Rubbed Out (A Memphis BBQ Mystery) Read online

  Praise for the

  Memphis BBQ Mysteries

  “Don’t let that folksy facade fool you. Lulu Taylor is one intrepid amateur sleuth.”

  —Laura Childs, New York Times bestselling author of Sweet Tea Revenge

  “Lulu Taylor serves up the best barbeque in Memphis. Never been to her restaurant, Aunt Pat’s? Well then, pick up a copy of Riley Adams’s enjoyable Delicious and Suspicious, slide into a booth, and follow Lulu as she tracks down a killer with the help of her wacky friends and family. You’ll feel transported to Beale Street. Oh, and did I mention the mouthwatering recipes at the end?”

  —Julie Hyzy, New York Times bestselling author of Fonduing Fathers

  “A saucy Southern mystery!”

  —Krista Davis, national bestselling author of The Diva Frosts a Cupcake

  “Riley Adams’s first book, Delicious and Suspicious, adds a dash of Southern humor to a sauté of murder and mayhem that is as good as cold banana pudding on a hot summer day. Lulu Taylor is a hoot! I look forward to reading the next book in the Memphis BBQ series!”

  —Joyce Lavene, coauthor of A Haunting Dream

  “Sassy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An entertaining read . . . Just like the pork barbeque and spicy corn muffins that fill the bellies of the fictitious patrons of Aunt Pat’s, the Southern flavor is what makes this novel unique. The characters live and breathe on the page, not as stereotypes of Southerners but as colorful personalities that complement the Memphis setting.”

  —Romance Novel News

  “Entertaining…Readers will find themselves immersed in the Memphis barbeque scene.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Riley Adams

  DELICIOUS AND SUSPICIOUS

  FINGER LICKIN’ DEAD

  HICKORY SMOKED HOMICIDE

  RUBBED OUT

  RUBBED

  OUT

  Riley Adams

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  RUBBED OUT

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-62444-9

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / July 2013

  Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  To my family

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to everyone who helped me research and write this book. Thanks especially to Neil Gallagher, pit master from the Too Sauced to Pork championship BBQ team, for giving me the lowdown on the workings of Memphis festivals. To my agent, Ellen Pepus, and editor, Adrienne Avila, for their invaluable support and help with the novel. Thanks to my family for their encouragement, love, and patience.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Recipes

  “Lulu, I just want to string this guy up.”

  Lulu’s friend Cherry was polishing off a barbeque plate and waving her fork around in the air to punctuate her tirade. They were sitting in great wooden rocking chairs on the front porch of Lulu’s barbeque restaurant, Aunt Pat’s, for what should have been a very relaxing lunch. But Cherry was wound up tighter than a top. Her plastic fuchsia and lime green bangles jangled on her wrist as she waved her arm around.

  “And that’s because you don’t like the way this Reuben looks?” asked Lulu with a frown. “That doesn’t really sound like you, Cherry.”

  “It’s not just that. Well, I don’t like his sneering grins, but that’s not the only problem. It’s his attitude. He acts like he’s God’s gift to barbeque. He’s completely convinced that he’s got this barbeque competition in the bag. That rascal struts around like he’s this amazing cook and tells us we don’t know what we’re doing. Makes me so mad, I could spit. He rubs everyone the wrong way.”

  “Sounds like a real winner,” said Lulu with a sigh.

  Cherry said dejectedly, “Maybe he will be a winner. That’s another big problem. He’s a good cook, I hear. But he’s so unbearable that I don’t see how anybody could stomach the food and listen to his mouth at the same time. He’s so ultracompetitive. The other folks that I know who entered the Rock and Ribs barbeque competition want to have fun, hang out with friends, and pig out on some great food. Winning a prize is really the last thing on their minds. This fella is all about the winning.”

  “Is the rest of his team just as bad, or are at least a few of the people in his booth okay?” asked Lulu, rocking gently as she listened.

  Cherry licked a little onion ring off her fingers and said, “He’s got a couple of teammates, but it looks to me like he does most of the work himself. And a lot of the bossing around himself. There’s a man named Brody and his wife, Sharon. They seem irritated most of the time, but then they’re hanging out with Reuben all day, so that could be why.”

  “Completely understandable,” said Lulu.

  “There were a couple of others who made up the rest of the team at first, but Reuben was so impossible that they haven’t been back. It doesn’t really matter, though, since we’re all Patio Porkers and aren’t in the major competition. You only need a few people for the Patio Porkers since we’re only cooking spare ribs and competing against other small booths.”

  “What a mess,” said Lulu, shaking her head. “But I’m surprised to hear that you’re letting him get to you. You’re a fine cook and I’m sure the booth is as cute as it can be. Can you try to ignore him?”

  “No. ’Cause he won’t leave us alone,” said Cher
ry grouchily. “If he’d just stay in his booth and stop popping over to ours, then we’d be fine and dandy. Every time he comes in our tent, he’s criticizing something about the way we set up the grill or our decorations or whatever.”

  Lulu said, “Isn’t that what they call trash-talking? I bet he’s trying to get a rise out of you to keep you from focusing. He probably thinks that gives him an edge.”

  “I absolutely do not know. He’s baiting me all the time, Lulu.”

  “Maybe he has a crush on you,” said Lulu, hiding a smile.

  Cherry rolled her eyes in a way that would have been the envy of any teen girl. “I doubt it. But whatever it is, it’s driving me nuts. That’s why I ran over here—I needed to escape before I did something I might’ve regretted.”

  Cherry attacked her onion rings with enthusiasm. “I need some grease,” she said, dipping a ring into the large puddle of ketchup on her plate. “Not that your onion rings are too greasy, Lulu. Actually, they’re perfect. But you know what I mean. Grease is my coping mechanism when I get stressed out.”

  Lulu laughed. “Not that you ever get really stressed out. But I’m like you—food helps me deal with stress.” Lulu looked ruefully down at her plump figure.

  Although Lulu could tell that Cherry was stressed today, you couldn’t really tell from her appearance. As usual, she wore cheerful neon-colored clothes that clashed with her henna-colored hair and large, jangling bracelets, and had her Elvis motorcycle helmet close beside her. Cherry claimed that life was too dangerous to face without a helmet.

  Lulu, with her white hair demurely tucked into a bun and customary floral print dress, felt positively faded next to her.

  “I do too get stressed out. At least once a week I endure stress during my docent gig at Graceland.”

  “Is it because of that little woman who keeps coming on the tours and messing with you?” asked Lulu.

  Cherry gulped down a large forkful of onion rings and chased it down with some ice-cold sweet tea. “That’s the one. I swear I don’t know what that old lady’s problem is. If she thinks I don’t know anything about Elvis, then why does she purposefully get in my group for Graceland tours?”

  “And why,” wondered Lulu, “does she go to Graceland every single day?”

  Cherry blinked at Lulu. “That’s not the surprising part, Lulu. She’s paying homage to the King, that’s all.”

  Naturally, Cherry wouldn’t find anything odd about a daily trip to Elvis’s home.

  “I only wish that she’d stop interrupting me every single time I open my mouth. And I wish she’d stop chucking out obscure factoids about Elvis’s life. Everybody in my tour group starts listening to her instead of me. It burns me up.”

  It sounded like the little woman was angling for a spot as a Graceland docent. Wasn’t that almost exactly how Cherry ended up with her volunteer role there? And the rest of Cherry’s Elvis-obsessed friends, known as the Graces?

  “This morning, though, it was totally Rock and Ribs stress. At first I signed up for the barbeque competition because I thought it would be a lot of fun. I dragged Flo and Evelyn into it and we’ve been planning the booth for months. But now with this Reuben making catty comments about our team, he’s making me feel all serious and competitive—which wasn’t why I signed up.” Cherry’s face was almost comically dejected.

  “Evelyn? Evelyn’s not cooking, is she?” Lulu couldn’t keep the concern from her voice. Flo and Evelyn were two of the other Graces. The Graces were her very best friends and regulars at Lulu’s restaurant. They were the King’s biggest fans and Graceland’s very first docents—which had earned them their nickname.

  “Hush your mouth!” said Cherry, with a panicked expression. “Absolutely not, no ma’am, she certainly isn’t. She’s our sponsor, since she’s Miss Moneybags, you know. She insisted on putting up almost all of the money for the decorations, entry fee, tee shirts, food, everything. But Evelyn wouldn’t want to cook and we wouldn’t let her, either. She’s enjoying herself by hanging out at the booth, drinking, and being decorative. I’m the one who’ll mostly be cooking, but Flo will help me out, too. And I thought you could help me, Lulu, which is why I’m here.”

  “But folks who are affiliated with restaurants can’t participate,” said Lulu.

  “I don’t need you to cook. I need you to show off,” said Cherry. “Tonight is Friends and Family Night at the festival. Since this Reuben is so high and mighty, I thought I’d introduce him to my best friend, Lulu Taylor—proprietress of the legendary Aunt Pat’s Barbeque restaurant. That ought to take him down a peg or two.” Cherry gave a malevolent grin at the thought.

  Lulu squinted doubtfully at her friend. “He’s more likely to take it that you’re cheating or something—that I’m helping you out with your recipe.”

  “Who cares?” scoffed Cherry. “At this point, I want to show him somebody who really knows how to cook barbeque. Take some air out of his sails.”

  “Of course I’ll be there for you, Cherry. Besides, I can’t wait to see your booth all decorated for the festival. Are y’all entered in the best booth contest?”

  “We are. Of course, a lot of the booths are super elaborate. But I sort of like ours, just the same,” said Cherry. “Especially since it’s covered with Elvis stuff.”

  “Covered with Elvis stuff? Wasn’t the theme this year Siberia or something? How could you get away with doing Elvis?”

  “No, it wasn’t Siberia. It was…well, hold on, I forgot.” Cherry tilted her bright red head to the side as if the bit of information she was looking for in there might fall out the side. “Oh, I know! Slovakia. That’s it. So we’re supposed to celebrate Slovakia for the Rock and Ribs festival, but all that means is that we represent the honored country by decorating our booths with that theme.”

  Considering the Graces’ love for all things Elvis, Lulu had to wonder how they’d managed to pull in the Slovakia theme at all.

  Cherry quickly enlightened her. “So we put an Elvis dummy in an apron with the Slovak flag on it, put a map of Slovakia on the walls of the booth with the town names renamed stuff from Elvis songs…stuff like that. You’ll love it.”

  “I knew the Graces would find a way to incorporate Elvis into their booth design,” said Lulu, beaming.

  “We had to use Elvis. Otherwise, the Graces’ booth wouldn’t make sense. Our team is called Don’t Be Gruel. We had a regular party last night while we set up. Evelyn brought some really expensive liquor, Flo brought beer, and we were laughing so hard we almost threw up. Think you can make it over tonight?”

  “I’ll pop out of Aunt Pat’s by five. You know usually this is such a busy time for us—Rock and Ribs brings gobs of visitors to town. They’re enjoying spring—seeing all the flowering dogwoods and the azaleas blooming. And, of course, they all want to visit Beale Street,” said Lulu.

  “And eat the best barbeque in Memphis!” said Cherry with an expansive gesture to the Aunt Pat’s dining room.

  Lulu laughed. “I couldn’t ask for better PR. I should be paying you. Anyway, I never usually even make it over to Rock and Ribs because the restaurant always needs extra hands. But this time we were proactive and hired extra waitresses and busboys as temporary help to get us through.”

  “Maybe we can really spend some time hanging out together at the festival, then,” said Cherry, sounding excited.

  “Sure thing! Besides, Ella Beth and Coco are dying to go to the festival this year. Usually, they can’t really make it over, either, since all the adults are working. So I’ll take a break from the restaurant and support y’all’s booth and take my grands around and keep an eye on Derrick, since he’s wanting to go to the festival with his girlfriend this year,” said Lulu. Derrick Knight was the teenage nephew of her daughter-in-law, Sara. And Sara and Ben had recently been appointed Derrick’s guardians. Cherry snapped her fingers. “Glad you mentioned Derrick. I need to ask him a question real quick. Is he home from the high school yet?”

  “Sho
uld be here any minute. But you’ll have to catch him before he takes off again. I swear that boy is tough to grab ahold of these days—always running off to do something. You wait here on the porch and I’ll grab the cookies from the kitchen—they should be cooled off by now. You know I always have an after-school snack for the kids,” said Lulu. “And food should keep him around for a while.”

  Cherry yawned. “That’s fine. You go find the cookies and I’ll close my eyes for a second and join the Labs for a nap.” The restaurant’s two Labradors, B. B. and Elvis, were sound asleep, curled up with each other on the floor. “I guess we must have partied a lot harder last night than I thought. Plus, the sound of the ceiling fans is enough to make me drowsy.” She was leaning back in one of the high-backed rocking chairs and shutting her eyes when Lulu left the porch for the restaurant’s dining room.

  When Lulu bustled back with a plate full of still-warm cookies, Derrick was thumping up the steps onto the porch with his big school backpack. Amazingly, Cherry slept right through the ruckus. Derrick started tiptoeing, and he and Lulu were quietly moving off the porch to the restaurant’s dining room when Cherry’s phone rang.

  That was apparently the one sound that was guaranteed to wake her up. She jerked in the rocking chair, arms and legs flailing as she tried to get oriented and scrambled for her pocketbook. All her commotion woke up the sleeping Labrador retrievers on the porch. “Where are y’all sneaking off to?” she asked them with a mock glare. “I wanted to talk to Derrick. Hold on, let me grab this call.”

  Cherry hit a button on her phone. “Yep. What’s that? I’m on it. No worries. Bye.”

  Somehow Lulu’s phone conversations never seemed to be that short.

  Cherry threw her phone back into her small straw purse and clapped her hands. “Okay! That was team member Evelyn making sure I had the team tee shirts under control. And of course I lied and said yes.” She gave a hoarse laugh and looked intently at Derrick. “Derrick, I need your help.”