Mayhem at the Orient Express

by Kylie Logan

  Sylvia’s golden eyebrows dipped over her eyes. “Did you? Love him?” There was that annoying note of compassion again. Like Sylvia might actually know what it’s like to get her heart broken. Thirty-two years old and, honest, I was pretty sure she was still a virgin. It was the only thing that could possibly explain how tightly wound she was. “I’m sorry, Maxie. I never thought—”

  “Whatever.” The perfect all-purpose response, and delivered at the right moment, too. The PA system that had been set up in the parking lot of the fairgrounds hosting the cook-off buzzed and crackled, and Bob “Tumbleweed” Ballew, our organizer and emcee, announced that there would be a vendor meeting that evening precisely at six o’clock. Since there was a vendor meeting precisely at six o’clock the night before every Showdown, it pretty much went without saying, but hey, there wasn’t one of us among the couple of dozens vendors who followed the chili circuit who would ever mention it. Tumbleweed liked making announcements and, hey, listening to him was way better than listening to Sylvia and I guess she knew it. She huffed out into the Palace.

  Just to prove it, I decide to practice a little more.

  Arms waving, hands beckoning, feet moving to the only routine I remembered from a long-ago tap class that thankfully proved to my mother once and for all that I was not made for the stage, I dance stepped my way to the front of our booth just the way I would do the next day when the Showdown opened.

  “Lookin’ good, Chili Chick!” This from Tumbleweed, who came out of the trailer where he and his wife, Ruth Ann, handled all the admin work that went into the Showdown. He stopped long enough to beam a smile at me. “Just you wait until tomorrow. There’s not a cowboy in New Mexico who will be able to resist you, sweetheart!”

  I didn’t take offense. After all, Tumbleweed was at least seventy and I’d known him since back when I was a kid and I spent my summers traveling the chili circuit with Jack (and, unfortunately, with Sylvia, too). In fact, Tumbleweed was Jack’s best friend, the one who’d called me when—

  Even inside the clumsy costume and standing in the blazing sun, I shivered.

  “Hey, not losing heart, are you?” Like I said, Tumbleweed and I had been friends a long time; he knew exactly what I was thinking. He pressed my hand. “We’re going to find him, honey.”

  “I know.” I did. Deep down in my heart I knew we were going to locate Jack, who’d been missing for nearly six weeks now. Tell that to the lump of emotion that blocked my throat and made it impossible for me to swallow. “But no one’s seen him, Tumbleweed, and—”

  He chuckled and waved away my worries as if they were nothing more annoying than the brown ambush bug that flew out of the flowering shrubs near where we were standing and did a fly-by between us. “I know Texas Jack and you know Texas Jack.” He grinned and winked. “We both know he’s got an eye for the ladies and a taste for adventure. He’ll be back, honey. And when he is, he’s gonna be as happy as a hornet in honey to see what you two girls have done to keep the business going.” Tumbleweed slid a look over to the stand where Sylvia was putting the last-minute touches on the catering trailer we hauled around behind our RV.

  Not that there was a whole lot to do. The Palace was only seven by fourteen—smaller than a lot of the trailers the other vendors and chili cook-off contestants used. It had a wide concession window at one end and, inside, a stove, fridge, worktable, and shelves where we displayed our wares. Jack being Jack, he didn’t allow the trailer’s small size to stymie business. The Palace was painted chile pepper red and the sign above it—the one that featured Jack’s smiling face—was impossible-to-miss yellow with alligator green lettering. The Palace was flashy. Some people said it was trashy. I thought it was beautiful, and I loved it like no other thing on earth.

  It looked like mind reading went both ways, because as I watched Tumbleweed look over the Palace and Sylvia working away like a busy little beaver inside it, I knew what was on his mind. When I shook my head, the chile costume swayed from side to side. “I just don’t get it, Tumbleweed. I know why I’m here.”

  “Yup.” He nodded. “To look for that wandering daddy of yours. And to help forget All You’ve Been Through, of course.”

  Did everyone on the cook-off circuit know the pitiful story of my love life?

  Tumbleweed ignored my groan. “Hey, I get it. I’ve fallen in love with the wrong sort a couple times myself.” Another chuckle jiggled his ample belly inside the blue Taos T-shirt he was wearing. “Nothing like Texas Jack, of course! It sounds cruel to say he’s the type to love ’em and leave ’em, ’cept he really is. When Jack falls in love with a woman . . .” Tumbleweed sighed. “Well, I suppose you’ve heard it from your mama. When Jack falls in love, that woman becomes his whole, entire world. He really does devote himself to her, body and soul.”

  “Until the next woman comes along.” I was long past judging so I was just reporting facts.

  Another laugh out of Tumbleweed. “Your mama never held it against him, though, did she?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. He didn’t need to. Tumbleweed spit a long stream of tobacco juice on the ground. “Nope, none of them ever did except maybe Norma, Sylvia’s mama.” He glanced toward where Sylvia was setting out a pile of shopping bags with Texas Jack’s face on them. “Always thought Norma was too high strung to be the Chili Chick. After all, Chick . . .” He gave me a friendly pat on the . . . er . . . chile. “The Chili Chick is a legend on the cook-off circuit. Has been since your daddy thought of her as a way to attract attention and bring in customers. Sylvia’s mom . . . the way I remember it, Norma was a last-minute fill-in when the Chick before her found out she was pregnant. Oh, Norma, she could dance passably well. But she never had that right spark. Then when your mama came along . . .” Tumbleweed whistled low under his breath, and I understood why.

  In many ways, my mom and I are a lot alike. Except that instead of being cute (oh, how I hate that word!) like me, my mother is drop-dead gorgeous. The story says that Jack took one look at her in those fishnet stockings and lost his heart right on the spot. Too bad he was married to Norma at the time, who was back home in Seattle and heard the news long distance that he wanted out.

  They’d been divorced for more than twenty years, but I thought about the way my mom still looked when Jack’s name came up in conversation. Wistful. And about the way Sylvia’s mom had looked the one time Jack and I showed up at her door to pick up Sylvia and take her on the road.

  To say hell hath no fury was putting it mildly.

  I turned to Tumbleweed. “You don’t think Norma’s still so angry that she might have—”

  “Stop that right this instant.” He tried for a stern look, but with Tumbleweed, that’s always a long shot. I blame his flapping jowls, his too-big ears, and that mile-wide grin that erupts at the most inconvenient times. “You remember what the cops in Abilene said, honey, when I first realized Jack was gone. No sign of foul play. And nothing missing from the stand, so they didn’t figure on a robbery. And Jack’s things weren’t left behind. Wherever he went, he went willingly.”

  It was what I’d told myself a thousand times since I got the call. Years before, Jack had given Tumbleweed an order: if anything ever happened to him, he was to get in contact with Sylvia and me so we could take over the business.

  Take over, we did. Me, because I was convinced if I stayed on the circuit long enough, I’d find out what happened to Jack. And besides, it didn’t hurt that the call came right at the time I needed to get far, far away from Chicago, my broken heart, and the debt collectors who were calling at all hours.

  Sylvia . . .

  From inside the Chili Chick, I slid her another look, and even though I was sure she couldn’t hear me, I leaned closer to Tumbleweed, my voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Why do you suppose she’s really here?”

  He sucked on his bottom lip. “I’d like to say it’s because she’s just as interested in finding Jack as you are.”

  “Except you know that’s not true.”


  Tumbleweed rocked back on his heels. “Well, she did mention something the other day. Told me she was thinking of writing a cookbook.”

  This is not as odd as it sounds, since before she got the call about Jack and how we needed to take over the Palace until he returned, Sylvia was a writer for a foodie magazine back in Seattle. “I thought she only ate tofu and weeds.”

  “And chili apparently.” When he looked Sylvia’s way, Tumbleweed’s eyes were beady. “Said she’s even preparing a special recipe. You know, so that she can enter the contests.”

  Suddenly, Sylvia mixing up spices the night before made more sense. “Well, that explains why she was mixing up a batch of chili to bring to the meeting tonight. She’s going to use us as guinea pigs, perfect a couple recipes, then when she gets a few wins under her belt, I bet a publisher would pay more attention to her cookbook. Opportunistic little b—”

  “Now, now, Chili Chick.” Tumbleweed wagged a finger at me. “Don’t you go and let that famous temper of yours get out of control. You ain’t gonna find Jack if you’re so busy fightin’ with your sister—”

  “Half sister.”

  He didn’t dignify this with a response. In fact, all Tumbleweed did was pull one corner of his mouth into a humorless smile. “Ain’t gonna get you nowhere if you two kill each other first.”

  Murder? One look at Sylvia behind the counter all cool and composed and not sweating from standing in the sun, and I considered the suggestion. But honestly, only for a second. Then again, I saw that she had a case of spice jars to unload, so I got my own little bit of revenge by pretending to be busy practicing my little heart out.

  I wonder if I’d have kept right on dancing if I knew that within twenty-four hours, talk of murder would be as impossible to escape as a dose of heartburn after a great big bowl of Texas Red.