by C. L. Bevill
What if M isn’t on that list? What if neither lady knows who William Johnson is?
Bubba instructed his inner voice to cross that bridge when they came to it.
The killer isn’t going to think you’re going to keep your mouth shut.
Bubba took a long drink of tea. Pomagranate Pizzazz needed some sugar. Several teaspoonfuls stirred into it might make a significant difference.
He thought about what David’s paper expert had indicated. The sheet that the note had been written on had been sold to General Motors Corporation. But what did that have to do with anything else? Anyone could have borrowed paper from GM and brought it to Pegram County. It could have been sitting around some dusty place for decades, just waiting for M to pick it up and write her urgent plea for assistance.
The paper could have been at any GM dealership near Pegram County. Bubba thought about it. There was a GMC dealership one county over. Bubba sometimes had to order parts from them. Roy Chance, owner and editor of the Pegram Herald, had a GMC Yukon that had issues with its transmission. The Teasdales had a GMC Sierra which had an issue with its brakes. Didn’t Melvin Wetmore have an old GMC Jimmy?
And someone else had a special GMC. It was a black GMC Typhoon. Bubba couldn’t remember the year, but it was in the ‘90s sometime. The older SUV hadn’t been in wide release. Someone at the shop said it had only sold in the thousands. Bubba had been more interested because the V6 engine was equipped with a Mitsubishi turbocharger and had a Garrett water/air intercooler, as well as special intake manifolds. The SUV could kick butt and take names at the same time it chewed bubble gum and performed a jig.
Sure Bubba remembered the Typhoon, but he was drawing a blank on the owner.
Bubba forced some more Pomegranate Pizzazz down and grimaced at its flavor. After he had reluctantly finished the cup, he took it to the sink and washed it out.
An errant thought popped into his head, and he went out the back door, padding through the grass in bare feet to the potato cellar. Halfway there, he went back for a flashlight and had to dig in the junk drawers of the kitchen to find it. He paused in the middle of his digging because he thought he heard someone moving around upstairs. Finally, he found a cheap flashlight with a bright LED bulb that worked well enough for what he wanted to do. He went back outside and on to the potato cellar. There he undid the combination lock and went inside to look at the parts he’d purchased from Paddy Sheedy.
There was no name stamped on the exterior, something that would indicate where the parts had come from. There was only the Chevrolet brand name and some numbers that he thought were part numbers. He looked at the top and then the bottom. It wasn’t as fancy as the part boxes he saw in the garage. The colors were humbler. The logo was not as specialized. Advertising in the ‘50s was a simpler time. After all, if a man had purchased a truck, then no one needed to advertise the parts. He would need them sooner or later, after all.
Bubba had already looked in the boxes for another note. The plain truth was that M had only had time for the one note. She hadn’t even finished her name.
Poor woman. She had been murdered. No one knew or perhaps they hadn’t suspected. Had her name been Myrtle or Maureen or perhaps Monet?
Alone and forgotten by all.
The thought of it made Bubba’s gut clench up.
After all, a good man didn’t let a lady down.
Chapter Twenty
Bubba has a Revelation
or Something Like a Revelation
Wednesday, August 22nd
Eventually, Bubba went back to bed, and he even slept for a while. His dreams were dark and murky and something lurked just beyond the ragged edges of his unconsciousness. The next morning he heard the door open and cracked open one eye to ensure that it wasn’t A) his mother, B) Willodean, C) ornery Travellers, D) a purple elephant with a ‘tude, or E) anything else he didn’t really want to see or talk with at the moment, which was just about everything and everyone in existence. Dan ducked his head and came through the door holding a mug of what Bubba assumed was coffee. It steamed and smelled like coffee, so it had to be a duck. Although the mug Dan held was Bubba’s largest mug, it looked dainty in Dan’s jumbo hands. The large man held out the mug.
“Wake up, Bubba. Day’s a-breakin’. Yonder comes a hare with his tail a shakin’,” Dan said cheerfully.
Precious woofed softly from the open door.
“I fed Precious and let her out,” Dan said. “Also, your ma left about an hour ago. That fella dressed in sheets was with her. Someone in a white van done dropped him off about an hour fifteen ago. She weren’t happy about it neither. You know that man really thinks he is Jesus. He ain’t.”
Bubba reached for the coffee. He drank while he was still horizontal, which was an interesting accomplishment given the circumstances.
“So what we investigatin’ today?” Dan asked and then perched himself on the edge of the bed. The bed groaned loudly, and the three legs farthest from Dan came up about an inch. “Did you find something in the potato cellar this morning?”
Bubba’s one open eye blinked. He hadn’t been aware that anyone in the house was onto him.
“I don’t sleep well on account of all that time in the pokey,” Dan explained. “Fellas there want to take down the biggest guy there to prove they got street creds. You don’t know how irritating it is to shake off some little five-foot ten-inch squirt from your leg.” He looked down at his leg as if someone was hanging on there for dear life. “Poor little guys. They just don’t want to be beat up in the slammer.” He looked at his hand. “After a bit of time, they didn’t mess with me no more. I ‘spect they might again ifin they found out I was a Buddhist. Being nonviolent is hard. In any case, I got into the habit of sleeping light on account that some of them came at me whilst I was asleep.”
Bubba drank more coffee. He wished he had a straw but there was none readily available.
“Miz Adelia came over about two hours ago. She had her cousin with her. I know Ralph from a little while back. Did you know he had a pot patch out in Sturgis Woods? Well, he don’t no more. I heard he moved it to that spot of woods underneath Haymaker Hill. Wait ‘til it looks greener than everything else. Them po-lice kin sniff out a pot patch faster than a knife fight in a telephone booth.”
Bubba put his head down and rested the mug on the top of his head.
Dan continued to speak. Bubba hadn’t known that the very large man was so loquacious.
“Miz Adelia made more biscuits, and she brought some of them cinnamon rolls. Them is good rolls. I ate ten. I left two for you.”
Bubba would have said that Miz Adelia liked to cook and that she was good at cooking, but his demented train of thought had chugged along to the apron wrapped around Kiki’s neck. Cinnamon rolls, cooking, aprons, the way Kiki’s persona had been murdered. Logical.
“Do you know William Johnson?” Bubba asked with a voice that could have competed with an electric vegetable grater. What the hell does an apron have to do with anything?
“The one the witch mentioned?” Dan asked. He scratched his neck. “There’s Ron Johnson, but he’s in Huntsville. There’s Rabbit Johnson. Oh, he’s in Huntsville, too. There’s Smith Johnson, James Cape Johnson, and Vincenzo Johnson. But hey, they’re all in Huntsville, too. No, I ain’t recalled any William Johnson. Not even a Bill Johnson neither.”
“Crap,” Bubba said. “I mean, carp.”
Precious approached the side of the bed, and Bubba allowed one arm to descend in order to properly worship the canine queen of Snoddy Mansion. She reluctantly allowed the worship and then withdrew to the hallway with a whining yip.
“Why don’t you get up and take a shower, Bubba? Make you feel better. Et a cinnamon roll and a biscuit, too. Another cup of coffee will put a smile on your face.” Dan stared at Bubba’s open eye, which was manifestly not amused nor even in the least bit equable.
“Mebe a whole gallon of coffee,” Dan amended hastily. He reached over and plucked the
mug out of Bubba’s hand. Bubba growled. There had been a few drops of coffee left in the mug after all.
“There’s more downstairs,” Dan said with a laugh. He got up, and the three bed legs loudly clunked back on the floor.
Bubba rolled and fell out of the bed.
•
It took Bubba about thirty minutes, but he managed to take a shower and dress himself in clean clothes. He picked up the mysterious murder note contained in the baggie, and put it back into his front shirt pocket. Upon reaching the kitchen, he simply picked up the entire pot of coffee and brought it along with the mug over to the kitchen table. Dan snorted and brought over the platter with last remaining cinnamon roll and a few biscuits.
“I thought there were two,” Bubba mumbled.
“That was before you took so long in the shower,” Dan said unrepentantly.
Bubba took the roll before it could vanish into Dan’s bottomless pit. He was chewing on its cinnamony goodness and relishing the wondrous flavor flowing into him, when they heard a vehicle rumble up to the mansion and screech to a stop. Car doors slammed unremorsefully.
Bubba thought he knew whose vehicle it belonged to before he heard, “ARR! No pokin’ me in the futtock shrouds, ye smarmy wench!”
The front door banged open and Willodean bellowed, “BUBBA NATHANIAL SNODDY!”
Dan blinked and took a step backwards. “Normally, I ain’t a-feared of no one, but that little gal can take down a Sasquatch and stop for tea and crumpets while she’s doing it.”
“She’s real good with mace, too,” Bubba said through a mouthful of cinnamon roll. He worked to swallow what he had in his mouth, not wanting to have it half-masticated before Willodean saw him.
Willodean appeared in the door from the long hallway and stood there for a moment so that Bubba could fully admire her. Her normally pulled-back hair was slightly askew, and her uniform was slightly rumpled. There was a stain on one of her knees that looked like she had set it in grass. Her boots were not polished. She was still beautiful. The light from the hallway shown brilliantly behind her head, making her look like an angel. A ticked-off, highly agitated angel, but an angel all the same.
Bubba swallowed before he could choke.
Delusional David the Dramatic loitered behind Willodean. He stood just enough to one side to reveal that he had handcuffs attached to his wrists and an unhappy expression plastered across his face. Apparently David was still on the job.
“He,” Willodean snarled, jabbing a thumb in David’s direction, “tried to carry me off this morning. Over his shoulder, screaming, ‘Blimey bilge rats!’”
“Rookie mistake,” Dan said.
“Shut up, Dan,” Willodean snapped. “I’ll clock you so fast your children’s children will be spinning a hundred years from now.”
“David,” Bubba said, “did you drink some rum? I ain’t happy with that. You were supposed to keep an eye on her, not your hands.”
Willodean bristled just like a cat. Precious trotted into the kitchen and then immediately turned and fled, having accurately gauged the situation as potentially lethal.
“I’ve been patient,” Willodean said, slowly gritting out each word. “I waited for you to tell me what the problem was, Bubba. But not anymore. You don’t tell David Beathard the mental patient to watch me. You don’t ask Dougie, DOUGIE, to look out the window at me while his five pre-law moron frat bros are yelling, ‘Take it off, Galadriel’. You don’t call Sheriff John and ask him to increase patrols on my street.”
Bubba winced. “Coffee?” He held up the pot.
Willodean stared at him for a very long minute. “Did you make it, or did Dan make it?” she asked finally.
“Miz Adelia did,” Dan said. “I don’t drink coffee much.”
“I’ll have some,” Willodean declared and strode across the room. She pulled out a chair before Bubba could come halfway up and threw herself down into it. “Dan, get me a cup. David, if you want a cup, you’ll have to get it yourself. Bubba, start talking.”
“Someone threatened you,” Bubba said, cutting to the chase.
Willodean’s lovely mouth shut.
“They said you or Ma might be next to get a bomb,” Bubba added. He took a drink of his coffee. Dan brought a cup for Willodean, and Bubba poured her some too. Normally she added sugar, but she didn’t this time.
David approached gingerly and held out a cup. Bubba poured him some, too. David immediately retreated with his priceless booty held to his stomach.
“She was trying to get away,” David muttered. “Me will have bruises all over my back. Think she bit me, too. Me hopes she had her shots.”
“Sorry,” Bubba said, but it wasn’t to David.
“The Darth Vader call?” Willodean asked.
Bubba nodded.
“You should have told me,” she said.
“Mebe. I dint want to take a chance on account that I don’t know who’s doin’ the threatening.”
“Can you remove me cuffs now?” David asked. “Me needs a nap on account that a pirate can’t sleep properly in a Smart car. Me has special pirate footie jammies. Thar be pieces of eight on it. Did ye know they make them in adult sizes?”
“You had a loony come and watch me?”
“And one to watch over Ma, too,” Bubba said firmly. “They ain’t bad folks.”
Willodean put her head down on the table. After another long minute her shoulders shook. Bubba was initially alarmed until he realized she was trying not to laugh.
“You had a Daniel Lewis Golligugh come watch over me,” Bubba said.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Willodean said, raising her head.
Dan said, “Hey,” at the same time Bubba said, “Exactly.”
“You find Justin yet?” Bubba asked.
“No.” Willodean’s tone was terse. She knew the police department had handled the matter of Justin Thyme incorrectly. Even she hadn’t been as supportive as she should have been to Bubba. Even Bubba himself had been somewhat stymied by the disappearance of what should have been a normal everyday, type of corpse.
David sipped his coffee while holding the cup with both hands. “There was an article in the paper about Judge Posey,” he said. The handcuffs rattled. “The reporter in Dallas wanted to know all about all the goings-on in Pegramville, on account of the mysterious note. Also some stuff about the mysterious bomb almost mysteriously blowing you up and also some stuff about Justin Thyme, too.”
“They find anything else about the bomb makings?” Bubba asked Willodean, who shook her head with a hard look in her eyes.
“Was there pictures in that article?” Dan asked.
David turned and said, “The paper’s in my belt.”
Dan took the folded paper out of David’s wide faux-leather, pirate belt and opened it up. “Look,” he said, “there’s a picture of the Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival. I’m the tall one.” He showed the paper to them. “I ain’t normally in the paper when I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
Bubba looked. There was also a picture of Justin Thyme. It looked like a mug shot that was a decade old. The newspeople were beginning to cotton to the fact that something else was going on besides gubernatorial races and murder mystery festivals. Bubba leaned closer to look at the picture and caught the line of print that quoted Penny Sillen’s words, “Justin hasn’t been home since Saturday, and there hasn’t been any word from him.”
Willodean looked at the photographs, too. She pointed at one with her coffee cup. “That’s from Hizzonor’s speech in Dallas on Sunday. For a man who’s got a strong law and order platform, he’s from an area with a lot of recent murders.”
“Mostly they’ve been solved,” Bubba said.
“Why didn’t your mother go to Dallas, too?” Willodean asked. “Miz Demetrice is acting like a pro forma campaign manager.”
“Oh, Ma likes to stick a broom handle in the hornet’s nest, stir it around, and then back away to see what happens,” Bubba said. He
stared at the photograph of Judge Posey standing next to the Mayor of Dallas, along with the mayor’s wife. “Where’s Miz Posey? Ain’t she attached to him like a leech?”
Willodean shrugged. “She’s probably around. Might have missed the photograph.”
They sat there for a few minutes more silently drinking coffee.
“Well, I need to get to town,” Willodean said. “They’re anticipating a larger crowd today. All the press has brought out the looky-loos, people from as far away as New Orleans and Houston, and I expect all the loonies, too.”
“Hey,” David said. “Me protests that inhumane way of referring to a person with a mental disability. Arr.”
Willodean stood up and looked David over. Her lovely lips flattened into a grim line of acceptance. “You can come with me if you behave. You touch my butt one more time, and you’ll be wearing hooks on both hands.”
“You touched Willodean’s butt?” Bubba asked darkly, rising up to his full height. He towered over David.
David put the cup on the counter and retreated. “Purely accidental, Bubba. Me swears on me ma’s grave.”
“You told me your ma lives in Florida with a ninety-year-old investment banker.”
“It’s a figure of speech,” David said.
Willodean paused next to Bubba. “I appreciate your concern. Next time tell me. I’ll be keeping an eye out for weirdness.” She shrugged. “But it will be difficult given the people who will be in town today.”
Then with firm fingers, she tugged on his shirt and pulled his head down to hers. Bubba went without thinking about it. The instant that her lips touched his, he forgot about everything else.
Dan sighed wistfully. David said pensively, “Arr.”
By the time Willodean pulled away, Bubba’s knees were trembling.
