Finger Lickin' Dead Read online

  All the ladies’ faces immediately registered an appropriate level of sympathy and concern. Adam’s brows raised curiously as a brightly dressed, well-preserved middle-aged woman with lots of large pieces of jewelry approached.

  “Come sit with us, Tudy,” urged Evelyn. “How are things going for you?”

  “Awful!” said Tudy, although she still had a broad grin on her face. “Hi, girls!” she said brightly and hugged as many of the Graces as she could reach. “Could I get a barbeque plate with cornbread?” she asked the hovering waitress.

  Lulu said, “Tudy, Ben fried up some okra today, too, in case you want any of that.”

  Tudy said, “You bet I want some fried okra!” The waitress added it to the order and hurried away. “I don’t know what Ben puts in that breading, but that okra is the best I’ve ever put in my mouth. I wish he’d add it to the main menu instead of just having it as a special sometimes.”

  Tudy pulled up a chair to the end of the booth. “Where was I?” she asked. “Oh, I remember. Awful! It’s been terrible, ladies . . . and gentleman,” she said, with a nod at Adam. “You know that restaurant was my life for so many years. And Oliver’s, too. I’ve been at Aunt Pat’s every day this week because I’ve got to be in somebody’s restaurant. Besides, this place has been part of my life for so long that it feels like home to me. My mama used to come here,” Tudy said to Adam. “And you look around and you feel like you’re a special guest . . . all the pictures and college pennants and baseballs and memorabilia on the wall where you can hardly even see the bricks!”

  Evelyn explained to Adam. “Tudy’s husband owned a restaurant for years.”

  “A wonderful restaurant. And it always did really well,” said Lulu stoutly. “We’d eat there anytime we weren’t over at Aunt Pat’s. Good food that stuck to your ribs.”

  “Rib-stickiness being a good trait for a meal,” murmured Adam in a voice that could be translated as sarcasm.

  Tudy beamed at Lulu. “Aren’t you the sweetest!” Then she said to Adam, “Then Oliver had this nasty review in the paper. That restaurant reviewer who has the following like a rock star? Eppie Currian. She’s on the Twitter. She’s on the Facebook. She’s everywhere! And people take her advice like it’s gospel. They’re just that taken in by her.”

  Adam leaned a little closer to Tudy. “So what happened after that review?”

  “You wouldn’t think that one bad review would close down a restaurant. That’s crazy, right? After you’ve got a group of regulars built up and a nice reputation and been around for years and years? But that’s just how devout those followers of this Eppie Currian woman are. They’re gaga over her.” Tudy looked bemused.

  “Who is she again?” asked Adam.

  The whole table frowned at him like they thought he was soft in the head. “He doesn’t subscribe to the newspaper. He’s just too busy to sit down for long enough to read it. Isn’t that right, Adam?” said Evelyn protectively.

  “Her name is Eppie Currian. Isn’t that just the most revolting name? The paper was making a cutesy thing out of ‘epicurean’ for her pen name. She’s incognito so she can visit the restaurants and be anonymous and then print hateful things. Anyway, it doesn’t matter who she is. What matters is that she ruined us. And if it happened to us, it could happen to anybody.” She gave Lulu a tired look.

  “What’s Oliver doing now?” asked Jeanne in a quiet voice.

  “Driving me half out of my skull with annoyance is what Oliver’s doing,” said Tudy with a snort. “He’s messing up my daily routine big-time. This morning? I came downstairs at my normal getting-up time and Oliver was on my laptop. Mine! And I always check my e-mails the very first thing in the morning because the girls like to e-mail me late at night after I’ve turned in.” Tudy and Oliver had grown daughters who lived somewhere along the East Coast, as far as Lulu could remember.

  Cherry winced. “That’s hard. I like to check my e-mails first thing, too.”

  “And then? He finally hands me the laptop back. I get on it, and I do have a nice long e-mail from our older daughter, Janet. But do I get to read it? No. Because Oliver has picked up the morning newspaper and starts reading the stories to me. Reading them to me! Directly from the paper as if I don’t know how to read for myself.” Her face flushed from just the thought of it.

  Lulu’s daughter in law, Sara, had joined the group and listened in for a few minutes. She made a face. “It sounds like he has Retired Husband Syndrome,” said Sara.

  “Get out!” said Cherry. “There’s no such thing.”

  “No, there is! And RHS has become a problem for millions of women worldwide,” said Sara, bobbing her red head emphatically. “There was this article I read about it. Here these women are. . . . They’ve been queen of the castle for thirty or forty years. They’ve run their houses like generals—cleaning, cooking, running errands, making decisions. Then their husbands come home and they’re bored and they start meddling in the household affairs. Why not try this brand of peanut butter? Did their wives know that they could make their own cleaner instead of buying it? Although I don’t really see myself having that problem with Ben when he retires.”

  “You don’t?” said Lulu. “I’d think he’d be itching to do something to keep busy if he didn’t have the restaurant. He’s always got to be moving around, doing something.”

  “He’d be off in the woods all day . . . subduing nature,” said Sara. “I probably wouldn’t see hide nor hair of him.”

  Evelyn looked adoringly at Adam, who looked coolly back at her. “Adam is so outgoing that I wouldn’t see anything of him, either. He’d be dining out with friends or playing tennis or going to see a play or concert.”

  “I wish I could say the same about Oliver,” said Tudy in a sad voice. “He doesn’t golf, he doesn’t hunt. He doesn’t play bridge. He needs another job. Quick. Before he drives me crazy!”

  Peggy Sue said, “When my husband retired, it was the shortest retirement in the world—it ended up being for only five days. The next thing he knew, he had a job at the meat counter at the Piggly Wiggly.” She archly raised her eyebrows. “He criticized my dusting abilities. ‘Missed a spot!’ ”

  The Graces groaned and nodded.

  Lulu said, “Can’t Oliver find another restaurant job? Even if it’s not his restaurant, it’s still what he knows.”

  Tudy tapped her manicured nails on the table. “It’s not as easy as you’d think. College students are competing for those positions now. And he’s got his pride, too. He’s been running a restaurant for so long that he doesn’t want to do those little piddly jobs anymore. He needs to get rid of that pride, though—otherwise it’s going to be all he has left.”

  “You know,” said Lulu in a low voice, as if diners might hear her and run out the door, “we had one of those reviews in the morning paper today. From that Eppie Currian.”

  Chapter 2

  Tudy sat back in the booth in alarm. “A bad one?”

  “Awful.”

  “In that snarky, looking-down-her-nose tone?”

  “As snarky as you can imagine,” said Lulu.

  “So how,” asked Jeanne in a hushed voice, “is Ben doing? After reading that review and all? I know how proud Ben is of his cooking abilities and everybody knows he’s the finest barbeque cook in all of Memphis. That review was pretty rough. I wasn’t going to mention it, but since you brought it up . . .” The Graces all murmured a concerned echo.

  “I suppose he’s doing all right,” said Lulu with a sigh as she thought about her son. “He’s back there cooking, after all. Thank the Lord. It’s just not the same when Ben’s not wielding the spatula.”

  Sara said, “Ben was just devastated this morning when he read that review. I won’t be surprised if he ends up going home sick. He was that ill over it. He puts everything he has into his cooking and having somebody make fun of it was so hurtful to him. He’s in desperate need of a hunting or fishing trip. It makes him so mad when he’s put everything
he’s got into cooking and someone writes something so ugly about it.”

  “That reviewer is such a . . . such a smarty pants,” fumed Jeanne. Lulu was fairly certain that a more derogatory name had been on the tip of Jeanne’s tongue, but she was too much of a lady to use it. “What got me most of all is that she said Aunt Pat’s ‘wasn’t Memphis enough.’”

  Peggy Sue gasped. “But everybody knows this is the place in Memphis for barbeque ribs. Not Memphis enough? When the King himself came to this restaurant, played out on the porch, and left Aunt Pat a signed guitar? And the guitar is hanging right up on the wall over there? Is this food writer off her trolley?”

  Lulu beamed at Peggy Sue. “You’re sweet. But you know, it is her job. Whoever this Eppie Currian restaurant critic is.”

  “That’s very nice of you to say so, Lulu,” said Cherry, still fired up, “but the fact of the matter is that this person doesn’t have to be snide and unpleasant. If she didn’t like the food, she could just point out the problems in a professional way. Instead, she makes it personal and cutting.”

  “It wasn’t that bad of a review,” said Evelyn in a soothing voice.

  “It was pretty bad,” demurred Adam.

  Cherry shot him a flaming look. “I thought you were too busy to subscribe to the paper!”

  “He was reading my copy of the paper this morning, Cherry,” said Evelyn. “He came over for an early morning coffee.”

  “Right,” said Cherry through gritted teeth.

  “‘Aunt Pat’s needs to be skewered.’” Sara quoted from the review. “That was the headline for the write-up.”

  “Y’all have been around for generations, though,” said Tudy. “I just don’t see the review hurting you like it hurt us.”

  “But you’d been around for years yourself. It wasn’t like you were the new restaurant on the block or anything. Whether we like it or not, this girl has a lot of power and influence,” said Lulu with a sigh. “Although I still say that the reason the food is so good here and that people keep coming back for more is that Aunt Pat’s love of food is in every bite of her recipes.”

  “Makes me long for the days when Holden Parsons wrote up the reviews,” said Tudy with a sigh. “He didn’t sugarcoat his reviews, but he was fair. He could be tough on a place, but he wasn’t going to be snide. And restaurants didn’t end up closing their doors because of him.”

  “Where has Holden been lately? Usually he’s in here every week, stuffing himself with some ribs. But I haven’t seen him so far this week,” said Lulu.

  “This girl! Eppie. She happened to him. As soon as she sashayed into the paper, his rear was kicked out onto the street. There’s just no loyalty anymore, you know? He’s a good friend of ours, and Oliver and I just hated seeing what happened to him. He used to be a regular at the restaurant. And now I see him just wandering around, looking lost. Wearing his bow tie. So sad.”

  “If this Eppie is anonymous, how do you know she was sashaying anywhere?” asked Adam dryly.

  “Oh, believe me, honey, I know all about that kind of girl,” said Tudy, shaking her head. “I don’t have to see her to know everything about her. You can just tell it through the tone of what she’s writing. Sassy! Thinks she knows everything. Smarty pants!”

  “But food reporters are supposed to be anonymous,” said Adam, looking bored. “That way the restaurant they’re visiting won’t make them a super-delicious meal and give them the best service. Right? They’re supposed to get an accurate picture of what the restaurant is really like.”

  Lulu nodded. “That’s right. But this Eppie seems like she’s not all that concerned about the truth—she just wants to write funny copy. But Holden was sort of a well-known secret in the business. We weren’t supposed to know who he was, but we did. He treated everyone fairly. If Holden wasn’t happy about something, he also made sure to still say some good things about the restaurant, about the décor or something, even if the food was rotten.”

  Adam carefully put his plate aside, scooted off the booth, and stood up. Evelyn stood up, too, smoothing down her expensive slacks. “I’ll walk you to the door, sugar.”

  He did walk over to the door—but first he quickly walked up to the brick wall and compulsively straightened a picture of an Aunt Pat’s regular holding up a huge fish and beaming.

  “Now watch,” said Cherry. “He’s going to lean over, act sweet, then say something to her, and next thing you know, her hand is going to be dipping in her pocketbook and pulling out some twenties.”

  Flo squinted toward the door. Sure enough, Evelyn pressed some money real quick into Adam’s hand before he walked out the door. “Whatta man,” said Cherry in disgust.

  “Maybe he’s going to run some errands for her,” said Jeanne.

  “You are so good, Jeanne,” said Flo. “Always looking for somebody’s good side.”

  “Well you’re not going to find it with Adam,” said Cherry. “I think you could look for his good side with a microscope and not be able to find it.”

  “Not be able to find what?” asked Lulu’s son, Ben. He was finally taking a break from the kitchen. He pulled up a chair near the booth and sat down next to Sara with a relieved sigh. Standing up for hours on end used to be easier than it was now that he was in his late forties.

  “Evelyn’s new old beau,” said Sara.

  “That joker? I hope she gets rid of him soon. There’s something that’s not right about that guy. He had Big Jack cornered here a couple of days ago, and after he was done talking to him, Big Jack looked all pale and shaky.”

  “Big Jack? Big Jack Bratcher, the politician?” asked Flo. Ben nodded and Flo said, “Wonder what he told him to have him that shaken up? Every time I see Big Jack, he’s got a beer in one hand, a puffy red face, and is bellowing out a laugh about something. Maybe he had the flu or strep throat when you saw him that day.”

  “Maybe. But he sure looked the picture of health up until Adam started talking to him,” said Ben.

  He looked over at the group of men who’d just come in the door. Big Ben, Buddy, and Morty were retired blues musicians, now in their eighties, who called Aunt Pat’s their hangout. Sometimes they even played if there was a break in the band lineup in the evenings.

  “Hey there,” Ben called out to them.

  Buddy and Morty looked over, but Big Ben was deaf as a post. Morty tapped his arm and he greeted Ben.

  Buddy said, “Y’all sure looked awfully serious when we were walking in. Something going on?”

  Ben said, “No, we were just fussing. We’re not crazy about Evelyn’s boyfriend, that’s all.”

  “Know what I don’t like about him?” said Morty. “He doesn’t have a nickname. Nobody thinks highly enough of him to call him Bubba or Bud or Ace.”

  “Men who don’t have nicknames bother me, too,” said Ben, smoothing his mustache. “Maybe that’s part of it.”

  “He should be Gator or something,” bellowed Big Ben. “This Adam nonsense—he just wants everybody to take him seriously.”

  “And he’s too pretty,” said Lulu, squinting thoughtfully. “He needs a rugged scar or something. If you put a wig on him, he’d pass as a girl.”

  “I’ll give him a scar,” said Cherry darkly.

  “You are just dead set against the poor man,” said Peggy Sue. She laughed. “He could be building churches in Africa and you’d find a way to criticize him.”

  “If he were building churches in Africa, I’d be looking for some kind of flimflam. He’d have some kind of secret connection to the company providing the building materials or something. No, he’s just no good and that’s all there is. It makes me feel all sick to my stomach to see Evelyn making the same mistake again.”

  “You should do something about it,” said Tudy.

  “Rabble-rouser.” Ben grinned as he got up and headed back to the kitchen.

  “I just like to stir the pot,” said Tudy. “It entertains me and my life hasn’t been much fun lately.”

 
“I’m going to do it,” said Cherry. “I’m going to get some dirt on that Adam and show Evelyn what he’s really like. Before it’s too late and she marries him a second time. I’m just not going to be able to plaster a happy smile on my face for that wedding.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Flo. “Don’t look now, but Evelyn is in trouble again with Adam’s ex. I guess Evelyn wasn’t able to leave the building before Miss Thing came up to talk to her.”

  Naturally, thought Lulu, all the Graces turned and looked on cue. There was no such thing as “don’t look now” for them.

  Evelyn was, you could tell, trying to keep her patience. She really did behave like the lady she was, thought Lulu. But she was clearly biting her tongue.

  “What’s her name again?” asked Lulu. “Seems like every time she comes in here, she’s stirring up trouble.”

  “It’s Ginger,” said Flo. “She’s legally separated from Adam, but they’re still married. Once Evelyn came back on the scene, he dropped Ginger like a hot potato. But they were already separated then—so it’s not like Evelyn stole him away. Anyway, Evelyn is an ex of Adam’s, too.”

  Ginger, a salt-and-red-haired woman with what must have been a good figure that was now sagging a bit with age, had both hands on her hips and her angry face was too close to Evelyn’s.

  “Her beef should be with Adam,” said Peggy Sue. “He’s the one who ditched her, not Evelyn.” She absently reached for another bite of her corn muffin.

  “This just illustrates the point I was making,” said Cherry. “The guy goes through women like yesterday’s newspaper.” They all watched as Ginger continued giving Evelyn a piece of her mind. Although it seemed to be more of a large chunk of her mind. Apparently, it suddenly occurred to Evelyn that she didn’t need to listen to the woman and she finally walked out the door of the restaurant.

  Ginger looked frustrated at having her diatribe thwarted. Looking around the restaurant, she spied the table with the Graces. “Shoot! She’s coming over here now,” said Flo.