Right on time, the rental crew showed up and started breaking down the buffet tables. Heaven fished around in her bag for the diagram of the location of the barbecue stands. She wanted everything to go perfectly tomorrow, without hurt feelings among the barbecue restaurants. Now that the hardest meal to organize had gone so smoothly, she had hope the rest of the weekend could go the same way. She was cautiously proud of herself: one meal down, two more days to go.
An hour later, the change was almost complete. Heaven supervised and sipped wine.
It was fun to be out almost alone in the night. The street was dramatically lit, with potted palms creating backdrops at the barricaded ends of the street. It was like a movie set. And of course Bob Daultman, the resident movie maker, had been in rare form tonight, insisting on getting shots of all the food and having the women of the various nationalities explain what they had made. Yes, Heaven could see why Bob Daultman was a prizewinner. He could draw people out, make the story seem bigger than life. He had interviewed Heaven about her inspiration for the world soul food theme and had stimulated her imagination with his flattery. Heaven was now sure the whole gala meal was the most brilliant thing she’d ever done, instead of just a desperate solution to a problem.
“Do you keep the grills and the propane tanks and big pots?” the rental foreman asked, reading off a list.
“Yes, we keep them all the way through Sunday.” Although the barbecue people weren’t technically going to grill—they slow-cooked their meat in smokers—a couple of them were going to do sausage and hot dogs, and more than one said they might use the grills to warm up their ribs or chickens. On Sunday, they would deep-fry the turkey in the big stockpots over propane flames on tall stands, just like they did in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. They would also use the grills for the oysters.
Heaven watched the rental crew leaving and decided maybe she should check to make sure that all the coals were out. The Thai cooks who did the satay were in the Ruby listening to the music and she hadn’t checked back there since they stopped serving. It would be just her luck if she burned down the historic Eighteenth and Vine district on its first night of its second life.
She was laughing at the thought when she stepped around the corner. Suddenly she saw a stockpot flying through the air, a silver blur in the night. She was hit hard and fell. Then everything went black.
* * *
The first thing Heaven saw when she came to was a flashing blue light. The second thing she saw was Detective Bonnie Weber. The detective did not look happy.
Heaven tried to get up and was greeted with a breathtaking pain in her right temple. “Boy, does that hurt,” she gasped.
“I bet,” Bonnie Weber said seriously. “It looks like someone took a swing at you with that stockpot. If it makes you feel any better, the pot has a dent, too, although I think it might have come from the brick wall and not your head.”
“I bet it was that bitch across the street, Ella Jackson,” Heaven said as she tried a second time to sit up.
“Yeah, it looks like you two had it out”
“Not really,” Heaven said, trying to put all the events of the evening in order. They were slipping around in her head in their own stream of consciousness; the mayor and the social clubs and all the guests were coming in and out of focus. “She pushed over the grills and made a mess with charcoal but I just called security.”
“Heaven,” Bonnie Weber said, shaking her slightly, “whatever happened here wasn’t just turning over some grills, and Ella Jackson definitely got the worst end of it.”
This time Heaven grabbed Bonnie’s sleeve and pulled herself up. The horizon line was spinning, her stomach was churning. She saw the faces of Mona, Nolan, and others blur before her.
Then she saw Miss Ella Jackson being wheeled away on a stretcher. She had an oxygen mask over her face and blood all over her pretty clothes. She looked worse than Heaven felt.
Sweet Potato Pecan Pie
enough pastry dough for a one-crust pie, or a frozen pie crust
2 cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
6 T. melted butter
1 T. vanilla flavoring
½ cup orange juice
Topping
6 T. softened butter
½ tsp. cinnamon
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup flour
½ cup pecan halves
Beat sugar and eggs until lemony. Add sweet potatoes, butter, vanilla, and orange juice. Turn into your pie shell.
Combine all the topping ingredients and cover the sweet potato mixture with it.
Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, give or take 10 minutes for the real temperature of your oven. The top will be browned and sizzling and the potato mixture should be set in the middle.
Twelve
Okay, we can go now,” Bonnie Weber said.
Heaven opened one eye. “I don’t know why I had to stay in this stupid emergency room all night,” she said crossly.
“Because you have a concussion and they wanted to make sure your brains didn’t start running out your ears,” Bonnie Weber said just as crossly.
Heaven dangled her feet over the edge of the examining table. The blow to the side of her head was now an ugly, swollen, purple knot. She gingerly felt it. “Ow.”
“Here, let me help you down,” Bonnie said. “Here are your clothes. Let’s go get breakfast.”
In a few minutes, Heaven emerged from her cubicle, squinting in the bad lighting of the ER waiting room. Mona was huddled over the morning newspaper. When she saw her, she flipped the front page around.
The headline, THE CURSE OF EIGHTEENTH AND VINE, was only upstaged by a particularly gruesome photo of Heaven sitting on the sidewalk, blood caked on her face, being checked out by the medics as Ella Jackson was being hustled away on a stretcher.
“Nice. Very appealing. Would you want to eat a meal cooked by this woman?” Heaven moaned.
“Ella? No, I can’t say that I would,” Mona said in an attempt to coax Heaven back to her usual sarcastic self.
“Mona, what are you doing here? And how is Ella?” Heaven asked as they walked out to Bonnie Weber’s car.
“I’m here because I was worried about you, of course. And Ella’s still asleep,” Mona said delicately.
“In a coma?” Heaven asked.
“No, she woke up once, but she’s hurt pretty bad, H, and they have to do CAT scans and stuff today,” Bonnie said seriously.
“Have I already talked to you about this? Did we talk to each other during the night?” Heaven asked.
“A couple of times,” Mona replied, looking at Bonnie Weber for support.
Bonnie opened her passenger door and helped Heaven sit. Mona got in the back. “Is the Corner Restaurant okay with everybody?” Bonnie asked.
“Of course,” Heaven said. “I need some of those good fried potatoes to help me recover. I’m sure you’ve told me, but what happened to us, Ella and me?”
“You know you got hit with a stockpot? Well, Ella got it with a full propane tank. And whoever whacked her was using the thing like a sliding fast ball.”
“Do the cops think I did it?” Heaven asked with a little catch in her voice, as if she had just thought of that possibility.
Bonnie looked over at her as she turned the car south on Broadway, toward Westport Road. “Hello! What am I? Chopped liver? In case that blow to the head has caused amnesia, I AM the cops.”
“No, not you,” Heaven tried to explain. “I’m assuming you know I didn’t do it. But other cops, your superiors. Am I in trouble?”
“Yes,” Mona and Bonnie answered more or less at the same time. “Come on, Heaven, let’s go in and eat. You’re in no shape to be arrested just yet,” Bonnie said as she parked the car.
As the women entered the crowded diner almost every pair of eyes in the place followed them. Most tables had a morning paper open, and Heaven saw her own photo looking back at her all over the
room. A part of her wanted to go home and hide in bed, but she knew she needed to eat. The big dedication was just hours away. She ordered her favorite, a Porker, which involved sausages, potatoes, onions, green peppers, eggs and a couple of kinds of cheese. Mona ordered bacon and eggs over easy, with fried potatoes. Bonnie ordered scrambled eggs and chili.
“And I think we need an order of pancakes for the table, those corn cakes with the bananas,” Heaven added.
The other two women looked at her in mild alarm. “A blow to the head sure made you hungry,” Mona observed.
“I didn’t really eat last night at the big party, just nibbled. Can I ask you a silly question?”
“Of course,” Bonnie said while filling her coffee with enough sugar and cream to make a cake.
“Did I talk to Hank last night or was it my imagination?”
“You talked to him. He was worried sick,” Mona said.
“Which one of you ratted me out and told him what had happened to me?” Heaven asked.
“Guilty,” Bonnie admitted. “When we got to the medical center, I asked Hank’s buddies in the ER if they had his number in Houston. I have an agreement with Hank to let him know when you get wounded in the line of duty.”
“Line of duty. Ha. I don’t exactly remember what was said, but I know it made me feel better to talk to him. Thank you, although I feel like the kid at camp who almost drowned in the lake and the counselors called my dad and told on me,” Heaven said as she dove into her food.
When the eating frenzy had subsided, Heaven looked across the table. “Well?”
“In my professional opinion, the possibilities are, Bonnie said, number one, “you and Ella got into a knock-down fight and your club was bigger than hers.”
“Now, wait a minute. What did I do?” Heaven asked, all fired up. “Knock her in the head with a propane tank, then knock myself out?”
“Shut up a minute and let me talk. You and Ella have had two run-ins in the last two days. Her employees said you pulled her hair yesterday and—”
Heaven cut in. “I grabbed her by the chignon. I didn’t pull her hair.”
Bonnie calmly went on. “And you had the security force watching her every move last night. Even Mona would have to testify that you accused Ella of vandalizing the grills in the very spot you two were found.”
“But the grills really were turned over,” Mona hurried to say. “I went back there to see for myself—not that I didn’t believe you, H.”
“And a good prosecutor would say that Heaven could have turned those grills over herself to make Ella look bad. Did anyone but you actually see her in the act?” Bonnie asked, looking sternly at Heaven.
Heaven, who was in the throes of a terrible headache, was beginning to realize how serious the situation was. “Jim Dittmar saw Ella do it, I think.” Of course, Heaven realized she had accused Jim of stealing the Charlie Parker sax, which might not put him in the best mood for corroborating her story. She’d just have to deal with that later if she needed proof of Ella’s misdeed. “Can we go to possibility number two now? I hate possibility number one.”
“Possibility number two,” Bonnie recited, “is that you interrupted some standard street violence. Perhaps Ella was being robbed, and you just happened to come around the corner at the wrong time. Possibility number three is that someone knocked out Ella with the intention of actually killing her and knocked you out to implicate you by making it look like a fight. Or vise versa. Possibility number four is the curse of Eighteenth and Vine, as the Star called it this morning. That is, that someone has rigged the accident at the Ruby either to kill Evelyn specifically or anyone in general, stolen the saxophone, and attacked you and Ella, all to ruin this weekend and the chances of the district’s being a successful tourist draw.”
“Boy, that was a mouthful, Bonnie,” Mona murmured. “Which do you think is what really happened?”
“Oh, probably some combination of all the above. Sometimes detecting is like geometry,” Bonnie said.
“And what about Boots Turner? I hate to blame him for this, but Ella did make a pretty nasty accusation about him in public,” Heaven said.
Bonnie got up. “I thought about that. I should have had him as possibility number five, but this attack took some real strength. It wasn’t just a case of pulling a trigger, and he is in his seventies. But I know better than to rule someone out because he seems too weak. If Evelyn were his daughter, and that’s a big if, he might have been angry enough at Ella for outing him to whack her good. Then you came around the corner at the wrong time and he wanted to make sure you didn’t see anything. What’s the last time you remember? Did you happen to check your watch right before you got hit?”
“No, but it had to be around ten-thirty. The rental guys came at nine and they’d just left.”
“Well, Boots had the first set, from nine to nine-thirty. So, it’s possible.”
Heaven still was sitting down, not quite up to standing like Mona and Bonnie were doing. “Wait, one more thing. What if whoever stole the sax . . . what if Ella were part of that scam. She did bring all that food into the Ruby just at the right time to create a diversion, when the sax was getting ripped off. What if she asked for a bigger cut or whatever . . .”
“A falling-out among thieves, possibility number six,” Mona said, looking at Bonnie for confirmation.
“Yes, that’s a possibility, I suppose,” Bonnie said with a weary smile. “Now, can we go?”
Heaven got up unsteadily. “Where’s my van? And has anyone called Murray and the kitchen crew?”
“Back at Eighteenth and Vine, and yes,” Mona answered. “Murray had interviews set with some of the jazz stars for an article for his column this morning or he would have been at the hospital. I called and talked to Pauline, and she said everything was fine and they had a good night last night.”
“At least I’d already covered myself on the schedule this weekend, so I haven’t put more work on my crew with this fiasco than they already had.”
“Mona, I’ll drop you at your car at the hospital. I know you have volunteers to coordinate,” Bonnie said.
Mona nodded. “And since I have to go to Eighteenth and Vine anyway, I’ll take Heaven to her car.”
Bonnie patted Heaven’s hand. “Heaven, can you go home and rest for a couple of hours? You look like hell.”
“I’m on my way. It’s only nine in the morning. The barbecue booths won’t be open until eleven. At least I can get a shower.”
Bonnie Weber parked her car near Mona’s in the emergency room parking area. “I’m going back in to check on Ella’s condition. Please be careful, both of you. If we do have a nut who’s psychotic at the whole idea of Eighteenth and Vine, something else bad will happen.”
Heaven turned to her friend. “Just for the record, I did not hit Ella Jackson, ever.”
“I believe you,” Bonnie said, “but not everyone knows you like I do.”
Jim Dittmar jumped into the equipment van that Bob Daultman’s crew was using. It resembled a television sports producer’s van. Bob had multiple video cameras circulating around the various events. He or his assistant sat in the van and made notations of especially good snips and pieces of business on camera 1, 2, or 3, notes to be used later in the editing room.
Bob Daultman turned toward the door when Jim came in. “Look at this footage from last night. Isn’t this priceless?” he said as he turned back to the monitor showing Ella and Heaven receiving first aid as the evidence technicians were working on the crime scene.
“I’m getting the willies. I think we should send the kid right now,” Jim said as he watched his injured friend on the screen. “This is not our usual MO. There’s a lot of violence going on, in case you haven’t noticed. Every cop in town is working one of these cases. And the paper is tying all of this together, this soul food restaurant owner, the sax, Heaven, and the woman who died last week.”
Bob Daultman waved his arm dismissively. “And so your idea is for the
kid to disappear two days early. They’d be all over that like a cheap suit. Those two wouldn’t get to the Colorado border.”
“This is not a western movie. They don’t have to ride horses as fast as they can for the state line. They’ll be in Paris before anyone misses them.”
“No,” Bob said firmly. “They stay. Your redheaded friend has made a star out of Louis and has been talking him up all week, since her little cabaret on Monday. And speaking of her, didn’t you say she and Ella had a big row and Ella tipped over her grills last night? It sure looks like Heaven took the payback to Ella and got carried away. I love a good cat fight.”
“Yeah, and I also told you Heaven has been asking questions about us in Europe. She came right out and asked me if I stole the damn sax.”
“So what?” Bob asked. “She’s in more trouble than we are by far, someone saw to that. We play out our hand. I’ve never seen you lose your cool. Just simmer down and enjoy yourself.”
“Bob, you didn’t hire some goon to clip the wings of those two women, did you?”
“No, but it certainly deflected some of the heat off the stolen sax, now, didn’t it. Besides, what if I had? When did you get so squeamish? You’ve bound and gagged a couple of little old rich ladies yourself.”
“I told you. I’m through with all that. I wanted to retire. That’s why I came back here.”
Bob laughed a short little nasty laugh. “But you just couldn’t keep your hands off the diamonds, could you, Jimmy? And this hasn’t been so hard, now, has it? You didn’t have to go off to some nasty mansion in Switzerland to do a job. The job came to you. I’m looking forward to you and Louis playing together this afternoon, Jim. Break a leg,” he said as a dismissal.
The Cornbread Killer Page 17