by C. L. Bevill
“I know. It’s just all this. Everyone’s wrapped up tight. I think my mother’s head might pop off you know like when you put too many rubber bands around a watermelon. I don’t know why she’s so concerned about this wedding. She’s had two other daughters get married.”
“Dint someone say they were both civil ceremonies at the court house?”
“Yeah, that could be it. A mother’s last chance, I suppose.”
“Ain’t nothin’ more than mules fightin’ over a turnip,” Bubba said.
“You sound like a cornpone country boy,” Willodean said. “I like that. Both my mother and your mother can be just like mules. They’re the mulest muleys that ever muled a mule.”
Bubba heard a woman’s voice in the background become both vehement and plaintive. “Gotta go,” Willodean said.
The phone disconnected before Bubba could say, “Fight the good fight!” He looked at the cellphone ruefully and glanced back at the woman who’d loaned him her phone. She was staring at him with saucer like eyes. She could have given a BEM a run for their money. “You’re Bubba Snoddy,” she said.
“Kin I just make one more call?” Bubba asked politely.
The woman nodded.
Bubba dialed the number from memory. It wasn’t difficult because it only had three numbers in it.
“Can I just ask you a question?” the woman said.
Bubba glanced at her distractedly.
“I mean I’m Daisy Dillworthy, Associated Press,” she said, flashing a row of teeth so white snow would have been blinded. She brushed back a hank of brown hair as she reached in a pocket to retrieve a mini-recorder. “How do you feel about—?”
“You weren’t invited,” Bubba said.
Precious stepped up and growled. His dog knew when there was someone uninvited in the mansion. She had a particularly good nose for people with shovels and metal detectors, the media, and Swedish meatballs. (God forbid that she ever go near an Ikea.)
Cookie couldn’t help herself either. She said, “Pootot,” which sounded remarkably like an infantile accusation.
“Is that your child?” Daisy asked. “I mean, there’s nothing about you already having a child. It was reported that your fiancée is pregnant, but I didn’t realize she’d already given birth.”
“How did you get in here?” Bubba asked.
“The door was open,” Daisy defended herself. “Wide open. People coming and going. It was very nearly an invitation.”
“On private property?”
“The gate was open,” Daisy said quickly. “What was left of the gate, that is. That was caused by one of the bombs left by Constance Posey?”
“So you drove onto private property, uninvited, and then came into the house, and helped yourself to a bunch of mimosas.”
Daisy glanced at the glass near her, still half full, or possibly half-empty, depending on the person’s perspective.
Her companion came out of the bathroom and said, “I think I have the bladder the size of a walnut, and…”
Bubba’s eyes settled on him. He was a tall man in a cheap suit with a cheap tie that even Newt Durley would have disdained. “You.”
“Me?” the man said.
“You’re a one of them, too?”
“I’m a…what am I?”
“Associated press?” Bubba said carefully. He heard the 9-1-1 operator speaking out of the phone. He thought it was Mary Lou Treadwell, and he said into it, “I’ll call you back.”
Daisy shrugged. “The cat is out of the bag.”
Precious growled harder.
“If your dog bites me, I’m suing,” Daisy said and snarled at Precious, who looked startled. The canine took a step behind Bubba’s legs. She knew a superior predator when she saw one.
“I’m going to get a shotgun,” Bubba said, “and you’d best be well on your way, with any of your brethren.” He stopped to think for a second because Daisy Dillworthy sounded familiar to him. He stared at the woman and said, “You’re the one who wrote that article about me.”
“You read that?” she asked weakly.
“‘Rarified Redneck Rube Detective Rips a Mystery,’” Bubba quoted. “You made me sound like a monkey throwing feces at the Christmas Killer.” In actuality he had thought the title amusing, but Miz Demetrice hadn’t been amused. She’d called Lawyer Petrie about suing for defamation, libel, and or/slander. His mother had lain on the fainting lounge and hadn’t gotten up until she had drank two martinis, which hadn’t made Bubba any happier. Then his mother had went out and purchased a stack of newspapers and burned them out back in one of the many convenient holes. “You dint even call me for a comment,” he accused.
Daisy shrugged again, but she seemed a little more shaken by the downward direction that his eyebrows suddenly took. After all, Bubba was a whopping six feet four inches in his stocking feet and weighed two hundred, forty pounds when he’d been eating regularly.
“Just one question,” the man said, and Bubba roared. He dimly perceived a crunching noise as his fists flexed and he realized he had just crushed the woman’s cellphone in his hand.
Pieces fell to the floor as the two reporters fled down the hall. People started to peek around corners.
“Your canapés suck!” the man yelled over his shoulder.
Bubba put his head down and began in a slow push as his feet started an inevitable rumble across hardwood floors. People naturally got out of his way in short order. It was later said that Cookie bellowed, “CHARGE!” but there was some debate about the veracity of that rumor.
Chapter 8
Miz Demetrice and the Dead Guy
Saturday, April 27th around 10:30 AM
Miz Demetrice stared at Peyton the Wedding Planner because she simply could not look away. (It was kind of like the cute kitty videos on YouTube.) He stood about five feet ten inches tall and tended on the wiry side. He had previously stated that he liked Pilates, yoga, and a StairMaster in order to keep his sinewy frame, well, sinewy. He also had an affinity for silk shirts, neatly pressed trousers, and makeup. (Manstick, manscara, and guyliner were all specifically mentioned in the je-ne-sais-quoi manner he favored.) His most notable applied feature was the pair of wings flying out from the edges of his eyes. One might have made the mistake of thinking this was a man who preferred the company of other men, but Peyton would have been the first to tell one that he had a girlfriend named Ginger and he liked her and her prodigious breasts just fine. He also possessed the innate ability to be named an honorary mule in the well-known society of jackasses. (Miz Demetrice knew that she was ranked high in that specific society.) This was an ability honed by dealing with hordes of family members all wanting their way with the wedding du jour.
“You wish me to check on Bubba,” Miz Demetrice clarified as if Peyton had asked her to scrape poop off the bottom of his foot. She already had a laundry list of things to accomplish before the wedding occurred and checking on her son was not one of them, as she had already performed it.
Peyton glanced at his watch. “I saw a steampunk man dancing on the rear lawn with a water hose shrieking about causing an earth ending tsunami. Since that man is Bubba’s best man and who was most recently Sherlock Holmes, I find myself having a reasonable amount of skepticism about his ability to ensure Bubba’s acquiescence in the marital process, although his brocade tailcoat is to die for. It is now 10:30. Bubba must be properly outfitted and present in approximately three and half hours. The seas must part. The earth must move. The heavens must be torn asunder for wedding excellence. I know that you appreciate this.”
Miz Demetrice nodded her head. She adjusted her tangerine suit that had cost more than most of her other suits combined. (Her justification: It’s Bubba’s wedding; probably Bubba’s only wedding. I need to look good, but not so good that I outshine Willodean, Celestine, or even Bubba. Rules of gentility did apply, however difficult they might be to shove down one’s throat.)
“Wonderful suit,” Peyton said, adjusting his own jack
et. She didn’t recognize the designer but she knew quality when she saw it. It was a pinstripe wool suit, possibly Armani, but Miz Demetrice didn’t want to demean herself by pulling the lapel back to see the maker’s label. Mayhap later when he takes it off and slings it on the back of a chair, she told herself. She wondered if Peyton would be interested in a rousing game of poker. Mostly only women played in Pokerama, but seeing as Peyton was an honorary member of the well-known society of jackasses, then he might as well enjoy all of the perks. Plus he could have some money to lose, considering how much he had been paid for his fee.
“I will see to Bubba,” she announced.
“Perfection personified!” Peyton said and flounced toward the kitchen. “I must see if all the items for the reception are in preparedness. Heads will roll if they are not. I will be the Queen of Hearts.”
Miz Demetrice sashayed toward the front of the mansion as she perceived she had been dismissed by His Highness the Queen. She had an inclination to grab a flute of mimosa and see if David Beathard was really dancing around the yard with a garden hose. She avoided her sister, Caressa, and a drunken Evan Gray by way of pointing behind them as if something was happening there that they should see, and then slipping away into a crowd. (Her sister was decidedly maudlin, and Evan Gray needed to cut off all alcohol before he started to cry.) The mansion was getting crowded with early birds eager for a taste of the wedding of the decade. Furthermore, there were people who she did not recognize.
Elegantly grasping a flute supplied by a bartender dressed in white with a gray bowtie that matched the color of Bubba’s suit, Miz Demetrice stopped to eye a couple who were also drinking mimosas. The man glanced at Miz Demetrice and asked, “Beg pardon, but is there a bathroom nearby?”
Miz Demetrice smiled. She knew a gatecrasher when she saw one; after all, it had been one of her best skills when she hadn’t been invited to a Bush fundraiser or when the Clintons had come to Austin a few years before. (Bill was a lot of fun when his wife was nowhere to be found, although Hillary could play the holy living hell out of a poker hand.) She pointed toward the rear of the mansion. “Just past the kitchen, dear.”
The man left with the woman following. Miz Demetrice made a mental note to see about them later. She took her mimosa and went to the front veranda. It was very nearly disappointing that David Beathard was noticeably absent, but Thelda was dancing with the garden hose. Somehow or another she had managed to fasten a leather bustier over her three sets of sweaters. In addition, it was so tightly fastened that one could see that Thelda did have a figure under all of her outerwear. She waved at Miz Demetrice and cried, “Thou impertinent spur-gulled dewberry!”
Miz Demetrice took that to mean, “Hello, Miz Demetrice. How are you? However have you been? What a delightful suit you’re wearing, and may I say you look twenty years younger today? Toodle-oo!” Thelda dropped the garden hose and scampered off around the corner of the mansion before a man with a butterfly net could catch her.
In reality there wasn’t a man with a butterfly net present, but there should have been. Thelda really was an enchanting woman albeit somewhat of a nutjob. She spoke exclusively in Shakespearean insults but one could readily interpret them if one had an open mind.
“We should have had the wedding at the mental institute,” Miz Demetrice muttered. “Lots of beds and lots of folks wouldn’t have had to travel far to attend.” Then she berated herself for being mean. Bubba, Bubba, Bubba, she said silently, attempting to keep herself on track.
Vehicles could be heard approaching in the distance. Miz Demetrice eyed the drive and realized that people would be walking down a graveled trek nearly half-a-mile in their go-to-a-wedding finery. She shook her head. Should have come earlier or bussed them in. Dear God, this wedding is more complicated than a protest at a maximum security prison. There had been that one time at Huntsville when…best I not think of that.
Miz Demetrice started to go back in through the mansion’s massive front doors but was blocked by two preachers, a rabbi, and a state senator. It was the beginning of a bad joke but there wasn’t a duck under one of their arms and the Snoddy Mansion wasn’t a bar. She wisely decided to go around the outside of the building, circumventing all conversation that would hold her back.
“Check on Bubba,” she told herself. Her heels crunched through a fresh layer of gravel. “Get back to all of the other stuff that weddings needed done. The pay envelopes for all of the various staffs, find the wedding photographers, two that is. One is the stills. One is a videographer. Arrange for Bubba’s truck to be decorated. There’s a bag of cans and ribbons in the pantry just for that purpose. Brownie would be good for that, but…maybe not Brownie. Give out all the little bags of birdseed to throw at the bride and groom for their exit to their honeymoon. Thank God I’ll never marry again.”
Miz Demetrice stepped on Bubba’s little porch and tried the door. It was not open, so she produced a key which she kept on her person, because one never knew when one would want to go inside their son’s house, and she prided herself on being the senior equivalent of a Boy Scout. She stepped inside and yelled, “Bubba! Are you well? Have you fainted? Peyton sent me over to make sure you’re on schedule! Did you know David Beathard was dancing on the lawn with a water hose? Now he’s got Thelda all riled up. I’m surprised Brownie wasn’t there with a pack of cherry bombs and some diabolic instrument that he concocted in Boy Scouts or possibly in Mad Scientist 101. Good Lord, boy, don’t you know how to answer your mother?”
She paused to take a breath and heard precisely nothing.
“Bubba?” she called again.
Miz Demetrice went down the hallway, paused by the living room to give it a glance, and then took a step past. She looked down the hallway and had an idea that her eyes glazed over. She methodically took a step backward, and slowly looked into the living room again.
Lying in the middle of the living room was a dead body. At least Miz Demetrice assumed the body was dead. After all, Bubba had said there was a body in his house and that it was a dead body. She thought that her only son was messing with her concerning the active campaign to keep cellphones and televisions out of his immediate vicinity.
She put her hand over her mouth as if that action would prevent a dead body from throwing a monkey wrench in the wedding works.
David had said, “But it’s not there right now,” in such a way to suggest that Bubba had seen a dead body and then it had disappeared, which had happened to Bubba before. Oddly enough, the Snoddys were all prone to peculiar events, so much so that it often seemed commonplace in the present. Isiah, Bubba’s great uncle, or was it great, great uncle, once stole a 1946 Chevy truck from the Texas governor because the governor had supported Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 Presidential election. Then he had buried it in the yard, which she supposed wasn’t really peculiar in the sense that it hadn’t just “happened” to Isiah. Isiah had instigated the entire affair. J. Edgar Hoover had gotten involved in that one, sending agents to search the Snoddy Estate in early ’53, which was likely the first time federal agents had descended upon the place.
Miz Demetrice almost chuckled. Bubba didn’t have that privilege of being the first Snoddy to be investigated by the government.
As for murders committed on the grounds, Miz Demetrice waved her hand in the air, well, there were more than a few. Including my late husband, who I introduced to a slithering, lively Taipan that was flown in from Australia by an old poker friend of mine. The venom of a Taipan snake was known to clot its victim’s blood, causing all kinds of blockages in the arteries and veins. The neurotoxic effects on an individual were quite disconcerting, and pleasing to Miz Demetrice. (Research nearly always paid off and didn’t the Internet make things considerably easier? Bless Al Gore’s little heart.)
“Well, crap,” Miz Demetrice said, at a loss for words. “I mean, carp.” She stood there for a long sixty seconds and thought about her options. I could call the po-lice, which would be bad for the wedding. I coul
d call the county coroner, who is my old friend George Goodjoint, which would actually just be a matter of tracking down where he is in the mansion. I could pretend I didn’t see the body. I could—
Miz Demetrice frowned. Reporting the body, murdered or not, would mean the end of the wedding for the day, the self-same wedding that was weeks in the planning, throwing every bit of effort into it, and throwing several cash reserves into the payments. “I should have charged admittance to this wedding,” she muttered. “And you,” she said to the dead body, “who are you? What are you doing here? Did you not read the fine print on the bottom of the invitation? Did you even get an invitation?”
Taking a step forward, Miz Demetrice tried to get a better look at the man. He lay on his back in the middle of Bubba’s floor and in her mind’s eye, she could see someone letting his limp form simply fall into place. She shifted her head to the side and stared at his face.
I don’t know him. Miz Demetrice was slightly dismayed. If someone wanted a body in Bubba’s house (he had appeared here twice) then wouldn’t it be someone that Bubba was likely to have killed? That was another conclusion to which she had jumped. The man must have been murdered. There couldn’t be another instance of a man dying by natural causes and then people orchestrating evidence to point to specific people. That would have been wretchedly pedantic. (Some halfwit hack had likely used that plot a half dozen times. Imagine an author fixated on a character named Bubba. Hah.)
But he doesn’t have obvious wounds, Miz Demetrice thought. No knife, bullet holes, rope or other method of strangulation left around the neck. No blood on the shirt or otherwise. She took another step closer and sniffed delicately. Perhaps some form of poison?
Miz Demetrice brightened slightly. She happened to know quite a bit about poison; she had researched three hundred, sixty-five ways of poisoning her deceased husband. There were thirteen nonfiction books on that precise subject in her personal library.
