Fry Another Day

by J. J. Cook

  I wasn’t so sure. “You know how berries are—some sweet, some not so sweet. I think a little sugar would be good on them.”

  “Zoe! You’re putting whipped cream on them,” Uncle Saul argued. “How sweet do they need to be?”

  “For most people, pretty darn sweet.”

  He shrugged. I put a little sugar on the berries and then had Ollie gently toss them in the sweet mixture.

  “People eat their food too sweet nowadays,” Uncle Saul said. “We shouldn’t help them.”

  I laughed at the idea that we were in any way promoting healthy eating. “We serve deep-fried biscuit bowls. I don’t think a little extra sugar is going to matter. Besides, you know when people eat out, they want things they don’t eat at home. Maybe they’re counting calories all week except for this one special meal.”

  “Okay. You win. And I know what you mean. Do I eat too much butter when I go out? Yes, ma’am. I eat a lot of cream I wouldn’t eat at home, too. I get your point.”

  The cameraman took back his camera as he returned the big spoon to Uncle Saul.

  “It’s easy, right?” Uncle Saul asked him.

  “Yeah—when someone else puts it all together.”

  I wiped my sweaty forehead with a cool, damp towel. It wasn’t bad enough that the kitchen was hot. I was also wearing a huge, heavy hat.

  Chef Art was smiling at me from the open doorway. I didn’t take the hat off.

  “It’s seven thirty,” I told my team. “Time to start the biscuits.”

  By eight A.M., we had two trays of biscuit bowls ready to go out the door. We decided to send Ollie out with Delia again. That combination had worked well for us. “Why am I going?” Ollie asked.

  “Because you look hot, and this way you’ll know when Delia starts running out of food. You did it before. Come back and get another tray so we can keep her going,” I said. “At ninety-nine cents each, we’re gonna have to sell a lot of biscuit bowls.”

  He glanced over me in a cursory kind of way. “You look hot, too, Zoe. You go.”

  “She needs to be here making biscuits.” Uncle Saul’s eyes were on the camera that was recording our disagreement.

  “But Delia could make biscuits,” Ollie reminded him. “Zoe taught her how. Or I could make biscuits. Delia and Zoe could go out together.”

  “No.” I finished the disagreement. “You and Delia are going. Get out of here.”

  Ollie wasn’t happy with that verdict. “Fine. I’ll go out looking like a big freak in a red bikini for everyone to see on national television.”

  Delia lightly slapped his hard butt. “Hey, I’m going out there, too. Believe me, you’ll get as many people interested in biscuit bowls with that body as I will.”

  “We’ll probably sell quite a few biscuit bowls as they walk through the crowd,” I said after they were gone.

  Uncle Saul nodded. “Like we did in Charlotte. We need to get more biscuits ready.”

  While I made new batches of biscuits and put them in the little oven, Uncle Saul fried them up into biscuit bowls. We made two trays—one sweet and one savory—for Ollie to pick up on his return trip. The hard part was staying ahead. It was very different than selling my biscuit bowls back home.

  Ollie was back even sooner than we’d expected. “That crowd is like a bunch of wolves. We barely got into it before we were selling left and right.” He picked up the new trays, dropped off the empties, and was gone again.

  “At this rate, we’ll reach that two-hundred mark before nine.” Uncle Saul was ladling his thick gumbo into biscuit bowls.

  “So will everyone else,” I said. “If we want to beat Our Daily Bread, we better sell until the sales stop or we run out of food.”

  We barely had the two new trays finished when Ollie came back.

  “Is the Our Daily Bread team out?” Uncle Saul asked him.

  “Oh, they’re out. All of them, I think. They had to get that bread ready mighty darn early.”

  “All of them?” I asked him.

  “No.” Ollie picked up the new trays. “Reverend Jablonski is standing in one place while the others are around him singing hymns. It’s like watching people throw money into a hat for a guitarist on the street. But they aren’t wearing bikinis. Does that mean their sales don’t count?”

  “I don’t know. It will definitely take away from their standing. We might finally beat them.”

  “Miguel,” I called out, knowing he was standing by the open door. “Will you go take a look and see what everyone’s doing?”

  “Sure.”

  I wasn’t sure why I cared. All I should focus on was getting our food to Delia. I suppose I was curious.

  “Our Daily Bread is selling bagels for a quarter,” Miguel said when he returned. “I guess they’re going for bulk sales.”

  “That’s a lot of bagels.” Uncle Saul whistled but didn’t look up from ladling gumbo.

  “What about everyone else?”

  “Shut Up and Eat seems to be doing okay with Bobbie’s daughter out there. Dante is doing some kind of street dancing and selling pot stickers stuck in a clay holder of some kind. Grinch’s is selling cupcakes with the Birmingham logo on them.” Miguel grinned. “The biggest crowd is hanging around the two attractive Biscuit Bowl people.”

  “Is everyone else in bikinis?” Uncle Saul wondered.

  “Only Ollie and Delia, and Bobbie and her daughter,” Miguel reported.

  I smiled at that. “Thanks for spying. I guess we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.”

  “I think it’s working,” Uncle Saul said. “How close are we to the two-hundred mark?”

  “Four trays. We could beat Our Daily Bread. I know it’s a good crowd out there, but selling bagels for a quarter each is going to take a while.”

  Chef Art called a halt to the cameraman being inside the Biscuit Bowl, thank goodness.

  “Good luck,” the cameraman called out as he was leaving.

  “You all are on track to win this one, Zoe,” Chef Art said. “Let’s do it.”

  “I’m glad they’re gone.” Uncle Saul took a tray of biscuits out of the oven. “And this bikini is uncomfortable. How do women wear them?”

  I laughed. “You should try high heels.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Ollie came back again in less than fifteen minutes. It was light outside now, and he said the crowds were thinning. “It might slow down. I hope it slows down. I feel like a piece of meat out there. I’m going to have bruises from people pinching me.”

  He was gone before Uncle Saul, Miguel, and I burst out laughing.

  “They might have to move out of the crowd and hit the downtown traffic,” I said. “I was hoping we could sell them all right away.”

  “We’ll do better than Our Daily Bread,” Uncle Saul said.

  “I hope so. They’re the ones to beat.”

  Ollie came back for the last two trays that made our two hundred dollars in sales. “Can we stop now?”

  “Keep going until we run out of food,” I said. “I’ll go report that we made our goal.”

  “We’re not going to go too much further,” Uncle Saul remarked. “I’ve only got enough gumbo for a few more bowls, and there’s only about that much left in berries and whipped cream.”

  “Okay. Let’s do what we’ve got.” I took the last tray of biscuits out of the little oven and set them aside. “I’m going over to make sure they know that we won the challenge.”

  Ollie came back for the last tray as I was leaving. I’d covered my bikini again and removed my chef’s hat. I walked quickly from the food truck to the cool-down tent, holding the money close to me.

  But I was too late. Sales had been very good for everyone. Shut Up and Eat had finished at the same time as Stick It Here. One of the assistants marked down when I got there. Grinch’s Gan
ache came in after me.

  I hoped the “tag” would help us out, and the fact that we’d worn our bikinis. I went back to the Biscuit Bowl to find out what the decision would be.

  I explained to everyone about where we were with the challenge. Ollie threw down his chef’s hat and stepped on it before stalking off. Delia went after him.

  Uncle Saul and I started cleaning up. It was too hot to wear the cover-up with the bikini. I took it off and worked.

  “Zoe, you look mighty fine in that bikini.” Uncle Saul nodded to Miguel. “Don’t she?”

  “I think she looks great.”

  “Thanks, but it’s hard to be a business owner in a bikini.” I smiled at them both. “Not that I don’t appreciate the compliments.”

  “I’m just saying.” Uncle Saul maneuvered his gumbo pot into the tiny sink.

  He winked at me when Miguel couldn’t see. I knew he was trying to help me. I thought I was doing okay, finally. Miguel and I seemed to be on the right wavelength.

  Ollie and Delia came back to the Biscuit Bowl, and we applauded their efforts.

  “I think everyone’s done,” Delia said. “It looks like they’re all headed for the cool-down tent.”

  “I’m glad we’re headed home today,” Ollie said, pulling his shirt over the bikini.

  I checked on Crème Brûlée, and then we started across the street to the stage and the cool-down tent after everything was clean and put away. I saw Patrick Ferris helping the two bikini girls with the electronic board. Delia was right. It was time to wind up the Birmingham challenge.

  Ollie was right, too. I couldn’t help that jump of joy in my heart knowing we would soon be going home. My bed at the old diner wasn’t much, but it was going to be good to sleep in it that night.

  I heard someone calling Miguel’s name coming closer from a distance. We all looked back as Tina Gerard ran up, tears and black dirt on her face and arms. The dirt seemed to be mingled with blood.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Miguel! Miguel!” She was screaming his name over and over until she threw herself into his arms. “Someone tried to kill me. They tried to run me down in the hotel parking lot. I managed to get away and I called a taxi. I rode all around the city, hoping he wasn’t following me. I tried to call you. Why didn’t you answer?”

  “My phone didn’t ring,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I just got a few scratches when I fell on the concrete in the parking lot. I thought this was over. Why would someone come after me? I’m not part of the race.”

  “It may not have anything to do with the race,” he said.

  “Surely this proves that I wasn’t part of what caused Alex’s death. People are trying to kill me, too. I don’t understand.”

  “Did you call the police?” Miguel asked.

  “No. I came straight here. I didn’t want to talk to them by myself. I was afraid I might say the wrong thing.” She buried her head in his shirt and stood there, shaking.

  Patrick was waiting for the remaining food truck teams to reach the stage. I hated to leave the dramatic scene, but we’d come this far. Miguel was going to have to call the police anyway. There wasn’t much any of the rest of us could do. “Go ahead,” he said over Tina’s head. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  Chef Art got out of his golf cart. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you all down there already?”

  I told him about Tina’s brush with death.

  “Hog feathers! Get over there and win this challenge, Zoe Chase, or you’re not the entrepreneur I thought you were.”

  He was right. All the remaining teams were there. The producers’ assistants were counting the earnings again as the four food truck owners stood by watching.

  Grinch’s Ganache had demanded a recount. When all the earnings for the morning were counted, the assistants returned our money. All eyes, and TV cameras, were on Patrick as he picked up the microphone.

  “Everyone did an exceptional job out there this morning. Congratulations! It looks like our winner for the Birmingham challenge is the Biscuit Bowl. Not only did they sell two hundred dollars in delicious biscuit bowls, they also knew what to do with their red tag—which meant all team members wearing red bikinis.”

  Ollie, Delia, Uncle Saul, Chef Art, and I were too busy squealing and hugging to even hear what Patrick said next. We finally quieted down and listened again.

  “We have a tie between Shut Up and Eat and Stick It Here. The producers have decided on a tiebreaker to determine who the second food truck winner will be.”

  “What happened to Our Daily Bread?” Ollie asked.

  “I think we missed that,” I whispered.

  Bobbie Shields was standing beside me. “They were disqualified for cheating and removed from the race.”

  “Why? What happened?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “They weren’t ministers after all.” She shrugged. “Someone reported seeing Reverend Jablonski on TV doing a promo for the race. He’s an escaped felon from Florida.”

  “Don’t that beat all.” Uncle Saul shook his head. “And here they’ve been trouncing us right along.”

  “Darn good bread makers,” Bobbie remarked.

  “We’ve come up with a tiebreaker,” Patrick announced. “We’ll need the owners of Stick It Here and Shut Up and Eat to come forward. Everyone else is free to do what they want for about thirty minutes. We’ll have the beauty pageant, and the official announcement of who is going on with the race, at the stage then.”

  “I forgot about the beauty pageant.” Ollie’s expression was fierce. “I don’t know, Zoe. I think I might just go on home now.”

  “We’re going home in a little while,” I said. “If you back out, we’ll be disqualified, too. Please, Ollie. One last thing.”

  “You know I might fall for that if I didn’t know we still had to do goofy stuff tomorrow in Mobile.” He was frowning but finally relented. “Oh, all right. As long as no one else pinches me.”

  “I won’t let it happen again,” I promised, hugging him.

  We went back out in the street and saw two police cars there with Miguel and Tina. An ambulance was pulling in, sirens blaring, as we reached them.

  “Is Tina okay?” I asked Miguel.

  “She’s probably fine. I think she should be checked out.”

  “Who are you people?” an officer asked when he saw our group.

  I explained about the food truck race.

  He laughed. “I’ve heard about that on TV. Sounds funny!”

  Ollie muttered to himself and shuffled toward the Biscuit Bowl to wait for the final announcement.

  “Come with me, Miguel,” Tina asked. “I don’t want to go to the hospital alone.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll come and get you. Just take it easy, okay?”

  She threw herself against him again. I was starting to feel a little doubtful that she was thinking of him only as a friend and attorney. Maybe I was being touchy because my relationship with Miguel was very new and she’d known him forever.

  “You might have to kick that girl’s scrawny behind,” Delia whispered.

  “Thanks.” I grinned at her. “At least I’m not the only one seeing this.”

  Miguel politely saw Tina into the ambulance. The paramedics got in back with her and the vehicle left.

  “Why would anyone want to hurt her anyway?” Delia asked. “I thought the police accused her and Miguel of killing Alex.”

  “No one said it had to make sense,” Uncle Saul said. “Maybe someone wanted to kill both of them—someone besides you, Zoe.”

  I answered my phone. It was Marsh calling from the hospital. Helms still hadn’t regained consciousness. Her family from Charlotte was flying in later that day to be with her.

  His update was brief and to the point. I explained what he’d said
to everyone.

  “I don’t know what to think about all of this.” I put my phone back in the pocket of my robe. “Marsh and Helms are the only ones who have followed this from the beginning. The Birmingham police are baffled. If we drag it to Mobile, they won’t have any answers, either.”

  We kind of looked at one another and shrugged. We stood around in the street as the sun rose in the blue sky. Uncle Saul said he was hungry and went to get a biscuit bowl.

  The thirty-minute wait to find out what was going on in the race went by slowly, until we were finally called back to the stage. With only two food trucks going to Mobile, the group was dwindling fast.

  “Last, but not least, we still have time for the beauty pageant. Biscuit Bowl team up first. Show us your bikinis.”

  I took off my robe self-consciously, even though everyone had said I looked fine in my bikini. This was different, being up on a stage for everyone to gawk at.

  I didn’t have to worry about anyone noticing me, though; not with Uncle Saul and Ollie’s onstage antics. Delia and I stood to one side as the men showed their muscles and generally acted like idiots.

  “Can you believe that?” Delia asked me when Ollie lifted Uncle Saul and held him in the air.

  “I knew he was strong. There’s a lot more to Ollie than any of us knows.”

  “I think that’s true, Zoe.” She smiled at me. “He’s such a nice person. I’m worried about hurting him. I don’t have good luck with relationships.”

  “Maybe this time will be different for you.” I waved shyly to Miguel, who waved back.

  “Thank you for the show, Team Biscuit Bowl,” Patrick said. “Team Shut Up and Eat, come on up.”

  Bobbie’s daughter was stunning in her bikini. She looked shy onstage, but everyone applauded her. Bobbie defiantly shed her flowered dress when she got up there. She looked like an overweight, middle-aged woman in a blue bikini with a tattoo of a swan on her chest. Nothing else to say on that score.

  We all applauded again. Bobbie and her daughter were very popular, but Ollie and Uncle Saul’s craziness won the day.

  “Team Biscuit Bowl wins the pageant, and a Caribbean cruise,” Patrick screamed. “Congratulations!”