Free Chili Con Carnage by Kylie Logan Page B

Little Rock to Dallas. Dallas to San Antonio.
    I’d been through the notebook a dozen times at least, and I knew the only thing that was even vaguely interesting in it was what wasn’t in it—pages near the back that had been torn away.
    “Because they were directions Jack didn’t need anymore,” I told myself like I’d told myself before. “Because he’d been doodling. Because that’s where he’d written the phone numbers of women he knew he’d never call.”
    I slapped the notebook closed and reached into the box again. At the bottom was a fat manila envelope that contained various and sundry bits and pieces—articles Jack had torn from magazines, cards I’d sent him for his birthday and Father’s Day and Christmas. As if I needed it, the forwarding addresses on each one of those cards reminded me that Jack was the proverbial rolling stone. You couldn’t gather moss, or obligations, or messy emotional entanglements if you kept on moving.
    I spread the envelopes out on the table in front of me. One of them was from Norma, and honestly, I’d never paid much attention to it. Norma being Norma, I was sure it was a letter demanding extra child support, or reminding Jack he needed to get Sylvia back home to Seattle in plenty of time before school started.
    Except that by the time this particular letter was postmarked . . .
    I squinted for a better look and saw that the letter had been mailed back when Sylvia was in culinary school, long after she’d stopped spending summers on the road with Jack.
    I slipped the contents out of the envelope and unfolded a newspaper clipping with a Post-it note attached.
    I can’t imagine you really care,
it said in Norma’s cramped handwriting,
but this is from Sylvia’s school newspaper. One more hurdle to jump! If she gets this award, she’ll spend next year in Vienna.
    “Vienna?” Something I knew nothing about, the city or the fact that Sylvia had once had the opportunity to go there. According to the headline on the article, that one last hurdle Norma referred to was the fact that Sylvia was a semifinalist for some snooty culinary award. The other person up for the award—
    The article continued on the next page, and I flipped to it and caught my breath. There was a photo there, old and grainy and black-and-white. It showed a smiling Sylvia near a podium with the only person standing between her and Vienna.
    Robert Lasky.
    I squinted some more and ice filled my veins. The photo had been taken ten years earlier, but it was hard not to recognize the face of the smiling Robert Lasky.
    Especially since the last I’d seen him, he was tumbling out of an RV and right on top of me.
    When I raced back to the Palace, my knees were shaking.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” I’d already called out when I saw that Sylvia wasn’t alone.
    Cops.
    Three of them.
    And one of them had his cuffs out.
    My timing was perfect. I got there just in time to see my sister . . . well, my half sister . . . get arrested.

CHAPTER 6

    It was as if every dream I’d ever dared to imagine had been suddenly brought to life right before my very eyes.
    Sylvia.
    Being led away in handcuffs.
    By a couple of big guys with guns.
    I swear, if this was a cartoon, there would have been an angel chorus singing in the background and bluebirds of happiness tweeting out their hallelujahs around my head.
    Unfortunately, before I ever had a chance to fully appreciate the beauty of the moment, my conscience kicked in. Damn conscience. Naturally, my curiosity followed right behind. I knew it wasn’t smart to interfere with anything as official as an arrest, but I couldn’t help myself. I darted over to where Sylvia—so stunned, each of her steps was as wooden as a zombie’s—was being led away.
    “Sylvia, what the—” It wasn’t any big surprise when I was stopped in my tracks by another big guy with a gun who’d apparently come along with the other two just in case someone like me tried to make a