by C. L. Bevill
While Cookie loudly sucked down her milk, Bubba thought about dead bodies. Now that wretched paranoia had become vile truth, he felt a little better, although that was certainly perverse. On the one hand, he was in the mood for an R.C. Cola and a MoonPie, but he’d have to share with all the visitors and he didn’t think he had enough, so he restrained himself.
On the other hand, the matter of the appearing and disappearing dead person was something Bubba could and did ponder upon. Someone wanted someone else to find that particular deceased individual in Bubba’s house, or else it wouldn’t have returned. Bubba wouldn’t be surprised if the body returned a second time. Therefore someone else had moved the body elsewhere, using the throw rug, which was still missing in action. (Bubba hoped that Cousin Taffy wouldn’t be wandering through his house on this particular day to enquire about the status of her homemade piece of fabric art. Taffy had been known to throw fits if she didn’t think people were using her gifts in an adequate manner.)
If all Bubba’s suppositions were correct, then it was a case of someone trying to get revenge upon him, or upon his family. And there were so many people who had varying grudges with the Snoddy family, some of whom had been officially invited to the wedding. Furthermore, if he was correct then there was a murderer running about with all of the people he loved, and he didn’t have a clue who it was because he didn’t have a clue who the victim was. (He did have a clue since Miz Demetrice had finally spilled the beans about Morgan Newbrough, but it wouldn’t matter much if the corpse couldn’t be located.)
Cookie burped loudly and all by herself. She let the bottle drop to the floor while everyone kind of milled about. Miz Demetrice said, “I’ll just take that empty bottle back over to the Mansion. Bubba, you’d best to get ready.”
Bubba thought about five different responses all of which were sarcastic in nature, but ended up simply nodding. He held the baby’s head while he bent and scooped up the bottle. He handed it to his mother with a quiet, “Ifin you see Virtna or Fudge, you might want to share that I don’t want to carry their only daughter down the aisle with me, no matter how cute she is.”
Once Miz Demetrice swept out of the house, Caressa followed with a weak smile, and Sheriff John said, “I best to investigate the kitchen for those canapés I heard tell about. Undoubtedly they committed some sort of crime. They’ll have to be confiscated.” His boots tap-tap-tapped as he went down the hall and out the front door.
Only Baron Von Blackcap the Revenger was left with his monocular still buzzing and whirling. Bubba reconsidered. He still had Cookie and he still had Precious. Both of them were cheerfully ignorant of all outside threats.
Precious pawed at the pantry door once more, having vacuumed up her portion of food in a speedily fashion.
“David, you believe me, right?” Bubba asked. It didn’t really matter if David believed him or not, but it would have helped.
“I believe you’re a much stressed soul,” David said diplomatically. “I believe that you believe there’s a dead body.”
“If there is one,” Bubba said, “then there’s a murderer about.”
“Lady Whiteshade could be running amok,” David offered. “She prefers a parasol and poison darts.”
“That fella dint have any obvious wounds,” Bubba found himself saying before wincing. “No, it ain’t your arch steampunk nemesis. That’s one thing I’m positive about.”
“You don’t know Lady Whiteshade,” David said loftily.
“You’re missing my point,” Bubba said.
“Let’s sit,” David said. “My feet are beginning to hurt. I attempted to cause water to accumulate for my planned massive evil tsunami, but the water hoses are simply inadequate for the task. These preacher boots are pinchy. Being a steampunk super villain takes a certain fashion sense that isn’t always comfortable.”
Bubba led David into the living room. He sat in a La-Z-Boy chair that had been a gift from Caressa. David sat on a couch that was almost as comfortable as the chair. Bubba patted Cookie’s head as she leaned back against him. She said, “Boopa,” and burped again. Bubba took that to mean she was tired. He thought that he should put her down to take a nap but the truth was diabolical. How could he leave her alone? How could he leave anyone alone?
Precious wandered in and sat at Bubba’s feet.
“Let’s say I’m correct and I ain’t lost all my marbles,” Bubba said to David.
David put his feet on the coffee table and Bubba frowned at him. David took his feet off the coffee table.
Bubba stared at the spot where a throw rug had lain. “You followin’ me?”
“Yes. There was truly a corpse in your living room,” David said. He chuckled. “Not the first corpse in your house, which is amazing considering that this house isn’t that old.” He waved at Bubba to continue.
“Someone moved it,” Bubba said.
David nodded.
“I’m thinking someone did something like when that director was here,” Bubba said slowly. “Someone thought I kilt the man. They dint want the wedding ruined. They moved the body.”
“But why wouldn’t it have been the original murderer?” David asked. Then he frowned and added, “Perhaps you stumbled onto the crime as it was just perpetrated and our conversation gave the villain a chance to move the remains before it was seen by anyone else?”
“The window on the back door was broken,” Bubba said. “And also the stone where the hide-a-key was moved.”
David bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He scratched at the side of his face. His monocular suddenly whirled and clicked as it moved back and forth. “If one had used the key, then the window wouldn’t have had to been broken, is that correct?”
“Yep.”
“That stands to reason,” David admitted. “One got the man inside. Another moved the body.”
“Then the first one watched the body being moved and moved it back,” Bubba said.
David clapped his hands together. “It sounds just like a movie. Life at your residence is never boring, Bubba. Ah, the joy we will have when you take the reins as Fleet Commander Palmer Bickerstaff. The adventures we will enjoy.” He sighed gustily.
“Missing the point again,” Bubba said.
“The perpetrator killed the victim in your house or killed him and brought him here. Someone else moved the victim. The perpetrator brought the victim back. Then did the first someone else come back and re-move the body?”
“Someone did,” Bubba said, thinking of his mother. “Someone who really dint want to have the wedding spoiled.” He also thought of missing cellphones and vanished televisions and how the telephone lines were inoperable. He was going to have to have a Come-to-Jesus moment with his mother, and he wasn’t thinking of the loony when he thought of the phrase Come-to-Jesus.
“I see,” David said. “The murderer is still aboot.” He pronounced about like a Canadian.
“Everyone is in danger,” Bubba said.
“The perpetrator doesn’t want to kill you,” David said. “You know there’s a great cable channel from Canada that has—” he cut himself off when he perceived that Bubba was glaring at him.
Bubba stood up and strode into the kitchen. He rifled in the drawers until he found a flashlight. It was the oversized kind that used four D sized batteries. It was also the kind he could use as a club if threatened by an obvious killer bent on revenge.
He put the flashlight on the countertop while he fished Cookie out of her harness.
Cookie said sleepily, “Foobla nug.”
“Hold her,” Bubba said, handing her to David. David took the baby like he was holding a bomb that was about to explode.
Bubba took the flashlight, opened the pantry door, and knelt. He opened the crawlspace door. He put himself in a prone position and put half of his upper body into the crawlspace. Slowly and methodically he turned on the flashlight and shone it over the entire crawlspace, making certain to catch all the corners.
Finally B
ubba pulled himself up and sat there while David awkwardly held Cookie. Precious nosed Bubba’s arm and woofed softly.
“Well,” David said.
“Ain’t nothing down there,” Bubba said. “Looks like it’s marked up, but I don’t know ifin that’s from a body bein’ dragged aboot, I mean, about, or because Wallie the Contractor went back down to wrap up the pipes.”
“Rediscovering the body would have been helpful,” David said, adjusting Cookie in his hands. Her little face began to turn red as she squirmed uncomfortably in his hands.
“Hold her the right way, David, or she’s goin’ to cry,” Bubba admonished. “Finding the body would have bin, well, a positive, but we got bigger fish to fry.”
“Massive, iron encrusted, automechanized steampunk fish?”
“Goin’ to have to cancel the wedding,” Bubba said darkly. “Ain’t got a choice.”
Chapter 13
Brownie and Janie Find the Body…Again
Saturday, April 27th around 10:15 AM
“Right there on that shelf,” Brownie said to Janie. Janie capably perched on Brownie’s shoulders and picked through items on a very high shelf in the back foyer of Bubba’s house. Well, it was actually Bubba and Willodean’s house now. Brownie had noticed that the sheriff’s deputy hadn’t made much of an impression for living there. Bubba’s furniture all appeared about the same, and there wasn’t a single fuzzy pink throw over the backs of the chairs or even one doily on any given table.
Brownie knew the difference all the same. It was no longer a man cave. Boots weren’t strewn in the hallway, and dirty dishes did not linger in the sink. The Big Mouth Billy Bass plaque had vanished from the living room wall and there was no mystery about why that had come to be. (It sang “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” or “I Will Survive” so Willodean obviously wasn’t a Bobby McFerrin or Gloria Gaynor fan. Brownie knew this because his mother was a fan and had given it to Bubba as a house warming gift.) Hence the prohibited fireworks that Bubba saved for Brownie for non-rainy, non-murder mystery prone summer evenings had been placed strategically out of reach and out of sight on a back shelf at the rear of the house where the diminutive Willodean wouldn’t be likely to notice them.
At least that was Brownie’s initial reasoning. Possibly Bubba had thought that Brownie wouldn’t find them there, but that was just plain silly and somewhat stupid, too. Brownie could find a needle in a stack of needles placed in a warehouse full of other needles. (A construction sized magnet and calculated planning helped.) It especially helped if it was an explosive needle in a stack of needles placed in a warehouse full of other needles.
A plastic bag of fireworks on a high shelf was child’s play. Since Brownie was, in fact, a child, he thought that was all aces.
“Got it,” Janie said. Brownie gently let her down, and she held out the bag so that he could peek inside.
“We need matches or a camp lighter,” Brownie said. He peered into the bag. Bubba had gone shopping since the last time Brownie had looked. It was a bulging plastic bag full of juvenile enchantment contained in volatile form, all intended for the kind of people who would drive a hundred miles to see a tall building demolished in a rain of fiery explosions. There were dancing butterflies, silver sonic warheads, two rain of fires, and three flaming spears. The bottom was littered with polychromatic sparklers. He shivered with delight. Illicit stuff that was combustible. How could a boy go wrong with that?
“In the kitchen,” Janie said. She handed him the bag and skipped down the hall with Brownie following at a lesser pace. He knew a good place back by the swamp where they could blow things up with impunity. Sure, people from the Mansion might be able to hear them, but it wouldn’t matter. Bubba might even be onto them, but as it was his wedding day, he wouldn’t care unless Brownie lit some of the forest on fire.
No burning down the woods today, Brownie admonished himself. He bumped into Janie who had stopped in front of the living room.
“What the hel-eye-copter?” he said to her rigid back.
“Body,” Janie said, jerking her head toward the interior of the living room. She might have been pointing out a UFO flying merrily past. If she had added, “You remember what a body looks like?” he wouldn’t have been surprised.
Brownie looked. Sure enough the very same body had returned to the place where they had originally seen it. In fact, it looked to be in almost the exact same position. The only thing that was different was that the throw rug was absent. If Brownie had to guess, and he liked to guess, he would have said that the throw rug was still in the barn. They should have shaken out the hay and returned it to its original position, but there hadn’t been time. Also they had forgotten.
“You don’t see that every day,” Brownie said. “It’s a boomerang body. You get rid of it and it comes right back. Mebe he’s from Australia.”
“I’m going to have nightmares about this,” Janie said. “Long, icky nightmares where I’m going to wake up screaming and sweating about a dead body that moves when no one is watching it. My mother is going to be pissed off.”
“We should get rid of it again,” Brownie said. “You know, if they find it here, no wedding.”
“I’m beginning to think there shouldn’t be a wedding no matter how many times we move the body,” Janie said.
Brownie rubbed his chin. “This is terribly mysterious.”
“Aren’t you more worried about who must have seen us moving the body in the first place?” Janie asked.
“You mean the person who put the body there,” Brownie said and pointed at the living room with his racket, “and then saw us move it. Then he or she moved it back. That’s a little bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
“It stands to reason,” Janie said. “We just moved it, for gosh’s sakes. Just…moved…it, so they have to be right around here somewhere. I can smell a perp from a hundred feet, and I smell perp.”
Brownie’s face crinkled. “They could be watching us right now.”
“I think it was one of those people who were out behind the barn,” Janie said. “They’re on the scene, trying to pretend that nothing’s amiss, and wham, as soon as the others are gone, they carry the corpse back. Any of them are big enough to sling that guy over their shoulders, especially the really big guy, Daniel Gollihugh.”
“Dan could sling two dead bodies over his shoulders,” Brownie admitted, “but he’s a Buddhist now, so I don’t think he would want to sling two dead bodies over his shoulders. There’s got to be something in their religion that says they cain’t do that. Do those big Buddha statues with the round bellies look like a statue for a religion that allows slinging of dead bodies? I don’t think so.”
“Maybe we should flip a coin,” Janie suggested. “Heads we move it. Tails we leave right now.”
“Mebe we should hang out and wait for someone to come looking to see ifin we moved the body,” Brownie said. “I could set a trap up for him. Something Freddy would have done on Scooby Doo. An industrial sized fan, soap bubbles, and a washing machine will do the trick. And a net. We cain’t forget the net. I’m perty shore Auntie D. has one of those big steel nets in the Mansion somewhere on account that she once threatened me with one.”
“I don’t think we have time,” Janie whispered. “Someone’s at the back door.” She yanked Brownie’s arm and they quietly slithered into the kitchen, listening as someone stomped inside.
“Why me?” someone asked loudly. “Why me? No, don’t answer that.”
Someone else came in, staggered as evidenced by the noise they made as they fell against a wall, and then the first someone caught them as evidenced by the, “There. Got you. Let’s just git you upstairs for clothing. Ain’t no one needs a naked lawyer running around today.”
“Bubba,” Brownie breathed. He was sure that the man talking was Bubba.
“And Lawyer Petrie,” Janie added. She had apparently assumed that there couldn’t be two naked lawyers lying about.
They listened as Bubba herde
d the attorney upstairs, and Brownie tugged on Janie. “It’s time to make like a tree and bark, dollface.”
“I agree,” she said. Before they carefully made their way to the back door, Janie expediently grabbed a camp lighter from a drawer with Brownie nodding approvingly. When they reached the back, Brownie peered out of the broken window to make certain no one else was watching, waiting, lurking, or even casually peeping.
“What now?” she asked.
“Let’s see what happens when Bubba finds the body again,” Brownie said with a shrug. “This is better than when the Christmas Killer was here.”
* * *
Bubba and Intensive Investigatin’
Around 11:15 AM
Bubba took Cookie back from David Beathard because he couldn’t stand to watch David’s discomfort. “I know you had children, and I’m shore that they was once babies.”
“You know I did,” David said. “I have three. I have a good relationship with them now that they’re adults, even when I’m involved in a persona. My daughter loves steampunk. She’s a photographer and she’s doing a whole book on steampunk. However, when they were babies, it was a little…different. They’re so little and they produce things from both ends.”
Cookie slid into her harness like an old pro. As Bubba fastened the buckles, she said, “Bloof!” and waved her little chubby arms. Bubba found her binky in a pocket and went into the kitchen to wash it off. After the little vampire teeth binky was clean he gave it to her, and she stuck it in her mouth like it had never left there.
“So what’s the nefarious plan?” David asked. “I say we build a massive underwater machine that mimics the shape of a sea monster as it preys upon the shipping trade on the high seas. We can plunder all the greatest shipwrecks. All I need is a hundred tons of steel, twenty-three tons of iron, an aether producing super engine, sixteen hundred Popsicle sticks, and a package of Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum.” He snapped his fingers to demonstrate the ease of his plan.