The Great Chili Kill-Off Read online

  “What the hell!” Sam yelled. That was a good indicator of how startled he was, because he seldom cursed. He was still standing, so he set the cup of coffee he was holding on the counter and then practically leaped to the door and threw it open. Phyllis was right behind him as he jumped to the ground, not bothering with the steps.

  She stopped in the doorway and said, “Wait, Sam. You don’t know what’s going on. You shouldn’t rush off into trouble.”

  “Something blew up, I know that much,” he said. He lifted his arm and pointed. “Over there!”

  Phyllis saw black smoke billowing up from somewhere a few rows away in the ranks of parked motor homes and travel trailers. All around the encampment, people were pouring out of their vehicles, running around aimlessly, shouting questions, and then starting toward the smoke when they spotted it. She knew Sam would be headed in that direction, too, so she hurried down the steps and joined him.

  Somewhere in the distance, a siren began to blare. Phyllis could barely hear it over the hubbub that filled the air.

  “What in the world happened?” she said.

  “Something blowed up real good,” Sam said. “I’ll go see what it was.”

  “Not by yourself you won’t,” she told him. “And whatever it was, you’d better not get too close. Something else might explode.”

  “That’s a good reason for you to stay here.”

  Phyllis wasn’t going to waste time arguing with him. She took off toward the rising smoke. Sam’s long legs allowed him to catch up easily, and after that they hurried along together, joining an ever-growing throng of people headed toward the apparent source of the explosion.

  They cut through between vehicles parked along two rows and came out into an open area. On the next row, several spaces over, a long motor home was burning fiercely, throwing off what was now a thick column of black smoke that rose into the sky and angled north, carried in that direction by the early morning breeze from the south. A large crowd had already gathered to watch the conflagration.

  The parking spaces were narrow enough that the vehicles on either side of the burning motor home were at risk from the blaze. To the left was another motor home, and as Phyllis and Sam watched, its owner—more than likely—climbed behind the wheel and shouted through an open window for everybody to get out of the way. He started the engine and eased forward, turning to get away from the burning motor home but having to go slowly because of all the people still blocking his path.

  On the other side, a travel trailer was parked to the right of the fire. A man worked desperately to get it hitched to a pickup so it could be pulled out of danger, too. That was made more difficult by the fact that the heat given off by the blaze was so fierce no one could stand to get too close to it for very long. Phyllis could feel the heat even where she and Sam were standing, a considerable distance away.

  The siren got louder. The constable’s Jeep came into view. Bystanders scurried out of the way, but Chuck couldn’t go very fast, either. He finally stopped when he was fairly close to the burning motor home and got out of the Jeep carrying a fire extinguisher. He ran toward the blaze, then stopped short and stared at the flames. Phyllis could tell by the sudden slump of his shoulders that he’d realized the little fire extinguisher wasn’t going to do any good against something like this.

  He turned, waved an arm, and shouted, “Get back! Everybody stay back!”

  Phyllis said to Sam, “Do you think the gas tank has already exploded?”

  “I believe it might have,” he said with a frown. “I didn’t really pay much attention when it happened because I was so surprised, but now that I think about it, seems like maybe there was more than one explosion. More like three, each one bigger than the last. But they were all so close together, it almost sounded like one blast.”

  Phyllis considered that idea for a moment and then nodded. “You could be right,” she said. “You think something else blew up first and then took the gas tank with it.”

  “If that’s what happened, I’d bet it was a propane tank that went up first.”

  That made sense to Phyllis. Most of these vehicles used propane tanks or cylinders in their kitchens to start with, and at a chili cook-off like this, there would be plenty of propane-fueled grills, too. She looked at the burning motor home and said, “If there was anybody in there . . .”

  “They wouldn’t have had a chance,” Sam finished.

  The constable had cleared all the bystanders back for a good distance. Hiram Boudreau came running up, bony red knees flying, skinny arms pumping, a floppy-brimmed straw hat on his head today but otherwise dressed much the same as he had been the day before.

  “What happened?” he yelped. “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Chuck told him. “I just got here myself. Did you call the volunteer fire department?”

  “Yeah, but you know as well as I do that it’ll be forty-five minutes before the truck gets here!”

  It was already too late to save anyone who had been near the explosion, Phyllis thought. The motor home would just have to burn itself out. The man who had been working to move the travel trailer next to it had finally succeeded in getting the trailer hooked up. With a roar from his pickup’s engine, he pulled the trailer away. The sides of it looked a little scorched, but that appeared to be the extent of the damage.

  Eve had gotten dressed, and now she and Carolyn joined Phyllis and Sam. Carolyn looked at the blaze and said, “Good heavens! Do you know if anyone was hurt?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “We haven’t heard anything yet. We don’t know what caused the explosion or who that motor home belonged to.

  Sam looked around and spotted a familiar face. He called, “Hey, Roger!”

  Roger and Julie Glennister were standing about twenty feet away in the crowd. Roger lifted a hand in greeting at Sam’s hail. Sam worked his way over to join the couple. Phyllis, Carolyn, and Eve followed.

  “You know what happened?” Sam and Roger asked at the same time, then each of them shook his head.

  “Sounded like a propane tank blew up,” Roger said, “and it got the motor home’s gas tank, too.”

  “That’s just what we were sayin’,” Sam agreed. “Any idea who owns that thing?”

  Roger shook his head again. “Maybe if I could see it better, but shoot, the whole thing’s just a big ball of fire.”

  “The poor people who were in it,” Julie said. A shudder went through her. “I can’t stand to even think about it.”

  “We don’t know that anyone was in it,” Phyllis said. She wasn’t familiar enough with propane grills and tanks to know if it was possible that one could have blown up by itself, with no one around. Something would have to set off a spark . . .

  Despite the futility of it, the constable began spraying foam from his fire extinguisher onto the blaze. Some of the spectators ran back to their motor homes and trailers and returned with extinguishers of their own. Soon more than a dozen people were spraying the flames, and after a couple of minutes the fierce conflagration began to subside.

  “Looks like they’re gonna get it put out,” Sam said. “That’ll keep the fire from spreadin’, anyway.”

  Behind the group of people with fire extinguishers, Hiram Boudreau hopped back and forth from foot to foot like a little boy needing to go to the bathroom. “Oh, this is awful!” he wailed. “This is gonna ruin the contest!”

  Carolyn snorted and said, “Not to mention ruining things for anyone who was too close to that explosion. I knew it was dangerous to have so much propane around.”

  “It’s plenty safe as long as you’re careful,” Sam said. “Somebody wasn’t.”

  “I’m sure the authorities will investigate the explosion,” Phyllis said. “There’s bound to be a county fire marshal or something out here. Or maybe the sheriff’s department has an arson investigator. I know they do back in Parker County.”

  Flames were still dancing around inside the motor home, but at least the
y weren’t leaping as high as they had been a few minutes earlier. The blaze wasn’t giving off nearly as much heat, either, although what was left of the vehicle would still be too hot for anyone to approach it for a while.

  Hiram Boudreau yanked off his straw hat, raked his fingers through his white hair, and turned to the crowd. “Has anybody seen Joe D.?” he asked with a note of desperate hope in his voice.

  No one spoke up. Some of the assembled people shook their heads. Boudreau groaned.

  The constable stepped over to Boudreau and said, “Wait a minute, Mayor. Are you saying this was Hammersmith’s motor home?”

  “That’s right,” Boudreau said. “I was just here talkin’ to him yesterday. And if he’s not around anywhere else, that means he must’ve been in there when the derned thing blew up. The cook-off doesn’t have a defendin’ champion anymore!”

  Chapter 8

  Boudreau seemed more upset by the tragedy’s possible effect on the cook-off than he was by the fact that Joe D. Hammersmith might well be dead. Phyllis hadn’t liked Hammersmith, had, in fact, disliked the man, but he was still a human being and she wouldn’t wish such a horrible fate on anyone.

  “There’s Josh and Felicity,” Sam said, nodding toward their left.

  Phyllis looked over and saw the reporter and producer from Inside Beat. The burly, taciturn cameraman Nick Baker was with them now, camera braced on his shoulder as he shot digital video of the crowd and the burning motor home.

  Felicity was dressed in jeans and a pink t-shirt this morning, and her long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. To look as good as she did, she probably had to put on her makeup and get ready to face the camera as soon as she got out of bed in the morning, Phyllis thought. That constant need to be ready to go on the air would be one of the occupational hazards of the job, as far as she was concerned.

  Josh wasn’t nearly as put together. His shirt was untucked and his shoelaces were untied. But he didn’t have to look good to do his job. He said something to Nick, then nodded to Felicity. She took a deep breath and put a concerned, solemn expression on her face as Nick swung the camera a little to frame her with the burning motor home and the crowd in the background. She started talking, although Phyllis couldn’t make out the words with all the hubbub around them.

  “That bunch never misses a story, do they?” Sam said.

  “It’s their job not to,” Phyllis replied. “At least Felicity’s looking properly serious.”

  “Acting,” Carolyn said. “That TV show she works for isn’t journalism. It’s show business.”

  Phyllis couldn’t disagree with that. But these days practically everything was show business.

  As she looked around, she spotted several other familiar faces. Kurt Middleton, the man who had punched Hammersmith the day before because he thought Hammersmith was trying to fool around with his wife, stood with his hands tucked in his hip pockets, staring intently at the destroyed motor home. An attractive woman with curly red hair stood beside him. That was probably Middleton’s wife Lindy.

  McKayla Carson was also there, with the tall, balding man Phyllis had guessed was her father. He had the same sort of look on his face that Middleton did, more interested than upset.

  Not surprisingly, the security guard who had helped Constable Chuck during the brawl at the tavern the previous night was at the scene, too. Ken was his name, Phyllis recalled. A couple of other uniformed security officers were on hand as well.

  The man who had started that tavern brawl by punching Hammersmith over gambling losses was also in the crowd. Phyllis had to think for a moment before she came up with his name: Porter. She assumed that was his last name, but she didn’t really know.

  So several of Hammersmith’s enemies were on hand, Phyllis thought, and given the man’s obvious reputation, there were probably others here with whom he had tangled in the past. That made something stir in her mind, but with a little shake of her head she pushed the idea away. She had been around too many murders, she told herself. Tragedies could happen without any ulterior motive or human agency behind them.

  Hiram Boudreau was still bemoaning what had happened while the constable motioned the security officers over to him and said, “Let’s get everybody cleared out of here. Ken, keep an eye on the motor home and don’t let anyone near it. I don’t want somebody poking around in there and getting hurt. The rest of you herd these bystanders back to their vehicles.”

  Ken and the others nodded in understanding and spread out to do their jobs. The crowd was already breaking up, now that the fire was mostly out, so Phyllis didn’t think the officers would have any trouble dispersing the onlookers. She didn’t see any reason for her and her friends to hang around, either, so she said, “Let’s go on back to the trailer.”

  “Yeah, we might as well head for the War Wagon,” Sam said. “Nothin’ we can do here.”

  As they walked between vehicles toward the row where their borrowed travel trailer was parked, Eve said, “I wonder if the cook-off is going to continue after this.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Carolyn asked. “This is a big deal. A lot of people have come hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles to participate in the contests. I can’t see them being called off because of the death of one man, even if he was the defending champion.”

  “We don’t know for certain that Mr. Hammersmith was killed,” Phyllis pointed out. “It’s going to be a while before what’s left of that motor home cools down enough for the authorities to get in there and find out if there’s a body.”

  Sam said, “Yeah, and Hammersmith might turn up somewhere else, hale and hearty, before that time comes. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  They went back to the breakfast they had abandoned when the explosion shook the encampment. Carolyn had put away the eggs and bacon before she and Eve left the motor home, so they could be heated up again in the microwave. She had also covered the biscuits with a clean cloth. The meal wouldn’t be as good as it would have been when it was freshly made, but the food was still all right.

  “You really did a good job on these biscuits, Phyllis,” Carolyn commented as they ate. “You can tell they’re gluten-free, but they still taste good. Excellent, in fact.”

  “Biscuits are biscuits,” Sam said with a grin. “I never met one I didn’t like, gluten or no gluten.”

  Eve said, “I keep reading that the idea of giving up gluten being good for you is actually a myth, unless you have that, what is it, Celiac disease.”

  Carolyn blew out a dismissive breath. “I know what some people say,” she responded. “I also know that when I gave it up, my arthritis got a lot better. I’m convinced I would have been in a wheelchair in another ten years, or sooner, if I hadn’t started being careful about what I eat.”

  “People have theories about a lot of things,” Phyllis said. “It’s what actually works that counts.”

  “Can’t argue with reality,” Sam added.

  “Actually, you can,” Eve said. “But then they come and take you away.”

  A knock sounded on the travel trailer’s door as they were finishing their delayed breakfast. Sam stood up from the tiny dining table and went to answer the summons. When he opened the door, Phyllis looked past him and saw a familiar figure standing there.

  “Howdy,” the tall, balding man said. “Are any of you folks entering the chili cook-off or any of the other contests?”

  “I’m cookin’ chili,” Sam told the man, “and one of my friends here is takin’ part in a couple of the side contests.”

  The visitor put out his hand. “My name’s Wendell Carson. I’m a former contestant myself and now one of the judges.”

  “Sam Fletcher,” Sam said as he shook hands. “What can we do for you?”

  Carson said, “The judges and some of the other people who work as volunteers on the cook-off are spreading out and letting people know that all the contests will continue as scheduled, despite the, ah, tragedy earlier this morning.”

 
Phyllis joined Sam at the door and asked, “Have they determined if anyone was hurt in the explosion?”

  “Well, nobody’s seen Joe D. Hammersmith, and Constable Snyder has asked around all over town. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Investigators from the sheriff’s department are supposed to be on the way. Once they get here and take a look at the scene, they may call in the Texas Rangers or the feds. They’ll want to make sure this was just a terrible accident.”

  “Why would it be anything else?” Phyllis asked.

  Wendell Carson made a face and said, “Well, not to speak ill of the maybe dead . . . but Hammersmith wasn’t a well-liked man. He’d made a lot of enemies over the past few years, here at the cook-off. It would have been bad enough, him winning all the time, but he’s, uh, not the easiest fella in the world to get along with.”

  “We sorta got that impression,” Sam said. “Seemed like every time we ran into him, somebody was trying to punch him.”

  Carson frowned and drew in a deep breath. “I never laid a hand on him myself, but I felt like it and told him so. He knew good and well my daughter’s only sixteen, but he tried to get fresh with her anyway—” He stopped short and gave a little shake of his head. “I’m sure whatever blew up and started that fire was just an accident. Don’t pay any attention to anything else I said.”

  “We met your daughter yesterday,” Phyllis said. “She seems like a very nice young lady.”

  “Yeah, she is. It’s just . . . I’m a dad, you know? Sometimes it seems like she’s too grown up for her own good.” Carson took another deep breath. “Anyway, the contests are going on as planned, so I suppose I’ll see you folks later. Good luck, Sam.”

  “Thanks. I don’t envy your job, havin’ to pick out the best chili from all these cooks. I’ll bet they’re all pretty good.”

  The man grinned and said, “Yeah, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”