by C. L. Bevill
Peyton said, “Ginger will be calling, but she doesn’t know where I’m at per se. Miz Demetrice and Miz Celestine know that I was running an errand. I suppose they’ll miss Bubba before they miss me.” He brightened. “Maybe Ginger will throw a fit at the police station in the city once she realizes I’m not returning messages or texts. That would be great for publicity.”
“Willodean will worry to-night,” Bubba said. “She’ll know when I don’t come home. She’ll put out the word tomorrow. She might even do it late tonight. But the problem is that I dint tell no one where I was going. Well, I did tell them, but I don’t think they will think I was serious. They ain’t going to know where to start looking.” He thought about it. “Peyton heard me. Peyton, did Ma and Miz Celestine hear me?”
“I think they were talking about guns,” Peyton said.
“What does that mean?” Leeza asked. “That it could be tomorrow at the best case scenario? Or that it could be Monday at worst?”
Dr. Adair sighed and paced in front of the table. “There are no deliveries on Sunday. A few people might have visitors like Abel, Leeza, David, Thelda, and Tandy.”
Bubba looked at them, and each of them shook their heads in turn. No one was expecting any visitors who might report to the police that the road was completely blocked off.
“Monday will be different,” Dr. Adair said. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out and then when they’re at the avalanche we can yell across for them to drop off some detectives and such. Tuesday is when the rest of the staff is due to come back, and the construction crew is due to start on the northern wing. I’m not sure about them because they said probably Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest.”
Bubba didn’t think it would work out the way that Dr. Adair was figuring.
“So we all stay together,” Ratchley said. “That way, no one gets hurt, right?”
“I’ve got a better suggestion,” Tandy said. She pulled a package of Marlboros from somewhere. (Bubba thought her pockets must be bottomless with all of the phones and the pack of cigs in them.) She extracted a single smoke and lit it with a Bic disposable lighter while she put the pack back into a pocket with the other hand. Then the lighter vanished into another pocket. “We go to our rooms and lock the doors,” she said, speaking around the cigarette. “All the rooms have bathrooms, so no problem. We’ve got water and toilets and beds and relative security. When the cavalry arrives, then we come out. Problem solved. Well, mostly solved.”
“Who’s got the keys?” Bubba asked.
Dr. Adair winced. “I’ve got a copy. So does Nurse Ratchley. So did Blake Landry. So do some of the doctors who are in South Padre, along with the hospital administrator.”
“Mebe ifin we sleep in groups,” Bubba said. “Nurse Ratchley, Tandy, Leeza, Cybil, and Thelda, for example.”
“What happens when we have to go wee-wee?” Leeza asked. “We could be locked in a room with a diabolical killer.”
“I want to sleep with Bubba,” Peyton said and then grimaced. “I mean in the same room as Bubba. I trust Bubba.”
Bubba wanted to say some nasty words. It certainly hadn’t been his intention to come out to Dogley and get embroiled in a mystery worthy of Pegram County’s venerated infamy. People had tried to kill Bubba before, and he had come out ahead. The problem wasn’t that he was going to get killed by someone, but that Willodean was going to kill him once she found out. Even if he had already been killed. She might bring him back from the dead in order to kill him. “I’ll walk out,” Bubba said. “I don’t need nothing but a flashlight with some extra batteries. I should make it in a few hours to a phone. Folks with digging machines will be here by morning.”
David nodded. “We will need help sooner rather than later. Look, the blasted fog comes rolling in.” He indicated the windows.
“I’ve never seen fog like that,” Cybil said. “It reminds me of the night of the Foggy Mountain murders. Old man Hovious stayed up on the top of the mountain with his wife and his six children. One night a terrible fog moved in, and no one ever left the mountain alive. No one knows what happened.”
“Old man Hovious had a stroke. Then when his wife was hurrying to call for the ambulance, she tripped on the stairs in the fog and broke her neck. There weren’t any children.” Bubba sighed. There was the ghost story, but it wasn’t about a haunted insane asylum like he’d expected.
“What if Bubba is the murderer?” Abel asked. “I don’t think any of us can go anywhere. If one is the murderer, they could double back and do us in, one by one. Or worse they could escape.” He considered. “Or would that be better?”
Dr. Adair glowered. “It’s a good point. Best to stay here, Bubba.”
“I ain’t a murderer,” Bubba said. “I only came up because David asked for he’p. When a friend asks for he’p, then you give a friend he’p. I ain’t got no cause to murder no one up here.”
“Sherlock,” David corrected. “If we are trapped in this place, then we must ferret out the true perpetrator. Each of us must give an accounting of their actions during the time we last saw each other until the time Blake’s corpse was discovered.”
“I’m not saying anything,” Peyton said. “I know my rights, and besides, I have nothing to do with this hospital. I’m a wedding planner, for God’s sake. I didn’t plan that poor man to death. Someone strangled him. Bubba, tell them.”
“Someone strangled that poor man,” Bubba said obediently.
“That I’m a wedding planner,” Peyton said with obvious irritation.
“And yes, he’s a wedding planner.”
“I smoked on the patio,” Tandy said. “I went to the bathroom. I listened to my iPod for a while. I looked at two scripts, which were both crap by the way. You star in one zombie movie and then everyone wants you to be in a zombie movie. Then I walked down to see the cellphone tower and the avalanche.”
“Iiii was iiiin deep praaaayer,” Jesus said. “The soooon of the hooooly one iiiis very buuuusy.”
Thelda said, “Thou slobbering crook-pated foot-lickers.” Bubba interpreted that as the fact that she had been busy doing whatever it was that she liked to do and not murdering Blake Landry, but he could have been wrong. For all he knew, her Shakespearean insult could have been a full confession to any and all murders committed in the immediate vicinity.
Dr. Adair said, “I went to my office. I did paperwork. Three partial evaluations. The electricity’s still on.”
“You mean the gennies are on,” Bubba said. “We’re goin’ to have to find them and make sure they have enough gas for the night.”
“I was in the kitchen getting a Pepsi,” Nurse Ratchley said. “And a Twinkie. Also a bearclaw. I might have also eaten three chocolate chip cookies. There could have been a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels.”
“The cupcake,” Leeza breathed.
“No, I didn’t eat your cupcake, Leeza,” the nurse said. “Everything else maybe, but not the cupcake.”
“Then where else were you?” David asked.
“I went to throw up because I ate too much,” the nurse admitted.
“I went to my room, then to the kitchen,” Leeza said. “I didn’t see Ratchley, so I must have missed her. The cupcakes were all still there so I suppose she’s telling the truth. I was looking through recipe books. It makes me feel better. And where do you get off telling me that food isn’t love when you eat when you’re stressed, Ratchley?”
Ratchley shrugged.
Abel said, “I went to my room. I slept for a while.”
“I was at the receptionist’s desk,” Cybil said, still with a subdued voice. “I caught up on some paperwork. I didn’t see anyone except Bubba and that was right before I found Blake.”
“I went out to get Milk-Bones for my dog,” Bubba said. “Precious will back me up. Right, Precious?” Precious woofed softly from under the table.
Everyone turned to look at Peyton. Peyton winced. “I went and redid my makeup. I checked my cellphone at every corner of th
e property. You never know when you might get a bar or two.”
“That’s one, two, three— ” Bubba counted aloud as he pointed— “ten. Who are we missing?”
Thelda pointed at David.
“Surely, you cannot suspect the greatest detective of our time,” David protested. “I was detecting with every enacting visceral aspect of my abilities. There were clues galore.”
“So, you’re saying, ain’t no one saw you neither,” Bubba said.
“That’s about right.”
Bubba would have sighed, but he suddenly decided that sighing didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Chapter 11
Bubba and More Interestin’ O-ccurrences
Saturday, April 6th – Sunday, April 7th
“David,” Bubba said to the would-be Sherlock Holmes when the rushed conversation began to lull. Most of the others didn’t know what else to say or what else to do. They drank coffee or tea and apparently thought dark thoughts. “What do you remember about those searches on your Xoom?”
“How to make someone look like they committed suicide, how to make someone look like they had a fake heart attack, how to make your own explosive device, which really makes me nervous even in Pegram County.” David chuckled uncertainly. “Do you remember when your mother had the improvised munitions book?”
“I remember she took all kinds of cleaning supplies out of the kitchen cupboards and everyone was right anxious,” Bubba said. “It seems to me that she mentioned something about blowing up Pa with stuff that was bought from the corner drug store. I think she collected the gunpowder for the muzzleloaders and made it into something them folks in Afghanistan would think was right special. She used nails and broken mirrors. She might have spit into it, too.”
“Why don’t you just look at the Xoom again?” David asked.
“Dropped it,” Bubba said with a little flush rushing across his cheeks. “Someone screamed, and my fumble fingers let right go. Sorry. I’ll replace it.”
David’s eyebrows went up. “If we happen to live through this, then we’ll talk about replacing it, Watson.”
Bubba wondered if Watson had the same mother as Bubba. That would make for interesting reading. He hadn’t looked at an Arthur Conan Doyle novel for almost fifteen years. “Shore you don’t recollect some of them searches, David?”
“Sherlock,” David corrected. He took the calabash pipe out and then a tobacco pouch. He precisely loaded the bowl with tobacco and tamped it down with a silver bifolding tool. Then he replaced the tool in the pouch and withdrew a match. He scraped the match on the table and lit the pipe, puffing on it carefully. Then he choked and gagged noisily.
When David had recovered, Bubba said, “Mebe you shouldn’t really smoke that.”
“There are studies to suggest it isn’t really healthy,” David admitted with a hoarse voice. He looked at the pipe for a moment and tapped it against the table. “I’ll just go dump this into an ashtray outside.”
Bubba watched David trudge toward the door. He opened it and went outside into the fog.
Bubba looked around and saw no one else missing. Everyone had their hands wrapped around their cups or their heads bent, visibly lost in thought. Precious lay on top of his feet, snoozing and snoring lightly. He looked at his cup and wished he had a little more coffee, but he didn’t want to feel like a racecar on the verge of the light changing. In fact, he felt a little sleepy. His eyelids were heavy. A little shuteye would be a welcome…
* * *
Bubba woke up with a snort. There was something wet dribbling down his face, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He would have used a shirtsleeve, but he was still wearing the “Bun in the Oven” t-shirt with its short sleeves. He looked around and saw he had been using the cafeteria table for a headrest. There was a little pool of drool right below where his mouth had been located.
The silver cupcake tree sat directly in front of him in the middle of the table, and he tiredly observed it. There were only nine cupcakes there. Bubba blinked. He counted again just to make sure. Someone had obviously regained their appetite.
His head came up, and he looked around. In various states of repose, sat or laid nine people including himself. Dr. Adair sat in a folding chair with his feet propped on a table. Ratchley had her head resting on folded arms. Abel laid on one of the tables on the side. It didn’t look like a particularly comfortable bed, but it beat the floor. Cybil was snoozing on two chairs pushed together. Tandy sat on the floor against the wall and clutched a pack of cigarettes as if it would save her life. Her eyes were closed and they twitched, revealing she was deep in REM sleep. Peyton had found a corner to prop himself in, and his chin rested on his chest. David had retrieved his Inverness coat from somewhere, and it was wrapped around him as he lay prone across the floor near the entrance to the kitchen. He used his arms as a pillow and the deerstalker cap had fallen across his eyes. Finally, Jesus was sprawled face down on another table. He didn’t look comfortable.
For a moment, there was the thought that Jesus was way too still to be alive. Resurrection wouldn’t be in his immediate future, Bubba thought unkindly and immediately chastised himself. Then Jesus’s arm jerked and moved slightly, revealing that not only was he not dead, but that he was not comfy. Jesus grunted and shifted to his side. The sheet he used as clothing shifted also, revealing that he still liked to go commando.
Looking away swiftly before his eyes went blind, Bubba thought about how something seemed to be missing.
Bubba checked under the table and sighed when he saw Precious with all four paws heavenward. She snorted in unintentional mimicry of her master, and her brown eyes opened to look at him. As she didn’t immediately perceive any danger and Milk-Bones were not raining from the skies, she closed them again.
Bubba started to put his head back down on the table. Wait, something told him, something is as warped as a dog’s hind leg. His head came back up, and the errant thought gave him a little pick-me-up.
Dr. Adair. Ratchley. Abel, Cybil, Tandy, Peyton, David, and Jesus. That was eight.
Bubba crossed his eyes in concentration. Eight plus me and the dog. That’s nine and the dog. Should be eleven because Blake is under a sweater in his office. Who’s missing?
Leeza and Thelda were absent. He slowly panned the room. They weren’t about. Initially, Bubba wasn’t really concerned. After all, folks needed to use the bathroom upon occasion. He needed to use the bathroom right now.
Bubba slowly got to his feet. Precious took note of that despite having closed eyes and did a clumsy roll to her feet. She shook her head and ears flapped everywhere. She blinked sleepily and then yawned.
The kitchen, Bubba thought. He looked in the kitchen and found everything there but a woman in a silk robe and a woman in five sweaters. Then he checked in the cafeteria again and found eight people still in snooze mode. No one else had vanished since he walked into the kitchen. There were still nine cupcakes, which was just short of miraculous since Precious had been known to climb on tables to consume defenseless food. (Miz Adelia had even used her smart phone to film the pooch moving a chair with her hind end in order to get where she could use it as a step stool to get to a box of pizza on the kitchen counter.)
Precious followed him without complaint, only bumping against him once when he passed the exterior door. He unobtrusively let her outside where she found a bush that needed moisturizing and returned to his side as if she was well aware of the urgency.
Trying to be quiet, Bubba meandered down the hallway and found a set of bathroom doors. While he didn’t know for certain if these were the closest restrooms, he thought they were close enough. He checked the men’s room, did his business, and then checked the ladies’ room. The ladies’ room had a basket of freshly cut flowers on the counter and an air freshener that the men’s room did not. The ladies’ room didn’t have anyone inside it. There wasn’t anyone to even sniff the flowers.
Bubba let himself out, glad that no one had seen
him in the ladies’ room. Willodean would have giggled her tushy off if she had seen him. He glowered with remembrance. Somewhere Willodean was worrying about him, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was half-past two a.m.
Everything was mysteriously quiet, and Bubba was disconcerted. While he didn’t know Leeza and wouldn’t wish a stranger harm, he sort of liked Thelda and her Shakespearean invectives. Plus Miz Demetrice knew and liked Thelda enough that the woman was invited to the weekly Pokerama parties. The truth was that Bubba didn’t want anything to happen to either one. (Hopefully Leeza wouldn’t prove to be the unmasked murderer and hopefully Thelda hadn’t put herself into harm’s way.)
In the lobby, Bubba found a roster of patients on Cybil’s desk complete with room numbers. He proceeded to check both rooms of the missing women. Their doors were locked, and no one answered. He didn’t see anyone or anything besides himself and Precious.
The blanketed emptiness of the hospital, and the deep shadows that haunted the hallways gave him the heebie-jeebies something fierce. Sure he was used to ghosts. His mother often talked about all the ghosts that haunted the Snoddy Estate. There was the Civil War lady in the upstairs powder room of the Snoddy Mansion. A black slave haunted the back ten acres. Supposedly, a midnight coachman came rumbling around in an ebony carriage when a Snoddy was about to die. No one had seen that one since Bubba’s father, Elgin Snoddy, had died of a heart attack.
There had been a fake haunting when Bubba’s former girlfriend had attempted to frame him for the murder of his former fiancée, but that had been a realtor with a sheet and a recording of screams and chains, so it didn’t really count.
Bubba himself had seen some odd things on the estate grounds upon occasion, but he wasn’t necessarily a superstitious man. Through tried and true methods he had discovered that if something was amiss, it could generally be attributed to the acts of man. Or woman, if the case may be.
