by Riley Adams
“No, that doesn’t really make any sense,” said Flo to Evelyn. “I knew going in that I was going to be here twenty-four hours a day with this barbeque. Don’t worry about it, honey. A little headache won’t take me down.”
“How about,” asked Lulu slowly as she figured it out, “if Flo leaves now with the girls? Ella Beth and Coco have got to be getting tired of walking. Flo could take them to Aunt Pat’s or back to the house and then she can go home and sleep until right before they close the gates for the night. I can stay and help Cherry out—not officially, of course. I won’t be cooking, but just making sure everything is okay. Then I’ll leave when they close the gates and Flo can spend the night here with Cherry.”
Flo glanced at her watch. “That would give me plenty of time to sleep or rest my eyes. I’ll go ahead and help you round the girls up now, Lulu.”
Lulu had to stop herself from giving seasoning tips or for actually helping Cherry cook. Instead, she stepped more into a hostess role like she had at the restaurant—visiting with the invited guests that came to the Graces’ booth. Once Cherry had cooked up a bunch of barbeque, she hurried off to visit with her friend in the other booth while Lulu helped entertain the guests. And between the three Graces, they’d invited a ton of guests. There were folks in and out of there all the time—eating barbeque, drinking, and cutting up. Lulu herself ended up sampling quite a bit of barbeque. She ruefully patted her tummy. She could use an antacid.
At about eleven thirty, Flo hurried into the booth. “Lulu, thanks so much for spelling me—I feel like a million dollars now. You should probably be heading out of here—there’s going to be thousands of folks leaving at one time and I’m sure you couldn’t be parked close.”
“It’s okay, honey. It won’t take me that long. Besides, you know I wore sensible shoes.” She lifted up a foot encased in a tennis shoe. Maybe it didn’t match her floral dress, but those shoes had served her well today. “And I’ve also brought my boots for the mud on the way to the car.”
“Any more problems from the booth next door?” asked Flo.
“No, it’s been pretty quiet over there,” said Evelyn.
“Probably because Reuben stalked off to make a point,” muttered Cherry.
“Funny that we didn’t hear him come back,” said Lulu. “He seemed like he was dead set on bossing around the others and running that whole booth.”
“Except,” drawled Evelyn, “that he wanted to teach them a lesson. Maybe this is the lesson…showing them how tough life is without his expert advice.”
It still seemed peculiar. But Lulu needed to get to her car before everyone else made an exodus for the parking. “All right…better go. I love y’all. Be careful.”
Cherry hugged her. “Thanks for helping us hold down the fort, Lulu! You’re the best.”
The weather had actually not been bad for most of the day—a real blessing. However, it picked that very moment to pour down buckets. “Oh no!” gasped Flo. “Your pretty ’do, Lulu!”
“It’ll be okay. I’ve got to wash it anyway,” said Lulu with a laugh.
Cherry dug through a pile of things in the corner of the booth. “Where are our ponchos? Why do things disappear around here?”
“Don’t worry about it, y’all. There’s a bit of cardboard here and I’ll hold it up over my head and kind of deflect it,” said Lulu.
“Might could check your pocketbook and see if there’s something you could cover yourself with in there, Lulu,” said Evelyn with a chuckle. “That pocketbook of yours is big enough to use to backpack the Appalachian Trail.”
Lulu laughed good-naturedly at her, but then snapped her fingers and riffled through the bag real quick. Then she sighed. “I must have used that plastic rain bonnet another time and forgotten to replace it. No, there’s nothing in my pocketbook that will do me a lick of good in this rain.”
Flo said, “Don’t we have an extra tarp or two, Cherry? That we didn’t end up using for anything? We left them here, didn’t we, just in case we needed them? Because cardboard is going to fall apart with this much rain.”
Cherry made a gargling cry of frustration. “We did. And where are they?” Her eyes darkened. “I bet they’re next door and that stupid Reuben swiped them.”
“Now, Cherry!” said Flo. “Let’s don’t go picking a fight with that tent. You know how they are.”
“I won’t go accusing them, but let’s poke around on the outskirts. I bet they took the tarps. Reuben even had a small covered storage area for food and supplies, remember? Like an annexed storage room. Let’s stick our heads in there and see. They have my name on them, so it’s not like we’ll have to argue about who they belong to.”
Cherry was determined, so Lulu offered to go with her. Flo and Evelyn didn’t want anything to do with poking through the other booth’s supplies. It was pitch-black dark and loud. There was music blaring from different booths and laughter and loud talking. The air was thick with the grilling smoke and cast a murky fog over the festival. First Cherry and Lulu poked around the nooks and crannies between their booth and the next. Then Cherry pointed a finger to a small tent that annexed onto a back “room” of the bigger booth. It was about the size of a standard closet.
Lulu at this point was ready to get out of the rain. She and Cherry stuck their heads into the storage tent. Lulu felt her heart start pounding hard in her chest and she put a hand up as if to stop it. With her other hand she grabbed Cherry and they backed out and into the rain as fast as they’d gotten out of it.
Because Reuben Shaw was lying dead, with a butcher knife stuck in his chest. And covered by the Graces’ tarp, marked with Cherry’s name in permanent marker.
They were lucky that Pink was still at the festival and was one of the policemen who responded to their call. He had a very calming effect on the women, who were left pale and shaking from the emotional experience of finding a body—even the body of someone who hadn’t been very pleasant. The fact was that he’d been alive and talking to them only hours before, then had reached a horrible end. He’d had his life unnaturally shortened and no one deserved that.
Pink stayed right there with them in their booth while the Memphis police questioned them. The booth next door was marked off with crime scene tape and the police created a barrier to keep people from getting too close and tampering with the scene. Eventually, an ambulance arrived to remove the body. A Lieutenant Avery Clark interviewed the women and even asked Pink a couple of questions after learning that he’d witnessed the argument earlier.
Cherry was ready to ask some questions of her own. “Shouldn’t y’all be talking to his team members? They’re the ones who were either threatening to kill Reuben or were putting him in a choke hold.”
Lieutenant Clark regarded her steadily. “We surely will. But right now we’re focusing on the people who discovered the body, whose tarp was found covering the body, and who actually assaulted the victim earlier in the day.”
Cherry turned as red as her hair. “Well, all right then. But it wasn’t really like that.” Her voice was uncharacteristically hesitant.
“What was it like then?” asked the policeman, giving her a stern look over his glasses. He was an older cop who didn’t seem in the mood to have his time wasted.
Lulu cleared her throat. “I think Cherry means that she was trying to protect Reuben’s teammate, Sharon, from him. He was acting very threateningly and Cherry used a nondeadly weapon to prevent him from hurting her.”
“The teammate,” said Lieutenant Clark, raising an eyebrow, “who was threatening to kill him?”
“So she’s not exactly a pushover. Still, he was a lot bigger than she was and he meant business. Hitting him over the head with a plaster Elvis wasn’t the wrong thing to do. I’d do it again, as a matter of fact. Except I’d choose something besides Elvis as a weapon. I feel like I was desecrating the King,” said Cherry.
“And remind me again what you two were doing in the storage tent of the booth next door?” aske
d the policeman smoothly. The lines around Pink’s eyes crinkled in concern, as if the women needed to be sure to think through their answer.
Lulu said, “I was fixing to leave the festival before the gates closed.” She pointed to her wristband-free wrist. “Of course, it was pouring down rain, same as it is now. Umbrellas aren’t allowed at the festival, you know, so we were searching for tarps. We thought if I held a tarp over my head that I might stay dryer on my way to the car.”
Cherry added darkly, “And swiping our stuff would be typical of the immature kind of thing I’d expect Reuben to do. So after we poked around here looking for it, I mentioned that maybe we should take a peek in his booth’s storage area.”
Both women were quiet for a moment, thinking about what they’d seen there. Somebody hadn’t been crazy about Reuben. And they’d shown their displeasure with a butcher knife.
“What was your opinion of the other team members?” asked Lieutenant Clark. “Did you get along okay? What was the problem between them and Reuben?”
Cherry shrugged. “They weren’t the most fun-loving people to be around, but I guess that’s because they acted really stressed out. But they were better than Reuben. They’re probably fine under ordinary circumstances, but were worse when they were around Reuben.”
Lulu said, “And of course lately they’d been around Reuben for twenty-four hours a day. From what I could tell about Reuben, he was especially hard to deal with when he was being competitive.”
“He was one of those people who thought he knew best all the time. Plus, he wanted to win. So he was being a real jerk, from what I could see,” said Cherry with fire in her eyes.
“What about the other man, Brody?” asked Pink. “How did he figure in? I know he was Sharon’s husband, but what was his connection with Reuben?”
Cherry said, “I think he was a friend of Reuben’s. Although they sure weren’t friendly yesterday.”
Lieutenant Clark closed his worn leather notebook. “Okay, that’s going to be it for now. I’m going to want to talk to you later, Cherry, so make sure you’re not planning on leaving Memphis.”
Cherry snorted. “Leaving Memphis? I’ll be lucky if I even leave this booth. We’ve had Evelyn in charge of the food for the last couple of hours, so who knows what kind of catching up I’m going to have to do. Or what perfectly good food I’ll have to throw into the garbage. It’s okay if I stay here, isn’t it?” she asked suddenly, frowning. “I mean, with the crime scene next door.”
“It’s okay as long as you stay in this booth and don’t visit that one,” said the policeman in a clipped voice as he walked out of their booth.
“Don’t worry about catching up with the cooking. Flo was helping, too,” reminded Lulu. “Everything will be just fine.”
* * *
When Lulu’s alarm went off the next morning, she was genuinely surprised and felt certain she had a few more hours of sleep. Of course, it had been a really short night, after the police interview and everything. Then Pink had escorted her out to the parking lot so she could finally get home and rest.
She’d wanted to check in at Aunt Pat’s and make sure everything was going well before she made it over to the Graces’ booth.
Aunt Pat’s was quiet when Lulu arrived at eight in the morning, and wouldn’t start bustling until the diners started coming in at eleven. As usual, she felt a real sense of peace as soon as she walked into the dining room and saw the familiar wooden booths, red-checkered tablecloths, and creaky hardwood floors. You couldn’t even see the restaurant walls because they were covered with photographs and memorabilia of all types and descriptions. As usual, the framed black-and-white photo of Lulu’s gently smiling Aunt Pat helped her relax. It looked like she was about to hop off the wall and visit with her.
The kitchen wasn’t quite as still as the dining room had been. There Ben was busily checking off a food delivery and putting it away. It was a large one, too…always a good sign in this business. They must have really gone through some food at the restaurant recently.
Sara was also checking things off the order sheet and putting them away. “Can I help?” asked Lulu. They both waved her off and kept counting.
The tables were even already set up for the day, with fresh paper towel rolls on each table and clean checkered tablecloths and silverware all set to go. The old wooden floor shone. Either they’d worked their tails off after the restaurant closed last night, or they had brought in so much temporary help that it only took minutes to get it in tip-top shape.
Seeing nothing to do, and feeling a bit befuddled about it, Lulu retreated to the sanctuary of the front porch. She was delighted to see her friend Morty already there. Morty was one-third of the Back Porch Blues Band, a regular customer of Aunt Pat’s for the past sixty years, and a good friend. He was in his eighties and resembled a black version of Mr. Clean. Although he kept calling himself retired, you couldn’t tell it. He and his friends Big Ben and Buddy still played regular gigs at Aunt Pat’s, and any wedding or even funeral that they could be booked for.
“What’s going on, Lulu? You were frowning up a storm when you came out on the porch. Everything going okay in the kitchen?”
“The kitchen is great—no problems there. But wait until you hear what happened to Cherry and me last night,” said Lulu and launched into the story. It was good to sort out some of the details by telling them to her friend.
“Do you think that Cherry will get into any trouble?” asked Morty, eyebrows drawing together. “Considering the argument she had, and the fact that it was even witnessed by a police officer…and then y’all discovering the body—that’s sort of suspicious, isn’t it?”
“I sure hope she won’t get into any trouble,” said Lulu. “They’ve got to realize that Cherry wouldn’t have been in any hurry to search in that storage tent if she’d thought there was a body in it. Especially a body wrapped in a tarp with her name on it.”
Morty said, “Who was on pig duty at the barbeque pit?”
“Cherry was. And I was right there with her the whole time while Evelyn was hostess to the different guests who came in the booth.”
“I’d say that’s an alibi and a half if she had y’all there to vouch that she was cooking spare ribs all night,” said Morty.
Lulu shifted in her rocker, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “Morty, there’s a problem there. Flo left yesterday afternoon with a headache and I took her spot until midnight. Cherry did leave the booth for a short while last night. She has this good friend of hers with a booth and she left to visit a spell with her.”
“Well, that’s all right then. So that woman will give her the alibi and everything will work out fine,” said Morty.
Lulu shook her head. “It’s not that easy, I’m afraid. Cherry had a hard time finding her friend’s booth. It was dark, you know, and foggy. And loud. While she was looking, there were some folks who came up to talk to her—you know, because she was dressed like Elvis.”
“Did those people have names and could give her an alibi?” asked Morty.
“She had no idea who they were, so no. Basically, it boils down to the fact that if Cherry had really wanted to kill Reuben, she had the opportunity to do it. And I guess there were enough butcher knives at that festival that she also had the means to do it—along with thousands of other people. Of course, none of us believe that Cherry would murder anybody”
Morty said, “You’ve got me all worried now. I’d sure hate anything to happen to Cherry. Maybe I can get friendly with the other team and find out some information for you, too.”
“That sounds like a good plan, Morty. You could maybe even offer to help Sharon and Brody out for a while, since Reuben isn’t there cooking with them anymore. Besides, folks always like talking with you.” Lulu reached over and gave her friend a hug. “And I do, too.”
Cherry was definitely in a funk at the grill. “Nothing is going right. I’m so distracted that I hardly even recollect what spices I’ve used on the ribs
. The tent next door has gone from being too loud with arguments to being too quiet. And the police keep popping their heads in to talk to me like they think I have something to do with all this. That Lieutenant What’s-his-face.”
Evelyn drawled, “Well, clearly the police haven’t found anything that would pin this murder on you or you wouldn’t be at the festival—you’d be cooling your heels in jail.”
Cherry glared at Evelyn as she shook out what appeared to Lulu like a heap of cayenne onto her barbeque. “Somehow the thought of being in jail isn’t cheering me up too much, Evelyn.”
Morty was looking askance at the cayenne, too. “You don’t have to worry about going to jail, Cherry—you didn’t do anything. And since you’re innocent, they won’t discover any evidence that could make them take you in.”
Cherry was still put out. “Except for a tarp with my name on it that wrapped up the body like a present. What a dumb night for me to wander around the festival. If I’d only stayed in the booth, they wouldn’t even be considering me as a suspect. I wasn’t planning on being gone for very long—I was just poking my head out for a few minutes after spending all day with that barbeque.”
“I’m wondering what’s going on with Sharon and Brody next door,” said Lulu in a low voice. “Are they shocked at what happened? Do you think one of them did it?”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “Well, of course one of them did it. Neither of them could stand Reuben. We know Cherry didn’t do it. And it sure doesn’t seem to be some random act of violence at the festival.”
“Somebody’s got to be pretty mad to stick a butcher knife into a man,” said Morty.
“But this was the kind of man who probably made tons of people mad at him. He made Cherry mad at him and she barely even knew him,” said Lulu.
Morty stood up. “I’m going to head next door and see if I can sweet-talk my way into their booth and sample their barbeque. Just to get an idea of what the mood over there is like and what kind of information they might have.”