Delicious and Suspicious

by Riley Adams

  Many a hapless person had been lulled into thinking Lulu was a sweet little old lady. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nice, yes. Sweet, no. And the “little” part had only happened in the last ten years when she shrank down from her substantial height like the melting witch in The Wizard of Oz.

  Unfortunately for her, Rebecca Adrian was one of those less-perceptive types who would make the fatal mistake of underestimating Lulu.

  Rebecca’s gaze swept quickly across the restaurant, taking in the large booths topped with red and white checkered tablecloths. The restaurant must be ancient, she thought. She squinted at the old brick walls—what she could see of them, anyway. They were jam-packed with photographs of smiling faces, school pennants, and what appeared to be autographed menus.

  “Mind if we join you for lunch today?” Lulu asked her regular customer, Susan Meredith.

  “Oh Lord, please take a seat,” said Susan, scooting over. “I felt bad about hogging the whole booth for myself. There weren’t this many people when I came in.” A wry look spread across her pretty face. “If only I could funnel this many folks into the gallery.”

  Lulu looked startled. “Now, I thought you were having some luck with business lately, honey. You said they were beating a path to your door.”

  “I wish they were beating a path to the cash register, though. They might be coming in, but they’re not spending enough time in there to do any buying.”

  Lulu gave Susan’s offhand remark the same grave consideration she gave to most things. “Maybe you should have an open house night. Not like a regular show. I could cater it for you . . . barbeque, slaw, and beans?”

  “Don’t forget the sweet tea.”

  “Oh, we do have some great tea. Have to, since the corn bread muffins are so spicy.”

  “But delicious.”

  “Are you absorbing this great propaganda?” Lulu elbowed Rebecca Adrian, who looked startled. Since the conversation had had nothing to do with her, she’d tuned it out. In fact, she was secretly annoyed. Usually she was treated more as a visiting rock star and flattered and spoiled by owners. And here was Lulu Taylor doing a marketing analysis for this tunic-wearing, hippie customer.

  Lulu’s attention swung back to Rebecca. Lulu spoke, widening her clear, gray blue eyes. “You must know so many people. Right? In the industry, I mean.”

  Rebecca smirked. This was more like her usual experience. “Sure. I’m out a lot. I run into the same people all the time.”

  “Not just food people? Oh, it’s hard to find the right words sometimes.” Lulu paused as if collecting thoughts that were flying off like bits of dandelion. “Not just restaurant owners and chefs?”

  Rebecca was losing patience. “No. I have tons of contacts in New York.” Rebecca dropped names of all the different people she knew in New York. She wasn’t even dropping them—more like smacking her audience upside the head with them. Lulu, thought Susan, actually seemed to be attentively listening to her drivel.

  Rebecca blathered on, “You see, I never know where the next story will come from. So I know traders, socialites, magazine editors, gallery owners . . .” She stopped at Lulu’s frantically wagging finger.

  “Perfect. Just perfect,” said Lulu, pushing up from the booth and rushing away.

  Demented, thought Rebecca.

  Lulu grabbed Sara’s arm, pulling her toward the booth. She took Sara’s pad and pencil from her and motioned for her to sit down. “This is your next big story.” Rebecca blinked at her. “Sara is,” said Lulu impatiently, “my daughter-in-law.”

  “She sets the waitressing world on fire?” asked Rebecca in a dry voice.

  “Because,” said Lulu, narrowing her eyes at Rebecca, “she’s the best artist you’ve ever seen. And she needs some contacts in the art world. I’m sure you won’t mind helping her out, seeing as how you have so many New York contacts.” Lulu swept off regally, taking orders at the next table.

  Sara’s broad face flushed at the unexpected interview, but nobody could blame her for being slow on the uptake. She slid into the booth across from Rebecca.

  Rebecca summed her up with a glance and found Sara completely lacking in star quality. It was true that Sara wasn’t exactly model thin, although her weight looked good on her bigger frame. Like her friend Susan, Sara had cultivated an offbeat look, with curly, strawberry-blond hair that swung below her shoulders.

  Sitting with friends had its advantages. It was a good thing because Sara wasn’t sure exactly what to say after Lulu’s pronouncement. Susan Meredith jumped in. “I could display some of your things in Southern Accents tomorrow for Miss Adrian to see. I’ve been trying,” she said pointedly, “to get her to do a show for ages.”

  A bored expression wafted over Rebecca Adrian’s face. She opened her mouth to issue a cutting evasion when a croaky, deep voice from behind her chimed in. The voice was so resonant, she jumped and clamped her mouth shut again.

  “Who is that little woman?” The voice belonged to Big Ben, an Aunt Pat’s regular, who was deaf as a post. “What’s going on?”

  Another loud, old voice said, “She’s that food scout from the TV network. Sara wants the woman to get her contacts for her art.”

  “A food scout? You tellin’ me that tee-tiny thing eats?” His choking guffaw hinted at a dire need for CPR. “Well, she’s a fool if she doesn’t help out,” Big Ben barked. “The woman would be lucky to discover Sara.” Big Ben had an unfortunate habit of bellowing out private observations. He was usually hushed quickly. No one moved to hush him this time.

  Rebecca Adrian’s face took on a petulant look. “All right,” she said grudgingly, “I’ll drop by your gallery tomorrow.”

  “It’s right down the street on Second,” said Susan, sliding out of the booth. “I’d better run, then. It takes a lot to set up a show in a day.”

  Lulu tapped Sara on the shoulder. “We’ve got you covered with waitressing. Dina came in because she saw the Cooking Channel’s Foodmobile truck at a parking meter, and now we’ve got her working. Don’t you think you’d better run help Susan?”

  Sara gave Lulu a hug and ran to the office to get her keys. “Well, now that that’s all settled,” drawled Lulu, “you can start asking me a little bit about Aunt Pat’s. For your story.”

  Rebecca leaned over and fished in her designer handbag for a pad and pencil. “So,” she said, flicking her blond hair back over her shoulders, “this is a family-run operation, right? It’s you, your son Ben, and your daughter-in-law?”

  “Mercy, there’s more of us than that!” Lulu twinkled winningly at Rebecca. “There’s Sara’s nephew, Derrick. He’s the one that’s lurking by the door who can’t take his eyes off of you.”

  Rebecca swiftly glanced over. She flicked her hair again.

  “Then there are the twins, Ella Beth and Coco. Or Cordelia, as she wants to be known, since she’s such a grown-up nine now.”

  “They’re your . . . ?”

  “Granddaughters. They work here every day after school, sweeping, wiping tables, and setting out silverware.”

  “The silverware,” said Rebecca. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever gone to a barbeque restaurant that sets the table. Usually you use plastic forks.”

  Lulu looked faintly shocked. “No, we couldn’t allow that to happen. Aunt Pat wouldn’t want her guests to eat with plastic cutlery. It wouldn’t be seemly.”

  “Certainly would save a lot of washing up,” muttered Rebecca. And why the hell did they use paper towel rolls on the tables instead of cloth napkins if the sainted Aunt Pat was so particular?

  Rebecca made some notes.

  “So we’ve got your son Ben, grandchildren, and in-laws here. Oh, and the dogs I saw on the porch on the way in. Anybody else?”

  Lulu would give Rebecca the benefit of the doubt—maybe sounding like a snippy little name-dropping snob was only because she was shy. Or something. “Actually, yes, Miss Adrian, there is one more—my other son, Seb. He’s recently come here from
New York to help us out.”

  Rebecca stopped writing and temporarily looked confused. “Seb?”

  “Sebastian. But we all call him Seb.”

  “Big guy? Dark, curly hair?” asked Rebecca.

  “Oh, you saw him when you were coming in? Yes, that’s him. He’s handling all our accounting right now. New York kind of burned him out, I think. Besides, so many people were getting laid off in his company that he was sure he’d be on the chopping block next. So of course we took him in. ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in’ and all that.”

  Rebecca looked over sharply at Lulu. Was she aware she was quoting Frost? Was she a lot sharper than Rebecca thought?

  Lulu smiled benignly.

  “Tell me a little about Aunt Pat,” said Rebecca. “I’m assuming there was at some point an Aunt Pat?” asked Rebecca, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand.

  Lulu’s eyes grew reminiscent as she looked into the past. “Aunt Pat was the dear woman who raised me. You see, I grew up at this restaurant,” she said, smoothing a hand across the checkered tablecloth. “I’d sit on a tall stool in the kitchen and tell her about my school day as she mixed together the dry rub or made the corn muffins. Later on, she let me help her in the kitchen and taught me about food and flavor. Her love for food was there in every succulent bite of barbeque. Aunt Pat’s was always full of heavenly smells and conversation. She gave me a love for cooking and a love for this restaurant. And later on, when she passed away, she willed it to me.”

  Rebecca, who rarely listened enough for follow-up questions, was already moving on. But Lulu had a point to make.

  “You see,” said Lulu. “the entire restaurant is one big family.”

  Well, zip-a-dee-doo-dah, thought Rebecca Adrian. Exactly the kind of sap she avoided. She wanted a little dirt, a little conflict. Some vivid local color.

  A torrent of local color abruptly slid into the booth next to Rebecca and Lulu. “Look no farther, Miss Lulu, it’s the hallelujah chorus come to sing the praises of Aunt Pat’s. Amen!”

  Now this was more like it, thought Rebecca. Five oddball Southerners to liven up the story and coo on cue over the barbeque. Perfect. She smiled at them and held up her pad. “Could you give me your names? For the story.”

  Lulu broke in. “We call them the Graces, because they’re docents at Graceland. They’re the finest group of regulars anywhere in the world,” she added warmly.

  “Because you’ve got the finest ribs in the world!” said one of the Graces stoutly. She beamed at Rebecca Adrian. “I’m Flo.”

  “Cherry.”

  “Peggy Sue.”

  “Jeanne.”

  “Evelyn.”

  They sounded like Mouseketeers, thought Rebecca. And the one named Cherry wore a motorcycle helmet with a picture of Elvis on it. No one seemed to find that fact at all odd, or suggested that she remove it. Lulu, now overly sensitive to any slights from Rebecca (either real or perceived) registered her puzzled stare. “Isn’t that a fine-looking helmet, Miss Adrian?”

  There was a warning tone in Lulu’s voice, so Rebecca nodded slowly in agreement. Cherry beamed. “Thanks. It makes me feel like Elvis is my guardian angel keeping me out of trouble.”

  “Out of trouble?” hooted Evelyn. “I’d like to see that. Maybe he’s keeping you safe. You couldn’t stay out of trouble if your very life depended on it.”

  Cherry leaned forward over the table and talked as though Rebecca eagerly hung on her every word. “At first I only wore it when I rode my motorcycle. Then, after my riding mower bucked me off that time, I put it on to cut the grass. Then I got to thinking how many people get hurt in car crashes, so I thought maybe wearing it in the car would be a good idea.”

  “And,” said Rebecca with a tight smile, “in the barbeque restaurant?”

  “There’s a threat of tornadoes!” said Cherry triumphantly. “A helmet is perfect to prevent head injuries during tornadoes.”

  Cherry provided far more local color than Rebecca had counted on.

  “Pooh,” snorted Lulu. “I don’t believe a word. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”

  “Just the same,” said Cherry, “there’s a threat.” She patted her Elvis helmet, complacent in the knowledge that she was well prepared for any exigency.

  Rebecca tried to find her way back to her story. “So you come here . . . how frequently?”

  “Once a week,” said Evelyn. And she was, thought Rebecca, possibly the only one with any fashion sense. She looked at Evelyn’s Hermes scarf with approval. “On Thursdays, we always come here for ribs after we give tours at Graceland.”

  “But today is Monday.”

  “Today,” said Peggy Sue, “is an exception to the rule.”

  Rebecca frowned. “I went to Graceland six or seven years ago, and I don’t remember any docents there at all. I remember a sling-around-your-neck audio tour guide and some staff who kind of kept an eye on everything.”

  Cherry beamed. “That’s just it! They didn’t have anybody there at all who was a docent. That’s why the Graces are so incredible. We made Graceland history.”

  Rebecca attempted a look of interest, which fell completely short into the boundaries of bored disbelief.

  “You see,” said Evelyn briskly, “we were all huge Elvis fans. Huge. So we were, separately, mind you, going each and every day to Graceland.”

  Rebecca looked a little queasy. “To Graceland. Every day. I guess the lines must not have been as bad as when I went.”

  Cherry shook her head. “No, that just shows how devoted we were! We waited every day in the line for a ticket, and then waited forty-five minutes for the shuttle to take us for the tour.”

  “After months of doing this, we still felt like we belonged there. It was home to us. We started making friends with each other and coming here for a bite to eat of ‘the best barbeque in town,’” Cherry said animatedly, with full-on air quotes. She continued on in the same breath, “Even though Aunt Pat’s isn’t even close to Graceland.”

  “And the Graceland people were making friends with us, too,” added Jeanne. “They’d cut up with us and laugh. But we were always serious and respectful at Graceland. It’s really a quiet place, you know. It’s one of the most peaceful places I know.”

  “So then the staff asked us if we’d like to be official docents. We don’t get paid and we don’t give tours, but we direct people in the right direction and make sure they don’t touch Elvis’s things or try to walk into the rooms under the ropes or anything like that. So we’re the first official docents for Graceland.” Cherry beamed.

  “And very decent docents,” said plump Peggy Sue, smugly. “I was so happy today to be in the pool room. You know, I think that’s my very favorite place to go. I feel like I’m enveloped in this big Elvis tent. It’s divine.”

  “That’s the room that’s covered with folds of fabric?” asked Rebecca.

  “The very same one! And it’s so much calmer than the TV room—too much yellow in there.” Peggy Sue immediately looked regretful at her revelation as though Rebecca might end up sharing her opinion on the Cooking Channel.

  Rebecca was bored again. She was now more interested in finding out how she might get the conversation back over to barbeque and remind her cameraman that he was supposed to be working, not scarfing down barbeque.

  “You’re going to take her back in the kitchen, aren’t you?” asked Evelyn. She turned to Rebecca. “You’ll feel right at home in the Aunt Pat’s kitchen. There’s not any kind of an industrial feel to it at all.”

  “It looks,” interrupted Cherry eagerly, “like you’re at your grandma’s kitchen and watching her cook something up just for you.”

  Flo nodded. “Every pot and pan has some family history backing it up.”

  Lulu looked pleased. “Y’all are so sweet to say that! That’s exactly the way I want the kitchen to feel. Because if that’s the feeling in the kitchen, the food coming out of it is going to
be just as comforting and loving. It’s the heart of the restaurant. And there’s a little bit of my heart there, too. I swear I feel closer to Aunt Pat in that room than anywhere else. Maybe she’s our guardian angel here at the restaurant.”

  Rebecca craned her neck to locate Tony.

  Cherry wasn’t ready for Rebecca to go yet. Not until she’d impressed some more important Aunt Pat’s information on her. She tapped her on the arm to get her attention. “See over there? No, there. That picture? That’s a picture of the Graces from five years ago. And that picture?” She gestured to another spot on the crowded wall. The old brick was barely visible underneath a massive collection of color and black-and-white photos and memorabilia from years back. “That’s us nine or ten months later. That’s another way this restaurant is like my meemaw’s house. Walls that are jam-packed with pictures. It gives you a sense of history, like you’re connecting to a real family.”

  “You are connecting to a family,” said Lulu warmly. “You’re right up there with baby pictures of my granddaughters, toddler pictures of Ben and Seb, and even pictures of me when I was little.”

  And apparently, thought Rebecca, when you go up on the wall, you never come down. The wall was full of pictures, and she couldn’t see an empty spot anywhere. Very busy looking, thought Rebecca, whose tastes ran to the Spartan look.

  “You forgot to tell the best part,” Flo said reproachfully to Cherry. “Remember?”

  Cherry slapped a manicured hand on the table. “I am losing it.” She pointed to the very center of the wall. “One of the King’s guitars. Signed.”

  Rebecca was impressed, despite herself. “You’re smart to put it in a case. It must be valuable.”

  “Lulu and Aunt Pat knew Elvis,” said Jeanne in an awe-struck voice. The ladies looked at Lulu wonderingly.

  “Well, not to hang out with. But if he was in Memphis, he was at Aunt Pat’s.”

  Ben strode out of the kitchen and saw Seb sitting in the office. “Why’re you hiding out in the office, Seb? I thought you were a middle-of-the-action kind of guy. It’s not every day we have Cooking Channel camped out at the restaurant.”