I found another two inches in my spine. “Who says we didn’t get your request?” I prayed my nose wouldn’t start to grow. “Wouldn’t you prefer it fresh? Not sitting in a warmer growing spongy?”
Again with the mustache, only this time he curled the ends. The corners of his mouth curved as well. “Prepare away, my taste buds are buzzing with anticipation.” I watched him barrel his way through a group of chili cooks conversing and blocking the aisle. “Excuse me. Watch out. Coming through.”
“Is he bothering you, Jo Jo?” Uncle Eddie asked, joining me.
“Do you remember anything about a special dietary request?”
He grabbed the brim of his hat with two hands. Uncle Eddie never wore his hat when working the restaurant, not unless he was putting on the dog for the tourists. “It’s on the bulletin board in the kitchen.”
“Did Carlos see it? Did you two discuss it?”
Slowly he shook his head, like a three-year-old caught with a crayon in his hand next to a dinosaur drawing on the living room wall. He took the drink tray from my hands. “Why don’t I deliver these for you? That way Linda can yell at me if they complain.”
“Table six,” I called above the din as he started off in the wrong direction.
I hurried toward the kitchen, dodging Lily as she bolted from the kitchen with a platter of quesadillas. “Carlos!” No sign of him. With my right hand, I grabbed Lucky’s registration from the bulletin board, and with my left, took a pan from the stove.
“What are you doing, Josefina?” Senora Mari stood at the back door. In the alley beyond her, Carlos was staring at me, jaw gaping, cigarette in midair.
“I’m leaving it in your capable hands.” I handed Senora Mari the pot and Carlos the form before she insisted I prove my negligible cooking skills. Fifteen minutes later, I sent Anthony to the kitchen to retrieve the desired dietary delicacy for Lucky. If that crotchety chili cook said one more cross word to me, I would spit in his eye.
After an hour, folks finally headed out. Lily was busing the last of the tables with the help of her older brother. With a quick sip of soda water and lime, I braced myself for the final push of the night. “I got it.” I handed her an empty rubber tub and grabbed the full one. I hauled the dirty dishes to the kitchen and delivered them to the dishwasher. When I returned to the dining room only Whip, Lucky, and Bridget Peck remained. They all turned toward me.
“Did you find a small leather pouch?” Lucky grabbed his shirtfront.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye—”
“Inside was a card about this big.” He held his thumb and index finger two inches apart. “And a topaz the size of your thumbnail.”
His jaw clenched, his chest rose, his hands fisted.
Whatever was in that bag meant a great deal to Mr. Lucky Straw. “We’re about to clean up. If it’s here, we’ll find it.” He was a thorn in my side, but I was skilled at recovering lost treasures—keys, earrings, cell phones, and especially dog leashes.
“Give her your number, man.” Whip pointed to his own cell phone.
With a grunt, Lucky trudged over to the cash register, grabbed a to-go menu, and scribbled his digits.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, Lucky.” Bridget Peck removed her visor, rubbed her temples, and plunked it back on her head. “Use the ingredients you submitted to us. No last-minute changes. No whims. The health department is not shutting us down to please your muse.”
Instead of heading for the door, the tall wannabe cowboy hunched his shoulders like a Brahma bull. “You can quote the dad-burn ICA rules until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t cook chili to save your life!” With a long, bony finger, he caught the inside of the rulebook and flipped it to the floor, pages spread open like the wings of a wounded bird.
I expected Bridget to respond in kind, but she surprised me. Her eyes narrowed and an angry smile spread slowly across her weathered lips. “Son, you better pray not one page of that book is damaged.”
With a quick glance at Lucky’s clenched jaw, Whip carefully lifted the binder from the floor, his dark hair falling in his face. He handed the rules and regulations to Bridget. “Come on, Lucky,” he murmured, grabbing his companion by the arm. “Don’t get kicked out over something stupid.”
I held my breath, waiting for the two chili slingers to fling more vitriol. Instead, Lucky gave his friend a nod, and the two sauntered out as if already holding the championship trophy in their ill-natured hands.
Chapter 3
Let the Games Begin
The dusty-colored coyote merely stared as we approached, his mouth open in a welcoming smile. Without the wag of his tail, he was a dog-shaped cactus. Or a friendly stray . . . if I didn’t know better.
As my Prius entered the weedy car park at the edge of the Big Bend County Fairgrounds, another canine nose slipped through the long grass. No smile on the muzzle of that one. Only when I turned off the engine with a sputter and shake, did the coyotes disappear.
“Yip, yip, yip.” I scooped up Lenny and placed him on the dash, the better to see his opposition. He smashed his nose against the front windshield as if the harder he pressed the more likely to apprehend his long-lost cousins.
“Don’t mess with those two unless you want to lose a leg.” Coyotes might seem friendly and nonthreatening due to their size, a mere twenty-four inches from the ground to their chest; but they would bite and tear and rip without a growl.
“Yip.”
“A wheelchair would definitely impede your dancing, my friend.” And after a close call with a clipper-wielding killer a few months back, I was keeping my crime-solving partner close.
A loud squawk erupted from the police scanner I’d stuffed below the dash. “Dispatch?” Deputy Pleasant’s voice pierced my eardrums.
“Yip,” Lenny howled.
I lunged for the volume control. Lenny had most likely bumped it with his tail again.
“Go ahead.” The young female dispatcher responded, smacking her gum.
“Taking a 10-10.” Even though Deputy Pleasant was the only female officer in Big Bend County and the tri-county area, she wasn’t embarrassed to communicate her personal needs.
“Roger that.”
Sumter Majors, my enigmatic editor at the Broken Boot Bugle, had insisted on giving me a police scanner to help me in my pursuit of local crime stories, which lay thin on the ground, like frost on the desert in February. I hadn’t learned all the radio codes, but I knew a 10-10 meant the female deputy was taking a fifteen-minute break. Why she bothered to use the code was a mystery. Even a civilian like me could figure it out.
Once out of the car, I slowly turned in all directions, carefully looking for our four-legged friends among the ocotillo plants and shin-dagger agaves along the edge of the parking lot. Those coyotes should’ve run from us, but I could hazard a guess as to why these two wanted to play with our shiny metal vehicle. Food. Someone had fed them or left savory trash behind, transforming this remote location into a canine epicurean market.
Once on his leash, Lenny bounded first in one direction and then another. I gave him only six feet of lead, but still he leapt the full length, pulling and straining, growling a warning to the coyotes that the big dog was in town—all six pounds of him.
It was barely six thirty in the morning, but I’d shot up like a rocket at five o’clock. Downstairs, Uncle Eddie had foisted coffee and cinnamon rolls into my hands and hurried me out the door. It was my job to check the location of each chili cook on the fairgrounds one last time before they began their savory battle of beef and spices to make sure nothing—no wind, no varmints, no vandals—had messed with the electricity, water hookups, or Uncle Eddie’s chance to impress the other members of the town council.
Two dozen RVs had parked behind their assigned plots. No lights were on. In one giant RV with a tan and brown landscape painted on the side,
a screen door appeared to be the only barrier between the great outdoors and the sleeping contestants inside. In the far distance, I spotted a white truck with FRANK’S FIREWORKS emblazoned on the side and a platform covered with boxes and odd-looking gizmos set up just beyond it. Our pyrotechnical wizard had made the most of his location. The crowd would park in the lot, set up their chairs and blankets nearby, and enjoy the bright lights and loud bangs from a good half mile away.
“Yip.”
“Don’t wake anyone or I’ll never hear the tail end of it.”
The first two pop-up canopy tents we approached were both cockeyed. No longer upright, they swayed in the wind like drunk cowboys on a Saturday night. I straightened them both and retrieved their tent numbers from the grass. The power and water appeared to be in order, so I moved on. At each tent, canopy, or shelter, I placed a check on my list that water and electricity were in working order and that the contestant number and set of ICA rules were attached to the electric pole with an extra-large rubber band. I’d decided on the rubber bands the previous afternoon after the first dozen sets blew across the parking lot and into the scrub faster than a jackrabbit on speed. Fortunately, my uncle had thought of everything and handed me a full bag of rubber bands as I headed out the door. He knew a thing or two about outsmarting the winds of the high desert.
When my Chi and I reached the last setup, a high pitch tent with side flaps zipped shut, I was stumped. But it was early and my brain was foggy. It was only after marching Lenny around the tent two times that I realized the owner had erected the harem-style shelter over the electric and water supply.
“I have not injected enough coffee to handle this . . .” I waved my hand in the air.
“Yip.”
“Accident waiting to happen! That’s exactly what I was thinking. But someone’s got to go in there and check it out, and you and I, my friend, have drawn the short straw.” About twenty feet beyond the tent in question, near a copse of bent mesquite trees and prickly pear cacti, rested an RV of epic proportions—a fifth wheel—if I had my terminology correct. I was 98 percent sure the owner would rather sleep in that luxury double-wide than the modest polyester shelter before me, but I’d tread lightly. Three panels were part mesh and from where I stood I could make out various shapes that looked like kitcheny stuff: coolers, a generator, and plastic tubs.
“Hellooo.” I knocked twice on the side of the tent, which was like trying to lasso creamed corn. Then I tried the zipper and found it unlocked. “Here goes nothing.” A band of gold now hugged the horizon, banded by a rippling sea of periwinkle clouds into the mile-wide sky. This welcoming light infused the east side of the tent, while the remainder lay in shadow. I gathered Lenny into my arms, gingerly unzipped the brown and tan panel, and stepped inside.
I immediately tripped over a nest of rattlesnakes coiled on the tent floor. As I jumped to my right, kicking my feet as fast as mixer blades in a blender of poisonous reptiles, I realized I’d been attacked only by lifeless extension cords.
“Yip.”
“Sorry, buddy,” I said.
I noted a folding table covered with spices, a cutting board, and some very sharp knives—a perfect place to leave the contestant’s number and set of rules—but whoever belonged to this tent had better watch themselves or they would do themselves an injury. I attached the rules to a knife on the table and turned to go. The wind caught the unzipped panel, fluttering the canvas like a flag on the Fourth of July, driving sunlight into the dark recesses between the containers and coolers.
Something under the table caught my eye, and the air flew from my lungs like a clay pigeon from a trap. I couldn’t breathe. Then realization dawned as I recognized Lucky Straw.
Of course, it was the strident chili cook’s tent. It was filled with too many supplies, yet organized from top to bottom like the cereal aisle in a Walmart—all except for the extension cords. “Sorry,” I whispered. His eyes remained closed in a deep sleep. I turned to go and paused for a second look. He was wearing a chef’s apron with no shirt underneath. I felt my cheeks warm until I realized he wasn’t completely naked. A hand lay over his heart as if he’d fallen asleep saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the Texas flag.
From our earlier encounter, I gathered he was a health nut, but he was obviously a rugged outdoorsman if he slept without sleeping bag, blanket, or pillow. Suddenly, the blood drained from my face, my head floating like a stringless balloon. Maybe he’d suffered a heart attack. I retreated far enough to tie Lenny’s leash to a tent spike, returned to Lucky’s side, and drew a deep breath before kneeling down beside him. I held my breath and lightly placed two fingers on his wrist. His skin was neither warm nor cold. In the dim light, I thought his chest rose infinitesimally, but I wouldn’t have staked my life on it.
No pulse. But I was lousy at the pulse thing. I forced myself to relax and tried again, this time at his neck. I waited several seconds. Nothing. I fumbled for my phone, lifting to my knees to yank it from the depths of my pocket.
I dialed 911 and prayed I was wrong.
“Yip, yip.”
My gaze drifted from Lucky’s cold body and across the fairgrounds as I filled in the dispatcher. Uncle Eddie was leaning against his truck, talking fervently with someone on the phone. He was going to be so upset. He’d worked so hard.
“Miss, miss!” The dispatcher’s voice held irritation.
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Do you know CPR?”
“Yes, but I took the class six months ago. How many pushes and puffs?” My mind flooded with images of the first murder victim I’d failed to revive. Dixie Honeycutt.
The dispatcher gave the lifesaving information carefully as if speaking to a child, but I still struggled to take it all in. I placed the phone on the table and began. It wasn’t perfect technique, but that didn’t matter. Did it? My skin crawled with adrenaline, racing up and down my arms like electricity. Come on! Live this time! Live!
The EMT workers found me inside the tent still giving Lucky’s lifeless body compressions and puffs of useless air.
“We’ve got it now,” a female voice said as I felt a hand on my shoulder. I yanked my gaze away from Lucky. It was the older EMT worker, a woman I’d seen once before. My mind grasped for the information. A retired principal. Her partner, a male EMS worker, gently moved me to the side, and Uncle Eddie helped me stand.
He placed a strong arm around my shoulders and walked my boneless body toward his truck. “Are you okay, Jo Jo?” His voice was tinny with fear.
I kept marching, onward, refusing to halt, my arms aching from pumping Lucky’s chest so many times. Lenny’s yips trailed after us, growing more faint by the step. I needed to go back in that tent and get him. He would worry about me. Finally we reached the back of Uncle Eddie’s truck.
“It’s okay, mi niña. It’s okay,” my uncle crooned. “It’s not your fault.”
Tears leaked from my eyes and down my chin and onto my shirt. “I couldn’t save him.”
“Shh.”
I could never save them. Never. Senora Mari was mistaken when she said I was strong. What a joke.
Chapter 4
Aftermath
When Detective Lightfoot stepped from his newly issued black-and-white SUV, I could’ve sworn I’d stepped into an episode of CSI: West Texas. Gone was the khaki uniform he’d worn like a second skin for so many years as a deputy in Big Bend County. Instead he wore a navy blazer and white button-down shirt, along with his familiar Stetson. We had developed a loose partnership, for lack of a better description. Basically, he investigated crimes for the Big Bend County Sheriff’s Office, and I tagged along as a reporter for the Bugle—when I could convince him I wouldn’t be in his way. In Austin, I never imagined I’d finally find my way to the crime desk when I returned home to Broken Boot.
“You okay, Josie?” Lightfoot’s black eyes filled with concern.
<
br /> I flushed with embarrassment, sniffing and wiping away any remaining tears of shock with my knuckle. I’m not much of a crier, and when I do it’s not pretty—unless pretty ugly counts.
“She’s fine, just tired.” Uncle Eddie handed me his handkerchief. “Jo Jo gave CPR until the ambulance got here.”
With a grimace, Lightfoot fished a bottle of water from his jacket pocket. “Rinse your mouth out with that until you find something stronger.”
I obeyed by spitting into a nearby cactus.
“That’s my girl.” Uncle Eddie laughed.
I checked out the new detective’s polished boots and turquoise bolo tie. “Didn’t realize you went to church on Fridays,” I said, shielding myself with sarcasm. “Or are you on your way to an interview?” Tiny butterflies of attraction danced in my stomach, and I wanted them dead. Love had done me wrong, big-time. And love could go play in someone else’s sandbox.
He popped his cuffs. “Detective duds. I may get used to them . . . in three or four years.”
“Congrats.” Uncle Eddie reached out his hand. “Looks good on you, man.”
“Can you talk?”
I sniffed. “Yeah.”
“Let’s walk.” He withdrew a small notepad and golf pencil from his pocket. If Lightfoot ever decided to join the modern age and take notes on his phone, the Chihuahuan Desert would instantly transform into a fjord.
A small, delicate head peeped out of the window of Lucky’s tent. “Yip, yip, yip.”
“Lenny!”
“I’ll get him.” He placed a hand on my arm. “You stay here.”
He stepped into the tent, exchanged a word with the officers inside, and untied Lenny’s leash from the tent spike. “Boy, is he excited to see you.”
I held Lenny’s trembling body in my arms. “Yes, I know.” I blinked away a few more stupid tears. “But you’re fine now.”
“Yip.” Lenny wriggled in my arms and licked my chin.
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