"She might be right,” I said. I glanced toward the nurses station and caught Carita’s eye. She gave me an apprehensive look and turned away. How much did she guess about the topic of our conversation? "Sony,” I said. "Looks like you’re in a real pickle. One of those damned if you do and damned if you don’t situations.”
Joyce gave me a pleading look. "You can’t. . . well, do a little detective work for us? It might not be too hard to find out whether Carita has been spending money she can’t have earned, or if somebody has seen her wearing some of the other jewelry that was taken. Or maybe you could poke around and find out who the thief really is.”
"Really, I don’t think — ” I began, but Joyce put her hand on my arm.
"Don’t say no, China. You’re perfect for the job. You’re here at the Manor every day, and you know most of our staff.”
I shook my head. "I’m sorry. I’d like to help you, Joyce, but McQuaid and I are going through a difficult period. His injury has been hard on us, and we’re trying to get on with our lives. Everything is. so complicated just now— so many things mixed up together. I just can’t take on another project.”
"I was afraid you’d say that.” Joyce gave me a small smile. "But I do understand. I know things must be tough for you and Mike just now. Can you suggest somebody else? Unfortunately, it would have to be somebody who knows us—somebody who’s here pretty regularly.”
I was shaking my head when suddenly I had an idea.
"Actually, I might know somebody who could help, if you can give me a day or so to check it out.”
Joyce’s face brightened. "That’s great!” she exclaimed. “Who are you thinking of?”
"I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” I stood up. I didn’t want to raise Joyce’s hopes before I got an answer to my question. But if I were looking for a sharp-eyed person to do some undercover snooping into a tricky situation at the Manor, I knew exactly who I’d ask.
Edna Lund.
Chapter Six
You can always judge a town by the quality of its chili.
Will Rogers
Judging is the most dangerous part of a chili cookoff.
D. Lee McCullough
Chili Monthly, September 1984
Before you can understand what happens next, you have to know something about a Texas chili cookoff, which is nothing like the Pillsbury Bakeoff. In fact, it’s not like any competition you’ve ever witnessed—except, maybe, for mud wrestling or rattlesnake sacking. It’s more like a tailgate party in the parking lot prior to the UT-O.U game, or the Oatmeal Festival in Bertram, Texas, where an airplane dumps flakes of instant oatmeal on the spectators. This is the Lone Star State, where chili was invented. If you take your chili straight, you’d better take your chili somewhere else. As to exactly who in Texas actually came up with the dish, and when, there is a certain amount of disagreement. One theory pins it on the cowboys of the 1840s, who pounded together dried beef, beef fat, dried chile peppers, and salt into something like pemmican, which could later be hauled out of the saddle bag and boiled with whatever liquid was handy. Another suggests that the first chili chefs appeared in the 1850s, when the gaily dressed San Antonio chili queens set up their simmering pots over mes- quite fires in the Plaza de Armas, hanging colored lanterns over their oilcloth-covered tables. Joe Cooper, author of With or Without Beans, thinks that the chili queens were predated by the Mexican lavanderao who washed the Republic of Texas’s dirty socks and made extra money by turning their laundry buckets into chili pots when it came time for the soldiers to eat.
Scholars may argue about the origin of chili, but there’s no disagreement as to why this dish is so popular. What does the trick is the chile pepper—the herb with an attitude. Dive into a bowl of red (as chili is familiarly known in Texas) and in a couple of minutes you 11 know what I’m talking about.
Mucho pain.
Your eyes will be tearing, your nose will be running, and your tongue will be on fire. But your sinuses and even your lungs will start clearing, courtesy of the chile’s capsaicin (a natural decongestant) and you will have swallowed a good dose of vitamin C, beta-carotene, and quercetin, which is thought to lower cancer risk. A minute or two more, and you 11 be feeling no pain at all—well, almost none. The capsaicin will have stimulated the production of endorphins, those friendly neurochemicals associated with a runner’s high, and you’ll smile happily while you dab away the tears. A cheap, healthy thrill. What more can you ask from a basic bowl of stew?
The first chili cookoff is legendary, pure Texas, the stuff of a chilehead’s dreams. It was held in 1967, in a ghost town called Terlingua, once the site of mercury mines. Terlingua doesn’t have much to recommend it but a few dust devils, a whole lot of short-tempered scorpions, and a wide-angle view of the Big Bend, off to the south. It was a good place to hold a cookoff because there weren’t any law enforcement types in the immediate vicinity. Actually, there wasn’t much of anything in the immediate vicinity, and the original contestants were encouraged to pack such survival items as a bottle of tequila, a shaker of salt, tarantula repellent, and a Terlingua first aid kit—a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bullet. Terlingua was, and is, one of the hotter hot spots in the entire United States. It was a fitting place for a bunch of good ol’ chileheads to stoke up the chili-cookin’ fires, uncork the tequila, and watch the world’s biggest moon float across the world’s biggest sky.
The fires of chili enthusiasm continue to burn hot in the hearts of Texans, and some sort of cookoff takes place here nearly every weekend between February and November. The last three decades have seen the flowering of the Chilympiad (in San Marcos), the Czhilispiel (in Fla- tonia), and the Howdy Roo (in Marble Falls), as well as the Cathedral Mountain Chili Cookoff and Easter Egg Hunt with Sunrise Services, the Caliente Classic, and the Fireant Chili Festival. Not to mention magazines—Chili Pepper is the current favorite of most chileheads—and the dozens of hot web sites on the Internet.
Now, all of this may strike you as a bit over the top, but it’s the environment in which the Cedar Choppers Chili Cookoff has flourished since 1979. The cookoff itself is not as big as the Chilympiad in nearby San Marcos and not nearly as raunchy as Terlingua—after all, JuneFest is a family celebration, and Pecan Springs believes in family values. Still, the CCCC has a certain elemental rowdiness. Older residents, Methodists, and Baptists often skip the event, preferring to attend Friday night’s crowning of Miss Pecan Springs and her court, the Saturday morning parade down LBJ Boulevard and around the courthouse
square, and the traditional Saturday afternoon contests in Pecan Park: the lawnmower and wheelbarrow races, the horseshoe pitching tournament, the tortilla and cow pie toss, the rubber duck race. Of course, those who are interested in culture can stroll over to the Myrtle Masters Library and take in the exhibit on German Texas history (Pecan Springs was settled by German emigrants in the 1850s), or drop by the Myra Menyweather Herb Guild House and admire the gardens (especially the salvias and the yarrows, which put on quite a show in early June). The bored can listen to the Wilhelm Toepperwein Polka Band or the Freitag Fiddlin’ Family (Mom and Dad, seven children, two cousins, and a nephew); and of course, watch the Chili Showmanship competition, which goes on for a couple of hours during the cookoff and consists of grown men making utter fools of themselves, to the chagrin of their spouses and the delight of everybody else. The hungry (and too faint-hearted to brave the chili booths) may sample the Kiwanis Club’s bratwurst and sauerkraut; the Lions’ barbecued brisket and funnel cakes; the Can-Do Club’s fajitas, flautas, and curly fries; and the high school cheerleading team’s Chocolate Covered Fruit.
But while Pecan Springs may be intent on celebrating its multicultural heritage, there is a certain contingent for whom the chili cookoff is the main attraction—in fact, the only attraction. This is the local pod of the Chili Appreciation Society, known as the Heart of Texas (HOT) Honchos. The HOT Honchos spend the week prior to the event building chili stands in the empty field
across the river from the park, stringing extension cords, setting up the judging procedures, and bullying their children into working as parking lot attendants. For the past couple of years, the HOT Honchos (a male enclave) have been joined by two sister groups: the Salsa Queens, who sponsor the Hotter the Better Salsa Challenge; and the Cali- ente Cooks, who sponsor the Sweet Heat. Both of these cookoffs are open to men as well, just to show how generous the women are.
Thyme and Seasons is only a stone's throw from the square, and we’re always busy on JuneFest weekend. This year, however, Laurel was taking care of the shop. I was McQuaid’s official wheelchair pusher, and anyway, I was on assignment for the Enterprise. For my first Home and Garden page, Hark had put me in charge of collecting recipes from the winners of all three cookoffs. This would not be a piece of cake. Most cooks prefer to keep their recipes to themselves, or they’ve had too many longnecks and can’t remember where they parked the pickup, much less how much of what went into the chili pot. Lore has it that most cooks don’t know what went into the chili unless something turns up missing. (Cartoon: A cook asks his helper if he’s seen the fuel for the cookstove. “Over there by the dog,” the helper replies. The cook glances around. "Where’s the dog?” They both peer into the chili pot and groan.)
But Hark wanted recipes, and I wasn’t about to disappoint my new boss in my first big assignment. If I couldn’t get them from the cooks, I’d pull some from my files or get them from Diana Finlay, Features editor at the San Marcos Daily Record. Diana, whose husband, Kent, wrote the National Chili Anthem ("If You Know Beans About Chili, You Know That Chili Has No Beans”) used to edit the Chili Monthly. It folded back in the mid-eighties, but copies should be around somewhere—in Diana’s barn, probably. As I remembered, the magazine was full of great straightforward, no-nonsense chili recipes—real Texas chili, which is never gussied up with avocado, nuts, lime wedges, olives, cheese, or yogurt.
• • •
The Manor’s van is available for residents’ use, and at eleven on Saturday morning, I drove McQuaid to Pecan Park. We had not spent any time alone together since our argument over Brian’s summer plans and I was determined that today—McQuaid’s first public outing—was going to be a good one. I chattered gaily about the weather and the upcoming cookoff. McQuaid was morose.
“I feel like a freak at a sideshow,” he muttered as the van’s lift deposited him and his wheelchair on the ground. “Everybody’s staring. They’re feeling sorry for me.”
“Bullfeathers,” I said cheerfully, hooking my straw tote bag over the handles of his chair. “There are nothing but freaks at this sideshow. What makes you think you’re anything special?”
McQuaid looked around. Maybe it’s the smell of spicy chili sweetened by burning mesquite or the sight of fifty- plus teams of hairy-legged guys wearing shirts with such cerebral slogans as DEATH BY HABANERO and I've GOT TH E HOTS FOR YOU, BABE. Whatever it is, there’s something about a chili cookoff that has the power to transform even the gloomiest man into a fire-breathing, rip snorting macho male. McQuaid was no exception, and the transformation from invalid to I’m-in-charge-here was immediate and interesting.
He pulled himself up straight in his chair and yanked the bill of his red cap down over his nose. "Shut up and push, Bayles,” he growled. “It’s time to get this show on the road.”
"Push where?” I asked, looking around. We were standing on the outskirts of what looked like a five-acre hobo jungle, littered with cook tents, campers, lawn chMrs., and Igloo coolers. Everywhere were little huddles of men with two-day beards, dressed in ragged blue-jean cutoffs and cowboy boots. They were hunched like Chuckwagon Charlies over camp stoves, barbeque pits, and open fires, stirring the contents of fire-blackened Dutch ovens, the bottom half of rusty oil drums, olive- drab ammo cans, copper washboilers, and cast-iron kettles suspended from crooked tripods. The billowing smoke could probably be seen as far away as Dallas, and the hot air was redolent with the sweet-sour twang of local heroes George Strait, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Gary P. Nunn. It was Willie’s picnic, Saturday night at the Gruene Dance Hall, and hamburgers at Dirty Martin’s after the Rice blowout—all dumped into one crusty black iron pot, seasoned with serranos and habaneros, and cooked long and slow over a mesquite-and- dried-cow-pie fire under a blazing Texas sun.
"Where?” I repeated.
“Over there, on the other side of the porta-potties, past the EMS station.” McQuaid pointed. "See that Honcho flag flying? That’s the judging tent.” He raised his arm, back in the saddle now, and enjoying it. “Mush, you husky! Home with the armadillos!”
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that this was what I had wished for when I had left McQuaid lying on his back, staring dismally up at the ceiling. I mushed, shoving the wheelchair over the gravel as McQuaid smiled and waved to friends, exchanging greetings with people he hadn’t seen since before the shooting. Somebody stuck a beer bottle in his hand and somebody else gave him a corn-dog on a stick, and he alternately swigged and munched while I kept pushing. He looked happy for the first time since February.
"Hey, Mike, glad t’ see ya, ol’ buddy.”
Jerry Jeff Cody was sun-flushed, sweating, and heavily handsome in khaki shorts and a red T-shirt that boasted the HOTTER THE BETTER, HONEY. He shifted a Coors from one hand to the other, giving me a dismissive glance and McQuaid’s shoulder a solicitous pat. "C’n she handle that chair, fella, or you want me t’ hunt up somebody with a little more muscle?"
McQuaid intercepted my snarl with a good-natured chuckle. "Believe China can handle it, ol’ buddy. She’s used to tryin’ to push me around.”
"Yeah. Ain’t they all?” Jerry Jeff's smile went crooked. He paused, breathing heavily, and I could smell the beer from where I stood. "Say, M’Quaid, I need some advice. I’ve got this problem, y’see, an’ you’re an ex-cop. You could tell me what I ought to — ”
"JJ, I want to talk to you.”
The woman who had interrupted him was wearing the shortest of white shorts and the briefest of red halters. The earrings that dangled from her pretty ears were silver chile peppers, and a matching chile pepper nestled deep in her cleavage. She was blond, beautiful—and madder than a boiled squirrel.
Jerry Jeff frowned at her.
"Did you hear me, JJ?” Roxanne Cody demanded in a shrill, petulant voice. "I said we got things to talk about.” She didn’t even glance at McQuaid or me. In his wheelchair, he was probably below her line of sight, while the gray streak in my hair made me an older woman. The pair of us, a cripple and a crone, might as well have been invisible, for all the notice she took.
Jerry Jeff cleared his throat. "You wanna have a conversation, Roxie, you go see Charlie Lipman. I’m payin’ him good money to talk to you.”
Roxanne smiled, her lips like ripe habaneras. "You bet I’m talking to Charlie, sweetheart.” Her voice dripped acid honey. “I been thinking ’bout what I found out last night, and I’ve decided that it throws a whole different light on our agreement.” She reached up, touched a red, saber-length fingernail to the tip of his nose and pushed, as if she were punching a button. “You tell that lawyer of yours that we’re goin’ back to square one on that measly little settlement you proposed. When we’re finished, it’s gonna be a whole lot bigger and richer and sweeter. Do you hear?”
Jerry Jeff stepped back, pale under his sun-flush. “Just a damn minute, Roxanne. You’ve already signed — ”
“Have I?” Roxanne smiled sweetly. “But you wouldn’t want me to go into court and tell the judge just how much income you failed to disclose, now, would you? I bet the first phone call you’d get would be from your friends at the IRS, wantin' their cut, plus penalties and interest. So you’d better tell Charlie Lipman that we’ve got ourselves a whole new ball game, and Roxie-baby’s in charge of the rule book.” Her voice hardened. "And while you’re at it, you tell that little sexpot Felicia Travis to unpack her lace nighties. There’s riot going to be any around-the-world
honeymoon cruise. When I get through with you, you’ll be lucky if you’ve got enough left to get the two of you to Terlingua and back.” With that parting shot, she sashayed away, hips swinging. Jerry Jeff stared after her, his jaw working. There was a tic in the corner of his eye, and I almost felt sorry for him. Almost, but not quite.
McQuaid chuckled dryly. “Yeah, ol’ buddy. You got dome problem.” He glanced up at me, and I could read a quick affection in his look. Compared with the two of them, we were almost normal. "We’d better get over to the judging tent, China. It’s almost noon.”
"Roxanne?” With an effort, Jerry Jeff refocused his eyes on us. “Hell, she’s not my problem.”
“Oh, yeah?" McQuaid said. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Jerry Jeff tried to laugh, but couldn’t pull it off. "Yeah. Well, I’ve got a mess there, that’s for sure. I’ve been thinkin’ maybe the best way out is a hired gun. But that’s not what’s on my mind. Mike, buddy, I need some help."
McQuaid shifted in his chair. “Doesn’t everybody?”
Jerry Jeff had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Listen, you used to be a cop. I need your advice.”
“I’m retired.” McQuaid looked down at the chair, and the good humor went out of his voice. "In more ways than one.”
"Yeah, I know, but—” JJ stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Listen, Mike, this is serious. Somebody is threatening me.”
"No shit.” McQuaid all but snorted. “What do you expect, Jer? I saw that look on her face. And to tell the truth, I don’t blame her for being fed up. For Pete’s sake, JJ, Felicia Travis can’t be more than seventeen.”
"Eighteen,” Jerry Jeff said. "Listen, it’s not Roxanne who’s got it in for me.”
“Who, then?”
Jerry Jeff suddenly remembered I was there. “After the judging,” he said. “I’ll buy you a beer and we can talk, alone. Okay?”
“Ask me later,” McQuaid said. “I may not be able to talk after I’ve poured a gallon or two of the world’s hottest chili down my throat. Come on, China. Get those dogies moving.”
Chile Death Page 8
