Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note

by C. L. Bevill

  Bubba saw a dim shape across the room. He thought it was a man sitting in a tall chair at a round table, although it might have been a voracious dinosaur with six-inch-incisors wearing Captain Kangaroo’s red jacket with the signature white trim.

  “Oh, it’s you,” the voice said. “Me was wondering what you were up to lately, matey.”

  “I cain’t believe ya’ll opened up a shop about handwriting and…readings,” Bubba said.

  “Me took a course, ya landlubber,” the voice said. Bubba peered closer. There was a round table that took up most of the six foot width. A person could barely move around it. A glittering table cloth sheltered the table. There were chairs on Bubba’s side so that several people could sit or wait or watch. There was the one large straight-backed chair on the opposite side with the person sitting there. The walls were painted a deep purple with glow-in-the-dark stars littering the ceiling. A black door was barely discernible behind the person. Bubba assumed the door led to the storeroom or a tiny office because the building only went back about twenty feet. If the owner was lucky, then it had a washroom, too.

  Bubba didn’t know what was in the back because he couldn’t remember if he had ever been in this precise business before. As he recalled, the previous owner sold organic incense, which seemed odd to Bubba. The one before that felt that bee’s byproducts were, well, the bee’s knees. People came in to get stung by bees kept on the premises, that is, until the businesses around him complained about errant insects. Bubba wasn’t certain, but he thought the one before that had been into hydroponic gardening, and Bubba would have had to look up the word, hydroponic, before he knew what that meant. The particular building opened and closed businesses like it was a revolving door. The structure should probably have a warning on it that businesses did not do well there. The realtor had been desperate to sell it, as evidenced by the latest incarnation.

  “On the Internet, you scurvy dog. It took me three years,” the voice said as Bubba’s eyes continued to adjust, “and I got a business loan. People like me can qualify for very interesting grants. Do ye know there’s a special dispensation for mental illnesses?”

  Bubba said, “Don’t you have a light in here?”

  “Of course, but the ambiance is better with semi-darkness.”

  The light came on in the form of a side lamp covered with a plastic façade of Marvin the Martian, which sat on a much smaller table to the figure’s immediate left. Bubba saw there was a crystal ball centered on the larger table, and that, indeed, the ambiance was better with semi-darkness because in the luminescent exposure provided by Marvin, everything looked cheap or plastic or made in a Third World country. The man sitting in the chair wasn’t an exception to the looking-cheap-in-bright-light rule. He wasn’t dressed like a fortune teller or even one of the gypsies that had come up earlier in his conversation with Miz Clack. Not that Travellers dress like the gypsies in the movies, Bubba added to himself.

  No, this man was dressed like a pirate. Specifically, he was dressed like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. He had the white blousy shirt. He had the beads in his beard. There was a red bandanna wrapped around his head and heavy kohl around his eyes. He had the leather vest and heavily buckled belts. The coat was hanging on a coat rack to one side, which was topped with a leather tricorn hat. An authentic-looking saber hung from wall hooks just to the side of the coat rack. Bubba felt inclined to assume that he was wearing the matching breaches and knee-high boots, as well, because Bubba didn’t want to peek his head under the tablecloth to ascertain the fact.

  “Uh, David,” Bubba said carefully, “what happened to The Purple Singapore Sling?”

  “This is me persona now, ye hornswaggling hempen head,” David Beathard said. David was one of the patients of the Dogley Mental Institute of Well-Being. He had been involved with the case of the Christmas Killer, and he had been instrumental in locating the beautiful Willodean Gray, when she had vanished. But at that time, he had been a purple-dressed superhero, complete with mask and matching sequined underwear. Previous to that persona, he had been a psychologist, or possibly a psychiatrist, depending on his imaginary degree. There might have been a presidential first lady before that one.

  “Me be Bad Black Dog McGee, the scurviest pirate ever to plunder the Spanish Main,” David said with a rasping pirate voice, “and also some other places, like Madagascar and Orlando, Florida. I think I once looted Powell, Ohio, but a lot of rum was involved, so I’m not sure.”

  “I need the graphologist,” Bubba said flatly.

  “Okay,” David said in a normal voice, “no keelhauling then. Let’s see the writing you want examined.” He paused and added, “Ye barnacle-breathed drivelswigger.” He paused again. “No offense.”

  “How’s business?” Bubba asked because he wasn’t sure if he should be offended or not. He took the baggie out of his pocket and passed it over to Dreadful Dave.

  “Great!” David took his hand and poked at the baggie with a finger that had a large piece of jewelry on it. It looked like a silver claw and apparently was supposed to correlate with the pirate façade. “People love pirates! Me even carried off a few wenches, I did.” He thought about it. “Well, for a few feet anyway. I had to buy them a drink and sign a piece of paper that said I wouldn’t touch them again. But it was a lot of fun.”

  He trailed off and looked at the note. Then he whipped out a large magnifying glass to examine the letter. The magnifying glass had its own light source, which he switched on. David considered the words. “This definitely isn’t a sammy. More murder,” he said. “Is this a joke?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bubba mumbled. “It’s not part of the festival. Can you tell me something about the person who wrote the letter?”

  “I need more samples of the person’s handwriting,” David said promptly.

  “Ifin I had more samples of the person’s handwriting, I wouldn’t have to bring it to you,” Bubba said.

  “Oh.” David twirled the magnifying glass in his hand. Bubba thought that Brownie might have been teaching David how to twirl things based on the expert action. “Well, graphology generally needs a minimum of 100 pen strokes in order to make any type of significant analysis. It speaks about personality, emotionality, and characteristics of the individual, all through their handwriting.”

  Bubba sat in one of David’s chairs. The chair groaned protestingly. Cheap chair.

  David examined the note again with the magnifying glass. “I can’t make any kind of official analysis based on so little a sample of the subject’s handwriting, you understand?”

  “I understand.” Bubba watched as David looked at the note.

  “I guess I can’t take it out of the baggie,” David said.

  “It needs to be tested for fingerprints.”

  David turned the baggie upside down and held it up to the Marvin the Martian lamp. It was level with his eyes, and he tilted it to and fro. “The pressure is heavy. You can see that the subject was pressing down with the pen. Looks like some kind of ballpoint pen.” He flipped it back over and put it in front of him. “One looks at the types of downstrokes and upstrokes in order to characterize points of reference. Once one has enough points, certain observations can be made about the subject’s psyche, although they can be classified as generalizations.”

  “Oh,” Bubba said. It sounded good to him.

  “Everything is pretty consistent on this note.” David pulled the magnifying glass up and looked at Bubba through it. All Bubba saw was a big eye staring at him. The eye blinked. “Deception might be indicated in the form of false starts and erratic strokes. I don’t see that here.”

  “You mean, ifin a person were writing a fake note, it wouldn’t be similar all the way through?”

  “It’s an assumption, and you know what they say about assumptions?” David grinned, and Bubba saw two gold teeth sparkling at him. One had a diamond embedded in it. The other one had a little skull and crossbones engraved on it.

  “I�
��ve made a few of ‘em in my life,” Bubba said. “Don’t usually go well.”

  “You make an ass out of u and umption,” David said and snorted with laughter.

  “The note,” Bubba prompted.

  David looked at the note again. “It’s old. The paper could be dated. The handwriting is consistent with a woman’s writing, but that’s just a guess. You see she’s got this curlicue at the bottom of the y in my. That’s an older style of writing. Someone who was taught cursive in their grammar school until it was second nature. Not like now. My sister’s kids aren’t even being taught cursive because the school district says they don’t need to learn it on account that they’ll be using computers and typing instead.”

  David looked at the other letters. He pointed with the silver-tipped finger claw. “This person was in a hurry, but I might be biased on the contents of the note, but the rush and the pressure made this subject write the way they were taught. There were shortcuts on the capital I’s and the forced down slant of the D’s.”

  Bubba waited although he was far from patient.

  “I’m guessing here. I’m surmising. Please remember that I’m human, and I can make mistakes, but everything that’s here would identify with a subject who was under duress and in a hurry to get this done. The strokes are clearly defined. This person was being threatened. The M trails right off the page, as if the person jerked the note away with their left hand, which means they’re a rightie by the way.” He put the magnifying glass down, while one finger clicked off the light. “I don’t think you want to hear this, Bubba, but I think this is real.”

  Bubba nodded. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “Let me take a sample of the paper,” David said. “I’ll use gloves and snip a section at the bottom. I know someone in Tyler who will test it. That’s all the guy does is collect unique paper. He knows everything about all kinds of paper. He might be able to tell something about this type that we don’t know, that will help us.”

  “Us?”

  “Well, you did ask my help,” David said as he grinned again. The gold teeth twinkled.

  “You’re not going to change into The PSS midstream, are you?”

  “Anything’s possible,” David admitted. “But me has a persona already, me hearty.” He reached under the side table and withdrew some plastic gloves, expertly removing the silver claw and snapping them into place. Carefully, he removed the note and took an inch by inch section of the bottom of the note where nothing was written. He pulled out a cellophane envelope and put it inside, cautiously sealing it. “I’ll send it to Will today. I’ve got some special papers for him. I found some Civil War stuff over at the Dogley Institute. Did you know that building dated from 1867? They stored a bunch of papers there and were just going to throw them away.”

  “I ain’t sure ifin the po-lice are going to be happy with me letting you do that,” Bubba commented as David stuck the note back into the original baggie.

  “You took this to them already?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sheriff John?”

  “Big Joe would sooner step in a fresh cow patty that’s been roasting in the hot sun all day, than deal with me.”

  “Sheriff John say it was a joke?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’ve read about similar circumstances, me has,” David seemed to realize he was allowing his pirate persona to lapse grievously and added, “ye pillaging picaroon.”

  “Similar as how?”

  “Well, notes left for other people. Usually suicide notes are analyzed. Did the person really write the note? Were they under duress to write the note? Are the upstrokes and downstrokes consistent with a person about to end their lives? There’s a lot more to graphology than you might think, me bucko.”

  “I reckon.”

  David slid the baggie back to Bubba. “How about a reading? I sense that you are typically a shy and withdrawn person, but when you come out of your center, you can be lively and vivacious.”

  Bubba put the baggie in his pocket.

  “Most of the time you are positive and cheerful, but there was a recent event where you were quite upset,” David went on and quickly added, “ye freebooting powder monkey.”

  “David, you were there when I was upset, so that ain’t like you dint know,” Bubba said calmly. Graphology really hadn’t done much for him. Bubba hadn’t really doubted the note’s authenticity before, although he had no particular reason for being certain that it was genuine. But David’s words had nailed the metaphorical nail in the coffin of some unknown person. The note was probably very real. Someone, somewhere, some time ago, had written it, scared and alone, and then never came back to remove it from the air cleaner.

  “I sense a mystical change in your future, Bubba,” David said. “Me does.”

  “I’m mystically goin’ to track down where this note came from,” Bubba said.

  “See,” David said. “Me is always right.”

  The door jingled and light came in as someone came through the door. Two teenage girls let the door shut and blinked their eyes at the sight of a Marvin the Martian lamp revealing the six-foot four-inch Bubba and the ingenuous appearing Dread Pirate David. “Hello,” said one. “We heard you do, like, psychic readings and stuff. We want our minds blown away, like, totally.”

  “Wenches!” David yelled gleefully.

  The other teenage girl blinked nervously at Bubba. Maybe they think David is a pirate gypsy.

  “Don’t let the pirate carry you off, girls,” he advised. David wouldn’t really carry one of the wenches, er girls, off? Naw. He wouldn’t know what to do with them. “What do I owe you, David?”

  “Pshaw,” David said. “You didn’t really let me get into the nitty-gritty, so I’ll call you when I hear from Will.”

  Bubba clambered to his feet, gathered the po’boy up, and paused to say, “Do you know how a pirate makes his money?”

  David stared hardly at Bubba.

  “By hook or crook,” Bubba said with a straight face. One of the teenage girls groaned and then tittered.

  As Bubba left the business, he heard David say to the teenagers, “Do you think me needs a hook?”

  Bubba let the door shut with a little sigh and a tinkle of bells. There were more people crowding the streets once again, and he began to suspect that something was amiss. Abruptly, everyone went silent, and he heard a clattering noise. Being taller than most people had its advantages, so he looked down the street.

  Bubba edged up to the sidewalk where he could see better. It was broad daylight, and the Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival Committee had gotten carried away. Perhaps they were confusing the festival with Halloween.

  The horse was a bay with a well-worn Western saddle. The rider didn’t have a head on her neck, but that didn’t seem to matter. The head dangled from the saddle horn by the hair, and vivid eyes glared out at the crowd. It didn’t seem to matter to the crowd that the head was made out of wax and dipped liberally into ketchup or a ketchup-colored substance. The rider deftly directed the bay down the middle of the street, half walking and half trotting. It didn’t seem to matter to the horse that he was the center of attention. The horse had likely been promised a copious share of grain at the end of the ride.

  As the horse and rider drew close to Bubba, the shirt of the torso parted just an inch and Doris Cambliss’s brown eyes twinkled at him. She winked before she pulled the shirt together again.

  Bubba stood and watched as the headless horsewoman touched her heels to the horse’s flanks, and the horse cantered off toward city hall.

  “I dint know Miz Doris could ride a horse,” Bubba muttered.

  Chapter Nine

  Bubba and the Tenacious Traveller

  Saturday, August 18th – Sunday, August 19th

  Bubba finally found his way home without discovering any bodies, dead or otherwise. He managed to get a ride with Roscoe Stinedurf and two of his wives. (Roscoe had at least three wives and a dozen chil
dren among them all, but he didn’t talk about it much, and for some reason, folks in Pegramville didn’t really pry into Roscoe’s business. All the wives were happy, and the children were always fed, clean, and in school on time, so everyone tended to turn the other cheek. There had been the one time the town council had spoken of the Stinedurfs. One member fiercely argued if they allowed same-sex marriages, which the state of Texas does not, but Pegramville didn’t have a problem with it, then they should allow polyamorous marriages. Half of the town council had to stop to look up the differences between polyamorous and polygamous. Consequently, each of the members of the town council developed a nasty migraine, and they dismissed the matter and never brought it up again.) One of the wives remarked that Bubba didn’t look the same if he wasn’t all beat up, and Bubba smiled weakly. Even Roscoe chuckled. Roscoe was in a good enough mood that he drove Bubba all the way down the lane from the rusting gate with the oversized S on it.

  Precious leaped upon Bubba before Roscoe had turned around in the driveway. The Basset hound knocked the big man down onto the ground and attempted to lick his face up. When the animal had ascertained that all was well with her master, she found the po’boy and gleefully picked up the sandwich, wrappings and all, and carried it away with an aloof humph at Bubba.

  Bubba hurled a discouraged eye at the 1954 Chevy truck before climbing to his feet. He had to put the truck together before he could go anywhere. He supposed he could ask to borrow someone’s vehicle, such as his mother’s or Miz Adelia’s. However, both women were still busily coming from and going to the festival and couldn’t really afford to lose their transportation. Furthermore, he was loath to ask anyone else any other favors at the moment. God alone knew what might happen to something else that he borrowed. Undoubtedly a meteor would crash upon it, followed by it catching a raging case of bubonic plague, and then it would go nuclear.

  Sighing, Bubba went inside and changed to clothes that he could get dirty. He discovered that the white shirt and the pressed jeans he had been wearing had already gotten dirty. There were specks of ketchup on it as well as grass stains from when Precious had tipped him over. There was a smear of tartar sauce and possibly fake brains from someone brushing against him at the festival. The jeans had a black oily stain on one knee that he suspected wouldn’t come out even with an angel’s divine intervention. There was a tear in the other knee of which he couldn’t fathom the origin.