|
Order this writing in the collection book the Book of Scars for only $1695 |
|
| |
|
Order this writing in the collection book Revealing All Your Dirty Little Secrets available for only $1995 |
 |
|
| |
This appears in a pre-2010 issue
|
|
|
|
| ||
DEATH BY BARBEQUE
Dawn Miller
In Pigwell, time is not measured by days or weeks but by the number of eighteen wheelers that drive past my house. Three or four go by every hour on their way to Bob’s Big Beefy Barbeque. Bob mixes up the best sauce south of the Mason Dixon Line. Word is he spices it up with a little bit of Jack Daniels and a splash of beer. Probably more than “a little bit,” I’ve gotten quite a buzz off of a plate of ribs on many occasions.
Giving alcohol to people who drive for a living may not be the best idea in the world but it does have its benefits when you and your wife own the only motel in town too. Bob and Peggy Sue Mitchell had quite a cash cow going for the past five years or so. That was until people started dying. Death tends to have an adverse effect on your business especially if it’s your patrons that are pushing up daisies.
The first causality was about two weeks ago. Johnnie Hewitt had been running freight for Trans Atlantic Trucking for twenty years before he met his maker after a heaping plateful of Bob’s beauties. Peggy Sue found him face down on the floor of his room the next day. It didn’t take long for word about his demise to make its way around town. Given the fact that Johnnie weighed about three hundred pounds and smoked like a chimney, most folks felt his time had just come. That is until fellow truckers Davie Stewart and Mark Cummings died five days later. Those passings weren’t so easy to dismiss. Both were in their early thirties with no obvious signs of ill health. So after Mark was found sprawled beside his truck bed, our local family physician took a closer look.
Poor Doc McCoy was beside himself when the blood tests showed arsenic. He’d been taking care of the good citizens of Pigwell for nearly four decades and had never seen any thing like it. People round here died of old age or the odd hunting accident. They didn’t drop dead from poison which is where I come in.
I am Mary Kate Gracen. Pigwell’s first female sheriff. It was a job which was highly coveted around this neck of the woods since the position came with a lot of perks. First and foremost was the three bedroom Colonial complete with a jail in the back, not that one was needed though. Crime around this bend in the south was pretty much non-existent which is why the job competition was so stiff. However when the battle for the badge ended, I was on top. I had one thing the other appointees didn’t, large breasts.
Pete Marley, our esteemed Mayor, was also the town pervert. So it didn’t hurt that I showed up for my interview in a blouse so tight it made my breasts look like they were standing at attention. Just in case Pete was a leg man, I completed the look with a form fitting red mini and matching spiked heels.
I’ll admit my tactics were a bit underhanded and though it was my looks that got me the job, it was my brains that was going to keep it, that and solving Pigwell’s first homicide in over fifty years. Trouble was I didn’t have a clue. Besides being male and a trucker, the three men didn’t seem to have a thing in common. Each one worked for a different company and all were well known family guys from the immediate area. The arsenic trail wasn’t any help either. There wasn’t a farm or ranch within a hundred miles that didn’t use the stuff to kill unwanted vermin.
So here I sat, a week after the last murder, watching the eighteen wheelers roll by my beautiful yellow and white wrap around porch. Oh the trucks still kept coming through Pigwell like always. You could still tell how much time had passed. They just didn’t stop any more. Word about the poisoned specials had quickly drifted around the tight knit group of truckers that worked the nearby interstate. Bob’s Big Beefy Barbeque was fading fast. Even the mice had taken up residence elsewhere. To the untrained eye that may have seemed like a motive and a good one at that if Beefy Barbeque wasn’t the only descent restaurant for miles.
Bob didn’t have any competition or enemies as far as I could tell. He was one of Pigwell’s favorite sons. When his daddy had died ten years ago, Bob and his childhood sweetheart Peggy Sue took over the family’s general store and turned it into one of the area’s biggest attractions though it really wasn’t until he started spiking the sauce that things started taking off.
The jealousy angle was going nowhere so I was currently concentrating on the events leading up to the death of the three men. Unfortunately, they were so mundanely ordinary my eye lids were starting to droop. So I decided to cross Pigwell’s one road and pay Bob’s another visit. Perhaps I had missed something the other twenty times, I’d been through the place. My mama said an answer was like a rattlesnake, always around if you knew where to look.
It was high noon and another scorcher. The dirt was so hot you could grill a steak. It made the soles of my feet burn as I walked down the main drag. Pigwell was one small section of a larger county. It consisted of one street and that one street housed all the essentials-post office, food, house of worship and jail.
Normally, at this time of the day, the Beefy Barbeque would be bursting at the seams with customers. Most of them truckers looking to relax and fill their bellies after a morning full of driving. When I opened up the heavy oak door, the main dining room was empty. Instead of spicy sauce, there was a strong aroma of bleach. The hairs on my nose itched from the smell.
The bar where Bob normally stood almost twenty-four seven was vacant too. The stools were lined up in neat rows along with the chairs and tables. From the kitchen came the sweet sounds of Elvis vacationing at Heartbreak Hotel. The swinging door squeaked like a scared mouse when I pushed it open, in search of Bob.
It was empty too except for Peggy Sue who sat on a counter next to the sink filing her nails. Her stringy blond hair was pulled up into a loose bun. Some of the fallen strands framed her thick face. At her feet, lay Bob. She was using his large form to rest her boots on.
“Bout time you showed up, Mary Kate,” she hissed without looking up. “You are a little slow on the uptake aren’t you but then brains ain’t why you’re wearing that uniform is it?”
Instinctively I took a couple of steps toward Bob but then stopped. His big lumpy chest wasn’t moving and his pallor was blue. I didn’t need a medical degree to tell me he was dead as a doornail. My hands nervously pulled at my sweaty uniform top and my eyes glanced down at the vacant holster on my hip. Like my TV hero Sheriff Andy, I didn’t carry a gun.
“What are you babbling about Peggy Sue? I got this job because I earned it.”
“On your back maybe,” she said with a smile. “Whole town knows why you got that appointment out of Pete and it sure wasn’t on merit.”
“Now you hold on a minute, I did not sleep with Pete Marley!”
Peggy Sue met my gaze head on. “Didn’t have to, all you had to do was show him those,” she said, pointing at my chest. “Are you gonna deny you did that?”
I smiled. “No, what’s wrong with flaunting what you got? What do you call what you do behind the bar? You might as well put yours on a platter the way you offer them up to the customers.”
Peggy Sue blew on her nails and glared. “Perhaps but I don’t sleep with other people’s husbands to get what I want. What I do is for the business.”
“I didn’t sleep with Pete Marley.” My cheeks were getting a bit hot. This visit was not going the way I’d expected. Peggy Sue was attacking my moral fiber which I’ll admit was a little questionable even on my best day but it hardly warranted the verbal attack.
“No, but you slept with Bob and Bob’s word is law round Pigwell. You know that.” We both glanced at the heaping body on the floor. Well, it used to be. “Don’t bother denying it,” she continued, unmoved by her dead husband’s profile. “He told me everything, poor slob. He never could keep a secret.”
Beads of sweat were running down my back. My mind was racing. This was my big chance to make a name for myself standing up. I was in the same room with the killer and I didn’t even have to solve the crimes. She flat out admitted it. All I had to do now was arrest her.
“Yeah, I slept with Bob,” I challenged, hoping to knock her off guard. “A little extra insurance is a good thing. You ought to know that. I’m sure you’ve been around more than one penis in your day.”
Peggy Sue slid off the counter and straightened her tight denim skirt. Her dusty boots clicked on the linoleum as she callously stepped over Bob’s body. The tight red t-shirt barely fit over her double d-cups. “How many penises I’ve mounted is not the issue here, have a seat,” she said, motioning to the sparkling clean counter. “Lunch is ready.” On the Big Barbecue’s trademark red and white checkered placemat was a small plate of ribs, dripping with sticky sauce. “Sit down,” she prompted again when I didn’t move. “It’s not a request.” Peggy Sue reached into a nearby drawer and pulled out a gun. “I said sit down.”
Slowly, I moved farther into the kitchen and sat down on the bar stool which was placed in front of the place setting.
“Eat it,” she instructed firmly.
“No,” I said, pushing the plate away.
Peggy Sue aimed the pistol at my head and walked closer. “It ain’t like you have a choice here Mary Kate. Your time is up, might as well accept it with the common decency you lacked in life.”
I glanced around the room, hoping to find something to save me. My heart was racing and the perspiration was trickling down my sides. Peggy Sue was already referring to me in the past tense and it was as frightening as the unfeeling look in her eyes. I strained my ears for some sound of motion in the place besides ours. The answering silence was sobering. “Why?”
Peggy Sue stared at me like I was an annoying child. “Why what,” she asked, mimicking my whimpering voice. “Why you or why the others?”
“Both I guess. I haven’t done any thing to you.”
Peggy Sue’s laughter drowned out the king’s voice crooning in the background. “You really have to be kidding me! You mean you didn’t get the connection.” She roared louder. “And you think you deserve to be the sheriff?” Her eyes hardened and she abruptly stopped cackling. “You broke the rule.”
My blood went cold at the sudden change in her eyes. It was pure hatred. “What rule?” I whispered.
“The cardinal rule,” she said laying the gun down on the counter. “You never mess with another woman’s husband.”
She had me there. I had done that, on more than one occasion. Coveting other’s husbands was not one of my finer qualities but it certainly wasn’t something that I deserved to die for. It’s not like I was the only one. When spring’s warmth turned into summer’s roasting, every one was in heat. There wasn’t much else to do around Pigwell.
“Look, I’m sorry but it isn’t like I was the first. You going to kill every woman Bob had sex with.”
Peggy Sue glared harshly. “We’re not just talking about Bob here Mary Kate.”
I knew that too. It was the connection I didn’t want to see but was staring me right in the face. I had slept with all three of the victims at one time or another in the past month or so. It’s been a hot summer. I sat up straight and looked her square in the eye. “What are you going to do? Kill me? How are you going to explain that, huh? Two dead people lying on the floor of your restaurant? You won’t be able to get away with it.”
“You willing to bet your life on that, Mary Kate,” she said grinning. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head bout that darling, there won’t be any bodies to find.”
Peggy Sue’s five five frame was thick and strong but there wasn’t any way she could haul two people away. She’d be lucky to drag Bob to the parking lot. He weighed a ton. “You may be able to get rid of me but not him.”
“Who says I’m on my own.”
The back door swung open with a slam and all the saliva in my mouth dried in an instant as the three grieving widows walked in and silently stood side by side with Peggy Sue. They all had that same hell bent look in their eyes. I was cornered like a deer on the opening day of hunting season.
“Now what’s it going to be Mary Kate, the lunch special or a bullet?”
I stared at the stoic faces. There wasn’t a sympathetic one in the pack. I glanced down at the plate. I’d read in high school that revenge was a dish best served cold. I never quite knew what that meant. English wasn’t my best subject but I guess I was going to find out, the hard way.
The four of them took a step toward me. Peggy Sue raised the gun again and aimed it for my head. Like most of us around here, she could shoot a flea off of a dog. I picked up a rib. The sauce was sticky. It smelled sweet. My lips touched the edge of the meat as my teeth tore off a small piece. It was cold.
