Grilled, Chilled and Killed Read online

  Grilled, Chilled

  and Killed

  Lesley A. Diehl

  Oak Tree Press Taylorville, IL

  GRILLED, CHILLED and KILLED, Copyright 2013, by Lesley A. Diehl, All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Oak Tree Press, 140 E. Palmer St., Taylorville, IL 62568.

  Oak Tree Press books may be purchased for educational, business or sales promotional purposes. Contact Publisher for quantity discounts

  First Edition, January 2013

  Cover by Kalpart

  ISBN 978-1-61009-454-2

  LCCN 2012938658

  To Jan Day Fehrman,

  good friend and great critique partner

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As ever, my love, support and inspiration—Glenn.

  Thank God you can cook.

  Chapter 1

  Emily shook the metal canister filled with ice, liquor and mix until her hand numbed from the cold. Perfect. She tapped the edge of the lid to loosen it and tossed the ice cubes she’d placed in the martini glass into the sink. A young man stepped up to the bar and opened the lid of the container which held cherries and slices of lime and lemon. He reached in to extract a piece of the fruit.

  She slapped his knuckles with a mixer spoon.

  “Yow!” He snatched back his hand.

  “I do the bartending around here. Keep your hands out of my stuff.” Emily shook the spoon at him, threatening to hit him once more. He spun on the heel of his boot and left.

  She poured the icy concoction into a glass and placed it on the bar in front of the man sitting there.

  “You’re a tough gal.” The man’s gaze swept over the tiny blonde bartender with admiration. “But I already knew that.”

  “He just came out of the bathroom. I’ll bet he didn’t even wash his hands before he pawed through my fruit.” She plunged the shaker into the soapy water in the sink and looked around the bar.

  “Good drink. Just enough vermouth. Almost as good as mine.”

  “Don’t sass your boss.”

  “Where’d you learn to use the word ‘sass’?” There was almost a chuckle in his voice. Emily knew Donald Green rarely laughed, never chuckled and chose to dole out his smiles with infrequency. The bass fisherman with the tall, muscular body and long, silver ponytail didn’t care if anyone found him pleasant or not. Emily figured he didn’t care about most people. Sometimes she worried she might be an exception. She didn’t need Donald paying attention to her as a woman, so she tried to aggravate him as much as possible. She thought that might take his mind off romance and put it back on catching bass or mixing drinks.

  “You drink that drink, and I’ll drive to the festival grounds. It would look bad for the country club if their back-up bartender got picked up for DWI.”

  Donald said nothing, simply slugged down the martini, grabbed his black cowboy hat and strode out of the bar. Emily threw her apron down, yelled back to the relief bartender to “check the cooler” and ran after him. In the parking lot, he tossed her his keys. She caught them, surprised at her luck, and climbed into Donald’s huge truck. She stuffed her purse behind her to reach the steering wheel. He settled into the passenger’s side and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

  “I’ll grab a little shut eye. Had a hard night last night.”

  Emily knew better than to talk to him on the short ride to the Big Lake Bar-B-Que Competition. She was content to consider her own thoughts. She was looking forward to the evening. All she had to do was pull beers all night long. No hard liquor was served at the festival. Better yet, she and Donald would be in different stations at either end of the fairgrounds, and she wouldn’t have to deal with his surly mood.

  The money tonight wasn’t great, but it was money. Her life partner’s will, discovered over a month after his death, was finally probated and settled. Emily inherited his estate which consisted of not much cash, some mortgaged property and a few debts. Emily’s small pension didn’t cover all her expenses, so she served as head bartender at the Big Lake Country Club and took odd jobs for additional cash. She liked tending bar, talking to all the folks who came in. Barely over five feet tall, she’d developed an ability to cajole drunks out of their pugnacious intentions and send others on their way with a firm “out”. If she had trouble, Donald was usually there to give them a look of cold, hard steel.

  Yep, she thought to herself, she was pretty happy of late. Her daughter was joining her tonight at the competition, and they were leaving tomorrow for a short vacation to Jekyll Island to celebrate Naomi finalizing her divorce.

  “I can hear you thinking, and it’s keeping me awake.”

  “That’s only because I’m having happy thoughts. If they were mean ones, you’d be dozing away, content in a familiar place. You are such a grump.” She jerked the wheel abruptly to the left to make the turn into the fair grounds and onto the bumpy dirt road that led to the back of the booths. The movement sent Donald’s hat flying.

  He grabbed it from the floor and brushed it off with his forearm. “You ruin my 10X Stetson, you’ll be in trouble, little lady.”

  “It’s not nice to point out how size challenged I am. I’m sure that’s some kind of ism or other and may be against the law.”

  Donald growled something under his breath, and Emily laughed. Donald gave her his version of a smile—one side of his mouth tipped upward—to show her they were good friends, although Donald wanted more, and she knew that. She wondered if he did.

  They parted at the gate for the vendors and workers.

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  “Naomi’s coming. She’s a better driver than you and much better company.” She loved to kid him. He didn’t see the humor in it, and that seemed funny in and of itself. He growled something under his breath again. She waved goodbye, threw her apron with the official competition worker badge pinned to it over her shoulder and took off in the opposite direction looking for her assigned beer station.

  She strode past the barbeque tents, sniffing the air filled with smells of meat cooking slow and low on huge cookers, some homemade, others state-of-the-art industrial smokers and grills. Her mouth watered in anticipation of later, after the competition when the contestants would offer their barbeque for tasting to the public.

  As she passed by one of the tents, a short man with red hair and a big belly called out to her. “Hey, there, I got some ribs here, ma’am, and I need someone to tell me if they’re any good.” He held out a meaty bone dripping with brown sauce to her. “Here you go. Sink your teeth into that.” He shoved a napkin into her hand. “Wha’d ya think?”

  “Good.” The meat was tender, juicy and the sauce spicy and sweet.

  “Wish you were a judge,” the man remarked.

  “I’ll just bet you do, ya bum.” The angry voice came from a skinny fellow with his hair in pigtails. He towered over the red-haired one. “You the guy who took my sauce mop? Someone took my sauce mop, and Barney over there said he thought you had it.”

  “I wouldn’t contaminate my meat with your inferior sauce. I’d have to soak that mop for days just to get out the overpowering taste of that cheap vinegar you use.”

  Oh, oh, thought Emily. She’d heard the guys at this competition were serious about their barbeque, but these two looked as if they wanted to clobber each other and throw the loser onto a bed of coals. She wiped the sauce from her mouth and backed away.

  A hand stopped her. “Don’t worry about them. Dirk and Casey go at it every year, accusing the other of doing something agains
t competition rules. It’s a good show.”

  She turned and looked up into the brown eyes of a man about her age. He held out his hand. “Name’s Charlie. Actually it’s Charlie Brown. People call me Chuck or Big Chuck.” He paused and the look on his face seemed to suggest he worried the “Big” might be offensive to one of her stature. “I’m the organizer for this affair. I see you’ve got one of our aprons in your hand. You a competitor?”

  “Gosh no. I’m one of your bartenders. Emily Rhodes. Nice to meet you, uh, Chuck.” She wiped off the stickiness onto the napkin before she offered her hand to him.

  “Don’t worry about the sauce. I shake so many barbeque-covered hands in the three days of this shindig, you’d think my paw was a rack of ribs.”

  “I demand the right to search your booth,” said the tall man.

  “I guess things are getting a little too hot. I’d better step in before it gets serious.” Chuck strode forward and separated the two before they got any closer. By the time Emily had finished her rib and tossed the bone in the trash, all three men were laughing together. She was relieved it was a show as Chuck said and not serious.

  At the beer booth, the two men, her fellow bartenders, showed surprise she was a woman and such a tiny one. And of course, they just had to make comments. By the sly smile that crossed the older man’s face, she knew they were planning to have a little fun with her.

  “Say,” he said, “this keg is getting low. I don’t suppose you could go get us another one.”

  “Now, Ralph, don’t be silly. This here is just a little bitty gal. She can’t be expected to lug a keg out of the cooler truck. I doubt she can even pull a beer without some help.”

  Emily walked up to the older guy, placing her foot hard on his. She rested it there bearing down with all her hundred pounds. “Why sure, fellas. I know you’ve been standing here for at least an hour or so, tiring yourselves out with telling tasteless jokes. You sure do need a break. You rest easy. I’ll get that keg for you.” Ralph’s masculine pride wouldn’t let him ask her to move her foot, not in front of his pal. His face began to turn red, and his smile lost its lift like a push-up bra without the foam inserts.

  Emily spun on her foot, delivering a final crunch to Ralph’s instep and eliciting a muffled moan from his lips.

  She was glad to get away from those two. She checked her watch as she walked toward the cooler truck. It was only eight in the evening. This is going to be a long night.

  Several men wearing badges indicating they were festival officials stood near the truck. Emily pointed to her worker badge. “Gotta get a new keg.” They nodded and ignored her. I could have flashed my AARP card. They wouldn’t have noticed. She wondered who would get the blame if some of the kegs came up missing.

  She flipped the heavy plastic curtains aside and entered the cold of the truck. The weather for the barbeque festival held in Florida’s Big Lake country in early April was signaling the heat of the summer; today it was in the mid eighties. The air inside felt good to her. Maybe she should spend the rest of the time in here and forget about pulling beer. She sat on one of the kegs to consider how she would handle her fellow workers when she got back. Was the crushed foot message enough?

  She got up and checked the kegs for one that held the light beer she was seeking. When she moved it from between two others, something flopped into the space she’d created by dislodging it. An arm! Scared the hell out of her. She leaned in to get a better look. It was attached to a man who seemed to have fallen between the kegs and was wedged in there.

  “Hey, buddy,” she said. It had to be a drunk looking for a place to get cool and sleep it off. She tugged at the man’s sleeve. “This isn’t a hotel. Get up.” She grabbed the man’s arm and tugged harder. Something cold and slippery came off on her hand. She held up her fingers in the dim light. It looked brown. She took a sniff. It smelled like barbeque sauce. What a slob, she thought.

  A few more tugs and some jockeying of the kegs allowed her to free him from between them. Now she could see the man was covered with sauce from top to bottom. And with all her efforts at extracting him, so was she. She looked into his saucy face and noticed something truly odd. A red apple was stuck in his mouth. And something even odder. Another substance on the side of his face, red not brown, mixed with the barbeque sauce. Good God. He’s got ketchup all over him too. Maybe I should look for other condiments. This gave a whole new meaning to beer and brats.

  The giggle about to erupt from her throat lost its way, headed off by a sickening smell, an odor not associated with barbeque. Not ketchup. It was blood on the side of his face.

  She backed out of the cooler and then hiccupped, her usual response to finding dead bodies.

  This was her second body. Please, God, let it be my last.

  Chapter 2

  “Well, I see you got yourself in another fix,” said Detective Lewis, the head detective for the Big Lake Police Department.

  He ignored the angry look she shot him. He expected it. He had pointed out the obvious and, as usual, she took offense.

  “Hey,” she said, “If you’re going to accuse me of creating trouble, you can at least look at me when you do it.”

  Stanton Lewis liked Emily, and he particularly liked her when she was all riled up, like now. The anger painted her lips a bright red and her cheeks flushed with color. It was, Lewis thought, a wholesome and healthy look. And not, he also acknowledged, the look of a guilty woman. He knew Emily well enough that he was certain she had nothing to do with the death of the man in the cooler.

  And just who was the dead man, Lewis asked himself. No ID on the body and no one he’d talked to yet seemed to be able to identify him. Or they were lying to him. Someone had to know him, otherwise how could he have gotten into the festival? The medical examiner told Lewis he thought the body had been on the cooler truck for awhile, several hours at least.

  “Probably hit on the head sometime this afternoon,” Doc Melbourne said. “Died soon after, I’d guess. I’ll have more for you tomorrow.”

  Lewis turned his back on Emily and bent over the victim before the techs zipped him into a body bag. Emily stood close enough to Lewis that he could smell her cologne. Kind of spicy. Like the woman herself.

  “I thought you didn’t like looking at dead bodies.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, then you should try not finding them so often.”

  “Is it my fault they turn up when I’m around? I was just doing my job, both times. These guys pop up around here like mildew on the siding of my house. Besides, I was kind of curious what could cause all that blood. There was no weapon I could see.”

  “Oh, so you had a look around before you called us.”

  “No, I did not. The cooler held only beer kegs. And the body. I’d notice if there was anything else there wouldn’t I?”

  “She’s a real stickler for detail,” said a voice behind them.

  “Donald Green. Another person who always seems to show up when the bodies do. Now the only one we’re missing is Clara.”

  “I’m right here.” The woman who spoke was as tall as Emily was short, almost as tall as Stanton and Donald. Her height was accentuated by her long legs and her mop of flaming red hair. “You bothering my friend again, Detective Lewis?”

  Lewis threw up his hands as if to ward off Clara’s attack “You know better than that, Counselor.”

  Both Donald and Clara stood behind the yellow crime tape. Lewis walked over to them, pulling Emily with him.

  “Have you read her her rights yet?” asked Clara.

  Donald stepped as close to Lewis as he could get without trespassing on the crime scene.

  “Hey, hey, guys. Stop behaving as if I’m not here. First the detective acts as if I don’t exist, then you two rush in here like the Russian mob. I’m just fine.” Emily hiccupped and put her hand on her abdomen. “I could use a bathroom though.”

  Lewis, Clara and Donald were too into their altercation to acknowled
ge Emily. If Emily’s stomach didn’t feel so odd, she might have laughed at the picture of the three of them trying to defend her by ignoring her. It was one of the problems of being short, she thought. She tugged on Lewis’ sleeve and got no reaction. She screwed up her face and crossed her eyes, but Clara and Donald were too busy getting in Lewis’ face to see Emily’s.

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned her back. And threw up on the crime scene.

  Clara held her up with one arm while she wiped Emily’s face with a paper towel. They were in the fairground’s bathroom. Other women entering and leaving gave them wide berth. Emily heard a mother tell her daughter, “That’s what happens when you drink too much. It’s not pretty.”

  “You could have told us you were feeling sick,” Clara said.

  Emily rolled her eyes.

  “You’re not going to pass out on me now are you?”

  “I did tell you I was sick.”

  “You need to learn to speak up, Emily. You’re such a tiny thing, people tend to overlook you.”

  “People treat me like I’m an elf.”

  “Not at all. It’s just that you’re so short.”

  “It’s just that you’re so tall.”

  Clara stepped back to look at her cleaning job. “Point taken. I’m sorry. The combination of Donald, Lewis and me, well, it’s lethal.”

  “Yet you’re all friends of mine. Couldn’t you put a hold on the fighting for my sake?”

  “Sure, honey. I got carried away seeing you there with Lewis. I thought he was going to arrest you again.”

  “He knows I had nothing to do with this one. I don’t even know the guy. I just found him.”

  “I suppose Lewis lectured you about doing that, right?”

  “Yep.” Emily turned on the water faucet and stuck her mouth under it. “I’m so thirsty.” She gulped down the liquid for several minutes. “Tastes good.” She turned her head and let the cold water splash over her hair and into her eyes. “Feels better.”