Red Hot Deadly Peppers (4 page)

Chapter Five

“Chester!” Nera exclaimed as the biggest, most orange cat I’d ever seen bounded out of the house and directly into Nera’s arms. While most cats have some sort of meow, this one let out a deep and painful cry that made me think it was probably either about to pass out or die.

“It’s okay, boy,” Nera said as she comforted the creature, which had surely been rescued from an African safari.

The cat didn’t pass out or die, but quickly melted his large body into Nera’s, one hefty back leg slowly relaxing into a hanging position over her forearm.

“This is Chester. He must have been locked in there. Annabelle”—she nodded toward the house with the old woman—“said that she hadn’t seen Graham in a number of days. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about him yet. Poor Chester, though. I’ll take him to my place later, but he probably needs to prowl a little. Here you go. Go do your thing.” Nera set the beast on the ground. He wrapped himself around her legs in one figure-eight movement and then took off to “do his thing.”

“That’s the biggest cat I’ve ever seen,” I said.

“You should have seen his mother. She was enormous. Come on, I think I know what the smell is, but I need to find out for sure.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Something’s gone bad in there. If Graham hasn’t been home, I guess it could be a number of things. I hear the generator, but maybe it was out for a while. Chester’s pretty active, and I’ve seen him open the refrigerator when he gets hungry.”

“Seems reasonable,” I said, though I think I was trying to convince myself more than agree with her assessment. I hadn’t seen any opposable thumbs, but Chester probably could have opened a fridge door with a solid nudge of his head, or a good hip check.

“Hold your nose a second. I’ll open some windows and turn on a fan. If it’s what I think it is, it’s wicked but it’ll clear out quickly,” Nera said before she disappeared into the house.

I took a deep breath, but it was to tell her I thought we should wait for Harry. She moved too quickly, though, so instead I pinched my nose closed and stepped reluctantly toward the door. After a few more moments’ hesitation, I finally crossed the threshold.

Most of the inside of the small front room was tidy; in fact, it seemed too tidy. The old couch cushions were slightly worn but in perfect position and fluffed just right. Rarely did my own couch cushions not show some sort of indentation or an “off” cushion. The matching chair, again old and slightly worn, was just as precise. A crocheted throw was draped over the back of the chair. It, too, was meticulously folded and neat. The coffee table in front of the couch had nothing on it, including dust if my assessment was correct. It was a polished dark wood that beckoned to me to touch it. I ignored it. I thought I should maybe try not to leave fingerprints.

Just off the front room was a small dining area that probably led to a small kitchen, though I couldn’t see it from where I stood.

The dining table contrasted with the front room in that it was such a mess, I couldn’t immediately decipher what was on it.

Nera opened windows and pulled out a fan from the area I thought was the kitchen. She seemed to be breathing through her nose. I experimented, but the air was still polluted and foul.

“What’s the smell?” I said.

“This,” Nera said as she pointed to something on the table. “Well, I think that’s what it is.”

She picked up a small jar that was full of an orange-ish liquid and small pieces of something.

“The smell is coming from that small thing?”

“I think so. Have you ever steamed broccoli and then forgotten to clean the pot, left the water in it? In a couple days, that small amount of water can totally stink up an entire house.”

“I’ve never done that,” I said, but I wasn’t being judgmental. “That’s broccoli water?”

“Not exactly.” Nera lifted the jar and inspected the table. “This is old peppers in alcohol, very stinky stuff if left alone. There’s more than one. Here, help me get these outside. I’d just dump them, but something tells me I shouldn’t.”

We gathered six of the small jars and carried them out the front door. We set them on the ground next to one of the cactuses, and I inhaled three big gulps of fresh air before following Nera back into the house.

She’d picked up the fan and was aiming it to circulate the air toward the open windows. She was careful with her aim and tried not to disturb the items on the table. A few moments later she sniffed purposefully.

“I think it’s getting better,” she said.

I sniffed, too, albeit tentatively. It wasn’t all the way fresh, but it was most definitely better. I might be able to stand it in another few minutes.

“Poor Chester,” I said.

“Yeah, that had to be awful, cooped up in here,” Nera said, her voice thoughtful and distant. “I have no idea where Graham has been staying, but it’s weird that he left his house like this with Chester inside, and for several days, if Annabelle’s recollection is correct.”

I stepped toward the table and inspected. A bottle of alcohol was on its side but with its lid firmly in place. Other small jars stood nearby, all empty, but a few seemed to have hard-water stains on their insides. There were also three potted pepper plants on the table, as well as a number of loose peppers scattered about. Even if I hadn’t just arrived in Arizona and worked next to a booth of pepper farmers and Nera hadn’t tried to explain the Scoville scale to me earlier, I would have known I was looking at habanero peppers—as far as I knew, the hottest of all the easily available peppers.

I saw knives, tweezers, and string, and the entire table was covered in a decent-sized layer of dirt—potting soil, I assumed.

“What’s all this?”

Nera put her hands on her hips and glanced over the table before she laughed sadly. “It was something my uncle started. Graham must have been trying to continue his experiments, but he didn’t have Jimmy’s brains or drive. He was—they were trying to create a hybrid, a hotter pepper.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Remember our earlier conversation about pepper heat and capsaicin?”

“Yes. Actually I think I’ve seen a commercial for something with that name. It’s a cream that helps relieve pain in joints, I think. Maybe muscle pain too.”

“That’s correct, but they named the product after the stuff in the peppers.”

“Okay.” The air was almost all the way fresh, and I was relieved to breathe easier.

“Have you ever tried any of the cream?” Nera asked.

“No.”

“Well, it’s the capsaicin in the cream that’s the miracle for many people. It really does alleviate pain for some who have been suffering, particularly people with arthritis. But it can burn like crazy, too. I tried it, and all it did was make my skin feel like it was on fire. It discolored my skin a little, too, but only temporarily.”

“Harry asked me what I might have gotten on my cheek,” I said as I reached to the spot. “There was a red spot that burned a little.”

Nera stepped forward and turned my shoulders enough that she could use the light from a window to look at my cheek.

“I don’t see it,” she said.

“It doesn’t burn. Maybe it’s gone. He said to put some vegetable oil on it to see if it helped. I haven’t had time, and I kind of forgot about it.”

“He must have thought it was a pepper burn. Vegetable oil helps. Did he think Graham got some on you?”

“He must have. He wondered if I saw any markings on Graham’s skin, but I didn’t—or maybe I didn’t know what to look for.”

“Graham probably worked with these peppers all the time. He must have had some on him.”

“Except that he hasn’t been here in few days, according to Annabelle at least,” I said.

“True.” Nera peered at the table, her eyes scanning all the items. I didn’t know if she was looking for something in particular or just digesting what was there. “You know, there’s this whole ‘hot pepper’ culture.”

“Like the boys—Cole and Brad?”

“Exactly. There are clubs, contests, blogs. It’s quite the thing.”

“Why were Jimmy and Graham so interested in making them hotter? For the contests? It seems like more of a . . . I don’t know, obsession, than a hobby or any sort of scientific experimentation.”

Nera looked up at me, and her eyes clicked back to the moment at hand. “Jimmy was working on it to create his own medicine, his own cream, I guess. The cream that burns me—and you, too, it looks like—saved him from some horrible pain. He was arthritic, and without the cream he couldn’t move. He started making his own but wanted to up the heat. He had dreams of having his own business. Come with me.” Nera turned and stepped quickly away.

I followed her through the area I had correctly predicted was the kitchen. Again, in contrast to the dining table, the kitchen was mostly tidy. There were two plates in the sink, but they didn’t look dirty. Even the two visible dish towels were folded and fanned nicely through handles on two drawers. The kitchen was old, though, old and yellow. The cabinets were a sunny yellow, the countertops a pale yellow, and the floor a white linoleum dotted with flecks of goldish yellow. The room was so dated and clean that it was actually charming and kind of cozy now that the smell had mostly dissipated. I could picture baking cookies or making a cup of tea as I tried not to dirty the brightly clean dish towels.

Nera pushed open the back door, and I continued to follow her through. The backyard was desert, too, and as unfertile as the front, but it held an interesting surprise. Only a few steps from the back door and perfectly hidden from the front of the house was a small greenhouse. Nera pulled open the door, and we stepped inside. If I thought it was hot outside, I imagined we might certainly melt in the stuffy greenhouse. We were cramped by the two rows of shelves that hung from three walls.

There were so many pepper plants in the space that my eyes started to water from the hot fumes.

“This is a mess. Jimmy would never have allowed his peppers to look like this,” Nera said. Her eyes were watering, too.

I could take only so much, so I stepped back out of the greenhouse and gave her room to do the same. I’d been inside it long enough to notice that the plants seemed to be neither cared for nor well groomed. Some peppers looked to have been cut up, some crushed.

I sniffed. My nose was running, and my hair and clothes were once again stuck to me from all the heat. Despite what I deemed an important search and a serious moment, I suddenly wanted nothing more than to take a shower and perhaps sit in a tub of ice for a while, but I felt like I had to contribute something helpful.

“It looks like exactly what you said, Nera. It looks like Jimmy’s experimentations were Graham’s annoyances. None of this might have anything whatsoever to do with their deaths.” I sniffed again and resisted the urge to wipe my nose on my arm.

“But where has he been?” she added.

“Girlfriend?”

Nera shook her head. The sound of a truck engine and tires over the dirt road and driveway pulled us back through the house and out the front. As we ventured through, I noticed that the smell was gone, replaced now by warmish but at least fresh air. And the warmish air was cooler than the outside air. I actually hesitated stepping through the front doorway again, but the look on Harry’s face wasn’t one I could ignore.

He turned off the truck and stepped out, taking his cowboy hat off as he did. His gesture wasn’t so much polite as apologetic. He had something he needed to tell us, some news he wished he didn’t have to share.

“Nera, Becca,” he said.

“Something’s wrong. What’s happened, Harry?” Nera asked.

“I got the COD, the cause of death for Graham,” he said as he pinched the brim of his hat.

“Was he killed?” Nera asked.

“Maybe. It could have been an accident, but . . . well, there’s more.”

“What?” Nera said, the patience gone from her voice.

“He died of anaphylactic shock.”

“He had an allergic reaction to something?” I said when Nera didn’t respond. Instead, she put her hands over her mouth and her eyes opened wide. I continued. “What was he allergic to? Wait, wouldn’t he have shown symptoms like being unable to breathe? Wouldn’t someone have noticed that?”

Nera’s teary eyes looked at me as she shook her head. “He was at the trading post early.” A tear fell down her cheek. “He was in there alone for a long time. You must have been the first person to even spot him.”

“He was allergic to only one thing. The coroner thinks it was that one thing that killed him,” Harry said.

“What?” I asked.

“Graham was allergic to pecans, pecan oil specifically,” Harry replied in an even deeper, more apologetic tone.

Oh no
, rang through my head.

“The police want to talk to you, Nera. I didn’t tell them where you were. You can . . . well, get out of here until all this blows over if you want,” Harry said.

I didn’t say anything for a few long moments. I didn’t think that Nera and Harry were family, but I understood his motivation for saying what he’d said. When you care enough for someone, you immediately sense they aren’t guilty of some horrible crime. It seems like your duty—in a manner of speaking—to make sure they are protected.

Again, I was about to disappoint a bunch of people back home, but sometimes, no matter how dangerous or how totally wrong it may seem, a girl just has to go with her gut.

“I’ll go with you. I can even drive,” I said.

Chapter Six

There’s nothing like a little common conspiracy to run from the law to solidify a friendship. Though she appreciated my gesture and though Harry pretended not to hear what I’d said, Nera declined my offer.

After we showed Harry around the house and explained to him that we’d found it locked and with no sign that Graham had been there recently, Nera left to go to the police station and answer whatever questions they had. She said that unless she was detained for some reason, she’d call Harry and me when she got home later that afternoon.

She was distraught about the way Graham had died. Both she and he knew about his allergy. They’d always been careful to keep anything that might be contaminated by her pecans far from him. He’d never even been to her farm, but I sensed there was more to that story than just his allergy. Even though he would have had to ingest the pecans to suffer any sort of reaction, they didn’t risk it. He never ate
anything
she cooked in her kitchen just to be safe. She claimed that he always carried an epinephrine shot with him because they used to joke that “hers weren’t the only pecans on the planet, and you just never knew when things could get nutty.”

When she’d first arranged the partnership with the trading post, she and Graham had made sure the other vendors were well aware of the allergy. Nera was also pretty sure that Graham showed everyone where he kept his epinephrine shots so they could administer one if they thought it was necessary. They took lots of precautionary measures. Even though he would have to ingest the pecans to set off a reaction, it just seemed like the right way to handle it.

As horrible as she felt about the way Graham had died, I guessed that she felt even worse about the words she’d had for him right before she sent me into the trading post. I wanted to somehow comfort her, but it was all too weird. I didn’t know these people, and they didn’t know me. I wasn’t sure whether the bond I felt with Nera was reciprocated, so I offered my condolences again and told her I’d look forward to her call. I was relieved she didn’t want to run away. I’d regretted my offer of helping her immediately after I’d voiced it.

Harry and I followed her truck down the dirt driveway, the dirt road, and then onto the two-lane highway that was much busier than any two-lane state highway around Monson.

“We’re not the best hosts,” Harry said, echoing a comment Nera had made earlier, as he steered his truck down the impossibly straight road.

“It’s okay. Believe it or not, I’ve seen a dead body or two. My . . .” Considering I’d recently accosted Sam with a kiss, I wasn’t sure what to call him. “I’m . . . friends with a police officer at home. He and I have had some crazy moments together.”

“Really?” Harry said.

I told Harry about the recent murders in my small patch of the world. Since he was a private investigator, his interest was genuine. I asked him questions, too, about his own work. We talked about background searches, interview techniques, and proper surveillance methods. It was my first conversation with a real private investigator, and we arrived at the Roadside Motel way too soon. I hoped for another opportunity to ask him more questions about what he did and how he did it.

The Roadside Motel was a small establishment situated along the highway somewhere between Nera’s farm and the farmers’ market stalls at the trading post. It reminded me of the Bates’ place from
Psycho
, but the owners were a young couple, and their living space wasn’t an old Victorian perched high on a hill. They had a small, modern one-story house behind the motel.

Harry stuck his arm out the window and waved good-bye as his truck tires stirred up a giant dust cloud and he left me in the parking lot. So far, even though I thought Arizona was beautiful, stark in some places, surprisingly colorful in others, the two characteristics that stuck out the most were the heat, of course, and the
dust
; there certainly was a lot more dust in Arizona than in South Carolina.

Nera had said that I wouldn’t need to rent a car, that she’d be able to get me to and from the trading post, and that when I wasn’t there or at the motel I’d probably be with her at her farm or running errands. Of course, she hadn’t planned on needing to stop by the police station to be interviewed regarding her cousin’s death.

I suddenly wished I hadn’t listened to her and had rented a car. I didn’t like being without my own transportation even under the best of circumstances, and the fact that I was now stuck out in the middle of nowhere without my own wheels only underscored that conviction.

But there was one thing I could do. Shower.

I took the most glorious one I’d ever taken. I’d never been so grateful for soap, shampoo, and cold water in my life. Once I was squeaky clean and dressed in fresh short overalls, I had no interest in just sitting in my room watching television, and I hadn’t even thought to bring a book.

I ventured back out to the motel’s parking lot and surveyed my surroundings. There were no other businesses, no parks, not even a tree to climb for as far as the eye could see. I knew the motel was about fifteen minutes away from the trading post in one direction, and about five or ten minutes from Nera’s farm in the other. I had no idea what elements of civilization lay between here and either of those “theres.”

It looked like the vending machine might be my only entertainment. I took a step toward the modern machine, but was diverted by the wife half of the motel’s ownership. The laundry facility was located in the middle of the row of rooms. The woman, her short brown hair pulled back from her face with a scarf, exited the front office pushing a cart overflowing with white sheets.

I hurried toward her and the laundry room and opened the door for her.

“Thank you, Ms. Robins,” she said, her southern accent stronger and deeper than that of anyone I knew in South Carolina.

“It’s Becca,” I said. “No problem.” I pushed the door wide as she maneuvered the cart into the small room, where two industrial-sized washing machines and dryers awaited her.

“Becca.” She nodded. “Thank you kindly.”

I followed her and the cart into the small room. She looked at me with raised eyebrows but then smiled. “Can I help you with something?”

“I guess I was wondering if you needed some help.”

She blinked and the smile faded. “You going to have trouble paying your bill or something?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.” I laughed lightly. “I don’t have anything to do. I thought I’d be busy with things, but . . . well, the people I was supposed to do those things with have other things to do. I don’t have a car, I didn’t bring a book, and I don’t want to watch television.”

The smile returned, and she thought for a beat or two. “Well, sure, I suppose. I just need to get these loaded into that washer, and that dryer’s about to buzz. Those sheets need folding.”

“Sounds like things I’m very qualified to do.”

While loading and then folding sheets, I learned that the woman’s name was Amy and her husband’s name was Nathan. They’d come to Arizona from Georgia a year earlier when they’d purchased the motel for a price that seemed almost too good to be true. Thus far, they’d been able to make a decent living, and they didn’t see that stopping any time soon, though they worked hard for their money—from way before sunup to long after sundown.

“But we’re young; we can handle it,” Amy said cheerily as she folded a sheet in record time.

“There’s something wonderful about having your own business, no matter how hard you have to work, isn’t there?”

“Yes, and it’s what both Nathan and I wanted. Actually, we’re surprised at how many local businesses we have close by. The farming community over that direction—oh, of course you know all about that. That’s why you’re visiting.” Amy laughed.

“I haven’t seen one farm, yet,” I said. “I think that was originally on my list of things to do today.”

“What happened?”

I realized that although Amy was a local resident, her early-to-late work schedule meant she probably didn’t have a lot of time to listen to local radio or television news.

“Oh. Uh, well, someone who worked at the trading post died today,” I said, wishing I had some way of softening the blow of such news.

She stopped folding. “Who?”

“Graham.” I didn’t know his last name.

“The jewelry guy?”

“Yes.”

“No! That’s horrible. What happened?”

I gave her as many details as I had, though the sense of being a gossip washed through me. I wasn’t a fan of gossip, and I was an outsider.

“Anaphylactic shock—and he was allergic to pecans?” She repeated the details I’d just mentioned. “Wasn’t he related to Nera, the woman who owns the pecan farm? Cousins, right?”

“Yes.” I was beginning to wish we hadn’t gone down this road, but when she spoke again, I changed my mind. Suddenly, gossip didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

“Hmm, I wonder how that will go over after their recent argument.”

“You know—knew them well?”

“Oh, no. Well, kind of. We all know each other, but their yelling match from a couple weeks ago was something everyone talked about. They went to battle right in the middle of the trading post. It was right before opening, before customers arrived, so they didn’t end up in much trouble, but I’m afraid we all spent too much time talking about it.”

“What was it all about?”

“No one’s totally sure, but Nera made loud accusations that Graham was an unethical business person. Since he didn’t ask for an autopsy for his father—who would be Nera’s uncle, I suppose—she made it quite clear that she thought he might somehow be responsible for his death. I think she used the word ‘murderer.’”

I swallowed hard. “How did Graham react?”

“He actually accused her of somehow being responsible for Jimmy’s death. It was a mean, heated battle. I heard that Nera adored Jimmy; that he was like a father to her for years.” She peered out the window to the Arizona desert for a moment. “It was strange. It was something about peppers or pepper, but as much as we’ve all tried to understand what he was talking about, as far as I know, no one knows what he meant. I guess we never will now.”

Whatever Graham’s comment had been, it must have had something to do with the pepper plants he and his father were working on, but how could that have been somehow accusatory? I suddenly really, really wished I had a car. I didn’t know exactly what to look for, but I wanted to go back to Graham’s house and nose around a little more.

I thought about calling Harry. I could tell him I was going stir-crazy and I’d appreciate just hanging out with someone. I’d work up to going back to Graham’s. Two things kept me from making the call. One, I didn’t know him well enough to feel like I could impose. And two, he didn’t seem to be objective when it came to Nera. I was having my own problems with objectivity. I’d offered Nera a ride out of town and I’d based my loyalty on a barely two-days-old friendship.

There was a third reason I didn’t call Harry; it was sitting in the back of my mind, well camouflaged by my lost objectivity. I was curious, the kind of curious that kicked up its heels at the thought that if I had a vehicle at my disposal I would finish helping Amy with laundry duty and then drive away from the Roadside Motel and into the desert to try to learn the truth about what was going on. I was a sucker for a mystery; the lure of searching for clues and finding answers was almost irresistible to me. This character flaw had gotten me into trouble a few times, and I was trying to temper it at least some, learn from past mistakes. Learn not to jump so quickly into a pool where I couldn’t see the bottom where the danger usually lurked.

It was probably a good thing I didn’t have a car.

Just as I folded the last sheet and placed it on the clean stack in the cart, my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I excused myself as I squeezed around Amy and left the small room.

“Hello?”

“Becca?” the voice said. I hadn’t saved his number to my phone yet, but I was pretty sure that the caller was Harry.

“Yes. Harry?”

The next words were bits and pieces. I wasn’t sure if I was in a low-coverage area or if Harry was. The best I could understand, he said something like, “Ca . . . leese. Nera . . . don’t trust . . . at Riggers. . . . ga home.”

“Harry, we’ve got a bad connection. Where are you?”

“Pepper . . .”

“Still not getting everything. Should I call Nera?”

The line was fuzzy for a long time, but before it disconnected, I distinctly heard him—or maybe it was another male voice, I couldn’t be sure—say, “Run!”

“Harry? Harry?” I said into the quiet phone. I pulled his card out of my pocket and confirmed that he was the one who’d called, and then tried to call him back a number of times. Each time I was greeted with the fast busy signal of a phone that was either dead or out of range.

I tried Nera’s number, but it went directly to voice mail.

“Hi, Nera, it’s Becca. Could you call me as soon as possible, please? It’s urgent.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know what else to do. Where was Harry calling from? Was Nera still with the police or at home?

Should I call the police?

And tell them what? That Harry had called and we’d had a bad connection?

“Everything okay?” Amy asked as she approached me.

I’d walked out to the middle of the dirt parking area, and I probably looked lost and confused.

“Amy, I’m sorry to ask this. I know I shouldn’t, but do you have a car I could borrow?”

“We’ve just got the truck, and Nathan drove it to town. He’ll be back in an hour or so, though. We’d be happy to let you borrow it.” She shaded her eyes with her hand.

An hour suddenly felt like a hundred years.

I looked in the direction of Nera’s farm. It wasn’t far. I turned back to Amy and said, “How about a bicycle?”