by E M Kaplan
She almost chuckled to herself, but the sound of the handle clattering to the floor resonated in her mind, taking on a life of its own, reverberating and replaying itself. Even though the mop and the bucket had stopped moving, that sound, the wooden clank of the handle hitting the red-orange stones of the floor echoed in her mind, making Smiley’s kitchen fade from her vision, calling forth the sound of a shovel hitting hard dirt, bringing back the darkness of the Arizona desert, that night she’d been taken out to the desert by two very bad men intent on leaving her body there.
Black spots floated in front of her eyes and her view narrowed to near-pinpoint dots.
Oh crap. Don’t pass out. Please don’t pass out.
She ducked down on her side of the counter and squatted, releasing the muscles in her neck, dangling her head between her knees.
Breathe, you idiot.
She took a big, gasping inhalation. She smelled the dirt of the foot-worn rug under her feet and the laundry detergent she’d used on her jeans, felt the heat of the sweat forming on her upper lip and around her face.
Another breath. Not so hard for normal people.
The spots in her line of vision subsided. A rivulet of sweat ran down her waistband into the back of her pants where they gaped as she remained hunched over.
Just tying my shoe down here. Nothing to see.
As she came back to herself, she lifted her chin to see how far off she was from being able to stand. The blood rushed to her head, and she had to hang her head back down.
Three more breaths. That ought to do it. Three more and I’ll be normal.
The hollow clanging of the wooden handle came back, and a wave of nausea washed over her. The stupid mop had sounded just like the tool that had almost taken her life.
She didn’t think she could make it to the restroom, wherever it was, without losing her cookies.
Just let me get through this and I swear I will go talk to someone.
She had a therapist’s card—Victor the counselor-slash-martial-arts-instructor’s card—on her refrigerator at home. She pictured it in her mind. The magnet that held it to the fridge had a Ted DeGrazia painting on it of four blurry horses running—gold, black, tan, and white. The same painting had hung in her favorite Mexican restaurant in Tucson. She’d sat under the painting so often, she had nicknamed it The Four Horsemen of the Taco-pocalypse.
She raised herself up gingerly, feeling the ache of strain in her thighs. The front of her shirt stuck to her belly where she’d sweated through then pressed it against her own legs as she’d crouched. She gripped the front hem and flapped some cooler, smoke-scented air between the damp cotton Ziggy Stardust face on her t-shirt and her concave stomach, which made her shiver.
The countertop had a napkin dispenser from which she grabbed a few thin brown squares of paper and blotted the sweat from her face and under her nose.
Smiley’s general manager who’d been talking with her was still looking the other way, distracted by the racket coming from the back of the kitchen. He hadn’t noticed her disappearing trick or even her sudden return. A glance behind her showed all eyes were trained on the back of the kitchen, thank goodness.
The sub-human cursing and snarling coming into the kitchen had formed into less-inflammatory, more understandable words. “What in the hell do I pay my taxes for? Do those suit-wearing panty-waists only think I want my roads repaved? Their snot-nosed babies in this town’s schools so they can spell better graffiti when they’re vandalizing my restaurant? If Sheriff Custard wants to keep hauling me down to the station to harass me about things which did not occur, he can damn well stop those punks from interfering with my right to run my business, I can tell you that right here and right now. I am a God-fearing citizen trying to get along from day to day. I do not need to put up with this shee-yit.”
There was rustling, followed by a cardboard box that took flight halfway toward Josie, resulting in an explosion of plastic drink straws. One fell out of her hair onto the counter.
A big bear of a man emerged from the hallway at the back of the kitchen. Well over six feet tall, gray-haired and grizzled, with a face that hadn’t seen a razor in a few days, he stormed into the kitchen, causing the cook staff to flee like backalley hobos under the beam of a cop’s searchlight.
In fact, the only employee who hadn’t budged—not so much as a flinch—was DJ, as he reclined with one large flannel-clad elbow on the counter across from Josie. Through sleepy eyelids, he observed his boss. Josie wasn’t sure if his posture was belligerence or just his way of standing up to a challenge, whether it be physical or psychological, like the studied nonchalance in the face of a chest-beating silverback gorilla.
“S’up, Billy?” he said, his good ol’ boy drawl back and thicker than ever.
Part 2: Smoke
You probably know that the proverb, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” means that where there are signs, clues, or rumors, there’s usually a reason for it. It’s a somewhat catty way of saying there’s some truth to the gossip.
When you smoke meat—say, a brisket—there’s a lovely pink ring that appears just below the outer crust of the cooked meat. This smoke ring, as it’s called, is the result of a reaction between a protein in the meat called myoglobin with nitric oxide and carbon monoxide. It proves that the meat has been smoked well.
The fallacy is, however, is that you don’t need smoke to cause the reaction. You can get the same pink ring reaction from using curing salts before you cook the meat in the oven. With no smoke.
Where there’s a smoke ring, there’s not always smoke. So what does gossip mean?
Not a darned thing.
—Josie Tucker, Will Blog for Food
Chapter 9
Billy Blake loomed large and seemed about eight feet tall, though Josie was aware her panic attack had skewed her perspective. He'd also looked like a bear for a few seconds.
She’d successfully wiped the sweat off her head and stuffed the napkin into the front pocket of her jeans as furtively as if she were shoplifting. A couple of deep breaths and her heart rate was back down from the stratosphere. Her nausea faded, and her vision peeled back to reveal the rest of the kitchen instead of just the narrow tube through which she’d been viewing the world.
She pressed her mental Reset button.
This time when she looked at Billy, she realized he was tall, but not inhumanly gigantic. He was upwards of six feet tall—still a beast compared to her five-two-and-three-quarters—and for a guy pushing 60, he looked solid. His blocky hands were reddish in color, the consequence of a fair-skinned person who labored in a kitchen. Extra weight padded his midsection and barrel chest. His chin and neck were also pink, grizzled with white scruff, and on the jowly side of heavy. His eyebrows were doing that older man thing, growing out in unruly wisps, and his forehead looked as if his creator had pressed a thumb against the ruddy flesh above either eye and mashed his brow downward. A perpetual scowl of distrust cast two pale green, almost yellow, eyes in shadow.
“What’s going on, Billy?” DJ said again. Not really a question, but still questioning, if that made any sense at all. He spoke during a lapse in what had been a non-stop stream of cussing and countrified epithets about come-to-Jesus-meetings and tanning people’s hides, peppered with f-bombs and a plethora of shee-yits.
“Some damned fool spray-painted obscene nonsense all over the side of the smokehouse.”
“Is that right?” DJ straightened up, alert and sharp-eyed. “What, like gang tags?”
“Go see for yourself,” the bigger man said and stalked off toward a door on the other side of the kitchen. The back office, she guessed, as he slammed the door.
Most of the people in the restaurant had gone back to their lunches when the show was over. The drama had died down, and they were back to their ribs and beans and Dr. Peppers, probably on work schedules with timecards that had to be punched back in.
Josie wasn’t on a schedule or agenda for the day. Her time was her own. So w
hen DJ headed for the back hallway that led out of the kitchen, she skirted the counter and followed him. Behind her, about a quarter of the patrons got up and filed out the front door, anxious to get a glimpse at what had made the big man so hopping mad.
Pure instinct had her heading through the kitchen rather than backtracking out the front door of Smiley’s. She’d worked in her mother’s restaurant before things had gone south with her mother’s mind. Josie still felt more comfortable on the other side of the counter. Maybe presumptuous on her part, but DJ didn’t seem to mind as he held the back door open when they headed outside and around the side of the building.
This part of the structure, at least, was brick, and it didn’t look original to Josie. Common sense had prevailed, at least for this wall. Based on all the limestone homes and office complexes Josie had seen up and down the major roads, like the Mo-Pac Expressway and I-35, stone seemed plentiful here. There was no reason not to rebuild with brick, especially a smokehouse and barbecue place. Especially one that had already burned down once.
A crowd of about a dozen people, mostly plaid-wearing old-timers, had gathered at the side of Smiley’s.
“Darn kids,” was the first thing Josie heard.
Her line of sight turned from the good ol’ boy spectators to the wall as she stepped from behind DJ, who was a bit of a wall himself, though not as formidable as his rampaging boss.
Scrawled across the wall in dripped-dry black painted letters were the words, “GO TO HELL U MUDERER WIFE BEATER LIER.”
#
“Not much of a speller, were they? Could benefit from some punctuation, too,” DJ said in his sleepy, taciturn fashion that Josie was coming to learn was anything but either of those things. It was no wonder Billy trusted him to run the place. There was more to Smiley’s GM than met the eye.
Josie was silent, staring at the words, trying to glean any clues as to the identity of the writer. The use of the letter “U” in place of the word “you” could have meant that the person was used to typing online or on a phone in text messages where people did that all that time. The writer had also left out a letter in the word “murderer.” Maybe that showed they were used to autocorrect for spelling errors.
She found the misspelling of the word “liar” more puzzling. Did the writer honestly not know how to spell the word, or was it a deliberate mistake so that they would appear uneducated or juvenile?
She took out her phone and stepped back a few feet to get the whole span of the graffiti in her camera’s viewfinder before snapping a couple of pictures. “Are you going to call the police?”
DJ sighed and ran a hand across his scruffy chin. “The sheriff? You probably heard Billy’s feelings on the man a few minutes ago. He and Billy are not what you call friendly, but I guess I’d better call this one in just in case we have any more problems later. Can’t be too cautious with vandals. Could be nothing or it might turn out to be something. You never know.”
“So you’ve had other incidents like this before?” Josie followed him as he headed back inside, holding the door for her once more. Very chivalrous. She didn’t know if it was a Texas thing or just unique to him, but no one really did that for her ever. Not that Drew wasn't gentlemanly. More like Josie didn’t give off the vibe that she needed to be coddled. Taken care of…well, yes, at times, thanks to her natural bull-headedness and propensity for getting into trouble.
I’m way over-thinking this, but that’s pretty much my signature move.
She made her way around the counter back to the customer side. He was already lounging on his big elbow, looking like he’d never left, only this time he had the restaurant’s phone in his meaty hand. He dialed as he answered her question.
“A few over the years. Nothing recently. More like Billy’s in-laws taking out a full-page ad in the local paper accusing him of hiding details that may have led to the whereabouts of their daughter.”
“Wow. That’s a lot more passive aggressive than sending a lawyer or a detective after him.”
DJ shrugged. “Oh, they did that, too, believe you me. They covered all the bases money could buy. A big money reward for information. Appearances on the local news morning shows. They pulled out all the stops.”
The other end of the phone line picked up and he cut off their conversation to report the vandalism. “Bernie, that you? Yeah, it’s me. We’ve got some spray paint all over the side of Smiley’s right where we had those eggs that one time. Y’all want to add this to your file? Yeah, you can send Louie, but don’t expect me to hold his hand and wipe his nose for him. He’s got a couple more hours of daylight if he wants to take photos today. All right. Yeah, I’ll be at the game. See you on Saturday.”
He hung up the phone and, by way of explanation, told her, “City basketball league on Saturday. We’re the Spurs. We’re playing the Rockets. Bernie plays center because he’s tallest, but he can’t move for the life of him.”
“Is your friend a cop?”
“Oh, yeah. He’ll take care of the report without involving the sheriff. It’s better that way. As you can tell, the sheriff don’t like Billy much. ”
It sounded like the local sheriff had it out for Billy Blake. Maybe he’d already made up his mind about the BBQ man’s guilt. Josie imagined not being able to solve a decade’s old murder would stick in a person’s craw, especially when the suspect was living and working daily in the community. She wondered if the sheriff was a fan of Smiley’s food. That would make it worse, not being able to go to a favorite place to eat because of an irritation like that.
Chapter 10
Josie dawdled in Smiley’s over a platter of brisket and beans—she couldn’t skip the beans after all the fuss people had made over them. They were impressive, as it turned out—spicy and sweet in just the right proportions of both. Full of flavor—probably a mountain of brown sugar, without a doubt—and chunks of smoked bacon.
She snapped a few photos of the food and the restaurant for her blog, capturing DJ behind the counter mid-laugh and gabbing to a regular customer. A full slab of ribs on the fire pit. A closeup of the sepia wallpaper. The smoke-tainted business cards lining the community bulletin board. A few tables with people hunched over their lunch plates. The row of unsmiling old-timers with flat stares, who glared at her as if she were an alien.
Maybe she’d just imagined that part, feeling like a perpetual outsider.
She lingered over her lunch at a table toward the side of the main room, away from the other people eating, but within sight of the door. From her vantage point, she could still see most of the restaurant in a broad sweep of the room, including the large picture mirror at the front.
Lizzie, the geology-Goth girl, had said the mirror was haunted, but Josie didn’t know if the item was supposed to be the ghost’s home or if she had free range over the whole place. She would have to ask Lizzie what the going theories were. So far, she hadn’t seen a lick of anything supernatural, other than the crisp of smoked bacon bits in the sweet-smoky beans at Smiley’s. How in the world did he get the bacon to stay crunchy in it?
She was still eating when a man from the local sheriff’s office showed up. He roared up in his shiny government-issued black-and-white car and threw open the front door, hands on his skinny hips, feet braced wide apart.
A crusty older patron had sniped at him, “We take our hats off when we’re indoors, son,” which caused him to flush bright red and slouch. He swiped off his wide-brimmed deputy hat as he approached the counter. He was so wiry, she could see the wallpaper between the legs of his uniform pants as he walked.
“Some of us weren’t raised in a barn.”
“Wait ’til I tell his mama. I see her at VFW later this week. She’ll give him a what-for.”
“I ought to write a letter to the editor about them kids these days.”
For his part, DJ treated the officer from the sheriff’s office as if he were brain damaged, speaking in slow, over-pronounced syllables. He went so far as to grab him by the
epaulet on his uniform shoulder to lead him out to the side of the restaurant where the spray paint stood out in stark relief on the light brown brick in the fading sunlight. Josie tagged along to watch the interaction.
“Write this down in your little notebook, Deputy Louie,” DJ told him. “You remember to bring something to write with? I’ll wait while you check your pockets.”
The officer didn’t seem much younger than DJ, but was clearly beneath him in pecking order. His face turned bright scarlet, from his neck all the way up through the tips of his somewhat pointy ears. His ginger buzzcut did little to hide the flush on his scalp. His pursed lips, white with anger, indicated to Josie that he was, in fact, not mentally deficient in any way and that his treatment was the result of a contentious history between them.
“I got it, DJ.” He fished in his pocket for a writing utensil, bobbled his cell phone, and ended up dropping the pen on the ground. Probably due to agitation. He was just as tall as DJ—everything in Texas did seem bigger to Josie in her limited experience so far—but probably half the bigger man’s body weight. Maybe a buck sixty-five soaking wet, as Josie’s Uncle Jack might say.
“Do you now, you sumbitch?” DJ’s temped flared. His pinkish face had gone a little florid over the collar of his plaid shirt. His back had straightened up as much as his virtual hackles, like a junkyard dog defending his lot.
“That’s Officer, even to you, DJ.” As skinny as he was, the deputy didn’t back down or lose his temper—Josie was impressed—though his ears had gone a deeper shade of red. He had a shaving nick on his neck right above his khaki uniform collar that looked fresh and painful. Josie didn’t know it was possible for someone to look both middle-aged and untried at the same time. He was like the smallest kid in her high school class, all grown up but still exactly the same. His skin had wear and tear, sun damage, and creases at his forehead and eyes, but his expression said he still didn’t know what he was doing or how he’d gotten there.
