by Tegan Maher
Our speculations were interrupted when Earl, Bobbie Sue's husband and the only person allowed to touch the grill or smoker, yelled for us through the swinging door. We looked at each other, foreheads crinkled, as we headed toward the kitchen; he tended to be a man of few words.
We pushed into the kitchen and waited a minute while he rummaged around in the walk-in. Once he'd gone through every pan, he stood in the center and scratched his jaw, perplexed.
"Neither of y'all moved any of my meat pans did you?" We shook our heads and he furrowed his brow. "There's a whole brisket and rack o' ribs gone. Last I checked, they were right there." He motioned toward a rack on the back of the cooler wall where he kept all the cooked meat.
Bobbie Sue popped around the corner carrying a huge plastic bin of coleslaw. "You still lookin' for that meat, Earl? I know you're good, sugar, but even you may have miscounted. It ain’t like they sprouted legs and walked off. We have about a half-hour ’til the rush starts, so you better get back to pullin' that pork. With the amount of ribs we're gonna be slingin' tonight, you won’t have time to do it later."
Earl scowled at her before heading back to a huge, stainless-steel table covered with hunks of meat on one side and a mountain of pulled pork on the other, muttering under his breath as he went.
Sarah and I headed back out to the dining room to make sure everything was ready. Bobbie Sue used to have an AYCE salad bar, but she'd watched a show about sneeze guards on one of the science channels and shut it down the next day.
That was perfectly fine with us. Since there were only two of us to cover twenty tables, we had enough to do without refilling the green pistachio dessert and pulling olives out of the ranch dressing a hundred times a night.
Sarah was just setting out the last table caddy when the first customers started trickling in, and it wasn't long before things were in full swing.
Rib night was always busy but that night was absolute chaos. I was taking ten seconds to suck down a few drinks of water while I was filling a tea pitcher when Sarah nudged me with her elbow.
"Heads up with table sixteen. Chet Malcolm. Total jerk and you won't be able to please him no matter what you do. And the kid’s a brat. My advice? Invest minimum effort. He doesn't tip anyway."
Yep. You bet your booties servers really do that.
I peered around the huge aluminum containers to see an average-looking guy with a kid that looked to be twelve or so. They didn't look horrible unless you count the fact that they were wearing matching green-and-black flannel shirts rolled up at the sleeves. Still, if Sarah, who loved pretty much everyone, said they were bad, then I mentally braced myself for the worst. I pasted on a smile and headed that direction.
"Hey guys. Welcome to Bobbie Sue's. I'm Noelle. What can I get you to drink?"
The man looked me up and down and I fought the urge to cross my hands over my chest. Or poke him in the eye.
"Bring me a tea," he told my boobs, then motioned with his thumb to the kid sitting beside him. "And he'll have a kid's coke. And we're both doing ribs. The all-you-can-eat ones, not the rip-off ones on the menu."
“Sure thing.” I nodded and turned to walk away when the kid said, "Put cherries in my coke. Like ten of 'em. Don’t forget." Sure kid. Let me get right on that.
I put their orders in and dropped off their drinks, then turned away to greet another table. The kid called after me, "Hey! There are only like five cherries in here. I said at least ten."
"I'll bring you a few extra when I come back through the next time." I said, smiling as I ground my teeth together.
"I want 'em now." He crossed his arms and his dad shoved his glass to the end of the table.
"We were here first," the senior jerk said.
I took a deep breath. I'm the easiest person on the face of the planet to get along with. I could make pleasant chitchat with the devil himself if he met me halfway, but I live by the policy, "Don't start none, won't be none." These two were starting some. I don't take orders from a snotty, entitled tween or his douche-canoe dad.
"I'm the one who brings your food.” I said, doing my best to remain civil. It had been a long night and this guy was tap-dancing on my last nerve. “You may wanna keep that in mind and adjust your attitude accordingly."
I leaned around him to speak to the brat. "Also, please and thank you’ll go a long way if you want more cherries."
I turned to walk away and Chet grabbed my wrist.
I jerked my arm away from him and snapped, "Mind your manners, else I’ll help you mind them."
His lip curled and he started to say something, but I turned my back and stomped away fuming before I did something I’d regret later. When their food came up, I’d cooled down but frankly didn’t want to deal with them, so I grabbed it out of the window and dropped it in front of them without ceremony. The kid was pouting with his arms crossed and his father looked none too pleased, either.
"I want to speak to Bobbie Sue," he said, motioning toward the kitchen door. "Nobody talks to me that way, especially not an uppity waitress. And you still didn’t bring my kid more cherries."
The kid glared at me. "Yeah. More cherries."
A real loquacious one, him. "I'll get her," I said, then peered around him to his spawn. "More cherries, please." I stood there tapping my toe for a couple seconds, giving him one more chance to use the magic word; apparently, with this kid, it was going to take a village. When he just glared at me, I shrugged and walked away.
When I pushed through the kitchen door, Bobbie Sue was pulling a huge pan of baked beans from the oven. "A guy named Chet Malcolm would like to speak with you about your uppity waitress. I had to remind him of his manners when he grabbed my arm. Table sixteen." I gave her the Readers Digest version of what had happened.
She blew a tuft of hair that had escaped her bandana off her glistening forehead and scowled. "Tell him I ain't got the time nor the inclination to come out there and kiss his ass. If he has a problem with that, tell him to come back here and kiss mine."
She shook her head, tossed down her dishtowel, and pushed past me into the dining room. "Never mind. It's not fair to make you do that. Besides, I need to let off a little steam and I reckon he'll do just fine."
I walked over to the table with her, smiling because he was about to get both barrels, and Bobbie didn't hunt with a BB gun.
"What's your problem tonight, Chet?" Bobbie Sue asked, sounding pained.
He was glaring at me. "The problem is that your waitress is rude and disrespectful. We deserve an apology."
Bobbie Sue looked around at the packed restaurant and snorted. "Please. What you deserve is a swift kick in the pants. You've been a bully since kindergarten. You've cornered the market on rude and disrespectful for decades, and you’re lucky, because if you’d laid hands on me instead of her, you’d be holdin’ a bloody stump right now."
Chet's face went beet red and when he replied, I had to wonder if he kissed his mama with that mouth.
The place was filled with kids and older people and, for that matter, adults who didn't need to hear that crap while they were paying good money for a meal. And nobody was gonna talk to Bobbie Sue like that as long as I was there. Not that she needed anybody to fight her battles. If the evil expression on her face was any indication, she was fixin’ to prove that.
She leaned forward, practically nose to nose with him, and opened her mouth to deliver the verbal five-finger death punch, and maybe even the literal one. I sighed—time to step in.
I cleared my mind and subtly flicked my hand in his direction. His mouth snapped shut mid-rant, granting blessed relief to the bleeding ears of those around him. The emotions that flitted across his face when he realized his jaws were locked were priceless.
I returned to the table and looked at him closely. "You okay, Chet? Cat got your tongue?"
Bobbie realized what was going on and bit her lip.
"Ribs were on the house tonight, Chet." She shifted her body and jerked her head in t
he direction of the front door. "Don't let it hit ya where the good lord split ya."
The kid started to pipe up, but his dad grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him out of the booth, his jaw muscles flexing. He shot me a final death glare over his shoulder as they pushed through the door and I wiggled my fingers and smiled. "Y'all take care, now!"
As the door swung shut behind them, Bobbie Sue elbowed me in the ribs and whispered, "How long you gonna leave him that way?"
I shrugged. "I considered tying it to his next polite thought or deed but figured he'd starve to death first. It'll wear off in a few minutes."
The rest of the night passed without incident, though I have to say that the tips from the people who'd witnessed the event were on the generous side.
When the last table left and we flipped the open sign off, Sarah and I pulled off our aprons and sagged into a booth. Looking around at the place, you'd never have guessed that more than five hundred pounds of ribs had been devoured there in the last 5 hours, but we both felt like we'd delivered twice that.
Bobbie Sue came out and dropped down beside us, propping her feet up on a chair. "Phew. My dogs are barkin'. You girls did good tonight. Noe, I appreciate you coming in, honey. You saved our bacon."
Thinking of the wad of cash in my pocket, I couldn't feel too put out. Plus, I would have felt bad leaving them in the lurch if I'd refused.
"It's all good. What are you gonna do about your newly hired bubble-brains, though?"
Bobbie pinched her lips together and shook her head. "I'm gonna fire her, is what. I just gotta find someone reliable to take her place first. Would Shelby want to pick up a couple of shifts a week?"
Shelby’d had a rough time of it lately. Since Aunt Addy had passed several months before, it had been just the two of us. It was hard enough being sixteen, but she’d essentially lost two mothers in her short life. Settling into a life without Addy, where I was essentially her parent figure, had been rough on us, but we were making ground.
"I'll ask her. She's working part-time for Will at the vet clinic, but she's been talking about trading in her car. I could do another shift or two a week, too."
Bobbie nodded. "Thanks. You girls would do your mama proud."
I had to blink back tears as an image of my mother popped unbidden into my head. She died when I was eleven, but the sorrow still caught me unaware sometimes. If I smelled jasmine or peppermint tea, it yanked me back to when I was ten, baking some treat or another with her in our sunny little kitchen. She’d been a kitchen witch like me; I think that's one reason I found so much comfort in baking.
Dad left shortly after Mom died. Apparently, he had no idea how to care for two pre-teen witches so he'd taken us to Aunt Addy and Uncle Cal's farm one day and just never came back. They waited a couple of days, then took us to the house, collected our belongings, and moved us in with them, then raised us like we were their own. We haven't seen or heard from my dad since.
"Oh," Bobbie said, digging in her pocket and pulling out a C-note. "I owe you this for coming in."
I took it but handed it over to Sarah. She was raising two little kids on her own, her own son Sean and her little cousin Bonnie, whose dad had disappeared—literally disappeared, right out of his bedroom—right before Christmas last year. She needed it a lot more than I did.
She shoved it back toward me. "I can't take that."
Her apron was on the table in front of me, so I stuffed it in the pocket with the rest of her tips. "Sure you can. Go over to Coralee's and get a pedicure, then spend the rest on the kids. It's school-shopping time, right?"
"Yeah, it is," she said. "Thanks, Noelle."
I smiled as Bobbie reached into her pocket again and stuffed another C-note in Sarah's apron. "I forgot about it being that time of year. Kids ain't cheap."
Now Sarah was the one who was misting up so I nudged her with my shoulder. "Shoulda just got a puppy," I teased.
She smiled, the result I was shooting for. "No kidding. I love 'em both to death, but man are they a handful." She turned to Bobbie Sue. "So, not to be nosy,"—a term every woman in the South uses before she's going to be nosy—"but how come you and Earl never had any kids?"
A shadow crossed Bobbie’s face and one corner of her mouth tipped up into a sad half-smile. "It's not that we didn't want to, honey. We wanted to have a whole passel of young’uns. It just wasn't meant to be for us, I reckon." She turned sideways in the booth and put her back against the wall, propping her feet up. "Instead, we turned out attention to the store here."
Though it had broken her heart at the time not be able to have kids of her own, she'd long since made peace with it, at least as much as a person can. I couldn’t help but wonder why the universe saw fit to give kids to horrible people, yet deprive good folks like Bobbie Sue and Earl of them. It just didn’t seem right.
“Speaking of parents,” Bobbie Sue said, “Addy popped into the back this evening and talked to me for a bit. Wanted me to let you know that she and Belle held a meeting tonight and decided it’s time to bring Hunter into the light—her phrase, not mine.” She held up her hands.
I snorted; every time I heard them use that term when they’d decide to clue a newbie in, the irony and absurdity of it cracked me up. When the reality of what she’d said sunk in, I panicked a little. It looked like it was time to push Hunter a little deeper into the paranormal pond.
Chapter Four
We sat in companionable silence for a couple of minutes, reveling in the silence and the sheer pleasure of sitting, then got back to work so we could go home.
I don't use magic often just to make things easy—there's no need to get lazy—but cleaning up when I worked was an exception. Between a little hocus-pocus and some elbow grease, we had the restaurant clean and ready for the next day in just under a half-hour.
I called Hunter before we started cleaning, and he was just finishing up. By the time we had the restaurant set to rights, he was on his way.
When he pulled up in front of the restaurant, he leaned across the cab and pushed my door open, then gave me a quick kiss when I climbed in. A little bolt of anxiety shot through me when I imagined the scene waiting to take place at my house, but I pushed it down. It was actually going to be a relief for him to know, assuming he took it as well as Addy thought he would.
"How was work?" he asked.
I pulled the wad of cash out of my apron and started to bank-face the bills. Call me weird, but I can't count it if it's all willy-nilly. "Slammed. The tournament made it nuts. I saw more fish-hook hats than you can shake a pole at, plus all the regulars. There seriously wasn't an empty table all night. How did things go with the whole Max thing?"
He ran a hand over his face and shook his head as he pulled away from the curb. "I don't know yet. Apparently the man had some pretty strong opinions and wasn't afraid to voice them. I already have three people to talk to tomorrow, and I have no doubt that those guys will point their fingers on down the line."
I reached over and squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry you've had such a crap day. I called in a pizza for us. I figured we could eat at my place, and there's kinda something we need to talk about. Shelby's home, and Rae's coming over."
He raised an eyebrow and searched my face. "Those are words that nobody ever wants to hear. They're usually followed by it's not you, it's me, or I'm sorry, but somebody burned your house down while you were gone. Nobody ever says that when you've won the lottery or world-peace has been achieved."
"It's nothing bad. Just ... more," I said, trying to put a positive spin on the fact that he was about to find out my dead aunt was only dead in body, and that those cold feelings he kept getting when he said something less-than-intelligent were her whacking him in the back of the head.
Really, it should make him feel better to know that he wasn't imagining the movements he kept catching in his peripheral vision. I worried my lip because sometimes there was a huge gap between what should be and what is. I supposed I was abou
t to find out.
I'd just started counting my money when goosebumps raced up my left arm and Max materialized between us. Hunter startled and jerked the wheel to the left. To his credit, he corrected before he even crossed the centerline. "Jeez, man. You're dead, but we're not. A little notice, please?"
Max snorted. "Sorry I didn't phone ahead, Numbnuts. Were you just complaining about your day? I'll trade ya, how about that? Speakin’ of, did you solve my murder yet?"
Hunter scowled, but let the new nickname slide. "We just found you today and you may not have realized, but apparently you weren't the most popular guy in town."
"Hmph. I had better things to do than mollycoddle folks. I got along right as rain with those that wanted to get along with me."
Hunter glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and sighed. "Yeah, I heard that, too. For the most part. What was your problem with Joe Sneed?"
"Joe Sneed?" His eyebrows shot up. "He sold me a fishin' boat that leaked like a sieve, that's what."
"Somebody told me it turned into a shouting match at the hardware store the other day."
Max dipped his head. "Course it did. He took exception to the fact that I pulled it outta the lake then parked it in his garage, dead fish and all, while he was gone for a couple days." He grinned, likely imaging what poor Joe came home to.
"But Joe didn't kill me if that's what's goin’ through that peanut brain of yours. We go way back. If anybody was gonna do any killing in that situation, he'd be the one sittin’ here right now; I lost my best pole when a largemouth hit my line while I was bailing water. I'm tellin' you though, leave Joe out of it. It wasn't him. Who else ya got?"
"We have a couple of people," Hunter hedged.
"Who? C'mon, boy."
I looked over at the ghost and I swear his silvery caterpillar eyebrows actually waved at me as he shook his head. He did the get on with it finger roll, shoving his icy elbow through my boob as he did. I shivered and moved closer to the door. You'd think riding three in the cab would be less crowded when one of you was incorporeal, but it was more like how it was when one of you had BO and the other two were hugging the doors praying for the end of the ride.
