Red Hot Deadly Peppers

by Paige Shelton

  “He came out here, armed with his epinephrine injectors, the shots to combat allergic reactions, so he would feel at ease and we could work together. I didn’t kill my cousin, Becca, but I can’t help but feel like I’m responsible in some way. He never ate food I prepared in my kitchen, but something must have happened . . .”

  “What about what you said about him scamming people?”

  She cringed. “Yes. He always upped the price of his jewelry if he knew he could get away with it. It wasn’t horrible, but he’d done it just yesterday and the irritation was still raw. That irritation combined with my annoyance about his lack of ambition regarding the experiments. Believe me, I really wish I hadn’t said anything.”

  I nodded slowly as I processed what she’d said.

  “I told the police everything I’m telling you. I hope they can figure out what happened. If there is any good news—well, not bad news, at least—the police say they’ll look into Jimmy’s death a little more closely. His body’s buried, but maybe they can snoop around now. It’s more than they were doing. I tried to call Harry on the way home to tell him the good news, but he didn’t answer.”

  “I heard from him. It was a bad connection, so it was strange.”

  “What’d he say?”

  I told her about the choppy words and the strange tone. Her face sobered quickly. She set her tea on the small porch and then sprinted toward her truck. I followed but not as quickly. I still wanted to be out in the open. She came back shortly, her cell phone in her hands.

  “He tried to call me three times, but didn’t leave a message. It looks like the only message is from you,” she said.

  She tried to call him, but received no answer. “Tell me again what he said.”

  I did the best I could to re-repeat what had been unclear in the first place.

  “Do you suppose he was talking about the Riggers and their pepper farm?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Some of the words were definitely ‘Riggers,’ ‘peppers,’ ‘don’t trust,’ and ‘run.’”

  “He came out to tell us that Graham died from anaphylactic shock. We showed him the pepper mess, and he knew about Jimmy’s experiments anyway. Why would he take you home and go to the Riggers’ place?” She glanced in the direction of the pepper farm.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think we should go over there. It can’t hurt. You want to come with me?”

  “Only if we call the police first,” I said. I suddenly imagined my friends and family back home swelling with pride.

  “Sure, but they’ll take awhile to get there. Let’s go. The Riggers can’t be dangerous, can they?”

  “I’ve thought that about people a few times and was proven wrong. It can’t hurt to let the police know,” I said.

  “Okay, sure.”

  Nera seemed to have the number saved in her cell phone. She talked to someone who must have said they’d send someone to the location she gave them. She closed her phone and said, “Let’s go.” She glanced at the scooter. “I’ll drive. We’ll take the truck.”

  Chapter Nine

  The drive to the Riggers’ farm took less than two minutes, but there was no real walking shortcut that I could see. Even though Nera’s farm was right next to the Riggers’, I noticed that a barbed wire fence separated the two properties.

  Nera pulled into the driveway and honked the horn.

  “Just announcing our arrival. Harry’s truck is here, but . . .”

  The pepper plants stretched out in beautiful, straight green rows about three feet high. From the driveway it was easy to see past the garage to the small barn behind it. The barn’s doors were wide open, revealing some farm equipment. The Riggers’ simple white bungalow-style house didn’t seem to fit with the detached garage, which was a dark tan and had a starker, modern look to it, as though it was a long-after-the-house-had-been-built addition.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Nera turned off her truck and bit at her bottom lip. “There is absolutely no reason to think something weird is going on here, but something just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Maybe you’re just feeding off the cryptic phone call I got.”

  “Maybe.” She looked at me. “But there might be more. You found the door to my shed open, right?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have broken in.”

  “Someone did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That door is always locked. Always. I’m obsessive about it, and so was Graham. I wasn’t in there this morning. If Graham was, I’m sure he would have locked it.”

  “Maybe he was distracted, or maybe he thought he locked it.”

  “It’s a small, small possibility. I was in my kitchen when I saw you knock on the door and it swung open. Honestly, it took me this long to really realize something was wrong. At the time I was more curious about you than the door being unlocked.”

  “And you think maybe someone else knew how important the experiments were, too?”

  “There was potentially big, big money involved, Becca. People get weird when that happens.”

  I looked at the house. “The Riggers are all about peppers, and they live right next door. Do you suppose they saw things happening and got curious? Would they have killed Graham, though? That’s a big leap,” I said. Being the voice of reason wasn’t a role I was used to playing. I was usually the one jumping to some crazy conclusion, though sometimes my crazy conclusions proved to be right on track. Instincts were valuable tools; I might be pointing out inconsistencies, but I didn’t want to discount whatever Nera’s feelings were churning up.

  “Yesterday I would have said no way, but something . . . something’s not right.”

  “Should we just wait here for the police?”

  Nera seemed to ponder the question but soon said, “No, I’ll just knock on the door, check the house.”

  I followed her out of the truck and up the two short steps to the front door. She pulled open the screen and knocked on the solid wood inner door. It had no windows, but a large picture window on the front of the house and to the left of the door would offer us a view inside, if necessary.

  Silence filled a long few seconds but was then punctuated by a loud crash. Something heavy and glasslike had smashed against something else, sounding just like Chester’s escape, and I feared that this time the origins of the noise weren’t as innocent.

  Nera reached for the doorknob and turned before I could tell her to wait a second. Maybe we could look in the front window first?

  Unfortunately, the door wasn’t locked, and she was able to open it wide and run into the house before I could do much more than utter a weak protest.

  “Becca, come in and help me!” she exclaimed only a second later.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  Nera was on the floor, next to Susan Rigger, or maybe it was the body of Susan Rigger. It was hard to tell with all the blood matting her pretty red hair.

  Fortunately, her eyes fluttered, and I realized that she’d been the one to cause the crash. Somehow she’d thrown a vase to the ground, probably to get our attention. She probably couldn’t have yelled if she’d wanted to.

  “She’s a mess,” Nera said, “but she’s alive. Grab that and look around the house.” She pointed to another vase; this one was porcelain. “You might need a weapon,” she added as if her suggestion made complete sense.

  I grabbed the vase.

  “Mr. Rigger?” I said as I walked out of the room and toward a short hallway. “Nick? Harry?”

  If I have learned nothing else in the last year or so it is that when you are faced with this sort of situation, you don’t do what you think you will do. You don’t do what your common sense dictates you should do. Nera and I should have gotten out of the house and waited for the polic
e to arrive. But when people are hurt or in harm’s way or potentially in harm’s way, it becomes human nature to see what you can do to help. By the time I got to the first bedroom doorway, my common sense wasn’t even whispering any longer; my human nature had taken over. I was hell-bent on finding Nick and/or Harry and helping them if they needed it.

  There was no one in the first small bedroom. I hurriedly peered under the bed and into the closet but didn’t find anyone, dead or alive.

  I sprinted toward the second bedroom, giving the small empty bathroom a quick glance as I passed by.

  The look from Nick Rigger’s eyes told me almost everything I needed to know. He was horrified but at least alive.

  He was on the full-sized bed, his ankles tied together and his wrists bound behind his back. He was on his side with his head toward the bottom of the bed. His neck was bent back, and he had a scarf shoved into his mouth and another one tied around his head to keep the first one in place, but that didn’t stop him from trying to speak.

  I pulled one scarf down and then the other one out of his mouth.

  “Susan? Susan?” he said, his voice raw and almost broken.

  “She’s in the front room,” I said as I moved to untie his wrists. We both worked on his ankles. “What happened? Where’s Harry?”

  “Those stupid kids . . .” he muttered, but he didn’t say more before he propelled himself off the bed. His legs gave out on him, but he caught himself on the bed frame before he hit the floor. He pulled himself up, trying to make his legs function normally. I didn’t know if they were injured or if they’d lost feeling from the awkward position. I tucked myself under one of his arms and helped guide him.

  “Nick, if you can tell me what happened . . .”

  “Let me see Susan,” he said.

  “Fine. Just one question—Harry, is he here?” I stopped walking, which was cruel but I had to know.

  “Yeah, yeah, the boys took him outside. I don’t know if they hurt him.”

  I started walking again.

  “Susan!” he exclaimed when he saw his wife. I didn’t know how anyone could survive what had been done to her head, but Nera had her sitting up and her eyes were mostly open.

  “I think I’m okay,” Susan said weakly as Nick fell to his knees next to her.

  “He said Harry was here,” I told Nera and then, turning to Nick, asked, “What boys are you talking about?”

  “Brad and Cole. They’ve lost their minds,” Nick said as he reached for his wife’s hand. “I think they were responsible for Graham’s death. They were ranting and raving about some sort of experiments? I don’t know. Harry had stopped by—we were chatting when the boys came in. Harry talked to the boys so we couldn’t hear, and then they started freaking out. We didn’t know what they were talking about. We didn’t understand why Harry was here either. Then the boys wanted us to help them, but we couldn’t understand what they wanted. They said they’d been over at your place, Nera, and if we’d just go with them they’d explain what they needed. We refused.” He looked at Susan. “I’m so sorry we refused. They were just so . . . out of control. They hit Harry and then Susan. They restrained me in the bedroom, and then I heard them talking to Harry. Then they left out the back door. I think they were going back to your place—they just left a few minutes before you got here. What experiments were you doing over there—and did they have something to do with peppers?”

  “Cole and Brad?” Nera said as though that was the only part she’d heard.

  “Yes, what’s going on?”

  “We’ve got to get back to my place, Becca. We’ve got to help Harry before they hurt him, too. The police are on their way. Nick, Susan, will you two be all right?”

  They were both confused and in shock, but they’d be okay. Nick’s legs had recovered enough that he was able to walk back to the bedroom and bring out two shotguns.

  “If the boys come back, I will kill them if I have to,” he said. “You take one, too, just in case.”

  Nera didn’t want to, but she took the gun. I just swallowed hard, but I didn’t blame Nick. I really, really hoped the police got to the boys before we or he did, though.

  Nera carried the gun like she knew what she was doing. I followed her back to the truck.

  Chapter Ten

  Nera pulled the truck out to the road but then veered back toward the side. She braked hard, moved the gearshift to Park, and then rolled down the window. She threaded herself up and out the window.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Hang on,” she said.

  A moment later she was back in the truck and said, “It looks like some of the wire between the properties has been bent. Believe it or not, traveling from the Riggers’ to my place is easier than going in the opposite direction. Their house is closer to the property lines, and from their side it doesn’t seem like such a walk. My house is on the far side of my property, but the garage and the shed seem a lot closer. It’s an optical illusion, really, but I get why the boys thought they could just walk over easily.”

  “How did this happen? How did those kids get involved?” I asked.

  Nera thought a moment. “They’ve been spending a lot of time over at the Riggers’. They must have seen Graham at my place. Maybe they talked to him at the trading post, too. Graham wasn’t as good at keeping secrets as Jimmy was. For a long time I was the only person Jimmy talked to about what he was doing. Graham lived with him but didn’t care at all. He just thought his dad was messing around with plants in his greenhouse.”

  “But why would the kids care about the plants? They’re too young to care about those sorts of things, aren’t they?”

  “The way Graham was—he could have been telling them that he was onto something that would make him millions of dollars. He might not have been all that far off.”

  “Just by making a pepper hotter?” I said as we pulled into Nera’s driveway.

  “It’s for medicinal purposes. Like I said, Becca, it’s big business.”

  Nera put the truck into Park and switched off the engine. We both sat still for a long few seconds. Now that we were there, potentially facing danger, I was glad for the shotgun, but I didn’t think I could ever shoot a couple teenagers no matter how threatening they were.

  “They’re kids, Nera. Maybe we can talk them out of being stupid. We don’t know that they killed anyone. We still don’t know if Graham or Jimmy were killed. Susan looks bad, but I think she’ll be okay.”

  I couldn’t tell if my words were making a difference or not, though she seemed to hear what I was saying.

  Finally, she looked at me. “I’m not going to shoot anyone unless I have to, Becca. You should stay here in the truck, though. I can’t wait any longer. Harry might need my help.” And then she was out of the truck and moving toward the garage and the shed, holding the shotgun in front of her.

  I didn’t have anyone I could call. Sam, Ian, my family, they were all in South Carolina. Even with all the crazy situations I’d gotten myself into, I’d been able to make a call and be assured that someone might come help me or at least find my body.

  Before Nera could get far, I was out of the truck, too, and running to catch up.

  She looked at me quickly. “Stay behind me at least.”

  I nodded and stayed to her side but back a little.

  We turned the corner of the garage only to find the shed door wide open but no one in sight.

  We moved closer to the shed and peered in. Still no one.

  “Ner . . .” Harry’s voice yelled from behind us.

  I turned and jumped at the same time. I saw that Harry’s hands were tied around his back, and Cole was holding onto one of his arms. Brad punched Harry in the jaw, which propelled his head backward, but he recovered his composure quickly. Harry’s cowboy hat was noticeably mis
sing.

  Nera turned and aimed the gun at the three of them.

  Don’t pull the trigger, don’t pull the trigger, I thought.

  “Come on, boys.” I jumped forward. “You haven’t done anything too terrible yet. Don’t hurt Harry. Let him go.”

  No one moved—really. People looked at each other, but for a suspiciously long time, no one moved.

  Finally, Nera spoke. “Becca, go over there and untie Harry. Cole, Brad, step away.”

  The boys did as instructed, but what should have caught my attention was that they smiled while doing it.

  I moved to Harry, but just as I reached for the rope behind his back, Nera spoke again. “Stop, Becca. Stop.”

  I turned toward her, but she was no longer alone. The two boys were now standing beside her, both with their arms crossed in front of their chests.

  “It was Nera,” Harry said to me. “She killed Jimmy. She killed Graham.”

  “What?” I said too adamantly. I really didn’t want to believe what I was hearing. “No!”

  “It’s what I suspected when you found Graham’s body, but I’m pretty sure she’s proving it now,” Harry continued.

  “For pepper juice? That seems so . . .” I wanted to say “ridiculous,” but it probably wasn’t wise to insult the person with the gun.

  Nera laughed. “Sorry, Becca. I didn’t think you’d ever find out. I didn’t think anyone would figure it out. I didn’t plan for Graham to die today, but the opportunity presented itself, so I took it.”

  “How’d you kill him?” Harry asked.

  “Put crushed-up pecans in his juice drink. He was early to the trading post, and it was sitting right there. I had to take the opportunity. He was alone. I put the pecans in the drink and swiped his epi injectors. I knew he’d be alone for a long time. I thought someone would eventually find him dead on the ground. I can’t explain why he was sitting up. Sorry about that, Becca.”