Hickory Smoked Homicide

by Riley Adams

  Pansy shrugged a thin shoulder. “Plenty of people. Everybody was always talking about her—even the girls she coached. She was just a mean person. She was always nosing around for dirt on pageant people . . . and there were lots of pageant people at the party. So I heard, anyway,” she finished quickly.

  “Pansy, were you actually at the party that night? I have to ask because somebody I know was sure she saw you. But I didn’t think you or your mother were there.”

  Pansy flushed and looked around Lulu real quick to make sure no one was close enough to listen in. “Mother doesn’t want anyone to know we were there,” she said in a hushed voice. “I did go—I was furious with Tristan, and Steffi had told me she was having a party. Tristan had been treating Steffi like a dog again, and I was sick of it. I wrote something on my Facebook page about Tristan, and I guess one of her girls told her about it. So she called me up and was insulting me and my mom—said I couldn’t act and I wasn’t pretty enough to win pageants and I was wasting my and my mom’s time. And she was planning to block me from any pageant wins she could.”

  Pansy shrugged. “I really just went there to bug her. I wanted to see if she was going to throw me out or not—if I could force her to make a big scene at her fancy party. But then Mother showed up pretty fast, yelled at me for being there, and I took off for the house to see if I could at least show my face to make Tristan mad. Mother wouldn’t even go in, so she waited for me outside. I wasn’t in there long because I didn’t see Tristan. Mother was furious with me—she hated Tristan as much as I did, but she always said we couldn’t confront her or else she’d be sure to slam me if she was judging one of my competitions.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Lulu, “is how Tristan could be a coach and a judge. That’s a huge conflict of interest.”

  “She only judged when she didn’t have a girl in the pageant. But she’d hold a grudge against certain girls, so it still wasn’t fair. She wasn’t impartial.” Pansy started putting another layer of mascara on her eyelashes. “And Steffi says she cheated, too, by getting information from Dee Dee on what the other girls were doing.”

  Lulu said, “So you think pageant people at the party might have been upset enough with Tristan to kill her.”

  Pansy shrugged again. “It’s possible. Plus, Dee Dee was there. I don’t think she liked Tristan much. But you know who else I saw before Mother pulled me out? That guy Loren and his wife, Pepper.” She paused with the mascara application and looked seriously at Lulu.

  “And they would have wanted to kill her?”

  “There’s this whole crazy history with them. Loren is creepy. I guess Pepper was there trying to keep an eye on her husband.” Pansy saw Coco walking up with her drink, and she said quickly, “Ask my mom about it. She can tell you.”

  “Pansy?” asked Coco. “Can you help me with my dress? I always have trouble tying my sash.”

  “Sure, sweetie,” said Pansy. And she and Coco walked off to a changing area with hanging bags everywhere.

  “Psst!”

  Lulu looked around, bewildered. Then she heard it again and saw that a young teenager, probably only fourteen, was trying to quietly get her attention.

  Lulu pretended to be studying Coco’s bag very closely, since stealth seemed to be in order. “Is there something you wanted to tell me?” she asked, without looking in the girl’s direction.

  The girl, very thin and blond, said quietly, “I heard what Pansy was telling you, and it’s a bunch of hooey. Tristan didn’t have anything to do with Pansy’s dress being ruined and her shoes missing. I was at that pageant with my cousin and was hanging out backstage. I saw Pansy mess up her own dress with the lipstick. I guess she did the same thing with her shoes, too.”

  “Pansy did it?” Lulu’s voice rose with surprise, and she spoke more quietly. “Why would Pansy do something like that? It messed up her chances to win the Miss Memphis pageant and to get that scholarship money she was looking for.”

  The girl said in a derisive voice, “Pansy wasn’t going to win that crown. She’s not that good! Not that pretty, even, compared to the other girls. She was hoping the judges would feel sorry for her or think she was being really brave by going out there with a ruined dress and borrowed shoes that didn’t fit and give her the crown.” She snorted. “She knew she was going to lose, so she decided to go for the pity votes.”

  “Did her mother know about this?” asked Lulu, looking to make sure that Pansy was still totally focused on tying Coco’s sash.

  “I don’t know. Probably not, though. Pansy’s mom wouldn’t understand why she’d do something like that, since she thinks Pansy is perfect.”

  Suddenly, the girl snapped her mouth shut and started curling her hair with a curling iron with intense concentration. Lulu turned to see Pansy and Coco walking over and Cherry coming over to join both of them.

  “Pansy? Just who I wanted to see!” said Cherry, with a big smile. “Your mama said you can give me the scoop on coaching and pageants and everything else I needed to know about.”

  “Cherry is planning to become a pageant coach,” explained Lulu. Pansy must have thought this explanation was just as confusing because her brow stayed wrinkled.

  “And Coco, maybe you can show me what you need me to do to get you all prepped. That’s something else I need to learn about,” said Cherry. Coco looked troubled that this process needed any kind of explanation.

  “I’ll slip back out to the audience so I won’t be underfoot back here,” said Lulu. “Good luck learning the ropes!”

  “Thanks!” said Cherry. But Lulu thought her perky smile looked like it was starting to fade.

  Colleen was a fidgety mess, decided Lulu. She couldn’t seem to sit still. She’d perch on the edge of her seat, then she’d jump up and talk to someone, then she’d sit down again and start texting on her phone. She looked like she wanted desperately to be backstage instead of sitting with Lulu.

  “We nearly had a disaster of momentous proportions while you were backstage,” said Colleen. “Imagine if you had gone out in this nasty weather to the middle of nowhere and the girls had gotten all dressed up and excited and there wasn’t a pageant! One of our judges fell suddenly ill and called to say she couldn’t make it. Now, ordinarily, that would mean we’d have to cancel the event unless we could scrounge up some last-minute judge from the town. But your friend Gordon, God bless him, was happy to step in.”

  “Gordon? Gordon knows how to judge a beauty contest?”

  “Well, no, of course he doesn’t. But he’s getting a crash course right now in it. Another emergency diverted. By the skin of my teeth.” She frowned a minute and looked at Lulu as if trying to gauge if she might be upset that her friend had been drafted into service. “By the way, he’s happy as a clam right now. Once he’d saved the day, all the moms were stuffing plates of food into his hand—probably trying to butter him up. So he’s eating Sharon’s chili and Cindy’s pineapple and pork chops—and there’s someone’s chicken soup that he’s raving about. He sure seems like a nice guy.” She hesitated. “Are y’all . . . seeing each other?”

  “Not a bit. I’m just showing him around Memphis, since he’s new to town.” She was a little worried about the chicken soup, though. That was supposed to be Lulu’s and Coco’s lunch. She hoped he wasn’t cleaning out the Crock-Pot because all this investigating was getting Lulu hungry.

  Colleen was still jittery and glancing nervously at the stage area, where they were messing with lighting and the sound system. “Don’t you want to go back there?” asked Lulu. “Just to check and see how everything is going?”

  “Honey, I’d love to, but Pansy has practically banned me from going backstage lately. Says that I act too much like a stage mom. Ha! I’m not nearly as bad as some of these moms,” she said, leaning in real close to Lulu. “They’d walk right out there on stage with their girls if they could. You look in their purses, and all you’ll see are extra sets of fake eyelashes and padding and tape. All the
y think about is their girls. I’m not quite that bad, but I make Pansy nervous, she says, so I’m trying to stay busy out here.”

  She sure didn’t look busy to Lulu, but at least she wasn’t running backstage.

  “How did Pansy seem?” she asked Lulu anxiously. “Did she act like she had bad nerves?”

  “Not at all,” said Lulu. “In fact, she was doing a great job helping Coco get ready on top of getting herself ready. And she was even telling me all kinds of entertaining stories about pageant life.”

  Colleen gave a nervous laugh. “Oh, there’s always a bunch of stories. I already told you what was going on with Pansy and Tristan, and that’s just part of it.”

  “She also told me to ask you about Loren and Pepper. I didn’t even know that y’all would know them at all.... I know Pepper a little bit through Cherry.”

  “Oh, Cherry knows them?” Colleen rolled her eyes.

  “Cherry is their neighbor,” said Lulu. “She and Pepper were trying to get into the Memphis Women’s League—but apparently Tristan had blocked them from being able to join.”

  Colleen snorted. “Probably because Tristan thought they weren’t good enough to join her club. I’ll have to ask Cherry what she thinks about Pepper and Loren, especially living next door to them. Because the impression that I got is that they’re totally crazy. Well, I shouldn’t say that—I don’t know Pepper. But if she knows about the running around he’s doing on her and she’s staying with him, then she’s crazy, too.”

  “I’m gathering that Loren and Tristan were an item?” asked Lulu.

  “Or something.” Colleen gave a shrill laugh. “All I know is that one day Loren showed up for a pageant and tried talking to Tristan. She totally blew him off, and he left, completely dejected.”

  “You knew that they were having a romantic relationship? It wasn’t just business somehow? I’ve heard his accounting firm handled the books at her company.”

  Colleen said, “It was hard to tell what was going on that first time, although everybody here was talking about it and trying to figure it all out. But he came back to the next pageant. And that time I could overhear what he was saying. He was complaining because she wasn’t taking his calls or coming to her door when he rang her doorbell.”

  Lulu shook her head. “Mercy! And what did Tristan say to him?”

  Colleen looked gratified to have such a rapt audience and warmed to her topic. “Lulu, she was an ice queen. Really, she didn’t even answer him. Didn’t even acknowledge that he was there at all! She just walked away.”

  Lulu felt a little disappointed that there hadn’t been any more drama than that, and Colleen hurried to add, “But then he came back again. And that time he cried. It seemed like it made an impression on Tristan—because even though she was still trying to ignore him, I saw them later making up in the parking lot. In Tristan’s car.”

  Lulu blinked. “Oh my.”

  “But then I guess she went right back to not taking his calls and ignoring him. So he came by another time and read some really bad poetry to Tristan—all the girls were laughing. It really was ghastly.” Lulu noticed that Colleen couldn’t hide a smirk, though. “So this time Tristan pulled him a little ways away from everybody to really let him have it.”

  “Too bad she pulled him away from everybody,” said Lulu sadly.

  “Oh, honey, I couldn’t help but overhear,” said Colleen in a triumphant voice. “Tristan said she was sick of him showing up at pageants, and she thought she was becoming the butt of a lot of jokes. And she threatened to tell his wife about the two of them! I thought that was really a stroke of genius on her part. Of course, he said that Tristan didn’t even know his wife, and she said she did—because Pepper was dying to join Tristan’s club. So then he said he still didn’t care. He didn’t even care if Pepper knew or not—all he cared about was being with Tristan. Which is crazy right there, because nobody even likes Tristan! He got even crazier when he said that he was going to kill himself or even both of them if she didn’t take him back.”

  Lulu drew a quick breath. “What did she say to that?”

  “Tristan was as cold as ever. She said he was free to kill himself if that’s what he wanted to do, although she figured he was being melodramatic. She was all scornful and said that she wasn’t going to be a victim, but he could victimize himself if he wanted to. So maybe he did kill her. Or maybe Pepper killed Tristan, for revenge. Although why she’d want that cheating husband is beyond me.” Colleen rolled her eyes.

  “So it might have just been this love-triangle murder,” said Lulu thoughtfully.

  “Do we even really care who killed her?” asked Colleen. “Honestly, the world is a much better place without Tristan Pembroke in it. At least poor Steffi isn’t undergoing daily persecution from her mother anymore. I mean, Steffi was a huge disappointment to her mom, and Tristan sure let her know it.”

  Lulu felt another wave of sympathy for Steffi. “Not that she could help it, poor thing.”

  “But she could help who she hung out with. When she started dating their yardman, I thought Tristan was going to go through the roof! I mean, if Tristan was going to be picky about Pepper getting into her women’s club, what was she going to think about her daughter dating the yard guy?”

  Lulu had a feeling Tristan wouldn’t have thought much of the idea. Maybe that’s what the final argument was about—the one that resulted in Steffi moving out.

  Coco, thought Lulu, was cute as a bug during the competition and had even placed and gotten a sash. Pansy, on the other hand, had definitely had an off day. Tina was making all kinds of profane grumblings from next to Lulu as Pansy came out on stage. And she certainly had acted like a crown was already on her head—but she kept her head so high that she tripped over her own gown and caught herself right before she hit the floor.

  She made the unfortunate choice of a leopard-print dress (“I didn’t even know that horrid thing was in her hanging bag!” said Tina), and when the pageant director conducted Pansy’s interview, Pansy’s portion was full of perplexed looks, mumbles, and uhs.

  As the division winner smiled through her tears, Lulu wondered if maybe Pansy had sabotaged her own dress. Because, as little as Lulu knew about pageants, Pansy sure didn’t seem like much of a contender.

  Chapter 14

  The next day, Lulu was in the Aunt Pat’s back office when Sara stuck her head in the door. “Guess who’s here again?”

  “Who?” asked Lulu.

  “Loren Holman. I have a feeling he’s looking for me or Steffi about that portrait again. And I can’t even look at him the same way again after all you told me about him yesterday when you dropped Coco back home.”

  Lulu sighed. “Well, I think he’s a very sad, sad man. If you think about it, it’s a tragedy. He finally found true love—with someone who didn’t love him back. To make matters worse, now he can’t even worship her from afar. And she had a violent death, which makes it even harder for him to have any kind of closure. No, he shouldn’t have been cheating on his wife. And he shouldn’t have been practically stalking Tristan. And he really went off his rocker when he threatened to kill Tristan and himself. But still—there’s something kind of pitiful about him.”

  “Do you think he could have gone through with his threat and murdered Tristan?”

  Lulu tilted her head to think about it. “I don’t know. I guess, in his state of mind, he could have done it—but he sure seems to regret it now, if that’s what happened.”

  Sara leaned back out of the office to check the restaurant. “He’s just standing there. I guess I’m going to have to go out and talk to him. Want to come along? I can’t handle any melodrama today.”

  “Sure, honey, I’ll join you. Maybe he’ll want to talk to Steffi, too. She came to work thirty minutes ago, if you want to grab her. Let’s have him sit in a booth with us. I really don’t want him making a scene standing in the middle of the restaurant.”

  As expected, Loren was in a state. He ha
d beads of perspiration on his forehead as he asked Sara, “Has the portrait turned up? The one of Tristan?”

  As if he’d be interested in any other portrait, thought Lulu.

  Sara said, “Loren, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any clue where that painting is. Steffi, has it turned up at all in your mom’s house?”

  Steffi shook her head. “No, I haven’t seen it. I looked for it before I went through some of Mother’s things. But I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m thinking that it’s not at the house at all.”

  “How could it have left the house?” asked Lulu. “It was a big painting. Seems like someone would have seen someone leaving with it.”

  Sara said, “But if you think about it, lots of people were leaving with big paintings. After the auction, some of the folks went ahead and put the paintings in their car and went back to the party. Some of them ended up having to collect theirs later on, but there were still plenty of people who took their paintings out early.”

  Loren rubbed his palms across his red eyes. Lulu didn’t think she’d seen anybody look so tired or dejected.

  Steffi said quickly, “Loren, maybe Marlowe has seen the portrait—she’s taken the day off from work to help with Mother’s things. We could call and ask her.”

  Loren gave her a grateful look and then wiped a hand across his face again. “Y’all must think that I’m totally nuts. Who knows—maybe I am. My whole life is falling apart around me. Pepper has kicked me out of the house because I can’t put Tristan out of my mind . . . even though she’s dead.” His voice was so quiet that they had to lean forward to hear him.

  “Where are you staying now?” asked Lulu with concern.

  “I’m staying at a hotel for a little while until I can find a place.” He sat still for a moment. “I can’t blame Pepper. She’s got to be hurting pretty bad right now. But I just can’t seem to help myself.” His voice cracked on the last words.

  Steffi leaned forward and impulsively squeezed his hand. “Why don’t you come over and have supper tonight with Marlowe and me? Then you can ask her about the portrait. And, if that’s missing, I’m sure we’ve got a couple of photographs of Mother that you’re welcome to take home with you.”