Rubbed Out (A Memphis BBQ Mystery) (7 page)

“The tension in that booth was running high yesterday,” said John, shifting uncomfortably just thinking about it. “I could tell, even for the short time I was over there, that they were all furious with each other.”

Lulu said, “There was a lot of anger there. Clearly, since they started fighting with each other. But some of it might have been people who were spending too much time together and were getting on each other’s nerves.”

“I guess that’s only natural,” said John. “Well, I wanted to let y’all know that I was sorry. You’re nice to feed me, especially under the circumstances.” He stared down at his empty plate.

“Don’t spend another minute worrying about it,” said Lulu.

“Guess I’d better get back to my booth now,” John said with a sheepish smile. “Otherwise, I’ll be on their bad side, too.”

He stood up to leave and narrowly missed running into Sharon on his way out. He muttered a quick apology as he hurried out of the booth.

Sharon peered after him for a second, then turned back to the women. Her eyes were red and her face blotchy
as if she’d been crying. She soon started crying again as she said, “Y’all. I am just so sorry. You must think I’m awful!” She’d put on a lot of eye makeup, probably to distract from the exhausted circles under her eyes. Her crying made her mascara trickle down her face in rivers.

It was clearly the day for apologies. The women hurried over to soothe Sharon and find her some barbeque…and a few tissues. At this rate, there wouldn’t be any barbeque left for the judges to sample. Still, in times of trouble, food always hit the spot and made everything better, at least temporarily. Sharon sat down at the red-and-white checkerboard-covered table and ate ribs with such abandon that the other women couldn’t help joining in. Although after this festival, Lulu was sure she wouldn’t be eating much barbeque for a while. Or maybe not too much of anything, considering the couple of extra pounds she’d put on. It was about time for a diet. Which was hard to do when you owned a barbeque restaurant.

Lulu said, “We don’t think you’re awful at all, Sharon.”

“We could tell there was a lot of tension over there in that booth. You saw how mad Reuben made me, and I only spent a few minutes with him,” said Cherry, growing flushed as she remembered. “I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but that guy was a handful. I don’t blame y’all at all for squabbling with him.”

Flo said, “I did have a question for you, though, hon. Something has been bothering me about the whole thing. Why on earth would you share a booth with the man when he was such a troll? I’d have thought you and Brody would’ve steered clear of him, and here you are signing up to spend three days straight or more with him.”

“In a confined space, too,” said Lulu.

Cherry shuddered at the notion.

“I guess that does seem pretty confusing,” said Sharon with a sigh, rubbing her eyes in exhaustion. “But he didn’t used to be such a rascal. Reuben was always a lot of fun. Sometimes he’d have these crazy kinds of ideas for stuff to do, but we always ended up having a good time. One time he convinced Brody to go hang gliding with him. Another time, he and Brody went skydiving. Reuben could be real convincing, too, when he wanted to be. The only thing he couldn’t get Brody to do was bungee jumping, and that’s because Brody always gets cricks in his neck as it is.”

“So he was real persuasive about getting a Rock and Ribs booth, too?” asked Evelyn. “I wouldn’t have said he was a charmer. I’m pretty sure that I could have resisted him.”

Sharon said, “You probably could have, but maybe not so much when he was at the top of his game. He could charm the birds right out of the trees.” She smiled wistfully, remembering. “And yes, he did want to have a booth real bad. He was always bragging about his
barbeque, saying it was the best stuff you ever put in your mouth. He came to the festival every year and charmed his way into all the booths to sample the barbeque. He got to be everybody’s best friend, and to him, it was one big party.”

“Was he always the way he was the last few days?” asked Lulu. “Seems like y’all would be worried about sharing a booth with him if that were the case.”

Sharon shook her head. “No, he sure wasn’t. He was a great guy with a huge personality who loved doing fun things—really, he was like a big kid. But then something happened about two years ago and he suddenly changed…almost overnight. All of a sudden he wasn’t this carefree kind of guy anymore.”

Lulu frowned. “That does sound real sudden. And you don’t know what made him change?”

Cherry snapped her fingers. “I got it—he probably went through a divorce, right? Divorce can really mess somebody up.”

“He was divorced, yes. But he got divorced from his wife right after this all started, so I know that doesn’t have anything to do with it,” said Sharon.

“Hmm. That’s a mystery, all right,” said Cherry.

“So how did you end up together doing the festival?” asked Lulu.

“Reuben called us out of the blue,” said Sharon. “He was suddenly real enthusiastic about Rock and Ribs and having a booth there. He was almost like the old
Reuben—excited, happy, full of life. He asked us to join him on his team. He sounded certain we could win it.”

“And you decided to let bygones be bygones?” asked Evelyn, lifting her eyebrows.

“That’s right,” said Sharon. “We were so glad to hear the old Reuben that we decided we’d go along with his idea. So Brody asked off from work and we all got set to cook barbeque. Of course, we had no idea it was going to end up like this. Reuben was in an awful mood right off the bat. He was drinking a lot, too, and Reuben had never been a great drinker. Soon he was talking in a real abusive way and even made a pass at me a couple of times—which was why Brody was so furious with him and felt like he had to defend my honor.”

“He had every right to be furious with him,” said Cherry, looking furious herself.

Flo shook her head, “Alcohol really can change a person. Reckon that’s what the whole change in personality thing was from?”

Sharon shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. All I know is he was different in every way. He even started having problems with work stuff. I kept hearing on the grapevine that people were real unhappy with him as a contractor. That guy, who was just in here? He was one of them.”

The women stared at Sharon. “John?” asked Lulu. “You mean the fellow who almost ran into you when you were coming in the booth? You know him?”

“I don’t know him at all. But Reuben did. He talked about it when he wasn’t busy yelling at us all. The guy was unhappy with some contract work Reuben did at his house. Real unhappy. He wouldn’t pay him and said Reuben was using shoddy materials and poor workmanship. They’ve been fighting on and off about the job for months apparently. Reuben said the guy even came over to his house sometimes, yelling about the work and demanding that Reuben come over to fix it.”

Lulu and Cherry exchanged glances. This was something they wanted to talk over, but would rather not do it with Sharon right in front of them. Instead, Lulu quickly changed the subject. “Mmm. It’s a small world, isn’t it? By the way, Sharon, how are you going to finish out the competition? Aren’t you shorthanded now?”

Sharon sighed. “Yes. We might need help. We want to finish what we started, but Reuben was primarily the cook. Brody and I are handling it okay, but we could use a couple of extra hands, for sure.”

Life has a way of handing good things out sometimes. Morty, who’d been hanging out with Brody, walked back into the Graces’ booth. He cleared his throat. “As it happens, I’ve got a clear schedule for the next twenty-four hours. And when I can’t be here, I know my friend Buddy or Big Ben can sub for me. Or maybe we can all work a shift together. I might be old,” he said, drawing himself up with dignity, “but I can sure cook.”

“Amen to that,” said Lulu. “Y’all would be lucky to have them on your team, Sharon.”

“I’m not one for turning down unexpected blessings,” said Sharon, holding out her hand to shake Morty’s. “Welcome to our team!”

“Interesting how John never mentioned that he knew Reuben, even after we were talking about the booth next door,” said Lulu shortly after Sharon returned to her booth.

“Or even when he heard that Reuben had been murdered,” said Cherry, agreeing.

“We should talk to John,” said Lulu. “But we’ll need to figure out which booth is his.”

Cherry crowed and rubbed her hands together. “Lulu is on the case! Woo-hoo!”

Lulu said mildly, “I don’t have any choice, do I? One of my best friends is a suspect and I need to clear her name.”

Cherry beamed at her. “Indeed you do. And I’m more
than ready for my name to be cleared. Although I don’t think Pink considers me the strongest suspect.”

“I don’t know,” drawled Evelyn from behind them. “You sure did attack the man, from all the accounts I’ve heard. With an Elvis. Redheads and tempers are well known.”

Cherry gave her a cross look. “Yeah, I might have killed him in the heat of the moment. I sure wouldn’t have thought about it, chilled out, then planned to sneak over there later and stab the guy. Not my style,” she said with a sniff.

Evelyn laughed. “Well, I’m glad to hear that, considering I’m spending all this time in an enclosed space with you. Premeditated crime is a lot worse than heat of the moment.”

But with the same end result, thought Lulu. “So how are we going to find this booth?” said Lulu. “Did y’all ever see what direction John was heading in when he left here?”

“No, he’s a slippery rascal,” said Flo. “He was always popping in and out real sudden.”

“Maybe he apparates,” suggested Evelyn, languidly taking a sip of her wine.

Cherry said, “Guess we’ll be getting our exercise. There’s about a mile’s worth of booths here.”

“Did anybody catch his last name?” asked Lulu.

“Did he throw it?” asked Cherry.

“Remember? He said his name was John Smith,” said
Flo with certainty. “And I’ve got to wonder if his last name is Smith.”

“You think he gave us a phony name?” asked Lulu.

Flo said consideringly, “I don’t know. He was obviously hiding stuff from us so maybe that was why I got the impression that there was something phony about him.”

“Who’s cooking for us?” asked Evelyn, alarmed. “You and Lulu are both going? Don’t we have a judge or somebody coming by? I haven’t even put my eyelashes on.”

Flo said, “Don’t worry about it, Evelyn. I’ll cook, and you can serve it up if we have visitors come by. Besides, we’ve pretty much cooked all the ribs…we’ve got to figure out the best to send into the judging tent for judging.”

“With all the excitement, I’d almost forgotten that y’all were in a competition.” said Lulu. “Have you heard back from the judges at all?”

“Well, we didn’t win for best decorated booth, but that’s no surprise,” said Cherry. “Did you happen to see some of those booths? They’re like mansions. The one that won was two stories tall, with a party deck on the top with umbrellas and covered with Slovak flags. We were still messing around with tarps.”

“We were in the Patio Porkers competition, Cherry. The cooking area is only fifteen square feet,” drawled Evelyn. “We couldn’t exactly make a mansion with those specs.”

Cherry was still grumbling. “At least we had flooring, but that was as elaborate as we got. Maybe we’ll do
better with the spare ribs contest.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

There were tons of booths. Lulu and Cherry first started peering into them and searching for John. But then Lulu realized that they might even go to the right booth and John could be temporarily out—visiting another booth or even at the restroom. So they returned to the booths and asked whether they had a John on their team.

Of course, many people did have a John on their team. Cherry and Lulu then had to think up a quick description of their John. The skunk-like stripe on the top of his head did help.

They’d gone to twenty booths before finally someone recognized their description. “Yeah, I know which guy you’re talking about. He’s over in that booth down there,” he said, pointing. “He’s on the same team as a buddy of mine.”

It was the right booth. But John wasn’t there.

“You couldn’t find him?” asked Evelyn. “Did his team at least know how to find him apart from the festival? Where does this guy live?”

Lulu said, “That’s where we ended up making progress. We got a home address for John. So now we don’t have to worry about chasing him down at the festival.”

“And thank goodness for that,” said Cherry. “I couldn’t stand to do any more walking around searching for him. My feet are killing me!”

“Maybe if you’d ditch the men’s shoes,” said Flo with a snort. “Imitating Elvis can only be taken so far.”

“The whole thing is wretchedly disappointing,” said Evelyn with a plaintive note in her voice. “I thought he was trying to have a romance with Flo or Lulu or me. The single ladies, you know.”

Flo said slyly, “I think it was Lulu who was the source of the attraction.”

Lulu gave a hooting laugh. “Mercy! No! Absolutely not. Even if he was interested, there’s no way I’d train another man. I’m too old. Not after all these years.”