She was shocked. “What? But, I teach. Let me think. It runs Thursday through Sunday, right?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thursday is the set-up day, then three days of cooking.”
“Oh, heck, the kids can watch a historical movie, one hour on Thursday and one hour on Friday. I have a student teacher right now anyway. I’m in!”
Chapter Three
The birds were chirping and the dew was still on the grass when we arrived at the cook-off site to get things set up. Hundreds of people were milling around Daniel Boone State Park, just 18 miles from Paint Creek, the day before the big event. The large area for both the EATS-TV competition and the special amateur permits was roped off from the rest of the huge camping expanse. Tents, campers, and concessions stands lent a festive carnival atmosphere to the public camping area. Inside the tape, the air was electric. Cameras, cooking equipment, and TV lighting and sets were in the final stages of set-up.
Kids and adults alike lined up to peer into the tournament site to get a glimpse of celebrity chefs, the line-up of famous food judges, and just to share in the magical atmosphere that filled the area.
Whoop, whoop!
Two sharp blasts came from a patrol car that was working its way slowly through the dense crowd, approaching the rope across the road. It was the Sheriff’s car, with lights flashing and the serious face of Sheriff Brody Hayes leaning his head out the window. Did I mention? Brody is my boyfriend.
“Official business,” I heard him say to the attendant.
The young woman quickly dropped the rope for him to enter, and he drove up to the Team Smoke sign, where we were busily filling our network-provided refrigerator, setting up the huge smoker and grill, and stacking the best and driest hickory and mesquite smoker wood we could find.
I usually tried to control myself in public and when Brody was on duty, but that brown uniform and broad-brimmed hat drove me crazy. I ran up and gave him a big hug and a kiss on his lips. I liked to mark my territory too.
“Good morning, Miss Howard,” he said to me, straight-faced, flipping up his clip-on sunglasses and putting his hands menacingly on his hips.
Okay, I’ll play along. “Hello, Sheriff Hayes. I heard you tell the attendant that you were here on official business. Is there a problem?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, still with his official law-enforcement demeanor. “There’s been a report of an incredibly beautiful woman terrorizing the area with her blue eyes and perfect smile. It’s been a major distraction for the cooking teams, and we’re getting a lot of complaints.”
Ooh! I think we’re role-playing. “That’s right, Sheriff. She’s a shameless hussy, flaunting her tangled blonde hair in a make-shift bun and trotting about in her oldest, least flattering blue jeans.” I took a step toward him, putting on my best outlaw sneer, and pushed my face right up to his. “What you gonna do about it, lawman?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you in, Miss.” He took out his handcuffs and tried to turn me around, but I resisted.
“Sheriff,” I said, batting my eyelashes, “are you sure there isn’t anything I can do to talk you out of arresting me?”
His face got red, and he came out of character. “I came here to squeeze my main squeeze. Just give me a kiss.”
I got my lips a millimeter from his. “Is that an order, Sheriff?”
“Nope. Just a very eager request.”
It was a short standoff to see who would give in first. At that distance, it was hard to tell who initiated the kiss, but I’m pretty sure it was me.
“Hi, Sheriff!” Ruby hollered from our food display area. “Try one of my cookies! Let me know if they turned out okay.”
“Sheriff, give us a hand over here with this smoker, will ya?” Jake asked from a crouched position behind our stainless-steel table.
“First, see if you can help me figure out how to tap into their electrical supply to get our lights and fans running, Brody,” Red requested.
“Seems you’re a popular man, Brody,” I said with a smile.
“Okay, just hold on everyone. First things first: Ruby, toss me one of those cookies.”
Her throw was off to the side, but he managed to catch it.
“Okay, now let’s all help Jake get this smoker in place before he breaks his back.” Then he looked at me. “I thought you were supposed to be the manager of this team, Mercy. Seems like I’m always doing your job,” he teased.
“Oh, really, Brody? And I guess I’m always doing yours, solving all your big cases.”
He gave me a look, but didn’t dare deny it. He walked over to Jake, who had the smoker sitting cockeyed on a foundation of loose cement blocks.
“What have we got here, Jake? A shower cabinet?”
It was a tall, rectangular structure that defied description.
“Nope. It the frame of an old telephone booth I found at the junkyard.”
Junior stepped up proudly. “And I welded a double-wall of sheet metal all the way around it, with a one-inch air-gap in between. It won’t get too hot on the outside and’ll keep an even temperature inside.”
His father continued from there. “And I reversed the hinges on the folding door so it folds out instead of in. You can smoke a whole 200-pound buck in this thing.”
Brody nodded with an impressed look on his face. “And I guess this big old attachment here is going to send all the smoke and heat into the chamber there.”
“Yessiree.”
“Mighty nice of you boys to make a smoker and help get Smoke set up when you’ve got a competition of your own to get ready for.”
“We already had a smoker big enough for us. We made it out of a 55-gallon drum when Junior graduated from high school. I was pretty proud of him that day. First one in the family to make it all the way.”
Brody rolled up his sleeves and helped Jake and Junior get the smoker leveled up and anchored in place. Smoke and I helped Red with the electricity for our lighting and small appliances.
We worked for a couple of hours and then sat at a picnic table to have a glass of lemonade. Brody headed back to town and dropped Ruby off at the high school. She wanted to check in on her classes, since things were in good shape at the cook-off.
The celebrity chefs kept pulling into the area, in huge RVs and trailers, and even a couple of 18-wheelers. It was amazing to watch their professional crews set them up completely and decorate their stalls beautifully in an hour flat.
“We kind of look like the Three Stooges setting up our little kitchen compared to those teams,” Red said with respect.
“You always look like the Three Stooges, Red,” Deloris said, just arriving from breakfast duty at the diner. Then she locked it up for the long weekend. “Especially when you’re with Smoke and Jake.”
“What about me?” Junior asked, not wanting to be left out.
Deloris just looked at him, no doubt wondering why he would want to be compared to a group of bumbling idiots from the movies. “You and I can be Laurel and Hardy, Junior,” she said after a moment of thought.
“Which one am I?”
It was obvious to everyone except Junior who the tall slender waitress and rotund construction worker would be.
She looked at him again. “Groucho.”
Junior nodded. “I thought so.”
Chapter Four
We heard the loud ah-oooga of an old-fashioned car horn. It was coming from a fancy new 20-foot RV that pulled into the stall next to ours.
“Hey, hey, hey, everybody! Make way for the next championship chef!” The voice came from the driver’s window of the luxury camper.
We looked to see who it was, as a tall cowboy got out of the driver’s seat. I rolled my eyes and tried not to gag. It was an old flame of mine from the summer after I graduated from high school – and the main reason I decided to leave town and go to college.
“Randy Malone,” Smoke said with a forced smile, as he stood to shake the hand of one of his competitors.
Randy was a tall, muscular, good-looking cowboy who thought he was God’s gift. And, when I was dating him, he didn’t know how take No for an answer. He did understand my knee, though, the last time I saw him. He ran after me when I got out of his car at a drive-in movie 15 years ago. He probably wished he hadn’t.
Today he wore a tall straw cowboy hat, a western shirt, snake-skin boots, and a white toothy smile with a toothpick jutting out. The bigger he smiled, the more he made my skin crawl.
“Well, hey there, Mercy Howard,” he said, moving toward me, “you’re still looking as pretty as ever.”
“Not as pretty as you, Randy.”
He smiled even bigger and nodded his head, twirling the toothpick with his tongue.
“Maybe now that you’re all grown up, Mercy, we can pick up where we left off at that outdoor theater a few years back.”
“Sure,” I said. “I never did get the chance to introduce you to my other knee.”
My friends all knew the story, and they listened in silence. The mood was tense.
Fortunately, someone started banging on the wall of Randy’s RV from the inside, and we heard a woman’s voice.
“Excuse me, all,” he said with a tip of his hat. “I have to get my auntie out of my little camper.”
We all relaxed a little as he walked away.
Randy took over a really great restaurant, Salvador’s Pizza and Pasta, in Baller’s Ferry a few years ago. That was the end of its greatness. Now it’s Dandy Randy’s Pizza & Chow Mein To Go. Nope, I didn’t stutter: pizza and chow mein. I guess he figured by combining two of the most popular food delivery items, he could make a killing. It might not have been a bad idea if he knew how to cook.
“How did that man ever get selected for this competition?” Red asked, incredulously. “He can take delicious ingredients and turn them into a gastric ulcer.”
Smoke just nodded but seemed reluctant to speak badly of a competitor. Maybe it was bad luck. Smoke had a few superstitions like that.
Randy pulled a ramp out of the back of his beautiful new RV and then rolled an older woman out in a wheelchair.
“Looks like he’s coming back over with his aunt,” Jake said.
The woman had a dour face and bad wig, but she knew how to operate her electric wheelchair. She maneuvered it with great speed and precision between two picnic tables and stopped next to Smoke, just as Randy stepped up beside her.
“Hey, everybody, I want you all to meet the best little pastry chef in the business. This is my auntie, Nancy Lu Carson.”
We all said hello to Nancy Lu and introduced ourselves. Smoke just nodded and then went off by himself to set up his kitchen area.
“What’s that ornery old coot got up his behind?” the old woman said in a hoarse voice that sounded like she’d been smoking three packs a day since she was 12.
“Oh, Smoke is just the solitary type, Nancy Lu,” I said. “He’s got a lot of things to get organized for the appetizer round tomorrow.”
“That should be a walk in the park for an old-timer like him. Us pastry chefs have to make a dessert every day. Well, he doesn’t have a chance of winning against my Randy anyway. I taught him everything he knows when it comes to cooking.”
Oh, really? Like his chop suey pizza and pepperoni egg rolls? Actually, the egg rolls were pretty good. “Well, I’m sure Smoke will give him a run for his money, ma’am. And they still have to get past all those pro chefs to win too.”
Chef Monsoon came riding past us on a little ATV four-wheeler with a crew running behind him. He stopped by the big information board not far from us. It was probably ten feet high and fifteen or twenty feet across. They posted all the schedules, rules, and special news for the tournament there. Pictures of all the celebrity chefs were being posted across the top, one at a time. Most of the chefs had already arrived, but they were staying in their trailers until they were announced.
“I wonder who the next big-name chef will be,” Red said, a little facetiously. “I haven’t heard of any of these people so far.”
“Then you don’t know nothin’ about outdoor cooking,” Nancy Lu said. “Roger Garaducci is the biggest thing in Italy, and Sexy Lexi Becker beat 50 men with her barbecue in Memphis last year at the Boss Sauce Festival.”
“Well, hoop-de-doo,” Red muttered to himself. “I can’t wait to taste his smoked spaghetti. And there’s no way we’re losing to a girl.”
I turned my head and shot Red a look to let him know I had heard his remark.
“I just mean that we have to try extra hard to beat a woman, Mercy,” he said meekly.
I gave him a nod and half a smile. I knew what he meant, and it was okay by me. Men of his generation respect and revere women – they just don’t like to lose to them. It’s an ego thing, I guess. Not that modern men don’t have egos – but we’re working on that!
Chester Monsoon was not posting the next chef right now. He took a large poster board from one of his people, and a man with a nail gun attached it to the huge bulletin board.
People started to gather around, and Monsoon waited for them to assemble.
“Hey, folks, we’re going to pump up the excitement with a little fun tomorrow! We’ve lined up an ATV race in the morning, before we judge the appetizers and desserts. Each team can select one member to represent them as their driver in the race, and another member will ride along.”
“I’ll drive for you, Smoke!” Junior said eagerly.
“You’re not on my team, Junior. I think Deloris is closer to the, um, right size for a jockey.”
Monsoon continued:
“We’ve got a seven-mile, circular course set up through the woods, and we’ve hidden a Golden Meat Cleaver out there. It might be somewhere along the trail or in the middle of the circle. There are clues every mile. Just check in with the person in the yellow or red vest by the mile markers, and they’ll hand you an envelope. You can drive off-road all you want, but you have to check in at all six mile markers along the way to get all the clues. And you have to cross the finish line with the cleaver to win the race.”
“Mercy,” Smoke said, “We’re going to need someone young and athletic to jump on and off the four-wheeler, grabbing the clues and hunting for that cleaver.”
Young and athletic? Me? I guess, by comparison, 33 and no arthritis made me the logical choice. Ruby was not really the outdoor type.
“Whoever finds the golden cleaver gets a two-thousand-dollar set of high carbon, hand-hammered Chef’s knives from Samurai Kitchens of Japan,” Monsoon announced.
There were a few oohs and ahhs from the crowd
“But that’s not all! The winner also gets to keep the golden Samurai cleaver as a trophy, plus a brand-new ATV, compliments of our sponsor, Road Horse. All the rules are right here on the board!”
“Read up and know those rules well, Mercy. We don’t want to get disqualified for some silly infraction. I really want those fancy Chef’s knives.”
I saluted. “Yes, chef!”
Smoke smiled and nodded as he walked to his kitchen. I could see that he enjoyed being the one barking out the orders to me for a change.
Chapter Five
The sun had just set. Things were really taking shape on the set of the big Catch It and Cook It cook-off. It was practically the size of a city block, with a semi-circle of kitchens on each side of a lineup of picnic tables, with one big tree in the middle. It all led up to the big TV studio set on the end. The amateur kitchens, like Jakes’s, were along the road, between the tournament kitchens and the public camping area.
EATS-TV had a big open-sided tractor trailer on the far end with a brightly lit and decorated set for the host, Chef Monsoon, and other EATS-TV celebrities. They had an even bigger production truck behind that for all the directors and producers and all the electronic equipment, and then there was a satellite truck next to that one to send the signal back to the headquarters in New York. EATS-TV cameras were everywhere, some big ones and some hand-held.
; Smoke pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead with his forearm. “I never really thought about how big a production something like this is,” Smoke said, staring down the middle of the two arcs of kitchens from our vantage point on the far end. “I’ve never seen so many cameras in my life, and they got this whole place lit up like the Las Vegas strip. They built a whole city here in a day.”
It really was like a little city. Each cooking team had an area set aside behind their kitchen too, so we could pitch a tent or park a camper and a couple of cars. Brody was coming soon with his little two-man camper, and Ruby borrowed her parents big RV for the rest of the crew. There was a long line of portable toilets way out in the trees, and they even had a gym and some little shops set up for us, since we would be living here for five days and four nights.
“Ooh!” Babs shouted excitedly pointing to the center kitchen on one side of the arc. “Chef Monsoon is walking over to introduce the final chef! It’s always some big celebrity. Who do you think it will be this year?” she asked us all.
“Big celebrity, my aching back,” Deloris said, sitting down with seeming disinterest. “It’s usually some ne’er-do-well former child star who just got out of rehab.”
Nancy Lu came rolling up in her wheelchair to see what was going on, as the cameras got ready to go live for the big announcement. “I just hope it’s some B-movie star who came in eleventh place in Celebrity Ballroom and not a real chef. I know my Randy can beat any of the so-called chefs they’ve got lined up so far.”
“They’ve got some pretty good chefs here, Nancy Lu,” Red said, taking his life into his hands by disagreeing with the disagreeable woman. “Most of them have their own fancy restaurants in big cities, and they all went to culinary school. A lot of them have TV shows too.”
“Maybe so, but this is an outdoor cooking battle, Red,” she said. “Ain’t none of them know a lick about smoking and barbecuing meat properly. We’re hill people. Randy grew up with my sister and me in the Kentucky backwater. We lived outside and cooked outside every day. We butchered our own heifers and lambs and had to learn how to smoke and cure the meat so it would last through the winter. Smoke here knows a little about that too. But these city slickers don’t know what they’re up against.”
Murder, Basted and Barbecued Page 2
