Her every move was like a fairytale princess. We followed Margot past her “camp site,” which looked more like a Hawaiian lanai-style patio beneath a beautiful canopy extending from her husband’s luxury Gallivanting Gastronome bus.
“Be careful coming around the smoker – it might be a little greazy,” she warned us.
Chef Gourdaine was in the shiny stainless-steel kitchen, busily working on his appetizer course.
“Dear, these are my friends, Ruby, Mercy, and Sheriff Hayes.”
The chef had the carcass of a small animal on his cutting table, and he looked up at us briefly.
“We’re with Team Smoke,” Ruby said. “I’m Ruby. I’m doing the desserts for him.”
“Ah, the veteran that they invited to the event. Good luck to you,” Gourdaine said without a smile as he carved out the rib section of the partially-butchered animal.
“What are you making, chef?” I asked. “Is that a lamb you’re carving up?”
He looked at me with half a smile as he laid the ribs on the table. “No spying allowed, Miss. But, yes, it is. I guess no one else will be making lamb lollipop wings anyway.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I just don’t get to see a gourmet chef at work very often.”
“He’s teasing you, dear,” Margot said.
“It’s not a problem, Mercy – long as you’re not reporting to that glory-hound next door,” the chef said. “They shouldn’t really allow Flye to compete here. He works for the network, and EATS-TV is selecting and paying all the judges too. Somebody should firebomb his kitchen – with him in it, if you ask me. Never did like that cocky SOB.”
“Dear! That’s quite impolite,” Margot scolded her husband.
“I’ve heard a lot of teams complaining about Flye, ma’am,” Brody told her. “Your husband isn’t alone in his opinion – except for the firebombing part.”
“Well,” Gourdaine said, “there are a lot of people around here with excellent knife skills, and most of them can’t stand the guy – me included. He’d better not wander far from his tent after dark, that’s for sure.” He pretended to cut his own throat with his chef’s knife, and then winked at us.
“Chef Flye is very talented, dear,” Margot said to her husband, trying to lighten up the conversation, “but I’m sure you will have no trouble beating him.”
“Especially with you as my pastry chef, sweetheart.”
Ruby’s face turned white. She just realized that she was in direct competition with Margot Steward in the dessert department.
Ruby smiled weakly. “I guess I’d better not make your gingerbread men today, Miss Steward, or is it Mrs. Gourdaine?”
“Call me Margot, dear. And you go ahead and bake anything you’d like. As it happens, I’m making miniature gingerbread jellyrolls with wild cherry compote today. It pairs so nicely with lamb.”
I think I detected an “I dare you to bake gingerbread” dagger shoot from the diva homemaker’s eye toward the woman she had just embraced as a daughter.
“Did I hear someone mention my name?”
We looked to see a tall, substantial figure walk in the front of Gourdaine’s kitchen. The sun was rising right behind him, but as he walked up to us we could see it was Billy Flye.
“We were just saying how lovely it was to have the great Billy Flye right next to us,” Margot said with a convincing smile.
“I know better than that,” Flye chuckled. He bellied right up to the carving table across from Gourdaine. “Whipping up one of your pompous, pinky-extended treats, fit for an emperor who’s been dead for 400 years, Andy? Real men don’t eat sheep.”
Gourdaine stopped and looked Flye in the eye. “Is that so? You should be in your own kitchen cooking one of those internationally famous habanero and hummus tacos – or fire and mud, as the Japanese called them when they felt honor-bound to give the visiting American their Samurai Chef sword award. I mean, it was your third try, wasn’t it, Billy?”
“Well, the Gassy Gourmet ought to know, Andy boy. After all, you did win the Purple Pickle Award at some West Virginia county fair, if memory serves.”
Billy chuckled as they exchanged glares. The mutual hatred between these two celebrity chefs was palpable. Billy stood tall, trying to intimidate the smaller Gourdaine with his powerful and foreboding presence. He spoke with a demeaning tone now.
“I’m having my team prepare my appetizers today, Andy – Southwestern sliders. That should be good enough to beat you, Pickle Chef. I’m driving in the ATV race. I need a golden cleaver to hang next to my Golden Samurai sword.”
I could see a slow burn in Chef Gourdaine’s eyes as he stared down his rival.
“Careful what you wish for, Corn Chef. If somebody else finds it first, you might have a golden cleaver in your forehead. Time to go now. You don’t want to keep your ATV waiting.”
Flye flashed an evil grin. He turned and started walking away, without ever having even acknowledged the presence of any of us except Gourdaine.
Chef Gourdaine took a parting shot. “Real chefs don’t drive ATVs, Billy boy.”
Chapter Eight
Smoke was busily preparing his wings for the smoker. He decided to do a small drumstick and two wing segments for each plate, and Ruby was preparing a vinegar slaw and a sweet pineapple slaw for acid and balance and color, or something that sounded way to technical for me.
Brody headed back to Calhoun to do some Sheriff business. But, since most of the county was here at Daniel Boone State Park, he would be back in time for the tasting and judging.
“Let’s get moving, Mercy,” Deloris said. “We’re the ATV team, and I want to get a good one before they all get taken. I have my eye on a pink one that will be perfect for our all-female team.”
“I didn’t know you were such a feminist, Deloris.”
“I’m not one of those dang-nab crazy feminists, Mercy. I’m a female. I like pink.”
We said our goodbyes to the rest of the team and stopped by the amateur site where Jake, Junior, and Babs were cooking up something that looked like chili.
“Good luck, ladies!” Jake said.
“Beat the pants off those men,” Babs added. “We’ll cook up some Old School chili omelets for the hungry crowd while you’re gone.”
Junior wished us well too, and we headed to the starting point, just outside the circle of kitchens.
Cameras were preparing to go live, as Chester Monsoon and Jennifer Gilliam were in their stools where ladies were putting on the finishing touches of makeup and hairspray.
“There’s the pink one, Deloris. Let’s grab it.”
“Hold on there, Merse. That powder blue one looks pretty nice too – and there’s a butterfly sitting on the handlebar. Looks like a sign of good luck to me.”
“Powder blue it is!”
I heard a harsh voice coming up behind me. “You girls stay away from the pink machine. I called dibs on that one last night, and Chef Monsoon said it was mine.”
“Hi, Nancy Lu,” I said. “No worries! We’re taking the light blue one.”
The old woman rolled up in her wheelchair with a teenaged boy running behind her. She was all dressed in camouflage and was wearing a backpack.
“Looks like you’re ready for a big outing,” Deloris said to her. “But it’s not a good idea to be out in the woods wearing camou during hunting season, Nancy Lu. What’s the backpack for?”
“I know what I’m doing, old woman. And if you knew anything about being in the woods, you’d have some water and food rations and a first aid kit just in case, too. You never know what might happen out in the wild.”
I nodded. That made sense.
“Grandma, do we have to take that pink one? There’s a black one right over there, on the end,” the boy complained.
“Damn straight, we do, Jackson. Pink is my lucky color. Now pick me up and set me into that driver’s seat.”
She parked her wheelchair by a tree and pulled some leather driving gloves, which looked m
ore like golf gloves, out of a pouch on her backpack and slipped them on.
She’s really taking this race seriously! I thought.
The strapping boy picked her up with ease and carried her to her chariot. She put on her pink helmet, but Jackson was refusing to put on his.
I walked over to the pair with my helmet. “Would blue work for you, Jackson? I’ll trade you.”
He looked at me. The light blue was still a little “girly,” but at least it wasn’t pink.
“Thank you, ma’am. Do you know my Uncle Randy? I saw him talking to you last night.”
“Sure do, Jackson. We’ve been friends since high school. He’s a good man.” Well, he’s probably a reasonably decent uncle. “Good luck!”
Deloris drove the ATV around the area to get used to the controls, and then we lined up at the starting line. We all turned off our engines to listen to the instructions.
Billy Flye was on the end in the black ATV, by himself. I guess he didn’t need a helper to read the clues and scour the woods for the cleaver.
“Looks like Flye isn’t the only chef racing,” Deloris said, pointing to a man putting on a helmet by a bright red ATV.
“Huh,” I said when I recognized him. “That’s Andy Gourdaine. I thought real chefs didn’t drive ATVs.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“It looks like he doesn’t need a co-pilot either. Must be an ego thing for big-name chefs.”
The producers called for silence, and the bright lights came on. Chester Monsoon and Jennifer Gilliam introduced the event and gave us the detailed instructions.
“Okay, Deloris, did you hear all that? We can go anywhere inside the marked path, but not outside. There are hunters just a mile past Big Bear Hill.”
“I’m not deaf, Mercy. I heard the man. I also heard him say that the last of the mile-markers is on top of Big Bear. There should be some hunters up there with the deer they bagged. They’re letting them use the zipline to send the carcasses here to the campsite. I’m going out after the race to get mine. It’ll have a day to hang anyway.”
We heard a whizzing sound behind us and turned around.
“Here comes one now. Looks like a small buck,” Deloris said.
“Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!” Monsoon said for the live cameras.
The air was filled with the buzzing of the small but powerful engines.
“Hold on tight, Mercy. I’m going to be leaving the rest of these losers in the dust.”
Deloris did get out to lead, but the others were right behind us as the path narrowed. Only ten of the sixteen teams were participating in the race, but it was still pretty crowded out there. There was enough room for one four-wheeler to pass another on the beaten path, but the vehicles were spread out on both sides of the path, in the trees, too. Attendants were standing near every turn with orange flags to keep us on the path. There were yellow ribbons tied around trees on the left side of the path and red ribbons on the right side.
“Make way for Nancy Lu!”
We heard her shrill holler above all the engines as she came careening around the curve behind us and passed us on the right. She drove off the road, sliding and skidding her way through the trees and underbrush. Her spinning tires threw dirt, dead leaves, pine needles, and twigs right at us.
“That woman’s a maniac. She’s going to kill somebody if she keeps driving like that,” Deloris shouted back to me.
“If she doesn’t kill herself first!”
The black ATV sped past us, forcing Nancy Lu into some thick underbrush that slowed her down. I think I heard a few curse words from her. The red ATV was hot on the tail of the black one.
“Looks like Billy Flye and Andy Gourdaine are going to be just as hard to beat on the trail as they are in the kitchen, Mercy. I can’t keep up with them without crashing this thing or flipping it over. And I’m not going to go driving off the main path like those fools.”
“That’s fine with me, Deloris. Let’s just concentrate on finding that golden cleaver. That’s what’s going to win us this event. We have to outsmart the bigshot chefs and the rest of the drivers.”
“That’s something we can do for sure, Mercy. No man is going to out-think us. Sheriff Hayes has already learned that, the way we’ve solved his biggest cases. First clue is right around the bend.”
A few of the ATVs were actually stopping to read the clues, while others seemed to have a strategy of getting all the clues as fast as they could. I grabbed the envelope from the attendant at the first mile marker as Deloris drove by slowly.
“You’re the fourth to check in, ma’am,” he told me.
“What’s it say, Mercy?”
I opened the envelope and read the index card inside.
“It says:
Before mile 2, you’ll be miles ahead
In your quest for the shiny gold cleaver
If you turn to your right when you see a cat’s head.
Find blue flowers and you’ll be a believer.”
“How in the world are they going to get a cat to stay in one place with all these noisy machines driving by, Mercy?”
“Maybe it’s painted on a sign or something. Just keep your eyes open for anything that looks like a cat. I’m pretty sure the chefs aren’t even going to look at the clues until they collect them all. They’re too busy trying to pass each other.”
Chapter Nine
A green ATV came rushing past us, followed by Nancy Lu and her grandson. Jackson smiled and waved at us.
“Don’t worry about them, Deloris. Slow and steady wins the race!”
“We’re not going to be the tortoise, Merse. But we’ll let the hares get a little jump on us, and cut ’em off at the pass.”
“There! Right there, Deloris!” I extended my right arm alongside her face and pointed at a big rock on the right before the next curve.
“What? Do you see the cat? That’s just rock.”
“Look closer, Deloris. It’s got two pointy ears sticking out of the top, and they must have drilled some holes in the muzzle and put three little pine fronds sticking out of each side, like whiskers.”
She grumbled but slowed down as we approached it. “Maybe you’re right, Mercy. They painted eyes on it too. You jump off and follow the little path that-a-way, and I’ll meet you around the curve.”
“Will do!”
I jumped off the four-wheeler and looked over my shoulder to see Deloris pulling the little twigs of pine needles out of the cat’s nose. I didn’t like it, but I knew that was exactly what Nancy Lu or Chef Flye would do if they found it first.
Just ten steps down the little footpath, a flash of blue caught my eye. A small sunny patch in the treed area had allowed a small patch of blue wildflowers to spring up. I ran towards it.
The patch was no bigger than a garbage can cover, and right in the middle was a short stake with an envelope one it. There was a one-dollar bill sticking out of the top, and on the front, it said Take the Money and Run!
I grabbed the envelope and headed toward the sound of the powder blue ATV.
Deloris was moving slowly around the curve as I hopped on. “Giddyap, girl!”
She floored it and we moved quickly ahead. There was another index card in the small envelope.
“There’s a dollar and a clue in here, Deloris:
This little clue is special for you.
Give the buck to the lady in red.
When she asks, ‘How’s your day?’
Be sure that you say,
‘I wish we were further ahead!’”
“There’s your lady in red, Mercy,” Deloris said, pointing down the road.
There was a young woman in red ski pants and a red jacket just up ahead. She was the attendant at Mile Marker 2. Deloris Pulled to a stop when we got to her, and I handed her the dollar bill.
She smiled. “How’s your day, ladies?”
I returned her pleasant smile. “I wish we were further ahead!” I said.
She winked at me and pulled out a gold envelope from inside her red jacket. “Here you go. Good luck! You are the fifth team to check in.” Then her smile became even wider and she leaned toward us. “But you’re miles ahead of the rest of them now – five miles to be exact.” She picked up a small shovel and slid it under the bungy cords on the small hood of our four-wheeler.
“Thanks, lady!” Deloris said as she slammed down the gas pedal.
I had to quickly grab her shoulder to keep from falling off the back of the ATV.
“What’s in the envelope?” she asked as she careened around the next curve. We could see Nancy Lu’s pink machine ahead in the distance.
“I don’t know yet, but it looks like we’re going to have to do some digging to find the cleaver.” I opened the gold envelope and pulled out several index cards. “Oh, my gosh, Deloris!”
“What is it?”
“We’ve got all the rest of the clues! We have five cards here, for Mile 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. That’s all of them, because Mile 7 is the finish line.
“That means we have the inside track, Merse. You can’t win unless you cross the finish line with the golden cleaver. Let’s drive into the middle of the loop and read through the clues. Even if the leaders are a mile ahead and doing a mile every two or three minutes, that still gives us ten minutes before they catch up with us.”
She pulled off the trail and out of sight from our competitors, and we stopped at a sunny clearing. Deloris stuck her fingers into her beehive hairdo and pulled out two sticks of beef jerky wrapped in cellophane.
“Here you go, Mercy. A little snack while we solve these silly riddles.”
Jerky wasn’t my favorite snack, but it did look pretty good at the moment, and appropriate for our outdoor setting.
“Thanks, Deloris. Now, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
We stood next to each other and looked at the five cards.
“How come the last four each have a different corner cut off?”
“Could be important, or it could be something to distract us. Let’s see what they say.”
Murder, Basted and Barbecued Page 4