Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles (Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery) (4 page)

 

“T
wo slices of red velvet cake. One pineapple upside-down cake, and two big helpings of banana pudding,” I say, eyeing the tray before handing it off to Darius. The tray is headed toward Marcus’s table. It’s nearly midnight and Marcus and his guests are the only patrons left in the restaurant. I wish they’d finish up and get out of here, so we could go home. The last of my kitchen staff is washing up and will leave any minute, and I sent most of the wait staff home already. Darius is still here, but I’ll let him go after he serves dessert. And of course, Wavonne would have been gone hours ago, too, if I wasn’t her ride.

It doesn’t surprise me that there are six people at the table but only five desserts on the tray. I’m sure Marcus’s sister, Jacqueline, abstained. She always eats like a bird when she comes to Sweet Tea. Like tonight for instance, we sent their table two fried chicken and waffle platters, two corn casseroles, a plate of fried catfish . . . and
some mixed greens, topped with grilled chicken, and vinegar and oil
(on the side, of course). Can you believe that? Coming into my restaurant, a regular fiesta of fine food, and she makes us prepare a plain salad with grilled chicken, which, mind you, isn’t even on the menu. I’m not sure if it’s all for real or not—if she eats that way all the time, or if she just pecks at salads in front of people and then makes a beeline for Bojangle’s and scarfs down a bag of biscuits in her car while no one is around. It wouldn’t surprise me if she did. Lord knows, she exercises enough to melt away any calories she eats. I hear she’s at the gym every day (sometimes twice a day) and goes for regular runs in the mornings. She runs her own fitness business on the side in addition to working for Marcus. From what I know she does some personal training and teaches some sort of jumping-up-and-down-type classes at one of the local health clubs. I think she might be one of those people with a lot of nervous energy, and exercise is a good outlet for her. I, fortunately, don’t have that problem—I don’t have a lot of nervous energy, and exercise isn’t a good anything for me. She’s always asking me to come to one of her classes, but even if I had any interest, I simply don’t have the time.

I let go of any annoyance I might have with Jacqueline and walk out with Darius to serve the desserts. I often make dessert runs with my servers. It gives me a chance to check in with guests and see how everything was for them. And it’s always fun to see the looks on their faces when I place Momma’s sweet creations in front of them.

I place the banana pudding in front of the young woman with blond hair (“Ms. Thang,” as Darius called her earlier) and the red velvet cake in front of her husband while Darius serves the remaining desserts. Their eyes go wide as we set the plates down, and they look decidedly more relaxed than they did earlier in the evening. Even Ms. Thang lets a huge smile come across her face when the pudding lands in front of her.

“Wow. That looks really good.”

“Made today with fresh bananas and Momma’s own vanilla wafer cake recipe. I’ve loved that recipe since I was a girl,” I say to her before turning my gaze to Jacqueline, who, for just a nanosecond, I swear was eyeing the young lady’s pudding like a lion circling a gazelle.

“No dessert for you tonight, Jacqueline?” I ask.

“It looks divine, Halia, but I try to stay away from sweets. I’m teaching a spin class early tomorrow, so I don’t want to eat anything too heavy tonight. You should come and try it out.”

I laugh. Yes, because the idea of me at a spin class does, indeed, make me laugh. “Thank you, but I’ve got the brunch crowd to prepare for.”

“Another time.”

“Sure,” I lie and turn my attention to the entire table. “How was everything this evening?”

“It was fantastic,” says the gentlemen to Marcus’s right. “I’m going to need someone to push me in a wheelbarrow to get out of here I’m so full.” He lightly pats his belly. “But don’t think that’s going to stop me from eating this pineapple upside-down cake.”

“So glad to hear it. We aim to please. Enjoy the desserts.”

“Thanks, Halia,” Marcus says. “You mind if we hang around a bit longer? We have some business to wrap up.”

“How much longer?” I’m trying to make it sound like a friendly question, but it’s late, and I want to go home. I’ve already bent over backward for Marcus today. I don’t feel like staying up until the wee hours of the morning waiting on him and his clients.

“I’m not sure,” he responds, and that’s when I notice a few legal-size manila folders on the table. I’m guessing they are filled with some sort of paperwork related to whatever Marcus has going on with these people . . . maybe some contracts for them to sign. “Why don’t you go on home? I’ll lock up when we leave.”

I’m so tired that I agree to leave Marcus and his guests at the restaurant. Marcus is practically a partner in the business and has a key. He can come and go anytime he wants, so it’s really not a big deal.

“Okay. Let me go fetch Wavonne. I’ll lock the back door before we leave. Don’t forget to lock the front door.”

“I won’t.”

“Oh, and there’s a tray of fried chicken in the walk-in. Feel free to wrap up a few pieces and take them home.”

I go back into the kitchen and see Wavonne watching something on her cell phone.

“Halia. Look at this. This dog’s ridin’ a skateboard! Let’s get a dog like that. We’ll name him Flo Rida.”

“Let’s go. Marcus will lock up,” I say, ignoring her dog comment, giving the kitchen a good once-over to make sure all the ovens and burners are off, and head toward the break room to grab my coat and purse.

“You’re leaving Marcus here alone?” Wavonne asks as she follows.

“Yes. It’s not a big deal, Wavonne. He’s an investor and has been a good customer for years.”

I watch as Wavonne pulls some sort of faux fur nonsense from one of the hooks in the back room and puts it on. We pop back into the kitchen to make sure the door to the alley is locked. Then Wavonne and I head toward the front door through the dining room.

“You all have a good evening. Please come back again,” I say as we pass Marcus’s table.

 

“D
amn, it’s cold out here,” Wavonne says as we approach my van.

“It’s only October, Wavonne. It’s not
that
cold . . . just a little chilly.”

“I just hate the cold! One of these days I’m going to move to Palm Springs and just lie on the beach all day.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” I say, not bothering to tell her that Palm Springs is in the California desert and the closest beach is miles away.

“Wait until winter really gets here. If we never get snow again, it will be too soon,” I say. “I can’t wait to get home, crawl in bed under my comforter, and get some sleep. I am beat.”

“Didn’t Aunt Celia say something about pickin’ up some groceries for her tonight?”

“Damn. I’d forgotten about that.”

Momma has some sort of church potluck tomorrow. She’d given me a whole list of ingredients to pick up, so she could make her smothered pork chops in the morning. She claimed she didn’t have time to do it herself after getting sidetracked with Marcus’s request for pudding. If I don’t get her items tonight, she’ll have to go out in the morning and get them herself, and I’ll never hear the end of it. We only serve pork chops as an occasional special at the restaurant. If I’d had any on hand I would have grabbed them from the walk-in fridge. And of course, I offered to bring Momma a whole platter of whatever she wanted from the restaurant to take to her potluck, but Momma values her independence and likes to keep busy, which is half the reason I think she goes to that church of hers. She used to go to an everyday Methodist church in Temple Hills, but after Daddy died, some friend of hers took her to the Church of the Holy Bible, one of those black megachurches that take up so many collections you get tired of reaching for your purse. I went with her a time or two but decided it wasn’t for me . . . especially when the pastor’s wife introduced herself to me as the “First Lady.”
First Lady?
I initially thought she was joking, but when I realized she was serious, I knew I had no business at the Church of the Holy Bible. I’m not calling anyone, no matter how overblown her ego, First Lady unless her last name is Obama. And it was really over for me when I saw the pastor drive off in an eighty-thousand-dollar Mercedes SUV. He can drive whatever he wants, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for it. Wavonne goes to services with Momma now and then, but I suspect it’s either to manhunt or get out of coming to the restaurant to help me set up for Sunday brunch.

“Makes you long for the days when the grocery stores actually closed for the night, doesn’t it?”

“Huh,” is Wavonne’s response. Sometimes I forget she’s so much younger than me. Grocery stores have probably been open twenty-four hours since she can remember.

“Nothing. We’ll stop at the Giant over by the house.”

It’s well after midnight when Wavonne and I walk through the door of the grocery store, which is surprisingly busy. I figure I might as well do some grocery shopping for the house while I’m here. One less thing I’ll have to do when I take a few hours off on Monday. I start in the produce section and before I bag a few apples, I notice Wavonne is nowhere to be seen. I’m sure she’s run off to the cosmetics section.

I go up and down the aisles trying to ignore how sleepy I am. If I wasn’t so tired from a long day, I wouldn’t mind being here so much. Much of the time, I almost like grocery shopping. The same way I sometimes like doing laundry and cooking at home. When you own your own business and spend so much of your time there, little domestic activities can sometimes be stress-relieving. It’s actually nice to shop for food for a family of three instead of a restaurant that seats nearly two hundred people at peak capacity. And I can’t tell you the joy I take in cooking for small groups. Some Mondays, the only day of the week I’m not at the restaurant most of the day, I make a full dinner for Wavonne, Momma, and me. It’s nice to make things in small quantities and just tend to one roast chicken or three salmon filets instead of seven pot roasts at a time or a tub of mashed potatoes so big you could almost dive in and go for a swim. It also gives me a chance to try out new recipes. It doesn’t happen a lot, but here and there I do make something new at home that I end up putting on the menu or serving as a special at Sweet Tea. Just last month, I was experimenting with a sausage, apple, and cranberry stuffing recipe. It turned out to be so tasty, I put in the orders for the bulk ingredients the next day, and began offering it as a side to our roast turkey special.

“Hey,” Wavonne says, as she nonchalantly slips some eye shadow, a barrette, and a tube of mascara into the cart.

“What’s all that?” I ask, as if I don’t know her game plan. She wouldn’t be so bold as to put something really expensive in the cart, but she figures I’ll let a few cheap sundries go unnoticed and just pay for them when we check out, which, I admit, I have done on occasion.

“Just some makeup and a barrette.”

“And who’s paying for ‘just some makeup and a barrette’?”

“I’ve got money,” Wavonne says and starts patting her side and looking around. “Damn. I think I left my purse at the restaurant. Can you spot me the cash, and I’ll pay you back later?”

I give her a look. “Fine,” I say and decide right then and there that we’re going to go back to the restaurant and get her purse tonight just in case she left it there on purpose, knowing that I was supposed to stop by the grocery store. I wouldn’t put it past Wavonne. If she spent half as much time doing something constructive as she did coming up with schemes to get out of paying for stuff (or getting out of work), she could probably run her own company.

“Can’t ya open another register?” Wavonne yells toward the cashier after we wrap up our shopping and approach the checkout line.

For whatever reason, the Giant is quite busy tonight and there are four or five people in line ahead of us. The cashier glares at Wavonne and doesn’t reply. She’s got an “it’s after midnight, and I’m schlepping groceries across a conveyor belt. Don’t antagonize me or I might just
cut
you” look on her face.

“Lord. I’m gonna be old as you, Halia, by the time this chick gets us through the line.”

I laugh.

“Man, those celebrities look rough without any makeup,” Wavonne says, staring at one of those “Stars Without Makeup” tabloids on display when we finally get close enough to start unloading the groceries on the counter. “Some of them look like that haggard woman behind the counter at the KFC across from Sweet Tea.”

I want to say that if Wavonne doesn’t shape up at Sweet Tea, she might find her own self behind the counter at KFC. And what is she doing going to KFC anyway when we serve the best fried chicken in town?

“Yes. Makeup . . . well,
money,
really, can make anyone look better.”

“Girl, they got to get you some help. This line is
crazy,
” Wavonne says to the cashier when we finally reach her.

“Yeah. We’re not usually this busy so late at night.”

“My cousin here is so tired. She can’t be waiting in line all night after working at her restaurant. She ain’t no spring chicken no more, ya know.”

I glare at Wavonne.

“I hear ya. I’m tired as all get-out, as well. And I’ve got six more hours to go on my shift,” the cashier says to Wavonne and then turns to me. “You have a restaurant?”

“Yeah. Mahalia’s Sweet Tea over at the King Town Center.”

“Oh. I’ve heard such good things about that place. But I think it’s out of my price range. I’m not exactly making the big bucks working the night shift here.”

I want to say that I’m not exactly making the big bucks, either. People think that when you own your own successful restaurant you must be raking in the dough, but let me tell you, I’m not making any millions. I earn a nice living, but rich I’m not. By the time I pay my staff, rent, insurance, utilities, random repairs, and make the payments on my loans, I’m almost bled dry, but I love it nonetheless. Life is about enjoying what you do in the moment, not about being rich . . . or so I keep telling myself.

“Oh, come on over, girl. We’ll hook you up. We got good prices at lunchtime, and I’ll sneak you a free dessert if you sit in my section.”

I chuckle, hoping that Wavonne is joking and isn’t really passing out free desserts to her tables. “We really do have some good values on our lunch menu. Give us a try.”

Once we’ve wrapped up with the cashier, Wavonne and I load the bags into the cart and make our way to the exit.

“You know. I think I’d sleep better if we make a quick run back to the restaurant and make sure Marcus locked up. He’d had a few drinks and may have forgotten,” I say to Wavonne once we pushed the cart into the parking lot and loaded the van.

And that is part of the reason I want to go back. But I also want to make Wavonne get her purse and see the look on her face when I ask her to pay me back for the makeup.