Malicious Mischief (A Rylie Keyes Mystery) (Entangled Select) (12 page)

“Aye, lass, but now is not the time,” he said and disconnected.

Passing clouds covered the sun, blotted out the vivid glare, and muddied the air into something normally seen in the dead of winter. It hardly surprised me. The weather matched my mood, reflective, pensive, and if I could find the courage, hopeful. In a perfect world, Zach would conquer his PTSD, Walter would get mental help, I would earn my grandfather’s approval, keep my job, and pay off our back taxes, and I would share my life with—I tried to picture Zach’s face. Of course, I knew every inch of it, the curve of his jaw, the hollows of his cheeks, his wounded eyes; I couldn’t picture it now, any of it. I looked around, confused, tired, and a little lost, but I had to let it go. Somehow, someway, I had to focus on finding a killer.

Up ahead, a cab arrived, its engine screeching as it pulled into the parking lot behind FoY’s booth. It bumped over the cement divider and parked at the adjacent deli. I thought for a second that the Audi right behind it was also going to ignore the divider, but it parked in the first lot, the one just behind our booth. The Audi’s male driver turned our way, his shaggy blond hair spilling over his forehead. His pasty coloring drew my eye, but he had focused his grim gaze on the cab. When a large group of teens wandered past, I lost sight of him.

“What a shitty tent,” said a nearby male voice.

I turned my head.

“No side walls. What if it rains? I hate rain, see. My hip hurts in the rain.” Booth Jackson crawled from the cab with a series of grunts and groans, rubbing his hip, cringing.

“Why aren’t you cooking? Why are you here?” Tita asked.

“Don’t start with me,” he told her. “And just so you know, I didn’t walk out on the job. Think back on how Otto clogged up his new low-flow toilet just the other day and not even twenty-four hours after it was put in. Well, to make a long story short, another damn senior did it again. Crap went everywhere, into the mudroom, the hallway. And now the water is off. So there is no cooking, Boss Lady. Delivery pizza is what’s for lunch, and delivery pizza is what they’ll eat.”

My mouth watered. I was starving.

“So you’ve come to help us with the booth?” Tita asked, her tone skeptical.

“No getting out of it if I want a paycheck,” he said, his wiggly brows bouncing. “But first things first, see. You are looking at a man in need of a new cell phone. And Roaring Wings is giving away an iPhone to whoever can eat the most Nitro Wings. Did you hear what I said? Banging hot Nitro Wings? Bring it on.”

“If you croak, it’s on your head,” Tita said. “You’ve got that irregular heartbeat.”

“Living dangerously.” He scratched an angry rash on his left forearm. “I’m suffering a bit of a crisis, see. I need to break my grip with my two-cent phone. It’s dulling my bling.”

I had a sudden thought. “If you win, can I buy your old phone? Solo needs one.”

“Sure, why not?” He wore a vague smile. “I guess I owe him. Ever since he came to work at FoY, Leland has stopped nagging me about exercising the seniors. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him ten times, I’ve got a bad hip.” He hauled out a small bottle of lotion and dabbed it on the rash. “The big boss ain’t any good at listening.”

My unspoken thought was he needed a bigger bottle. The rash had taken up residence on his arm. Then I thought of the stinging nettles growing near Otto’s discarded kippah. Sure, it was a long shot as Washington was riddled with the bushy scourge, but I wanted to see his reaction. “That’s some rash. What’s it from?”

His brows shot up, twitching. “What’s it to you?”

“You’ve got welts,” I said. “Like maybe you tangled with some stinging nettles?”

“Don’t know what that is,” he said, expressionless.

“It’s a flower, perennial. It causes a rash.”

“Oh, is that all? For a minute, I thought you were saying I had a social disease.”

“Huh?” I said. “That’s sort of random.”

He cast a wary look over each shoulder. “If there’s gossip around FoY, you can bet your sweet bippy I’ll hear it. And hear it I did this morning. Two seniors have herpes.”

My mouth fell open. “Shut up.”

“If I’m lying, I’m dying.”

“Which seniors?” Tita asked.

“The Colonel won’t say, but he’d know since he works in the clinic. Unreal, right? Can you imagine? Sex at their age,” he said, shaking his head in apparent surprise.

I made the smart decision not to remind him that he was well over sixty, and if one believed his workplace boasting, sexually red-hot and active. A loudspeaker announced the wing eating competition would begin in twenty minutes.

“So do we have a deal?” I asked. “You’ll sell me your phone.”

“I’m open to the possibility. It’s tight, though. Can’t let it go cheap, see.”

“But it cost only two cents. That’s thievery.”

“Sick world we live in, uh?” He limped toward Roaring Wings tent. Halfway there, a twenty-something black woman with an extraordinary body joined him, wrapping her arms through his. The limp abruptly disappeared. Interesting.

“Tita,” I said. “Do you know how Booth hurt his hip?”

“Car crash, I think.”

I looked back at Booth as he and his female friend waited outside Roaring Wings. The blond driver who had followed his cab into the parking lot approached Booth with an outstretched hand. The man gestured toward a nearby display table between the FoY and Roaring Wings booths, which up until now I hadn’t noticed. A spangled banner stretched between two poles at each end of the table read:
White’s Jewelry
. A perfect name, as the man looked almost transparent. A sandwich sign beside the table read:
Free appraisals and cleaning
.

Booth turned his back on the man’s obvious solicitation for business. The man scowled on his return to his display table. Booth and his female friend entered the tent, Booth immediately slouching into a chair at the contestant table. His friend whispered in his ear and stepped away to make a call. With his eyes fixed on her, Booth drew out a prescription bottle from his pocket and downed several pills without water. He placed the bottle on the table, left it there, and grabbed a glass of water from the nearby set-up table. But he didn’t take a drink. He just held it in his hand, crossing to his friend.

I wondered about his pills. If they were for pain, and if once taken, could he climb Leland’s steep hill, or if he was merely faking the pain to throw off suspicion. I had to get a look at those pills.

Sizzling oil smoked as a chef dropped chicken wings into a hot pot. I thought about how I could examine those pills, visualized several scenarios, and settled on one.

Tita stepped back, talking about the weather, happy as a fat rat in a cheese factory for the uncharacteristically hot weather. “Looks like our replacements have arrived,” she said as a FoY senior and an office staffer entered the booth.

Greetings were said all around, and we departed the tent and walked to the sidewalk.

“So when do you pick up Elsa from church?” I asked her.

“On the twelfth of never, I hope. She called a little while ago, said she was getting a ride from church to the Ready Clinic. Gunk in her eye, or something. She will call, you know. When she’s done.”

Big grin. “So you have some time to kill?” I asked.

“Maybe. Why?”

Funny thing about Latino chefs. They love themselves some habanera peppers, and amazingly, they can eat tons of them without fanning their
sombreros
. So who better to eat a boatload of piping hot wings? Me, who cannot eat a red-hot candy without gasping for air? Or Tita Iglesias, FoY’s resident fire breather.

“Yum,” I said. “Smell that hot sauce? It’s like the Mother Ship calling you home.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “What are you up to?”

I filled her in on the investigation and how I had to—
had to
—get a look at Booth’s pills and win Solo a new iPhone, as I didn’t trust Booth to give me his old one. “So are you in?”

She looked over at Booth, then back to me “You really think he killed Otto?”

“That’s the working theory.”

“I’m in. I hate that bastard,” she said. “But don’t put all your eggs in Booth’s basket. Gilad is right, everyone is a suspect, especially him.”

“Why him especially?”

“I saw him slip away after the bonfire got going. Come to think of it, it was about the same time Booth left.”

“Where did Gilad go?”

She shrugged. “I lost him in the dark. You know I knew a private investigator once. One day he just up and went. Mysterious disappearance some say, gang killing I say. The PI biz is like that, you know. They uncover secrets. People kill for that. How bad do you want this?”

“Real bad.”

“Buckle up,
chica
, it’s gonna get bumpy.”

After signing a waiver—Tita rolled her eyes rather than show weakness by reading the cautionary document—the five contestants congregated behind the cafeteria-style focal table. A big crowd watched. Each competitor donned a plastic bib and latex gloves, then took his or her seat. Tita let loose an excited hoot.

“So you’re ready to do this?” I stared at her across the table.

As if to say, “duh” she hooted again.

She sat between Booth and a man wearing a dingy muscle shirt. Fuzzy pale hair covered his body and his eyes were a piercing golden brown. He looked like a blond werewolf. The two college-age guys seated beside him looked preppy, rich, and buzzed. Frat boys, almost certainly.

Nearby, two chefs in heavy white aprons dumped heaps of wings into two bowls, poured on the sauce, and placed them under warming lights.

“As you can see, folks,” the announcer said from the podium as the awaiting crowd quieted. “We’ve only got one portable stove, so we’re running behind. Five minutes, promise, till the competition begins.”

As the chefs loaded up the hot oil with another batch of wings, the noise level resumed to a steady hum of conversation.

Another whiff of peppers made me blink, and my eyes started watering. “You sure you’re okay doing this?” I asked Tita.

“Piece of cake. Easy as pie. Sweet as mother’s milk,” she said.

Booth regarded Tita. Big glower. Squirming brow pinched. An equal match to a bulldog: one lip corner up, showing some tooth,
a little plaque
. He was pissed. The good news? The pill bottle was still where he had left it.

Each contestant was allowed one friend for encouragement, so I circled the table and stood between Tita and Booth. I looked around. Booth’s female friend stood in the back of the tent talking on her cell phone again. Booth had his back to me, watching her, his hands fisted and his knuckles white.

“Here goes.” I crouched and took out my cell phone. I made a pretense of showing Tita some pictures on it, but in reality, I was snapping photos of the label on the prescription bottle, which read on closer inspection:
Oxycodone 5mg. Take two tabs every 4 hours as needed for pain.

“You know taking painkillers isn’t a crime?” Tita whispered.

“But taking them so you can climb a big hill and kill Otto is,” I whispered.

Booth turned around. “What are you doing?”

“Er—nothing, I’m not doing anything, right, Tita?” I said. “Er—we’re just discussing strategy. I have lots of ideas about how to eat the most wings.”

Judging by the look on his face, he thought that hilarious. “My win is in the bag,” he said.

The time was right to prod him for answers. “Funny the company Leland was keeping.” I watched his eyes for a reaction. “On second thought, it’s probably not that funny to you, Happy Hye being arrested. Leland, too. Curious mix. Does it make you jealous, maybe?”

Tita leaned in. “The boss was arrested?”

I gave her a sidelong look. “A couple hours ago.”

“You’re out of your damn mind if you think any of that bothers me,” Booth said. “Common mistake, married folks messing in each other’s enterprises. Happy Hye and I have a good thing going, see. It pays the bills.”

I gaped at him in shock. “You two are married?”

“Five long years,” he said. “Don’t tell me you thought I was her pimp.”

My mouth was still open.

“Pretty clear that’s exactly what she thought,” Tita said.

Booth’s companion came up behind us. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

I started, my elbow slipping from where it rested on the table, and knocking over the bottle of painkillers. When I scrambled to pick it up, the top popped off, and I got a whiff of a familiar, yet unidentifiable nasty smell. I started to ask about it when Booth bolted up.

“Who was on the phone?” he asked her.

“Don’t start, not here,” his female friend said. “Calm down.”

He grinned sickly. “Go on, then. Convince me, baby. Every second counts.”

There came a pause as her face stiffened. Then she rose on her tippy-toes, and dutifully, slightly theatrically, she kissed his cheek.

“See, was that so hard?” he asked.

“Don’t look so smug,” she said, bristling.

“Like it or not, pleasing me is the key to everything, see.”

She looked down and saw me watching. “Who are you?”

She laid on the tough girl act so thick I was tempted to say
Xena: Warrior Princess
but knew I couldn’t pull it off with a straight face. “Rylie Keyes,” I said. “I work with Booth.”

“No kidding?” But after Booth whispered in her ear, she added with a suggestive shake of her ass, “I work with Booth, too, if you get my drift.”

Booth grinned, his jowls aquiver. “She gets your meaning, Queenie. Don’t you, Rylie?”

I wanted to gag in my hand, but decided this Queenie would likely slap me to high heaven. “Congratulations,” I said instead.

She stared at me with a highly stubborn glare. I had the impression I had seen her before, not because of her face so much as her eyes. They were oval, angled, and hung for dear life from her perfectly bowed brows. French poets would call her
le beau ideal
. French painters’
création d’Art.
No matter the language, she was drop-dead gorgeous and by standing next to her, I was reduced to primordial pond scum.

“Congratulations,” I said again, though I knew full well she had heard me the first time.