Chile Death Read online

  I nodded. "He wasn’t crazy about the idea, but he says he'll do it.”

  "Good for him to get out, if he can,” Fannie said, opening her car door. The hot air came out in a puff, and she took off her hat and tossed it onto the passenger seat. "I got stuck with judging the Sweet Heat competition again.” “Again? I thought you’d decided to give that up.”

  She sighed heavily. “I should. It’s pure hell on this earth. Last year. Chuck Moffett’s habanero marmalade nearly melted my dentures.” She got into the car, lowering herself gingerly onto the hot plastic-covered seat, and pulled her lilac-print dress up over her knees. "But Jerry Jeff twisted my arm.”

  "He’s a real arm-twister,” I agreed conversationally, leaning against the open door.

  - "Oh, well. I guess it won’t kill me to do it one more year. Then they can find a few other poor suckers to judge the damn thing.” Fannie dug through her bag. "By the way, I hear that Jerry Jeff and Roxanne have agreed to a property settlement.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  "Uh-huh.” She pulled out a set of keys, which were suspended from a piece of red-white-and-blue plastic in the shape of Texas. She held the keys in her hand for a moment, as if she were weighing them. "But Roxanne’s madder than boiled squirrel about it. It seems that Jerry Jeff s financial picture isn’t as rosy as she thought it ought to be.”

  "No kidding.” Well, Jerry Jeff was slick. And Roxanne wouldn’t be the first wife who discovered that the community property pot was empty when the divorce rolled around and it was time to go halfsies.

  Fannie put the key into the ignition. "Of course, Roxanne hasn’t been pure as the driven snow,” she remarked obliquely. “She and Pokey Clendennen have been thick as thieves for over a year. I’m sure that didn’t set real well with Jerry Jeff. Maybe he figured he’d get even.”

  "Sounds as if there’s enough blame to go around,” I said.

  Fannie turned the key. "I hear Ruby’s going out with him.” She glanced up at me, and I read concern in her blue eyes. Fannie knows Ruby pretty well. "She’s not serious about him, is she?”

  "Ruby is not going out with him,” I said. "He took her to dinner in order to sell her some insurance.”

  Fannie shook her head and got to the point. "Well, the way I hear it, Roxanne isn’t any too happy with the current state of affMrs. Which includes Jerry Jeff's girlfriends.”

  "Why am I not surprised? Just out of curiosity, who’s on the current list—besides Ruby?”

  Fannie raised her eyebrows. "You know I don’t gossip.”

  I smiled, nodded, and waited.

  "I only repeat what I can substantiate.”

  I waited a moment longer.

  "He's seeing Felicia Travis.”

  Ah. Last year’s Miss June-fest, who can’t be twenty yet. Jerry Jeff must be the envy of every teenaged, testosterone-driven male in Pecan Springs.

  "And he’s been seen with Lulu Burkhart.”

  "Maybe he’s selling her insurance, too.”

  Fanny gave me a quick glance. "After what happened between Jerry Jeff and Craig Burkhart, I don’t think Craig would want Lulu to buy insurance from Cody and Clendennen.” Jerry Jeff and Craig Burkhart had gone to court over something—a property deal of some sort, maybe—and Burkhart had lost.

  "I wish Ruby had found another insurance salesman,” I said.

  Fannie sighed. "Can’t say I blame you. It’s not a pretty business. But maybe you ought to keep an eye on Ruby. I’m not saying Roxanne’s going to make a fuss, but she might.”

  frowned. "What kind of fuss?”

  Fannie met my eyes. “With some people,” she said, "you never know.” She started the car. "Sony. I don’t mean to sound ominous.” She put the car into gear. "All the same, you keep an eye on Ruby. You hear?”

  Chapter Four

  “Women have no business whatsoever trying to cook chili. It’s a man’s dish and a man’s sport.” Don Russell Chilympiad co-founder

  As things turned out, I didn’t have to worry about keeping an eye on Ruby that weekend, because she was in Dallas, visiting her sister. I didn’t see her until the next Monday morning, and by that time, Fannie’s warning seemed less urgent, hardly worth passing along, actually.

  The shop is closed on Mondays, but that doesn’t mean I take the day off. I spent the morning happily digging in the garden under the watchful eye of Khat, the large and elegant Siamese who lived with me until Howard Cosell came into the picture. After a couple of chaotic months, Khat decided he would be happier being a shop cat, a decision which has worked out well all the way around. I was on my hands and knees, setting out Purple Ruffle basil in the space between the path and the fence, when Hark Hibler phoned with an offer. He and Arlene had liked the sample columns I gave him. They had decided it was time to fancy up the Enterprise by adding a Home and Garden page on Thursdays. I could start the week after the chili cookoff with a feature on chile peppers, including recipes. I considered the offer for all of two seconds and said yes.

  Then Ruby stopped by. Her shop is closed on Mondays

  too, but she doesn’t have a garden to keep her busy. She was looking cool and leggy in a short-short pink denim skirt with silver rivets down the side and a sleeveless pink

  top. When I told her about my new job, she suggested that we celebrate with lunch.

  “It’ll have to be someplace cheap,” I said. “Sales were pretty slow last week.” And summer stretched out ahead, the shop’s slowest time of year. I’d been wondering whether I could afford to keep Laurel on full-time, or whether I’d have to cut back on her hours.

  "Cheap?” Ruby raised her chin. "You forget. I am a wealthy woman. It’s on me. Anyway, I owe you. You bought the last lunch.”

  I glanced at Khat, who was rubbing against Ruby’s ankles. "If you’re in the mood to squander your ill-gotten gains, I know a certain someone who would be glad of a few chicken livers.”

  Ruby bent over and smoothed Khat’s ears. (His rump is untouchable, which you will learn to your sorrow if you try to give him a full-body stroke.) "Later, my love,” she cooed. "Aunt Ruby will bring you a whole pound of fresh chicken livers, sauteed in butter.”

  "Don’t forget the garlic,” I said.

  She straightened up and looked at me. "This cat must have had great karma in his last nine lives. You’re spoiling him.”

  "The garlic is as much for me. as it is for Khat. It keeps the fleas off. They detest the odor.”

  On that note of herbal esoterica, I went to wash my hands and then we walked across the street to what used to be the Magnolia Kitchen, now called Casa de lets Dos Amigas. We knew the restaurant had been sold, of course, but the new owners’ upgrade had taken the neighborhood by complete surprise. Until a few months ago, the Kitchen had belonged to our friend Maggie Garrett, a former nun and a gifted chef. But Maggie had gone back to St. Theresa’s and the restaurant had been purchased by two women from Indianapolis, Lois Alpern and Barbara Holland. They ripped out Maggie’s casual country decor and replaced it with all the cliches of Sante Fe modern: clay tile floors, chrome-and-glass tables, indirect lighting, pink wails, pastel prints of idealized Native Americans, and stuffed fake cacti in large terra-cotta pots. They hadn’t gotten around to changing the patio herb garden yet, but Lois had told me they were planning to turn it into additional parking. The news made me sad. The garden had provided the culinary herbs—cilantro, parsley, dill, garlic, fennel, lemon balm, lemongrass, marjoram, mint, thyme — that had distinguished Maggie’s menu from all the others in town. I hoped it would be spared.

  The new menu featured Southwest cuisine at New York prices. My choice was poblantu retleriM, a humble poblano chile which had been dignified with a stuffing made of ground chicken, beef, and pork, along with peanuts, carrots, and raisins, then baked and served with a peanut sauce—a concoction Barbara must have learned at the Santa Fe Culinary Academy, where she spent six months learning to cook. Ruby was having something called Goat-cheese CrMtini, featur
ing shrimp and goat cheese on sourdough bread slices, along with a fluffy looking green salad with more varieties of lettuce than we could count. The service was slow (understandable in a new restaurant), but when the food finally came, it was almost good enough to make up for the orchestral version of “San Antonio Rose” that was playing in the background.

  "Not bad!” Ruby bit into her Crostini with enthusiasm.

  "It’s good,” I said, digging into my stuffed pepper. "But not for your ordinary Pecan Springer, who’s addicted to sirloin and fried catfish.”

  Ruby looked around at the nearly empty dining room. "The place is just getting off the ground. It’ll take a while.”

  "Be realistic, Ruby. How many natives can afford to pay these big-city prices for lunch? And how many tourists will opt for ersatz New Mexico when they can go to Bean’s and get authentic Texas?” Bean’s Bar & Grill is the real thing, with scuffed pool tables and chipped dart boards, a rusty wagon-wheel chandelier, the front half of a ratty buffalo sticking out of the wall, and the best Tex- Mex between Austin and Del Rio.

  "Well,” Ruby said judiciously, "I don’t think it will be a threat to our tearoom, if that’s what you mean.”

  "That’s not what I mean,” I said. "Ruby, I really don’t think—”

  She leaned forward, eyes intent, face serious. “China, I do not understand you. For the last twelve months, you have been talking about the tearoom—how attractive it could be, how much money it would make, how many customers it would bring in, how this, how that. Now you’ve got the chance, and all you can say is no. What is the deal with you?”

  I poked at the remnants of my pepper. “I just don’t think you ought to sink your lottery winnings into such a speculative project. It’s too big a gamble.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes. "And just how did I get the money in the first place? If the lottery isn’t gambling, I don’t know what is.”

  That stopped me for a few seconds, but I recovered. "Think of the way you’ll feel if you put all that money into the tearoom and it goes belly-up,” I said. "You’ll be disappointed. You’ll be angry. It will come between us.” "What is going to come between us,” Ruby said frostily, "is your inability to accept any help from your friends.” "That’s it,” I snapped, "blame it all on me. I’m the one who’s at fault.”

  We glared at one another.

  Lois Alpern, one of the new restaurant owners, chose this moment to stop by the table. Lois is a slender, graceful woman in her early fifties, quite attractive in a cool sort of way, with frosted hair shorn up the back like a boy’s and fluffed out on top in an exuberance of frothy curls— definitely not a cut she had gotten from Bobby Rae at the House of Beauty. She was wearing trim-fitting cream- colored slacks, a thigh-length rosy-beige tunic the same shade as the walls, and gold hoop earrings big enough for Howard Cosell to jump through. Her face was carefully made up with deep blue shadows over her eyes, and her half-amused glance made me conscious of my shorts, T-shirt, and sandals and the garden dirt under my nails. "I hope you ladies are enjoying your lunch,” she said. Pointedly, Ruby and I did not look at one another. "The food is very good,” Ruby said.

  "Tell Barbara we enjoyed it,” I added.

  Lois took the compliments with a graceful nod and turned to something else that was on her mind. "I’ve been wondering,” she said, touching one earring with perfectly manicured rosy fingertips, “what you might tell me about the chili contest we’ve been hearing so much about.”

  "It’s the biggest local event of the year,” Ruby replied. "Of course, you know that it’s just one part of JuneFest, which kicks off our summer tourist season. There’s a beauty contest, street dancing, a parade, a watermelon eating contest—”

  "I know all that.” Lois made a dismissive gesture. “It’s the chili contest we’re interested in.”

  Ruby gave me a cool glance. "You need to talk to China about that. She’s a close friend of one of the judges. And she’s going to be covering the event for the newspaper. She’s the new Home and Garden editor for the paper, you know.”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t know,” Lois said, her eyebrows rising under her frosted fringe. "Home and Garden editor. How nice!” She smiled with a warm friendliness that exonerated my dirty nails, and I was suddenly One of the Girls. "Well, then, perhaps you can give us some insights into the competition, China. Barbara has a great vegetarian recipe, you see, that she plans to enter. It’s a simply superb chili, quite mild, made with several different kinds of beans, peanuts, jalapenos, and her own secret spice blend.” She rolled her eyes. “So elegant, presented in a lemon-glazed earthenware bowl and garnished with a swirl of yogurt, diced avocado, and lime wedges. Smart, tasty—and sure to win.”

  "But that’s not possible, Lois,” Ruby said. "You' see, this particular cookoff is for—”

  "We absolutely covet first prize, China.” Ignoring Ruby, Lois leaned forward and lowered her voice. "It would be a simply fabulous advertisement for Casa de las Dos Amigas.”

  I frowned. "As Ruby was saying—” I began, but Lois cut me off.

  “Please tell your friend that we’d be glad to do anything we could to . . . well, tip the scales in our favor,” she said, and gave a significant little laugh. "Free lunches for a month, perhaps. Or maybe you’d rather tell me what’s appropriate.”

  Ruby cleared her throat. “As I was saying, people here are possessive about chili. The legislature declared it the official state dish twenty years ago.”

  "Yeah,” I said. "We like our chili cowboy style.”

  Lois’s sniff was clearly audible. "Cowboy style?” She bit off the words as if they were synonymous with ignorant aborigine. "But superior flavor is bound to be recognized, even by a .. . cowboy. And of course, vegetarian chili has almost no fat.”

  Our disagreement forgotten, Ruby and I traded glances. Normally, neither of us is especially vicious. We try to go the extra mile, especially with folks who come from north of Dallas. But there are limits.

  "Here in Texas, we like our chili greasy,” I said. "And we don’t care for beans. Maybe you haven’t heard the National Chili Anthem. It’s called ‘If You Know Beans About Chili, You Know That Chili Has No Beans.’ ”

  "No beans!” Lois asked, horrified. "But in Indiana, we always — ”

  "Beans,” Ruby said sternly, "are actually against the rules.”

  "The rules'!"

  "Yep,” I said. "Where CASI is concerned, chili is made with meat, not beans. Here in Texas, at least.”

  "What’s a cassy?” Lois asked suspiciously.

  “The Chili Appreciation Society International,” I said. "This is a sanctioned event, you know.”

  "A sanctioned — ”

  "The meat is extremely important,” Ruby said, as if she were giving a lesson in brain surgery. "It’s usually either Texas longhorn or venison. If it’s longhorn, you want a cow with lots of character. The same goes for deer meat. In November, the guys shoot the biggest, oldest buck they can find and stick him in the freezer until it’s time for the cookoff.”

  "Buffalo is good too,” I said. “And emu’s not bad, if you check for pinfeathers and cook it long enough to soften up the strings. Ostrich, too. Cracker Bob’s Ostrich Chili could have been last year’s big winner, if some joker hadn’t dumped a pound of red worms in the pot when his back was turned.”

  "Red . . . worms?” Lois said faintly.

  "Of course,” I went on, "venison and buffalo and such don’t make a very greasy chili, so folks usually throw in a pound or two of lard. And Cracker Bob has a neat idea— he renders the fat of an overweight possum and pours it in at the last minute. He ends up with about an inch of grease on top.”

  Lois was trying to speak, but Ruby had thought of something else. "And of course there’s alligator. The team that won year before last cooked up a pot of something called Hot Swampy Chili, with alligator meat and craw- dad tails.” She paused thoughtfully. "You have to drive to East Texas to get alligator, though—it’s scarce around here. Parks and Wi
ldlife frowns on shooting the wild ones, but there are plenty of alligator farms. You could probably get enough for a couple of batches.”

  I nodded. "Of course, if you want local meat and you haven’t shot a buck or don’t have a Texas longhorn you can butcher, the very best thing is rattlesnake. And that’s not at all hard to find.”

  Ruby nodded enthusiastically. "The chili that came in second last year—something called Roadkill Chili—was cooked up by a gang of Harley bikers on their way to

  Mexico. It had big hunks of rattlesnake in it. They said they scraped the snake off the road, but I never believed it. They probably got it at the landfill—that’s the best place to go rattlesnake hunting.”

  "That’s right,” I said. "Rattlers aren’t hard to catch first thing in the morning, when it’s cool and they haven’t had their coffee yet. But be sure to wear heavy boots and leather gloves and take a big burlap bag.”

  Lois’s face had turned greenish-gray, an interesting contrast to the rosy-beige of her tunic. "I’m certainly glad we talked,” she managed. "I’ll convey your . . . suggestions to Barbara. Perhaps she’ll want to rethink her entry. ”

  Ruby held up her hand. "Oh, but you can’t enter, Lois. I started to tell you, but I got interrupted. The Cedar Choppers Chili Cookoff is a men-only event.”

  “Men only?” Lois was incredulous. "But that's discrimination! Up north, we’d never stand for it.”

  shook my head. "Wait a minute, Ruby," I said. "A woman can enter, if she’s one hundred years old or older. It’s in the rules.”

  "That’s double discrimination!” Lois shrilled. "Sex discrimination and age discrimination.”

  "That’s certainly what it sounds like,” I remarked mildly.

  "And you . . . you put up with it?” Lois sputtered.

  I shrugged. Ruby smiled. "The boys have to do something with their weekends,” she said.

  If Lois had been civil, we might have told her that she and Barbara had other options. The Luckenbach Texas Ladies’ State chili cookoff is open only to women, and the Terlingua World Championship is open to both women and men. And if they were really interested in local chile culture, they might join either the Salsa Queens or the Caliente Cooks. But these were things she could find out for herself.