Death on Eat Street (Biscuit Bowl Food Truck)

by J. J. Cook

  “Thanks, Miguel,” I told him. “I wish I could come, too, but I have to work tomorrow.”

  “I’ll let you know what happens,” Miguel promised me. “Make sure you’re careful until we know what’s going on. Do you have a gun?”

  “A gun?” I giggled a little at that. It wasn’t really funny. I was nervous and I sometimes giggle when that happens. I sobered at once. “No. I have an attack cat, and a few frying pans. I’ll be careful.”

  After he left, I turned the lights out and we went back to bed.

  “I sounded stupid out there, Crème Brûlée. I would’ve been better off biting him and licking the spot after, like you do. You’re lucky you don’t have to worry about the right words.”

  It took me a long time to get back to sleep. I jumped up at every noise I heard. Delia was up and down a lot, too.

  The last time I looked at the clock, it was a little after two A.M. Morning was coming too fast. I hoped my enthusiasm would get me through another long day with no sleep.

  I guess I finally fell asleep again. The alarm was suddenly going off. For a moment, I wasn’t sure why it was making that awful racket. It was four A.M. Time to get up and bake biscuits.

  I mixed my biscuit dough together, and set the first tray in the oven. I took that opportunity to shower and get dressed. By that time, I put in another tray of biscuits.

  Delia wasn’t sure what to do to help. I wasn’t sure, either, since I hadn’t had anyone helping me before. I had her look outside in the dark parking lot. We seemed to be alone.

  There were no new messages or texts from Miguel. I wished he would’ve said if the police were taking the event seriously. It was hard to focus on the day ahead and get everything right.

  Ready to load the food truck, I picked up a tray of cool biscuits and headed out the door with them—straight into Ollie.

  At first, I was afraid it was the masked man with the gun again. The idea of having a gun at that time sounded pretty good, though I wasn’t sure I could actually shoot anyone.

  I realized the person I’d run into had caught, and was holding, my tray of biscuits, which would otherwise have fallen to the ground.

  “Ollie.” I didn’t know whether to be angry that he’d scared me or happy that he’d kept me from dropping the tray. One thing was for sure—he was the immovable object. I don’t think he even budged when I ran into him.

  “I want to help you,” he said.

  “Stocking the food truck?”

  “Yes. And going with you. You need a good strong hand, Zoe. I’ve got two good arms and legs. Nobody is gonna mess with you, like that taco man did, with me there. I guarantee nobody will think about sneaking up on you and Delia.”

  It made sense, I supposed, in an Ollie kind of way. I told him I’d pay him what I could. He said he didn’t care.

  “No sword, though.” I made my restrictions up front.

  “No sword,” he agreed. “I won’t need one with all the kitchen equipment anyway.”

  I knew it was possible I could be sorry, but after yesterday, having somebody with me seemed like a good idea.

  “Okay. Let’s get going. If we’re going to beat Suzette’s Crepes to a spot in front of police headquarters, we have to get there early.”

  Ollie was a big help loading up, too. He could take two trays of biscuits at once.

  Delia brought the water out to get the heating pan started, and put the fillings into the refrigerator. The last thing in was Crème Brûlée and his bed. He hissed at me and then went back to sleep when he was safely in the front of the food truck. I had to make room for him between the seats for me and Delia.

  Ollie rode in back.

  “Thanks for doing this,” I said to him again. I was still alive with excitement and energy about the coming day.

  “Ain’t nothin’ to it,” he drawled. “Besides, you think I want you to get all the credit for my savory filling? I don’t think so.”

  That was fine with me. We rode through the dark, nearly deserted streets of Mobile. Morning traffic was getting started in the downtown area when I pulled the food truck into the same parking space where Suzette was selling her crepes yesterday.

  I hoped for the same success the crepes seemed to enjoy. Delia made some coffee and then poured a cup for each of us.

  “This is all there is to it?” she asked.

  “Pretty much, unless we get busy. I hope we get some morning business, too. Some people like to get their lunch early and heat it up later.”

  Ollie made a face much like Crème Brûlée did when I offered him something to eat that he didn’t want.

  “Heat up a biscuit? What’s wrong with those people?”

  I shrugged. “It saves them another trip down later. They can eat at their desk. I did that a lot of times at the bank. I brought my own lunch. You get the idea.”

  “I don’t understand why a person can’t take some time to eat without working. It’s not healthy.”

  “They’re eating fried biscuits.” Delia laughed. “I don’t think they’re worried about being healthy.”

  I warmed up to my subject with such an appreciative audience. “I’m hoping to sell some breakfast biscuits, too. I think people might even enjoy a biscuit bowl for breakfast. I didn’t bring eggs this morning, but I was thinking that scrambled eggs might be good. Maybe with some sausage, bacon, or peppers.

  Ollie rubbed my head, a bad habit that I thought he might have picked up because he was so tall. I’d seen him do it to Marty and some of the others at the homeless shelter.

  “You’re always thinking, aren’t you?” he asked with a grin. “Don’t you want to stop for a while and just enjoy?”

  “I don’t think that would be good for business,” I said pertly. “Would you like to help me set out the chairs and tables, and lift the sides? I have to add your gumbo to the menu list, too.”

  Ollie was ready to help in any way. He didn’t want to think about much, but he was right about using his strong arms and legs. We had the food truck set up in no time.

  Delia wrote Ollie’s Spicy Gumbo on the menu board in a pretty script. My menus were easy to change. Uncle Saul had added two big chalkboards to the swing-open doors on the side of the food truck.

  Delia used different colors of chalk to highlight my specials. She even drew some pictures of biscuits and fruit. I’d found that it was always helpful to bring a few café-style chairs and petite tables with me. My chairs and tables gave my potential customers a place to sit and enjoy their food, if they were so inclined. I thought I might invest in colorful umbrellas for my tables later, after I made some money.

  My special was a plain biscuit and a cup of coffee for ninety-nine cents. Uncle Saul had told me to use my specials wisely. “Get them to try something cheap and reel them in for something more expensive later,” he’d advised.

  I hadn’t had much of a chance to try this food law of economics yet. I was ready for it. I just had to put it into practice.

  After everything was set up, I started cooking a few biscuit bowls. I made some plain biscuits that I could use for my special. My biscuit bowl biscuits had to be made in cupcake pans. The biscuit batter cooked up solid and round with a depression in the middle where the fillings went.

  I’d experimented with deep-frying the biscuits at the diner before I went out. That had left them greasy and cold, not even good heated up.

  They had to be deep-fried at the spot where I was working. That meant a small deep fryer that could do a few biscuits at a time. They came out crispy and brown. The biscuit bowls held up well to the sweet and savory fillings I’d tried. Soup was too liquid, but things like chili, stew, and, hopefully, Ollie’s gumbo worked. There was no problem at all with the sweet fillings.

  “What are you all cooking in there?” Our first customer of the day walked up to the food truck. “It smells wonderful. I don’t care what it is—I want some. And some coffee with it, please.”

  Ollie grinned at me. “Of course, sir. Step righ
t up. Would you like the biscuit plain or a biscuit bowl with some cinnamon apple filling inside?”

  I was totally blown away. Ollie looked so big and fierce, like a warrior from a fantasy movie. Who knew there was a great customer service rep hidden under that tattooed skull?

  That man wasn’t our last customer, either. About twenty more followed him before nine A.M. After that, things got slow for a while. Everyone was at work. I couldn’t expect another rush before eleven.

  Still, I was ecstatic. I’d made more money in that one morning than I had the other whole days I’d taken the food truck out. It was possible, if the rest of the day went as well, that I might even make enough money to pay Ollie and Delia.

  Feeling very pleased with myself, I went out to make sure my tables and chairs were clean. The sun was shining warmly down on the spinning biscuit on top of the food truck. Birds were singing in the live oaks, Spanish moss swaying in the breeze from the bay. Life was good.

  A man, who looked like a college student, approached. He was wearing a backpack and a red ball cap on his stringy, long hair. He walked right up to the side window. I thought I’d stand back and see Ollie in action from this angle.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Ollie asked as the young man drew near.

  “Yeah.” The seemingly harmless man drew a gun out of his backpack. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got in the cash drawer, Pops, and whatever Terry gave you before he died.”

  Imagine that! Right in front of police headquarters!

  What did he mean—whatever Terry gave him?

  I looked around for a uniformed officer but didn’t see one. I tried to think of something I could do to keep our hard-earned cash from disappearing down the street in this man’s backpack.

  Ollie’s eyes narrowed on the man. His face transformed. I hoped never to see him look at me that way.

  The man took a step back. The gun shook in his hand. “I mean it.” His voice, which had been insolent and demanding, quivered. “I want that money, and th-that stuff.”

  Ollie folded his arms across his broad, muscled chest. “You’ll have to come through me to get it, son. Do you think you’re up to the challenge?”

  The thief stood there for another moment. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to decide if he could get through Ollie or what. In case he decided to go ahead with his plans, I picked up one of the café chairs and held it, ready to hit him.

  Lucky for me, I’ll never know what I might have done to try and stop him. The man threw down his gun and ran away, his backpack sliding down one of his arms.

  I dropped the chair in relief and sat down on it. In all my planning and calculating, I’d never thought of anything like that happening.

  “Are you okay?” Ollie seemed more concerned for me than for him.

  “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

  “It was just some punk. He wasn’t even big enough to keep. He had to run home to his mama. Maybe she’ll take a switch to him and teach him better.”

  “I guess you were right. I’m glad you were here.”

  “Why? You would’ve hit him with the chair, right? We had him covered, either way.”

  “Do you think you could show me how to make that face that scared him off?”

  Ollie studied me. “No. You don’t have what it takes, Zoe. Just stick to making your food. Let someone else take care of the other stuff.”

  It was good advice. I had a feeling you had to be tall, mean-looking, and big as a mountain to scare someone away with only a glance and a few words. The thief probably would have laughed at me if I’d tried it.

  Maybe I needed to start building some muscle. Of course then I’d have to shave my head and have it tattooed. I was pretty sure it was the whole look.

  Delia came out of the front of the truck where she’d been reading a magazine and looked around. “Is everything all right?”

  That meant we got to tell the story again.

  While we were telling her all about it, I thought back to what the young man had said.

  “He thought we had something of Terry’s,” I told Delia. “He wanted the money and something he thought we had.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to that,” Ollie advised. “He was probably just saying that because he saw it on TV.”

  Delia seemed doubtful, and even a little nervous after that. I asked her what she thought, but she shrugged and walked away.

  “What should we do about the gun?” I asked Ollie.

  “What kind is it?”

  “I’m not really sure.” I stepped closer to it on the pavement and inspected it without touching it. “I don’t really know much about guns. I think it’s real, if that helps.”

  Ollie went back inside the food truck. “It’s too small to be any good—like that boy. Just throw it over there in the bushes. That’s what everyone does before they go inside.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  He shrugged, and started stirring the warming gumbo.

  That idea didn’t sit well with me. I called over the next police officer I saw going into the building and pointed out the gun. He thanked me and picked it up.

  Maybe I should have told him about the boy who’d left it there. After the incident the night before at the diner, I thought not. Nothing really happened.

  Things were dead slow for about an hour. I put the harness on Crème Brûlée and let him relieve himself on a little patch of grass across the street. I hoped it wouldn’t be long before he began staying at the diner by himself while I was working.

  A few customers came by and bought biscuit specials after that. I was getting anxious about lunch. I hoped I had enough food. I hoped I had enough customers to eat all the food. My stomach was jumping around like a fish out of water.

  It was ten thirty when the Suzette’s Crepes food truck pulled up beside us. A man almost as big as Ollie jumped out of the truck and quickly headed our way.

  “I think this could be trouble,” I told my companion.

  TEN

  “He doesn’t look like trouble to me,” Ollie said. “He looks hungry. Probably starving to death eating crepes. What kind of food is that for a man to live on anyway?”

  Sure enough, the man came and pounded on the back door. I couldn’t let Ollie take all the tough situations. “Can I help you?”

  “You can get your biscuits out of my spot,” he roared back. “I was here yesterday. You can’t come in and take someone’s place.”

  “I didn’t see your name on it.” Ollie loomed up behind me. “Go find your own spot. Get up earlier. We were here first.”

  Suzette, or whatever his name was, didn’t like that idea.

  He kicked the tire on my food truck as he walked by. “You really want a battle?” he asked as he came to the open customer window. “I’ll give you a battle.”

  “Maybe we should move,” I whispered to Ollie. “I really don’t want a battle.”

  “What’s he gonna do—throw his little crepes at us?”

  Suzette (I didn’t know what else to call him) kicked a tire again and flipped us off. Then he went back to his crepe truck. I let out a sigh of relief.

  We waited as the lunch crowd began to trickle out of the surrounding buildings. I saw people heading for us with delight. When they suddenly veered away, I wondered what was wrong.

  “I’m going outside to see what’s happening,” I said after this had happened several times.

  “Let me,” Ollie said. “I don’t like people messing with our business.”

  I waited for a few seconds after he’d left the food truck. I finally followed him, imagining all kinds of things that could be going on.

  What I didn’t imagine was that “Suzette” was standing in front of our food truck giving away free samples of his food and directing people to his crepe truck.

  I heard Ollie growl when I came up behind him. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  “Get me some biscuits, Zoe,” he said. “Two can play at this game. I’ll bet I can play it b
etter.”

  I scurried to do what he asked. I stood beside him with a big, welcoming smile on my face, giving out little menus as he gave out biscuits. Delia watched from the window as she put apples into biscuit bowls.

  “Suzette” looked our way a few times as people began to come toward our food truck. I had to give up handing out menus to serve our customers.

  I was thrilled when people began ordering both sweet and savory biscuit bowls. A few sat on the café chairs and smiled when they bit into the treats. Some even ordered a savory biscuit bowl and then came back for a sweet one.

  There was actually money in the cash register. The crowds I’d remembered from yesterday were lining up at our window. It was almost too much to keep up with. That wasn’t a good thing since poor service has been the death of many a restaurant. I called to Ollie so he could give me a hand. It was all Delia could do to keep up with filling the biscuit bowls.

  For the next hour, we were so busy, I didn’t have time to look up from the rapidly disappearing biscuit bowls. My fears about not having enough food were almost right. We were down to the last pan of biscuits when the crowd vanished as fast as it had appeared.

  It was almost two P.M. “That was the lunch rush.” I took a deep breath.

  Delia let out a sigh of relief. “How were you doing all that by yourself, Zoe?”

  “I wasn’t. This was my first really busy day!”

  Ollie grinned. “I think they liked us.”

  “I think so.” I smiled back, elated. “You and Delia were my lucky charms. Well, your gumbo, too.”

  “I told you, give them what they want, and you’ll be fine.”

  “That, and being an aggressive marketer, and scaring away potential thieves,” Delia said.

  I agreed. “Thanks for your help, Ollie.”

  “Happy to be here for you, Zoe. You should take a breather. I’ll straighten up a little.”

  I liked that idea, though I felt guilty once I was sitting outside on one of the café chairs. I was lucky to have Ollie and Delia. I hoped I’d made enough money to pay them both something by the end of the day.