Midnight Cravings

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Prologue

In Chief of Police Dan Duvall’s view, the annual Rocky Top Chili Cook-off was always a huge pain in the butt.

The problem wasn’t just the drunks—although there were plenty of them, thanks to the fact that the contest was sponsored by the local Rocky Top Beer Company—it was the tourists. Everyone in the little town of Beldon, North Carolina (pop. 8,356), sprang to life like citizens of Brigadoon to cater to the visitors. For one long weekend each year, the normally calm residents of the town frantically set up kiosks to sell T-shirts, snacks and four-dollar sodas to all the hot, thirsty, gassy out-of-towners.

“So I’m thinking I’ll just sell beans, you know?” Dan’s brother, Jerry, was saying to him as they walked down the shady sidewalk next to Main Street. It was a week before the contest was set to begin and Jerry was, as usual, plotting a get-rich-quick scheme. “Pinto, kidney, green. Because what do people want when they’re making chili? Beans. I’ll make a fortune.”

Dan looked at Jerry in disbelief. “This is it? This is the great investment opportunity you had to tell me about?” He looked at the broken-down gazebo old Jeb Currier had offered to lease to Jerry for the week at the “bargain” rate of nine hundred bucks. It was on a small patch of grass off Main Street, right under the old billboard that read Beldon: Home of the Pea Bean. Only some idiot had spray-painted an r over the e in Bean, presumably—and aptly—misspelling brain.

“Yup. You could finally get a safe job. Hell, you already got shot in the butt in the line of duty….”

“It was my hip,” Dan said, with little patience. Eight years ago, Dan had made the mistake of making time with a platinum-blond cook-off contestant from the Deep South. Her chili wasn’t so good, but she had other talents. Unfortunately, she also turned out to have a husband, and when he found her with Dan, he did what any gun-toting drunk would do: took one bad shot and passed out.

Jerry didn’t know the whole story. He, along with the rest of the town, just knew Dan had been shot by one of the tourists.

“Yeah, whatever,” Jerry scoffed. “So, you interested?”

“No.” How many times would he have to say it?

“I wish everyone would stop thinking of the contest tourists as a gold mine. It’s like feeding seagulls at the beach. They’ll just keep coming back.”

“That’s what we want.” Jerry flipped his hair back out of his eyes. “You’re missing the whole point, bro’.”

“No, no, that is the point. That is exactly the point. Every year this town is overrun by bossy, impatient—and sometimes gun-wielding—city folks, and everyone here leaps to serve them. I realize that it’s motivated by greed, but with every illegal soda stand, unlicensed T-shirt shop and uninspected bean gazebo, the job of every member of my force gets harder. We’re talking about six hard-working men and women who end up having to work around the clock, with little or no thanks, every single year for this thing. Don’t you get that?”

Jerry looked at him for a moment, then hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his skintight designer jeans. “I’m going into the bean business, man, and you can join me or not.”

Dan looked at Jerry and shook his head. “Get a real job.”

“Okay, give one to me. Deputize me.”

Dan should have seen this coming. It, too, happened every year. “Not gonna happen, Jer.”

“Come on,” Jerry whined. “You just said you’re shorthanded. I’ll do a great job. Give me a chance. Give me a badge. It’s the perfect opportunity for me to get girls.”

“Forget it. If you can’t get girls without a badge, you’re not gonna get them with one.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jerry said defensively. “All the chicks go for you.”

Dan held up a hand. “Don’t say another word. Not one word.”

“Danny Duvall!” a voice called behind him.

Dan turned to see the stout figure of Buzz Dewey, president of the Rocky Top Beer Company, approaching as quickly as his short legs could carry his Tweedledum figure. By the time he’d crossed Main Street, he was huffing and puffing.

“Hey, Buzz.” The man’s pallor and physique always made Dan feel like he was a time bomb, ticking down to zero. “Slow down.”

“I’m fine,” Buzz rasped. “Come on, let’s walk. Doc says I need air-obic exercise every day.”

“All right.” They started walking down Main Street, in the shade of tall pin oak trees and colorful little storefronts. There was Smith’s Pharmacy, established in 1925, and Liz Clemens’s flower shop and the Beldon Cake Bakery…. It would have been the perfect setting for just about any Frank Capra movie.

“So how are we set for security this year, Danny?”

“Same as always,” Dan said, stopping in front of the Steak ’n’ Eggs so that Buzz didn’t overexert himself.

“I ask because it’s extra important this year,” Buzz said, eyeing something behind Dan. Probably the faded photo of a cheeseburger and fries that was taped to the window.

“Why is that?”

Buzz returned his attention to Dan and hiked his brown polyester pants up over his considerable girth until his belt was almost to his armpits. “We’ve got a celebrity cookbook author, Beatrice Beaujold, coming. Wrote a book on what to cook for men. Spicy things, meaty things, snacks, desserts—what real men like.” Buzz looked even hungrier. “Idea being to get ’em to propose marriage, I believe.”

“Oh, that book.” Dan had read an article in the paper about the feminist backlash against the cookbook a few weeks ago.

Buzz nodded. “I get the feeling the author’s a real delicate lady-type. I don’t want her to be offended by the, uh, rowdy behavior of some of our townsfolk during the cook-off.”

When a beer company sponsors a chili cook-off, you’ve got to expect rowdy behavior, Dan thought. The station got calls all night from fussy city folks—no doubt in silk pajamas and slumber masks—complaining about the noise. There was no way he could keep the entire town quiet for one prissy lady.

But Dan couldn’t bear to break that news to Buzz, who looked as if one more worry would send him into the coronary he’d been tempting for the past decade or two.

“Take a look at this,” Buzz said, taking a rolled-up magazine out of his back pocket. He handed it to Dan. “This is all the protection she’s bringing.”

There, circled, was a photo of a beautiful, willowy woman with copper hair and a smile as high voltage as anything Dan had ever seen coming out of Hollywood. The caption read “Page-turner Promotions’s newest member, Josephine Ross, at the Zebra Room.”

“She doesn’t look like much of a bodyguard,” Dan said. What she looked like was a whip-smart, sexy city girl. If he didn’t know better than to get involved with that kind, he’d probably be putty in her hands. But he did know better. He’d known better since college when he’d made the stupid mistake of handing his heart on a silver platter to a city girl who used it like a rubber ball, bouncing it around until it went flat. It had been flat ever since. Especially where whip-smart, sexy city girls were concerned.

“Exactly! Look at her, can’t be more’n twenty-five and if she weighs more than my left leg, I’ll eat my hat. If anything, she’s going to draw even more rowdy attention!”

As if the small police force didn’t have enough to deal with. They didn’t have the time to serve as private security for the author. In fact, if Dan asked them for any more overtime, he was afraid he was going to get resignations. He’d probably have to take care of this one himself.

“How about this, Buzz?” he said. “How about I, personally, keep an extra good eye on your cookbook author?” That way, at least he could give the other officers a break. Besides, how much attention was one little old cookbook author going to need?

Buzz swabbed a handkerchief across his damp forehead and looked grateful. “That’d be real good of you,” he said. “You’re a good man, Danny. A good cop. Just like your daddy.”

“Well, thanks, Buzz.” All of Beldon had thought the world of the late Jack Duvall, whom Dan had replaced as police chief.

“Ms. Beaujold arrives Thursday afternoon,” Buzz continued. “If you could be at the Silver Moon Inn, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll be there, don’t you worry about a thing,” Dan said, resigned. The cook-off was really going to happen. Again.

And something about the picture Buzz had shown him of Josephine Ross made him think this year was going to be even more trouble than usual. He was definitely going to stay out of this woman’s way.