by Logan, Kylie
“Deep breaths,” he suggested.
“And how am I supposed to do that?” My wail scaled back to something more like a whimper. “There isn’t enough air in here. If I could just take off this costume—”
“You will. In just a minute.” Damn him for sounding so calm. But then, I suppose that was something else Nick had learned during his time on the police force. Courage in the face of danger. Composure when everything and everyone around him was out of whack.
Too bad I’d never had the same training. This was the first I’d been up close and personal with a dead guy. And to have that guy land smack on top of me—
Good ol’ Roberto. All he’d ever wanted was to jump my bones.
The thought hit and like it or not, I found myself grinning.
It looked like he finally got his wish. Too bad he was too dead to enjoy the ride.
I wondered if Nick was about to question the quick bark of laughter that came from inside the chili, and just in case he was, I headed him off with a comment of my own and a wriggle to top it off. “I can’t get this costume off soon enough.”
Phil backed off. He was a fortyish guy with a receding hairline and thick, dark-rimmed glasses, and sure, I might be just a tad strung out, but I still couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t so much looking for evidence on my costume as he was staring at my legs.
Briefly, his gaze flickered to where he figured mine was behind the mesh. “I think I’ve got everything I need, and we got photographs earlier so that’s taken care of. We’ll need to take the costume as evidence.” As if to prove it, he picked up a jumbo-sized plastic bag from the nearby table and waved it like he was leading the flag corps at a football game. “That means I’ll have to stay with you. You know, so the chain of evidence isn’t compromised. Go ahead.” His glasses winked in the light from the window behind me. “Get undressed.”
Too bad he couldn’t see the sour smile that went along with my reply. “I hate to ruin your day. I mean, the way having a dead guy fall out of a trailer and on top of me ruined mine. But news flash, buster, if you think you’re in for a peek at a Victoria’s Secret angel, you can think again. I happen to be wearing clothes under this costume.”
Phil’s cheeks flamed. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t even think it. I—”
“And you can stop checking out my legs, too.” Just to make sure he did, I squashed myself between Nick and the table bolted into the floor in front of a built-in bench covered with green vinyl. This was Jack’s RV, after all, and the decorating scheme was masculine from start to finish. The upholstery on the bench matched the curtains on the windows. The tiled floor was nearly the same color as the maple cabinets.
Safely away from Phil, I groped for the zipper at the back of the costume, but dang, though I put on a good show when it came to putting the creep in his place, I was still dazed and confused by everything that had happened outside. My hands shook too much for me to get a grip. I’d already turned a pleading eye on Nick when I realized he couldn’t see me.
“Could you . . .” I spun around so that my back was to him. “There’s a zipper up near the top and . . .”
Something else to remember about Nick: When it came to removing women’s clothing, he knew his way around. Even when the woman in question happened to be wearing a giant chili. He didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t falter. He grasped, pulled, and a second later, I heard a welcome unzipping sound and felt a touch of cool air against the back of my neck.
Even though the costume was still over my head and my face was still covered, I breathed a sigh of relief.
That didn’t last long when Phil moved forward and reached for my hips. “I’ll help you the rest of the way out of the costume.”
“That won’t be necessary.” There was steel in Nick’s voice, and Phil might be creepy but he wasn’t stupid. He backed right off, and he kept on backing up when Nick added, “In fact, Phil, you’re going to wait outside. We’ll call you when we’re ready.”
“But the chain of evidence—”
“Out.”
That one last word was all it took. Of course, Nick didn’t so much say it as he growled it.
No sooner had the door slammed behind Phil than Nick’s hands closed over my shoulders. His fingers were cool, but his palms were hot, and at the contact, I found myself gasping for air inside the chili.
“I’m just going to push the costume over your head and slowly peel it down,” he said. “You ready?”
That all depended on what he was asking me to be ready for.
Like I said, any other time, any other place. Right now, I couldn’t get the picture out of my head: Roberto’s eyes had been wide open when he came at me from the gloom inside the RV. His arms flopped at his sides. He tongue bulged from between his teeth, an image that was sure to haunt my dreams. Even that wasn’t as gruesome as the smear of blood across his shirt.
My breath hitched. My stomach flipped. When I didn’t give Nick the go-ahead to start removing the costume, he simply waited, and I realized with a start that in spite of the scary images racing through my head, the warmth of his touch had already seeped through my T-shirt and into my skin. Bit by bit, the tension faded. So did the grisly image of Roberto.
“I’m ready.” Was that my voice? Good thing I was swathed in the costume, or Nick might think there was a reason for my breathlessness that had more to do with him than it did with the suffocating air inside the chili.
His voice brushed the back of my neck. “I know you’re anxious to get out of there, but I’m not moving fast. I don’t want to disturb any evidence.” The costume was years old, and pretty bulky thanks to the wire foundation that kept the chili shape. Once he’d pushed it down over my shoulders, he had a better sense of how clumsy the chili really was. I didn’t see Nick make a face, but I imagined he did when he said, “You really wear this thing all day? How do you dance in it?”
I tried for a quick shuffle. But then, that was a better course of action than standing there thinking about the heat of his hands resting on my waist.
“Very funny.” He might have said it, but he wasn’t laughing. In fact, he sounded as winded as I suddenly felt. He inched the chili down a little farther toward my hips, a little more—“I can get it the rest of the way off,” I told him, and moved as far as I was able out of Nick’s reach. That was no easy thing since we were standing at the front of the RV and the driver’s seat and dashboard were only inches away. I wiggled out of the costume and handed it to him. “You can tell pervert Phil that he can come back in to get his evidence.”
Nick did just that then stood back, his arms folded over his chest, while Phil stowed the costume. “Stockings and shoes, too,” Phil said, with a quick look at Nick designed to gauge whether he was on the verge of offending me again. Apparently, he wasn’t taking any chances because he added, “I’m sorry. But I have to ask. You understand.” He glanced at Nick again. “My boss is going to be all over me if I don’t come back with the entire costume.”
All over.
Like Roberto was all over me.
The heat of Nick’s touch dissolved thanks to the chill that shot through me, freezing me in place before I could snap the first garter. I flinched when Nick cleared his throat and pointed toward the rear of the RV. “You might want some privacy,” he suggested. “That’s a bedroom, right?”
Actually, that wasn’t just a bedroom, it was Sylvia’s bedroom. I didn’t bother to mention this, just like I didn’t explain that when Tumbleweed had called to say Jack had gone missing, I hadn’t been picking up my phone messages thanks to my credit cards, Edik’s spending habits, and the way every debt collector in the Midwest and beyond had me on speed dial.
Sylvia had gotten to Abilene before I did, and she moved herself lock, stock, and barrel into the larger of the RV’s two not-so-large-to-begin-with bedrooms. My own room (it had actually started life as a storage area) was on the other side of the bathroom and I hurried in there to finish undressing. Done in reco
rd time, I tossed my stockings to Phil and set my stilettos on the floor. When he finally packed up his gear and headed out, I sped to the front of the RV.
“I need a cigarette,” I said, more to myself than to Nick. “Bad.”
“You don’t smoke.”
Since this was a little detail I’d completely forgotten in the heat of the moment, his comment brought me up short. “How would you know?”
His smile wasn’t as genuine as it was quick. “My ex was a smoker. Believe me, I can recognize the smell a mile away.”
“An ex, huh?” Hey, he’d opened himself up to the question. Which meant he shouldn’t have ignored it. I wasn’t in the mood to care. Dead body + scared out of my wits + blood all over me = one heck of a nicotine craving.
Too bad I remembered I’d left my purse—and the pack of cigarettes in it—back at the Palace.
I grumbled a curse, but hey, I was not about to be beaten. Not when I couldn’t wait to get a cigarette in my fingers and a long, delicious drag of smoke into my lungs.
I rummaged through the cupboards in the kitchen and when I didn’t find a stray pack there, I started in on the vanity in the bathroom.
No luck there, either, and I raced into my bedroom.
I squashed myself between my single bed and the wall and looked under the bed, so I didn’t so much see Nick follow me into the room as I felt his stony presence. “I don’t smell like smoke because I quit,” I said, loud enough so he could hear me. I crawled out from under the bed and flopped my head against the mattress. Even though I’m short, there wasn’t a lot of room for my legs; I had to bend my knees to fit. “And damn, but I got rid of every cigarette in the place.”
“Isn’t that good news?”
“You obviously never smoked.” I pushed off from the floor and hotfooted it back into the kitchen. I’d seen a bag of Chips Ahoy! there a couple days before, and hey, any port in a storm. I moved Sylvia’s color-coded, arranged-in-alphabetical-order bags of dried fruit to find it—tossed the bag of cookies on the table, plopped down, and dug in.
Okay, so chocolate isn’t nearly as good as nicotine when it comes to relieving stress.
But it comes in a close second.
By the time I’d polished off four cookies, my heartbeat had ratcheted down to something close to normal. The stiffness in my shoulders dissolved. I sank back against the bench.
“I thought you said you felt like you were going to throw up.”
I’d been so busy chomping my way to nirvana, I’d nearly forgotten Nick was there. Now, I glanced up to see that he was watching me carefully.
It was the first I realized I had crumbs on my chin.
I wiped them away and grabbed another three cookies before I pushed the package across the table toward him. “Want some?”
“Some answers.”
The next cookie halfway to my mouth, I froze. “You came to the wrong place. I don’t even know the questions.”
“No, but you will soon enough. The cops are sure to talk to you. You’re going to hear plenty of questions then.”
“Is that all that’s bothering you? What I’m going to tell the cops?” I made quick work of that cookie and popped another one into my mouth. “I can’t tell them any more than I already told them. I opened the door of the RV and Roberto—”
“What about the fight you had with Roberto this morning?”
It was no easy thing swallowing a mouthful of cookie, what with my throat suddenly filled with sand. I got up, grabbed a bottle of Coke from the fridge, and took a long gulp.
“You don’t waste any time,” I told Nick, sitting back down and pretending like his sudden interest in my motives—and the fact that he was tapped into the Showdown gossip grapevine—didn’t bother me.
His shrug was almost casual enough to make me believe he really didn’t care. “I talked to some people. That’s all. While you were talking to the cops.”
“And those people . . .”
“Said Roberto stopped by the Palace earlier today. They said the two of you had an argument. Things got physical.”
I choked on the sip of soda I was about to swallow. “I bonked him with the chili costume,” I said, because really, “got physical” was just a stupid cop way of saying the same thing.
“Then you admit it?”
“That I whacked Roberto on the head with the Chili Chick? Heck, yes. He deserved it.”
“Because he . . .”
Honestly, did my love life (or lack of it) have to be the topic of every conversation at the Showdown?
I thought not, and thinking it, I glared at Nick. “Because I didn’t give a crap about him.”
“In my experience, people don’t fight unless they care very much about the other person. That doesn’t mean that caring is about liking the person. Or loving them. Sometimes, they care enough to hate.”
“And we’re getting philosophical now . . . why?”
“It’s my job.”
“Funny, I thought your job was to keep the turnstile jumpers and the shoplifters away from the Showdown.”
Oh yes, that stung. Just like I knew it would. It was precisely why I bothered to mention it. See, from the moment I met him, I knew Nick had a bug up his butt about not being on the job anymore. It was exactly why I thought I’d remind him that acting like a tough cop was going to get him nowhere. Not with me, anyway.
I sat back and kept my mouth shut.
He dropped into the seat across from mine.
“You were angry at Roberto?”
“So what? You think I killed him?”
I spit out a laugh that died in the air between us when Nick said, “Did you?”
I finished drinking the Coke and tossed the bottle in the nearby container Sylvia insisted we keep for recycling. Suddenly, it was all too clear what was going on here. The comforting touch of Nick’s hand . . . the way he’d defended me against Phil’s lecherous advances . . .
I narrowed my eyes and shot him a look. “You didn’t come in here while I was getting undressed so you could make sure Phil the perv didn’t molest me. You came in here so you could find out what was going on before the local cops did. All you wanted was to ask questions.”
“So far, you haven’t answered any of them.”
“So far, you haven’t said anything that makes any sense.”
Nick scraped a hand through his hair. “Look, if I heard the story about you and Roberto going at each other, the local cops are bound to hear it, too.”
“Then I’ll tell them exactly what I’m telling you. I barely knew Roberto. And it didn’t take me long to figure out that barely was as close as I wanted to get. This morning when he came by, he said some things that pissed me off. That’s why I walloped him with the chili. Listen, it’s not like I’ve never hated anyone enough to want to kill them. Sylvia tops the list. And then there’s Edik. Since you apparently know all about me, I’m sure you’ve heard that story. But when it comes to people I’d like to see removed from the face of the Earth, Roberto wasn’t on my radar screen.”
“But you two did have history.”
I threw my hands in the air. It was better than wishing I had the bottle of Coke back so I could throw that at Nick. “History? I went out with the guy once. Does that make it history?”
“It means you had a connection.”
“Not a very interesting one.”
“Maybe Roberto thought that, too. Maybe if he said he didn’t want to see you again—”
“Are you kidding me?” I was on my feet before I knew it, my fists on my hips. “Do you think I’m that hard up?”
Nick got to his feet, too. Slowly. Casually. Like we weren’t here debating how crazy and desperate I would have to be to actually kill a guy who didn’t want to date me again.
A more level-headed woman would have given him time to at least try to explain himself. “While you’re deciding that I killed ol’ Roberto, think about this. I saw Roberto this morning, and it’s now . . .” The clock on the micr
owave hadn’t worked in years, but automatically I looked that way. “It’s afternoon sometime,” I said. “That means hours have passed since I last saw Roberto. So while you’re using that Sherlock Holmes brain of yours, think about this: A whole lot can happen to a guy in a couple hours. And believe me, whatever that whole lot was, it had nothing to do with me.”
Since I was fuming, it didn’t seem right that Nick looked so completely blasé about the whole thing. He walked to the door. “I’m just telling you that the cops are going to want to talk to you about all this,” he said. “I thought you’d want to take some time and think about what you’re going to tell them. I was just concerned, that’s all. You know, as a friend.”
“Friend.” Since I was standing near the recycling bin, it seemed a waste not to grab the plastic Coke bottle I’d just deposited there. I winged it at Nick and missed by a mile, which is just as well since at that moment the door opened.
“Oh.” Sylvia stood at the bottom of the two steps that led into the RV, her lips parted and her eyes wide. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“I was just leaving,” Nick said, and without another word, he was gone.
“Friend.” The bottle had hit the wall and bounced into the passenger seat, and I retrieved it and shoved it back in the recycling bin. “I don’t need friends like that. Can you believe it?” I stomped back over to the table. “That idiot actually thinks I had a reason to kill Roberto.”
In spite of the fact that there was sun streaming through the side window of the RV, Sylvia’s face was pale.
I collapsed in the nearest chair. “What are you looking so gloomy about?” I asked her. “You were just there minding your own business, and nobody’s going to be asking you any question. At least nobody thinks you had a reason to kill Roberto.”
Sylvia didn’t answer. In fact, all she did was hurry into her bedroom and close the door behind her.
I should have listened. After all, she didn’t say anything.
And there’s a lot you can hear in silence.
