Rubbed Out (A Memphis BBQ Mystery) (23 page)

Ben came out on the porch, wiping his hands on his apron, and Sara hurried out behind him, still clutching a pencil and order pad. “What’s going on?” asked Ben, concerned.

“Well, y’all might have noticed that I was spending a lot of time with Peaches lately,” said Derrick.

Lulu really, really hoped that there wasn’t going to be an announcement of impending nuptials between the two seventeen-year-olds. Peaches was as cute as a button, but her grandmama would have both their heads on platters if they decided they were going to get married.

“Peaches is really good in school, you know. And I haven’t really been,” said Derrick, coloring in a splotchy way.

Derrick’s grades had been pretty low since he moved to Memphis. But with all the upheaval in his young life, they’d all found it completely understandable. He’d also been showing real improvement and was putting time into his studying. The problem was that he’d had a good deal of catching up to do from the years in New York, where academics weren’t exactly at the forefront and making some semblance of normalcy in his mother’s dysfunctional home was. The focus had been more on survival.

“So I decided that I wanted to make a real push this semester and go all out. Try to show colleges that I could be serious and I could show improvement,” said Derrick.
“I’ve been meeting Peaches for months now, studying in the library or in the coffee shop together. And here’s my report card.” He shyly pulled it out.

Ben and Sara peered at it and then Ben held it up for everyone to see. “All A’s!” he said with a whoop. Sara hugged Derrick tightly around his neck until Lulu wondered if the poor boy could breathe.

“So you’ve been studying with Peaches?” asked Lulu.

“More than studying,” said Derrick. “She was tutoring me, too. Getting me caught up with everybody else.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Sara.

“Well, I didn’t want to let you know what I was doing, in case I really bombed,” said Derrick with an attempt at a careless shrug. The insecurity still showed on his face, though. He didn’t want them all to be looking forward to a great report card if there was a chance that he might end up with bad grades and disappoint everybody.

Lulu reached out and gave Derrick a big hug. “I’m so proud of you, sweetie. I know you were taking tough classes, too. This calls for a celebration.”

Morty snapped his fingers. “I know just the thing. The Back Porch Blues Band will play tonight in celebration of our young scholar. Derrick, I know you’re a fan.”

Derrick grinned at them as the men started making plans.

“I bet Finn would like to hear y’all sing and celebrate, too,” said Lulu. “Why don’t you give him a call and tell him to come on over tonight.”

Derrick grinned even wider.

Ben said, “I’ll cook up some special stuff on the grill just for Derrick. I know you especially like grilled shrimp, Derrick. And Peaches will have to be our guest of honor, since she was the tutor extraordinaire. Her food will be on the house tonight!”

Derrick gave a whoop. Lulu had the feeling that there would be many good grades in Derrick’s future. Between their reaction and his own pleasure at doing well (and the boost in his self-confidence), it seemed like he was finally starting to make his peace with school.

They’d decided that the celebration would start at seven thirty that night, and once they’d settled on a time, Lulu headed home to put her feet up for a few hours.

Before she left for home, she remembered to ask Derrick to show her how to text. He was still on cloud nine with all the praise.

“It’s not so hard,” he said. He showed her which icon to press and how to open a new message and type in the contact name or phone number she wanted to reach.

“Where is the keyboard?” asked Lulu, frowning at the device.

“It’s right here,” said Derrick. He pointed at the tiny cell phone screen.

“Mercy! You mean I don’t have any raised buttons to type on?” asked Lulu.

“Not on this phone. But it’s okay—you’ll get used to it,” Derrick said in a comforting voice.

“But I’ve got such chubby fingers!” Lulu said, studying her hands in dismay. “How am I going to be able to make out the different letters?”

“Why don’t you try to send a test message to my phone and see how you do,” said Derrick.

Lulu took the phone from Derrick and stared at it in great concentration. Then she carefully followed the steps he’d shown her.

Derrick’s phone beeped at him to notify him about the text and Lulu was glad that he’d chosen a different ringtone than Dawn and Sharon had. He opened the text. “Okay. So…
rsty mradagr
.” His brow furrowed. “I’m sure there’s a message in those letters somewhere.”

Lulu sighed. “It was supposed to say
test message
.”

Derrick smiled at her. “It takes time, Granny Lulu. Don’t worry—before long, you’ll be texting like a pro.”

Back home, Lulu put her feet up for a while and was surprised to find herself waking up from a nap. She must have been more worn out than she’d thought. Glancing at the clock, she decided to head back over to the restaurant to help prepare for Derrick’s big celebration. She was picking up her big key ring when her doorbell rang. She peeked out the window and saw Sharon.

This time Sharon wasn’t crying, but her eyes were red like she’d been crying recently, and there was a streak of mascara on her cheek. She remembered Pink’s warning from last night not to trust anybody. Could you really live your life like that, though? Lulu wasn’t sure she
wanted to. But she didn’t want to be stupid, either. She hurried to the junk drawer in a nearby end table and pulled out a screwdriver. She could defend herself with it, although she didn’t want to have to get to that point. Then she opened the door and invited Sharon to come inside and to sit down on the sofa with her.

Sharon said, “Lulu, I hope you don’t mind that I dropped by. I called the restaurant this morning and they said that you hadn’t come in yet. There was something I wanted to talk to you about.” She frowned, studying the bruises on Lulu’s arms from the fall. “Is something wrong? Has something happened?”

“Oh, I’m fine. But I had an incident when I was leaving the restaurant last night.” She told Sharon what had happened.

Sharon’s reaction to the story was pretty strong. Her eyes widened and she gasped when she heard the news. “And this was last night? When?”

Lulu said, “Around midnight probably. I sort of lost track of time last night.”

Sharon slumped into the sofa, buried her face in her hands, and groaned.

“Sharon? What is it?” asked Lulu.

Sharon lifted her head. “It might be nothing,” she said in a tone that sounded like she was trying to reason with herself as much as with Lulu. Then she shook her head. “No, it’s definitely something. It shows me how bad everything really is.”

She gave Lulu a weak smile. “You must think I’m a nut. I’ve always got drama going on. But what I’m trying to figure out right now is why Brody was out last night around midnight.”

Lulu’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh.” So Tim had definitely seen Brody’s truck. Her mind spun trying to find a reasonable explanation for him to have been in the parking deck. She couldn’t come up with one.

“Yeah. But Lulu, I can’t imagine Brody hurting you. He told me how much he enjoyed meeting you and how great you were. I can’t believe I’m even talking like this. Brody couldn’t hurt anybody. He’s not that kind of a person. Not the sweet guy that I fell in love with.”

“Where did he say he was last night?” asked Lulu.

“He said something about going to the store…that he’d forgotten that he’d run out of toiletries that he needed for getting ready for work,” said Sharon.

“Did he come back home with toiletries?” asked Lulu.

“He did. But when I checked under the bathroom sink, there were still plenty of deodorants and toothpastes and stuff like that under there,” said Sharon. “Besides, he was gone for a long time. He could have gone over to Aunt Pat’s, attacked you, then run by the store on the way back home.” She stopped. “No, I don’t believe it. He couldn’t have done it.”

Lulu said, “Y’all have been married a long while, haven’t you? Does that seem like the kind of thing that Brody could possibly have done?’

Sharon dropped her gaze. “I have a tough time wrapping my head around the idea that he could have done something like that. I mean, yes, he’s had minor scrapes with the law before. We’ve been married for about ten years, but before we were married, he was doing some things that I wasn’t happy about. He hung out with a kind of wild crowd of people for one—and went to parties where sometimes there were people there doing drugs. He wasn’t one of the druggies…but because he was there, sometimes he’d get in trouble, too. But the way he was with me was always so gentle—so sweet.”

“He’s stayed out of trouble since y’all have been married?” asked Lulu.

“For the most part. One time he got arrested for gambling, but that was it. Besides, he knew I don’t like gambling, so he made sure he stopped. And he had a DUI once. That was all,” said Sharon.

It sounded like a lot to Lulu. But then, she’d led a pretty sheltered life.

“Sharon,” said Lulu slowly. “You didn’t know about last night when you came over here. Why did you visit?”

Now Sharon appeared even more deflated until Lulu had to wonder if she was going to disappear completely into the stuffing of her sofa. “I came because I wanted to talk to you about the night that John died.”

Lulu leaned forward.

“You see,” said Sharon with a sigh. “Brody had gone out that night. He’d told me that he’d wanted to blow off
steam. Everything had been so stressful with Reuben acting so weird and then being murdered. Even our being the will executors was making us stressed out. He’d met this guy named Jim at work and he’d gone out a couple of times with him after work. Once I’d joined them and Jim’s wife had, too.”

Lulu nodded.

“So I told him sure. I told him to go on out and have a nice time with Jim. I was worn out that night and I was in the bed by nine o’clock. I woke up when he came back in—it was probably around eleven thirty, which I thought was pretty late. But I was still so exhausted that I fell back asleep right away,” said Sharon.

“Then, of course, the next morning I discovered John’s body and was a total wreck. I’ve been trying to cope with all this since I found John. But yesterday, I ran into Jim’s wife at the grocery store. I asked her if Jim and Brody had a nice dinner the other night. She looked at me real funny and said that Jim hadn’t been out with anybody for the whole last week—Jim’s mother has been in the hospital and his sister was staying with them and they were at the hospital all the time.” Sharon stared at Lulu with a bewildered expression on her face.

Lulu took a deep breath. “What do you think he was actually doing?”

Sharon gave a brittle laugh and started working on picking off her nail polish again. “I don’t know. When I came over here to tell you about it, it’s because I needed
a sounding board. I figured that Brody was seeing another woman or something like that. And that made me upset. I hated thinking that he might be cheating on me. But what if he isn’t? Now that I’ve spoken to you and I know he was out when you were attacked last night, it makes me wonder if maybe he was out murdering John instead of being with a woman.”

Lulu sat in silence for a moment. Brody seemed like a nice guy, but his lack of alibi was disturbing. Plus the fact that Tim had spotted Brody with a tarp shortly before Reuben was murdered. Pink told her that Brody and Sharon were in deep financial trouble. It sure did seem awfully convenient that now they had enough money to take care of all their money problems.

Lulu said, “Honey, you need to ask Brody about where he’s been. Maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation. If you let your suspicions run rampant, then things are only going to get worse.”

Sharon groaned. “I don’t know if I can ask him. I dread his answer too much. Can you come with me when I ask him? Because, what if he
is
a murderer and he killed Reuben for the money and then killed John to cover it all up? If he knows that I know, maybe he’ll kill me, too.”

“Of course I’ll come with you,” said Lulu stoutly. “Although I don’t think you have a thing to worry about.”

But she patted the screwdriver in her dress pocket. Just to make sure it was still there.

“Do you want me to drive or do you want to drive?” asked Sharon. “Oh wait. I’m blocking you. So I’ll drive and I can bring you back.”

Lulu was thinking about Derrick’s celebration. She really didn’t want to miss out showing him support and cheering him on. But maybe this wouldn’t take all that long. Or maybe it would get ugly—if Brody had killed two people, what might happen? Pink’s warning about keeping safe was really ringing in her ears.

“That sounds good, Sharon. I’m going to run to the little girls’ room real quick before we go,” said Lulu.

As soon as she got back to her bedroom and bathroom, Lulu pulled out her cell phone. Texting when she was in a hurry was going to be interesting. She felt so flustered that she could barely remember how to do it. She pushed the icon for texting, then peered at the contacts. She sent a message to Derrick that said she would be running late, but sent kisses and hugs. Except it looked more like
runinf laat. Kises abd hygs.