by C. L. Bevill
Bam Bam wasn’t done, however. “That’s true. No one thought I was a minister, either. Except this one time I went to church with my mother, and—” he trailed off as he saw Bubba’s expression— “I just mean that fella who was in my bathroom could be a mortician as easily as a federal agent.”
“Looks like a fed, and wouldn’t he have some kind of mortician’s license? Don’t those fellas need some kind of official decree to do what they do to the recently departed?”
Bam Bam shrugged. “Ain’t something I ever thought about before.”
“And would a group of other morticians sneak into the back door of your place in order to spirit off the other mortician who mysteriously got shot in the forehead?” Bubba tapped the middle of his forehead for emphasis and then leaned over to snag another grape out of Precious’s reach.
“They weren’t sneaking,” Bam Bam denied. “Leslie saw them and talked to them, so how could they be sneaking?”
“Look, Bam Bam, I don’t know if morticians would be a secretive group of cover ups or not, but I’m just trying to do what you wanted to do here. Figure out what happened to John J. Johnson the Third like you lured me here to do.”
Bam Bam’s shoulders slumped. “I know, Bubba. I thought when the body vanished that my problems were over, or at least the most urgent problems, but that ain’t the case at all. Now all I can think of is that I’ll sound like you when you were trying to convince folks at your wedding that there had been a body in your house. I do believe a vein in your mother’s forehead was that close to exploding.” He held up his right hand and pinched his index finger and thumb close together to show how close that possibly had been.
One of the ladies opened the door to the practice room and looked at them both expectantly. Bubba struggled for the name and came up with Snuggles somethingorother. Why? Because everyone needed a snuggle now and again, and wasn’t that what an exotic dancer was trying to impart, that one could be snuggly with them? Honestly, he did not know the answer to that because he had never wanted to snuggle with an exotic dancer. (There was only one lady he wanted to snuggle with, well, two if he counted Precious.) No, he didn’t really want to think about that. In fact, there was a highly disproportionate amount of things that he didn’t want to think about at Bazooka Bob’s gentlemen club. (Girls! Girls! Girls! Free Buffet on Tuesdays!)
“Oh, hey Snuggles,” Bam Bam said. “You goin’ to yell at me, too?”
“Oh no, I like working here,” Snuggles said, and Bubba looked at her closely. She wasn’t exactly like the other dancers. She was tall and the high heels she was wearing were some kind of black shiny booties with straps that went up her ankles. She also wore fishnet stockings (Now why doesn’t Willodean have some of those?) and a leather skirt with a matching leather bustier. Her hair was that strawberry-colored wig, and she wore a deep layer of makeup that would have given Gene Simmons in his heyday pause.
Bubba tilted his head. Snuggles looked familiar to him, like he’d seen her somewhere before. That wasn’t inconceivable because he saw a lot of people while he worked as a mechanic. Culpepper’s Garage was the number one mechanical service in Pegram County. Gideon Culpepper had had to add two more mechanics in the previous month to deal with an upsurge in business. (Bubba’s personal theory was that people were hanging on to cars longer causing the necessity of taking them to an auto mechanic, which was definitely good for business.)
Bubba frowned and leaned in closer. Snuggles blinked false eyelashes at him. The eyelashes were encrusted with rhinestones that increased in size as they went from the inside of the eyes to the outside. Bubba didn’t quite understand how someone could wear the eyelashes without having to take them off in the middle of the day because they appeared heavy. Of course, Snuggles had a whole rhinestones thing going on with more of them over the eyes and running down both of her cheekbones. It must have taken her an hour to apply all of it.
Bubba’s own skin itched in response. The last time he’d had something applied to his face with a special glue (zombie makeup in the movie that Bam Bam had a quarter percentage point in), he’d had an allergic reaction that made him unintelligible and unable to swallow his own spit. It had been quite debilitating and also prompted him to keep away from any form of makeup for the remainder of his life, even if he had been so inclined. (The wedding planner for Bubba and Willodean had been so inclined, but his preference had been for eyeliner wings and not rhinestones. Possibly his inclination had changed since the wedding, but Bubba didn’t really know.)
Snuggles deliberately blinked slowly at Bubba using both eyes so that both sets of rhinestones could be observed glittering in the fluorescent lights of the practice room. Bam Bam glanced at Bubba and chuckled. “You don’t remember Snuggles, Bubba?”
“I don’t,” Bubba confirmed. “I reckon I need to think about it.”
“Something’s wrong,” Snuggles said. “I can sense it. A woman like me knows about these things, plus I have some experience with situations gone terribly wrong.”
There was also something very familiar with Snuggles’s deep voice.
Bubba, quite naturally, was suspicious. “What kind of dance do you do, Miz Snuggles?”
Bam Bam made a noise that sounded like he was choking on an armadillo egg, and when Bubba glanced at the other man, he was holding one hand over his mouth staring at the tiled floor and had his other arm crossed across his midsection. He made another noise that sounded like, “Mmph moog.”
“It’s a feather dance,” Snuggles said. “I use about a dozen very large feathers to cover up my body while I take pieces of clothing off. No one ever really sees anything, but there’s a certain illusion of nakedness. It’s kind of like a peek-a-boo game. Sally Rand, who was an infamous burlesque dancer from the 30s, though I do believe she continued to dance until the 70s, was the veritable mother of the fan dance. They used to arrest her for indecent exposure, but she wasn’t really exposing anything.”
Bam Bam clearly bit his lip and said in a breathy voice, “Snuggles has quite a following on Sunday nights. Half the people from Dah—” he broke off when Snuggles hit Bam Bam in the solar plexus.
“I have three thousand followers on Facebook and four thousand on Twitter,” Snuggles said.
“And you ain’t making enough money?” Bubba asked Bam Bam.
Bam Bam shrugged. “If the place ain’t completely packed, then I don’t make enough money. Tole you, folks like their YouTube more than they like coming to Bazooka Bob’s.”
“Well, Miz Snuggles,” Bubba began and saw Bam Bam’s face contorting as he spoke, “do you know about any official individuals in the club lately? Perhaps asking questions and wanting to know if anything illegal is goin’ on?”
Snuggles blinked again and shifted reaching out to touch Bubba’s shoulder with strawberry-colored fingernails encrusted with more rhinestones. He got a whiff of her perfume. It was odd because it smelled more like men’s cologne than it did perfume.
Abruptly, Bubba’s eyes threatened to roll up in his head like a wayward set of roller blinds that suddenly went careening back up to reveal the exterior cold cruel world. “No,” he breathed. “No. It cain’t be true. David?”
Chapter 12
Bubba and Investamagation
Tuesday, August 22nd
“I am Snuggles Palomino,” David Beathard said imperiously, deliberately keeping his voice high pitched. He placed his arms akimbo and thrust his chin, as well as other parts, forward. “I am a dancer.”
“Of course,” Bubba said. David was well known to take on certain personas. His most famous to date was The Purple Singapore Sling, who had been a superhero with various superpowers and who had been known to wear all purple attire right down to his underwear. A permanent resident of the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being, he was colloquially known as a “loony,” although most people agreed that it was a wretched, biased tag with which to be labeled. (“Loonies are just like us, except they’re loonies,” Miz Demetrice had been known t
o say on more than one occasion.) On the positive side, David was also Bubba’s friend. He’d helped Bubba out on many occasions and most recently with the preposterous and despicable series of events that had occurred at Bubba and Willodean’s wedding.
Bubba couldn’t help but look beyond David to see if any of the other loonies had appeared. Where there was one, it was quite probable that there were others. Jesus Christ (who wasn’t really the Jesus Christ) might have come to proselytize at Bazooka Bob’s employees to help them in the only way that he could, or it was also possible he might come to steal hemorrhoid cream. Either one. He wore toga-like sheets in a way that he thought the Lord and Savior would have, although he often lacked underwear. There was also Thelda, last name unknown, who liked to wear sweaters even in the hottest part of the summer. She also had a preferred communication method of using Shakespearean-style insults. Goodness knows one hadn’t been properly insulted if it wasn’t done using Shakespearean-style insults, thou pestilent fen-sucked botches!
Fortunately for Bubba, the hallway appeared to be devoid of other loonies. (It was nearly a loony-free zone.) “David,” he said, “did you see the fella who looked just like Bam Bam?”
“I see Bam Bam,” David said, fluttering rhinestone encrusted eyelashes at him. “He’s right beside you. Is this a trick question?”
“Yes, er, no, it’s not a trick question, but we have a bit of a conundrum.”
“Not another conundrum,” David said, reverting to his natural voice. “That would be awful.”
“He was in the bathroom.”
“The broken bathroom?”
“Yes, from before.”
“When Bam Bam said he had played a joke on Bubba,” David interpreted, “there was a dead Bam Bam in a suit, right? The twins saw him, er, it.”
“It wasn’t a joke. It was a real live dead body.” Bubba winced. “It was a real dead body,” he corrected himself. Boy, that never got old and not in a pun-worthy manner, either.
“Bubba, you have the worst luck,” David pronounced.
“I have the worst luck,” Bubba agreed but then he glared briefly at Bam Bam, “but sometimes it’s because someone else drags you into it.”
“Funny you should say drag,” David said and chortled.
Bubba knew that David had supposedly dressed as a former first lady and then there had once been a disguise as a woman while David’s persona had been Sherlock Holmes. This time seemed to be the whole enchilada.
“Look, David,” Bubba started and David interrupted with— “Call me Snuggles.”
“I ain’t shore I kin do that,” Bubba drawled. Then he sighed and added, “Snuggles.”
“So we have another mystery,” David said excitedly. He quickly surged inside the room and shut the door behind him. “How thrilling! Who’s the dead guy? How can I help? Do we need me to go undercover as an exotic dancer detective? I can do that. I can interrogate all of the girls. They have secrets you know. Alotta Fagina loves to eat Hostess Twinkies. She keeps three in her bag just in case of an emergency. Gummi Worm likes to read books like The Count of Monte Cristo, Gone Girl, and The First Wives Club when she thinks no one’s looking. And Tomi Knockers is pregnant again. She’s going to run off and marry the father, who’s a stockbroker, as soon as she gets her next paycheck. She’s going back to her real name Emily Smith.”
Bam Bam shrugged noncommittally. “Good luck with that. Ain’t sure if I can afford the paper for the checks.”
“And the club is closing soon, too,” David added breathlessly.
“I just tole you that,” Bam Bam snapped. “I tole all ya’ll.”
“Then it isn’t much of a secret, is it?” David asked airily.
“What about gov’ment agents coming into the club?” Bubba asked. He was certain that John J. Johnson the Third had some type of government connection and since this was so, it must have something to do with his death. (Bubba kind of thought he was getting good at this whole investigation thing. He was cresting the learning curve or the learning curve was about to crest him, one or the other.)
“Possibly,” David said. He blinked several times, and Bubba couldn’t look away from the rhinestones’ iridescent reflections in the fluorescent lights. Then David crossed his arms over his chest and forced the bustier up so that Bubba could see that something was clearly not right in the chest area.
“Falsies,” Bam Bam muttered. “Just don’t look there, Bubba.”
“Uh,” Bubba muttered and looked at the fluorescent lights.
“That one DEA guy comes in once in a while,” David said. “What was his name? Wartley? Warty?”
“Warley,” Bubba corrected. “Warley Smith. I don’t reckon he’s related to Tomi Knockers?”
“That’s Emily’s married name,” Bam Bam said. “She’s divorced though, so I guess she’ll take the stockbroker’s name, or maybe not. Some girls don’t. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
“So is the DEA guy interested in the show, or is he interested in something else?” Bubba asked.
David shrugged. Bam Bam shrugged. Bubba grunted. Precious sighed a mighty dog sigh and threw herself down on the floor for a minute’s respite as food was no longer raining from the heavens.
Bubba wouldn’t have thought that John J. Johnson the Third looked like a DEA agent, but illegal drugs were the likeliest scenario, or at least it seemed like it would have been to Bubba. “Any arrests?”
“Just that guy who grabbed Jade’s G-string,” Bam Bam said.
Who else could Bubba ask? He could ask all of the employees, but if one of them was involved, then they wouldn’t want to squeal, and maybe they would take off, too.
“Maybe we should let this go, Bubba,” Bam Bam suggested.
“It’s goin’ to come back and bite you on the tuckus,” Bubba advised.
“It’s okay. I have a strong tuckus,” Bam Bam stated. “I been doing my clenches on a regular basis.”
“We should ask Ralph Cedarbloom about the drug stuff,” Bubba said. “He’s kind of in the know. They haven’t caught him or his roving pot patch yet.”
“You could ask your wife,” David suggested.
“She would want to know why I was asking,” Bubba said, “and I think I’ve already reached my limit of reasonable credibility for today. Purt shore.”
“You should probably know that Destiny and Diamond are looking in the other bathroom,” David said. “There might be some other girls looking, too. They’re, ah, somewhat suspicious. I understand why now.”
Bam Bam’s face crinkled. “They suspect something. Good thing those fellas came along and ‘took’ the evidence.”
“What fellas?” David asked.
“Gov’ment people,” Bubba said at the same time Bam Bam said, “Plumbers.”
“They’re about the same,” David judged. Then he whispered conspiratorially, “I used to be a postman, you know.”
Bam Bam shook his head and said, “Best to see what they’re about.”
“Ain’t nothing to see,” Bubba said. “And I need to head back to the Cedarblooms to talk with Ralph before he heads out to his pot patch.”
“He’s got a greenhouse on Lake Plooey,” David said. “It’s a houseboat. Takes it out into the lake so people can’t see what he’s doing but everyone knows. If the police come, he can just sink it.”
“How do you know?”
“I know lots of people who talk,” David said loftily. “They love me. And they love my fan dance. I have a YouTube channel.”
Bubba spared a moment to look at his watch. Time was marching away like tin soldiers off to a war. Willodean would be at the station by this time, getting ready to leave for home. She wouldn’t be asking questions for at least an hour. He followed Bam Bam and David out the door and down the hallway.
When they passed Leslie, he was singing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” at the top of his lungs using a spatula as a pretend microphone.
Bam Bam came to a screeching halt as he caugh
t sight of Destiny, Diamond, Gummi Worm, Granny Goodbang, and Pop Tart Smith all looking inside the men’s bathroom where, until very recently, there had been a dead Bam Bam lookalike in a suit. (Wait, was Pop Tart Smith related to Agent Warley Smith, or was it just that Smith was a very common name? Possibly Pop Tart was a family name. After all, Bubba’s family had a Fudge, a Brownie, and a Cookie.)
The group all turned in unison to look at Bam Bam.
“We don’t think you had time to change,” Destiny said accusingly. At least Bubba thought it was Destiny. One of them had a higher hair boof than the other and that was the one Bubba was calling Destiny.
“Yeah, and that means there was a body,” Diamond said and tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder.
“Cough up the corpse, mister,” Granny Goodbang ordered.
“Leslie said there were plumbers here,” Gummi Worm said. “They carried a toilet off in a black garbage bag. What kind of plumber carries off a toilet in a black garbage bag? It doesn’t look like any of these toilets is brand new.”
“Yellow pages,” Bam Bam said. “I just let my fingers do the walking, and here those fellas came. They was so quick like they didn’t even leave a bill, but I be certain I’ll pay for that later.”
“Yeah you will,” Bubba said under his breath, and Bam Bam shot him a glare.
“Ain’t nothing to it,” Bam Bam said loudly. “Go on now. Miz Demetrice said she was getting an employment agency to come down here and see what could be done. Plus I’ll get together all the money I have to pay ya’ll your last paycheck. If I have to sell something like my car, I will.”
“Ain’t no one going to buy that car,” Alotta Fagina said derogatorily from behind Bam Bam, “but at least the thought’s there.” She released the derision from the second part of her sentence and smiled in a brittle fashion. “It’s purple metallic,” she explained as if Bam Bam looked confused about why someone wouldn’t want to buy his beloved AMC Gremlin, “and it has curb feelers. Did you happen to notice that it snows like maybe an inch a year in Texas?”
