he could tell me, I went right on. “A bar fight is just a bar fight, Nick. It doesn’t mean a thing. What really means something is the fact that our friend Alphonse here never had a booth reserved for this art fair. Not until he found out Roberto worked for the Showdown.”

“How did you—” Alphonse had no intention of giving that much away. He clamped his lips together and maybe I’m a whole lot smarter than Nick gives me credit for being, because I knew it was time for me to step back and let him take over.

“I’m willing to believe you had nothing to do with killing Roberto, or what happened here at the fairgrounds last night,” he told Alphonse. “But you’re going to have to convince me. What was the fight about, Alphonse? If it was some stupid beef, then so be it, but if there was bad blood between you and Roberto . . .”

Here’s the thing about Taos. Maybe it’s the altitude, or maybe it’s the way the sky is so clear, the sunlight just seems more alive than it does in other places, like it’s just not up in the sky, but it’s all around, touching everything and everyone. Maybe that’s why I thought a flush of color raced up Alphonse’s neck and into his cheeks.

But I don’t think so.

I think the big guy was actually blushing.

“It was about . . .” Alphonse’s gaze darted over to me and he cocked his head, indicating that he and Nick needed to take a walk into the back part of the booth where I’d seen him working on that sculpture of the bear/tuna/flower. For a minute or two, the two of them put their heads together back there, and all I could hear was the rumble of their voices.

When they were done, Nick walked out of the booth and without a word, he started back toward the fairgrounds.

“So?” I scrambled to catch up. “You going to call the cops and tell them what Alphonse said?”

Nick kept walking without ever once looking back. “I’m going to call the cops, but I think we can leave Alphonse out of it.”

His legs were long and I had to hurry. “So he told you, right? He told you what he and Roberto were fighting about.”

“He did.”

“And . . . ?”

We were all the way back to the fairgrounds and I was breathing hard from having to run to keep up with Nick. He pulled me over to the side of the ticket booth and looked back over his shoulder toward the art show. Apparently he was satisfied that Alphonse wasn’t watching because he said, “Remember that video and how we saw Puff buy drugs from Roberto?” He knew I did, and he didn’t stop long enough for me to answer. “Well, I know what the drug is. Roberto was selling knock-off pharmaceuticals. That’s what Puff bought from him on that video.”

“And you know this because . . .”

Nick ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Because Alphonse bought some from Roberto, too.”

“And . . .”

He shrugged. “And nothing. He thought he was buying the real thing. He found out he got ripped off. When he ran into Roberto at El Rancho, he naturally lost his temper.”

“So what’s the drug?”

“Alphonse seems like an okay kind of guy to me,” Nick said, which didn’t sound like an answer to my question. “I’d hate to see him get dragged into this and get embarrassed in public.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Because it was . . .” Nick mumbled something under his breath, something I only caught the last little bit of.

“You mean the little blue pills?” The words burst out of me. “The ones guys use when—”

“That’s right.”

“And Roberto was making fake ones?”

“Counterfeit prescription medications are a huge problem around the world. It’s something like a seventy-five-billion-dollar business.”

“And Roberto was part of it.” It made sense. “That’s what he was manufacturing, and that’s what he sold to Puff, but he kept some for himself, and he sold a few pills to Alphonse, and Alphonse, he figured out they weren’t the real thing when . . .”

Nick looked at me hard. “I think we can both imagine that scene.”

We could.

I couldn’t decide whether to burst out laughing or to take pity on Alphonse. That didn’t keep me from grinning all the way back to the Palace.

“You’re not packing up.” Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann walked by holding hands, and stopped long enough to peek into the Palace where I was sitting with my butt on one high stool and my feet on another. I was finishing up a bowl of the chili I’d made earlier that Sunday morning. “We’re leaving bright and early,” Tumbleweed reminded me. “Got to clear out of the fairgrounds before the next show moves in.”

“Except I’m not. Clearing out, that is.” I swallowed down the last of the chili and congratulated myself. It wasn’t as good as Jack’s—nothing was—but it wasn’t half bad. Especially since I’d sprinkled chopped jalepeño on top of the chili and added a big, fat dollop of guacamole. I’d gotten some salsa and chips from one of my neighboring vendors to go along with the chili, and I brushed crumbs off the front of my shirt. “I’ve got to stay around, Tumbleweed.”

Ruth Ann poked him. “Told you so. Told you she wasn’t going to leave Sylvia high and dry.”

Tumbleweed tugged on one earlobe. “I suppose I should have expected it. As much as you two like to fight, you really do love each other.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” I felt morally obligated to mention this, especially since I didn’t want word to get around the Showdown that I’d gotten soft, or worse, that Sylvia and I were BFFs thanks to the little matter of somebody plunging a knife through Roberto’s heart. I swung off the stool, and since I’d been smart enough to eat my chili out of a paper bowl, I threw it away instead of having to wash it. “But I can’t exactly head for Vegas with the rest of you. At least not until after Sylvia gets arraigned tomorrow. After that . . .” Truth be told, after that, I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen and the thought scared the bejeebers out of me. Was it possible that Sylvia actually might be found guilty of the murder? Founded guilty and tossed in prison?

Just thinking about it froze my insides, which had been feeling nice and warm and full from the chili. Of course, I couldn’t let on. Not to Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann. If they knew how worried I really was, they’d never leave Taos.

“You know we’d like to stay with you.” Ruth Ann must have been reading my mind. “But we’ve got to be in Vegas bright and early Wednesday. I already put an ad in the local paper there to interview for day help, and we can’t have folks showing up and have nobody there. We’ve been talking about it . . .” She glanced at her husband. Yeah, as if that
we
could have been anybody but her and Tumbleweed. “We just hate leaving you here, honey.”

I didn’t doubt it for a second.

“Sylvia and I will be fine,” I assured Ruth Ann. “Guaranteed, the judge is going to know right away that Sylvia had nothing to do with Puff’s death. She was in jail, she couldn’t have killed Puff. Maybe that will convince him Sylvia couldn’t have had anything to do with Roberto’s murder, either.”

“Maybe.” Both Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann spoke at the same time, and I might have been a little more confident if either one of them had bothered to sound the least bit sure of themselves.

“Oh come on!” I looked from one of them to the other. “You don’t think—”

Ruth Ann reached across the counter and patted my hand. “I think you’re the best sister Sylvia could ever have,” she said.

“Half—”

Tumbleweed squeezed my other hand. “She’s lucky to have you. And you . . .” Like he always did when the Showdown wrapped up and it was time to move on to the next town, he was carrying a stack of flyers that included a map that showed where we were headed and where we could park when we got there. He peeled one off, set it down on the counter in front of me, and tapped the map with one finger. “You’re going to meet up with us, right? You and Sylvia. I want the both of you girls there.”

I said we wouldn’t miss it for the world, and promised we’d be there as soon as possible, and when Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann moved on to the next vendor to hand out their flyers, I flopped back down on the stool. Truth of the matter is, I would have felt a lot better about lying to Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann about how confident I felt if I felt the least bit confident.

I also would have felt a whole lot better if I had the answers to the questions that kept battering around inside my head.

Did Puff really kill Roberto?

And was it because they were conspirators in some shady business that distributed fake little blue pills to guys desperate for some bedtime action?

So why did somebody kill Puff?

Frustrated and feeling completely out of my league, I scrubbed my hands over my face, and reminded myself that I’d gotten this far. I could take the next step. Honest, I could.

If only I could figure out what that next step was.

No sooner had the thought popped into my head than I heard Ruth Ann’s voice float to me from the booth next door.

“. . . she’s such a good sister,” Ruth Ann said. “So devoted. She’d never leave Sylvia. Blood is thicker than water. That’s what they say, you know, and our Maxie, she’s living proof. Blood is thicker than water.”

Hmmm . . .

It was one of those old sayings that I’d heard so many times, I’d never really stopped to think about it. But I guess it was true. Even half blood made people do stupid things. Look how I was sticking my neck out for Sylvia. Like it or not, Sylvia and I were tied together by Jack. That meant that no matter how rotten, nasty, and mean-spirited she was—I set the thought aside, because the whole blood-is-thicker-than-water thing meant something else, too.

I slid off the stool, locked up the Palace behind me, and headed to Gert’s.

• • •

“So I figured you could use the help. I mean, what with me not leaving for a couple days. I’m in no hurry to get the Palace packed up.”

“That’s so sweet of you!” Gert folded dish towels and laid them carefully in the big plastic containers she used to transport them. “If you just want to grab that other container over there . . .” She pointed.

I went and retrieved the tub, and while she worked on the dish towels, I started in on the aprons on the other side of the rack.

The first batch of them was bright red with the words
Some Like it Hot
embroidered across the front. I scooped them off the rack, set them on a nearby chair, and got to work. It took me a couple minutes, but I eventually got a folding routine down: bib under skirt, ties behind bib, skirt of the apron folded around it all, then folded again.

I set the first apron in the open tub. “So what do you think?” I looked at Gert through the wire folding rack that separated us. It was about six feet high, taller than both of us, but I could see her through the slats. “About poor Puff.”

She bent over to set a pile of towels in her tub, so I couldn’t see her face, but I heard her click her tongue. “Poor Puff is right. Do you think . . .” She peeked around the corner of the rack. “People are saying he was involved in something he shouldn’t have been involved in. That’s why he got himself killed. Do you think it’s true?”

“Can’t say.” I couldn’t, so it wasn’t exactly a lie. Nick had asked me to keep my mouth shut about our theories regarding Roberto’s and Puff’s murders. About the video and the little blue pills. But keeping my mouth shut didn’t mean not asking questions, right?

I kept on asking questions.

“Do you think it’s true?” I asked Gert.

“Well, it would seem just too horrible otherwise, wouldn’t it? I mean . . .” She ducked back behind the rack and continued to strip towels off it, fold them, and stow them away, and with each row she peeled away, I could see a little more of Gert in her ankle-length red skirt, her white shirt, and her turquoise earrings and silver-and-turquoise squash blossom necklace.

“It’s terrible either way, of course,” she said. “But somehow, if Puff was completely innocent and someone did this awful thing to him . . . well, that’s just too horrible to think about. If that could happen to an innocent person, then it could happen to any one of us, and, of course, that’s a frightening thought. But if Puff was involved in something illegal . . . well, it’s still awful, don’t get me wrong. But it means he put himself in danger. That he made the choice, and his death wasn’t random. It’s still vicious. And evil. But it’s not random, and in the great scheme of things, I guess there’s an odd comfort in that.”

“And which do you think it is? Random? Or he had it coming?”

I saw her shoot me the pointed look I deserved for the had-it-coming comment. “Can’t say. Don’t know. I’m not familiar with all the players around here, not like you are. You don’t think . . .” I watched her hands still over a towel, mid-fold. “You don’t think someone around here could be that wicked, do you?”

I shrugged even though I knew she wouldn’t see it. “Depends. I guess it would make more sense if someone had a motive. You know, a really good motive. Like they were getting revenge because someone hurt somebody they loved.”

Even from where I was standing, I could see that Gert’s tub wasn’t full, but she stopped putting towels into it and covered it up. She went to the other side of the tent, grabbed another tub, and dragged it over.

Through the rack, I saw her level a look at me. “You don’t think I killed Puff, do you?”

“I don’t. Not really.”

“But not really doesn’t mean absolutely.” Somehow, she didn’t seem to hold this against me. She grabbed a handful of yellow towels with smiley faces on them made of different types of peppers and got to work on those.

“I have to ask,” I said. “I figured you’d understand. You know, because blood is thicker than water.”

“And Sylvia’s still sitting in jail.” Gert wasn’t done, but I saw her brush her hands together as if to say enough was enough. She walked to the back of the tent and sat down in one of the chairs where we’d had our heart-to-heart—and that really nasty tea—just a couple days before. It seemed like a lifetime ago. I guess for Roberto and Puff, it was.

I finished the red aprons before I joined her.

“Just the other day, you thought I killed Robert because I hated him.” Three cheers for Gert, she didn’t beat around the bush. She didn’t seem to hold a grudge, either. She said this as if we were nothing more than friends, just sitting and chatting and not talking about knives and fires and murder. “Now you think there’s some connection between Robert’s death and Puff’s, and that I killed Puff because I loved Robert very much.”

“I think Puff killed Roberto.” This didn’t exactly violate Nick’s rule about keeping my mouth shut, because for all Gert knew, I was just sitting around thinking and I’d come up with this theory on my own. I didn’t say that there was actually proof, like Puff calling Roberto’s phone, and Puff in Roberto’s apartment and, oh yeah, that damning video. “So naturally I thought that someone who loved Roberto might—”

“I guess that lets me off the hook.” Gert laughed, but not like it was funny, more like it was uncomfortable to say and the only way to make the words come out was to pretend they were part of a joke. “Yeah, he was family, but as I told you before, Maxie, I could never forgive Robert for what he put my sister through. All the pain, all the suffering . . . he didn’t deserve to die the way he did, but . . .” When she sighed, her shoulders rose and fell and for a couple minutes, we sat in silence.

“I wasn’t exactly completely honest with you last time you were here to talk to me,” she finally said. “Oh, I didn’t lie. Don’t get that impression.” Gert glanced away. “But I may have left out a few pertinent details.”

“About Roberto.”

She nodded. “I told you what he was like, what he was always like. Robert Lasky was a lazy, dishonest boy, and he grew up to be a lazy, dishonest man. When he showed up here in Taos, I was ready to toss him out on his keister, but he told me . . .” Though her expression was calm, her hands worked over each other, like she was knitting an invisible scarf. “He admitted that he was involved in some things that weren’t exactly on the up-and-up.”

My turn to nod. “Drugs.”

Gert’s gaze shot to mine. “You know that! How?”

I remembered my promise to Nick and toed the edge of saying too much and not saying enough to get a response out of Gert. “It’s kind of a long story,” I explained. “And it really doesn’t matter. He was manufacturing those little blue pills. You know, for erectile dysfunction.”

She spit out a laugh. “Is that what it was? He never said. He only told me he’d gotten involved in manufacturing something and that it was illegal. I didn’t question either. Robert was a brilliant chemist, so him being on the manufacturing end, that made sense. As for the illegal . . .” She gave a sort of
whatever
shrug, but hey, I’d used the gesture before myself a million times, and I knew it covered a multitude of emotions. “Like I said, lazy and dishonest. He did say he was making a lot of money doing whatever it was he was doing, and that’s where I stopped asking questions. I figured I didn’t want to know any more than that. He also confessed . . .” She didn’t much like Robert, and I couldn’t blame her. But Gert had a conscience, and she was still ashamed on his behalf. “He said he mixed together things like wallboard and paste to make pills that looked just right and that they were selling for a fraction of what the real things cost and people never knew the difference. I was appalled, and I told him so. I begged him to get away from that life, but he said I shouldn’t worry, he already had.”