Chili Con Carnage (18 page)

It took me a couple moments to put a name to the sensation.

I don’t do guilt. I mean, it’s a pretty big waste of time and energy, right? So my first thought was to smother the sucker with a great big bite of chicken and guajillo, but I knew that since he brought me the sandwich, that would only make me feel even more guilty.

See, I had some things to ask Carter. Good-looking, smiling, Carter with his millions of adoring fans, his millions of dollars, and the good sense to come calling with Cotija in hand.

Things about Puff. And beans. And murder.

I guess that’s one of the perils of trying to play detective. Sometimes you have to make people uncomfortable. Even people who have people and are more than mildly attractive, way richer than anyone you’ve ever met, and—if the smile Carter was aiming at me meant anything—interested in me in an interesting sort of way.

I played with one corner of the white deli bag. “I’m glad you stopped by,” I said, easing into the subject. “Because I wanted to talk to you anyway and I figured I’d have to track you down tomorrow to do it.”

His smile settled into place. “I’ve never been opposed to being tracked down by a pretty woman.” He’d been standing, and he sat back down on the stool, propped his elbows on the table, and leaned toward me. “What is it you’d like to talk about?”

“Puff.”

It wasn’t what he was expecting, but then, like I said, Carter had fans and groupies galore. My guess was that most of the women who wanted to get him alone didn’t do it so they could talk about murder. He covered his uneasiness by taking a swig of root beer. “The guy who was killed in the fire last night?”

I nodded. “I’ve known Puff since I was a kid, and in all those years, there was one thing that never changed about him: He was a first-class bullshitter. Not that I held it against him. It used to be great when we were kids and we were camped for the night and we would go over to sit outside Puff’s trailer and roast marshmallows and listen to his tall tales. Back then, I believed every word he said, but hey, that was a long time ago. These days, I’ve learned to take everything Puff said with a grain of salt. But the other day . . . the day you showed up to film, before Roberto came tumbling out of your motorhome, Puff told me something really interesting. About you.”

Carter took this in stride. Then again, when you’re accustomed to seeing your face on magazine covers and billboards, I guess you get used to people talking about you. “He must have been a fan.”

“I guess a lot of people are, but that’s not what Puff was talking about.” I kept my gaze on Carter, hoping to gauge his reaction. “He was talking about you, and beans.”

“Of course!” Call me cynical, but the way he said this sounded a bit too hale and hearty to me. Like we were old boys at the old boys’ club shooting the breeze. Carter took another drink of root beer. “I bought my supplies of specialty beans from Puff.”

“That’s what he told me, only I didn’t believe him. Like I said, Puff liked to make himself sound important.”

“And you think that maybe him making himself sound important to the wrong people might be what got him killed.”

“I didn’t say that,” I told him because really, when you’re talking murder and you’re obviously sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong and asking questions about things that are none of your business, that sort of thing is expected. “I’m just asking around. That’s all. To see if anyone knows anything.”

“Or if anyone has a motive the cops haven’t ferreted out.”

There was no use denying it. I smiled in a way that wasn’t exactly an apology. “I’ve always been told I’m too nosy for my own good.”

Carter wadded his white deli bag into a tight ball. “That might not be the best plan,” he said, and he tossed the wad, overhand, into the trash can. “There’s a murderer on the loose and if word gets out that you’re asking too many questions . . . well, I’m sure you’ve seen all the same movies and TV shows I have. You know that’s not smart, Maxie.”

Had I just been threatened?

I wasn’t sure, and until I was, I reminded myself I had to play it cool. “I think Puff murdered Roberto,” I told him.

His ginger eyebrows did a slow slide up his forehead. “Really? Why?”

“It’s just sort of a theory.” If he noticed I didn’t really answer his question, he didn’t let on. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about it, and putting together ideas. You know, like they do in all those movies. So now I’m trying to figure out who killed Puff.”

“And so you asked me about the beans.”

“It proves that you and Puff had a connection.”

Carter had been about to finish off his root beer, and slowly and carefully he set down the can. “I can guarantee you that I have thousands of connections to thousands of people. I’m sure Puff had plenty, too. After all, he traveled all over the country. There are bound to be people he was more closely connected to than me.”

I was thinking about the little blue pills, of course, and about how Puff bought them from Roberto, then sold them to the suckers he met as he traveled the Showdown circuit. I was thinking that if he could hide the pills among his beans in his trailer, it would be easy to hide even bigger quantities of pills in large shipments.

“Sure, I know Puff knew a lot of people. But how many of them did he ship large quantities of beans to?”

A lot of this was nothing more than guesswork, of course, but I guess I hit the nail on the head, because suddenly, Carter wasn’t the lovable TV chef. His shoulders shot back and his voice was sharp-edged, like one of the knives that hung over the sink nearby.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “I did buy large quantities of beans from your friend, Puff. I did have them shipped to my restaurant in LA. They were really good beans, especially the hutterites, and they were reasonably priced. Puff has been my supplier for years, and I’ve always been happy with his product. So, because I have a feeling I know where this is going, I’m going to do you a favor and set you straight before you say something you shouldn’t say, let me make it perfectly clear—I didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t want to lose my bean supplier.”

There was no politically correct way to say it, so I didn’t even try. “Your supplier for chili beans?” I asked him. “Or magic blue beans?”

“You know . . .” Carter’s voice simmered. He spun toward the door, then turned back around again, one finger poked in my direction. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And you.” Another poke just for emphasis. “You’d better be careful about spreading lies, because that could get you in deep legal trouble.”

He whirled back around and slammed out of the door.

But not before he grabbed the deli bag on the table, and took my chicken and guajillo sandwich with him.

The public defender assigned to Sylvia’s case told me I should be happy; not everyone accused of murder was fortunate or trustworthy enough to get let out on bail.

Didn’t I look happy?

Maybe that was because my hopes plummeted along with my expression as soon as the judge explained I’d need to bring five thousand dollars back to the court in order for Sylvia to walk free.

Five thousand?

It might as well be five million, and I wasn’t the only one who knew it. When the bailiff led her back to her cell where she would have to wait until I forked over the bucks, there were tears in Sylvia’s eyes.

By the time the taxi dropped me back at the fairgrounds—I decided driving the RV would make me look a little too conspicuous—I swear, I was on the verge of tears myself, and not just because I didn’t know how I was going to get Sylvia out of jail.

During the night, Carter’s peeps had come for his super-duper-sized motorhome as promised, and while I’d been at the courthouse, those few Showdown vendors who hadn’t left Taos the night before had hit the road. Only Jack’s RV and the Palace remained behind, and in a puff of dry New Mexico air, dust swirled around their tires. The place was a ghost town, and I was the one lonesome spirit who’d been left behind.

I kicked through the dust on my way to the RV. “Just like back in the old days,” I told myself, but of course, it wasn’t true. Back when I traveled the circuit with Jack, we hadn’t just been part of the crowd, we’d been at the center of Showdown life. Each town we left, we led the parade, Jack honking the horn on the RV and waving to folks as we passed, even people he didn’t know. I’d never seen a fairgrounds as deserted as this. I had, though, felt the emptiness. That happened at the end of every summer when I said good-bye to Ruth Ann, Tumbleweed, and the rest of the Showdown crew, and Jack took me home.

I knew it wouldn’t change anything, but I glanced around anyway, wishing there was somebody I could whimper and whine to. Five thousand dollars? Where the hell was I going to get five thousand dollars? And if I didn’t, if I couldn’t, could I afford to stay in Taos and off the circuit until Sylvia’s trial? No big mystery there. Without the income we made at the Palace, I couldn’t even afford to pay for a place to park the RV.

I wasn’t sure what my next move was going to be, but I knew I had to hitch the Palace to the back of the RV and get both off the fairgrounds and to parts unknown. After lunch. I dragged into the RV, lying to myself about how my head would be clearer and my options more apparent once my stomach was full.

As soon as I was inside the door, though, I froze.

There was something on the table just behind the driver’s seat, something that hadn’t been there when I left a few hours earlier.

At the same time I closed in on the table, I glanced around. There was nobody inside the RV, nobody but me, and nothing but a stack of—

“Hundred dollar bills?” As soon as I realized what I was looking at, I darted for the table and flicked through the crisp bills, counting as I went. Five thousand dollars. Sylvia’s bail money. On the table along with—my heart stopped, I swear it did, and my hands shook when I picked up the photograph that had been under the pile of money. It was the picture that was usually tucked into the visor of the RV, right where Jack could see it as he drove. Me and Sylvia, caught on one of those few-and-far-between good days, our arms around each other’s shoulders.

• • •

By the time I got back to the courthouse and they’d processed all the right legal forms in all the right legal ways and Sylvia and I got back to the RV, it was dinner time. I ordered a large pizza with everything on it including extra anchovies, and though she hates anchovies and always turns up her nose at pizza because she says it has too many carbs, she didn’t put up a fuss. I guess that says something about jail food, and about how grateful Sylvia was to finally be out of stir.

While I finished up my third piece of pizza, she leaned back against the vinyl bench in front of the table where her bail money had magically appeared a few hours earlier. I’m not sentimental. Especially when it comes to Sylvia. But really, there wasn’t a hard-hearted person alive who would fail to notice how her face radiated happiness and her eyes were dreamy with contentment. She glowed with an inner light and looked like a Madonna in some old painting. Well, except for the dab of pizza sauce on her chin.

“So that’s what’s been going on.” I’d filled her in about everything—start to finish—not just what had happened since I visited her in jail early Saturday morning. “Roberto’s dead. You know that part. But now, so is Puff, and I’m telling you, Sylvia, I’m sure the two murders are related. Puff killed Roberto. I know that for a fact. I’ve eliminated Karmen as a suspect in Puff’s murder. She was drunk and passed out on Saturday night, so she couldn’t have killed Puff. Carter Donnelly has a connection to Puff, but I dunno . . . why would a world-famous chef want to bump off a nobody like Puff? And then there’s Gert. Dang! I like Gert. I don’t want her to be guilty. But she sure is acting strange. When I talked to her—”

“You talked to all these people?” Sylvia sat up, and like she’d been listening before but not exactly understanding what I was saying, she cocked her head. “You’ve actually been investigating? Like a real detective?”

I felt a little goofy admitting it, but as it turned out, I never had the chance.

Sylvia reached across the open pizza box on the table between us and squeezed my hand. “Just to think that you’d do all that . . . for me . . .” I thought the waterworks were going to start again, and dang, but that would have made this whole heartwarming scene even more uncomfortable! Fortunately, she controlled her tears with a sniff and took another sip of the Shiraz she’d poured as soon as we were in the door. One more squeeze and she let go of my hand and sat back. “Maxie Pierce, you are the best sister anyone ever had!”

Okay, that was one thing I’d never been accused of.

At least not in the universe I used to inhabit.

In this new universe where Sylvia and I shared dinner and drinks and talked as openly and as honestly as if we were (gulp!) friends, the old rules apparently didn’t apply. That would certainly explain her barefaced appreciation. I guess it might account for the lump in my throat, too.

“Has Nick come around asking about me?”

Sylvia’s question snapped me out of my thoughts and tossed me into the heart of a fresh dilemma. In the old universe I would have laid the truth on with a trowel and made sure to mention as many times as I possibly could that in the days she’d been gone, her name had never passed Nick’s lips. But in this new place, I wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed. If I told her the truth, Sylvia might take it badly. And she’d already been through so much.

I opted for the shaky ground between the worlds. “I don’t know if he headed to Vegas with everyone else,” I told her. “I haven’t seen much of Nick since Saturday night.”

This version of the truth seemed to satisfy her, and the old me from the old world knew why—if Nick hadn’t been around, that meant Nick wasn’t interested in me.

The new me in the place where everything was sweetness and light knew that was a cynical way to think, and mean, to boot. New me told old me to shut up. Besides, if it was true, if Nick hadn’t come around because Sylvia was locked up and he wasn’t the least bit interested in spending time with me . . . well, that was something I didn’t want to think about, especially since I didn’t want to think about why I didn’t want to think about it.

I shifted and winced; I was wearing shorts, and my thighs stuck to the vinyl bench. As long as Sylvia was being so easy to get along with, I figured she wouldn’t complain like she usually did when I picked at food, so I grabbed a couple pieces of pepperoni from the top of the pizza and popped them in my mouth. “At least part of the mystery is solved,” I said. “We’re pretty sure Puff killed Roberto and we know it was probably because Roberto was blackmailing him with that video. It fits. Gert said Roberto was always lazy and greedy, and blackmail seems like the kind of thing he’d do. Now all we have to do is figure out who killed Puff.”

“We?” Sylvia touched a paper towel to her chin, wiping away the sauce, and flipped the lid of the pizza box closed.

Good thing I have quick reactions; before the lid shut, I snaffled one more piece of pizza and put it down on the paper towel on the table in front of me, then washed down the pepperoni I’d just eaten with a long swig of beer. We’d already decided we were going to take our chances with the fairgrounds folks and not move the RV and the Palace until the next morning. To me, that meant
have another beer, Maxie
, and I was only too happy to oblige. Two lite beers wouldn’t kill me and besides, this was something of a celebration. When I grabbed another beer out of the fridge, Sylvia refilled her acrylic wineglass with Shiraz.

I slid onto the bench on the opposite side of the table from her. “You want to prove you’re innocent, don’t you?”

Sylvia finished chewing before she spoke. “You said you’ve already done that. You said Puff killed Robert, and that means I didn’t. You said you can pretty much prove it, and the cops have Robert’s phone and the video, so once they get their acts together and review all the evidence, I’m off the hook. End of story.”

I was about to chomp down on the piece of pizza in my hand, and I stopped and looked across the table at her. “But what about Puff?”

Jail had not been kind to Sylvia. I think she’d lost a couple pounds, and when she shrugged, she needed to adjust the sagging shoulder of the pink cotton blouse she’d put on along with a pair of neatly pressed khakis the moment we were in the RV. “What about him? I obviously didn’t kill him. I was in jail.”

“But someone did.” This seemed so obvious to me, I wasn’t sure why I had to stare at Sylvia as if the harder I looked, the more she’d get it.

She didn’t get it.

“He was our friend,” I reminded her.

“Was he?” She brushed crumbs off her hands. “I always thought he was kind of creepy.”

Truth be told, I did, too, but wasn’t it a little cold-blooded to admit it? I mean, what with Puff being dead less than forty-eight hours? “He was always nice to us,” I said. “Especially when we were kids. We used to make s’mores with him in the evenings. Remember?”

Sylvia grabbed her paper towel and walked over to the trash can with it. “Just because a guy was nice to me once upon a time doesn’t mean I can figure out who murdered him. Neither can you.”

“But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

“It means we should mind our own business and leave the police work to the professionals.”

It was so much like what Nick had said to me that I couldn’t help but have the same reaction. My muscles tensed and I clenched my jaw. “If I minded my own business, the cops wouldn’t have that video of Puff and Roberto. If I minded my own business, Sylvia, your butt would still be in jail.”

“True.” At least she had the good sense to realize it. Maybe Sylvia wasn’t aware of the new rules in the new universe, because she should have left it at that instead of adding, “But if you were minding your own business, you wouldn’t be playing at something you can’t possibly be good at.”

New universe be damned! I was on my feet before I knew it, and toe-to-toe with Sylvia just a second after that. “I thought I was the best sister in the world.”

“Well, you are.” I had a feeling she would have patted me on the head if she thought she could get away with it. Instead, Sylvia strolled back toward the bathroom. She rummaged around on the shelves in there and when she stuck her head out again, she was holding the jasmine body wash she reserved for special occasions. I guess her first night out of jail qualified, but how could she think about relaxing bubbles and spa scents at a time like this?

“Everything you’ve done for me, Maxie, it’s just amazing,” Sylvia sent a smile in my direction that was so sweet, I was pretty sure it could cause cavities, so I clamped my lips shut. “Now it’s time to step back and get out of the way.”

“Out of the—” I controlled myself. Honest, I did. The old Maxie in the old universe would have gone for her jugular. The new Maxie considered it. But only for a second. “I’ve got to talk to Alphonse again,” I told her, and she knew who he was because I’d already explained about how he hadn’t been interested in a spot at the art show until he knew Roberto was around and how he was mad at Roberto about the fake blue pills. Of course, that didn’t mean he had a connection to Puff, and that’s what I needed to find out. “I’ve either got to eliminate him as a suspect or prove he did it.”

“Oh come on, Maxie.” Sylvia unscrewed the top of the bath gel bottle and breathed in deeply. “I can’t imagine this artist would murder somebody just because . . .” She stopped to consider. “Well, guys’ egos are pretty fragile, aren’t they?”

“Exactly.”

Before she could talk me out of it, I dug out my phone so I could check the location of Alphonse’s studio. It was Monday evening, and he might not be there, but when I checked his home address and saw that they were one and the same, I knew I was in luck.