by C. L. Bevill
Bubba glanced at his watch. It was just past two in the afternoon. “I’ll come home around six all things considered.”
“Do you think you can bring some of that green tea ice cream, too?” she asked quickly.
“Don’t you have enough ice cream?” he teased.
“Not green tea,” Willodean said. “Kiss, kiss.”
“Love you,” he said as she disconnected. Boy howdy, did he love Willodean. She was the sun and the moon and the clouds and the wind and the power that made the world turn. He gave the cellphone back to a trooper who examined it mutely.
“What?” Bubba said.
“You don’t remember the last time you borrowed a phone from me?” the trooper asked curiously. “You were looking for that sheriff’s deputy. You found her later on. That one fella had her down in an old storm cellar chained up with his uncle, I believe. Glad to hear she wasn’t hurt.”
“Oh yes,” Bubba said. “I remember I crushed that phone. I did pay you back, right?”
“Oh yeah,” the trooper said. “I got your check which didn’t bounce. I didn’t think I would get one, but hey, you were as good as your word.” He grinned at Bubba. “You never stopped looking for her, though. That’s pretty dang special.”
“She’s a special lady,” Bubba said. “I wouldn’t have stopped looking for her for anything.”
The trooper smiled and strolled away. “Dang straight.”
Bubba abruptly frowned. He wasn’t frowning at the trooper or the cellphone or the thought of Willodean being a special lady. Instead, he was frowning at the fact that he was about to walk away from helping another lady. Hadn’t he told himself that he liked Marquita, that she had been kind to him when she hadn’t needed to be, that she wasn’t really hurting anything by asking him to investigate?
Why, yessiree indeedy, he had done that very thing. And Bubba was about to walk away regardless. WWMDD? Or WWMD? Either one. What Would Miz Demetrice Do? Or What Would Ma Do? His mother had taught him better, and no matter what was happening, a man had to have priorities in his life. It brought to mind the final acronym: WWWD? What Would Willodean Do?
A certain something crawled up Bubba’s spine and slapped him in the back of his head. Willodean was all right for the moment. His mother and Miz Adelia were right next door and checking on her frequently. They’d find a way to call him if something started happening. They all knew where he was at the moment. The hard and fast truth was that no one was going to take this stuff about Marquita disappearing seriously once they heard what Simone and Risley had said about doing this for publicity. No, they’d pull out and say that she was just yanking proverbial chains.
Bubba knew what that meant. He looked back at the Hovious place and sighed heavily.
Chapter 15
Bubba and Possible Culprits
or Impossible Culprits
Risley Risto and Simone Sheats could be lying. They’d lied before. They’d lied right to Bubba’s face. After all, wasn’t that the point of all of this folderol? To tell a big whopper and have people fall for it?
However, what stuck in Bubba’s mind was that one expression on Risley’s face when he’d admitted their transgressions. His sister wasn’t just “missing,” she was “MISSING!” She had been playing the game but she’d gone off the playbook, and things were definitively amiss. Risley had been terrified. He had been sincerely afraid, and Simone had been unmistakably agitated. Risley had even said he’d been frankly frightened, and he’d meant that shizz.
Furthermore, as Risley and Simone had owned up to the charade, why would they lie about a second Boo? Why would they lie about Marquita if they’d already copped to the farce?
Bubba shook his head. Maybe he was missing something, but it seemed like they wouldn’t lie the second time. After all, they’d confessed. It was out in the open. They could simply text Marquita and tell her the jig was up. They’ve jumped the shark. They’ve spilled the beans. Look everyone, the cat dragged in a mountain out of a molehill and also cried over the spilled milk.
Precious nudged his leg as if she could read his mind. Cat? What cat? You’re stupid. Give me Milk-Bones.
Bubba stood next to his truck and considered Foggy Mountain, which wasn’t particularly foggy at the moment.
It was time to do a conjecture. There wasn’t a better time for conjecturing. If a man needed to conject, then it was the time to do some conjecturation.
There were several likely scenarios that Bubba could envision. One: Marquita was playing the Boo and hid to pretend she was kidnapped/killed/eaten by the real Boo and fell down a hole, incapacitating herself or worse. Two: Marquita was playing the Boo and hid to pretend she was kidnapped/killed/eaten by the real Boo. She encounters the real Boo, and he actually kidnaps/kills/eats her in a very real and final way and no one would ever really know what happened because they would never again find a trace of her. Enter the making of a real Hollywood mystery. Three: Marquita was playing the Boo and hid to pretend she was kidnapped/killed/eaten by the real Boo. She pops out later and says, “I escaped! Boo-ya!” Four: Marquita was playing the Boo and hid to pretend she was kidnapped/killed/eaten by the real Boo. She encounters someone else pretending to be the Boo and they kidnap/trap/kill her to cover their collective derrieres. Five: Marquita was playing the Boo and hid to pretend she was kidnapped/killed/eaten by the real Boo. She encounters someone who was not pretending to be the Boo and who sees an advantage and kidnaps her. Maybe he/she/it holds Marquita for ransom and Risley hadn’t yet received a demand.
Bubba glowered so hard that a nearby squirrel made a sound like its tail had been caught in a bear trap and fled up a tree.
None of those imagined scenarios was particularly helpful. Number one was most likely, in which case Sheriff John would track her down sooner or later. John wasn’t stupid even if he sometimes acted like it. Although he wouldn’t like being made to look the fool, he wouldn’t leave Marquita in the tunnels if there was a possibility that she needed help. He’d probably bring in Lewis Robson’s tracking hounds to hunt her down, even if she had pulled a fast one.
Bubba dismissed number two because the real Boo wasn’t really real, and if he wasn’t really real then he really couldn’t really kidnap/kill/eat Marquita which was a damper on the whole scenario in point. If there had been a real Boo, he’d doubtless headed for Las Vegas as soon as the travel trailers had pulled up at the base of Foggy Mountain. Outfit himself in an oversized Hawaiian shirt and matching jams, add some checkered Vans on his feet, and a pair of Wayfarers perched on his nose, and no one in Sin City would blink at the sight.
And if number three was the occurrence of choice, Marquita would have already told Risley and Simone she was okay. They wouldn’t have told Bubba that she was truly missing. Bubba wouldn’t have told Sheriff John that tomfoolery was part of the scenario. Everyone could go home and binge on Netflix while rubbing their pregnant wife’s tootsies and eating Häagen-Dazs. Problem solved, except it wasn’t.
That left numbers four and five. In four, someone else could have had the bright idea to pretend to be the real Boo in order to upset Marquita’s apple cart, which meant they held a grudge against her. She was a Hollywood guru so she had to have enemies. Her deceased husband doubtless still had enemies. Whilst prancing through the tunnels practicing bigfoot-like taunting squeals the person in the dastardly disguise out to do a disservice to her and the set could have bumped into Marquita and took advantage of a situation that only seemed to happen in Pegram County.
Bubba grunted. Number four wasn’t out of the range of reality but it seemed unlikely. How many fake Boos could be running about in the tunnels, after all? (He had to rub his forehead because his inner voice squealed in consternation at the thought of more than one fake Boo scuttling around in the passageways under the Hovious place.)
In considering the fifth possibility, if someone came across Marquita because they were already in the tunnels doing stuff they ought not to be doing because they were fundamentally as
sharp as a bag full of raw liver, they might have thought, “Hey, we already kidnapped someone, so why not kidnap a Hollywood bigwig who prolly has lots of money to ransom her? Yee haw, buckaroos!”
Didn’t Bubba know some kidnappers? Didn’t he know where they lived? Didn’t he know where they kept their last kidnappee? Why yes, to all of the above.
* * *
The junkyard appeared about the same as it did the last time Bubba had been there. In a prominent position, a rusting Chevy Camaro mounted on a giant pole indicated that oxidizing and decomposing Chevys and other corroding vehicles were available for sale on the premises. The gates were open as it was still part of a business day and a ground-mounted sign announced that it was a “JUNKYARD HERE!” “See the manager at the office” was also written sloppily on the bottom. On the bottom of that it said, “Ring bell if closed during business hours.” However, someone had crossed out the b in bell and substituted an h just for cleverness’s sake.
Bubba parked outside the gate because he didn’t want to drive over something sharp. The narrow track that led to the interior of the junkyard appeared clear, but this had been where Brownie had been held briefly, and the boy had caused damage that was still visible. It would not have surprised Bubba to discover some untriggered boobytrap left by the boy, and he wasn’t going to risk his beloved truck.
Bubba had to admit that it was the biggest junkyard he’d ever seen. There were car parts and cars and was that a cannon?, boat parts, and that old Chevy Camaro mounted on top of a giant pole pretty well sealed its junkiness state of being. It was piles upon piles of the most interesting things that a fella could think of. There was a line of eroding porta-potties standing like brave soldiers that showed evidence they had been sorely used in a pink explosion of chemicals. There was still a pile of plastic chemical bottles to one side that Bubba would have thought Laz would have moved long ago. There was a pile of rusted axes and mauls and sharp, pointy things that Bubba could see Brownie longing to caress with his hot little fingers.
All in all, it had been Brownie’s idea of heaven on earth. On dark nights when the moon was full and the wolves were howling in the distance, the boy still longed for his state of kidnapping. It was even better than the time he’d zapped Matt Lauer with his homemade stun gun.
Bubba walked past all of that with Precious trailing behind him. She stopped to mark junked vehicles and sniff at various items of ill repute. Once there had been a guard dog, but Brownie had fed the animal a ton of hot dogs and made the poor animal his personal slave. Bubba doubted that Laz had replaced the animal since he’d been on the lam and then when he’d returned, he’d wisely kept his head down.
Would kidnappers leave the gates open whilst keeping their victim in the trailer? Bubba grimaced. It was looking more and more like a dead end because he couldn’t believe anyone could be that stupid. Regardless, there was a reason he called them the moron triplets, and he had to make certain they hadn’t gone back to the infamous practice of napping a kid, er, grown woman.
In all likelihood Laz, Tom, and Jasper had fled the Hovious place when the law had descended. None of the three were fast friends with the constabularies of the state, county, and city. They knew that when John Q. Law was present they tended to get arrested, and if they moved onward and outward, they might evade the act of being detained. (Rightly as it turned out, but they couldn’t seem to quit doing things that would get them thrown in the pokey.) The junkyard wasn’t the ideal retreat for criminals on the run, but it wasn’t the worst, either.
Bubba noticed that a van was parked near the gates. Further in he found the place where the Berryhills made their home. It wasn’t really a house but a trailer home that sat almost directly in the middle of the junkyard. In what was pretty much the center of the junkyard, it sat belying its garbagy neighborhood. It wasn’t a bad-looking trailer, and it wasn’t a bad-looking home. It was a double-wide the color of sand with neat white shutters outlining each window. The door was brilliant white with a round crackled-glass insert. There was a bright-red welcome flag hanging on a pole mounted next to the door. A white picket fence went all the way around the yard and made it look cozy and welcoming. The grass in the front yard was still green despite a recent draught, and expertly trimmed boxwoods lined the picket fence. The leaves of a Japanese maple planted alongside the front steps were just turning the color of hottest flames signaling the onset of fall to come or that the summer had kicked its tushie.
Bubba noticed the curtains in one window shifted and fluttered shut. Someone was watching him approach. He went through the picket fence and mounted the steps to politely knock on the door. He might even have said, “Avon calling,” if he had been in the right kind of mood, but he wasn’t in the right kind of mood so he didn’t.
“Who is it?” came a quavering voice through the door. It sounded like a man pretending to be an elderly lady afraid to answer the door to a stranger. It also sounded like Laz pretending to be his mother, Tayla Berryhill, the erstwhile manager of the junkyard.
Bubba had met Tayla once or twice having been here before in a buying capacity because he was always on the hunt for genuine 1954 Chevy 3100 parts. This particular junkyard had a dearth of antique car and truck parts. Mostly it specialized in anything wrecked in the last twenty years, so it wasn’t his cup of tea, but sometimes Culpepper’s Garage used parts acquired from Tayla.
“You know who it is,” Bubba snarled. “Open the dang door, Laz, on account that I have some questions.”
“Laz isn’t here,” came the very fake high-pitched voice. “He went to Africa to tend to orphans. Lots of orphans in Africa. He’s a God-fearing chile and those orphans needs…uh…tending.”
Another high-pitched voice wheezed loudly and said, “Yeah, orphans. Whee-whee.”
“I ain’t here about Brownie,” Bubba said.
“Brownie who?”
“Brownie I’mgonnaputafootupyourtushie,” Bubba said immediately.
“I don’t know that Brownie,” the first voice replied. “Brownie Johnson and Brownie Smith but not Brownie whatshisname.”
Someone giggled nervously from inside.
Bubba looked over his shoulder. He could see the Ford Courier parked partially behind a large stack of compacted Chevy Monzas. (Someone had gotten a Pontiac Sunbird mixed up with them.) So, if the first high pitched voice was Laz and the second one was Tom, then Jasper was likely in there, too.
“No solicitors,” the first voice said in his falsetto. “I’ll call the ASPCA or NAFTA or maybe LULAC ifin you don’t leave immediately.”
“Call the Girl Scouts,” advised the second voice forgetting to make it high pitched, “because them girls can kick butt and take names when someone forgets to pay for three boxes of thin mints.” Then he wheezed again. “Where’s my dang inhaler?”
Bubba thumped on the front door with both fists, and the entire trailer home shook with the force of it. “All I want to know is one thing!” he rumbled.
Silence ensued. Bubba then heard frantic whispering as the trio conferred on whether Bubba would allow them to live or not if they let him in.
Finally, the lock clicked open and the door gaped precisely two inches and not one quarter inch more than two inches. Bubba saw Laz’s brown eyes peering out at him and over his head was Tom’s face staring fearfully. Finally, Jasper ducked under Laz’s arm to look at Bubba.
They all acted guilty as hell.
Bubba took a deep breath and asked, “Did you run into Marquita in the tunnels?”
Laz’s mouth opened and then shut. He glanced at Tom and then back at Bubba. “You really ain’t here about Brownie?” he asked in his normal voice.
Bubba winced. It was an answer of sorts to his question without actually answering the question properly. He was kind of hoping that they had kidnapped Marquita. Bubba could have paid them off with tacos from the Lotta Enchilada place. Marquita could be back on the set within an hour and pretending to be the Boo once again. All would be well within the
city, until it wasn’t, which was a strong contender in this neck of the woods. “No, I ain’t here about Brownie. Ifin I wanted to come here about Brownie, I would have come months ago.”
Laz sighed gustily. “What a relief.” He threw open the door and said, “I thought my mother came back early from that latch hooking convention in Shreveport. I just about died when—” he trailed off when he saw the look on Bubba’s face.
Bubba shoved past him by virtue of his size and frame, and the three men retreated backwards in to a neat and tidy living room with doilies on the tables and the backs of the overstuffed chairs and couch. There was even a doily on the television in the corner. He looked around for any sign of Marquita and then stomped back to the bedrooms. It only took him about thirty seconds to discover that the Hollywood bigwig was not present. He stomped back to where he’d left Laz, Tom, and Jasper and asked, “Did you kidnap Marquita Thaddeus?”
Laz’s face wrinkled like a disorganized shar-pei. “Why in hellfire and damnation would we do that?” he asked, clearly confused. “You cain’t just waltz in here. You ain’t the po-lice. You might be married to one, but she ain’t here, and I’m not afraid of her mace.”
Bubba stared at the three of them and determined that they truly were too stupid to have even thought of kidnapping Marquita.
“So, she’s not in the back of the junkyard locked in a trailer or somethin’?” Bubba persisted. “You don’t have her chained to a block of old Fords until Risley Risto forks over some cash?”
“Of course not,” Laz said. “I don’t care what Shishkabob McCandless said. Kidnappings is for dopes. Too easy to git caught and folks don’t care to be kidnapped. And even if they do—”
“Exceptin’ that kid,” Tom added. Then he wheezed loudly and patted his pockets for something. He pulled out his inhaler and took two shots. “That kid seemed to like it.”
