by Kylie Logan
Available in paperback from Berkley Prime Crime
1
“Who died and left you boss?”
It was one of those what-do-you-call-its, a rhetorical question, so really, Sylvia shouldn’t have given me that know-it-all look of hers. Eyes scrunched, head tilted slightly forward, she looked me up and down, and her top lip curled when she said, “Since when does the giant chili pepper get to ask the questions?”
Okay, so I hadn’t picked the best of all possible moments to confront her, I mean, what with her wearing crisp khakis and a jalapeño-colored polo shirt with the Texas Jack logo over her heart and me in a giant red chili pepper costume that covered my head and body all the way down past my hips.
She looked neat and professional—as always—with her honey-colored hair pulled back in a ponytail, and far cooler than I was feeling with the sun of a New Mexico September beating down on me. But hey, Sylvia might be a neatnik and taller than me by a head, but no way was she ever going to look as good as I do in fishnet stockings and stilettos.
Just so she wouldn’t forget it, I shuffled said stilettos against the blacktop of the parking lot behind where we’d set up Texas Jack Pierce’s Hot-Cha Chili Seasoning Palace. It was the day before the opening of the Taos Chili Showdown and though technically I didn’t need the practice, I did need an excuse not to have to help Sylvia stick labels on spice jars. Rehearsing the routine I’d use to attract the crowds that would begin arriving the next morning was as good an excuse as any. While I was showing off my dancing talents (not as artistic as they were enthusiastic), I gave Sylvia the I-have-better-legs-than-you grin. Too bad she couldn’t see it, what with my face being covered and all.
“The Chili Chick gets to ask the questions,” I reminded her, stopping to catch my breath, “because the Chili Chick is equal partners with you in this little venture. Which means the Chili Chick has equal say. Which means my original question stands. Who died and left you boss?”
Sylvia rolled those sky-blue eyes of hers like she always does when I get the best of her and she refuses to admit it. Which is all the time. “All I did was change the prices on a couple of our most popular products,” she said. “All-Purpose Chili Cha-Cha, Global Warming, and—”
“Thermal Conversion. Yeah, I know. You changed the prices. And I didn’t know anything about it until I showed up this morning and started setting up the stand. You have an awful short memory, Sylvia. When we took over, we agreed—”
“To make all decisions jointly. Yes, I remember.” I guess that didn’t mean she had to like it, because those perfectly bowed lips of hers puckered. “I decided to make the change last night because I was going through the books and realized we were missing out on a gold mine. Those are our biggest-selling items, and by jacking the price up just a tad, we can increase our profit margin by—”
Since she couldn’t see me yawn, I made enough noise to let her know what was going on inside my Chili Chick costume.
“See?” She tossed her head. “I knew you wouldn’t be interested. Which is exactly why I didn’t bother to tell you. Besides, you weren’t even here last night.” Her lips thinned. “You knew there were seasonings to mix last night, Maxie. Tomorrow’s the first day of the cook-off and we always do our best business in the first few hours. But instead of helping, you ran off. With that loser Roberto, right? You left me high and dry and I had to stay up well past midnight. I had to do everything. All by myself.”
She was right. I’d bailed. And truth be told, Roberto hadn’t been worth it. Not that he wasn’t cute. And marginally sexy. It’s just that any guy who thinks drinking überquantities of tequila is the way to a girl’s heart isn’t exactly my type.
I was actually all set to apologize until Sylvia added a little singsong, “And you didn’t come in until what was it, three this morning?”
Apology forgotten, I propped my fists on my hips. Well, not exactly on my hips since my hips were camouflaged by the red chili. “So in addition to being the one who makes the decisions and doesn’t tell me, now you’re my mother?”
Oh, that stung her. Just like I hoped it would. I knew it for sure because Sylvia’s slim shoulders shot back a fraction of an inch and her chin came up. The word mother always does that to Sylvia. But then, talking about mothers makes her think of my mother. And thinking about my mother makes her think about how my mother stole her father from her mother.
Got that?
Sylvia and I, see, are half sisters. We share the same father, the aforementioned Texas Jack Pierce, and we have mothers who are as different as . . . well, as Sylvia and I are.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I reminded her, “but I happened to have a date last night.”
“With Roberto.” No one could do a tongue click quite like Sylvia. But then, she had a lot of practice. “I told you when he signed on, that roadie’s up to no good. Honestly, I thought you’d be smarter about men. I mean, after All You’ve Been Through.”
The capital letters are my addition, though I swear, if it was humanly possible to speak in upper case, Sylvia would have mastered the skill by now. Like she didn’t like talk of mothers in general and mine in particular, I was not exactly thrilled when she dropped the whole All You’ve Been Through thing.
Which is, of course, exactly why she mentioned it.
“We were talking about you raising prices,” I said, and since my teeth were clenched, I hoped she could hear me from behind the red mesh that covered my face so I could see out of the chili and customers couldn’t easily see in. “We weren’t talking about Edik and what happened back in Chicago.”
“No, but maybe we should.”
Uh-oh. There it was. That sympathetic look. The tender, understanding voice. Before I could back away, Sylvia grabbed my hand and dragged me closer. She liked to do this when she was playing big sister. Well, big half sister. I liked to resist because, let’s face it, she didn’t really care. All Sylvia wanted to do was remind me what a mess I’d made of my life back in Chicago. That, and the fact that she’d never in a million years be stupid enough to make the same mistakes I had.
“You’ve got to work through this problem of yours, Maxie,” she insisted, and then before I could point out the obvious fact that there was no problem and, therefore, no chance of working through it, she went right on. “You keep getting involved with guys who are all wrong for you. Obviously Edik—”
“Was hotter than a habanero and great in bed.” I knew she’d get all pinch-faced on me when I said this.
Which is exactly why I did.
Sylvia is an attractive woman. When she’s not as puckered as a prune. “He also stole how much from you? Fifty thousand dollars? And left your credit rating a shambles. Honestly, Maxie, if you can’t see that Roberto’s going to do the same thing—”
“He’s not. Because I’m not going to give him a chance.” This much was true. Rather than admit I’d already decided I was never going out with Roberto again, I added, “Roberto’s good for a few laughs. Nothing else.”
“Like the nothing else you were doing until three o’clock this morning?”
“Like I said, a few laughs.” It was easier than explaining about the tequila and the bar and the fight and the cops. It was also easier than even trying to begin to explain what I knew in my heart: With Edik, I’d learned my lesson. Oh yeah, he was firecracker hot, and as drop-dead delicious as any rock band lead guitarist in the western hemisphere. But Edik was a creep who thought of Edik first, last, and always. I’d caught on a little too late, but believe me, I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Because there was no way, no how, I was ever going to let myself fall in love again. Not madly, completely, and totally in love. Not like I’d been with Edik.
“Listen . . .” If I wasn’t wearing the Chili Chick costume, I would have scraped a hand through my dark, spiky hair. The way it was, all I could do was pat the side of the giant chili pepper. Something told me it didn’t have the same effect, and no way did it express the s
ort of frustration I always felt when Sylvia pretended that she was the loving big sister (okay, half sister) and I needed her guidance to find my way through the minefield that is my love life. “I can take care of myself,” I reminded her.
Her smile was so brittle, I waited to hear the crack. “Yes, and you proved that back in Chicago, didn’t you?”
I bit the inside of my mouth. It was that or the long line of vendors around us who were getting their booths ready for the next day’s opening festivities would hear a string of profanity hotter than any chili mix in the great state of New Mexico.
“What happened in Chicago was a mistake,” I said.
“You admit it?”
“Of course I admit it.” My arms stuck out the side of the costume (the better to wave folks toward Texas Jack’s stand), and I threw my hands in the air. “What, you want me to say it wasn’t? That I liked being taken to the cleaners by the man I loved?”
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 dozen vendors following the chili circuit who would ever mention it. Tumbleweed liked making announcements, and listening to him was way better than listening to Sylvia. I guess she knew it. She huffed into the Palace.
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 flyby 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 chili 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 chili 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.” He glanced toward where Sylvia was setting out a pile of shopping bags with Texas Jack’s face on them. “Always thought Sylvia’s mama was too high-strung to be the Chili Chick. After all, Chick . . .” He gave me a friendly pat on the . . . er . . . chili. “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, Pam 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.
My mom and dad have been divorced going on 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 sinc
e 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 had 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—”