by C. L. Bevill
When the law arrived Brownie was posing for a photograph taken by his mother with her Droid. He was saying proudly as both Pegram County Sheriff’s Deputies and Pegramville Police Officers rushed inside, “Knot tying was one of my favorite Boy Scout badges.” Then he proudly held up the stun gun. “Science and technology was another favorite.” He had one foot propped on Nancy Musgrave’s inert body as if he was a big game hunter, and the social worker was his downed prey.
Precious and Wallie had rushed in a few minutes before John Q. Law. Wallie had a very large pipe wrench and was ready to wield it in defense of the people for which he was contracted to build a house and from whom he hadn’t received the final third installment of monies owed him. Precious had a set of teeth with which she was prepared to nip and savage anyone threatening her favorite humans.
“Brownie made…the stun gun?” Bubba said incredulously.
Brownie smiled proudly, and then the police descended. They didn’t ask questions or take time to find out details. They simply pounced on Bubba and made sure he was incapacitated before settling down to find out the discriminating particulars.
Bubba looked around for Willodean and was saddened to find that she was not present. Was it possible that Sheriff John had taken her off the case because of her bias, or that, even worse, she might have been fired for her previous actions? If either case was true, Bubba could ensure that it was cleared up as soon as the two police officers, Haynes and Smithson, climbed off his back and allowed him to breathe once again.
Miz Adelia and Aunt Caressa were both trying to tell Big Joe the same thing. “Nancy Musgrave did it!” one shrieked. “She admitted everything!” the other one yelled. “She killed Steve Killebrew and Miz Beatrice!” “She tried to frame Bubba and Miz Demetrice!” “Bubba’s not guilty of nothing at all!”
Big Joe was skeptical. There was a large bruise on his jaw where Bubba had clocked him. It turned out that Bubba hadn’t broken his jaw after all, but that fact didn’t dim the glare he threw in Bubba’s direction when the chief paused to consider the information.
Then Fudge repeated the same company line. Then Virtna did. Then Brownie showed them the stun gun and the secured Nancy. The ten-year-old had bound her with readily handy curtain ties. Big Joe took the stun gun away from Brownie and looked at it doubtfully.
The loonies put in their nickel’s worth. All three pointed fingers at Nancy. David Beathard said, “The social worker has a latent personality disorder that was formed in early childhood by traumatic events that tainted her ability to differentiate between right and wrong.”
“Uh-huh,” Big Joe said. He studied the stun gun carefully.
“She art verily an unmuzzled, plume-plucked miscreant,” Thelda nodded firmly.
“I triiiied to heeeeaaaal the one with the demon in her sooooul,” Jesus Christ ascertained calmly. He reached for a cinnamon roll and pulled it free from the others with a cheerful smile. “But the demon is caught faaaast there. It’s a saaaad state, to be true,” he finished, smacking his lips. “Thank meeee that she has been caaaaught.”
“And the kid knocked her out with this,” Big Joe said unbelievingly.
Brownie nodded proudly.
Big Joe looked at the very large revolver on the ground next to Nancy Musgrave. “Will someone please pick up that weapon and secure it before something really bad happens.”
Deputy Steve Simms plucked up the gun and stepped back. “Damn,” he said, hefting the weapon. “It’s a .50 caliber Smith and Wesson. And it feels like it weighs five pounds.”
Big Joe grimaced. “I meant with gloves, dumb ass.”
Steve winced.
Sighing, Big Joe lifted the stun gun again. “I don’t believe this worked.”
Brownie was indignant. “Put her down like a dog lying on a sunny porch,” he avowed.
Fudge nodded eagerly. “Boy’s smart.”
“I need to go to more of the Boy Scout meetings,” Virtna said with an acrid promise in her eyes. “Really I do.”
“Commere,” Big Joe said to Officer Smithson. Smithson stepped away from Bubba, and Bubba heaved a sigh of relief. Smithson moved to Big Joe’s side, and Big Joe abruptly zapped him with the stun gun. Smithson curtly fell down on the floor and proceeded to twitch uncontrollably.
Big Joe looked at the stun gun again with amazement. “Dang. You made this, kid?”
Brownie tried to appear humble but failed.
Sheriff John came into the dining room, bandages still fastened to his neck where he’d had a tracheotomy. He had rough red marks around his neck where he’d been hanged with the rope. His sidearm was out and pointed at the ground in front of him. His eyes skittered over the chaotic scene. “What the hell happened here?” he demanded with a voice that sounded like grated boulders.
Everyone but Bubba, Nancy, and Officer Smithson rushed to explain.
Eventually it was only Big Joe and Sheriff John speaking. “You really want to take Bubba to jail, Joe?” the sheriff asked sarcastically. “After all, you wouldn’t have listened to him ifin he had told you there was a killer at his house, would you?”
Big Joe pointed at Bubba. “He assaulted a law enforcement official.”
“You don’t look so bad,” Sheriff John judged. “Little itty-bitty bruise on your jaw.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Jr.,” Big Joe said with a heartrending sigh of disgust. “Let him go, Haynes.”
“No H.,” Jesus corrected, his mouth half full of cinnamon roll. “Aaaand I’m not a junior.”
Big Joe scowled at Jesus Christ momentarily.
Bubba finally was allowed to get off the floor. “And you’ll let Ma out?” he asked of Big Joe.
Big Joe scowled some more. It was a look that Bubba reckoned he had practiced regularly in a mirror to perfect. “I’ll let her out as soon as everything gets cleared up.”
Bubba nodded solemnly. “A little jail time will put some fire in her britches,” he said.
“And who’s going to take the loonies back to the institute?” Big Joe demanded.
“I protest the derogatory use of such slanderous names against those who are mentally disabled,” David Beathard said vehemently.
“Sheriff John,” Bubba said. He looked around. “Where’s Willodean?”
Sheriff John looked at Bubba and then slowly looked around as well. “She ain’t here?”
Bubba shook his head. “Not unless she’s outside. I thought mebe you’d…”
“What? Fired her because the two of you are…oh, hell, I don’t know what you are,” Sheriff John said forcefully. “No one knows. And everyone really wants to know.”
Big Joe started rounding up the loonies and directing them to go with an officer who would return them to the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being. He called for an ambulance to check on Nancy Musgrave and Officer Smithson. Big Joe finally ended with an irate, “Will someone please put some cuffs on Nancy before she wakes up and becomes homicidal again?”
Fudge and Virtna were speaking softly to Brownie. Brownie was asking them if he could get his stun gun back.
Precious nudged Bubba’s leg, and Bubba leaned down to scratch under her loose jowls. She leaned against his leg in utter disregard for anyone else’s presence in the room.
“Hey, Simms,” Sheriff John said. “Where’s Gray?”
Steve Simms looked around. “She ain’t here?”
Sheriff John keyed his shoulder mike and said a request for Willodean’s call sign. There wasn’t an answer. He looked carefully at Bubba. The older man’s face was worried, and the expression made Bubba’s insides twist. “She tell you about the problem she’s been having?”
Bubba frowned. “There was something she wanted to tell me but all of this happened.”
Sheriff John nodded grimly. He repeated his request for Willodean to check in.
The room began to grow silent as the urgency of Sheriff John’s voice became clear. He called to the station and asked for a GPS report on her unit. When he received the i
nformation he tugged on Bubba’s arm and said, “Come with me.”
Willodean’s official car was a mile away from the Snoddy property. It looked as if someone had rammed in the side of it with another vehicle. Bubba looked around frantically. Willodean wasn’t in the car, but there was blood on the steering wheel and on the door. It wasn’t a lot of blood, but it was enough to seriously alarm both men.
“Don’t touch anything else, Bubba,” Sheriff John warned him. “It’s a crime scene now.”
“Crime scene,” Bubba repeated with irritation. “It’s a car wreck, John. We need to call folks in to look for her. She could be injured and stumbling around.” Bubba started around the wrecked Bronco, and his intense gaze raked frantically over the landscape. There was nothing but fields to one side and deep forest to the other. And there wasn’t even a sign of Willodean Gray.
Bubba’s breath hitched in his chest and it hurt.
“We’ll look for her, I swear,” Sheriff John said. “But I don’t think she’s here now.”
Bubba cast him an incredulous glance as if he couldn’t believe the words coming out of Sheriff John’s mouth. He turned back to the woods and yelled, “Willodean!”
No one answered.
The End.
Author’s note:
Oh, I know, I know. People are going to hate me for that ending. I’m going to get letters. Lots of letters.
Allow me to explain a few things. I wrote Bubba and the Dead Woman in 1999. It was one of my first books, and unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of luck getting it sold. So when the wide world of eBooks opened up, I was glad to go back and try to remake the book into something saleable. I wasn’t impressed with my own work, so I made it free because I didn’t think it was that great. But what the heck do I know? People loved Bubba. They loved Miz Demetrice. They loved Precious. They loved the whole thing. To date, about 200,000 copies have been downloaded of Bubba and the Dead Woman. I’m not getting a penny for it, but I enjoy the feedback, which is largely positive.
In my writing career I’ve written several books that were meant to be the first part of series, like Sea of Dreams is meant to be the first in a trilogy. And rest assured I have every intention of finishing each and every one that needs a sequel. So Bubba was meant to be a series of funky, funny mysteries. I love the South and contrary to some of the reviewers’ critical comments, I’ve lived in Texas and Louisiana long enough (decades) to know how they speak and to copy some of their phraseology. I hope the purists will forgive my literary license with Civil War events. Although most of the action took place east of the Mississippi, there were some smaller battles in Texas, and I didn’t have to make that up at all.
In any case, I hope the diehards love Bubba as much as I do. And be assured that unless a meteor falls on my head tomorrow, the third Bubba is in the works as we speak. I haven’t thought of a name, but I’m open to suggestions.
In the meantime, if you liked Bubba, you’ll enjoy my blog, Confessions of a Fat Woman, at http://carwoo.blogspot.com/ Life is too funny not to laugh about it.
Happy reading to all!
Sincerely,
C.L. Bevill
About the Author
C.L. Bevill has lived in Texas, Virginia, Arizona, and Oregon. She once was in the U.S. Army and a graphic illustrator. She holds degrees in social psychology and counseling. She is the author of Bubba and the Dead Woman, Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas, Bayou Moon, and Shadow People, among others. Presently she lives with her husband and her daughter and continues to constantly write. She can be reached at www.clbevill.com or you can read her blog at www.carwoo.blogspot.com
Other Novels by C.L. Bevill
~
Mysteries:
Bubba and the Dead Woman
Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas
Bubba and the Missing Woman
Bayou Moon
Paranormal Romance:
Veiled Eyes (Lake People)
Disembodied Bones (Lake People)
Arcanorum (Lake People) (Coming Soon)
The Moon Trilogy:
Black Moon (The Moon Trilogy 1)
Amber Moon (The Moon Trilogy 2)
Silver Moon (The Moon Trilogy 3)
Cat Clan Novella:
Harvest Moon
Blood Moon
Shadow People
Sea of Dreams
Suspense:
The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager
Black Comedy:
The Life and Death of Bayou Billy
Missile Rats
Chicklet:
Dial ‘M’ For Mascara
Table of Contents
Chapter One - Bubba Finds Another Body
Chapter Two - Bubba and the Police Chief
Chapter Three - Bubba Meets Jesus Christ
Chapter Four - Bubba Has a Headache, er, Family Christmas
Chapter Five - Bubba’s Mama Finds a Corpse
Chapter Six - Bubba is a Suspect…Again
Chapter Seven - Bubba Finds a Clue and it Don’t Look Good for Miz D.
Chapter Eight - Bubba in the Sheriff’s Department…Again
Chapter Nine - Bubba Has a Willodean Moment
Chapter Ten - Bubba on the Trail
Chapter Eleven - Bubba’s Mama Does Some Criminal Mischievousness
Chapter Twelve - Bubba on the Tracks of an Evil Perpetrator
Chapter Thirteen - Bubba and the Sheriff…Again
Chapter Fourteen - Bubba Gets Incarcerated for the First Time in This Novel
Chapter Fifteen - Bubba’s Mama Spills Some Beans
Chapter Sixteen - Bubba’s on the Hunt
Chapter Seventeen - Bubba Has to Ruminate About Things
Chapter Eighteen - Bubba and the Gorgeous Willodean Gray
Chapter Nineteen - Bubba Does Some Investigatin’
Chapter Twenty - Bubba’s Like a Hound Dog
Chapter Twenty-one - Bubba Meets Jesus Christ Again
Chapter Twenty-two - The Christmas Killer Meets…Brownie
Epilogue - Things Wrap up for Bubba…or Do They?
Table of Contents
Chapter One - Bubba Finds Another Body
Chapter Two - Bubba and the Police Chief
Chapter Three - Bubba Meets Jesus Christ
Chapter Four - Bubba Has a Headache, er, Family Christmas
Chapter Five - Bubba’s Mama Finds a Corpse
Chapter Six - Bubba is a Suspect…Again
Chapter Seven - Bubba Finds a Clue and it Don’t Look Good for Miz D.
Chapter Eight - Bubba in the Sheriff’s Department…Again
Chapter Nine - Bubba Has a Willodean Moment
Chapter Ten - Bubba on the Trail
Chapter Eleven - Bubba’s Mama Does Some Criminal Mischievousness
Chapter Twelve - Bubba on the Tracks of an Evil Perpetrator
Chapter Thirteen - Bubba and the Sheriff…Again
Chapter Fourteen - Bubba Gets Incarcerated for the First Time in This Novel
Chapter Fifteen - Bubba’s Mama Spills Some Beans
Chapter Sixteen - Bubba’s on the Hunt
Chapter Seventeen - Bubba Has to Ruminate About Things
Chapter Eighteen - Bubba and the Gorgeous Willodean Gray
Chapter Nineteen - Bubba Does Some Investigatin’
Chapter Twenty - Bubba’s Like a Hound Dog
Chapter Twenty-one - Bubba Meets Jesus Christ Again
Chapter Twenty-two - The Christmas Killer Meets…Brownie
Epilogue - Things Wrap up for Bubba…or Do They?
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