Wild at Heart

by Jane Graves

  “Hey, Inez,” Stanley said. “Y’all heading over to the celebration pretty soon?”

  “Soon as we close up here, we’ll be right over.”

  As the deputy left the station, Cletus came around the counter. He was in his forties, thinning a little on top and thickening a little around the middle. He examined the tire.

  “Can you replace it?” Alex asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You have a tire in stock?”

  “Yep.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “I’ll have it done by tomorrow morning.”

  Alex felt a jolt of apprehension. “Tomorrow morning? I thought you said you had a tire.”

  “I do. It’s the rim that’s the problem.”

  “The rim is damaged?”

  “Oh, yeah. And I don’t carry this kind. Gonna have to get one from Ruston in the morning. They got a bigger stock over there.”

  “You can’t go now?”

  “Nope. The store’ll be closed by now. You folks from around here?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’d better just plan on staying the night.”

  “Staying the night?” Val said, then turned to Alex. “Uh, we have places we need to be.”

  Alex didn’t like this. Not one bit. He had no idea who might be on their trail. But it wasn’t as if they had a choice. Without a tire, they were stuck.

  “That motel next door,” he said to Cletus. “Do you know if there’s any vacancy?”

  “Me and Inez run that, too. We’re almost to capacity with the celebration and all, but we’ve got one room left.”

  Almost to capacity. Seven rooms out of eight. This guy was a regular Howard Johnson.

  “Good,” Alex said. “We’ll take it. If you can just give us a key—”

  “Sorry. Can’t.”

  “Can’t? Why not?”

  “You wouldn’t want in one of those rooms right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I set off bug bombs about thirty minutes ago.”

  “Bug bombs?” Val said.

  “Yeah,” Inez said. “We fog the rooms once every three months. If we don’t, pretty soon the vermin take over. And let me tell you—in these parts, you never want to let that happen.”

  “No kidding,” Val said suddenly. “Kill those suckers. Every last damned one of them.”

  Everyone turned to stare at Val. She gave them a sheepish look. “Sorry. Bug phobia.”

  “Hey, I don’t blame you one bit, sweetie,” Inez said. “I hate them, too. Which is why we fog every three months.”

  “But you said you’re almost at capacity,” Alex said. “Isn’t that a bad time to exterminate?”

  “Nah,” Cletus said. “It’s a perfect time. The rooms will be vacant, because everybody’ll be at the celebration. By the time they get back, the fogging will be done, and I’ll have the rooms all aired out.”

  Alex slumped with frustration. Could this experience get worse? Was there any way it could get any worse?

  Cletus pulled his cash drawer out and locked it beneath the counter, looking as if he was getting ready to close up.

  “Okay, then,” Alex said. “Can you direct us to a restaurant where we can get some dinner?”

  “Sorry. It’s closed.”

  “It’s only six-thirty.”

  “The evening part of the celebration is starting.”

  “Anyplace else we can get a bite to eat?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “At the celebration.”

  Alex felt as if he were on a merry-go-round with no way off.

  “You folks are more than welcome to come along,” Inez said.

  “No, thanks,” Alex said.

  “There’s gonna be a watermelon-seed spittin’ contest. And a chili cook-off.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “And a dance, too. Live band.”

  “No. I’m sorry. We can’t.”

  “ ’Course, some of the boys have been hunting rattlesnakes all day, and I expect they’ll be cooking those up, too.”

  “We’d love to come,” Val said.

  Alex shot her a look of disbelief. What did she say?

  “I knew the rattlesnake would get you,” Inez said with a grin. “The park is just down Cedar Street. If you’ll wait just a minute, Cletus and I will close up the station, I’ll grab my potato salad, and we’ll walk over there with you.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Val said with smile. “Thanks so much for the invitation.”

  “We’ll wait outside,” Alex said.

  He grabbed Val by the arm and dragged her out the door, then stopped short and faced her.

  “Are you out of your mind? We don’t know how widespread a net Henderson has decided to cast. Somebody might recognize us.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “That’s because you’re being careless, as usual.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m being logical.”

  Logical? Val?

  “Look, Alex. If anybody was going to recognize us, it would have been that deputy. He’d have read some kind of APB or something. But as you can see, he didn’t have a clue.”

  “Still, I don’t like the idea of getting out in the middle of a bunch of people.”

  “We’ve only been gone from Tolosa since ten-thirty this morning. What are the odds that anyone would have heard that a man and a woman are on the run who meet our description?”

  “They could have seen a Tolosa paper right after the murder and recognize me.”

  “Then they’d have to take the Tolosa paper, wouldn’t they? And have it delivered by mail. What are the odds of that? Dallas or Houston papers, maybe. Not Tolosa. And in order for them to have seen any TV reports, they’d have to pick up the local stations around Tolosa. They can’t do that out here. If by some chance they can, it means they’ve got satellite and they’re watching something a whole lot more interesting than a local news broadcast from halfway across the state. And it’s going on six-thirty already, so nobody’s going to be home watching TV tonight. They’re all going to be …”

  “At the celebration.”

  “Very good, Alex. You’re catching on.”

  “This is a bad idea.”

  “No. It’s a great idea. I’m starving. Oooh!” she said, lifting her nose and sniffing. “I can smell the barbecue from here. Can’t you?”

  “Val—”

  “Admit it, Alex. You’re just afraid that somebody’s going to make you eat rattlesnake.”

  “Val—”

  “I bet if you ask real nice, they’ll give you the rattle as a souvenir.”

  “Val!”

  He started to berate her all over again, because God knew he was totally justified in doing it. But then she did something that he considered to be a hit right below the belt.

  She smiled.

  It wasn’t just a regular smile. That he could have handled. This was different. This was a smile so broad and brilliant that it could have lit up the entire landscape of southwest Texas in the dead of night. Instead of making him want to throttle her, it made him want to smile back. And he did. Just a little.

  “Well, I’ll be darned,” she said, staring at him as if he were a scientific oddity. “Alex DeMarco really can smile.”

  “I’m not smiling.”

  “Then what is it? Gas?”

  He sighed with exasperation. “You absolutely wear me out, do you know that?”

  “Yeah,” she said, still smiling. “I know. Consider it good mental exercise.”

  Now there was an analogy. Since Val had shown back up in his life, he felt as if he’d run a mental marathon.

  “I hope you’ll at least try to have fun,” Val said.

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, fun. You say the word as if you’ve never heard it before. Don’t you ever have any of that?”

  Sure. He played pool. He went to an occasional football game, and usually in the spring somebody got
a softball team together. Had lunch with the family—well, that could go either way. But most nights he just went home alone, watched a little TV, had a beer or two, fell into bed, then woke up and did it all over again. Fun?

  He pondered that for a moment.

  No. Not really.

  Cletus and Inez came out the door and locked it behind them.

  “I guess it’d be nice if we actually introduced ourselves,” Inez said to Val. “My name’s Inez Miller, and this is my husband, Cletus.”

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” Val said. “I’m Sarah Roberts, and this is my husband, Dan.”

  Good job, Alex thought with a little bit of surprise. The simpler the names, the easier they would be to remember. He would have expected Val to come up with something slightly more difficult to deal with. Like Bonnie and Clyde.

  Ten minutes later they were walking with Inez and Cletus through the park toward a large pavilion. Barbecue pits were set up adjacent to it, and picnic tables were lined with red-checkered tablecloths. Even though the sun was nearing the horizon, the heat of the day still hung in the air, but a nice evening breeze was starting to make the temperature at least bearable.

  Stanley came up beside them. “Well, hey there, folks. I see you decided to join the celebration.”

  “Yeah,” Val said. “Smelled the barbecue and couldn’t turn it down.”

  “Don’t believe I caught y’all’s names back at Cletus’s place.”

  Val introduced them to the deputy by their phony names, and they made nice all around. Alex would have preferred not to give any names at all, even fake ones, but if they were asked, they had to respond with something.

  Then all at once a woman hurried up to Stanley. “You’d better get over to the tasting table. Nadine and Raydine are going at it.”

  “Those two ladies bickering again?”

  “More likely ready to start tossing chairs around. You remember what happened last year.”

  “And a sorry sight it was,” Stanley said. “Raydine and Nadine are sisters, but you’d never know it when it comes to the chili cook-off. One of them would stab the other in the back to get that blue ribbon. I’d best go break them up.” He sighed dramatically, shaking his head. “The things I have to deal with.”

  And that, Alex thought, was probably the extent of the things he could deal with.

  As the deputy strode toward the tasting table, the altercation got louder.

  “Because he’s your brother-in-law, that’s why!” one of the women said.

  “Are you suggesting that Odell can’t be impartial?” the other one hollered back.

  “There’s no suggesting about it!”

  They lunged for each other, and it was all Stanley could do to wedge his skinny body in between their far more substantial ones. He looked like a tiny sliver of lean turkey between two sourdough buns.

  “Now, wait just a minute!” he shouted, grasping each lady by a shoulder and shoving them apart. “Nadine! Raydine! I’m warning you! You go disturbing the peace any more, and I’m gonna have to haul you both in. You hear?”

  Big words, Alex thought, considering that if either woman chose to throw her weight around a little, she could squash the deputy like a bug.

  The two women continued to glare at each other, and the situation was clearly at an impasse. Finally Stanley looked out over the audience, focusing on Val and Alex. “Can y’all come up here for just a minute?”

  Alex and Val looked at each other.

  “I think he’s talking to us,” Val whispered.

  “Yeah, you two. These two ladies are related to just about everybody in town, so we need somebody impartial to judge this contest. You wouldn’t mind doing that, now, would you?”

  A low profile. That was what they needed to maintain. But at this rate, that was never going to happen.

  “Sorry,” Alex said. “We don’t know a thing about chili.”

  “All you have to do is taste each one and tell us which one you like best.”

  “No, thanks. We can’t.”

  “Sure you can. Eat the chili, make a decision. Simplest thing in the world.”

  Alex opened his mouth to protest again, but he couldn’t think of a really good objection. And since every pair of eyes in the pavilion had turned to them, continuing to say no would be worse than just doing it and getting it over with. And what Val had said was true. The odds of any of these people recognizing them were slim to none. He’d wager that most of them weren’t even sure they were in the twenty-first century.

  They started toward the tasting table. Val was actually smiling, as if she was looking forward to this, as if a stupid celebration in a hick town was her idea of a good time. He’d never understand her if he lived to be a hundred.

  There actually appeared to be three finalists, but from the behavior of Nadine and Raydine, apparently they were the only two who were really in the running. The deputy handed Alex a spoon. He dutifully took a big bite from the first pot and began to chew. He tasted tomatoes, beef, chili powder—the usual suspects when it came to chili. And then something strange and powerful began to happen.

  Heat. Painful heat. Blazing heat. It was as if somebody had stuffed a flamethrower in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Spitting wasn’t an option. He had to swallow.

  The concoction traveled down his throat, searing every inch of his esophagus along the way. His eyes watered, and sweat popped out on his forehead and ran down his temples. He tried his level best not to gag, but still a few coughs escaped.

  “It’s the habanero peppers that give it the kick,” Nadine said with a grin of pure delight. “Harold calls it my napalm chili. He says it’s the hottest thing this side of the jungles of Southeast Asia. He was there, you know.”

  “Yup,” a man in the audience said, who was most likely Harold. “Leaves nothing but scorched earth behind.”

  Alex took a deep, gasping breath. Somebody handed him a glass of pale green liquid on ice. He took a desperate gulp, only to jerk back, exploding in a fit of coughing.

  Holy shit. Was that a margarita? If so, he’d just poured alcohol on a five-alarm fire.

  “Weenie,” Nadine muttered. “Probably eats chili from a can.”

  Alex glanced over and found Val smiling. Grinning, actually, as if she thought this was funny. But as soon as this stuff was taking the top three layers of skin off the inside of her mouth, he was going to have the last laugh.

  “Now it’s Sarah’s turn,” he said, handing her a spoon. To his surprise, she gave him a big smile and dipped a healthy bite of chili out of the pot. Had she not noticed the smoke coming out of his ears?

  But as she started to pop the spoon into her mouth, she stopped suddenly, then turned to Nadine with a look of utter distress.

  “Oh! Now, hold on just a minute. Did you say this chili is made with habanero peppers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, darn it!” she said, dropping the spoon back into the pot with a dramatic thunk. “Wouldn’t you know it? I’m allergic to habanero peppers. Every time I eat one, my throat closes up and I get all red and I can’t breathe, and …” She sighed. “Well, let me tell you, it’s not a pretty sight.”

  Alex couldn’t believe it. She’d just described his experience perfectly, and allergies had nothing to do with it.

  “Oh, that’s such a shame, sweetie! You’re missing out on one of life’s biggest pleasures.”

  Val shook her head sadly. “I know. A life without peppers. It’s a hard cross to bear, let me tell you.” She turned to Alex with a sunny smile. “Well, Dan. Guess that means it’s all up to you now, huh?” She nodded toward the remaining two pots of chili. “One down, two to go.”

  He was going to get her for this. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know when, but she was a dead woman.

  He took a bite of Raydine’s chili, and within seconds sweat beads were forming on his sweat beads. This contest wasn’t about who could make the best chili. It was about who could do the mos
t thorough job of incinerating an intestinal tract. He managed to swallow without coughing this time, but it was a hard-won battle.

  Val turned to Raydine with a plaintive sigh. “It looks as if your recipe has habaneros in it too.”

  “Well, of course,” Raydine said proudly, then got a suspicious look on her face. “But if you think I’m telling you what else is in there, think again.”

  “Nobody gives a damn what’s in it,” Nadine muttered.

  Raydine started toward Nadine again, and while the deputy was breaking up the catfight one more time, Alex leaned over and whispered to Val, “Practical jokes are for small minds.”

  “Then call me a peabrain, but it’s still funny.”

  “Before this night is out, I’m going to force-feed you a whole bowl of this stuff. I’m going to put one knee on each of your shoulders, and it’s going down. Every bite.”

  Val grinned. “Big talk for a man who can’t handle his chili. And you didn’t do so great with the margarita, either.”

  “Margarita, my ass. It was six shots of tequila with a drop of lime juice for flavoring. Nitroglycerin doesn’t have that kind of blasting power.”

  “Okay,” the deputy said, nodding toward the third pot. “One more to go, Dan.” He looked at the ladies, who were glaring at each other like a pair of junkyard dogs. “And make it snappy.”

  Alex angled the spoon over to the third pot, dipped it in, and took a bite, hoping by now that the nerve endings in his mouth had been permanently annihilated so he’d be spared the pain of actually tasting the stuff. But he got a welcome surprise. He chewed and swallowed, and his mouth didn’t burst into flames.

  Pepperless chili?

  He put down the spoon, picked up the blue ribbon, and slapped it down in front of the pot.

  A gasp went up from the crowd. Then silence. It was as if everyone in the tent were holding a collective breath, and for a moment Alex wondered whether he’d just incited a riot. Then the deputy started clapping, and somebody else joined in, and pretty soon the whole tent came alive with applause, whistling, and catcalls. Somebody pulled a young woman to her feet and escorted her up to the tasting table. She wore a long, loose skirt, wire-rimmed glasses, and a very surprised expression. Nadine and Raydine just stood there with their mouths hanging open.