Hickory Smoked Homicide

by Riley Adams

  Pansy gave a happy sigh. “No, this is perfect. I’m glad you called me up.”

  “Well, you know, I’ve been thinking about calling you for a long while now. But I was too shy and worried I’d be rejected.” He ducked his head and blinked up at her through his lashes. Pansy laughed and swatted him. “As if!” she said.

  Cherry rolled her eyes at Lulu. They were sitting in the booth directly behind the couple, and it was still very quiet in the restaurant, since it wasn’t even six o’clock yet.

  “You could have turned me down, you know,” he said teasingly. “You haven’t even accepted my Facebook friend request yet. And I’m devastated over it.”

  Cherry put her head down on the table as if it was hurting.

  “For heaven’s sake, Doug! When did you make this request ? A few minutes ago? I haven’t even been on Facebook today.” Lulu saw Pansy take her phone out and access the Internet there. She punched a few buttons on her touch screen. “There. We’re friends.”

  “Good,” said Doug, with a smile in his voice. “I feel a lot more secure now. If I believe you. Maybe you’ve blocked me or something, instead.”

  “Check and see for yourself!” said Pansy.

  Doug took out his own phone and fiddled with it for a minute. “Okay, never mind. False alarm. We are friends.” He smiled beatifically at Pansy. “And now I’m on your profile page and will find out all kinds of fascinating tidbits about you. See, this is how to make first dates go well—start finding out as much as possible about the person you’re with.” He paused while he scanned Pansy’s online profile. “And you seem to be absolutely fascinating.”

  Pansy gave a tittering laugh.

  “I see some wonderful pictures of you—are these pageant dresses? Wow. And you’ve got seven hundred friends listed! See, I’m out with the most popular girl around.” Another pause. “Ooh! What’s this now? Looks like you’ve been flaming some people, too.”

  Pansy sounded a little less cheerful. “What? Oh. You mean the note I put on there about someone cheating so they could win? Yeah.” She gave a short laugh. “The pageant biz isn’t all sweetness and light, you know. We have a whole lot of competition between girls, and all of us want to win really badly. It gets ugly sometimes.”

  Lulu worried for a minute that Doug was going off on his own investigative tangent, so she was relieved when his phone suddenly rang. “Typical! This is a call I really need to take, too—I’ve got a project I’m doing for Chemistry, and this is my lab partner calling. Could you excuse me just for a few minutes?”

  Lulu and Cherry had decided that the best thing to do would be for Lulu to sit down with Pansy by herself. Lulu thought Pansy might get on the defensive if it looked like she was being ambushed. Cherry was just going to listen in (she was back to back with Pansy in the booth).

  Lulu slid out of the booth and walked to the next table. “Well, hi there, sugar! I didn’t see you come in. Do we need to order you up something to eat?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Taylor. No, probably not yet. I’m here with a date, so I better wait on him to get back to the table before I order.”

  Pansy smiled as Lulu beamed and said, “A date! How fun. Is he a nice boy, I hope?”

  “I think so. He’s treating me pretty well so far, and he’s making me laugh. I love to laugh.”

  Lulu clucked. “There hasn’t been too much to laugh about lately, has there?”

  Pansy shook her head. “There sure hasn’t been. I couldn’t believe it about Dee Dee!” Pansy gave a tiny shiver. “To think that could have been any one of us . . . in the wrong place at the wrong time. We all parked in that deck, after all. It could have been me or Mom or you that ended up getting mugged.”

  Lulu frowned. “You didn’t know, then? It wasn’t a mugging gone wrong at all, Pansy. It was murder. That’s why the police were so interested in asking us all those questions.”

  “Really? I thought they were trying to figure out if we’d seen anybody who looked dangerous when we were getting out of our cars that evening.” Pansy rubbed her forehead. “It’s just too much. I hate it. Can’t the police find who’s doing all this and put him away?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” said Lulu. “It’s made it hard for all of us, hasn’t it? So—did you see anything that night that would help the police out? What did you tell them that you’d seen?”

  Pansy looked like she was trying to remember. “I didn’t see anything in the parking deck,” she said slowly. “Well, I saw a couple of people, but they were obviously just coming back from partying on Beale. Nobody was lurking around the parking garage. I guess they’re wanting to know who might have left the party? But everyone that Tristan knew was still there when the police came!”

  “They were,” said Lulu in a soothing voice, “but someone could easily have left the fund-raiser, murdered poor Dee Dee, and come back again to the restaurant. I think that’s what the police are thinking.”

  Pansy was quiet for a few moments. Lulu saw Doug out of the corner of her eye, watching them for a clue that they were done talking. Finally Pansy said, “I did notice that Pepper was there, then she left. Then she was there again. I was laughing about it to Steffi, actually. She obviously came that night just to make Loren feel really uncomfortable. I mean—Pepper didn’t even like Tristan! And I don’t think she knew Steffi. I figured she was going to go out and slash Loren’s tires or something like that.”

  “I was surprised to see her there, too,” said Lulu in a musing voice. “I thought she’d want to stay as far away from Loren as she could. When I saw her there, I figured, like you did, that she was only there to get under Loren’s skin. I couldn’t keep track of her, though—poor Coco wasn’t feeling well that night and I was tending to her.”

  Lulu really needed to ask the next question—she’d put it off for a while now. But it wasn’t an easy one to broach. Finally she decided that the only way to ask it . . . was just to ask it. “Pansy, honey, I hate to ask you this. But someone suggested that you might have damaged your own dress and hidden your own shoes for the Miss Memphis pageant.”

  Pansy froze. “Why would I do something like that, and hurt my chances of going to college?”

  “This person suggested that you didn’t have a chance to win the pageant, anyway. And that you thought that you could get sympathy votes from the judges if you had some sort of disaster happen to you before you were supposed to go on.” Lulu shrugged helplessly. But the truth flared in Pansy’s eyes for a moment, giving Lulu all the information she needed.

  “That’s bull! And I bet I know who suggested that to you. One of the pageant girls, right? That’s because they’re all jealous of me. They’re jealous of my talent and my looks and the fact that I’m doing well and beating them at competitions. We’re in it for the same scholarship dollars, so of course they’re going to feel that way.”

  Lulu reached across and gave Pansy’s hand a quick pat. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It was bothering me and so I thought I’d mention it to you.”

  “Mrs. Taylor, do me a favor and don’t say anything about it.” Pansy’s voice sounded stressed. “That’s the kind of thing that could mess up a girl’s pageant career.”

  “Consider my lips sealed,” said Lulu quickly. She looked across the restaurant and gave Doug a quick nod. “Oh, here comes your young man. I hope your date is going well, dear.”

  Pansy relaxed. “You know, I think it is,” she said in a confiding voice.

  Lulu was relieved. As long as both the kids were enjoying themselves. She didn’t like being ruthless.

  Cherry and Lulu didn’t have to cook up plans to talk to Loren. He showed up the next day at Aunt Pat’s to see Sara in midafternoon, when it was quiet at the restaurant. As soon as Lulu saw him and realized that he wanted to talk, not eat, she ushered him to the back office.

  He was fidgety and agitated until Sara joined him in the office. “I know you’re probably sick of seeing me here,” he started, “but I ju
st can’t get that portrait out of my head.”

  Lulu and Sara looked at each other. Lulu had told Sara about the portrait, and she promised not to let it go any further. The police apparently thought that keeping the destroyed painting under wraps might help them to solve the case. Sara took off her apron and sat down on one of the chairs. “Loren, I know where you’re coming from, but the painting is missing. And—I have a funny feeling it might be missing for good. I’m sorry, but I think you should probably try to move past it.”

  Loren bobbed his head. “I agree with you about the portrait being permanently missing. It would already have turned up by now if it was going to.” He leaned forward and looked Sara right in the eyes. “That’s why I want to commission a new portrait of Tristan.” He opened up the laptop bag he had with him, and Sara gaped as he pulled money out.

  “I can pay for the portrait myself. I know, of course, it takes some time to paint. I’ve got pictures of Tristan that Steffi and Marlowe were kind enough to give me . . .”

  Sara gave Lulu a sort of sick look as Loren rooted around in his laptop bag for the pictures of Tristan that he’d brought with him. He was carefully pulling them out of a folder when Sara said, “I just don’t know, Loren. I feel kind of funny about it. A commemorative painting, sort of? Won’t your wife . . . ?”

  Loren shook his head, and a lock of dark hair fell into his face. “She’s not going to even know about it because Pepper and I have separated,” he said impatiently. “But it sure would mean a lot to me if you’d paint another portrait.”

  “How about,” said Sara hesitantly, “if I think about it?”

  “I could pay more money for it, if you wanted—”

  Sara said quickly, “It’s not about the money, Loren. I’m just not sure if this is something I want to take on or not. The first one honestly didn’t turn out all that well—Tristan certainly wasn’t happy with it.”

  Loren looked surprised to hear this. “I thought it was beautiful,” he said. Love, thought Lulu, is obviously blind. Tristan had had a decidedly peevish look on her face in the original portrait, beautiful as it was.

  Sara sighed. “It brings back bad memories, Loren. I don’t particularly want to look at a photograph of Tristan for hours on end. It’ll make me think about the murder. And now we have another murder on our hands. Whatever could have happened to Dee Dee?”

  “Probably somebody she crossed the wrong way,” said Loren absently. “It could even have been Pepper. Pepper’s been mean and vindictive lately.”

  Sara knit her brows. “You’re thinking your wife killed Dee Dee?”

  “Soon to be ex-wife,” said Loren coolly. “And, yes, I do think she’s capable of it.”

  Lulu wondered if maybe even Loren could have destroyed the portrait. He’d surely been mad enough at Tristan at the party. He’d been furious, upset, betrayed. Couldn’t he have taken out all those feelings on the portrait and then regretted it when Tristan had ended up dead?

  Loren was still mulling over the possibilities. “I worry more about what happened to Tristan. Steffi sure hadn’t been happy with her mother at the time of the murder. Or maybe it was one of those pageant people . . . like Pansy. Tristan kept talking about how much the girl hated her.”

  Lulu said gently, “Loren, is there anything that you saw the night of Dee Dee’s murder that could be a clue to who’s behind all this? I didn’t really get much of an impression of anything that night because Coco was sick and I was trying to work out a way to get her back home.” Loren looked up, and Lulu said, “You know the police are thinking it was murder, right? Some folks still seem to think it was a mugging gone wrong.”

  “You know, Lulu, I’ve thought really hard about that night. I want to see Tristan’s killer behind bars more than anybody, and I’m sure whoever killed Dee Dee killed Tristan, too.”

  He lowered his head and said, “But Lulu, my attention was diverted at the fund-raiser, too, just like yours was with Coco. Pepper was bound and determined to make my life miserable. I know the only reason she was there was to make me uncomfortable. Every time I looked up, she was staring at me with this hateful expression on her face.”

  “Was there anybody else that you noticed?” asked Lulu. She was beginning to think that they weren’t going to get any information at all.

  “Well,” he said, a little reluctantly, “I did see that woman—the pageant woman—looking for her daughter at one point. I was talking to Marlowe at the time, and she asked Marlowe if she’d seen Pansy. So I guess at some point Pansy wasn’t around. But that could have been because the room was so crowded. But I did notice that I had a break for a while. Pepper was gone for quite a few minutes and I had a wonderful break from all her glares. And she’d spoken to Dee Dee earlier in the party. Maybe there’s some kind of connection.” Loren looked positively cheerful at the idea. “Because it wasn’t that she left Aunt Pat’s for the night. She came back into the dining room to torture me some more later.”

  “Seems like she could have simply been visiting the ladies’ room,” said Sara wryly.

  Loren shrugged. “It’s a possibility, I guess. But she sure was gone for a long time.” He frowned. “I did also notice that Steffi wasn’t around for a little while. I looked for her for a few minutes when I was ready to leave. Of course, though, she turned up a little while later, so maybe she was just in the restroom, too.”

  This time when Cherry popped over, it was almost bedtime. Lulu heard Cherry’s motorcycle in the driveway and peeped out the door. She’d pulled out some milk and some praline cookies when Cherry knocked at the door. “You saw me coming!” said Cherry, looking appreciatively at the refreshments.

  “More like heard you coming. Have a cookie?”

  Cherry wanted several cookies, actually. Finally she gave a grunt and pushed the plate of cookies away from her. “Stop me! Those are addictive. Okay, I dropped by the restaurant a while ago because I didn’t know you’d left early. Sara said you’d been investigating without me.” Cherry’s expression was a combination of hurt and curiosity, but curiosity was winning out.

  “Well, honey, I couldn’t help it. Loren came right on into Aunt Pat’s, determined to speak to Sara again. He’s got a real bee in his bonnet over that portrait. Actually, it’s more of a hornet than a bee. And he wasn’t all that much help, anyway. Honestly, Cherry, I’m getting discouraged. The police don’t seem to be making that many inroads, and we’re running into dead ends, too.”

  Cherry said, “So tell me what Lover Boy Loren had to say for himself. Maybe there’s a clue mixed up in there somehow.”

  Lulu filled her in on their conversation.

  “It sounds to me like you found out a few things,” said Cherry. “Pepper, Steffi, and Pansy weren’t visible for at least part of the party.”

  “Or maybe,” said Lulu glumly, “they were all reapplying their makeup in the ladies’ room. Or out on the porch listening to the band.”

  Cherry said, “Or maybe they were killing Dee Dee in the parking deck! We just don’t know . . . that’s the whole point of an investigation, Lulu!”

  Lulu perked up a little bit. “You’re right. Let’s work through it a little. So we’ve got Pepper who’s looking suspicious—or is she? I’m wondering if Loren is angry enough right now to blame Pepper for everything he can think of. If she’s locked up in jail, then she’s out of his hair for sure, after all.”

  “Maybe,” said Cherry. “But what about the others? Pansy sure didn’t mention leaving the fund-raiser, and neither did Steffi. It’s something to follow up on, anyway. And how about the information that Pansy gave you? She didn’t see Pepper for part of the time, either! So maybe Pepper was the one who sneaked off. Maybe Dee Dee saw Pepper do something really suspicious at Tristan’s party—something that the police could’ve used as evidence. And then Dee Dee tried to blackmail her and she killed her.”

  “It looks like Pepper might be the next person we should talk to,” said Lulu thoughtfully. “Any ideas on how t
o do that in a natural way?”

  “Bunko,” said Cherry decidedly. “We’ll invite some suspects, and I’ll tell them that we’re going to have a Bunko night to unwind a little bit. Everyone can bring something to snack on.”

  “I’m liking this idea already!” said Lulu, cheering up a little.

  “And then we can play the game. Pepper lives right next door, you know, so I can maybe convince her to stay a little longer.” Cherry thought a second. “I know! I’ll ask her to stay and help me clean up.”

  Lulu laughed. “She’ll love that!”

  “It’s the kind of flakiness that she’d expect of me, though. She’s already fussing about my plastic flowers, but I swear you can’t tell. The only reason Pepper knows they’re fake is because I told her.” Cherry looked miffed.

  “As far as the Bunko goes, though—won’t it take a while to set it up? To invite folks and get them to come over?”

  “No, because I’m supposed to have it tonight—it’s my month, anyway. But out of the twelve girls we’re supposed to have, a whole bunch can’t come because of some golf tournament or something. So it’s perfect! I was going to have to call around for subs, anyway.” She lit up. “I’ll invite Colleen, Pansy, Steffi, and Marlowe, too! Let’s have all the suspects there, then we can see what happens. Murder at Bunko!” Cherry, thought Lulu, looked way too enthusiastic by the prospect.

  “Except for Loren,” said Lulu.

  “Well, but we couldn’t invite Loren. Men don’t come to Bunko. Well, maybe some do, but not in our Bunko club. Husbands never sub. And he’d hate it and hate us and would be upset at Pepper being there, and he’d storm out, or she would, and then we wouldn’t be able to talk to anybody.” Cherry looked dismayed.

  “No, Loren doesn’t need to be invited,” said Lulu. “Okay. So call them up and see who can come.”

  They could all come. “That’s because,” said Cherry smugly, “Bunko is the most fun game ever. And they can all use some fun right now.”