Hickory Smoked Homicide

by Riley Adams

  “Detective Freeman, you remember my mother-in-law, Lulu Taylor, don’t you?”

  The detective nodded slightly at the introduction, then continued with his questions. “As I was saying, Mrs. Taylor, you didn’t point out that you and Ms. Pembroke had a connection besides your commissioned painting of her.”

  Sara knit her brows. “And I was saying to you, Detective Freeman, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Ms. Pembroke wasn’t a regular at the restaurant, and I never spent any time in conversation with her at all.”

  Freeman pounced. “Except, perhaps, at the beauty pageants your daughter Coco competed in? And that Tristan Pembroke judged? Could it possibly be that Ms. Pembroke’s votes prevented your daughter from advancing in pageant competitions? I know how hostile these stage mothers can get—of course, it would be understandable that you’d want your daughter to win,” he said in a soothing voice that seemed designed to lure Sara into confiding in him.

  “Now just hold on a minute,” said Sara hotly. “I am not a stage mama. Half the time I’m not even at these pageants. My friend Colleen takes her, since I’m working at the restaurant. It’s just an after-school activity that Coco enjoys—that Coco enjoys.”

  “But you didn’t think to tell me that Ms. Pembroke was a frequent judge on the circuit that Coco was on? I’m sure that your daughter doesn’t always win these pageants. It probably upsets her a lot. You didn’t think to mention to the police the other night that you could be considered disgruntled?”

  Lulu snorted. “Oh please, Detective. Sara doesn’t care squat about pageants, which is exactly why it didn’t occur to her to say anything about them. Sara, disgruntled?”

  Unfortunately, Sara at that very minute, was the living embodiment of disgruntled. Detective Freeman smirked as if his point had been proven.

  “Well, I’ll be on my way, then, Mrs. Taylor. And please, if you think up any other way that you and Tristan Pembroke were associated with each other, do me a favor and let me know.”

  As he left, Lulu got the sinking sensation that Sara was the detective’s favorite suspect.

  Chapter 9

  After Detective Freeman left, Lulu retreated to the restaurant’s front porch. Besides the kitchen, the porch was her favorite place to go at Aunt Pat’s. The Labs, B. B. and Elvis, snored gently; the sound of the ceiling fans was a relaxing drone; and Lulu could half doze in the rocking chair with the sounds of Beale Street as background noise.

  In fact, the stress of Detective Freeman’s interview with Sara must have tired her out more than she’d thought because she nodded off for a little while right there on the porch. She only woke when the sound of the screen door closing made her give a little jump.

  “Oh, sorry, Lulu,” said Buddy. “I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

  Lulu straightened up in the rocker a little. “It’s no problem, Buddy. I can’t believe I dropped off to sleep like that. Want to sit down and chat for a few minutes? I think a little hanging out with friends would be good for me today.”

  “Sure thing, Lulu. Morty and Big Ben are supposed to be meeting me to play a little penny poker and eat lunch, but I’m early.”

  “Let’s go ahead and get you set up in a booth, then, before it starts getting busy. Y’all need to be sure to order the corn pudding today. It’s Aunt Pat’s old recipe and one of my favorites. That bit of sugar in it makes all the difference.”

  “Now how am I supposed to wait for the fellas to come before I eat?” complained Buddy with good humor. “I’ve got corn pudding on the brain now.” He gave a sigh as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  “How’s everything going?” asked Lulu.

  “Hard times, hard times,” said Buddy, shaking his head. “But doesn’t life usually go that way? You think everything is the cat’s pajamas, and next thing you know, you’re singing the blues again. With feeling.”

  “Mercy! I must have missed something. Did something happen with you and Leticia?”

  Leticia Swinger was Buddy’s lady friend, and they’d been getting along well, Lulu thought. She sang in the church choir, and he sang for the band. They certainly had plenty in common. And Buddy was a handsome and spry octogenarian.

  “No, no, everything is fine as far as my love life goes. You should ignore my ranting and raving, Lulu. I’m a little bitter over the Back Porch Blues Band’s last gig.”

  “That’s Tristan’s party, right? Oh goodness. Y’all probably didn’t get paid for playing that benefit, did you?”

  “Nope. Not a red penny. And after all that trouble we went through! That woman wasn’t letting us take a break for nuthin’. And we’re old men, Lulu! In our eighties. If nothing else, we should’ve had restroom breaks.” His lined face was thunderous.

  “Y’all didn’t get any money when you booked the event?” asked Lulu. “I was thinking you’d said you’d gotten something in advance.”

  Buddy said, “We did get a little money down. Ten percent, maybe?”

  “Just ten percent?”

  Buddy nodded sadly. “Yes, Tristan said she’d had bad luck in the past with bands skipping out on her. I guess, to be fair, she couldn’t have known she was going to get herself killed during the party. And we wouldn’t dream of asking Steffi to pay the bill,” he finished glumly. “We’ll write it off as a rehearsal. A really long and tiring rehearsal that I’m still trying to recover from.”

  Lulu said, “Well, I guess we know why she ended up as a murder victim. I’m starting to believe that there wasn’t a single person at that party who liked Tristan Pembroke.”

  “Thinking back, though, it’s probably a good thing she ran the band into the ground,” said Buddy solemnly. “We had the perfect alibi. Otherwise we’d all be suspects, too! Because we were that irked at the lady.”

  Big Ben and Morty walked up to the booth. “What’re y’all doing? Gossiping?” bellowed Big Ben. Lulu saw his hearing aid but had a feeling he didn’t have it turned up. It was time for the gossiping to stop, if everyone in Aunt Pat’s was going to hear Big Ben’s booming voice repeating it.

  “Let me guess—the murder,” said Morty. “Definitely the topic du jour.” He turned to Lulu. “Are you planning on doing a little poking around again? You’ve gotten to be the amateur detective extraordinaire!”

  Lulu said, “Actually, I think I probably will.” She lowered her voice and saw Big Ben finally reach to turn his hearing aid up. “Sara is one of the suspects, you know.”

  “Insanity!” said Big Ben in a lower voice, but one that still carried. “Sara wouldn’t hurt a fly. Might yell at the fly, or cuss the fly out, but she wouldn’t hurt it.”

  Lulu sighed. “Yelling is what got her on the suspect list. Tristan got all fired up at Sara for bringing that portrait out and putting it up on the auction block without her permission. And Sara wasn’t going to sit back and take it. So they were both yelling at each other in view of several witnesses. Then Sara took off in the car to cool down . . . and had a flat tire. It all looked pretty suspicious to the police. And Sara didn’t think to mention her pageant connection to Tristan because the pageants just aren’t that important to her. I know Sara didn’t have a thing in the world to do with it, but the police don’t. I’m going to try to find out enough to put the cops on a different trail.”

  A waitress brought a big pitcher of sweet tea and took everyone’s orders. Morty took a big sip of tea and mulled things over for a minute. “Besides the Back Porch Blues Band, who else at the party couldn’t stand Tristan?”

  Buddy gave a deep chuckle. “I’m sure there are plenty of people to choose from.” He thought for a moment. “Lulu, do the police think Steffi’s a suspect?”

  “Probably, just because of her history with her mother. After all, Tristan was a horrible mother to Steffi her whole life and recently kicked her out of the house after another big argument they had. Steffi told me that her mother said she was going to write Steffi out of her will. The police are bound to think that money wo
uld be a big motive—that Steffi wanted to kill her mother before she had the chance to change her will.”

  Morty said softly, “She’s not working today?” When Lulu shook her head, he continued. “It sure sounds like a powerful motive to me. Isn’t money usually the main reason behind most murders?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. But I told the police that Steffi was with me during the murder. And she was—I think she was really starting to regret coming to the party at all. She and her mama had this big argument, and Steffi came out from it totally miserable. She spent the rest of the evening with me—well, up until the point that the police came. I guess she showed up just to make her mother feel uncomfortable, but really, she was the only one who felt that way.”

  “How about Tristan’s sister?” mused Morty. “Seems like Steffi was talking at the restaurant last week about how great her aunt is—and how her mom and her aunt don’t get along at all.”

  The food arrived at the table, and Lulu waited for a minute for everyone to get settled. “I’ve heard the same thing about Tristan and Marlowe. Sounds like Tristan has always found ways to mess with her sister and generally make her as miserable as possible—even when they were kids, they were at each others’ throats. And then Marlowe was saying that Tristan practically ran their father’s company into the ground—she seemed to really take it personally. Apparently, Tristan was pulling money out of the business for her own personal use.”

  Big Ben nodded, “I vote on Tristan’s sister, then. As revenge. It’s not as powerful a motive as money, but still a biggie.”

  “The only problem is that Marlowe was out of town on business that night. So she couldn’t be a suspect.”

  Big Ben’s face fell. “Too bad. It was the perfect solution, too. Actually, it’s so perfect, Lulu, that I think you need to double-check Marlowe’s alibi. Maybe she wasn’t really where she said she was.”

  “You know who else didn’t like Tristan?” asked Morty, wagging a finger in the air as he remembered. “Oh—what’s her name? Eats in here a lot. Her daughter does the pageant thing, and it’s all she knows how to talk about.”

  “Colleen Bannister,” said Lulu.

  “That’s the one!” said Morty, beaming. “What about her? And I hope she’s a possibility because you keep eliminating our best non-Sara suspects from the running.”

  Lulu shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid she’s not a possibility. She wasn’t even at the party. Which is no surprise, considering there was no love lost between Colleen and Tristan. Tristan wouldn’t have invited that woman to her party if her life depended on it.”

  The three men frowned at each other. Then Buddy said, “Colleen—we’re talking about the same person, right? Big hair? Lots of makeup? Kind of country sounding? Pretty daughter?”

  “The very one,” said Lulu.

  Morty smiled victoriously. “Well, then we do have a possibility, Lulu. Because Colleen was at that party—and so was her girl. We saw them outside while we were playing. And they were having the biggest argument you ever saw. The girl ended up stomping off toward the house and the mama paced and waited for her to come back. Steam was practically coming out of her ears! But I could tell she didn’t want to go into that party. She just waited there at the edge of the yard.”

  The next day, Lulu decided she had some fences to mend over at Dee Dee’s Darling Dress Shoppe. She was fully aware that she was responsible for bringing Cherry into the shop, monopolizing Dee Dee’s time, and then waltzing out without spending a dime.

  Since Dee Dee’s shop was really, exclusively, the only place where Lulu shopped for clothing, she decided it would be wise to make up. Besides, she had a couple of things she wanted to know about Tristan, and Dee Dee seemed to know everything about everybody.

  Dee Dee looked up when the bell rang as Lulu walked in the store. She frowned but then quickly mustered a more pleasant expression. Lulu guessed that’s because she was by herself, with no redheaded, motorcycle-riding, time-sucking friends along with her.

  “You doing all right, Lulu?” asked Dee Dee in a loud voice.

  It did grate on Lulu’s nerves that Dee Dee was determined to believe that she was hard of hearing. As if she was that much older than Dee Dee! Why, there probably were only nine years between them. Lulu managed to swallow her irritation, though. “Doing fine, Dee Dee, doing fine. And I did want to tell you I was so terribly sorry about the other day. Honestly, I don’t know what got into Cherry. She told me she wanted a whole new wardrobe to go along with her new soul. I guess change is harder than we think.”

  “I guess so,” said Dee Dee in a doubtful voice. “Well, what can I do for you today, Lulu? You’re shopping for yourself?”

  “Yes I am. I think I’m probably good with dresses, but I was thinking I could use a pair of slacks—really casual ones. Black, maybe?”

  Dee Dee and Lulu started going through the racks. “You know, Dee Dee, I’ve been shopping here for years, but somehow I didn’t know exactly how connected you were with the pageant world! It sounds like you’re the go-to shop for pageant clothes.”

  Dee Dee looked pleased. “I’ve worked hard on it, yes. And the business has really built up over the years. It wasn’t an overnight success, but over time, things have definitely come together. The pageants have been really good for the boutique. I couldn’t have stayed afloat all these years by selling separates and dresses to the Lulu Taylors of the world.”

  Lulu wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or not but decided to give it a pass. “I guess I’m just unaware of the pageant world altogether. Sara has been filling me in, since she’s been involved in it for a while because of Coco. She and I were talking about poor Tristan’s tragic death, and Sara mentioned to me that Tristan was very involved in pageants. I guess you must have seen a lot of Tristan? She sent some customers your way?” Lulu asked.

  “She did,” said Dee Dee, pushing some clothes down the rack a little roughly. “She was a pageant coach—the girls’ mothers hired her to help them figure out what to wear, and what their talent should be, and how to walk—that kind of thing. She was good to recommend that her girls visit me for dress fittings—that’s really where the shop’s pageant side started to take off.”

  Lulu looked sympathetically at Dee Dee. “It must have been hard for you, Tristan’s death. Such a terrible shock!”

  Dee Dee gave her hoarse, cigarette-smoking laugh. “It wasn’t a shock at all, Lulu. Tristan did help me out, but she rubbed a whole lot of people the wrong way. Look at the argument we overheard at the party between Steffi and Tristan! And that was only one example of many.”

  “I did hear,” Lulu said, fingering a pair of black slacks, “that Colleen blamed Tristan that her daughter lost the Miss Memphis crown.”

  Dee Dee rolled her eyes. “In Colleen’s head, Pansy was already doing the Miss America walk and wave. That’s one reason Colleen’s head is all messed up.”

  “Pansy didn’t have that much of a shot at it, then?”

  “Didn’t have a shot in . . . uh. She didn’t have a shot,” said Dee Dee, censoring herself with effort. She apparently thought Lulu had delicate ears as well as deaf ones. “Don’t get me wrong—she’s a pretty girl. And she wore my dresses, which means she made the most of her looks for the pageants. But her talent is just so-so at best. She can sing . . . sort of. She can play a fiddle pretty well. And she does some great parlor-game kind of stuff. But she doesn’t have the kind of talent or interview capabilities that would put a Miss America crown on her head—or even a Miss Memphis one.”

  Lulu frowned. “But Colleen sounded like she was certain Tristan had damaged her dress. And stolen her shoes? I know it made the news really big, too.”

  “The national media loves any story about beauty-pageant girls being ugly to each other. They eat those backstage-antic stories up with a spoon. People love hearing about that kind of stuff. So it did get picked up on the newswire but not because there was a single bit of truth to the story at all. And
I can’t imagine Tristan Pembroke doing anything to sabotage Pansy. The girl just wasn’t that much of a threat to her client. I can tell you one thing, though—the other girls in the pageants never like Pansy. I’ve heard them talking about her right here in the store, and they really talked when she made the national news like that. Pansy always wants to be the one in the spotlight, and that’s not the way to make friends. Besides, those kinds of things happen at beauty pageants all the time—the girls get upset with each other. Maybe Pansy got someone upset and she was getting back at her.”

  “It sounds like one of the other girls could just as easily have damaged Pansy’s dress to get back at her for being such a pill,” said Lulu thoughtfully. “Colleen sounded so sure, though.”

  Dee Dee walked briskly over to a dressing room and hung a few pairs of slacks on the hook in one. “That’s because,” she said in her raspy voice as Lulu entered the dressing room, “Colleen believes her theory. And there’s no denying the bad blood between Tristan and Colleen—it dates back to their own pageant days as teens. But I know Tristan didn’t think Pansy was going to win the Miss Memphis pageant. She wouldn’t have worried a second over it. Maybe she could have destroyed Pansy’s chances in order to get back at Colleen. Maybe. But that’s the only reason I can see her doing it.”

  “I think, especially after the whole spy mission and nearly having to buy a prissy dress, that I deserve a sidekick spot. At least just for this case, anyway.” Cherry and Lulu were on the front porch of Aunt Pat’s, and Cherry was rocking her chair back and forth with concentrated determination. “The next time a dead body turns up, you can reevaluate everything.”

  “There won’t be any more dead bodies turning up,” said Lulu, in a voice with more conviction than she actually felt. “We’re already swimming in murder. But I do appreciate the sidekick offer, Cherry. As long as you’re not a suspect,” she added teasingly.

  Cherry snorted. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been eliminated from the pool of suspects,” she said. “I may have had the motive, but I didn’t have the opportunity.”