by C. L. Bevill
“Then I would have found some way to get you back there,” Bam Bam said wearily. “I was watching on the security camera.”
Bubba perked up. “Then you can figure out who shot you, er, him.”
“It doesn’t record. It’s live. Bob was a cheap bastard who didn’t think ahead. I reckon he weren’t thinking that someone would shoot someone who looked exactly like me and then just leave the body lying about.”
Bubba ate the final two wings before responding. “So you lured me in to find the body and then solve things.”
“Okeedokee, artichokee,” Bam Bam said, and Bubba took that to mean that he agreed.
Bubba swallowed the last bite, wiped his hands on the napkin again, and took a long swig of sweet tea. It wasn’t all better, but there was marginal improvement. “So I got two questions.”
Bam Bam stared at the two shots of scotch. “Shoot. Er. Don’t shoot. Just ask me.”
“That fella who’s dead in your bathroom,” Bubba started, sighed, and then finished, “is that your brother?”
“I do not know,” Bam Bam said.
“You do know he looks a lot like you,” Bubba said.
“I noticed that.”
“But you don’t know if that’s your brother.”
“I was adopted as an infant. My mama lives in Las Vegas with her fourth husband. She’s retired, and I send her money every month. I think she blows it on craps, but if it makes her happy, that’s well and good.”
“Adopted,” Bubba said.
“I never had the notion to look up my biological parents,” Bam Bam said. “I had an idea that I wouldn’t like what I found. I always thought it would be better not to know than to know and regret that I knew, you know?”
Bubba wasn’t sure if he knew.
Bam Bam tapped one of the shot glasses. “But yesterday, he showed up, right after closing when no one else was about. He said he needed to talk to me but that it wasn’t safe. Said he had things to tell me. Didn’t tell me his name. Didn’t say if he was my brother or what. Just popped his head into my office while I was trying to finish paperwork. I didn’t even see him on the security feeds.” He pulled the glass closer to him by hooking the end of his index finger around the curve of the tiny container. “I was so dumbfounded that I sat here in this very spot for a minute, and I didn’t even run after him. By the time I got up, went out, he was gone. I looked out in the parking lot and didn’t see anything. There weren’t any cars out there except mine and one of the girls’ cars that was broken down. She had caught a ride with one of the other girls. He was gone as gone can be. He’d made like a banana and split. He’d made like a nut and bolted. I didn’t have anything except a notion that I had a daydream.” The shot glass inched closer to him.
Bubba didn’t really want to say anything. In the darkest hours of being around his father, he’d had a hopeful wish that he’d been adopted or that his mother had had a fling with the mailman or the milkman or any man except Elgin Snoddy, but it wasn’t true, and Bubba had to live with it.
“I thought I’d had a delusion or a hallucination, but I’m not old enough for dementia, and I don’t do drugs,” Bam Bam said. “And as I said, I only drink one shot of scotch a week except for the last twenty-four hours, which is, as you might have figured out, special.”
“You’re not talking like yourself,” Bubba said.
“Some people expect a black man to talk a certain way,” Bam Bam said. “It always he’ped with bizness.” He easily slid back into a Texan accent tinged with equal parts street thug and gangsta. “I suppose that’s really stereotyping myself.” One index finger drew a ring along the edge of the glass. “I got a master’s degree in business administration from University of Texas at Arlington. It didn’t always go the way I planned, but I made pretty good money. Made pretty good money from that movie, too. I thought a strip club would be a no brainer.” He examined the liquid on the end of his finger and then licked it off. “I didn’t realize there would be so much office politics among the ladies who work here. So and so is upset about which makeup table she has because it’s underneath the vent. Such and such thinks that the schedule is favoring another dancer. They argue like cats and dogs, and it drives me nuts. Plus the money ain’t as good as I reckoned it would be.”
“You’ve never heard from your family before?” Bubba asked. He felt like taking his finger and wiping the last bits of chicken wing sauce away from the plate, but that would be somewhat rude. Somewhere his mother and Miss Manners were wincing in concert.
Bam Bam shook his head. “My mama is a goodly woman. She didn’t think much of my skirting legalities and all, but successful is successful with only a few trips to the hoosegow. And hey, they all got dismissed.”
Bubba couldn’t argue with that reasoning. How many times had he been in jail without any actual convictions? Pretty much all of them. Pretty much, although there had been that one time that I got mistaken for Troy Aikman and that lady wanted to pinch my…never mind that now.
“So when did you find him?” Bubba asked. It wasn’t the first time that someone had found the body first, but Bubba never got tired of that.
“About an hour after he left, or after I thought he left,” Bam Bam said. “I didn’t hear any gunshot or anything that could be mistaken for a gunshot, but I did put my earbuds in listening to Elvis.” His brown eyes flittered up from the shot glass to Bubba’s. “It’s the From Elvis in Memphis album. I can listen to ‘In the Ghetto’ twenty times a day.”
“And your point being that this fella might have been shot, and you might not have heard it because the King was crooning in your ear,” Bubba said.
Bam Bam shrugged. “I like Elvis.”
Bubba glowered. “And here’s the hard question. I thought I only had two, but they seemed to have multiplied exponentially. Think hard, Bam Bam.”
Bam Bam looked at Bubba expectantly.
“Why in seven hells did you connive to get me here instead of just calling the po-lice?” Bubba asked sincerely.
“I hate the police,” Bam Bam said just as sincerely. “Can’t trust them. They look at me and see a man with a record and a man whose skin color is wrong and a man who owns a strip club. By the way, don’t call it that in front of the girls; they just about lose their minds.”
“So you decided that since I happened to be driving past once or twice a day you might as well lure me in and put me to work finding out what happened to this fella who happens to look just like you.”
Bam Bam sighed and snatched the shot glass up. He downed the scotch without hesitation. He slammed the glass down and snatched the other one without pausing to ask Bubba if he wanted the drink himself. When he grimaced and swallowed the alcohol, he said, “Well, yeah. That was the plan. What could go wrong with a plan like that?”
Chapter 5
Bubba and the Big Story
Tuesday, August 22nd
Bubba had a strong urge to bang his head against the side of the office wall, however, he observed that the structure had the appearance of a manufactured building and probably wouldn’t stand up to the force of his noggin bashing against it. Who was he to put a big hole in the side of a building?
Precious looked up at her master and sighed in a mightily dogly fashion. She apparently decided more chicken wasn’t forthcoming, so she turned three circles and plopped on the floor, placing her chin upon Bubba’s boot.
Bubba repeated the sigh, trying to find some kind of inner guidance. For a day that had started out without a problem, they were being heaped upon his head in increasing numbers that seemed to be growing rapidly by the second. He’d have to explain to Willodean why he was at Bazooka Bob’s. He’d have to explain why he’d stayed there beyond dropping Cayenne Pepper off and then delivering her clutch back to her. (It occurred to Bubba that Cayenne had purposefully left her clutch in the truck, so he would have to follow her inside. Tricksy woman. He’d have to introduce her to Miz Demetrice. They’d probably get along like gangbusters,
if they hadn’t already met.) Then he’d have to explain to Sheriff John Headrick, who was Willodean’s boss and a man who’d arrested Bubba more than a time or two, why he’d found a body. Then he’d have to hope that Bam Bam didn’t decide to tell a fib and that Cayenne Pepper didn’t back him up. The good news, which was marginal at best, was that everyone, including Kiki, had seen that he’d come into Bob’s without any kind of gun on him. The even better news was that Bubba had a rock-solid alibi for the evening before, a fact for which he was profoundly grateful.
Bubba finally understood that he was going to have to try to reason with Bam Bam. Cold logical reasoning would have to produce the results that Bubba needed because nothing else was working. “You do understand that the po-lice are goin’ to find out about that poor dead fella sooner or later, Bam Bam?”
“I understand that,” Bam Bam said. “I figure they’ll say I did it. Kind of like when they say you did it every time you find a body.”
“So you got me to ‘find’ the body to make it seem like I did it?” Bubba asked carefully. He was usually slow to percolate, but lack of food and knowledge of intent was starting to steam his pickles.
“No! No!” Bam Bam protested. “It’s just that you’re like a body lodestone. It wouldn’t be so strange for you to find another body. You’ve found bunches already. And every time it turns out that you didn’t do it. That’s a good pattern there. It won’t be an automatic ‘he did it.’” That wasn’t true because one of the exotic dancers had pointed the finger at Bubba before even five minutes had passed.
“Ain’t bin that many,” Bubba said, and it even sounded lame to himself.
“You found a body at your own wedding,” Bam Bam said accusatorily. “Not once but several times.”
“It was just the one body, and it wasn’t my fault folks kept moving it,” Bubba disputed.
Bam Bam shrugged. “I’ve never been to a wedding where that happened. Not likely to forget it.”
“This is goin’ to rile everyone up. Them news people only just started letting things go again,” Bubba said. “Bin all kinds of folks out to the mansion digging holes in the ground looking for Colonel Snoddy’s gold on account that that old bit of nonsense came out again.”
“It was that FBI agent who broke her ankle,” Bam Bam said. “She self-published a book on the Snoddy gold. Sold pretty well, too. They had her on The Today Show, but Matt Lauer didn’t want to talk to her for some reason. It was that pretty gal Savannah Guthrie who interviewed her. Did you know she left the FBI and is a professional treasure hunter now? I mean the FBI girl not Savannah, of course.”
“I dint know that,” Bubba admitted. On the inside he hoped that the former FBI agent, her name had been Hornbuckle or Hornswaggle or Hornturtle or something like that, fell into another hole, but hopefully a hole that was located well away from the Snoddy Estate. He reckoned that the woman probably thought of the Snoddy Estate “treasure” as the one that got away, and it hadn’t mattered that he, as well as a dozen others, had told her that the only treasure that the Confederate Army colonel had buried was a load of rusted iron bits. It made for good press, and she was spreading the word again. Every night of the previous two weeks he’d chased away somebody with a shovel and a metal detector. One fella had even been unloading a micro backhoe before Bubba had come by carrying one of his mother’s largest shotguns.
“Anyway,” Bam Bam said, “I knew that if you came here, you could help me. It was serendipity that made you cross my path every day for the last few weeks.”
Serendipity sucked, or least that was Bubba’s concerted opinion.
“So you don’t think that the po-lice is goin’ to find it a mite suspicious that you dint call them right away?” Bubba didn’t know if persistent reasoning would work because Bam Bam seemed to be particularly resistant, but he was willing to give it a shot.
“Cain’t the trust the po-lice,” Bam Bam stated. He eyed the two empty shot glasses in a way that suggested that he was thinking of refilling both. “You might feel better ifin you had some of this here scotch, Bubba. Takes the edge right off.”
“What exactly do you think I’m going to do?”
Bam Bam glanced at Bubba. “Figure out who done it, then we can call the po-lice.” He brightened at the thought. “Yeah, that’s it. We’ll solve the mystery, then we’ll call your wife. She’ll protect you.”
“Ifin Willodean figures out what’s goin’ on around here, she might kill us both. You might think that being six months along will hold a gal back, but then you prolly don’t know my wife very well. I actually think her aim is better now that she’s pregnant.”
“She’s awfully cute,” Bam Bam admitted. “Clever, too. Maybe we should call the sheriff after we figure it out. He’s not as smart as your wife.”
Bubba propped his elbows on Bam Bam’s desk and put his face into his hands. “Bam Bam, I don’t think you understand. Ifin you just leave that fella in the bathroom, he’s goin’ to get found sooner or later by someone who will blab.”
“You’re right, Bubba,” Bam Bam exclaimed. “We should move the body. Who moved the last body? We could get tips.”
“That would be Brownie and Janie, then the murderer, and then my mother and my aunt Caressa, and then the murderer again, I think, and then it was Brownie again. Prolly Janie, too. They never admitted it, and I personally think the two of them wouldn’t crack under waterboarding and starvation tactics.” Bubba took his face out of his hands and glared at Bam Bam. Reasoning wasn’t working at all.
“We should call Brownie. That boy is the opposite of being as sharp as a sugar bag full of wet spaghetti, and I don’t care what Matt Lauer says about him. I bet Big Mama up to Dallas would hire him in a flash. Wait, Big Mama would have the body moved for you. Well, she’d do it for Miz Demetrice.” Big Mama was an associate of Miz Demetrice’s who was also a fellow poker player, but that was about as far as their association had gone. Big Mama also happened to be some kind of criminal overlord in the great Dallas metroplex, but Bubba didn’t hold that against her.
“Don’t know Big Mama that well, and Brownie just started school,” Bubba said flatly. He didn’t want to involve one of his mother’s larcenous counterparts, or for that matter, his cousin’s rambunctious son. It would be like the four horsemen of the apocalypse coming to visit Pegram County at the same time while they were on drugs. Furthermore, he didn’t want to involve the infamous crime lord of Dallas, and he especially didn’t want to involve his mother. “And I ain’t moving a dead body, no how, no way.”
Bam Bam glowered. “Well, it was a thought. We’ll have to move quickly. I was here by myself last night, as it was Monday and business is slow on Mondays so we’re closed. So I got a call from Lawyer Petrie about some paperwork to finish, and then there was a call from your mother—”
Bubba interrupted Bam Bam with— “Your lawyer is my lawyer? And what in Sam Hill is my mother doing calling you?”
“Give me a minute, Bubba,” Bam Bam said. “Lawyer Petrie does business law now, too. We got to talking at your wedding and he’s handling some aspects of Bazooka Bob’s. Do you know how hard it is to do all this payroll stuff? You’ve got to pay these people their salary and then account for all the medical insurance and social security, not to mention, I have to give the government their cut. Ain’t nothing easy in this world. I wish I’d won the lottery, instead.”
“My mother,” Bubba prompted.
“Oh yeah, you know how Miz D. is. She’s bin here quite a bit of late.”
Bubba nodded. He knew how his mother was, of all people he knew better than most.
“We came to an agreement the other day, and we were working on details. That’s goin’ to work out real well, as long as we can get past this whole murder thing.”
“How do you know it wasn’t an accident?”
“Bubba, please,” Bam Bam said. “Fella’s got a hole in his head. You think he fell on the sink and impaled himself on the faucet?”
B
ubba shrugged. It could have happened. Stranger things had happened in Pegram County.
“Mebe he was cleaning his gun, and it went off by accident,” Bubba said hopefully.
“Wasn’t any gun there,” Bam Bam said meaningfully.
Bubba took a breath. There was beginning to look like only one way out of this. “Okay, you got some calls and then what happened?”
Bam Bam touched the rim of a shot glass again. “Baby,” he said to the bottle of scotch, “are you a parking ticket? Because you got fine written all over you!”
“Are you talking sweet to the scotch?” Bubba asked with disbelief.
Bam Bam blinked at Bubba and then looked at the scotch again. “You right, Bubba.” He grabbed the bottle and stuck it back in the drawer. Then he locked the drawer with a key and put the key in his pocket. He changed his mind as he took the key out and slid it across the table to Bubba. “You keep that for a bit.”
Bubba took the key and put it in his jean pocket. “What happened after the calls?”
“There was a weird call,” Bam Bam said. “They asked for a Nehemiah Clement Jones, which is me, and ain’t but a few people know that name about here. Furthermore, you aren’t to repeat it.”
“Do you think the same fella who called for you is the same fella in your bathroom deader than dirt at Chernobyl?”
“He asked for me, and I said something about yes, but I don’t go by that name, and he hung up before I could figure out if he was a process server or a debt collector.” Bam Bam sat up straight and added, “Not that I have any warrants out on me lately or that I been skipping out on my credit cards. I don’t think I would have admitted it but he surprised me.”
“That’s the name on your adoption forms or is that the name you were born with?”
“That’s what my mama named me when she got me. I believe I was about three months old. I don’t remember my other name. Not certain if Mama ever told me. And like I said, I wasn’t interested in finding biological relatives. Big can of worms that.”
