by C. L. Bevill
“That’s a dang shame,” Bubba said, “but as far as I know, he ain’t related to Edison.”
“Perhaps one of the guards at this facility could tell you about Mr. Beathard,” the man said. “If you happen upon an alternating current electric generator, come find me. I have inventions and electrical current to develop in diabolical ways. Bwaha.”
Bubba pursed his lips as the man in the seersucker suit wandered off. He could check the cafeteria or David’s room or many of the other places that a man dressed in a deerstalker cap could be hiding. A stout woman in a flowered dress and matching hat appeared next to him and made him jump.
“Ma’am,” he said.
“I understand you’re on the hunt for David,” the woman said.
Precious bumped Bubba’s knee. Bubba extended his hand down to scratch her head.
“And you’ve a hound for the hunt,” the woman added. She wasn’t that tall, but she made up for it in width. Her face was craggy and caked with makeup. The lipstick matched the poppies on her dress.
“She’s a hound all right,” Bubba said, looking at her suspiciously. “Do you know where David is?”
The woman leaned in, and Bubba nearly flinched. “Call me Cella,” she said. “It was my grandmother’s name, too.”
“Are you a patient here or perhaps visiting someone?” Bubba asked.
Cella giggled and covered her mouth with a white gloved hand. “Oh, I’m a patient, too, if any of us are really patients.”
Bubba’s eyes narrowed. “Is that you, David?”
Cella abruptly stopped giggling. “You think I’m a man?” One of her hands fluttered in front of her chest. Her mouth opened, then shut, and then opened again. “I never,” she said huffily.
Bubba felt he had come to a decision that was not made lightly. He could accuse the woman of being a man or pretend that the woman who wasn’t really a man was a woman. It could very well be David under the caked makeup and the auburn wig arranged in curls that would have made a young Shirley Temple envious. Bubba was uncertain how David could have managed to temporarily shrink himself. “This ain’t funny, David,” Bubba said, going for the gusto. “I came all the way out here to see ifin you’re alright.”
Cella took in a deep breath and glared at Bubba in an exceedingly indignant fashion. That’s what Bubba would call it, and he had seen it from his mother many a time. Indignant to the extreme. Bubba almost backed down, but he was starting to get a headache, and although he’d stopped at Jack in the Box for a Sourdough Jack burger, seasoned curly fries, and a vanilla ice cream shake, he was still a mite peckish. Pickles were sounding better and better.
“David,” Bubba said again, “that social worker came to see me on account that you ain’t bin out here since Wednesday. I’m sorry I couldn’t come with you earlier. It’s all this wedding bizness that’s driving me crazier than a dog in a hubcap factory.” He paused. “No offense intended.”
Precious yipped, obviously offended.
“A wedding?” Cella repeated. Her demeanor abruptly changed. “I adore weddings. Can I come?”
“Of course you’re invited,” Bubba said impatiently. “I done sent you an invitation last week. Mebe you ain’t got it yet. Jesus Christ is invited, too. Also Thelda. Wouldn’t be a gathering without you folks.”
Cella clapped her hands together.
“Dr. Watson.”
She did a little jig. “I get to go to a wedding. I get to go to a wedding. I get to go to a wedding. Will there be a reception? With jumbo shrimp and cocktail weenies?” Her manner instantly turned serious. She stopped dancing to say, “I would never go to a reception without cocktail weenies.” She glowered at him. “Swear there will be cocktail weenies.”
“They ain’t decided what they’re serving at the reception,” Bubba added sourly. “There was talk of caviar and macaroni and cheese. Not together, I hope. I would think there would have to be cocktail weenies.””
Cella smiled again. She resumed dancing.
“Dr. Watson.”
“Okay, David,” Bubba said to Cella. “Cain’t you just go back to being Sherlock Holmes?”
Cella stared at Bubba. “I was never Sherlock Holmes. I was Mamie Eisenhower. Then I was Pocahontas in another life. I might have been kidnapped by aliens once. I’m not sure.” She leaned in to whisper into Bubba’s ear. “I think they did something to my brain.”
“Dr. Watson!”
Bubba turned his head to look at the other person who was talking and saw the man in the seersucker suit with the scar on his face. The one who wanted an induction motor and to make sure relatives of Thomas Edison weren’t there to swipe his patents related to electric currency. Who was that? Nikola Tesla?
Nikola winked at Bubba and leaned in toward him. “Dr. Watson, psst. It’s me.”
Bubba glanced at Cella who was still dancing a jig, although it had transmogrified into an electric glide. “Oh, carp, I mean, crap, I mean carp. Sorry, ma’am, I thought you were someone else.”
Cella froze. “Does this mean I’m not invited to the wedding?”
“Uh,” Bubba said. “No, you can come. I’ll get the details to you later. Cella, right?”
“Cella Montague LaPierre Mitchell Blankenship,” Cella said haughtily. “Get it right, or I won’t bring a gift. Don’t forget the cocktail weenies.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bubba said obediently. He watched as she danced away and then turned back to David Beathard. “Dang. I dint recognize you, David.”
“Sherlock,” David said. “Watson, I wouldn’t have expected you to recognize me whilst in disguise. I am, after all, a master at the art of illusion and concealment.”
Bubba inclined toward David in order to see the makeup better. “How did you do the nose and the scar?”
“Those people with the movie company were highly informative,” David whispered confidentially. “There was one makeup girl who showed me pictures of herself dressed in a Lady Godiva outfit, not that there was much to it. She was wearing this wig with long silvery hair covering all the strategic spots. She told me she was going to a convention as a daisy this year with crystals glued to her body.” He sighed. “What lucky glue.”
“David,” Bubba said, “don’t you have a daughter not much younger than that makeup girl?”
“Silver wig,” David explained, “no clothing. I’d have to be dead not to get that. I suppose you had to be there to appreciate it, Dr. Watson.”
“Okay,” Bubba said. “I talked to Willodean and Doc Goodjoint about the two deaths here.”
“Murders,” David corrected. He looked surreptitiously about and then tugged Bubba into a corner. “Remember I am still Nikola Tesla, famous inventor and eccentric Serbian American.”
“You’re David pretending to be Sherlock Holmes pretending to be Nikola Tesla,” Bubba stated. “I ain’t shore I kin follow this all the time, but I reckon I’ll try.”
“Good,” David pronounced. “Try to remember to call me Nikola whilst I am in disguise. I cannot pretend to be a mad scientist if you call me David. Bwaha.”
“I-uh-okay, Nikola.”
“Walk with me, Watson,” David said, pointing to the hallway. “I don’t know why you brought the hound of the Baskervilles, but we’ll adapt to it and possibly use the beast in the culmination of this quixotic conundrum.”
Precious yipped sharply. Bubba blocked her with one foot as her sharp teeth were likely going for David’s ankle. The dog knew when she had been insulted.
“Uh, Dav-Sher-uh, Nikola,” Bubba said, “got any sardines around? I gotta hankering for some, mebe with chocolate poured over ‘em.”
Chapter 7
Bubba and the Emergent
Advent of Evil Intentions
Saturday, April 6th
To Bubba’s abundant dismay, he didn’t get sardines with chocolate sauce. He did, however, convince David to allow him to call him David instead of Nikola or Sherlock. “You see, you’re really David here, and everyone knows you as David,” B
ubba reasoned. “Folks would be surprised if you wanted them to call you Sherlock once your gig as Nikola is up.”
“By Zeus’s electrical superconductors,” David swore, “you’re correct. Call me Nikola until I have undisguised myself. A truly intellectual man should keep to his masquerade no matter what the occurrence.”
They walked down a long hallway. A man dressed in a hospital robe and ladybug slippers approached them and nodded genially. The antennas on the slippers bobbed in time with his slow shuffle. Precious moved as far away in the hallway as she could get from the bobbing slippers.
Once the man passed them, Bubba said, “So my contacts said one death was a heart attack and the other one was suicide. What makes you think they ain’t just that?” It wasn’t exactly what Bubba thought Dr. Watson would say, but it was as close as he was going to get being he wasn’t British, a doctor, or cultured.
“The first victim, Mrs. Ingrid Ferryjig, was forty-two years old and in excellent physical health. The medical personnel performed a full physical examination upon her admittance to the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being.” David glanced around. “This is what they do to all new patients upon her entrance. Personally, I think they’re gouging the various medical insurances, but it’s also a case of covering their bums. They wouldn’t want a lawsuit to occur if a said individual died, and they were not thorough in their analysis.”
Bubba frowned. “Why did they admit the lady?”
“Seasonal affective disorder, sometimes known as SAD,” David said. He scratched at the fake scar on his cheek. A little edge peeled away, and Bubba resisted the urge to say, “Don’t pick at that, you’re making it worse.”
“Some folks have something-like wrong with them, doesn’t mean they don’t have heart attacks.” Bubba shook his head. “I would think forty-two was getting into the heart attack zone for a person. It’s young, but it ain’t unheard of.”
“Key factors include family history, smoking, obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and blockage of the arteries. You see, Watson, a heart attack occurs when one of the oxygen-rich blood-filled arteries ceases to supply the heart. Coronary heart disease is the cause of heart attacks. What makes the artery become blocked is the curiosity.” David glanced at Bubba curiously. “As a gentleman of medicine, you should know this already.”
“You know my dad died of a heart attack, David.” Bubba winced. “I mean, Nikola.”
“Mrs. Ferryjig was a health food advocate. Her cholesterol level was exceptionally good. The levels of good cholesterol were high. The bad cholesterol numbers were low. She ran five miles four times a week. She weighed a mere one hundred ten pounds and was only five feet two inches tall. Her biggest problem was that she would break down and cry on a cloudy day. She would use an entire box of Kleenex in one sitting. It was most disconcerting. Gor Blimey.”
“Sometimes there are factors folks don’t know about,” Bubba said. “A bad valve that ain’t detected until after a soul is dead.” His father’s autopsy had revealed a lifetime of smoking, drinking, and eating fried foods had done him in; of course, no one was really surprised. Bubba himself could rarely resist fried food, but he also ate his fair share of veggies and forced himself to exercise several times a week, even if it was chasing a stranger with a metal detector and a shovel down the long drive that led to the main road. “Ifin you plant a tater, you get a tater,” he added. Potatoes sounded good at the moment, covered with a chili sauce, parmesan cheese, and green olives.
“I’ll grant you that, good man,” David said. “All by itself, the death of Mrs. Ferryjig was not particularly doubtful. In fact, I was saddened by it initially but not suspicious. It was only after the second death that I began to look into it. All of Mrs. Ferryjig’s medical records reflect that she was in supreme physical health. Her doctors must have been happy about that part. No family history of cardiac disease. No diabetes. She even had an EKG when she came into the facility.”
“It’s strange, all right,” Bubba said, “but it ain’t murder. Your docs here signed off on it.”
“Then by process of deduction that means they are foolish and ill-bred or completely incompetent.”
“Or mebe they don’t want the hospital to have anyone in it that done got murdered,” Bubba said and immediately regretted it.
“Remarkable process of reasoning, Watson,” David proclaimed. “I had not considered that it could be a simple cover-up, which muddies the waters of indubitable investigation. We shall take that into account whilst we process all the myriad bits of information provided to us by the great human condition.”
“Great,” Bubba said, but he wasn’t sure it was great because he didn’t even want to venture a guess at what came next. “What about the other person who died?”
“Hurley Tanner,” David said. “Mr. Tanner consumed barbiturates obtained from a source other than the hospital. He expired sometime in the early morning hours of the first of April.”
“David, this ain’t a belated April Fool’s joke, is it?”
“Murder is never a joke, Watson!”
“Of course, it ain’t,” Bubba agreed. “You know I don’t laugh at murder.” He sighed and thought about cheese curds. Cheese curds suddenly sounded very good to him. Would a mental hospital have cheese curds in the cafeteria? Probably not. Deep-fried cheese curds with a ranch dressing dip and a side of cucumber relish. “What makes you think that Mr. Hurley Tanner did not commit suicide?”
“He was a recovering alcoholic,” David said.
They reached an exterior door, and Bubba looked outside. It had been a long afternoon and the sun was transcending into the area of evening. It would likely set in another hour or two. Precious made a hopeful canine sound as she pressed her long nose against the glass in the bottom of the door and created a nose print that wasn’t going to be easily wiped away.
“Ain’t shore ifin I see the distinction, Dav-er-Nikola,” he said as he opened the door and let his dog outside. She trotted outside with a little prance in her step.
“Alcohol was his drug of choice. According to his brother, he never touched pills. The pills weren’t from the hospital because the doctors testified to the sheriff that they weren’t the same brand used in that regard. The only pills brought in with Hurley were antibiotics that he was finishing for a sinus infection, and those pills were accounted for.”
Bubba thought about that and frowned. It wasn’t exactly abnormal. An alcoholic man who he didn’t know committed suicide by swallowing an overdose of barbiturates. However, the barbiturates weren’t readily available from the hospital. Certainly, they had to have some kind of barbiturates around because it was that kind of hospital, but drugs like that were carefully monitored and kept under lock and key. Thus the man had gotten the pills from somewhere else.
The suicide had been investigated by Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Simms, who wasn’t exactly known for setting the woods on fire.
“Did this Hurley fella have visitors before he died?”
“His wife and daughter,” David said, “who could have provided the pills. Or it was possible that the pills were acquired illegally. There is a booming business within the hospital of illegal chemical enhancers. Mostly marijuana. One can always tell when Ralph the Potman has been around by the number of people hitting up the vending machines in the middle of the night.”
“What kind of place is this?” Bubba had a sneaking suspicion that Ralph the Potman was none other than Ralph Cedarbloom, Miz Adelia’s cousin, who had a pot patch that he supplied Miz Adelia’s mother with. Sadly, Miz Adelia’s mother was dying from terminal cancer and used it as a painkiller. Ralph used the rest of the pot in his patch to make a living. The local authorities weren’t exactly happy with him, but he hadn’t yet been caught. Bubba would have thrown the DEA after Ralph but that would have made Miz Adelia readily unhappy, and Bubba couldn’t stand the thought of taking the drug away from a dying woman, illegal or not.
“The people who are buying pot aren’
t here for chemical dependency, you daft halfpenny.” David pointed toward the lawn where several people were playing lawn darts with foam missiles. They were a little hard to throw given that they weighed next to nothing. “There’s quite a range here. Depression, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, generalized panic disorder, which also can be generalized anxiety disorder. Disassociation disorders are common—” Bubba nearly snorted but bit his lip instead— “as well as bipolar, and I think we have two, no, three eating disorders. Of course, there are several people drying out here. Dogley is getting to be quite the destination facility for celebrities. The VIP suites are quite spiffy. The shower has travertine tiles and multiple shower heads including one with a rain head on the ceiling.”
“Were Hurley or Mrs. Ferryjig celebrities?” Bubba asked. He hadn’t heard of them, but that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t.
“Hurley is second generation oil man. Mrs. Ferryjig is the granddaughter of a very famous Hollywood director. They both inherited wealth.”
Bubba shook his head. “I don’t reckon I understand why you think them two were the product of foul play, David.” How did a former postal employee afford to stay at Dogley, then? David was just that, but it was possible that there were things that Bubba didn’t know about him.
“Nikola,” David corrected.
“And I don’t reckon I understand how you got to examine their medical records neither.”
“That was simple, Watson,” David said with imperious disregard, “I broke into the records department and took a look. It wasn’t difficult. They write the passwords on the paper next to the computer. Horrific security in that regard.”
They went out the door with Bubba wondering why getting buzzed into the front doors was a de facto security measure when someone could simply walk around to the side and come right through the open doors. They walked onto the lawn, and Bubba took in the spring air. It was still a pleasant day, albeit a strange day. He wasn’t exactly concerned that people had been murdered. No, it was more likely this was an offshoot of David’s latest persona.
