by C. L. Bevill
“Don’t tell Willodean that,” Bubba said immediately.
“Of course I won’t,” Miz Adelia agreed.
“You staying there tonight?” Bubba asked, knowing he sounded about as obvious as a cow peeing on a flat rock.
There was immediate silence. Then Miz Adelia asked, “What you up to, boy?”
“Not sure exactly, but I’m aiming to find out.”
“You worried about me? About your dog?”
“Not just you.”
More silence.
“You’ll have to lock the pair of them up in a black hole,” she finally said. Miz Adelia referred to Miz Demetrice and Willodean and Bubba knew it very well.
“Something like that,” Bubba said and then looked at Dan again. Dan had a ginormous turkey drumstick in each hand. He took a bite from one side and then took a bite from the other side. Maybe he thought turkey drumsticks grew on trees. A thought occurred to Bubba. Maybe he wanted to stick out like a sore thumb. That would make it easier for a murderer to follow him.
“You’ll be careful?” Miz Adelia asked.
Bubba perked up. He certainly didn’t want Miz Adelia to immediately call Miz Demetrice or Willodean. “I’ll be real careful. I got Daniel Lewis Gollihugh with me. He’s loaded for bear.”
“He is a bear.”
“A Buddhist bear,” Bubba specified.
“Better than nothing.”
“We’ll see.” Bubba disconnected the phone and was pleased that he hadn’t cracked the case or that it hadn’t simultaneously combusted. He handed it back to the woman, who gave him a wary glance. “Much obliged,” he said to her.
Bubba turned toward the library again. He jerked his head in that direction, and Dan reluctantly followed, waving drumsticks like he was directing a 747 into its berth at an airport terminal.
The crowd automatically parted.
Bubba nodded approvingly.
Chapter Nineteen
Bubba Doesn’t Want to Let a Lady Down
Tuesday, August 21st – Wednesday, August 22nd
Unfortunately, Bubba hadn’t kept an eye on the time, and the library was closed. Miz Clack had exited the building, and the lights inside had been extinguished. Regardless of the closed condition of the library, three murder festival participants actively investigated the strangulation of a woman on the front lawn. The strangulated woman was none other than Kiki Rutkowski. She didn’t look particularly comfortable as she lay on her back on the lawn, waiting for the detectives to pursue the matter of her untimely “death.” One of her shoulders jerked awkwardly and her closed eyelids twitched.
“The dreadlocks are a clue,” one enthusiastic individual declared from above her.
“Is there a Rastafarian about?” another one asked. “That person could be a suspect. A criminal Rastafarian with an avid dislike of blonde women with dreads.”
“Dreads aren’t just for Rastafarians,” Kiki hissed, undoubtedly unable to help herself from defending the extreme hair style.
“Shh. You’re dead,” the first man said.
“So not a Rastafarian,” a second one said.
Kiki moaned and not in an I’m-dying-I’ve-been-strangled way, but rather in an I’m-surrounded-by-dumbasses way. Bubba had had that feeling before, upon occasion.
Dan said conversationally, “I knew a fella in the klinky who had dreadlocks. He was in his fifties, Caucasian, and worshiped blow-up dolls. Really, he thought rubber was next to godliness. So mebe it’s just a style thing.”
The three festival aficionados paused to look up, up, up at Dan. Dan stared at Kiki. “Mebe it’s the apron around her neck that’s the clue,” he suggested. “I watched a lot of Murder, She Wrote in the joint, you know.”
“Maybe it’s a Rastafarian chef with an involved criminal history of hurting women with protective garments,” one of the detectives suggested.
The three people convened around Kiki’s “body.” One poked at the apron, and Kiki’s eyes opened and she snarled, “That hurts.” Then she said some other words that made Bubba’s list of inventive curses to remember. Somewhere Brownie Snoddy was saying, “Hey!”
Bubba hunkered down by Kiki and said, “Excuse me,” to the festival partakers. “Kiki,” he said, “I know you’re busy and all, but did you get that list for me? I know I said you should be circumspect, but I’m thinkin’ that things is getting complicated.”
“Oh hey, Bubba,” Kiki said, reaching up to adjust the apron around her neck. Then she scratched the side of her nose. “I did, as a matter of fact.”
“We’re investigating a murder here,” the first man said.
“So am I,” Bubba said back.
“I have six names for you,” Kiki said. “It turns out that there aren’t that many murdered or missing women in the Pegram County area with the first name that starts with an M. There really aren’t that many murders here, except in the last year or so.”
“Is this something to do with the note we’ve all been hearing about?” the first man asked with incredulous fervor coloring his tone. “The note?”
“That’s like finding the gold egg in an Easter egg hunt,” the second one said reverently.
Bubba sighed. “You got the list with you?”
“You’ve got to get a cell phone, dude,” Kiki admonished. “I would have texted it to you. She reached down and rolled to one side so she could reach for her back jeans pocket. She pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to him. “There. Six names. If it’s one of them, then we can go from there.”
“That’s evidence,” the first man declared roundly. Bubba finally noticed that the man was H.H. Holmes. The second person was Edwina Kemper. The third was a middle-aged woman with an avaricious gleam in her grayish blue eyes.
“You will give ze note to us,” she said. Her trilling accent revealed she was probably one of the other French women staying at the Red Door Inn. “Or we will report it to the committee.”
“Go ahead,” Bubba said.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with my murder,” Kiki said groaningly. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the festival at all.”
“I think that’s what they would zay if they were trying to fool with us,” the French woman avowed.
Dan said, “Ifin Bubba says it don’t have anything to do with the festival, then it don’t.”
“It doesn’t,” Bubba said absently as he unfolded the paper and looked at the names.
H.H. Holmes said, “Have you noticed that Bubba doesn’t always sound like a bubba? It’s very suspicious. He’s pretending to be a redneck. Who would do that?”
“I have noticed that,” Edwina said. “How about you, er, I forgot your name?” she asked of the French woman.
The French woman glared at Bubba as if he were at fault for everything going wrong in her universe. “My name is Hélène Jégado. I will win zis miserably boring competition from you Americans. You cannot hide zis paper from me. Anyone named Bubba is most definitely suspicious.”
Bubba shrugged and showed her the sheet of paper.
“I do not know any of zes women,” Hélène complained, looking at the list.
H.H. was writing furiously in his notebook. Edwina popped out a smart phone and snapped an image of the list.
“Any of these women stand out?” Bubba asked.
“The first name, Myrtle Cratelayer,” Kiki said, “is a missing person. She’s the only missing person on the list. She disappeared in ’90-something and left a husband and two children behind. She was in her thirties.”
The three festival participants listened avidly, soaking in all the information.
Bubba looked at them. “Uh, I reckon I ought to let you get back to bizness,” he said.
“Wait, what about Myrtle Cratelayer?” H.H. asked. “That’s a funky name. Just like Amanda Reckonwit and Robin Banks.”
“I recollect a Henry Cratelayer,” Dan said. “Fella liked to drink whisky sours at the Dew Drop Inn. Three cherries. He can tie a knot in the s
tem with his tongue.”
Edwina said, “With his tongue?”
“Ten seconds,” Dan said, nodding solemnly. “The ladies love him.”
There was a chirp that came from Dan. Dan said something intelligible and reached into his pocket. The chirping came from a compact cell phone. Bubba would have said something, but he was at a loss. The surprise was that Dan had a cell phone when Bubba didn’t and that he hadn’t mentioned it all the time they were locked in the hotel room.
Dan pushed a button and said, “Hello,” into the phone. He listened for a moment.
Bubba watched him, and the four other people there watched Bubba. Kiki had rearranged her arms under her head, so that it rested with maximum murder-victim comfort. One of her hands idly tugged the apron away from her neck.
Dan handed the phone to Bubba. “It’s the pirate.”
“There’s a pirate?” Hélène asked. “Zut alors!”
“He’s not really a pirate,” Edwina said. “He tells fortunes and says ‘avast,’ a lot. The fortune telling wasn’t bad.”
“Oh,” Hélène said, obviously dismayed that the pirate wasn’t a raving murderer complete with bloody sword.
“Aye Bubba, it’s David,” David said, regardless of the fact that he didn’t need to identify himself. “I mean, it’s Bad Black Dog McGee. Arr. My friend who did the paper analysis called me and said that ye olde sample is very interesting.”
“How interesting?” Bubba asked.
Clearly everyone in the group could hear David’s voice. Bubba didn’t know how he had managed to do it, but he had put the phone on speaker. Bubba looked at the phone, but there was no apparent way to reverse the action.
“How interesting?” H.H. repeated.
“The analysis revealed that it was a fairly unique sheet. Lots of stuff to be said about the chemical composition, which me didn’t understand at all. Think he was drooling over the phone. But Will is like that. Ye should see him when ye gives him an old book.”
“What did he say about where the paper came from?”
“It came from a tree, Bubba,” David said.
Bubba considered the nearby sidewalk as a venue for bumping his head against. But he’d had too many head injuries lately, so it wasn’t a good idea.
“Did your friend happen to say what kind of tree it came from?” Bubba asked slowly.
“That was the good part,” David said. “It’s a type of oak tree that doesn’t get used for harvesting anymore. It comes from northern Louisiana, and it’s illegal to cut them down anymore.”
Bubba thought about it.
“So the paper came from a plant in Northern Louisiana,” he said. Louisiana wasn’t that far away from them. It was perhaps fifty miles as the crow flew.
“Yes, and it was sold to the General Motors Corporation,” David said happily. “Will could tell by the chemical properties of the paper that it was only sold in 1992, and the corporation purchased the entire lot that year from a paper company outside Provencal, Louisiana.”
“You know General Motors employs over 200,000 people,” Edwina said cheerfully.
“200,000?” H.H. repeated. “That narrows the suspect pool down.”
“Is zis really part of the festival?” Hélène asked distrustfully.
Bubba thought about it some more. Thinking gave him a headache. And he was getting hungry again. Furthermore, Miz Adelia wasn’t going to be cooking any of her wonderful suppers anytime soon. However, Willodean wouldn’t be baking cakes anytime soon either. Life wasn’t all bad.
“Kiki, did any of these women on that there list have anything to do with General Motors?” Bubba asked while he held the cell phone away from his mouth.
“Don’t think so, although Maureen Dikenstrike was killed in a suspicious car accident,” Kiki said from the ground. “That might have been a GM car she was in. Is anyone going to take this apron off me? It’s very itchy.”
“I will!” Hélène said. “It might have ze most important clue on it!”
“Is there anything else, David?” Bubba asked.
“Have ye a jug of rum, ye putrid patch-wearing sea monkey?”
“I reckon that’s no,” Bubba said. “Thank you, David. Keep an eye on Willodean and make sure Jesus does the same for Ma. Don’t drink any rum.”
“Aye, matey!” David said loudly and disconnected.
Bubba handed the phone to Dan. Dan shrugged. “I forget all about it. Cain’t use it very well on account of my big fingers,” he said.
Bubba could understand that. As he thought about what the information meant, he listened to the three festival people bicker over the best way to investigate the brutal strangulation of one Wendy Bottom, exotic snake handler and former beauty queen.
“Come on, Dan,” he said finally. “Let’s go keep an eye on Ma and Willodean until this thing wraps up for tonight.”
“Great!” said Dan. “They got deep-fried Twinkies there! I ain’t tried those yet. They also got deep-fried Oreos. They put a little powdered sugar on top. Ain’t neither of them were alive, am I right? I don’t recollect ever seeing an Oreo with legs on it, unlessin’ it was one of them animated commercials.”
“I reckon they ain’t alive,” Bubba allowed.
•
Bubba had made Ralph Cedarbloom promise to watch over his cousin until the whole thing was straightened out. Bubba made David promise to watch Willodean Gray until she went home. David and Jesus also promised to show up bright and shiny to watch over Ma and Willodean. He even elicited a promise from Willodean that she would be extra-special careful as she went around her business. He ended up driving home with Miz Demetrice and Dan in her Cadillac with a brief stop to collect Precious from Miz Adelia’s home. Then he borrowed Dan’s cell phone and called Kiki. Kiki also promised to be careful and to keep an eye on what was happening or not happening in the duplex. Dougie would stay on guard detail because he was one hour into a LotR’s marathon. Frodo was preparing for his quest in perpetuity. Copious amounts of Red Bull and fellow pre-law students were involved.
Bubba followed up with a call to Sheriff John about Willodean’s safety. Sheriff John took the call in genial good-naturedness. (Bubba hadn’t even had to remind the sheriff that Bubba saved his life from the wicked rope of the Christmas Killer, although Bubba was prepared to play that card.) Sheriff John promised to have the city patrol her street at least every half-hour and not tell her.
By the time Bubba played with his dog, cleaned up the kitchen mess, took a shower, and fell into bed, his brain was so corroded with fatigue that he didn’t even think about M for a moment.
•
Of course, Bubba woke up in the middle of the night. The glowing numbers of the alarm clock on the nightstand said it was 2:06 a.m. Bubba’s internal clock said it was get-the-heck-up-and-think-about-something time.
Precious had managed to climb onto the bed, and her head was draped over his legs. She whined piteously when he moved, but she simply lifted her head and put it on her front paws instead.
Bubba got up and dressed in worn blue jeans and an old t-shirt that said “Strangers have the best candy.” One of Precious’s brown eyes opened and observed him with pained skepticism. She wanted to know what he was doing but not enough to get up and go with him.
Bubba went down the stairs carefully to avoid walking up his mother. The last thing he wanted was to get into a philosophical discussion about who may or may not have been murdered in the past decades. Going down the grand staircase, he sidestepped the third step from the top that squeaked like a drag queen who had just discovered that his lipstick didn’t match his nail polish. He stepped over one of Precious’s chew toys and deftly evaded the socks that had been left on the fourth step from the bottom.
Making it into the kitchen without interference was nothing short of marvelous. The mansion was eerily quiet. This was the moment where the other boot would drop and something pertinent would happen.
But nothing did happen.
Bubba
made himself a cup of herbal tea, avoiding Miz Adelia’s special container, and used a bag from a box of Bigelow Assorted Teas. Using the light of the moon pouring in the kitchen window, he looked at the tea bag he had plucked out and found it was Pomegranate Pizzazz.
Oh glorioski, he thought.
Bringing it to the table, he sat in the darkness and looked out the window to the yard outside. It was a brief moment of utter silence and nonchalance. It gave Bubba a much needed respite from the excitement of the days gone past.
Bubba was going to have to go back to work. He needed the money more than he needed to solve a crime. If he missed many more days, Gideon Culpepper was going to put an ad for a mechanic in The Dallas Morning News just to get someone worthy of the ASE licenses down to Pegramville. The loss of steady employment would make the whole mosquito whisperer gig sound appealing.
But even the thought of making money to pay down his debts didn’t deter Bubba from thoughts about what had occurred in past days. Someone had been murdered. Bubba had found the urgent note that person had hidden. The knowledge had spread about like gasoline on a fire. Someone else had been murdered. That person’s body had vanished. Bubba went looking. Someone else had planted a bomb on the Snoddy Estate. Bubba had nearly been blown to smithereenies. Someone had called Bubba up and threatened him, Miz Demetrice, and Willodean. Bubba had backed off. Bubba had been kidnapped (kind of) by Irish gypsies. Bubba had met a witch. Something was bothering Bubba, and he couldn’t put his finger upon it.
Fireflies pirouetted about in the yard. There were six of them doing a dance outside the window. Their little green butts would light up spectacularly for a few seconds and then vanish. Then it would repeat. He watched them absently. No one was threatening the fireflies. They weren’t worried about anyone being murdered or having been murdered.
Lucky fireflies.
Bubba made a mental note to ask his mother about William Johnson and the list of women Kiki had provided. If anyone knew about all the dirt hidden in Pegram County, it would be Miz Demetrice. Chances were high that she could eliminate at least half of the list based on personal knowledge. Miz Adelia might be able to kick off one or two more. That would make it easy.
