Rubbed Out (A Memphis BBQ Mystery) (5 page)

Reuben made a sudden move and pulled away from Brody to lunge at Sharon, who shrieked more and jumped over to a tabletop. At this point, Cherry jumped into action. She hefted the plaster Elvis and hit it hard against Reuben’s head.

Reuben stumbled and quickly sat down on the booth floor, looking dazed. That was when Pink Rogers, a Memphis police officer and friend of Lulu’s and the Graces’, entered the booth. He gawked at the sight of the blond woman on a tabletop, the stunned man on the floor, and Cherry holding the remnants of an Elvis. He quickly straightened up to his full and imposing six-feet-seven-inch height. “All right. What’s going on here? What’s all the shouting and…hitting? Cherry?”

Cherry’s mouth comically flapped open and closed a few times.

Pink sighed and caught Lulu’s eyes. “Lulu? I’m sure you can explain this all to me or make sense of all of this.”

“We heard a lot of commotion in here while we were visiting next door, Pink. We rushed over and saw that these folks were all having…a disagreement,” said Lulu slowly.

“A lively one, I’m guessing,” asked Pink grimly.

“You might say so, yes,” said Lulu, smoothing down her floral dress.

“I was trying to prevent that Reuben—that weasel of a man there—from attacking Sharon,” said Cherry, still flushed with anger.

“It looks like y’all have been really going through some beer here,” said Pink, nodding his head at a bucket full of empty bottles. “I need you to calm down, pull your heads together, and stop acting out. If I have to
come back here to arrest somebody, I won’t exactly be tickled pink, you hear?”

Sharon and Brody nodded, staring at the floor, but Reuben seemed hardly to be listening again.

Pink stared at Reuben through narrowed eyes. “Look, fella, I’m talking to you, too. You seem to be at the bottom of all this. I need to hear that you’re going to turn things around. A festival is no place for this kind of acting out. There’s kids running around and there’ll be judges heading your way tomorrow or the next day. You’re going to straighten up, right?”

Reuben’s lip curled back in a snarl. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll clear out for a while. Give these jokers time to see what real work is like, since they think they’re so smart.” The snarl became even more pronounced. And before Lulu could blink, he’d stormed off.

Back in the Graces’ tent, Pink became more relaxed. “Here I am, thinking I’m simply going to check in with my friends. Next thing I know, I’m having to break up a fight that one of those good friends is involved in. Let me have a nip of sweet tea if you don’t mind.” He listened for a second. “At least it’s all quiet over there now.”

Cherry snorted. “Only because that loudmouth isn’t at the booth. Guess he’ll get it all out of his system and come back. I don’t think Reuben trusts his team to be able to cook worth a flip, and I’m sure he’ll be back soon to supervise.”

Flo walked into the booth, minus Coco and Ella Beth.
“Lulu, I spotted Derrick coming into the park and the girls wanted him to walk around with them for a few minutes. I hope that’s okay.”

“They probably aren’t wanting to spend too much more time here today,” said Lulu. “So a few minutes with Derrick before I take them home sounds like a good plan. And thanks so much, Flo, for walking the girls around.”

Flo said, “Pink, is your presence here due to wanting to visit with the Graces or more of an official capacity? I wasn’t sure what to think when I heard all that ruckus next door. That’s why I hightailed it out of here with the girls.”

Pink explained to a wide-eyed Flo what had happened.

“Y’all,” Flo said, “that booth is officially trouble. I hope that’s the end of the worst of it, though. Maybe now things will calm down a little.”

Pink frowned at the Graces’ wrists. “Are y’all planning on staying all night? I see you’ve got team wristbands on so you can stay after the gates are closed. Because I’m wondering if those folks next door might get riled up again later…after they have more to drink.”

The Graces glanced at one another. Flo said, “I hate bringing this up, but my allergies are getting to me or something. My head is positively pounding and I need to get some sleep. Or I need somebody to run home for me and pick up my headache medicine and bring it to me, if I’ve got to stay.”

Cherry said quickly, “I’m planning on staying to make sure the grill temperatures stay consistent. I can do that by myself. The only thing I wanted to do this afternoon was to visit one of my girlfriends real quick—she and her husband have a booth that’s not too far away. But that won’t take me long.”

Evelyn hesitated. “I can stay here overnight if you need me to, Cherry. Not that I can cook, but I can lift and I could help you out if the people next door start creating any problems.”

“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?” asked 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.”