Chili Con Carnage (A Chili Cook-Off Mystery)

by Logan, Kylie

  In spite of our surroundings, her laugh was silvery. “Ten years ago, he was anything but! Robert Lasky had a lot going for him, and he knew it. He was on his way to being a superstar in the brewing world. I knew it, and so did he. In fact, there was only one thing standing in his way.”

  Sylvia lowered her eyes and stared at the metal table for so long, I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. That is, until she glanced up at me. “The Mannington is one of the premier awards in the culinary world,” she explained. “It’s endowed by the Mannington family, they made their money in upscale restaurants and they say their mission is to give back, and to support up-and-coming restaurateurs. It’s a monetary prize. Fifty thousand dollars. It’s awarded to one student a year so that the person can study whatever facet of the culinary arts interests him the most. More than anything, Robert wanted to win the Mannington.”

  I remembered the newspaper article I’d found in Jack’s things. “You did, too. You must have. You two were the finalists.”

  “It was my dream,” Sylvia said on the end of a sigh. “You see, I never actually pictured myself spending my life writing for a food magazine.” Another bit of news, since in the past Sylvia had always acted as if her stint with the magazine was the be-all and end-all of her existence. “What I really wanted to do—”

  “Was go to Vienna.”

  “It’s kind of funny considering our background, isn’t it?” Sylvia said, but she wasn’t laughing. “Our father sells spices out of the back of a truck. Our mothers—both our mothers—put on a chili costume and danced around to bring in customers. And I had dreams of getting away from it all, of being something so much more! I wanted to be a pâtissier.”

  Like I didn’t know what she was talking about (I didn’t, but she had a lot of nerve making the assumption), she added, “That’s a pastry chef. If I won the prize, I was going to use the money to go to Vienna and study. Because Robert wanted to concentrate on brewing, he said if he won, he’d use the money to tour microbreweries here and in Europe and study something called dry hopping. I never did understand exactly what it meant, but he was convinced it was some process that was going to change the industry. The two of us being finalists . . .” Sylvia pulled in a breath and let it out slowly and her voice dropped so low, I had to lean forward to hear her.

  “I thought it was a dream come true,” she said. “Really, there was no way we could lose. If I won, Robert would come with me to Vienna. There would be plenty he could do there to study brewing. If he won, I was more than willing to give up my own studies for a year and travel with him. All each of us had to do was complete one major project and present it to the selection committee.”

  Any other time, I might have tried to be a little more diplomatic about what I was about to say next. Well, maybe. But hey, I was sitting in the visiting room of a police station, and suddenly things like being politically correct pretty much didn’t matter. I decided to go for a truth as unadorned as our surroundings.

  “I’m guessing since you never went to Vienna, Robert’s project was better than yours,” I said.

  Sylvia’s eyes met mine, steady, and suddenly as cold as a snake’s. “Robert’s project was mine.”

  It took me a moment to figure out what she was getting at. “You mean—”

  “My project was on culinary math,” she explained. “As you can imagine, it’s something I’m particularly good at. It was also something Robert didn’t know squat about. I can’t tell you how many times I had to help him with his math homework. Converting ounces to pints and pounds to cups, figuring weight and volume, determining costs and pricing. It’s still my strong suit.”

  I knew this was a dig about Sylvia raising prices at the Palace, but I chose to ignore it. At least for now. She was the one wearing handcuffs; I could afford to be generous.

  “Robert’s project was supposed to be about adding fruit essences to beer, but though he talked about it plenty, I hardly ever saw him working on it. When I asked, he told me not to worry. In fact, the weekend before we were scheduled to turn our projects in, he suggested we go away. You know, just to blow off some steam, to put the stress behind us. We left New York City and went upstate to this sweet little bed-and-breakfast inn. While we were gone . . .” Her voice clogged and she needed to cough before she could get going again. “Someone broke into our apartment. When we got back, both our projects were missing. All our display boards were gone. So were both our computers and all our backup disks. All of it . . . all of it had disappeared.”

  “That stinks.” I actually felt sorry for Sylvia, but my sympathy evaporated under the harsh look in her eyes.

  “I panicked and nearly had a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t understand why Robert was so calm. I stayed up for forty-eight hours, re-creating as much of my project as I could. I turned in crap. There’s no other way to describe it. All my months of research and my careful writing and editing . . . and I turned in crap. Robert, on the other hand . . .” She flattened her palms against the table, and the handcuffs on her wrists caught the light and glinted at me. “As calm as can be, he walked into that committee room and turned in his project. A project about culinary math.”

  I sucked in a breath. “He stole your work.”

  “Every last bit of it. And he won the Mannington for it.” Sylvia turned away and I gave her a moment. Even ten years later it was clear that Robert’s betrayal had turned her world upside down and broken her heart. “I can’t even describe how upset I was. And Robert? He told me it didn’t matter. He reminded me that we said no matter which of us won, we’d both be happy with the results, happy for each other. But that wasn’t what I was talking about when I said I’d be happy if he was the winner. I had no proof that he’d stolen my project, of course, and if I started complaining, it would have looked like sour grapes. I didn’t know what to do, so I took the coward’s way out. I broke off our engagement, quit culinary school, and went back home to Seattle. I gave up my dream of becoming a pastry chef. All because of Robert.” She shrugged like it was no big deal, but let’s face it, I knew better than that. Sylvia’s entire world had come crashing down on her thanks to Robert. I knew of what she spoke. After all, I’d had Edik in my life.

  She tapped her fingers against the table. “That’s when I got the job with the foodie magazine,” she said. “I’ve been there ever since, and you can be sure I never thought I’d see Robert again. Then earlier this week, who walks into the Showdown?”

  “But why didn’t you say anything?” I demanded. “If you knew the guy—”

  “I couldn’t believe it. Not at first, anyway. He’d changed so much, and of course, he was using another name. He wasn’t Robert Lasky, he was Roberto Larko. Once I convinced myself it really was him . . . well . . .” Sylvia’s shoulders rose and fell. “There wasn’t much I could do, was there?”

  “You still hated him for what he did to you back in New York.” The way she refused to meet my eyes told me I’d struck a chord. I scooted forward in my chair. “Sylvia, the cops are sure to find out.”

  “They don’t need to. I told them. I told them everything when they came to question me yesterday. I didn’t think I had anything to hide.”

  “So they know you’ve got the mother of all motives.”

  Sylvia’s gaze snapped to mine. “Well, I do, don’t I? I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hated Robert Lasky.”

  “Shhhh!” I looked at the mirror and pictured a row of stony-faced cops watching us from the other side of it. “Don’t make things any worse for yourself.”

  “How can they get worse!” When Sylvia threw her hands in the air, the handcuffs protested with a metallic clank. “I also told the cops I saw Robert the morning he was killed,” she added. “You know, after you fought with him and clunked him over the head with the Chick costume.”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because I knew you went out with him that Wednesday night and—”

  “And that’s why you gave me grief about it. You kne
w he was a scumbag, and you didn’t want him hanging around.”

  This revelation should have made me feel better, but all it did was make me queasy. “Is that why you went to see him after I fought with him that morning?”

  She nodded. “I knew he had his eye on you, and I told him to back off. I told him to clear out. I told him if he didn’t, I’d let everyone know what a lowlife he was. And Robert . . . he laughed.”

  I could only imagine how humiliating that was for Sylvia, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the prize. Right now, that was getting at the truth, or at least as much of it as I was able to cobble together from the bits and pieces of facts being thrown at me. “Did he explain what he was doing there?” I asked.

  “Don’t think I didn’t try to find out. About that, and about why he was using another name. I told him if he didn’t leave you alone, I’d let Tumbleweed know he was hiding something and get him tossed out on his behind.”

  “And let me guess, Roberto didn’t care about that, either.”

  Sylvia sighed. “Not even a little.”

  Thinking, I scrubbed my hands over my face. “So what we know—”

  “Is that there never was anyone in the world who deserved a knife to the heart more than Robert Lasky. I’m ashamed to admit it, Maxie, but that’s how I feel. I’m glad he’s dead. But I didn’t do it.”

  At the risk of getting tossed out on my ass, I reached across the table and squeezed Sylvia’s hands. “I know that,” I told her. “And you know what?” I got up and headed for the door. “I’m going to prove it.”

  “How—”

  There was no use lying to her, so I didn’t even try. At the door, I turned and gave my sister one last look. “I don’t know how,” I admitted. “But nothing’s going to stop me.”

  She rose to her feet. “Thanks,” she said.

  And I hightailed it out of there.

  I didn’t want to say anything else and risk her hearing the emotion that clogged my throat.

  I didn’t want her to see the tears that suddenly filled my eyes.

  If she did . . .

  Well, dang, I didn’t want it to look like I actually cared.

  CHAPTER 9

  I had to get back to the fairgrounds and get the Palace up and running by ten, so I raced right there from the police station.

  I should have saved my breath (and the cost of a cab). I arrived just as the clock was striking the hour and Tumbleweed was making the first announcement of the morning to welcome folks to Saturday’s Showdown.

  There was already a line of a dozen people in front of the Palace, and I admit this struck me as odd. That is, until I went inside, unlocked the rolling metal window cover, and opened for business.

  “This is where it happened, right?” The woman at the front of the line stood on tiptoe and leaned forward, her gaze darting around the inside of the Palace like she expected to see bloodstains on the walls. “This is where the guy was killed by that maniac woman with the huge machete!”

  I curled my fingers around the counter. It was that or punch her in the nose, and something told me that was the last thing the Palace needed, reputation-wise.

  “We have spices, our one-of-a-kind chili powders, and a special on whole dried peppers.” Even I couldn’t believe I said this in a tone that sounded nearly professional and I somehow pulled it off with a smile, to boot. “What can I get for you?”

  She winced and stepped back, and I cursed myself for missing out on the chance to pop her in the nose. If she was going to look that offended, it might as well have been for a good reason. “I don’t want to buy anything,” she said, and I swear, she didn’t need to add the no duh! because the way she scrunched up her nose and twisted her mouth pretty much said that. “I just wanted to see where it happened and you don’t need to be so snotty about it. Everybody in town’s talking about the murder, and I figured if I got here first—”

  “Next!” I called out, and the woman didn’t so much back away as she got shoved out of line by the man behind her.

  “Billy Wibler,” he said. “Taos Ledger and Times. I waited for you earlier, but you were late arriving. If you could just give me a few minutes of your time. You know, to talk about your sister.” He pulled a digital tape recorder out of the breast pocket of his tan sport coat. “I’d like to get some sense of what it’s like to live with a killer.”

  “Next!”

  I didn’t even wait for the tall, thin man who took Billy’s place at the counter to open his mouth. “Don’t say a word,” I snarled. “If you’re not here to buy anything, hit the road.”

  He blinked. Swallowed hard. And hit the road.

  The next guy in line was actually looking to buy Thermal Conversion, and yeah, he balked a little when he realized the price had gone up since the last time he’d ordered the seasoning from Jack’s website. Lucky for me, I am as good a schmoozer as Jack is and quick enough on my feet to come up with good excuses for what I thought was a dumb idea from the start; he bought three bottles.

  “You must be Maxie.” The next guy in line was a cute cowboy in tight jeans and a T-shirt that hugged his six-pack abs. Golden hair. Sky-blue eyes. A lopsided smile that just about caused the soles of my sneakers to melt into the Palace floor.

  Sure, I’d sworn off men in general and relationships in particular.

  Of course I meant what I said.

  But that didn’t mean a girl couldn’t make an exception when the timing was right.

  I leaned an elbow on the front counter. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  With thumb and forefinger, he cocked his cowboy hat back on his head and smiled up at me as if he knew it would cause my heart to skip a beat. He was right.

  “You can have coffee with me as soon as you take a break,” Cowboy said.

  “I could.” Oh yeah, that was me sounding way too breathless for my own good and not giving a damn. I gave him a careful once-over, all the way down to the tips of his dusty boots and back again. “Oh, how I do love a good cup of coffee.”

  “You can be sure I do, too, ma’am.” His gaze was just as thorough as mine, and I guess I passed muster because he touched a finger to his hat. “Then I can come back—”

  “Anytime.” My smile matched his and yeah, I knew there were other people in line. Let them wait! They probably weren’t going to buy anything, anyway. This guy, on the other hand . . .

  Cold, hard reality hit, along with the realization that just because I am easily distracted does not mean I’m stupid. I eyed up Cowboy again and believe me, it was no effort. Still smiling, I leaned a little closer and lowered my voice to what I hoped was a seductive purr. “If you want me to talk about the murder, you can get lost right here and now.”

  “Wasn’t.” Again, that nuclear smile and it caused something very much like hope to blossom in my heart. Too bad he followed it up with, “And I wasn’t planning on asking any questions. As a matter of fact, I was hoping I could answer some for you.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Tommy Taylor Thompson,” he said, his voice as seductive as warm brandy. “Personal injury attorney.” He gave me a wink. “If you’re innocent—and honey, one look at you and I’m bettin’ you are—and that sister of yours implicates your sweet little self in her crime, that’s slander, and we can sue the pants off her. I’m just the guy who can get you a nice, big settlement.”

  “Why thank you, Tommy.” My smile firmly in place, I took the card out of his hands and studied it for a moment or two. That is, right before I slowly and carefully tore it into a dozen pieces. “Now why don’t you take this . . .” I put the scraps of paper back in his hand and closed his fingers over it. “. . . and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

  “You tell him, girlfriend!”

  I hadn’t realized Gert was in line right behind Tommy until I heard her chuckle and glanced over. That was okay; Tommy Taylor Thompson had stomped off in a huff and turned the corner. I’d already missed out on my last opportunity to w
atch his cute little butt in those tight jeans.

  “Hey, Gert!” This time my smile was genuine. “What are you doing here?”

  “Thought you could use some help.” She didn’t wait for me to invite her, she went around to the side of the Palace and joined me inside, and together we took care of the next people in line. Two of them actually made purchases. After what happened with Tommy Thompson, the rest of them slunk away and disappeared.

  “Brought you coffee.” Gert had set down paper cups from one of the local vendors on the counter when she came into the Palace, and now she held out one out to me. “Heard you went to see Sylvia this morning. After an ordeal like that, I thought you might need a little caffeine.”

  I popped the plastic top off the cup, added three packets of sugar, and sipped, closing my eyes in gratitude and enjoyment when the coffee hit the back of my throat. It was still sore from my run-in with Karmen and the heat was heavenly. “I always need a little caffeine,” I admitted. “Especially today.”

  She glanced back behind the Palace toward where the RV was parked. “I saw the cops didn’t clear out until this morning. And that tells me you couldn’t stay at home last night. You know, you could have bunked with me,” she said and paused a heartbeat before she added, “unless you had a better offer.”

  “I had an offer. A couple, in fact. One was from Puff.”

  I shouldn’t have said that while Gert was drinking her own coffee. She nearly choked on it and I had to wait to finish until she was done coughing.

  “The other was from Nick,” I said when she was done.

  Her auburn eyebrows rose. “Let me guess which one you accepted.”

  When another customer walked up who was looking for a chili powder that wasn’t too hot (his wife wasn’t a fan of spicy), I sold him a bottle of Jack’s mildest mix, then turned back to Gert. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” I told her because, of course, she already had. “He was a real gentleman. In fact, he helped pay for my room.”

  “And stayed in his own.” She nodded.