by C. L. Bevill
Peyton appeared beside him. “Oh my great pugnacious pearl putters,” he said and handed Bubba a portable fire extinguisher. “I figured you would know how to use this better than I.”
Bubba happened to know exactly how to handle a fire extinguisher. (This wasn’t his first fire rodeo. It wasn’t even his second fire rodeo.) In preparation of future fiery events, he’d watched a video on them and installed three in his house, even though the manual only recommended one upstairs and one down. He’d also put several in the Snoddy Mansion and schooled both Miz Demetrice and Miz Adelia on their proper usage.
He broke the plastic seal on the top of the lever. Then he pulled the pin in the lever mechanism. Holding the extinguisher in one hand, he aimed the hose with the other one. He sprayed in a sweeping motion, aiming for the base of the fire, which in this case was the engine of the Mercedes Benz.
Ain’t no one goin’ to restore that one, Bubba thought regretfully. He thought it was a 500SEL, which had never been available in the United States, so someone probably had purchased it in Germany and shipped it back to the US. He shook his head to get obscure car facts out of his head. V8 engine. Optional air bag. Self-leveling hydro-pneumatic suspension. Too bad.
He shook his head again. He really was tired, and his head was aching terribly. The pills hadn’t done much of anything for him.
Someone stepped up beside him and aimed another fire extinguisher. Tandy kept a cigarette in the side of her mouth while she sprayed the chemical at the Mercedes and what might be the remains of the Rabbit. Clearly, a woman who smoked as much as she did was well used to putting out fires. She filled in the gaps he missed in the fire. By the time they ran out of flame retardant, which wasn’t all that long, most of the fire was quenched.
“I can go find another one,” Peyton offered.
“No, best not to go anywhere by yourself,” Bubba said.
“That was my Rabbit,” Ratchley said, appearing from behind them. Obviously, she recognized her diminished vehicle when Bubba couldn’t. “My car died. I loved that car. It belonged to my father. He loved that car, too. He’s going to be very pissed at me.”
“For what?” Tandy asked. “You didn’t blow up your own car, right?”
“No one blew up the Rabbit,” Bubba corrected. “Someone blew up the Mercedes, and it came down on top of the Rabbit.”
“I think that’s a point that won’t sink in with my father,” Ratchley said with obvious despair. “I should just kill myself before he finds out.” She brightened. “But maybe the murderer will take care of that before my father finds out.”
Bubba looked back to see if Ratchley was serious and found her peeling open a package of Hostess Sno Balls. She shoved an entire Sno Ball into her mouth. It didn’t look like she paused to chew, and he wasn’t sure if she was really swallowing or it was just forced down into her gullet by a means that even Albert Einstein wouldn’t understand. (Bubba was reminded of the time Precious was begging for one of the boiled eggs Miz Demetrice had brought to a picnic. She’d tossed it to the dog, and the canine had swallowed it out of midair. Unfortunately, the egg lodged in her esophagus. It had taken a couple of hard slaps to Precious’s back to dislodge the egg. Precious never, ever caught another boiled egg from the air again. Lesson learned.)
“Where did you get those?” Peyton asked, pointing to the pink coconut-covered treat.
“I have an emergency stash,” Ratchley said, but it didn’t actually sound like that because she had already put the second Sno Ball into her mouth. “You have no idea how nerve-racking it is to work in a mental institution. I’m looking for another job if I manage to live through the weekend. Maybe something in a cubicle where I never actually have to talk to another person face-to-face.”
“You’re going to barf again,” Tandy said, lighting up another Lucky Strike by using the last flames on the Mercedes Benz’s engine.
Ratchley pulled out a short can of Pringles Pizza-licious flavored chips. Bubba wasn’t sure where she’d been hiding it in the scrubs she was wearing. She tossed the plastic cap, pulled the seal off and threw it and then dumped most of the can into her mouth. Crumbs went everywhere.
Peyton said, “You need to calm down and tell me where your stash is, so we can hide it from you. Look, we’re all here, no one is going to hurt you, and…oh, fiddlesticks.”
“What?” Bubba asked.
“We’re not all here,” Peyton said pointedly.
Bubba looked around. They weren’t all there. That was bad. “Come on,” he said, putting the empty fire extinguisher on the ground. “Back to the cafeteria. We need to make sure everyone’s okay and still there.”
Bubba rushed back, only slowing down to ensure that Peyton, Ratchley, and Tandy were following him. Precious plunged ahead, not exactly certain where she was going but in pursuit of something, nonetheless.
The cafeteria was empty. There was no Dr. Adair. There was no Cybil. Most importantly there was no David.
Bubba’s eyes immediately went to the cupcake stand. He counted. One, two, three, four, five cupcakes. Five cupcakes. He looked at Peyton, Ratchley, and Tandy. He was so tired that he would have to take off one of his socks to do the math. “But there’s four of us,” he muttered finally.
Peyton looked around. “Five if you include Precious Wescious.”
Precious made a hah-like noise and tossed her phenomenal nose up in the air. Plainly, she was tired of humans not counting her. Peyton’s little affection name addition wouldn’t do the trick, not unless he backed it up with her favorite type of Milk-Bones.
Ratchley dropped an empty, recently sucked Strawberry Kiwi Kick Go-Gurt on a table. “I didn’t eat the cupcakes—” she burped in an eloquent fashion—“but I think I’m going to ralph anyway.” She scrambled into the kitchen.
Bubba ran to the doors that led to the hall. “DAVID!” he bellowed. “CYBIL! DOC!”
The only answer was the sound of Ratchley emptying her insides into the kitchen sink, which only made Bubba want to throw up, too.
* * *
“Now the sun’s up,” Tandy said, pointing with her cigarette. “It seems like it should all be better because the sun is up, but it isn’t, is it?”
“Are you asking?” Peyton asked. “I don’t think it’s better unless the National Guard comes prancing up to the front door armed with bazookas and Sherman Tanks.” He’d made Bubba and Tandy a cup of tea after locating a stash of mint tea in one of the cabinets. He’d even made himself a cup, pausing to inhale the soothing fragrance.
“You ain’t seen our local National Guardsmen,” Bubba said. More questions meandered through his head. Why blow up the Mercedes Benz? Distraction for the people or perhaps a way to get people to separate from each other? Furthermore, why were there five cupcakes and not just four? Did cupcakes have anything to do with anything?
Ratchley sipped water and stared at the pile of snacks that Peyton had persuaded her to give up.
Bubba took some more pills because he had such a headache. He considered finding another Coke in the kitchen because the mint tea wasn’t giving any kind of caffeine assistance that he desperately needed.
The bomb had to be a distraction, he told himself. Someone wanted to get a few more witnesses out of the way. The person on the outside planted the device on the Mercedes and blew it up, then waited to cull the herd.
Bubba, you stupid fool, he thought. Should’ve known. Should’ve never left David alone.
There was a sick feeling deep inside Bubba. He wanted to think it was the sympathetic pregnancy symptoms he was feeling, but it wasn’t that at all. It was the thought that David, Jesus, and Thelda might very well be dead, killed by some kind of psychopath preying on the hospital.
And what had Bubba done? Why, he’d put a fire out from a Mercedes Benz and a Volkswagen Rabbit instead of keeping three people from vanishing into the ether. Wasn’t that just ducky? How many points was that going to get him in the long run?
Bubba’s hand constricted arou
nd the mug. It wasn’t about points. It was about the people he knew and liked and what had happened to them.
Somewhere there was an answer to all of this madness, but Bubba wasn’t thinking all that well. There was nary a nap to be found in the pressing crush of homicidal insanity. He would have to hold on until help was to be had. He glanced at a wall clock. It was just after eight a.m. The sky was blue. There were some clouds to the west. It didn’t seem like the kind of morning where murderers were prancing around doing evilness with impunity. Not twenty-four hours earlier, Bubba had been sitting in the boat, eating a Moon Pie, holding a fishing pole, and considering the J names in a baby name book. Jude. Judd. Jules. Jun. Julie. Justine.
He looked about. Peyton, Tandy, and Ratchley (Should he ask what her first name was at this point or just pretend the last name was fine?) sat around him.
Tandy had suggested locking themselves in their rooms until the cavalry showed up. The problem was the bad guy (or guys) wasn’t going to stop there. Not at this point. There wasn’t any motivation to stop. In fact, things would probably escalate until he/she/it/they got what they wanted.
And Bubba had never been the kind of person to sit down and take it. A few ideas trickled through his brain. He thought about that Agatha Christie novel again.
Bubba drained the mint tea with a compulsive swallow. “We’re goin’ to the doctor’s office. Ratchley, you still got your keys?”
Ratchley held up her keys attached to her scrubs by a retractable reel. “I wrestled them back from David. Can I have a Ding Dong first?”
“No Ding Dongs,” Bubba said. “Do you really want to barf again? Or make me barf again?”
“No, but a bag of Fritos would make me feel so much better,” Ratchley said.
“Why are we going to the doctor’s office?” Peyton asked. He rubbed his eyes and then abruptly seemed to recall that he was wearing eye makeup. “Crudcakes on toast,” he said, “did I mess my wings up?”
“There’s just a little blur on that side,” Tandy said as she pointed.
“Because I think there was only one dang way that there’s two of them out there,” Bubba said.
Precious nudged the cafeteria doors open with a loud bang and everyone jumped. She trotted happily up to Bubba and laid something down at his feet. He bent over and picked it up, ignoring the copious amount of dog saliva. It was the calabash pipe.
“Isn’t that…” Tandy said and trailed off. There was only one person with a pipe in the hospital, and it wasn’t her.
“Yep,” Bubba said morosely. He carefully used the edge of his t-shirt to wipe the drool from the pipe. Then he stuck it in his pocket. “Keys, Ratchley.” He held his hand out.
Ratchley disconnected the reel and dropped the lump of jangling steel in Bubba’s hand. “Some Smarties then?” she asked hopefully. “Just to take the edge off?”
“Sorry,” Bubba said. “You’ll feel a lot better when the sugar gets out of your system. Which way to the doc’s office?”
* * *
Bubba had also been in Dr. Adair’s office before. He’d given it a cursory glance before closing and locking the door. The doctor had a smaller desk than Blake Landry. He had a single window that looked out on a row of air conditioners. He had a few framed degrees on the wall. It didn’t really look like what he imagined a psychiatrist’s office should look like. “What do you know about the doctor, Ratchley?”
“He was divorced. He was bitter about it. He didn’t have children. He didn’t have a girlfriend. I don’t think he had a boyfriend,” Ratchley said with a distinctly monotone voice.
“Peyton?”
“Adair, Adair, Adair,” Peyton said. “I don’t know any Adairs. I don’t think he was related to any up-and-coming socialites, and he wouldn’t have been on my marital radar at all. So I’ve got nothing.”
“Tandy?”
“He preferred behavioral counseling,” Tandy said. “We discussed some aversion therapy in relation to the weed. He smelled like peaches sometimes.”
Bubba sat in Dr. Adair’s leather-backed chair and looked at his steel desk. He touched the laptop and then flipped it open.
“You know, there’s probably a law against that,” Ratchley said, “which I would happily ignore if you gave me some sort of snack food. In fact, I would take pork rinds right now, and I hate pork rinds. Most people keep some kind of snack food in their drawers, you know.”
“Mebe pork rinds with some redeye gravy and fried zucchini,” Bubba suggested while he turned the computer on. He was stopped as soon as it powered up because it demanded a password. None of the typical passwords worked. Bubba tried god, God, GOD, password, Password, PassWord, and PASSWORD. Then he tried Adair, adair, and ADAIR. He shut the computer with a sigh. Then he looked at the doctor’s brass inbox on one side of the desk. He pulled the pile of papers out of the box and put them in front of him.
“Why are we digging through the doctor’s stuff?” Peyton asked. “I got sidetracked before.”
“You remember how Blake died,” Bubba said.
“Strangled. Awful for the eyes. I bet makeup artists for morticians are seriously badass,” Peyton said.
“Well, why did his body up and leave?” Bubba asked.
“Someone moved it,” Peyton said.
“It didn’t walk away,” Tandy said.
“Mebe it did,” Bubba said. “I was thinking about Agatha Christie and all, and in that one movie, someone did pretend to die. Guess who helped the fella do his pretend death? Guess which person no one would question until it was too late?”
“That would be the doctor,” Peyton said.
“Betcha.” Bubba shifted through papers. He saw memos. He saw some medical paperwork relating to patients. There was an electricity bill for a house located perhaps ten miles from the hospital. It was past due, and it was the second notice. There was a bank statement showing where he had bounced checks several times. Finally, he stopped and pointed. “Bankruptcy proceedings. Dr. Adair is about to go belly up and not in a dead way.”
Tandy peered over Bubba’s shoulder. “Dah-am. How does a person get into debt for almost a million dollars?”
“Three houses,” Bubba read. “One is on the beach in Pensacola, Florida. One divorce with alimony in the thousands per month. Sixteen credit cards. Five cars including a 1980 Mercedes Benz 500SEL, which was the cheapest of the lot. That one had sentimental value on account that it belonged to his uncle, who was a retired colonel from the U.S. Army. That explains how it ended up in the states.” He glanced up at three confused faces. “That model of Benz didn’t come to the states.”
“So he was a financial dud,” Tandy said. “What does that have to do with the price of tea in Guatemala?”
“Do they grow tea in Guatemala?” Peyton asked.
“Mebe someone done came up to him and asked him does he want to make a buck or two, mebe enough to get him out of the debt he’s in,” Bubba said. “Mebe that gives the not-so-good doctor a motive.” He glanced at the bank statement again. The bottom line didn’t really reflect what a man in the throes of bankruptcy should have. He frowned.
“Precisely, Watson,” said a woman from the door. She was about David’s height and weight. She wore a pink polka-dotted dress and white heels. Her hair was dusted gray. Her face was powdered with flesh-colored foundation. Her lipstick matched her polka dots. However, her face was David’s.
“Great Caesar’s ghost,” said Peyton.
“No, just David,” Tandy said dryly.
“I am Mrs. Penhallow-FitzGibbons,” announced David. “I have come to assist you and also chew bubble gum. However, I am freshly out of bubble gum.”
Bubba leapt out of the chair and was in front of David in a heartbeat. He grabbed the former Purple Singapore Sling and gave him a fierce hug. “I ain’t bin so happy to see a loonie in all my life,” Bubba said.
David pulled back slightly and asked, “Is that a calabash pipe in your pocket or are you just happy to see me, Watson?”
>
Chapter 19
Bubba and the Horrendous Hunt
Sunday, April 7th
Bubba was happy to see David but not in that way. The question made him back away from the other man faster than a bell clapper in a goose’s butt. He tugged the calabash pipe out of his pocket and pushed it at David, who took it with his fingers revealing a pristine set of carefully manicured nails. (Pink like the lipstick and the polka dots. Bubba didn’t care to look closely at the nails, but it didn’t look like there were a lot of mistakes. He was certain he couldn’t quickly apply pink fingernail polish without making a lot of mistakes. He shuddered before making himself stop that particular train of thought.)
“Nice dress,” Tandy said, puffing on a fresh cigarette.
“A lady always dresses for the occasion,” David said grandly. He expertly swished the bottom of his skirt in demonstration. (A little too expertly if one asked Bubba, but no one did.)
“Then we should all be wearing camouflage, right?” Peyton asked. “That’s the occasion here. The one where we should all be hiding.”
“Mrs. Penhallow-FitzGibbons,” Ratchley said, “do you happen to have a snacky-poo in your clutch?”
Bubba hadn’t noticed the white clutch. It could have been one of his mother’s. In fact, the entire outfit could have been one of his mothers. In fact, Bubba became increasingly certain that it had been one of his mother’s outfits. She liked to wear it after Labor Day so that it would irritate the ladies at the church socials with the blatant rule breaking. (No white after Labor Day. It was a rule to be remembered in the same league with never take a cooler to church and never let the dogs eat at the table no matter how good their manners are.) (Precious always ate under the table, although she never did excuse herself after burping.)
Mrs. Penhallow-FitzGibbons dug in the clutch. “I have peanuts from Eastern Airlines. I think I flew on them in 1989 just before the Berlin Wall fell. I sat next to the most interesting man from the German Democratic Republic. He had a delightful accent. All those V’s and W’s. He swore that all Americans would love communism.” He made a noise, withdrew a little silver package, and then held it out to the nurse.
