by C. L. Bevill
“Must have the whole place rented,” Bubba mused.
Dan said, around a mouthful of bearclaw, “Shore. That’s why they don’t care ‘bout you jawing away.”
“I won’t tell no one where I got the name from,” Bubba said through the door.
No response.
Bubba said a bad word.
Dan quoted, “‘Conquer the angry man by love.’”
“Ifin you try to hug me, Dan, I will not be happy.”
Dan shrugged and finished off the bearclaw. Then he licked his fingers.
Bubba gave up talking to the back of the door. He went to the bed and sat down. Dan was sitting in the single chair by the little table. They waited about ten minutes before they heard cars starting outside. Bubba went to the window. Then he went to the door and threw it open.
The Travellers had absconded.
“Crap. I mean, carp,” he said.
Bubba looked around, and no one else was there. Even Jack Cass wasn’t in the office. The office was locked up, and the sign said there were no vacancies. Dan dug in his pocket for change for the vending machine that was beside the office door.
“Perty shore Snickers is pain free,” Dan told himself. “Hey, I got enough for you, too. You want a candy bar?”
“Naw,” Bubba said. He spied the ice machine beyond the vending machine and then the payphone behind that. Gloriously, it even worked. As Bubba held the receiver, he thought furiously about who to call, and in the end, there was only one choice.
•
“I cain’t fit in that,” Dan said staring down, down, down at the miniscule vehicle.
Bubba looked at the Smart car. Then he looked up, up, up at Dan. “Well, dang.”
Daring David the Detoured said, “Avast, me hearties. Come aboard before me mizzen mast falls aflutter.” He hadn’t been surprised to see Daniel Lewis Gollihugh with Bubba, but obviously, he hadn’t thought about the whole big-tall-men-in-a-tiny-car-that-was-meant-for-average-sized-people issue.
“What’d he say?” Dan asked.
“Get in,” Bubba translated, “before something else bad happens.”
“Where?”
In the end, David lowered the convertible top, and they pushed the seats all the way to the front. Dan sat sideways in the tiny storage area in the back with his head towering above the top of the car. He couldn’t breathe deeply, but the large man didn’t complain. David had his knees bent abnormally so he could drive. Bubba thought a shoehorn might have helped him sit better in the front.
“Hope you took some Dramamine, David,” Bubba said darkly.
And away they went back to Pegramville without even a feather in their caps. Except for David, who did have at least one feather woven into his false dreadlocks, and who also admitted that he had taken Dramamine before driving on a longer than normal trip.
David was also contrite about the Travellers kidnapping them. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, Bubba,” he said. “I’ll call Pip back and talk to her. I’m sure they just meant to warn you off. If they had wanted to kill you, then they would have just shot you.”
“‘Let your love flow out toward the universe,’” Dan quoted from the back, although the noise of the wind tended to obscure his words.
“David,” Bubba said warningly.
“Pip isn’t really a master criminal queen,” David defended. “They haven’t done anything criminal for at least a decade. She’s trying to make all the Travellers into regular business folk.” He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be a pirate and added, “Arr. Some of the Travellers have a bad reputation for ripping people off, and well, flea markets are a good transition. If a fella barters badly, then it isn’t the Traveller’s fault. Am I right?” He thought about it. “Am me right?”
“They had guns,” Bubba said. “They were upset. They kidnapped us.”
“Not really,” Dan disagreed. “We dint have to get in the van. As I recollect, you wanted to go with them, Bubba. You done said so.”
“See?” David said as he pointed back toward Dan. “All Pip wanted to do was see if you were someone who could threaten them, and well, me guesses she didn’t think you could.”
“I need that name, David,” Bubba said grimly. “Ya’ll will call back and get it from Pip, won’t you?”
David nodded. “Yes, but she’s probably mad at me.”
“Did I ask you to threaten them?” Bubba asked vehemently.
“Well, me just thought that—”
“Don’t.”
“Me did what ye asked,” David said plaintively. “You know, what you asked yesterday on the phone.”
“Shore. Was she upset?”
“No, she just…looked at me every once in a while. Like I was a bug. The kind she’d like to squish under her Sunday best shoes then she would dance on top of.”
“Ma’s good at that. Who did you get to watch her while you were gone?”
“Jesus Christ,” David said.
“I like Jesus,” Dan said.
“Not that Jesus,” Bubba said.
“Yes, that Jesus,” David confirmed. “He had his robes on and his best jock strap. It’s got little crosses on it. So if the wind blew up the sheets, all folks would see was the little crosses. Of course, that jock strap doesn’t cover anything in the back.”
Bubba groaned. Jesus wasn’t the real Jesus as most people might have guessed. He was one of the patients of the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being, along with David and a multitude of others. He had been one of the patients roped into the Christmas Killer’s maniacal plans. Honestly, for a half-baked lunatic, Jesus wasn’t a bad sort, though he felt compelled to shoplift odd items when he got stressed about something. Bubba could just imagine how well Jesus would look after Miz Demetrice and how his mother would take it.
“Well, as a Buddhist, I look forward to meetin’ him,” Dan said. “Or is it Him?”
After a long drive that rapidly got longer as Dan and David got into an active conversation about religious beliefs, Bubba abruptly spied a mailbox and said, “Stop, David.”
David had been arguing with Dan about the piratical church, which surprised Bubba as actually existing. Dan didn’t think that any pirates fit the bill as being enlightened enough to be worshipped as a savior. Nevertheless, David pulled the Smart car over, and Bubba tumbled out. He did tumble out. He couldn’t make his legs unfold, so he had to get out head and body first. The ground met him halfway.
“Shouldn’t we be rescuing, er, I mean getting back to guarding your mother?” David asked. “Ye olde demonic hag.”
“This is Justin Thyme’s place,” Bubba said, ignoring the insult to his mother because David was simply trying to stay in character and really not being vitriolic. Bubba indicated the house at the side of the road. It wasn’t a large place. It was a simple ranch house with a shed at the back. The trim was white, and the shutters were blue. The front façade was brick, and there was a tire swing hanging from a huge mulberry tree in one corner. The yard was mowed but littered with older kid’s toys, like skateboards and bikes. After all, Sheriff John had said that Penny had two children from a previous marriage. To complete the picture, a newish Dodge truck sat in the driveway and an old rusting Pontiac Firebird was parked on the side of the house.
Just as Bubba straightened up, two kids ran around the corner of the house. Both were in their early teens, and they pulled to a stop as they saw Bubba and the Jolly Roger-enhanced Smart car.
“Ma!” one yelled. “You got visitors! I don’t think it’s the po-lice this time!”
“Don’t look like repo men neither!” the other teen yelled. “Should we hide the keys to the Dodge?”
The front door opened, and a woman in her forties looked out suspiciously. Bubba knew who Penny was. He knew Justin, too. Like many people in Pegram County, Bubba had a nodding acquaintance to them. Penny and her family used to attend the same church until the divorce from her first husband. Apparently, it had been her ex-husband’s church and not he
rs.
“Bubba?” Penny asked curiously. She brushed her blonde hair back from her face. She was very slender, and her face was still pretty despite years of alcohol abuse. She had been sober for two years when she had divorced James Sillen. She had happily taken the kids and moved in with Justin Thyme. The two had an amicable relationship until the fork-stabbing incident. Bubba hadn’t even heard about that, but it hadn’t surprised him overly. Once Penny had been married to a butthead, and she wasn’t likely to want to put up with another one.
“Say, Miz Penny,” Bubba said politely. She came out onto the tiny porch and waited while he walked down the driveway. He knew that she was watching David and Dan because her eyes went big. Probably because David got out of the car in full pirate regalia, and then her eyes got larger as Dan unfolded himself out of the teensy storage area.
“How’d he get in there?” one of the teens asked.
“Go finish the back yard,” Penny said to the teens. “Then when you’re done, you can clean up all the junk in the front.”
“But Ma,” one protested, looking at Dan.
“Mind you, mind me,” she snapped.
When the pair had vanished around the corner, Penny said, “They said you found his body before it up and disappeared.”
“I didn’t think he was really dead,” Bubba said. He hadn’t at first, but he had changed his mind. Then he had gotten caught up in the note ordeal to include bombs and threats, and Justin Thyme’s fate had flitted out of his mind. It shouldn’t have. Bubba knew all about coincidences. Even the brainiest man in the last century had said, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Surely, Albert Einstein couldn’t possibly have been wrong.
If Justin Thyme had simply been a victim of happenstance, his body wouldn’t have vanished. That was the clue, and that was the fact that Bubba focused upon.
“Justin ain’t called you or such,” Bubba said, and it wasn’t a question.
“I ain’t heard from Justin since Saturday,” Penny said. Bubba saw that her eyes were red as if she had been crying. She hadn’t had a good time of it. He thought it might be a bit before things improved again. “No one’s heard from him, as far as I kin tell.”
“That like him?”
“No. Justin usually only spends one night away when he’s of a mind,” Penny said. “I tole that to the po-lice yesterday, but they thought he’s playing some kind of joke, on account of not getting any business from the Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival.”
“He was supposed to help out?”
“He applied for the position of victim/murderer, but they had gotten enough people by then. Justin wasn’t really happy about it. In fact, he yelled at your ma about it. Said if they could hire Lloyd Goshorn, then they could hire him, by God.” Penny rubbed the side of her face with her hand as if she was very tired.
Bubba wasn’t sure what to say. If what he thought was true, then Justin had been murdered in the middle of a busy place and carried off like a bit of garbage. So what did he have to do with the note?
Did Justin have anything to do with the note?
“Did Justin have anything to do with selling automobile parts?” Bubba asked.
Penny shook her head. “You know he was a general handyman. Has been for years, ever since that factory he worked at went belly-up, but that was way before I knew him. He did what he could to get by, but he had some income from somewhere he dint tell me about.” She shook her head again. “Couldn’t tell me about. I figured someone was giving him some money to keep his mouth shut about something.”
Bingo. I mean, that’s I-45. Yes, indeedy.
“Did you tell the po-lice about that?”
“No, they don’t think anything’s wrong.” Penny rubbed her face harder. “But I know better.”
“Why do you say that?” Bubba asked softly.
“Today’s his birthday. We had tickets to a show in Tyler. He’s been itching to go to them Redneck Games at Gator Run. They got the original Bigfoot there, too. Couldn’t stop talking about it. Them tickets are sitting on the dresser in the bedroom, and I ain’t heard a lick from him. I just finished calling all the hospitals in this county and the next one over. I aim to call the hospitals in the county on the other side next.” Penny sniffed. “I’m beginning to think that man ain’t coming back. I wish I could tell him I was sorry about stabbing him with the fork.” She frowned to herself. “I fell off the wagon for the first time in four years, and he got the brunt of it. I’ve been sober for 63 days now. It’s a hard climb back. Wished I could stop Justin from drinkin’, too, but he weren’t of that mind.”
Bubba couldn’t help himself. He gently enfolded Penny in his arms and said, “There, there. I’ll try to find out what happened. Help ifin I can.”
Penny sniffed again and rested her head against the side of his chest for a moment. Then she pulled back. “I don’t care what folks say, Bubba. Ain’t bad luck. Just luck. One way or the other. You cain’t help that you found them folks nor Justin.”
After that Penny gave Bubba and Dan a ride back to town in her Dodge truck. There was no way that Bubba or Dan was going to get back into the Smart car without a weapon being pointed at them. She dropped them off at the edge of the Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival and drove off without saying anything else.
Bubba couldn’t imagine how she felt, knowing something had happened to someone she loved and that she couldn’t do anything about it. Oh, wait. Yes, I can. It done happened to me before. Prolly happen again.
Dan stopped for food. Bubba kept an eye on the crowd. They wandered past a man lying on his back on the front stoop of one of the few apartment buildings in Pegramville. He had been shot at least ten times. Or at least there were ten holes in his front, accompanied by a substantial amount of ketchup.
Bubba recognized him as Ralph Cedarbloom, Miz Adelia’s cousin who used to grow marijuana in a patch out by Sturgis Creek. He’d had to move his patch, and a drought had pretty much killed it off. Originally Ralph had started the patch for his aunt, Miz Adelia’s mother, who had breast cancer. Ralph had enjoyed the benefits of self-employment and sold the remainder for a tidy profit. Fortunately, Charlene had a back supply to get her through the remainder of her second round of chemotherapy.
Pausing to make certain Ralph wasn’t really dead, Bubba sighed loudly.
“I ain’t seen so many holes in something since I last bought some Swiss cheese,” Dan said.
Ralph’s right eye opened incrementally. Then both his eyes opened wide as he perceived that it was Daniel Lewis Gollihugh towering over him. “I swear I dint sleep with Berry or Dreama or Trixiebelle.”
Dan swallowed the last of a foot-long corn dog. “I’m a believer of nonviolence now, Ralph.”
Ralph stared for a moment. “I reckon that’s good.”
“MURDER!” someone bellowed from behind them.
Dan jumped. “I don’t rightly approve of all this nonsense.”
Ralph lowered his head back to the stoop and closed his eyes.
A rabid woman in her mid-forties leaped upon the scene. She was wearing the festival t-shirt and had the matching book bag hanging at her shoulder. She reached into her bag to extract a phone and a notepad. She eyed Bubba and Dan as if they would steal the “corpse” away from her.
Bubba lifted his hands up as if surrendering. “Ain’t playing, ma’am.” Then he pointed at Dan. “And he don’t approve of this nonsense.”
The woman frowned. She hit speed dial and quickly reported the victim to the festival’s coroner. “Zis is Amelie Dyer at Main Street and Cotton. I have ze male in his thirties who has been murdered,” she said with a lovely French accent. “I will zolve ze crime, I swear.”
Bubba couldn’t help but wonder if she was one of the French women staying at the Red Door Inn. “Good luck, ma’am,” he said when she disconnected the line. “Ralph.”
Ralph whispered, “My name is Peter Palmer.”
“Ah, ze victim, Peter Palmer,” Amelie said and
judiciously recorded the information.
“I have a note in my front jeans pocket,” Ralph whispered helpfully.
“Shh. I am ze detective,” Amelie said sternly. “I will detect.”
Bubba walked off as another would-be detective started to point out that Amelie was standing in a pool of ketchup.
“At least he weren’t really dead,” Dan commented.
Bubba was thankful for that. After a few more minutes, he found Debunked Dave the Diabolic. He had parked in the city hall lot and was watching for Bubba and Dan. David had his arms crossed over his chest. “Me can’t believe ye didn’t want to ride in me pirate car.”
Dan said. “Bubba’s got a crook in his neck from that car, plus he’s limping. I’m perty sure I got a kink in one of my intestines, and that ain’t a good thing.”
“I think one of the tendons in my leg snapped from being bent the wrong way,” Bubba said as he scanned for his mother and Willodean. Miz Demetrice was sighted first. She was near the Murder Points Committee tent. She was having an avid discussion with several festival participants, as evidenced by their t-shirts.
Partial relief flooded through Bubba. Near his mother stood Jesus Christ, brutally evident in his pristine white sheets, fluttering wildly in a sudden summer gust. “No one can truly beeee murdered!” he shouted. “I shall heeeeaaaal them!”
“Hush,” Miz Demetrice said to him.
Willodean was across the lot, talking to a couple of Pegramville Police Officers. Bubba said to Dan, “Ifin you can do a favor, Dan, I’d be grateful.”
“Shore, Bubba, you’ve always bin a stand-up guy to me. I don’t think we tangled since high school. At least when you were in high school.” Dan grinned and showed his gap. He said to David, “I ain’t got no call to hate on him.”
“Will you keep an eye on Willodean?” Bubba asked and pointed in her direction.
“I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”
“Me can watch Willodean,” David declared. “The wench has exotic green eyes.”
Bubba sighed. “If you try to carry Willodean off, I will hurt you, David. Furthermore, Willodean will probably hurt you. She likes mace.”
