by Logan, Kylie
“No, but I am!” I waved the cameraman forward at the same time I tugged Carter to just the right spot. Heck, if we were getting our picture taken together, it might as well be smack dab in front of the sign that advertised Texas Jack Pierce’s Hot-Cha Chili Seasoning Palace!
CHAPTER 11
I can’t say there’s any scientific proof, but I’ll bet anything that research backs me up—chili eaters are beer drinkers. In addition to the vendors who sell everything from spices to salsas, hot sauces to cookware, and dish towels to beans, the Showdown has a beer tent.
After asking around a bit, trudging around some more, and generally searching high and low, that was exactly where I found Tessa Fleming.
She was a pretty woman. I suppose she wouldn’t have been offered that almost-golden opportunity to host her own TV show if she wasn’t. She was also two sheets to the wind by the time I caught up with her.
“Tessa.” After the bartender pointed her out, I slipped into the chair beside Tessa. “I’ve been looking for you.”
She gave me a cockeyed stare.
“Maxie,” I said by way of introduction. “I need to talk to you. About Carter.”
“Son of a . . .” Tessa’s grumble was lost beneath the sound of her taking a gulp of her beer. “What’s he wa now?”
I took this to mean what’s he want? and went from there. “He doesn’t want anything. Carter didn’t send me here.”
“Then tell him to get lost.”
I pretended this made sense, because really, there was nothing to be gained from asking her what the heck she was talking about. While I was at it, I pulled a paper bowl filled with snack mix closer and grabbed a handful. I was starving, and something told me a little food in her stomach wouldn’t hurt Tessa, either. “Carter says you’re a decent chef.”
“Decent?” Tessa was a blonde, but I’d bet a year’s worth of Thermal Conversion the color wasn’t the one she’d been born with. Her eyes were brown and her complexion wasn’t peaches and cream, not like Sylvia’s. Still, she pulled it all off with style. Just the right amount of makeup to accent high cheekbones and a small, perky nose. Just a touch of lip gloss on a mouth that was a little too thin. Though the temperature outside the tent was quickly shooting into the nineties, she had an ice-blue cotton cardigan tied around her shoulders and the white sleeveless top she wore with trim denim capris.
She flicked a hand through her shoulder-length hair. “I’m better than decent, and Carter, he knows it. If it wasn’t for me—”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” I nudged the bowl a little closer to Tessa and she took a handful of the mix of pretzels, crackers, and nuts. “You do a lot for Carter.”
“You got that straight.” She munched and talked with her mouth full. “If it wasn’t for me—”
“Yeah, you said that. And hey, I get it. Really. I mean, he promised you your own show, right?”
She had another handful of snack mix halfway to her mouth, and she paused. I wondered if I looked a little blurry to her. Then again, she was swaying, just a tiny bit. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Maxie.” I said this like it was not only the most natural thing in the world (which it was), but like she should have known it all along. “We were talking about Carter, and how he promised you your own show.”
“Damn straight.” She took another gulp of beer. “‘Oh, Tessa, you’re so wonderful’,” she said in a singsong voice that told me she was quoting Carter, and doing it with a heaping spoonful of acid. “‘You’re the best thing since sliced bread. You need your own show’.”
“But it didn’t happen.”
She stopped, mid-chew. “It didn’t happen. It’s never going to happen. And you know why?”
I remembered what Carter had said, about how Tessa’s work had suffered and her attitude had gone through the roof when she thought she was on the brink of cooking stardom. Something told me this wasn’t the time to mention either. Wannabe diva, beer, sour grapes toward Carter . . . it all added up to bad juju.
“I haven’t heard the whole story. At least not anything I’m sure I can believe.” I grabbed another handful of snack mix before Tessa could wolf it all down. Lucky for me, I got two of those little pretzels. I love the little pretzels. “That’s why I wanted to hear your side of the story,” I told her.
“My side of the story . . .” She hiccuped and pounded her chest. “About what?”
I am not a patient person. At least not unless the situation calls for it. My teeth were gritted when I said, “The TV show. You know, your TV show.”
“Yeah.” As if that cardigan was chain mail, her shoulders drooped. A single tear spilled out of her left eye and rolled down her cheek. She flicked it away with one perfectly manicured hand. “I was supposed to have a TV show.”
“And now you don’t. Because of Carter.”
Her lips thinned. Her eyes narrowed. Her right hand curled into a fist, and since it happened to be filled with snack mix, pretzel crumbs and orange phony cheese and bits of salted peanuts rained down on the white plastic table cloth. “I hate that man.”
Okay, so this wasn’t exactly something you want to hear somebody say about somebody else, but honestly, I had to control myself or I knew I’d smile. I was getting somewhere. Oh, the path was still murky, and at this point, it was awash with beer, but I didn’t care. I was searching for information and finally—finally!—I was getting some.
I nodded.
Tessa might not have been following the conversation totally, but she nodded back.
“I know just what you mean,” I said.
“About what?” she asked.
My jaw tightened. “About how you hate Carter. You know, on account of how he offered you your own TV show and—”
“He said I was the best cook in the world. Then . . .” She tried to click her fingers and when it didn’t work, she drowned the realization in another swig of beer. “I’ll never have my own show now.”
“Like I said, I understand. You know, I once had this boyfriend named Edik and—”
“Edik?” She giggled. “That’s his name?”
“Pretty funny, huh?” I actually never thought it was, but then, I knew the whole package that went with the name. Edik of the long, dark hair and the nicely muscled body. Edik, whose tats intrigued me and who could make a cup of espresso like no other I’d ever tasted before. Edik, who was so good in bed—I came to my senses to find Tessa watching me. Well, at least one of her eyes was. The other had sort of wandered off in the other direction. “I know what it’s like to be really pissed at a guy,” I told her. “I know when Edik did what he did to me—”
“Edik.” Another fit of the giggles. I waited it out.
“I know I would have done anything to get even with him,” I said. “Anything at all.”
“Well, here’s to you, sister!” Tessa raised her plastic cup and took another drink. “Because I’ll tell you what, I’d do anything to get even with Carter, too.”
“Anything?”
Maybe I sounded too eager. Tessa suddenly looked a little too clearheaded. “Did somebody kill him?” she asked.
“Carter?” I shook my head. “He’s alive and well.”
She snorted. “If he’s alive, all’s not well.”
It was actually kind of funny, so it wasn’t like I was just trying to get on her good side when I laughed.
“So tell me . . .” She dangled her beer cup in one hand. “What did you do? You know, to get even?”
“With Edik?” That was a sticky subject, but I knew what was going on. Drunk or not, Tessa needed to know we were comrades when it came to the I-hate-men wars. If we weren’t, there was no way she was ever going to share, and if she didn’t share . . .
I scooted forward in my seat, the better to look like I was trading girlfriend confidences. “Well, I put sugar in the gas tank of his car,” I said. It wasn’t true, but hey, it sounded nice and nasty. And tough. And revengeful. All the things I wished I’d been when
I found out what Edik had done to my bank account and my self-confidence. Nasty, tough, and revengeful sounded better than disbelieving and sucker punched. They beat heartbroken all to heck, too.
Tessa grinned. “What else?”
There needed to be more? I scrambled. “I called his new girlfriend,” I said, and this was actually partly true. Well, except for the part about how when said new girlfriend answered the phone, I hung up. “I told her what a creep he was. I told her she couldn’t trust him. I told her—”
“You go, girl!” Tessa held up a hand for a high five, and when I obliged, she missed my hand by a mile.
“So . . .” I pretended like it didn’t matter. Like Sylvia’s life and liberty didn’t depend on the next words out of Tessa’s mouth. “What did you do? To Carter?”
“About what?” she asked.
Good thing she was busy waving to the bartender for another beer or she would have heard my exasperated sigh. “About how he treated you. You know, promising you your own show and then not giving it to you. What did you do to get even?”
“Well . . .” Whatever she was going to share with me, Tessa was so excited, she shivered. She looked left, then right. She leaned in so I could hear her when she whispered. “I put in a call to my attorney out in LA,” she said.
“Huh?” I sat up so fast, I knocked into the guy bringing over the beer and some of it sloshed out of the glass. Tessa looked so darned upset about the waste of such perfectly good beer, I dug into my pocket, pulled out a five, and told the bartender to keep the change. “So what you’re telling me is that your big plan of revenge is—”
“Number one,” she said, swaying forward. “I’m leaving Carter’s show. Gettin’ out of my contract. Up and quitting.” She threw up one arm to emphasize this and nearly toppled out of her chair. “I don’t need him anymore. And then . . .” Tessa’s eyes twinkled. “I’m going to sue the pants off the bastard.”
“So you’re going the legal route.”
She gave me a broad wink. “Darned tootin’.”
“And you didn’t try to teach Carter a lesson or scare him by putting Roberto’s body—”
“Roberto.” She stuck out her bottom lip. “That was the guy who fell out of Carter’s RV. Fell out. Did you know that?” She nodded, faster and faster. “Fell out. He was dead.”
“And you knew him, right?”
This time, she shook her head, and the quick change of direction must have sent her head spinning, because she hung on to the table with one hand. “He’s dead. Never knew him.”
Really, I guess I wasn’t surprised. What person in their right mind would cop to a murder in the middle of a chili cook-off beer tent? That didn’t mean I wasn’t disappointed. I may not have expected more, but I sure had hoped.
And hope does, or so I’ve been told, spring eternal.
I tried one last time.
“So . . .” I did my best to sound oh-so-casual. “You’re not the one who stabbed Roberto in the heart?”
Perfect makeup or not, Tessa’s face went pale one second and turned a livid green the next. “He was stabbed right in the heart?” She pressed her hands to her own heart, suddenly breathing hard and fast. “Oh, that’s just horrible. Terrible. There must have been . . .” The green washed right out of her face. “There must have been a lot of blood,” Tessa sighed.
I was about to tell her she was right on the money, but I never had a chance.
That was pretty much when Tessa clamped both her hands over her mouth and raced out of the beer tent.
• • •
So much for that line of inquiry.
I kicked my way through the dust and back toward the Palace, and if anyone took the chance of getting close enough, they would have heard me grumbling. Then again, I was crabby, annoyed, and discouraged, and I guess the expression on my face showed it.
Nobody took the chance of getting close.
That was fine by me. With no one daring to get within ten feet of me, I could mumble and grumble all I wanted. That mumbling and grumbling went something like this:
“Fine. Good. Great. So Tessa’s idea of revenge is a big, fat settlement package. So she didn’t kill Roberto. So it was a long shot to begin with. So what? At least I found out something useful.”
Only when I thought about it, I wasn’t at all sure what that useful something was.
I grumbled some more.
“She didn’t even know Roberto. I’m beginning to think nobody knew Roberto. Nobody but Sylvia, that is.”
This did little to lift my mood, so I refused to think about it. The beer tent was at the far end of the fairgrounds, and I wound through the crowds, watching as they parted in front of the storm cloud that was me.
“Roberto.” I snorted my opinion of the man and the mess he’d made of my life thanks to his dying. “If his body wasn’t put there to scare Carter, that means somebody killed Roberto because somebody didn’t like Roberto. Just like I figured to begin with. And so I need to start with Roberto, and what I know about Roberto, and what I know about Roberto is—”
A sudden thought brought me to a stop in the middle of the midway.
So did a sudden realization: Other than the fact that he was formerly known as Robert Lasky and that he’d been engaged to Sylvia and interested in beer, that Karmen claimed he was smart (and let’s face it, it wouldn’t take much to impress Karmen), and that he claimed he’d once had some big, important job . . .
Other than those bits and pieces, I knew squat about Roberto.
Lucky for me, I happened to be right outside the entrance to the auditorium where the salsa judging was just beginning, and I had a flash of inspiration. Roberto had worked at the Showdown. That meant that somebody at the Showdown had to know something. And that somebody . . .
No sooner did I think it than I saw Nick walk past the doorway of the auditorium and head toward the stage. As security chief, it was his job to make sure the salsa samples delivered by the contestants were untampered with and untasted until they were put in front of the judges, and as security chief, Nick had access to things like employee files. And employment applications. And files and applications were just the kinds of things that could give me a glimpse into Roberto’s life.
I actually took a step toward the auditorium to talk to Nick when a big dose of harsh reality washed over me. Yeah, like Nick was going to give me a peek at confidential files.
I stepped back and thought and it didn’t take long. Nick might not be much in the cooperation department, but I knew someone who was, and I headed over to the trailer where (luckily) Tumbleweed was away from his desk. Ruth Ann, as it turns out, was not.
“Hey, sweetie!” She popped out of her chair the moment she saw me. “What’s shaking?”
“Well . . .” It wasn’t far from the auditorium to the office where Tumbleweed and Ruth Ann worked, so I hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to plan what I was going to say. Not sure I could come up with an elaborate story that would be believable, I stuck with the tried and true. “I just saw Tumbleweed outside,” I told her. “I don’t want to worry you. And believe me, he said he didn’t want to worry you, either, but—”
Ruth Ann was around the desk in a flash. “Oh my, I knew all this talk of murder was too much for him. It’s not his ticker, is it? Did he say anything about chest pains?”
I am not completely heartless, and Ruth Ann was no spring chicken. I couldn’t let her rush out onto the fairgrounds with her own heart racing a mile a minute and her stomach in knots.
“No, that’s not it. Not at all.” I stopped her at the door. “Actually, he said he did a little too much sampling this morning when Lonnie Earnhardt was mixing up a pot of his dilly of a chili. He said if you could just bring a bottle of antacids—”
“Antacids. Got it.” Ruth Ann whirled around and ducked into the tiny bathroom of the trailer and I heard her rummage through the medicine cabinet. She came back with a bottle of Tums clutched in one hand and zipped right to the door. “And w
here did you say you saw him last?” she asked.
“Near the front gate.” It didn’t exactly count as a lie because my fingers were crossed behind my back. “He said he’d wait for you over there.”
“Thanks, honey,” she said, and I would have been perfectly happy if she’d just left it at that. Instead, she kicked my guilt up a notch when she put a hand on my arm. “You’re a real doll to come all the way over here and get me.”
Without waiting for me to answer, Ruth Ann raced out the door and was gone.
With any luck, it would take her a while to find Tumbleweed, but really, I couldn’t count on that. If I was going to find out what I could about Roberto from the Showdown’s files, I’d have to do it fast. No doubt the cops had already looked for the same information. I only hoped they’d made copies and not absconded with the originals.
There were three file cabinets across from Ruth Ann’s desk, and I checked the index cards taped to the front of each drawer.
Yearly records.
Fairground contracts.
Vendor information.
Employee files.
“Bingo!” I pulled open the first drawer of the employee files and got to work. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. The man who had once been Robert Lasky was using the name of Roberto Larko, and I flipped through the alphabetized file folders, found his name, and drew out the thin file.
“Please let the paperwork be in here,” I whispered at the same time I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and flipped the folder open.
Roberto’s employment application was right where it belonged.
I nearly did a few dance steps worthy of the Chili Chick, but I knew I didn’t have time. Before I hotfooted it over to the copy machine, I glanced out the window. No sign of Ruth Ann.
Though I was itching to know more, I didn’t bother to read the application. I copied both sides, stuck the original back in its folder, and tucked the whole package into the file cabinet. I already had my hand on the door to leave when it popped open.