by C. L. Bevill
“But then those gals once left out a jar of salsa and Bill Clinton ate the whole thing and the poor dog had the backdoor trots for days. Think Alice ended up taking Bill Clinton to Doc Goodjoint on account that the vet was down to Houston for a training. And that’s a damn shame because Doc Goodjoint is a Republican.” Tee trailed off as if he realized he was speaking to elementary school-aged children. “And you’re here to see the jail.” He rattled his keys.
As Tee walked away, he said, “Follow me.”
“Cover me,” Brownie muttered to Janie.
Janie said, “What?”
“Cover me,” he said again. “We’ve got to talk to the sheriff about the spatula. Or your auntie. Or some other po-liceman who will know who might be the culprit.”
“Hmm,” Janie murmured. “I’ll go. I can speak police talk. They’ll listen to me. They’ll look at your fedora and giggle.”
Brownie touched the brim of the hat. “What? It looks just like Sam Spade’s in that movie I watched last night. And partners support each other. You back me up.”
“If we’re partners either one of us should go,” Janie said. “Rock, paper, scissors.”
Brownie nodded and glanced at Tee. Tee was rattling keys vigorously and saying, “This here is the main entrance, but we got a rear entrance, too. Just in case we need to get out quick-like. Once there was a time where Newt Durley stopped up the sh-I mean, potty, and we all had to get out the back in a rapid course of time. That poor cell hasn’t been the same since.”
Brownie and Janie both made fists and thumped them into the palms of their other hands. “One, two, three, shoot,” he said in time with the thumping.
Janie stared at his hand as it stopped in its final shape. “What’s that?”
“A laser gun,” Brownie clarified. “It beats everything. Especially your rock.”
Janie glared at him. “You like to make up rules, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Brownie admitted readily. “Otherwise you have to do everything adults say. Don’t you do that, too?”
“Well, I wouldn’t admit it in a court of law,” Janie said. “Especially if a judge was around.”
“The doors are stainless steel, and the entire frame is made of the same,” Tee was saying. “That’s in case someone gets the mind to go through the walls and disregards the door altogether, like that fella did back in 2001. He found the sheetrock and just crawled right through and then punched out the brick façade. But we caught him at the Red Door Inn the same day.”
Brownie saluted Janie, and she rolled her eyes. Then he snuck away while Tee was saying, “I don’t think that fella was staying at the B&B, doncha know? But that’s neither here nor there, and well, I don’t think Miz Demetrice would care ifin I talked about it to you children.”
Brownie was out the door before Tee finished rattling keys. He slipped into the sheriff’s department door and cast Mary Lou Treadwell a measured look. “The bathroom is broken over there, and Mr. Gearheart don’t want us using the cells,” he said.
Mary Lou blinked and pointed to the door. Like most adults she wouldn’t dream about arguing with a child on the matter of using the bathroom. She pushed a button that opened the door. “First left, then two doors down,” she instructed.
Brownie did not go to the bathroom. Instead he wandered around the building until he found Sheriff John Headrick’s office. It was listed boldly on the door. In fact, the letters on his door were larger than anyone else’s. Furthermore, the door was open, and the sheriff was in residence. He had his back to the door while he talked on the phone to someone. His booted feet were propped on a filing cabinet.
Brownie knew that Sheriff John was the tallest man around if one disregarded the infamous Daniel Gollihugh, who was allegedly seven feet tall and who had once torn the Piggly Wiggly sign down right off of the store and stomped on it and who was presently incarcerated in the state prison. Sheriff John was taller than Bubba and his daddy.
“Uh-huh?” Sheriff John said. “Really? Red? Dark red or orangey red, because I reckon I like the dark red one better. Well, shore, I hate to pick, but a man is right particular about these sorts of things.” He paused to listen and then he did something that Brownie never thought he’d ever hear. The sheriff giggled, and it didn’t sound proper coming from that particular man.
Sidling forward, Brownie sat in the high-backed chair to one side of the sheriff’s desk. He looked around as the sheriff continued to speak. There were framed news clippings on the walls. One about the woman who’d tried to frame Bubba. There were some about the Christmas Killer. Brownie perked up. Then he leaned forward to see if his name was in those articles.
“Tee-hee-hee,” Sheriff John said, “you know all about that don’t you, honey-sweetie-pie?”
Brownie brought his notepad out. He dug in a pocket for his pencil and finally located it next to a half-eaten package of Smarties and a green button he’d found somewhere. He perched himself on the edge of the seat and waited. He wasn’t exactly impatient, but he had a mental vision of Tee Gearheart trolling through the sheriff’s department on the lookout for a missing ten-year-old would-be gumshoe. But hey, Janie probably told him some story. Dames are good for stories. She could con a copper in the caboose.
“Really?” Sheriff John’s gravelly voice sounded amused. “No, you first. You know what I like? I like it really rare, with the liquid just drippin’ down the sides.”
Staring at Sheriff John’s steel gray hair, Brownie wondered just what the heck the law enforcement official was discussing and with whom.
“And maybe that porterhouse cut…” he turned the chair around just as he was finishing and jumped as he saw Brownie. “CRAP!” he said. “I mean carp,” he added subdued. “Darla honey, just get whatever cut looks good. You get the coals going, and I’ll take care of the cooking in an hour or so. I gotta go. I gotta something, er, I mean, someone in the office.”
The sheriff pushed the end button on the phone and put the unit back into the receiver. Then his steel gray eyes, which exactly matched his hair, observed Brownie. Brownie was well used to that sort of look. His father, mother, principal, Boy Scout troop leader, pastor, and teacher all practiced that precise look upon Brownie on a daily basis. Depending on the individual, it might be an hourly basis. Some of them were even good at it. Brownie supposed the sheriff was up there, but he got to frequently practice the look on common, and some uncommon, criminals.
“Brownie Snoddy,” Sheriff John said, “what brings you into my lair?”
“On approximately— ” Brownie checked his notebook and abruptly remembered that he hadn’t asked Miz Adelia when the spatula was nicked from the Snoddy mansion, “— last week, a MWF Spatula from Williams-Sonoma was stolen from Miz Adelia Cedarbloom. It was a special spatula, see, sweetheart.”
Sheriff John’s eyebrows arched at the word “sweetheart.”
“It was also stainless steel, slotted, and dishwasher safe,” Brownie went on.
“Why didn’t Miz Adelia file a report?” Sheriff John enquired.
“She hired me to find the item in question.” Brownie arched his eyebrows, but he didn’t think he could get them as high as Sheriff John’s. There was also the niggling question of whether Miz Adelia had actually agreed for Brownie to do the investigation, because he couldn’t quite recall if she had. “And she don’t trust no flatfoots.”
“Flatfoots,” Sheriff John repeated. He swallowed, then waved at Brownie, “Oh, go on.”
“Of course, John C. Law knows all about the local thugs and such, so I came to make a deal with you,” Brownie said. “Ifin you tell me what you know, then when I collar the palooka, I’ll drop a dime on him, I’ll hand him over to you buttons. I’ll make sure the coppers get the byline on the press.”
“By some horrid twist of fate, you don’t— ,” Sheriff John paused to look at the ceiling, “— have your stun gun, do you, Brownie?”
“No,” Brownie mumbled. “Auntie D. took that away about a minut
e after I stepped in the door.”
“I see,” Sheriff John said. “And ifin I tell you what I know, you’ll catch the perpetrator.”
“The bindle stiffs,” Brownie elaborated, “punks, Johnson brothers, hoods. They’ll be crying for their mamas to call them a lip.”
“A lip,” Sheriff John said.
“A lawyer,” Brownie said.
“And you’ll credit the police for the collar?”
“That’s the deal, shmoe, take it or leave it,” Brownie said as he squared his shoulders.
Sheriff John’s lips began to tremble. Brownie thought it looked very bizarre, as if the much older man was about to cry.
“There have been some funny things going on about the town,” Sheriff John admitted slowly.
“I knew it,” Brownie said. “Ain’t no one steal a spatula just for the fun of it. Something perplexing going on. It’s a Chinese angle, that’s what it is. Something really strange.”
Chapter 4
Brownie and the Shady Suspect
Tuesday, April 3rd
Before Sheriff John could drop the low-down, put Brownie wise, or spill, Tee Gearheart came rumbling through and reacquired his wayward charge. Tee didn’t actually lock Brownie or Janie in the cells, but he kept a vigilant eye on them so that Brownie had no further opportunities for mayhem. Later that day, Miz Demetrice came back to collect Brownie and Janie and took them back to the Snoddy Mansion where they ate dinner. (Fried chicken and it wasn’t the kind from the Colonel’s and Brownie didn’t mean Colonel Nathanial Snoddy who had perpetrated the whole Civil War gold incident in spades. No, it was Miz Adelia’s grandmother’s secret fried chicken recipe that cooks all over Pegram County had been attempting to steal for decades on account of its mouth-watering characteristics.) There was also corn on the cob, potatoes au gratin, and pecan pie. He went to bed that night full and dreaming not of sugar plums, but of absent spatulas and funny-goings-on that perplexed his brain in wonderful spine-tingling ways.
The next morning, Brownie returned to the gumshoe persona with great glee. There was a single hiccough when he bounded into the bathroom and bounced off the clear plastic wrap that had been spread over the bathroom door. Someone had taken the time to neatly frame the door in plastic where Brownie wouldn’t see it before he went in. He fell on the floor and looked stupid for a minute until he comprehended the problem. “Haha,” he said, but on the inside he thought, Dang, good trick. I’ll have to remember that.
He looked around for a giggling offender, but no one was about. He wondered if Janie was already front and present. When he was finished brushing his teeth and dressing, he went downstairs and found that Willodean had already dropped Janie off at the mansion. Janie yanked Brownie aside without ado.
“I got suspects and also another missing item,” Janie told him. “We’ve got to follow up. That’s what it says in all the good police manuals.”
“You get to read police manuals?” Brownie asked. “You dint go upstairs earlier, did you?”
“Duh, everyone in the family is a cop except Grandpa. I’ve practically got some of them memorized. And no, I haven’t been upstairs. Why do you ask?”
“Never mind about that. Okay, sister, give me the skinny,” Brownie drawled. They gathered for their impromptu information-sharing session in the library.
“There’s a man named Bryan McGee who has a missing item,” Janie said. She looked around and found a large desk. A moment later, she dug through the drawers and located a phone directory. Plunking the book on the top of the desk, she paged through to the M’s. “There it is,” Janie said and pointed a finger to Bryan McGee’s name. “Get to the crime scene as soon as possible. That’s the key.”
“I know that road,” Brownie said. “We can walk to it from here. Did your source say what was missing?”
“No, Miz Mary Lou said that Bryan called up yesterday morning and chewed her out on account that the police hadn’t instantaneously figured out that something was missing from his house.”
“We need a map of Pegram County and push pins,” Brownie announced. “We need to map out the pattern. Doubtless there will be a pattern, and we kin discover what the similarities are.”
Janie nodded. “I like the way you think, Brownie, except I don’t think I would have shocked Matt Lauer on national television.”
“He was asking for it.”
“He didn’t ask for it.”
“Did you see his face? When I said I built the stun gun from scratch, he didn’t believe me. He thought I was making it up.” Brownie was still outraged about that.
Janie cocked her hip and rested a hand on it. Today’s t-shirt proclaimed “Support your local police! (Leave fingerprints.)” She tilted her head at him. “So what? That didn’t mean you had to shock him.”
“Shore it did,” Brownie said. “Now he won’t be all doubtful when a fella tells him how it is. Bet he never looks at a ten-year-old the same way. Betcha.”
“There is that,” Janie said. “You want to go see Mr. McGee now? I think Miz Demetrice won’t miss us if we’re gone less than an hour or two.”
“Now you’re on the trolley, dollface.”
* * *
Forty minutes later Brownie rapped on Bryan McGee’s door. He didn’t know anything about the man except the day before he had spoken vehemently to Mary Lou Treadwell on the emergency line. The subject had been something missing from his residence, but he did not say what it had been. Brownie also recollected Cousin Bubba speaking about Bryan having a Ford truck that had a bad knock. Since Brownie didn’t know much about automobiles, he disregarded that fact as irrelevant. (If a truck had a bad knock, did that mean that it couldn’t get someone to open the door?)
“My turn this time,” Janie said to Brownie as he hit his fist against the door.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” Brownie offered.
“You cheat.”
“I don’t cheat. I improvise. Isn’t that what a good detective should do?”
Janie stared at Brownie suspiciously. “There might be something in the books about improvisation, but I had to look that word up in the dictionary, and I still don’t get it.”
“Ad-lib, sweetheart.” Brownie slanted an eyebrow at her. “Make stuff up on the spot. Lie very well. You should practice that.”
“I lie,” Janie said. Her eyes flicked downward. “Your fly’s undone.”
Brownie looked down and blushed. “It is not!”
“See, I lie. You believed me. Totally.”
The door pulled open, and a man stared down at the pair of them. He was in his sixties and white haired. His eyes were as brown as a newborn fawn. His face was as wrinkled as the Sunday wash after it had been left in the basket all day. Janie tried to step backward but Brownie nudged her.
“I’m Janie and this is Brownie,” she said firmly. Brownie nodded.
“You’re Bubba’s nephew,” the man said, looking at Brownie. “Nice suit and hat.”
“Second cousin. My daddy is Bubba’s cousin,” Brownie said. “Or is that cousins, once removed. I cain’t never recall.”
“You’re Mr. McGee?” Janie insisted. Brownie surely enjoyed watching Janie get all assertive. She reminded him of her aunt, Willodean. Firm, assertive, ready to take action. Sure there was a grumpy man who answered the door, but Janie wasn’t going to take no for an answer. If Brownie had a mind to like a girl (Eww! Girl germs!) then Janie would definitely be one of the highest tomatoes on the list. Right next to Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, who are cutie-potooties, even if they are girls.
“And you’re the sheriff’s deputy’s niece,” Bryan McGee said to Janie. “Heard about you, too.”
“How’s that Ford truck running?” Brownie asked.
“It sucks,” Bryan said. “Sucks like a giant Hoover and everything else around here. Did you know it sat at Bufford’s Gas & Grocery for nigh on two months before that swizzle stick, Melvin Wetmore, told me all it had wrong was a batch of bad gasoline? Ifin your cousin had sti
ll been working there, he would have fixed it good. Now, ifin I drive it down the block, it clunks like hailstones hitting a tin roof in April. Cain’t sell it neither.”
“Sorry to hear that, sir,” Brownie said gravely. “A man’s truck is holy.”
“What do you kids want? Selling cookies or mulch? Heck, I’ll take some of whatever it is. Give me something to do.” Bryan looked over his shoulder to see if anyone else was about. “The good Lord knows I’ve got to escape outta this house whenever I get a chance. Last year about the time my truck was broken, my wife had her gallbladder out, and her sister, Henrietta, came up from Lake Charles. You know that woman ain’t left in all this time? Says she likes the weather here, and it ain’t all that different from Louisiana. Plus they’re going out on Thursday nights to the Pegramville Women’s Club, and you kids got to know that it ain’t no women’s club.”
“Tell us about the club, Mr. McGee,” Janie said decisively. Brownie noticed that her green eyes resolutely bored into Bryan’s.
“The club,” Brownie echoed inflexibly. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Bryan blinked. “Of course, your great-auntie is the orchestrator of the whole caboodle. She’s the master criminal of all that tomfoolery. She’s got all the women in this county riled up and ready to go on Thursday nights. It’s like they was going to the opera. Sparkly dresses and big hats with feathers on them. Big purses, high heels, red lipstick. And do you know what they bring with them? My wife said they pour cheap wine and Cheetos on top of ice cream.” He grimaced in a way that suggested the thought of such a thing would make him vomit. “Twaddle.”
I need a feather on my fedora, Brownie thought. Cheetos on top of ice cream don’t sound half bad.
“And— ” Bryan trailed off as he realized what he was saying and to whom he was saying it “— what do you kids want?”
“You called the emergency line yesterday,” Janie said, and Brownie swore the girl sounded just like a real cop. She could have fooled someone with a bright light and magnifying glass.
“Yeah,” Bryan agreed in an uncomfortable tone of voice. “I called Mary Lou.”
