Finger Lickin' Dead (11 page)

“Oh, we grandmas just know these things, Derrick,” she said, now rocking gently in the chair and giving him a sweet smile. The last thing she wanted to do was to scare the boy off.

He plopped down next to her and happily took a handful of cookies, plunking them down on a small plate. He took a big bite of his first cookie and his eyes rolled back a little. “Umm!”

Lulu took a deep breath and decided to plunge right in. She knew Derrick was only going to stay put for a few minutes anyway. “Honey, how are things going at school for you lately? You’ve seemed pretty withdrawn—I was just a little worried about you. You know how we grandmas can be,” she said with a laugh.

Derrick’s dark eyes looked warily at her over his milk glass. “What do you mean? Like I’ve been quiet?”

“Don’t you think you’ve been quiet?”

He shrugged and shifted as if he were going to stand up and retreat with his cookies, but then he hesitated. “I dunno. I guess so. It’s just that after I got rid of my old friends, it’s been hard on me. I don’t have anybody to hang with at school. So I’m quiet there and I guess it lasts over to the rest of my day, too.”

Derrick’s old friends had been the first crowd of kids he hung out with when he moved to Memphis. They were a big reason behind the fact that he’d been in and out of trouble with the law for misdemeanors before cleaning his act up a few months ago. And one of Lulu’s happiest moments was when he’d taken to calling her “Granny Lulu” instead of “Lulu.”

Lulu nodded. “I know that’s tough, Derrick. But you know you’ve done the right thing—those guys weren’t good enough to be your friends. You’ve got so much more promise than they do.”

Derrick snorted, but his face brightened with the praise.

Lulu took a deep breath and seized the moment. “By the way, honey? I don’t know if you’re dating anybody right now or not”—Derrick’s face went from partly sunny to instantly cloudy again—“but you know my friend Peggy Sue? She’s got a granddaughter. . . . Well, I guess technically it’s her step-granddaughter. But anyway, she was just dying to have you and this step-granddaughter of hers go out on a date.”

Derrick opened his mouth up really quickly and Lulu reached across and handed him another cookie to sustain him through the conversation. “Here, honey. Now, I know this is incredibly inconvenient, and I’m so sorry about that. But this little girl apparently just moved to Memphis and Peggy Sue is trying to introduce her around. She doesn’t seem to go to your high school.”

“Granny Lulu, I just—” He stopped. “I just don’t want to ask anybody out right now.” He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “The whole thing with school, not having any friends? It’s—rotten. I couldn’t call somebody I don’t even know up right now and ask her out.”

Lulu could tell that the words were hard for him to say. But this was a boy whose mother had chosen to leave him for some man she was having a fling with. Was it any wonder he was having insecurity issues?

“Well—guess what?” Lulu said in a falsely peppy voice. “Peggy Sue’s got it all set up. Yes, she’s really quite the organizer. Her granddaughter, Peaches, is going to call you soon and set up dinner and a movie. I think she’s one of those really modern girls. She might not even let you pay!” Lulu gave a forced laugh and Derrick groaned.

“I’m so sorry about this, sweetie. Tell you what—I’ll find a way to make it up to you, I promise. But if you could go out with her just this one time, it would mean such a lot to me. Peggy Sue is a dear old friend of mine. And maybe? Well, maybe this Peaches is cute. After all, Peggy Sue is cute! Or she
was
, back in the day.”

“But you said that Peaches was her
step
-granddaughter.”

“So I did,” said Lulu slowly. “Well, hon, maybe we can just hope for the best.”

Derrick shrugged a thin shoulder, although Lulu could tell he wasn’t as unconcerned as he looked. “It’s just one date, right? If it doesn’t work out, then that’ll be it.” Derrick took a few big gulps of his drink, then hesitated. “There was one other thing I did want to mention to you, Granny Lulu. While we’re having this talk.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s probably nothing. But after what happened with Ella Beth, I thought I’d better bring it up. That guy who was murdered? I was working on the Aunt Pat’s blog and Aunt Sara and I figured it would be good for me to see other local restaurant blogs and find out what kinds of things they were doing. And I came across that guy Oliver. You know—the one who had that restaurant that closed down? I know he comes in here a lot, and his wife does. He said all kinds of things on his blog and Twitter page about the dead guy . . . Adam. He acted like he was really steamed. I thought you might want to know.”

Another Oliver story, thought Lulu. She was going to have to check out what was going on. “There wasn’t anything really crazy on there, was there? Like him admitting he’d murdered Adam or anything?”

“No, there wasn’t anything like that in there. But it was like he wanted to ruin Adam’s job, you know? Because if all the restaurants knew who he was, it would make it harder for him to review them. Who knows if the paper would even want him? And Oliver had Adam’s picture on there and everything. He was really slamming him like he wanted to make it hurt.”

Lulu sighed. “I sure appreciate your letting me know, Derrick. I guess the police will end up finding out soon enough and go to talk to him. I guess we have to presume he’s innocent, right? But still watch ourselves. There’s definitely someone dangerous out there. I just hope it’s not Oliver.”

Derrick headed back to the office to start on the computer work again, leaving Lulu looking blankly out at Beale as she tried collecting her thoughts. Sara, taking a break from cleaning up the dining room, joined her. “How did it go?”

“It went all right. He caught sight of the food and he sat right down. I think he’s doing okay,” said Lulu slowly, pursing her lips. “But he’s still fighting with that insecurity of his. Who knows—maybe this date will be a good thing for him. But he was worried about that, and worried about Oliver Hatley. When he was looking at other Memphis-area websites to help design ours, he came across all this angry talk from Oliver about Adam Cawthorn and how he’d ruined his life. Derrick was just letting me know.”

Sara rolled her green eyes. “Of course Oliver was furious with Adam/Eppie/whoever. We were furious with him for the bad review and he didn’t even shut Aunt Pat’s down. But I don’t see Oliver as the murderer.”

Lulu raised her eyebrows. “Who do you think did it?” “Ginger Cawthorn, of course. And I bet the cops do, too. The spouse is
always
the top suspect in all those police shows.”

“But Ginger and Adam weren’t married anymore.”

Sara shook her head until red spirals of hair tumbled around her face. “They
were
still married, remember? But they’d been separated for a while when Evelyn started seeing Adam again.”

“And she sure was mad about Adam dating Evelyn,” said Lulu, nodding. “But wasn’t she more mad at
Evelyn
than Adam? It seems more likely that she’d shoot a big hole in Evelyn than Adam.”

Sara said stoutly, “If we don’t buy into that scenario, though, then we’ve got to explore the idea that some of our friends might be murderers. And I really don’t want to go there.”

Lulu rubbed at her temples. “It’s all making my head spin. Let’s talk about something else. Like—the girls. How are the twins doing now?”

Sara smiled proudly and said, “They’re doing so much better than I thought they would, Lulu. Kids are so incredibly resilient. I’m not going to say they didn’t have nightmares last night—because they did. But I was amazed how well they’re handling this.”

“What did the counselor say to them this morning?” asked Lulu. “I was busy with customers when y’all came in a little while ago.” Sara had taken the morning off and gone to talk to a pediatric counselor with the twins.

“Oh, she was wonderful. Asked them what happened, let them talk it all out of their systems. And then she said all the right things to help them process it and make a little sense out of what happened. I think it helped a lot.”

“Do you think I should even mention anything about the murder to them?” asked Lulu.

“They’ll probably start talking to you about it, actually. That seems to be where they are in the process right now.”

 

 

“How’re my babies doing?” asked Lulu, giving Ella Beth and Coco big hugs as they came out on the porch. She wasn’t really sure exactly how to handle such a traumatic experience, so she was relieved when Coco piped up.

“Pretty good. We had a whole day off from school so we could talk to some lady who was a counselor.”

“And the teachers didn’t even give us any make-up work!” said Ella Beth. “But I’ve had some bad dreams, so I guess it’s not really been too great.”

Lulu nodded. “Well, I wish there was something I could do to make the bad dreams go right away. But I think that as time goes by, they won’t be quite so awful.” She squeezed both girls’ hands. “I do have something to put a smile on your face in the short term. I made y’all some apple pie and some home-churned ice cream to go on top.” The twins cheered and seemed to put the murder out of their minds as Lulu brought out two plates heaped with generous portions of hot apple pie and homemade vanilla ice cream.

But after Coco, happy with her full tummy, left the porch to do homework, Ella Beth lingered. “Something on your mind, sweetie?” asked Lulu.

Ella Beth nodded, her thin face serious. “I was watching this movie that was on in the office. And it had this guy who was just a regular guy but his friend got killed.”

Lulu made a mental note to monitor what was on the television in the office more often.

“And so he went on a hunt for the guy who killed his friend. He became a totally different person. Because he was ‘
emotionally invested
,’ he said.”

“But, sweetie, you didn’t even know this man who died. He was a grown-up and honestly, he wasn’t even a very
nice
grown-up. So there is really no reason to feel close to him at all.”

Ella Beth shook her head. “But the point is, Granny Lulu, that I’m
emotionally invested
. I’m the one who found him. I want to help find out who did him in.”

“You didn’t mention your idea to your counselor, did you, sweetie? I don’t think she’d think this was a great way to handle your shock.”

“Actually,” said Ella Beth, raising her pointed chin, “the counselor said we were supposed to work out our feelings in a healthy way. This sounds pretty healthy to me.”

“Oh, honey. I think she probably meant that you should go to your mama’s workshop and throw some paint on a canvas. Or go outside and run around for a while—something like that.”

“Finding the man’s killer means that everything is all tied up, though. Very neatly.”

Lulu was about to quickly squash this idea, but then she looked closely into Ella Beth’s pinched face. The little girl had really been affected by finding the murdered man. Maybe, in some ways, just letting her think she was helping put the murderer away would help focus her energy in a positive direction. She obviously wasn’t just going to forget the murder and put it behind her. It
wasn’t
tidy.

“Tell you what,” said Lulu. “Why don’t you plan on doing a little investigating.
Just
around Aunt Pat’s, Ella Beth. And you make sure you tell me everything you find out, okay? And—you’re not going to want to let people know that you’re nosing around in this—just to be on the safe side, sweetie. There’s obviously a really disturbed person out there.”

Ella Beth drew back, offended. “Granny Lulu, I’m not
dumb
. Detectives are supposed to work undercover. And then I’ll report everything I find to you. Just like I did the last time when that food-television reporter was murdered.”

Lulu had to admit that Ella Beth, despite being nine years old, had definitely helped her out with the last case she’d found herself involved in. Murder. Circling around Aunt Pat’s! What had the world come to?

The next day the lunch rush was bigger than it had been the rest of the week. “I think folks have pushed that review out of their heads,” Lulu said to Ben as he grated huge blocks of extra-sharp cheese in the Aunt Pat’s kitchen.

“I sure hope so. It’s just wrong that one person’s opinion could mess up our business for as long as it did. And it wasn’t even true! Adam was pigging out on red beans and rice at Aunt Pat’s every chance he got.” Ben looked steamed just thinking about it as he grated vigorously.

“Well, there’s no need to get all fired up about it now, Ben. Adam’s not too likely to be writing any more stories in his current condition.”

“Yeah. And I just can’t seem to summon up an ounce of sympathy for the guy, somehow.” Ben saw his mother’s worried face and said, “But I didn’t murder him, Mother. You know that’s not the way I’d go solving a problem or settling a score. I was set to
expose
him, though. I figured if I let everybody know who he was, then he couldn’t go around bashing people’s restaurants and putting them out of business—because they’d be on the lookout for him. He’d have no secrets.”

“I think Oliver Hatley was beating you to it, sweetie. Derrick was saying that he had blog posts up with Adam’s picture and a big story about Eppie Currian’s real identity. He was even spreading the news on Twitter.”

Ben hesitated. “I was doing more of a word-of-mouth campaign. There’s only one thing that worries me. And I don’t know if I’m overreacting or what. I mean, it probably doesn’t mean anything.” He started cracking a couple dozen eggs into a large bowl for the spicy corn muffins.

Lulu put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “I
knew
you weren’t telling me everything. When are you going to learn that it’s never good to try to hide things from your mama?”