Death by Devil's Breath by Kylie Logan Read Free Book Online

the thought. The cop scratched a line in a small notebook. “You’re saying they’d all be poisoned.”
    Tumbleweed nodded so hard, his jowls flapped. “They’d have to be, see. The scoops, they all come out of the pot at the same time. Which means the scoop Dickie got from that last contestant . . .”
    He went on explaining, but I was too busy thinking to listen. That last contestant he talked about was the woman who’d decided for some strange reason that she didn’t like me, and wondering about her, I looked over to where I’d last seen her. Didn’t it figure, now that I was interested, she was nowhere around.
    “Maxie will tell you.” Tumbleweed’s words snapped me out of my thoughts. “She’ll tell you that’s how a cook-off works. Always has, always will. No way one judge can get a taste of something another judge can’t. It’s all mixed. It’s all stirred. It all comes from the same pot at the same time.”
    I nodded my agreement and took another thought for a spin. “That could mean what happened to Dickie . . .” At that particular moment, the guys from the medical examiner’s office were taking Dickie away, and we all watched as they lifted his body into a big black bag, set it on a stretcher, and strapped it on so it wouldn’t take a tumble. I am not a particularly queasy person, but the sound of the bag zipping closed sent shivers over my shoulders.
    “Dickie wasn’t exactly a spring chicken and he was overweight, and I bet you anything he was a smoker, too.” Believe me, this was not a criticism on my part. Until a couple months before, I, too, had been a smoker, and there were days I wished I’d never quit. “Maybe Dickie died of natural causes.”
    “Maybe.” The cop got our contact information down and flipped closed his notebook. “Maybe not.”
    I guess The Great Osborn had been eavesdropping, because he darted forward, looking a little less great and a lot more panicked. “We should go to the hospital,” he told the cop. “We should all get checked out. We all ate from the same pots of chili. We could be ticking time bombs.”
    Hermosa rolled her eyes. “If there was poison in your chili, you’d be dead by now, Osborn. Although if memory serves, the last time we went to bed together, you were already pretty dead.”
    Osborn’s smile was acid.
    Hermosa turned her back on him.
    “Tumbleweed’s right,” I told the cop though he certainly hadn’t asked for my opinion. “The judges’ bowls are all filled at once. If the whole pot was poisoned, everyone would have gotten some. I’m going with natural causes.” I nodded, and so did Ruth Ann and Tumbleweed, not because they thought my announcement carried any weight, but because I knew what they were thinking: a death from natural causes was much easier to deal with than the thought that someone wanted Dickie dead and took the opportunity to help him along with a little Devil’s Breath.
    “It’s possible.” The cop took pity on us. He even patted Ruth Ann’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
    “Well, you could get to the bottom of it right now if you’d pay a little more attention.” Her eyes gleaming, Reverend Love stepped forward. “I’ve been trying to talk to someone but—”
    “We’ll get around to interviewing everyone,” the cop assured her.
    Reverend Love stepped back, her weight against one foot. “Do you know who I am?” she asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll tell you what, sonny, you will once I talk to your superiors.” She clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “If you’d all stop running around like chickens with your heads cut off, I could put an end to the questions right here and now. I know who killed Dickie!”
    Like everyone else, I pulled in a breath and leaned toward her, hanging on her every word.
    Now that she was the center of attention, Reverend Love stood tall and threw back her shoulders. She also threw out