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and the next. Then Cherry pointed a finger to a small tent that annexed onto a back “room” of the bigger booth. It was about the size of a standard closet.
    Lulu at this point was ready to get out of the rain. She and Cherry stuck their heads into the storage tent. Lulu felt her heart start pounding hard in her chest and she put a hand up as if to stop it. With her other hand she grabbed Cherry and they backed out and into the rain as fast as they’d gotten out of it.
    Because Reuben Shaw was lying dead, with a butcher knife stuck in his chest. And covered by the Graces’ tarp, marked with Cherry’s name in permanent marker.

They were lucky that Pink was still at the festival and was one of the policemen who responded to their call. He had a very calming effect on the women, who were left pale and shaking from the emotional experience of finding a body—even the body of someone who hadn’t been very pleasant. The fact was that he’d been alive and talking to them only hours before, then had reached a horrible end. He’d had his life unnaturally shortened and no one deserved that.
    Pink stayed right there with them in their booth while the Memphis police questioned them. The booth next door was marked off with crime scene tape and the police created a barrier to keep people from getting too close and tampering with the scene. Eventually, anambulance arrived to remove the body. A Lieutenant Avery Clark interviewed the women and even asked Pink a couple of questions after learning that he’d witnessed the argument earlier.
    Cherry was ready to ask some questions of her own. “Shouldn’t y’all be talking to his team members? They’re the ones who were either threatening to kill Reuben or were putting him in a choke hold.”
    Lieutenant Clark regarded her steadily. “We surely will. But right now we’re focusing on the people who discovered the body, whose tarp was found covering the body, and who actually assaulted the victim earlier in the day.”
    Cherry turned as red as her hair. “Well, all right then. But it wasn’t really like that.” Her voice was uncharacteristically hesitant.
    “What was it like then?” asked the policeman, giving her a stern look over his glasses. He was an older cop who didn’t seem in the mood to have his time wasted.
    Lulu cleared her throat. “I think Cherry means that she was trying to protect Reuben’s teammate, Sharon, from him. He was acting very threateningly and Cherry used a nondeadly weapon to prevent him from hurting her.”
    “The teammate,” said Lieutenant Clark, raising an eyebrow, “who was threatening to kill him?”
    “So she’s not exactly a pushover. Still, he was a lot bigger than she was and he meant business. Hitting himover the head with a plaster Elvis wasn’t the wrong thing to do. I’d do it again, as a matter of fact. Except I’d choose something besides Elvis as a weapon. I feel like I was desecrating the King,” said Cherry.
    “And remind me again what you two were doing in the storage tent of the booth next door?” asked the policeman smoothly. The lines around Pink’s eyes crinkled in concern, as if the women needed to be sure to think through their answer.
    Lulu said, “I was fixing to leave the festival before the gates closed.” She pointed to her wristband-free wrist. “Of course, it was pouring down rain, same as it is now. Umbrellas aren’t allowed at the festival, you know, so we were searching for tarps. We thought if I held a tarp over my head that I might stay dryer on my way to the car.”
    Cherry added darkly, “And swiping our stuff would be typical of the immature kind of thing I’d expect Reuben to do. So after we poked around here looking for it, I mentioned that maybe we should take a peek in his booth’s storage area.”
    Both women were quiet for a moment, thinking about what they’d seen there. Somebody hadn’t been crazy about Reuben. And they’d shown their displeasure with a butcher knife.
    “What