Rubbed Out (A Memphis BBQ Mystery) (24 page)

Then she decided she better cover her bases. What if Brody started acting crazy? Would Sharon and Lulu be able to handle him? Should they? But maybe he wasn’t even the person responsible for all this. So she sent another text—this one to Cherry. It said that she and Sharon were going to talk to Brody—Sharon suspected he might be involved in the murders. Except the text, of course, was more like
Shron snf i goingtakk to Brody. Might br invokvrd.

This texting wasn’t so bad, really. The nice thing was that she didn’t have to have a phone conversation that would make Sharon think that Lulu believed Brody was guilty. That would make Sharon probably burst into hysterical tears at a point where it was much better for her to be cool and collected and approach Brody in a firm and logical manner. With texting, she hadn’t had to say a word.

Lulu turned off the volume on her phone. She didn’t need to be talking to Brody and have text messages
popping up all over the place. She put it in her pocketbook and joined Sharon. “You remember Derrick, don’t you? We’re having a little party for him tonight at Aunt Pat’s to celebrate his all-A report card,” said Lulu.

Sharon smiled at him, more relaxed than she had a few minutes ago. “Are you? That’s great. He seems like a really nice kid.”

“He is. He’s had a rough time in school, and a report card like this one goes to show how much work he’s put into his studying,” said Lulu.

“Am I going to mess you up, then?” asked Sharon with an anxious frown. “I don’t want to make it so that you can’t get back to Aunt Pat’s in time for Derrick’s party.”

“We’ll be good,” said Lulu. “I’m sure this conversation won’t take all that long.”

They climbed into Sharon’s car and took off. Sharon seemed mighty nervous. She sighed. “I sure do miss smoking. I used to love me a cigarette when I got this jittery. Took the edge right off. But I quit a few years back and I know it would be a slippery slope if I even had one.”

“Are you having a bad gut feeling about this?” asked Lulu. “I know you’re nervous about talking to Brody about his whereabouts—is that what’s making you feel this anxious? Do you think he’s going to lash out at you or anything?” Or lash out at
us
?

Sharon gave a laugh that she probably hoped sounded light. “Oh no, I can’t imagine Brody doing something like that. But I don’t know what he’s going to say when I
ask him about it. It’s the not knowing that makes me worried.”

Sharon was clearly trying to stay distracted and asked Lulu to tell her more about Derrick and where he’d come from. “He’s not your grandchild, is he?”

“Technically? No, he’s not. But I’ve sort of adopted him as my grandson. He’s my daughter-in-law’s nephew.” She explained how Derrick had come to them and the situation he’d left and how far he’d come. The pride might have leaked into her voice, but she couldn’t help it—Sara and Ben had done a great thing rescuing that boy from his home, and Derrick had done a great job working as hard as he had. She really thought he had a bright future ahead of him.

Lulu was so carried away with telling the story and Sharon seemed like such a rapt audience that it took a while for Lulu to notice that they weren’t going to Brody and Sharon’s house. “Aren’t we going to your house?”

“Brody isn’t there,” sighed Sharon. “Which is what gave me so much time to think today. He’s at a restaurant—he decided to eat out after work. So we’ll meet up with him then, if that’s okay?”

Lulu thought again about the celebratory meal going on at Aunt Pat’s. But there was something else that was bothering her. She replayed their conversation for the last few minutes in her head, frowning.

Finally, she knew what it was and a cold chill crept up her spine. Why would Brody have gone to a restaurant
after work when he’d picked up a large to-go order from Aunt Pat’s for both of them only this afternoon?

She tried to keep calm and pressed the palms of her hands against her floral dress. She said in what she hoped was a careless voice, “This is a nice car, Sharon. Is this the one you usually drive?”

“Most of the time,” she said in a distracted tone. “Except when Brody has to drive clients around at work, then he takes this one and I drive his truck.”

“That’s right, he works at the bank, doesn’t he? Does he have to drive clients around fairly often?” asked Lulu, still trying to sound offhand as if she were only making conversation.

Sharon’s cell phone made a cheerful chirp. Lulu’s breath caught.

Sharon ignored the incoming text, but her eyes narrowed and her fingers gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “Why so many questions about the car, Lulu? Wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you saw Brody’s truck the other night, would it?”

Lulu just stared at her, eyes wide.

“Oh, come on, did you think Brody wasn’t going to tell me the fact that he overheard you saying you’d seen his truck the night you were attacked?” said Sharon in a hard voice.

Lulu said, “But I
didn’t
see it. Tim saw it. And it wasn’t only me he told.”

Sharon was barely listening. “The problem is, Lulu,
that you know something. I don’t know exactly what and I don’t know how. But I can’t let you tell Pink,” said Sharon, an icy edge to her voice.

“Sharon, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought you and I were going to ask Brody where he’s been lately,” said Lulu, still thinking that she might be able to get out of the situation if she didn’t acknowledge what was really happening.

Sharon’s eyes watched the road as she drove farther out of town. “No. You know that’s not where we’re going,” she said tersely.

“You’re the one who murdered Reuben and John,” said Lulu in a heavy voice. “Why, Sharon? Was it because you needed the money?”

“Of course I needed the money. There was never a time when I didn’t need the money,” she snapped. “Even when I thought that Brody and I were doing okay, we weren’t in good shape. The last couple of months I’ve been thinking that we’re going to lose our house, our stuff—everything that we’ve worked for. And Reuben always ran his mouth about how much money he had. He bragged all the time. One day he’d been drinking and told me that he was getting back at his ex-wife by changing his will in favor of Brody and me. That made everything a lot clearer for me.”

“Did Brody know what you were doing?” asked Lulu.

“Of course not,” said Sharon in a scornful tone. “Brody doesn’t have the guts to do something like that
and he always had a soft spot for Reuben. Why, I don’t know. If I’d let Brody know what I’d done, he would have acted so guilty that everybody would have known. The man can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

“Why did you kill John?” asked Lulu. “Was it because he knew you’d murdered Reuben?” Lulu was now making sure she knew where the locks and door handle were on Sharon’s car in case she had an opportunity to try to escape.

“John had seen me struggling with Reuben,” said Sharon. “Or he saw me take the tarp from Brody and figured out the rest—I’m not sure which. The problem is that he thought he could make some kind of deal with me. He needed money, too, and he planned on blackmailing me so that he could finally hire a contractor to finish the mess his house was in. Too bad for him that he didn’t realize I wasn’t the blackmailing type.”

“So you killed John, left, and came back again later to ‘discover’ the body,” said Lulu.

“I figured that finding the body and being upset by discovering it would help give me believability,” said Sharon with a shrug of one shoulder.

“And you attacked me when I was leaving Aunt Pat’s,” said Lulu.

“Don’t take it personally,” said Sharon, emotionlessly glancing at her before focusing back at the road. “I was trying to keep you from being nosy. It obviously didn’t work, though, so I’m moving on to plan B.”

Lulu’s thoughts whirled. She thought about trying to text Cherry again, but how would Cherry find her way out here? And Sharon would see what she was doing anyway. She wiped her sweaty palms on her dress again and this time her hand brushed over the screwdriver in her pocket. She also realized that basically she was allowing Sharon to drive her to what was going to become a crime scene—with Lulu as the victim.

She also saw that there was a yard that had a really generous number of large wax myrtle bushes in the backyard. And that they weren’t going very fast. Lulu took a deep breath, and said quickly, “What’s that over there?”

Sharon turned to look through her window and Lulu grabbed the steering wheel, yanking it as hard as she could into the bushes. Sharon shrieked and slammed on the brakes, which squealed and shuddered in protest. The impact with the bushes was enough to shake them up but didn’t hurt them. That’s when Lulu decided it was time to get out of Sharon’s car. She pulled off her seat belt, hit the unlock button, jumped out, and ran to the nearest house and pounded on the door, glancing fearfully behind her as she knocked.

Nobody immediately answered and she couldn’t hear anyone inside the house—and a furious Sharon was rocketing out of her car in pursuit. And she was a much younger woman than Lulu.

Lulu tried the doorknob to see if the door was open.
It was. She fumbled to open the door, then shut it, hard, and—hands shaking—slid the chain on. Sharon yelled and threw herself at the door, pounding on it, and pushed the door as far as it would go with the chain on.

Now there was movement behind Lulu and a low growling. Desperately, she turned around…and saw a German shepherd almost as big as the small room she was standing in. She froze. She started reaching for the screwdriver again, then hesitated and realized that old habits die hard and she actually had that huge pocketbook of hers dangling daintily from her arm in this life-and-death struggle. She slowly put her hand in the bag and rummaged around gently.

Her hand closed around it…the jar of peanut butter she’d finally remembered to bring for the office break room for Coco. The dog’s teeth were bared now and the growling louder. Nothing to put the peanut butter on…wait. She stuck her hand in her purse again and pulled out the zipper bag of treats for the Labs. She tossed one treat, plain, to the German shepherd, then dipped two others in the peanut butter and tossed them away from her toward the back of the house—where she was hearing somebody coming in through the back door.

Sharon.

Lulu waited until Sharon was several paces into the house, then slid off the chain and ran through the front door to the car. Surely Sharon hadn’t had the presence of mind to lock the doors of the car.

They were unlocked. Better yet, the key was still in the ignition.

Lulu turned the key, and the car started up as Sharon bolted, wild-eyed, from the front door of the little house, the German shepherd tearing after her as she shoved at the animal’s head and tried to shut the front door closed. Lulu didn’t wait to see if Sharon succeeded—she threw the car into reverse, floored the accelerator, and took off.

This worked out real well until Sharon’s car decided to die from whatever injuries it had sustained from its hard landing in the bushes. Lulu was over a block away but still in full view of Sharon.

For the first time in her cell phone ownership, she was grateful to hear the usually annoying sound of the ringtone. She quickly answered it.

“Cherry?” she gasped. “Is that you?”

“It’s Pink, Lulu. Cherry called me because you’d texted her something real garbled and you hadn’t shown up at Derrick’s party. Where are you?”

“Pink, I don’t know exactly where I am. I’m somewhere kind of remote, probably right outside the city,” said Lulu. “And Sharon is the one behind all this, Pink. She drove me out here to kill me and I’m in her car right now. It’s stalled out and she’s coming back after me.”

Pink’s voice was alert but very calm. “Okay, Lulu. Can you see a street sign or anything that can help me find you? And can you describe Sharon’s car? I’m driving around now and I’ll try to get to you as fast as I can.”

Lulu squinted in front of her, but the nearest street sign was blurry. “I can’t quite make it out.” Then she turned around and she could make out the next sign, behind her. “I can see the one behind me, though. It’s Trellis Lane.” She described Sharon’s sedan to Pink.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

Sharon ran toward her. Lulu hit the locks again, just to make sure. “She’s coming my way, Pink. And she has a knife in her hand.”

“Are your doors locked? Do you have anything that you can use as a weapon, if you need to?”

Lulu said, “I grabbed a screwdriver before I left my house. I sure would hate to use it, but believe me, if it’s me or her, I’ll make sure I use the thing.”

“I don’t think she’s going to get very far using a knife on a car,” said Pink dryly. “But if she starts using her head and finds something to smash in your window, you need to be ready.”

Lulu took a deep breath as Sharon finally reached the car and launched herself at it, beating it with her palms. “I think she’s really disturbed, Pink.”

“Hang in there, Lulu.”

Sharon’s face was so furious and her features were so distorted that Lulu turned away. Lulu noticed that Sharon was getting some attention from the neighbors, who were at their windows and in their doorways, watching her.