Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

“You’re driving a vehicle that isn’t monitored. We don’t have a blip for you on the screen.”

“I’m still in my father’s cab.”

“Be careful.” And he was gone.

I lugged the charcoal and wood and fire starter stuff across the field to Lula and Grandma. Lula filled the bottom of the grill with charcoal and piled the wood on top. She poured accelerant on and used the gizmo to light it. WHOOOSH! The accelerant caught, flames shot up, and the canopy caught fire. One of the guys in the kitchen next to us rushed over with a fire extinguisher and put the canopy fire out.

“Thanks,” Grandma said to him. “That was quick thinking. Last time that happened, it burned up Lula’s chef hat and cremated our maple tree.”

“You might want to move the canopy so it’s not over the grill,” the guy said. “Just a suggestion.”

Connie hurried to the table and set two bags on it. “I saw the flames from the parking lot,” she said. “What happened?”

“The usual,” Grandma said. “No biggie.”

Connie, Lula, Grandma, and I each took a pole and moved the canopy back a few feet. There was a large black-rimmed, smoking hole in the top and a smaller one in the front flap where the funeral home name was written. It now said MAYNARD FUN HOME. I thought it was an improvement. God works in mysterious ways.

We all set to work mixing the sauce and getting the ribs into the marinade.

“I was talking to some people in the parking lot,” Connie said. “One of them was on the barbecue committee, and they said Al Roker and his crew were going to be walking around all afternoon. They were waiting for the van to show up.”

“Al Roker is a big star,” Grandma said. “He might be about the most famous person we’ve had in Trenton.”

“There was that singer last year,” Lula said. “Whatsher-name. She was pretty famous. And Cher came through once. I didn’t see her, but I heard she rode a elephant.”

“We’re not as fancy as some of these people,” Grandma said. “I don’t know if Al Roker is gonna want to film us.”

“I got it covered,” Lula said. “You’ll see soon as Larry gets here, we’ll have it locked in.”

Connie looked up at the sign. “It just says Flamin’.”

“One of the committee people got a stick up her butt about cussing,” Grandma said. “We tried to explain Assholes wasn’t being used as a cuss, that it was the part of the body effected by our sauce, but she wasn’t having any of it.”

“Bein’ that we burned a hole in our roof, it turns out Flamin’ isn’t such a bad name for us, anyway,” Lula said.

Weekday or not, there were a lot of people at the cook-off. Swarms of them were milling around in front of the kitchens and strolling the grounds. I could see Larry’s head bobbing above the crowd as they all made their way along the path. He reached us and handed a big box to Lula.

“I can’t stay,” he said. “I have to work today.”

“Thanks,” Lula said. “This is gonna make celebrities out of us. This could get me my big break.”

“I couldn’t get exactly what you wanted,” Larry said. “So I got you the next best thing.”

Larry left, and Lula tore the box open. “I got the idea from Mister Clucky,” she said. “Cluck-in-a-Bucket got Mister Clucky the dancin’ chicken, and we’re going to have the dancing barbecue sparerib.”

No one said anything for a full thirty seconds. I mean, what was there to say? A dancing sparerib. As if the funeral home canopy and the massacred sign wasn’t enough humiliation for one day.

Grandma was the first to find her voice. “Who’s gonna be the sparerib?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Lula said. “I didn’t decide. Probably everyone wants to be. I guess I could do eenie meenie minie mo.”

“There’s no way in hell you’re getting me in a sparerib suit,” Connie said.

“Let’s see what we got,” Lula said, pulling the suit out of the box. “What the heck? This isn’t no sparerib. This isn’t even a pork chop.”

“It looks like a hot dog,” Grandma said. “I guess it was all Larry could get on short notice.”

“This don’t work,” Lula said. “How can someone be the Flamin’ dancing hot dog when we’re cooking ribs?”