Finger Lickin' Fifteen

by Unknown

  Lula was wearing a stretchy orange sweater with a low V-neck and short sleeves, and a matching orange-and-black tiger-striped skirt. No flak vest.

  “What happened to the flak vest?” I asked her.

  “I was always sweating under it and it gave me a rash. I just gotta be on a more vigilant outlook for those idiot killers. If I get rid of the rash in time, I might wear the vest to the cook-off. Although I hate for it to interfere with my chef outfit.”

  “Do you still think Chipotle’s killers will be at the cook-off?”

  “They’ll be there,” Lula said. “And we’ll catch them and be rich. I got a bracelet all picked out at the jewelry store. And I’m going on a cruise down to the Panama Canal. I always wanted to see the Panama Canal.”

  I agreed with Lula. I thought there was a good chance the killers would be at the cook-off. They were sticking around, and the cook-off seemed to be the logical reason. Although for me, it wouldn’t have been reason enough. If I whacked someone’s head off and was worried about being recognized, I’d get out of town. These guys didn’t seem to be all that smart. They were focused on getting rid of the witness, and in the bargain they were getting more witnesses.

  Lula parked at the curb in front of my parents’ house and looked around before getting out of the car.

  “I guess the coast is clear,” she said. “I don’t see no killers anywhere.”

  Everything was business as usual in my parents’ house. My dad was in his chair in front of the television. My mom and Grandma Mazur were in the kitchen.

  “I got all the chicken soaking in the sauce,” Grandma said. “I got batter for biscuits, and we made some coleslaw.”

  “I got Larry comin’ over as soon as he’s off his shift,” Lula said. “He’s gonna show us how to do the grillin’. He should be here any minute.”

  The doorbell chimed, and Grandma went to open the door.

  “Well, lookit you,” I heard Grandma say. “You must be Larry. Come on in. We’re all in the kitchen waiting for you. And this here’s my son-in-law, Frank.”

  “For the love of everything holy,” my father said. “What the hell are you supposed to be?”

  “This is from my Julia Child collection,” Larry said. “I know she didn’t barbecue, but I just love the simplicity of her clothes and the complexity of her dishes.”

  I stuck my head out the kitchen door and looked beyond the dining room into the living room. Larry was wearing a curly brown wig, a lavender-and-pink flower-print blouse, navy skirt, and navy pumps with very low heels. There actually was a frightening resemblance to Julia Child.

  My father muttered something that might have sounded like flaming fruitcake and went back to reading his paper.

  Larry followed Grandma into the kitchen, and Grandma introduced him to my mother.

  “Very nice to meet you,” my mother said. And then she made the sign of the cross and reached for the liquor bottle in the cupboard next to the stove.

  “We had a mishap with the grill a couple days ago,” Lula said to Larry. “But we got it put together again and we’re pretty sure it’ll work. It’s out back.”

  “And here’s the chicken,” Grandma said. “We got it sitting in the sauce just like you told us.”

  “Lookin’ good, ladies,” Larry said. “Let’s barbecue.”

  Lula grabbed the tray with the chicken. My mother had her hand wrapped around a highball glass. And my grandmother had a broom.

  “What’s the broom for?” Larry wanted to know.

  “Dogs,” Grandma said.

  We went outside, Larry approached the grill, and the rest of us hung back. Not that we didn’t trust Larry’s manly ability to ignite a grill; more that we suspected this was the grill from hell.

  After a couple minutes of fiddling around, Larry got the grill up and running. He adjusted the flame just so, and he arranged the chicken.

  “Good thing you got the night off from being Mister Clucky,” Grandma said.

  “I never get the Sunday night shift,” Larry said. “Sunday night is dead. All the action takes place for the brunch and the early-dinner crowd. They always give those times to me because I’m the best Mister Clucky.”

  “You’re a pretty good Julia Child, too,” Grandma said. “I bet you’re fun on Halloween.”

  At six o’clock, my father took his seat at the table and we all hustled into the dining room with the food. We took our seats and I realized there was an extra plate set.

  “You didn’t do what I think you did,” I said to my mother.

  “He seemed like a nice young man,” my mother said. “I met him in the supermarket. He helped me pick out a grapefruit. And it turned out he’s related to Biddy Gurkin.”

  The doorbell rang and Grandma jumped out of her chair. “I’ll get it. I like when we have a new man at the dinner table.”

  “You have to stop doing this,” I said to my mother. “I don’t want a new man.”

  “I’ll be dead someday,” my mother said. “And then what? You’ll wish you had someone.”

  “I have a hamster.”

  “This here is Peter Pecker,” Grandma said, leading a tall, bald, red-faced guy into the room.

  Lula spewed water out of her nose, and my father choked on a piece of bread.

  “Sorry,” Lula said. “I never met anyone named Peter Pecker before.”

  “And he looks just like one, too,” Grandma said. “Did anyone else notice that? Isn’t that something?”

  My mother drained her highball glass and looked to the kitchen.

  “Sit here and have a piece of chicken,” Grandma said to Peter Pecker. “We made it special.”

  Pecker sat down and looked across the table at Julia Child. “I thought you died.”

  “It’s not really Julia Child,” Grandma said. “It’s Larry all dressed up. Earlier today, he was Mister Clucky.”

  “That’s weird,” Peter said.

  “Not as weird as being named Peter Pecker,” Larry said.

  “I can’t help it if that’s what I’m named, asshole.”

  “Who are you calling an asshole?”

  “You, Mister Fruity Tutti.”

  “You must have heard wrong,” Grandma said. “He’s not Mister Fruity Tutti. He’s Mister Clucky.”

  “Biscuits,” my father said. “Where the hell are the biscuits?”

  My mother and grandmother and I snapped to attention and passed the biscuits to my father.

  “What do you do at the supermarket?” Grandma asked Pecker.

  “I’m assistant manager for produce. I’m the vegetable specialist.”

  “That sounds like a real good job,” Grandma said.

  “I know all the vegetables,” Pecker said. “And I know all about fruits, too.” He looked across the table to Larry. “Nothing personal.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Larry asked. “Are you calling me a fruit?”

  “If the high heel fits.”

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “Hey, pal, I’m not the one wearing ladies’ panties.”

  “This is the United States of America,” Larry said. “I can wear whatever kind of pants I want.”

  “You should stop pickin’ on him,” Lula said to Peter Pecker. “You don’t watch your step, and I’ll put my foot up your runty butt.”

  “Oh, I’m so scared,” Pecker said. “Now the fat chick’s going to protect the pussy-boy.”

  Lula was on her feet. “Did someone call me a fat chick? I better not have heard that.”

  “Fat, fat, fat,” Pecker said.

  “Pecker head, pecker head, pecker head,” Larry said.

  “Nobody calls me pecker head and lives,” Pecker said. And he launched himself across the table and tackled Julia Child.

  The two men went to the floor, punching and grunting, rolling around locked together.

  “Look at that,” Grandma said, leaning across the table. “He is wearing ladies’ panties.”

  My father kept his head
down, shoveling in buttered biscuits and barbecued chicken, and my mother went to the kitchen to refill her glass.

  Lula hauled her Glock out of her purse and fired off a round at the ceiling. A small chunk of plaster fell down onto the table, and Larry and Pecker stopped gouging each other’s eyes out long enough to look around.

  “We got chicken on the table,” Lula said, pointing the gun at the two men. “And I want some respect for it. What the hell are you thinking, rolling around on the floor like that at dinner hour? You need to get your asses into your chairs and show some manners. It’s like you two were born in a barn. Not to mention I got a contest coming up, and I need to know if this is gonna give you all diarrhea on account of everything I’ve cooked so far has gone through people like goose grease.”

  Larry righted his chair and sat down, and Pecker went to his side of the table. Pecker’s nose was bleeding a little, and Larry had a bruise developing on his cheekbone.

  “I hope this chicken’s okay,” Grandma said, spooning coleslaw onto her plate. “I’m hungry.”

  Everyone looked to my father. He’d been shoveling food into his face nonstop, including the chicken.

  “What do you think of the chicken?” my mother asked him.

  “Passable,” my father said. “It would be better if it was roasted.”

  Pecker tested out a leg. “This is pretty good,” he said, reaching for another piece.

  “It’s Larry’s recipe,” Grandma said.

  Pecker looked over at Larry. “No kidding? How do you get that sweet but spicy taste?”

  “Blackberry jelly,” Larry said. “You add a dab to the hot sauce.”

  “I would never have thought of that,” Pecker said.

  I ate a biscuit and nibbled at the chicken. Pecker was right. The chicken was good. Really good. I didn’t have any delusions about winning the contest, but at least we might not poison anyone.

  My father reached for the butter and noticed the chunk of plaster in the middle of the table. “Where’d that come from?” he asked.

  No one said anything.

  My father looked up to the ceiling and spotted the hole. “I knew when we hired your cousin to do the plastering it wasn’t going to hold,” my father said to my mother.

  “He plastered that ceiling thirty years ago,” my mother said.

  “Well, some of it fell down. Call him after dinner and tell him he better fix it.”

  “I heard some interesting news today,” Grandma said.

  “Arline Sweeney called and said they were going to hold the Chipotle funeral here in Trenton.”

  “Why would they do that?” Lula asked.

  “I guess he had three ex-wives who didn’t want him in their plot. And his sister didn’t want him in her plot. So the barbecue company decided to take charge and bury him here since that’s where his head is. And he’s gonna be at the funeral home on Hamilton. Right here in the Burg.”

  “That’s weird,” Lula said. “Are they going to have a viewing?”

  “Arline didn’t know anything about that, but I guess they’d have a viewing. There’s always a viewing.”

  “Yeah, but they only got a head,” Lula said. “How do they have a viewing with just a head? And what about the casket? Would they put just the head in a whole big casket?”

  “Seems like a waste,” Grandma said. “You could just put the head in a hatbox.”

  AN HOUR LATER, Grandma waved good-bye to Larry and Pecker and closed the front door. “That went well,” she said. “We need to have company to dinner more often.”

  I was holding my laundry basket of clean clothes and the keys to my Uncle Sandor’s baby blue and white ’53 Buick. He’d bequeathed it to Grandma Mazur when he went into the nursing home, but Grandma Mazur didn’t drive it. Grandma didn’t have a license. So I got to borrow the gas-guzzling behemoth when I had a transportation emergency. The car was a lot like my apartment bathroom, not nearly what I would choose but utterly indestructible.

  “What’s the deal with your apartment?” I asked Lula. “Is your door fixed?”

  “Yeah, and I’m moving back in. I just have to stop at your place to get my clothes. I’ll be over in a little while. I gotta get some groceries first.”

  I carted my laundry out to the Buick and slumped a little when confronted with the reality of my life. I would have preferred a new Porsche Turbo, but my car budget was old borrowed Buick. And the truth is, I was lucky to have anything at all. I put the basket in the trunk, slid onto the couch-like bench seat, gripped the wheel, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled in front of me. Testosterone shot out the exhaust pipe. Big, wide-eyed headlights blinked on.

  I slowly backed out of the garage and chugged down the street. Without thinking too much about it, I turned down Adams Street and after a couple blocks found myself in Morelli’s neighborhood. On nights like this, after suffering through dinner with a guy dressed up like Julia Child and a guy who looked like an ad for erectile disfunction remedies, I found myself missing Morelli. He wasn’t perfect, but at least he didn’t look like a penis.

  FOURTEEN

  I THOUGHT I would quietly cruise by Morelli’s house unnoticed, but it turned out Morelli was standing in his small front yard and spotted me half a block away. Hard to miss me in the Buick. I pulled to the curb and he walked over to me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. As if I didn’t know. Bob was hunched on the lawn, head down, tail up.

  “Bob’s got problems,” Morelli said.

  “Must have eaten something that disagreed with him.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got the same problem,” Morelli said. “Mooch and Anthony came over to watch the game and I think we got some bad food.”

  “Bummer.”

  “I thought you were driving Ranger’s Cayenne.”

  “It sort of burned up.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Totally.”

  Morelli gave a bark of laughter. “That’s the first thing I’ve had to smile about all day. No one was hurt?”

  “No. Ernie Dell stole it and torched it.”

  “I bet that went over big with Ranger.”

  “He went after Ernie and rooted him out like a rat in his nest.”

  “I don’t always like Ranger, but I have to admit he gets the job done.”

  Bob had taken to dragging his butt on the ground, going in circles around the yard.

  “Maybe he needs to go to the vet,” I said to Morelli.

  “This is nothing,” Morelli said. “Remember when he ate your red thong? And the time he ate my sock?”

  “That was my favorite thong.”

  “Mine, too,” Morelli said. His face broke out in a cold sweat, and he bent at the waist. “Oh man, my intestines are in a knot. I have to go inside and lie down in the bathroom.”

  “Do you need help? Do you want me to get you Pepto-Bismol or something?”

  “No, but thanks for the offer.” Morelli waved me away, collected Bob, and they shuffled into the house.

  Okay, that was sad. I thought it might be satisfying, but it wasn’t at all. I drove on autopilot to my apartment building, surprised when I realized I was parked in the lot. I hauled my laundry basket to the second floor, let myself in, and listened to the silence of my empty apartment. The silence felt lonely. Rex was still with Ranger. I wasn’t greeted by rustling pine bedding or the squeak of Rex’s wheel. I carted the basket into my bedroom, set it on the floor, and my cell phone rang.

  “Bitch,” Joyce Barnhardt said when I answered.

  “Do you have a problem?”

  “You poisoned me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t play dumb. You knew exactly what you were doing when you forced that pork on me.”

  “Gee, I’d really like to talk to you, Joyce, but I have to go do something.”

  “I’ll get you for this . . . as soon as I can leave the bathroom.”

  I hung up with Joyce, and I heard
the front door open.

  “I hope you don’t mind I let myself in,” Lula called from the foyer. “I still got the key you gave me.”

  “No problem,” I said, and I came out to meet her.

  There was a BANG from the parking lot, followed by the sound of glass breaking.

  “That sounded like a window next door,” Lula said.

  We stuck our heads out the dining room window and looked down at the lot. Two guys were standing there, and one had some sort of shotgun. They were wearing masks like Zorro, but they were still recognizable because one of them was giggling. They were the Chipotle killers.

  “Imbecile,” the one guy yelled at the other guy. “You can’t even shoot a stupid firebomb into the right window. You’re a total screw-up. You never do anything right.”

  “You said she lived in the apartment on the end.”

  “I said next to the end.”

  “Looks to me like there’s smoke comin’ from your neighbor’s apartment,” Lula said.

  The fire alarm went off next door, and I could hear doors opening and closing in the hall and people shouting. I turned my attention back to the lot and saw the smaller of the two men shoulder the gun.

  “Uh-oh,” Lula said. “Duck!”

  We went flat to the floor, and BANG! A small black ball sailed past us, crashed against the far wall, and burst into flames. The flames raced across the carpet and the curtains caught.

  “Fire!” Lula yelled. “Fire! Fire! We’re gonna die. We’re gonna burn up like we was in hell.”

  I ran to the kitchen, got the fire extinguisher from under the sink, and ran back to the dining room with it. By now, the fire had spread to the living room, and the couch was on fire. I shot some foam at the couch and the living room curtains, and then I turned tail and ran for the door. I grabbed my purse on the way out, relieved that Rex was at Rangeman.

  Lula was already in the hall, along with Dillon Ruddick, the building super. Dillon had a fire hose working on my neighbor’s apartment. Mr. Macko was helping him. Lula and I stumbled down the smoke-filled hall to the stairs.

  “I don’t know if we should go out,” Lula said when we got to the ground floor. “What if they’re still there?”