Page 1 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

Prologue

On the road again…

Louise Rivard was cruising along the Louisiana bayou road in Lillian, her vintage lavender Chevy Impala convertible. Lillian was the name she gave to all her cars. Traded one in, got another, different make, usually a used jalopy in the early days, but still the same name.

But then, in the midst of her reverie, she heard the police siren behind her. Even with two cushions under her butt to compensate for her diminutive (okay, short, darn it!) height, she was barely able to see in the rearview mirror. When she recognized the cop in pursuit, she let loose with her version of a curse, “Oh, for the love of Jude! Not again!”

St. Jude, her favorite saint, was the patron of hopeless causes. Not that she was feeling particularly hopeless today, seeing as how she was dressed to the nines, lookin’ good, if she did say so herself, and off to that new restaurant, The Mudbug, to have lunch with her niece…well, her niece a couple of times removed or somethin’ like that. Mary Lou Lanier, Charmaine’s girl, a pre-veterinary student at Tulane, had begged her to meet today. The fact that she insisted on driving from their family ranch up north on a weekday when there were a bunch of mares about to give birth told Louise that it must be something important.

Hard to believe that Mary Lou is a young woman now! My, how time flies by! Or that Charmaine has a baby boy, a toddler, after a twenty-year break since Mary Lou was born! I remember when Charmaine was gettin’ married (and divorced) so many times her weddin’ cakes scarce had time to go stale, especially to the same man, Raoul Lanier, or Rusty, the sexiest cowboy this side of the Mason-Dixon line. Of course, Charmaine allus did match him in sexiness. She takes after me. Like the time me and Charmaine entered a belly dancin’ contest, and Rusty…never mind. Louise’s mind wandered a lot these days. She had to concentrate extra hard to keep her focus.

Glancing at the St. Jude bobblehead on her dashboard, she noted that the little statue wasn’t even doing the hula. How fast could I have been goin’?

She pulled over into the parking lot of Boudreaux’s General Store where a sign announced a special on jumbo bags of pork rinds, along with good deals on bait worms, okra, alligator meat, rods and reels, rotten chicken used for catching crawfish, and Tastykakes. She’d have to stop on her way back. The dumb animals who tried to ravage her vegetable garden…possums, raccoons, and the like…had a passion for those crunchy snacks, which she sprinkled around her fenced vegetable patch. She figured if she fed them the piggy treats, they would leave her tomatoes and sweet peas alone. It had worked so far. As for the okra, she had an overflow crop in her garden that she couldn’t give away, and any bayou lady worth her salt made her own cakes, thank you very much, Mister Tasty.

She put on her best glare as the copper got out of his vehicle—a dark sedan, unmarked except for the bubble light on top—and strolled up to the driver’s side of her car. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he was a policeman, all right. John LeDeux. A detective who’d transferred last year from the force in Lafayette to Houma. He was her great-nephew, or some such connection; sometimes, Louise forgot the fibs she’d been telling for decades and got her family tree mixed up.

Several faces were pressed up against the window of the store, trying to get a look-see at what she was doing. The nosy posies! Louise still had a snap in her garters, which attracted the menfolk of a certain age and wimmen who wanted to see what she was up to these days, but then, maybe they were ogling her nephew who’d be the first to say he was hotter than asphalt outside a strip club on a summer day. And, yes, the rascal had been a stripper at one time…one very short time, bless his rascally heart. He wore a pure white button-down shirt, open at the neck, blue jeans, a navy sport coat, and dark sunglasses. Didn’t matter that there was a bit of gray at the edges of his overlong dark hair, now that he’d hit forty. Hot was hot when it came to Cajun men.

“Tee-John!” That was the name the rascal had been given when he was a little tyke, Small John, before he’d grown into his six-foot frame of male handsomeness. She loved the boy to pieces. “What did I do now? I know I wasn’t speedin’.”

He leaned against the side of the car, let his sunglasses slip halfway down his nose, and peered down at her. “Can I see your license and registration, ma’am?”

“Pff! I’ll give you ma’am! You know darn well I don’t have ’em. Where’d you hide them this time anyhow?”

He shook his head as if she were clueless. “You were driving too slow. Buford Doucet called the station to say you had traffic backed up a mile on the bayou road.”

“That Buford has some nerve complainin’ about me. You oughta check out the old fart when he’s drivin’ that smelly farm truck of his. And he won’t let anyone pass him, either.”

“It’s a no-passing zone.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Try smellin’ cow shit fer a half hour and see if you don’t try to go around.”

“Tante Lulu! Such language!” Tee-John exclaimed with a grin. Tante was the Cajun word for aunt, which was what everyone called her, even those who weren’t blood kin. “Where you off to anyhow?” He gave her appearance a sweeping glance, taking in her neon-blue net driving scarf anchoring down a Farrah Fawcett wig, her heavier-than-usual blonde-toned make-up, thanks to the free samples from Charmaine’s beauty salons, and a pale pink tank top with silver sequins spelling out “Sizzling Senior” over hot pink capri pants.

She thought he murmured “Lordy, Lordy!”

“I’m meetin’ Mary Lou at The Mudbug.” She glanced at the St. Jude watch on her wrist. “And I’m late.”

“Well, auntie, shove your little behind over. Looks like I’ll be drivin’ you into town.”

“Why? I kin drive myself,” she complained, but she didn’t really mind. Sometimes she didn’t see the road signs too good. Used to be she could read those old Burma Shave signs from far away. Now…well, they were too faded, even the reproduction ones some local know-it-alls had deemed relics of historical importance. Leastways, that was her excuse for squintin’ now and then.

“Maybe I just like your company,” he said. He adjusted the sunglasses back over his eyes as he opened the driver’s door, tossed the cushions into the back, and pushed the seat as far back as it would go.

“How you gonna get back to yer cop car?”

“I’ll walk over to Luc’s office and shoot the bull for an hour or two, till you’re done with lunch. Then, I’ll drive you home.”

Luc was Lucien LeDeux, his brother and Louise’s oldest “nephew.” Best known in these parts as the Shark Solicitor because of his talents in the courtroom. If you shot your wife’s lover, or were over limit on your possum trappin’, or were caught moonin’ the mayor, Luc was the lawyer you wanted.

“Doan you have to be workin’?”

“I’m off duty today.”

“Ain’t it against police rules to be chasin’ people with a siren when yer off duty?”

He gave her a look that pretty much asked when he had been one to follow the rules.