Ransom of Brownie

by Bevill, C. L.

  THE RANSOM OF BROWNIE

  by C.L. Bevill

  Smashwords Edition

  Published 2013 by C.L. Bevill

  on Smashwords

  Copyright ©2013

  by C.L. Bevill, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The Ransom of Brownie is intended

  as book 4.5 in the Bubba series.

  The series follows this order:

  Bubba and the Dead Woman

  Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas

  Bubba and the Missing Woman

  Brownie and the Dame

  Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note

  The Ransom of Brownie

  It is best read in order.

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, November 12th

  The Ransom Note Concerning Brownie

  The note itself was rather inauspicious in appearance and presentation. It sat on the welcome mat on the front veranda of the Snoddy Mansion. A fist-sized rock rested on top of it, which had probably been placed to prevent it from blowing away. It was folded in half and taped closed with clear Scotch tape.

  Bubba Snoddy, who was not quite fully awake and more than likely mostly half asleep, had come out upon the veranda with an extra-large cup of coffee gripped tightly in one hand for the purpose of enjoying the fresh morning air. He happened to notice the note by virtue of stubbing his big toe on the rock. While he hopped on one foot and unsuccessfully attempted to keep most of the coffee inside the cup, he said, “Huh.” After a few explicit and well-deserved swearwords he had learned from a Russian soldier he’d met while he’d been in the U.S. Army, he had ceased hopping and bent over to look at the flyer. He tossed the rock aside, resisting the urge to throw it as far as he could because his big toe was still throbbing. As for the note, he thought it might be something benign like a flyer for a local store and that some determined individual had delivered it down the long lane, unyielding in his resolve to do his advertising duty. (There were a few such dogged people in the greater Pegramville Metroplex who would take it upon themselves to deliver flyers to each and every household no matter how far down a lane the household was located.)

  Bubba then opened it, prying the tape apart with a fingernail. An average person wouldn’t have thought twice about the flyer at first. One first saw a giant-sized loaf of Wonder Bread that was on sale for 29¢. (→29¢←!!!) just so one would remember it was on sale.) It quickly became obvious that it was a flyer from a Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store. Then one saw some letters cut out from other sources and glued on. Then one saw that a gallon of whole milk was on sale for $1.40. Then there were other glued-on letters which blended in because the flyer was particularly busy. The very happy pig at the top smiled out at the casual reader. “YOU could be a WINNER!” was announced in between some more letters and a “GIANT” sale on Chef Boyardee. Fresh whole chicken fryers were 49¢ a pound. “WOW!” was printed on the bottom in red, white, and blue. The little period at the bottom of the exclamation mark was a star. He noticed that raviolis were only 12¢ a can and blinked. (→12¢←!!!) He was aware that not all was right in the world. In fact, the world seemed abnormally quiet.

  Bubba looked around. There were only a few fluffy white clouds in the sky, and the sky was the kind of blue that made a man want to go fishing on an isolated lake. The wind was blowing a little bit, but it was a caressing touch with the lingering scent of burning leaves. It was a fairly nice November day. Since November in Texas tended to be an average of 60 degrees, it wasn’t cold and it wasn’t hot.

  It was remarkably serene, and it was obvious that something remarkably unserene was about to happen.

  He looked around again. Specifically, he looked for corpses. There were no corpses. This was a good thing. Previously, he had encountered several dead people. Since Bubba was an automobile mechanic in the small Texas town of Pegramville, he wasn’t really used to running into dead people. (To be precise Bubba hoped he never got used to that.) Mostly, the aforementioned dead people had been murdered dead people. There had also been the recent Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival in which people pretended to be dead and used copious amounts of ketchup in their presentations. Unfortunately, there had been one dead person who wasn’t pretend-dead.

  Bubba blinked again. He lodged the extra-large coffee cup in between his arm and his body and held the former Piggly Wiggly flyer to the light. He thought he might need reading glasses, but since he wasn’t yet thirty, he didn’t really want to see an optometrist. It was true that Bubba was vain enough not to want to have to wear glasses. He would catch hell down at Culpepper’s Garage where he worked, if he had to put on spectacles in order to replace a transmission. There, he had caught hell over a number of things lately and was inclined to let the blurred vision lapse until it became a real problem.

  Bubba was fortunate that Gideon Culpepper had allowed him to go back to work at the garage after the whole murder festival fiasco. After all, trouble followed Bubba around like a dog begging for a Milk Bone. In fact, Bubba thought that trouble was tattooed on his tushie, even though he didn’t actually have any tattoos.

  Lost in the bleary limbo of half-awakedness and a rare calm moment where nothing particularly alarming was occurring, Bubba took a moment to comprehend what the letters glued on the flyer said.

  The words finally became clear. Bubba read them once and frowned. He’d found a note in a Chevy part box during the murder festival and that note had been handwritten by a woman who had been long dead. This note was very different. He read it again just to be certain.

  Bubba chuckled darkly. Brownie. Dang Brownie.

  Brownie Snoddy was the ten-, or was he eleven now?, year-old son of Bubba’s first cousin, Fudge. Brownie was also infamous for the use of a handmade Taser on the Christmas Killer and Matt Lauer. Matt Lauer still had a restraining order on Brownie, like Matt was going to wander through Pegramville anytime soon and make Brownie break out his measuring tape. The boy also happened to be a savant with pranks, weapons, and gory details of serial murders from the last two centuries. If bodily fluids were involved, Brownie was likely an expert on its dissemination. Bubba had personally seen what Brownie could do with a booger, and it wasn’t pretty.

  Furthermore, Brownie had been sent to the Snoddy Mansion by his parents in the middle of the school year because his mother, Virtna, was seven months pregnant and condemned to bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy. Typically, this wouldn’t require explaining, but Brownie had likely raised his mother’s blood pressure by a factor of ten. It was either send the kid away or bury him in the backyard with a shovel. Fudge and Virtna weren’t sterling parents, or human beings for that matter, but they did love their only (at that moment) child. Off he went to Texas until the baby was born.

  Unfortunately, this was bad news in general for Pegram County and specifically for the Texas Snoddys.

  Bubba understood that Brownie was somewhat confused and alarmed at the state of affairs. His mother was heavily pregnant and on the verge of rupturing a vein in her forehead. His father was lost in the throes of a sympa
thetic hormonal imbalance of gigantic proportion. Brownie wanted to help, but he couldn’t help being Brownie. Being farmed out to the Texas Snoddys was like being sentenced to serve time for a crime Brownie hadn’t known he had committed, and consequently, he wasn’t very happy.

  After a week in residence, the Texas Snoddys weren’t happy either. It was hard to keep Brownie in line. The school wasn’t happy. The principal of the school had called five times in five days. (One day had been without phone call, but the following day had two calls and made up for the day without.) Miz Demetrice, Bubba’s not-so-sainted mother and Brownie’s great-aunt, wasn’t happy. Precious, Bubba’s Basset hound wasn’t happy. The only one who was happy was Bogie, Brownie’s Basset hound mix. He didn’t care where he was, as long as he got to run and jump and play with his master. Also, he particularly enjoyed chewing on shoes. (Apparently Bubba’s shoes, being the largest about, were the best shoes upon which to feast.)

  Bubba sat on one of the Adirondack chairs and carefully cradled his coffee. He laid the note on his lap and considered it.

  Miz Adelia Cedarbloom, an old family friend and Miz Demetrice’s housekeeper/cook, wandered out onto the veranda for a moment. “Say, Bubba,” she said, and her dark eyes twinkled with amusement. “That boy didn’t get a chance to do something with his Sharpies, did he?”

  Bubba touched his face with tentative fingers. “Do I have something written there?” It was true that Brownie had a certain way with a permanent marker. He also had a certain ninja skill in applying the permanent marker while the victim remained asleep. (There had been discussion that the child had drugged his victims, but nothing had been proven.)

  “I done hid all them Sharpies,” Miz Adelia stated unequivocally. “Them Sharpies ain’t coming out until Master Brownie gets in his pa’s truck to go on back to Louisiana. Furthermore, I told all the places that sell Sharpies not to sell to Brownie else Miz Demetrice would be apt to picket them, and they don’t want that.” She sighed and added, “Not that that would hold the boy back ifin he had a mind to go all Rembrandt with a Sharpie or two.”

  Bubba chuckled again. Brownie was entirely too creative, and if there was a store in the Pegramville area that hadn’t been picketed by his mother, then it was only because it was still on her list of things to do.

  “You see Brownie this morning?”

  Miz Adelia smiled grimly. “Boy ate eight pancakes not twenty minutes ago. He inhaled them, and I’m purty sure he dint stop to chew. Eight big pancakes with real butter. Made a lake out of the syrup. I don’t rightly know where he puts all of it. He cain’t weigh more than seventy pounds. Boy has to run around in the shower to get wet.”

  “He go down the lane to catch the bus?”

  “Saw him skipping merrily away, as happy as a two-tailed puppy,” Miz Adelia confirmed. “I suspect he has a new plan to torture one of the Donato boys. The biggest one stepped on Brownie’s foot on Friday and war was declared. Feel sorry for that Donato chile. He don’t know what’s goin’ to happen.” She sat in another Adirondack chair and sighed. “What did that boy do? Shave Precious? Glue something what ain’t supposed to be glued? Last week, he was on the phone to the White House. Think he might have been talking to the Vice President, and I’m plumb surprised the Secret Service ain’t showed up to give us a warning about letting that chile on the telephone.”

  Bubba handed Miz Adelia the Piggly Wiggly flyer. She scanned it. “Dang. That’s some sale on fresh whole chicken flyers.” Her eyebrows crinkled as she looked at it and she finally clicked her tongue. “This flyer is about thirty years old, Bubba. SpaghettiOs ain’t been that cheap since I was knee high to a bull frog wearing black and white spats.”

  “I reckon someone had an old stack of newspapers and such lying about,” he commented. He drank about half of his cup of coffee. It was good coffee. Miz Adelia wouldn’t condone bad coffee. Rather than face the inimitable wrath of Miz Adelia, bad coffee would have flowed out of the pot and committed its own form of seppuku by throwing itself down the drain of the nearest sink. Ritual disembowelment wouldn’t have been necessary.

  Miz Adelia read the letters that were glued on the flyer. “That little doodle head,” she said mildly. “Leaving this for us to find, like we wouldn’t know it was him.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Bubba said. “Think it was the stuff about the rolls of quarters that gave it away.”

  Miz Demetrice wandered out onto the veranda wearing a peacock blue robe that matched her eyes and set off her white hair. She held two cups of coffee and handed one to Miz Adelia while Bubba vacated his chair for his mother. He pulled up one of the other Adirondack chairs and plunked himself down. “What are we talking about?” she asked as she sat down.

  “Brownie,” Miz Adelia and Bubba said together.

  “That child,” Miz Demetrice said and nothing more needed to be said.

  Thus, the three consumed the caffeine and watched Precious chase Bogie across the yard while Bogie carried off one of Bubba’s Nike running shoes. (At least Bubba thought it was one of his running shoes. He couldn’t remember having one with green stripes, but the size looked right.) Bubba couldn’t be bothered to retrieve the shoe because there was still a little bit of coffee remaining in his cup.

  And the day went downhill from there.

  * * *

  Balancing another cup of coffee in his hand, Bubba was about to go to work when the school called. More precisely, he was the unfortunate individual who had the thankless task of being closest to the phone when it imperiously rang.

  “Snoddy Mansion,” he said into the receiver. That was the way phones had been answered in the household ever since Alexander Graham Bell met Thomas Edison. Once, Bubba had tried being clever by answering, “Jelly Jigglers Male Strippers,” but Miz Demetrice had grounded him for a month and taken away his fishing poles to boot, so he was thusly dissuaded into not repeating the act. (How was Bubba supposed to know that the National President of the Methodist Church Society was calling on a Monday afternoon and that her husband had run off with not one but two male strippers a month before?)

  This time the caller was not the National President of the Methodist Church Society. Instead, it was Filbert Turberville, principal of Pegramville Elementary School. “Bubba,” Principal Turberville said, and Bubba instantly recognized the voice. It was not, after all, the first time Principal Turberville had been forced to call the Snoddy residence, and certainly not only in relation to Brownie. Principal Turberville had been principal of the school since Bubba had been in elementary school, and they knew each other well.

  “Principal,” Bubba said cautiously. Certainly, Bubba knew that it didn’t have anything to do with what he’d done in elementary school. That big stain was still in Room 65 the last time he’d been in the school. (The janitor had done everything he could barring replacing the linoleum, and he’d sworn the linoleum was indestructible. The stain remained as a testament to Bubba’s ingenuity, although they had fixed the walls so that no one would have ever known.)

  “Oh, you recognized my voice,” Principal Turberville said.

  “I did,” Bubba said and was reluctant to say any more. It was true he wasn’t given to talking too much, but the rule with principals, sheriffs, lawyers, and dog catchers was to keep his words to monosyllables. It was a good rule and had kept him out of trouble at least a few times.

  “Is Brownie sick?” the principal asked.

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Bubba said before he could help himself. “Uh, no. Do we need to pick him up? Projectile vomiting? Something that might make Linda Blair green with envy?”

  The principal didn’t say anything for a moment and then said, “Brownie didn’t come to school this morning. There was a biology experiment yesterday, and I thought that perhaps something hadn’t agreed with the boy. You know, I’ve never had to talk to the school’s legal aid so many times in a single week before.”

  “Brownie didn’t get on the bus?” Bubba asked. He thought
of the note. He shook his head. Couldn’t be. Couldn’t be. Just couldn’t.

  “I talked to the bus driver myself,” Principal Turberville said. “It’s Elvira Evermoss, you know. You remember her. She still wears her hair in pigtails even though they are gray as a gunship now. She said he wasn’t at the end of the drive, and she waited ten minutes and tooted twice. The bus horn, that is.”

  Bubba said, “I’ll see if I kin round that boy up and bring him over just as soon as I can.” He paused, and just before the principal hung up, he asked, “Is Elvira certain?”

  Principal Turberville said, “The bus was like a tomb this morning, and I think Elvira would know the difference.”

  Once he was done with Principal Turberville and off the phone, Bubba started at the top of the mansion and worked his way to the bottom. By the time he got through with one of the secret passages, he stopped to tell his mother and the housekeeper. Miz Demetrice was less than impressed. Miz Adelia was also less than impressed.

  An hour later and they had ascertained that Brownie Snoddy was not in the immediate vicinity. Then Bogie trotted up, dragging Brownie’s school pack. It was half-chewed, and the lunch had been pawed open. The Lunchable had been torn apart in a frenzy of dogish glee. The bologna and cheese had been eaten, but the cookies and crackers had been disregarded. The Capri Sun had been punctured and half-drained, leaving strawberry kiwi-flavored liquid in the bottom of the sagging plain brown bag. The handle of the pack was inundated with dog drool. Bogie looked pleased with himself.

  Bubba retrieved the Piggly Wiggly flyer from the front veranda.

  Miz Demetrice studied the writing on the bottom. “That ain’t Brownie’s scrawls,” she said. She took out one of his notepads from the pack and showed Bubba an example of Brownie’s writing. Brownie’s was rounded and childlike. Several of the i’s had little frowny faces instead of dots. One i looked like a stick of dynamite with the fuse lit.