“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
