by C. L. Bevill
“Did you?” Bubba asked Peyton.
Peyton delicately wiped the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t know what to tell you, Bubba.”
Bubba glanced at the wall clock. It was close to ten a.m. He didn’t want to think about his mother and Willodean going through the agony of wondering where he was, but he hoped they were close to figuring out that all was not well in Happytown and that also he was at the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being, anxiously waiting for assistance. He didn’t want to think about the fact that a murderer might be getting more and more antsier about his extra guests. After all, if it had been up to the killer, David would be the only one left and consequently the only one to blame. Problem solved. Case closed.
But there was the problem of Bubba and Peyton. The case was not closed.
I’m smarter than this, Bubba thought. I’m smarter than this other fella. This other fella don’t know exactly when the po-lice are coming. He don’t know and neither do I. It could be in five minutes. It could be in five days. Bubba grimaced. It wouldn’t be five days. The hospital’s employees were due to show up on the following day, and surely they would want to say something about a big mound of rocks and dirt blocking the only road in or out of the hospital proper. The construction crew would show up at the landslide the next day. They would report it to the police or to someone.
Normally Bubba would sit in a chair, maybe one of them plastic Adirondacks on the lawn, put his feet up, and wait for someone to take care of business. But someone else was taking care of business, and Bubba didn’t want to wait to see what that someone’s next plans were.
Bubba stared at David and then at Peyton. First, he was going to have to get rid of the wedding planner. That was a given. But how? There were all the traditional methods of making someone disappear; shallow graves, rivers, old abandoned mines, and whatnot. (There was also a nearby conveniently located cliff that Bubba had to consider.)
This was probably an all-time new low for Bubba. It had been building and building, growing like an ignoble blackhead on the day before the wedding, but here it was. (Or should that be that it had been descending and descending, dropping into the earth like a dastardly sinkhole sucking down a McMansion in Florida?)
Bubba stomped back and forth in front of the table with the cupcake stand. Trudging was easier than giving in to fatigue. He knew that if he put his head down and closed his eyes, he would wake up hours later or possibly not wake up at all. Or even worse, he would wake up and David would be gone by reprehensible means. Who wanted to explain that one lost a loony while taking a nap? Who wanted to explain that one lost any loonies at all, period?
Plus his head was throbbing. Aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen hadn’t put a dent in the pain. He was a little afraid to throw some other chemical additive to the mix in case something ugly and unwarranted happened. (Glowing in the dark would be bad. Growing an extra arm would be bad. Having his penis fall off would also be bad. No more pills.)
“What if we set up a big fire?” Peyton asked. “We could put lots of green leaves on it so it would smoke. We could make it huge, and people wouldn’t be able to ignore it. I know a recipe for homemade sparklers. All we need is bleach and a salt substitute. I’ve used it in weddings before. You can make them different colors.”
“A bonfire is like the explosions,” Bubba said. “People prolly heard them before and dint do anything about it. This is out in the country, and folks think it’s jelly because jam don’t shake like that.”
“What does jelly have to do with anything?” Peyton asked.
“Smoke won’t work because we’re too far away,” David said.
“Folks sometimes use dynamite to go fishing ‘round here,” Bubba explained.
“That’s hardly sportsmanship-like,” Peyton protested.
Precious yawned widely and fell over onto the floor with a thump. She put a paw over her eyes and adjusted her body so that she was comfortable. It made Bubba wonder what to do with her. After all, she would likely be all right. She couldn’t very well announce to all and sundry who the murderer was, so there wasn’t any point in killing her. Although she had been known to go after people with shovels and metal detectors with impunity, she didn’t typically go after local murderers. (Which was a shame in Bubba’s opinion, but who knew how to train a hound to do that? Teach her all the sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies and then alert on that? Precious would be pointing to half the people in Pegram County which would get old fast.)
Bubba finally stopped stomping and looked at Peyton. “You seem like the easy going sort, Peyton,” he said with a voice that sounded a lot calmer than he felt. “You’ve bin proper about this whole murder and missing people business. You haven’t even cried once, which is something I truly appreciate. How would you like to play a game?”
“A game?” Peyton repeated. “I can play games, although I don’t think I want to play dominoes with David, er, Sherlock. Things tend to happen to the people he plays games with.”
“Hey!” David protested. “It was only a few, and I didn’t do it.”
“A game,” Bubba repeated. “It’s sort of like hide-and-seek.”
Peyton said, “Can we make electric smurfs? That’s a frou frou cocktail. It’s got coconut rum and blue curacao in it. I think it comes with a splash of Sprite and some pineapple juice, too. I just love a little blue umbrella in it. Sometimes you can get it with dyed blue olives.”
“I don’t think they have any alcohol around here,” Bubba said.
“Oh, there might be some about,” David said.
“Mebe later,” Bubba said.
“Okay, then,” Peyton said gleefully. “Let’s play.”
* * *
“What if someone comes along and finds Peyton?” David asked fretfully.
“There’s a lock on the door. There’s a lock on the inside. I tole him to use the stuff inside to barricade the door.” Bubba rubbed his chin. “I stuck Precious inside with him. He’s got the best hound in Pegram County around. We gave him three knives and a baseball bat, plus he’s still got that baton. You know, that wasn’t just any baseball bat but a Louisville Slugger with a lizard skin grip. Ifin he cain’t protect himself with them things, then I don’t know what is what. Besides he cain’t plan the wedding if he ends up dead. That’s the right motivation.”
Peyton had been pushed inside one of the interior offices that had no windows. Bubba had locked the outside with a key from Dr. Adair’s ring. The inside had a sliding catch. “Do all them doors lock that way?”
“It’s a double locking procedure for security issues,” David said. “You should know that, Watson. These particular offices are used for violent patients when there is an overflow, not that I can recall that happening. You remember Nancy Musgrave, the social worker who introduced us?”
Bubba remembered Nancy Musgrave, her and her big gun, too, and her little Santa Claus cheese knife, also. (Actually it hadn’t been her knife, but she had been the last one to use it.)
“She often threatened us with locking us in these offices. There’s no surveillance here like in the bubble-wrap rooms.”
“The bubble-wrap rooms?”
“That’s where they put the ones with DTs or when someone is undergoing a psychotic break. The walls are padded, and there’s a little camera in one of the ceiling corners to make sure no one dies in there. Your fellow resident of Pegramville, Newt Durley, has been in one three times. I think he received special dispensation on account that he doesn’t have any money. I don’t think operating an illegal still nets him a significant profit.” Newt Durley was a local alcoholic who often spent time in the Pegram County Sheriff’s Department’s jails. Sometimes he spent time in the city’s jails, too. He was an equal opportunity drunk.
“It don’t make a profit ifin you drink all your proceeds.” Bubba looked at the door again and sighed.
Peyton hadn’t been all that willing at the last moment. In fact, he had complained vociferously.
; Bubba hadn’t been paying attention to Peyton. He’d been looking around the hallway and ascertaining that no one could see the office door from an exterior window. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t want the person spying on them to be able to tell where Peyton had gone. Before he had shoved Peyton inside, Bubba had also turned off the security system in the long hallway and covered up the lens with pieces of masking tape just to be sure.
“Bubba,” came Peyton’s voice through the door, “I don’t like this game. Neither does Precious.” The sound of claws raking against the door came next.
“I know, I know,” Bubba said soothingly. He wasn’t sure if it was more to Peyton or to his dog, but then he made up his mind. It was to his dog. “This’ll be safe for ya’ll,” he added for Peyton’s benefit. “Just don’t open the door until you hear me or Willodean. Not for no one. No matter what they say. And stay quiet, too. Ifin this fella don’t know you’re in there, then he won’t try to kill you.”
“What about David?”
Bubba looked at David and shrugged. “Hard to say about David. Several people might want to kill him.”
“But if he’s the one being railroaded, then shouldn’t he be locked up in here with your dog?” His voice lowered for a moment into a consolatory tone. “Of course, I don’t mind being locked in here with you, darling redneck hound.” The tone went back to his normal, and Bubba could imagine Peyton tossing his mane over one shoulder and directing his voice at the locked door. “I could have your back, you know. I might be all about wedding planner, but you would be surprised how closely related wedding planning is to prevention of homicidal activities.”
David set his shoulders in a straight line, emphasizing the cut of the Inverness coat. “I resent your saying that people want to kill me, Watson,” he announced. “I say that you are…a noodlehead! In fact, you’re all noodleheads!”
“We need to cover up the doc,” Bubba said. He hesitated for a moment while he thought of an appropriate insult to return with. “And you’re just a crazy fella.”
“Is that the worst insult you can come up with, Bubba?” David whispered.
“Wait!” Peyton cried. “Why are you fighting? You’re just tired, right?”
Precious yipped imperiously.
“Okay, then,” Bubba said. “Let’s get back there and make sure that body ain’t vanished into thin air.”
“Turnipface,” David said.
“Is there a food theme?” Bubba asked.
“I’m hungry, Watson,” David said. “You mushmouthed man with hepatitis breath.”
“Yep,” Bubba agreed. “I could go for collard greens with a peanut sauce but nothing spicy.”
“I was thinking of Oreos,” David said. “What’s wrong with you?”
* * *
They trudged back out to the cliff. Bubba held a blanket. He was expecting that Dr. Adair’s body had disappeared, but it still sat in the same place. The knife was still in the man’s chest. The person was still dead, as far as Bubba could tell.
Bubba disregarded his roiling stomach and covered the former psychiatrist with a mint green blanket that had what Bubba thought were candy canes embroidered on it. (It was clearly homemade, and they might have been barber’s poles.) It wasn’t exactly respectful, but it was better than the Grateful Dead throw that he had first picked up from one of the patient rooms. The choices of what to cover up the recently dead had also included a blanket with the Eiffel Tower and the words “Do it in Paris!” on it, but Bubba had also dismissed that.
“Now?” David asked. “I have everything I need. We can even…”
“Wait,” Bubba said and tilted his head as an odd noise registered on the peripheral part of his brain. The last cup of coffee (three actually) had given him a boost of energy, and he didn’t feel quite as poorly as he had. The ice cream sandwich that he had snatched and gulped up had helped, too, even if it had been Neapolitan.
“Perhaps we should switch roles, Watson,” David went on. “I would imagine your affianced one will likely kill me in a gruesome fashion should one hair on your phenomenal head be harmed. Did you know that she can shoot the wart off a hog’s nose at a hundred feet?”
“Willodean is goin’ to kill me if something happens to me,” Bubba confirmed. “Ifin I should get kilt, she will find a voodoo priestess who will bring my sorry ass back to a zombie-like life and then kill me again on account that she will be that mad at me.”
Bubba turned a little toward the hospital. He heard something he shouldn’t have heard, considering that they had just locked up a wedding planner and a Bassett hound.
His dog was baying. Precious let a mournful howl go, and it echoed across the woods to them.
“That doesn’t sound like she’s still locked up,” David said.
Bubba didn’t think so either, so he ran for it.
* * *
The door was open. The locks had been thrown from the inside. The exterior lock had been broken. Bubba looked at it and decided it had been broken from the inside. Peyton had gotten himself out.
It took David a minute and the extraction of his large magnifying glass from his pocket to come to the same conclusion. The dragonflies and butterflies on the handle and rim of the glass did not detract from his deduction. “He planted his foot here,” David said and pointed to the large footprint next to the door handle. “Then he kicked it three times. Maybe four times.”
“How is a lock like that supposed to keep a psychotic person inside?” Bubba asked. “It couldn’t keep a fella like Peyton inside. He don’t look like the type to lift weights.”
“He does yoga and super Pilates,” David said. “I inferred this from the books he had about yoga and super Pilates in his car. There was also an exercise DVD. Also there was a program on Pilates on his iPod. Plus, he discussed it once with me. In addition, he talked to your mother about it, who complained that the only way she would do yoga or super Pilates was if someone held a gun to her head, and she wasn’t sure about it even then. I think that’s all.”
“Why would he do this?”
Precious yowled again, and Bubba turned to see her charge down the hallway toward him. She power slid into his leg and nipped his ankle. Then she plodded off to a nearby corner and licked her paw. She sat down with a loud thump and glared at Bubba.
David took a deep breath and looked over the door with his magnifying glass. “I deduce that his girlfriend has left him for a WWE wrestler named The Shadow Reaper. I deduce that his business is secretly going down the potty because his partner took all of the money and escaped to Rio de Janeiro and now lives with an exotic Carnaval dancer named Papaya. Papaya was once hooked up with King Momo, who is the central figure in Brazilian carnivals. Peyton, however, came to get money from killing off rich alcoholics and addicts to keep from going under financially. It’s a terribly diabolical plan. Secretly I admire him, but I would never admit that elsewhere.”
“There ain’t a WWE wrestler named The Shadow Reaper,” Bubba said. “I ain’t sure about the rest.”
“There were the remnants of a bug found only in Rio de Janeiro and some sparkly glitter used for body decoration which was only made in Brazil,” David explained, “or possibly it was a mummified house fly with ordinary craft glitter.” He looked closer, angling the magnifying glass for the best look. “Yes, it is a regular house fly. Forget I said all that other stuff.”
“Are you suggesting that Peyton is in on all this?” Bubba asked. He waved his hands around in explanation of “all this.”
“Why else would he break out?” David asked. He straightened up and replaced the magnifying glass in one of the Inverness coat’s deep pockets. “Surely, even a man such as he should realize it’s safer in there than out here.”
“But Ma and Miz Celestine dint know they were goin’ to hire him until a week ago. They were lucky he was free.” Bubba chewed on his lower lip. “Plus Peyton’s so…wedding planner-y.”
“A clever ruse,” David inferred. “The makeup, the ambi
guous sexual orientation, the deep interest in all things wedding. It threw me off the track. In fact, perhaps the real killer took Peyton’s place. He discovered that he would be coming to Pegramville and killed the real Peyton.”
“That’s really a stretch,” Bubba said.
“So is what we’re planning to do.”
Chapter 23
Bubba and Impending Peril
Sunday, April 7th
“Peyton dint do it,” Bubba said with certainty, “any more than you did. Ifin you think about it, David, that’s too many what-ifs, even for Pegramville.”
Bubba insisted that they look for Peyton. They searched the hospital, careful to bring the Louisville slugger that Peyton had left behind. (Apparently, Peyton had taken two of the three knives, so he wasn’t exactly helpless.) They went from top to bottom, opening all the doors and leaving them open in their hunt. Instead of dead or missing people they found a diorama depicting the march of Hannibal the Carthaginian’s army over the Alps. (The elephants were the kind from a craft store and wore battle armor constructed of aluminum foil.) They discovered that Thelda had a secret cache of extra sweaters in a closet down the hall from her room. The cache included the crème de la crème of Christmas sweaters with Rudolph constructed from brown felt and a battery operated nose that glowed a brilliant red. Two ornate wreaths were placed in strategic locations. They also discovered a collection of empty bourbon bottles lined up by size and color inside one of the attic access doors.
“That’s Timothy’s,” David commented. “He’s an orderly and likes to collect bourbon bottles, but only after he’s consumed the bourbon.”
“Of course,” Bubba said. He had tried to get Precious to hunt for Peyton, but she wasn’t having any of it. She had clearly been reluctant to follow them as they went from room to room, as she was still ticked off at her master for locking her into a room with the wedding planner.
