Chili Con Carnage Read Online Free

comment suitable for the situation.
    Nick was either a really good actor or he honestly didn’t pick up on the bad vibes traveling from Sylvia to chili and back again. “They’re not all that heavy.” He set the boxes down on the countertop that up until Karmen’s whirlwind arrival had showcased our most popular spices.
    She’d been so busy simpering, it was the first Sylvia noticed the mess. As if on cue, her cheeks paled and one of her hands flew to her mouth. “Maxie, did you—”
    “Maxie didn’t do anything.” I wasn’t sure Nick believed this, but I was grateful for the assist. “There’s a troublemaker lose on the grounds.”
    Sylvia stepped forward and put a hand on Nick’s arm. “Are we in any danger?”
    “Please!” I made sure I sawed the word into two syllables, just so she’d know that I knew what she was up to. Didn’t Sylvia get it? Nick was so not her type.
    What type was he?
    Well, my type. If I was looking for a type. Which like I said, I wasn’t. Having had a type who I thought was my type who turned out to be no type but the wrong type.
    But if I was looking, I might just look Nick’s way. After all, from what I’d heard, he left Los Angeles under a cloud of suspicion, and me and suspicion, we go together like ancho peppers and tamales.
    Sylvia and suspicion?
    Not so much.
    Of course, that didn’t keep her from trying. While I fumbled for the zipper at the back of the giant chili, Sylvia practiced her come-and-get-it smile on Nick. It wasn’t like I was vying for attention, and it sure as hell wasn’t like I thought I had to compete with Sylvia. Not for any man. But I pushed the costume down to my waist, anyway. The Chick’s costume was made of canvas stretched over a wire frame, and after an hour in it, I probably looked like hell, but I was willing to take the chance. In a T-shirt, denim shorts, and with an hour of accumulated sweat dampening my hair, I might not look as put together and proper as Sylvia, but at least I was no phony-baloney.
    I stepped out of the costume, scooped it up into my arms, and while I was at it, I kicked off the stilettos, too.
    “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I told Sylvia. “Karmen wasn’t looking for you. How could she be? Somebody who doesn’t have a life has a hard time making enemies.”
    Sylvia sneered.
    In the prettiest sort of way, of course.
    I sneered right back.
    And Nick, smart guy that he is, knew enough to steer clear.
    He took another look around the area. “We’ll keep an eye out for the woman,” he said to neither one of us in particular. “And when we find her, I’ll talk to her before I escort her off the property. Maybe that will help explain what she’s up to.”
    It wasn’t my imagination. He emphasized the word
that
just the teeniest bit. The meaning was just as obvious to me as if he’d come right out and said, “Since you won’t tell me what’s going on, maybe Karmen will,” but before I had a chance to call him on it, an RV twice the size of ours and a hundred times fancier rolled around the corner.
    I heard Nick mumble something that sounded like, “Oh good, they’re here,” before he hurried over to the side of the Palace and directed the super-duper-sized vehicle to park right next door.
    “That’s no good!” I scrambled over to Nick’s side, waving to my right to get the RV to move farther away from our booth at the same time he waved to the left to get it to park closer. “You can’t let him park there,” I told Nick. “He’s going to mess up the flow of traffic to our booth. Tomorrow when the show opens—”
    “Not to worry.” When the driver stopped exactly where Nick indicated, Nick gave him the thumbs-up. “It’s only for today. It’s Carter Donnelly’s motorhome, the one he uses as a dressing trailer.”
    “Carter Donnelly!” Before, Sylvia’s eyes had sparkled with what might, in some alternate universe, have passed for a come-hither look. Now they gleamed with sudden