by C. L. Bevill
Janie glanced around. “Move it again? That body is getting around more than a traveling salesman.”
“You get the wheelbarrow,” Brownie said.
Janie took a long pull of her R.C. Cola. She carefully put the bottle in a V created by two branches and tucked the MoonPie next to it. Brownie followed suit. The R.C. Colas and MoonPies would be there when they were done with their hard work.
As Janie walked toward the corner of the caretaker’s house, Brownie crouched by the open door and tugged on the dead man’s arm. “We shouldn’t put him back in the barn,” she called.
“Of course not,” Brownie said. He tugged hard and the man’s shirt ripped. “Whoops. Where should we put you? Hmm.”
* * *
Bubba and Miz Demetrice Face Facts
Around 11:20 AM
Bubba changed Cookie with all of the vigor he did not feel. Cookie was simply happy to have a clean tushy. He even found a new jumper that said, “Does This Diaper Make My Butt Look Big?” He gently tucked her limbs into the proper holes while humming an old song that his mother had used to hum to him. (“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers, of which the irony was not lost on Bubba.)
He wouldn’t have changed Cookie if he had been able to find Fudge, Virtna, or even Brownie. Bubba would have handed Cookie over to Brownie with an alacrity that would have even alarmed the second youngest Snoddy. However, people seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to a nearby baby with a fully loaded diaper.
When he was finished and Cookie was back in the carrier, Bubba took the kaka bomb and disposed of it in an exterior trash container. On the way, everyone he encountered gave him a wide berth. An example of what was said to him on that fateful trip: “Oh, hey Bubba, shouldn’t you be getting dr— oh, dear Lord Above, what is that smell? I just remembered I need to see a man about a horse.”
Finally, Bubba returned to the Mansion and eventually located his mother. She had straightened her hair, rebuttoned her jacket, and somehow unskuffed her tangerine colored shoes. She looked like the Southern society matron she was, even while she was planning her next illegal activity.
“Ma,” Bubba said. “The jig is up.”
“What jig, Bubba dearest?” she asked as she arranged a vase of flowers in the front foyer. Several people loitered about, still sipping mimosas. A few had plates of canapés. A few others had red plastic cups that smelled like beer. Bubba wondered who had brought beer.
“The icing is on the cake,” Bubba elaborated. “The chicken’s come home to roost. The cows have come home.”
Miz Demetrice adjusted some freshly cut roses and sighed heavily. “I sense a barnyard theme, but the icing reference isn’t making the ensemble complete. Shouldn’t you be getting dressed in your suit?”
Bubba leaned in to get close to his mother’s ear. “I know what you did.”
Miz Demetrice chucked Cookie’s chin with an index finger and a thumb. Cookie giggled fetchingly. “Which thing did I do?”
“You shoved a body into my crawlspace,” he whispered. “Do you know what it’s like for people not to believe you about a dead body?”
His mother brightened and smiled wryly. “Oh yes. People don’t believe me when I talk about your father all the time.”
“Ma,” Bubba said warningly. “A dead body means someone put him there. It means someone moved him once, was that you?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Then someone put him back. Then you came along and put him in the crawlspace. Then someone came along and took him out of the crawlspace.”
Bubba was looking into his mother’s face as he said the words and he found surprise there.
“You mean, there’s nothing in the crawlspace?” she asked, the epitome of innocence. His mother was about as innocent as a fox caught red pawed in the middle of the chicken coop. (She was correct; there was a farmhouse theme going on.)
Bubba shook his head. “Do you understand that means there is a bad person among us? Mebe more than one bad person? My stomach is rolling like a race car at the Daytona 500.”
Miz Demetrice shrugged in a manner that instantly sent Bubba’s blood pressure into a high altitude orbit.
“This bad person has kilt someone,” he insisted.
“We don’t know that,” Miz Demetrice said. “It could have been bad milk or possibly a myocardial infarction. Bad milk is known to cause death in 0.003% of the population, you know. Better odds than the lottery.”
“Really?” Bubba asked. “Another dead body is lying about, and all you can do is think that is was caused by bad milk.” However, he did remember a certain milky residue on the dead man’s lips.
“Pitiable pasteurization processes are a horrible price to pay in human lives,” Miz Demetrice said. “I need to think about some kind of protest.”
“Kin I assume that you dint move the body from the crawlspace?”
His mother looked at her tangerine two piece dress-suit and managed to appear mildly horrified. “Do I look like I went into a crawlspace and moved a corpse?”
“You don’t look like you fly on a broom, neither,” Bubba said immediately.
“That’s a low blow, Bubba dearest,” she said mildly, “but I’m proud of you for saying it. That comes from my side of the family.”
“Ma,” Bubba said quietly, “there’s a murderer running about. We need to cancel the wedding.”
“Nonsense,” Miz Demetrice said promptly. However, there was a note of doubt in the single word. “We’ve got Johnny Law about in several forms. There’s Sheriff John laying waste to all available canapés. There’s the DEA running about. That one man, Warley Smith, has been searching the upstairs bedrooms.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “He thinks he’s been surreptitious, but he’s clomping about like Teddy Roosevelt when he formed the Bull Moose Party.”
She rolled her eyes. “Then there’s three FBI agents about. That young man, Billbee is in the pink parlor discussing politics with Mayor Leroy. Monday is chatting up one of the older Boomer girls, although she is far too young for him. And Hornbuckle is hobbling about somewhere. Did you know she might need another operation on her leg? She fell into one of the holes out back while looking for the supposed Union gold.”
“I remember,” Bubba said. “I also recollect filling that hole in.”
“That woman wouldn’t do much good against a murderer with her leg in that cast and all,” Miz Demetrice went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “but she can shoot something with her gun. She’s carrying a Glock G4, Gen4. That’s a .45 auto and the balance is excellent. Don’t tell anyone, but she actually let me hold it. An old lady cain’t git her hands on that weapon on account that I’m not law enforcement.”
“Are you goin’ to cancel the wedding?” Bubba asked.
Miz Demetrice stared at her only son. “Are you certain you want to do that?”
“No, I don’t want to do it, but people are in danger. You’re in danger. Miz Adelia’s in danger. Willodean will be once she gits here. Her family are here already. You don’t think she wants that?”
His mother’s shoulders slumped, and Bubba knew that he had finally won. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Tell Sheriff John you saw the body, too. I reckon you don’t want to say anything about moving it on account that we don’t want you in jail today.”
“This outfit isn’t fit for the inside of a jail,” Miz Demetrice admitted. “I’ll have to change. I kin hardly wait to explain this to the new judge. Arimithia seems like our type of people.”
“I don’t recollect her having a sense of humor, Ma.” Bubba sighed and looked around. “I don’t know whether to first dot my t’s or cross my i’s.”
“If we were to cut off the booze and snacks,” Miz Demetrice said, “then half the crowd would likely vanish into the heavens.”
“Okay, then,” Bubba said. “You do that. Don’t go nowhere alone. Don’t trust anyone you don’t…uh…trust. You know what I mean. Ifin you kin pl
ay poker with them, then all right then. Oh, hell, I don’t know. Who kin we trust?”
“Family,” Miz Demetrice said. “You start rounding people up in the front. Just tell them the wedding is off and to go home. We’ll reschedule soon. Oh, we should probably tell Peyton first.”
“You kin do that,” Bubba said with an inward shudder. He didn’t want to tell the wedding planner that all his intricately laid plans were about to go up in smoke. Furthermore, he didn’t want to see Peyton cry. Any man who wore eye makeup should never be allowed to cry. It was a rule. Somewhere it was a rule. Bubba didn’t know where it was a rule, but it should have been.
Miz Demetrice went toward the kitchen with what appeared to be steel inset in her spine. Bubba went outside but there was no steel in his spine. Actually it felt like overcooked spaghetti noodles.
Chapter 15
Bubba and the First Big Clue
Saturday, April 27th around 11:15 AM
The truth of the matter was that Bubba needed to first talk to one person above all others. Willodean. Willodean would understand once he had explained, but if he didn’t explain it to her, and she heard it through her mother or her father or even through Peyton, Bubba’s behind would be monocotyledonous graminoids. He’d have to sit on the ground and eat dirt. People would start calling him Dirt Boy or Worm Man or possibly just The Incredible Dirt-E. The news would no longer refer to him as the Unlucky Redneck Detective because Worm Man sounded funnier. He’d die because no one was really meant to eat dirt. His tombstone would say, “He ate too much darn dirt.” It would be a sad and ignoble ending to his life.
Yes, Bubba needed to call Willodean first and foremost. However, in order to talk to Willodean he needed a person with a cellphone. Specifically he needed a person who was willing to give him the cellphone, and the cellphone had to actually work.
Bubba had walked outside in order to start trying to herd people off the Snoddy Estate. The first person he saw in the front was Jeffrey Carnicon, who was sitting in a lawn chair next to several other people sitting in lawn chairs. Mayor John Leroy Jr. had backed up his truck to the section of lawn upon which the group sat. All were enjoying the fruits of the mayor’s labors, namely a shiny, full-sized keg sitting in the back of the Ford F150. Anyone could walk up to the rear tailgate and reach the keg coupler with the elbow fitting that had been attached to the top. A neat stack of red plastic cups sat next to the massive keg for convenience sake. Unmistakably, the rule of the day was the more alcohol, the better the wedding.
The mayor had even taken advantage of a good thing by planting a “Vote Leroy in November” sign. Evidently, he was planning ahead.
“Jeffrey,” Bubba said as he approached the group. “I need your cellphone, and ya’ll need to pack up.”
Jeffrey glanced up at Bubba, and Bubba could see that Jeffrey’s eyes were glazed like they were donuts from Krispy Kreme. Whatever the man had been doing, he had been doing a lot of it. “Sure thing, Bubba,” Jeffrey said, patting his shirt pocket. He patted the other side. He patted his pants where there were clearly no pockets. He patted his fanny pack where there were obvious bulges. “Dang. I don’t think it’s on me,” he said insincerely.
Bubba looked at the others. Mayor Leroy sat next to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ sat next to Thelda. Thelda sat next to Stanley Boomer, who owned a farm with a special breed of fainting goats. Stanley Boomer sat next to George Bufford, the owner of Bufford’s Gas and Grocery and Bubba’s former employer. And the list went on. One of them sat in the shade on a lawn chair, obviously sleeping with his Dallas Cowboys hat pulled down over his face, and his arms resting across his abdomen. Bubba finally comprehended that Mayor Leroy must have brought the chairs as well as the substantial keg. There was probably a grill somewhere about, too, with someone tending to the barbeque ribs that were likely cooking. Understandably, it wasn’t a real wedding without enough alcohol and enough tailgating.
“I need a phone,” Bubba said plainly, but it was like talking to a drunken set of walls. Apparently, Miz Demetrice had been too all encompassing when she had spread the word about not allowing her son access to a phone. They shook their heads and looked at the ground or at the sky in complete pseudo-innocence. He suddenly wished the reporters were back so he could have used their cellphones. (They’d do it if they thought Bubba would give an interview, but he would fool them.)
“Okay, there’s bin a murder,” Bubba announced, hoping for the shock factor.
Raucous giggles burst forth at the statement. Bubba was a funny guy.
“I am completely serious,” Bubba said.
More giggles ensued. Bubba was plainly a comedian of extreme talent.
“I am.”
Bubba couldn’t help his eyes rolling. Why did this have to happen to him? He had a perfect right to be paranoid. After all, look what had already happened, and he hadn’t had a darned thing to do with it. Now since he couldn’t produce a corpse at a moment’s notice, everyone thought he must be joking.
He had a sudden urge to grab one of the people sitting in the lawn chairs and tip them upside down until a cellphone fell out, along with dentures and various coins. The act wouldn’t go over very well.
“I think you need to calm down,” Jeffrey said after a minute. “I’ve got a little primo weed that I grew myself that will do the trick. You know I’m a horticulturist. Hortis grow the best stuff.”
Bubba didn’t know that Jeffrey was a horticulturist. He didn’t know what he had thought Jeffrey was, other than an avid, outspoken atheist who had a Dodge Challenger. The man didn’t seem to work at all, any more than Mayor Leroy or Lloyd Goshorn.
Jeffrey giggled again. “Hortis do it best in dirt.”
Bubba would have groaned but it was a waste of energy. “Come on, Cookie,” he said to the baby still harnessed on his chest. “Let’s find a goshdurned phone before I pop my cork.” He glanced back at the group of giggling morons. “Ya’ll leave. No, wait.” Bubba paused as he thought about it. What’s worse? Having them hanging around where a murderer is lurking or having them get on the roads while they were half-baked? He sighed. “Don’t leave until I figure out a way to git you home safely.” Silently, he added, “You dope smoking lushes.”
“Wait!” Mayor Leroy called. “Who did it? I mean, who murdered someone, because as a duly elected official of this locality, I think we need to know about it.” He looked around him craftily, waiting for everyone to look at him expectantly. Then he asked, “Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?”
More sniggers issued forth.
“It was Professor Plum in the conservatory with a lead pipe,” Stanley Boomer called.
“Go back to your fainting goats, Stanley,” Bubba snarled and turned on his heel.
“Miss Scarlet with a dagger in the study,” someone else called.
Bubba swore to himself that if he got to a second wedding ceremony attempt, there would be no alcohol involved. Furthermore, he was going to have to go inside the Mansion and instruct Miz Adelia to make an ocean’s worth of coffee to try sober people up so they could leave before a murderer got itchy fingers. Someone was going to have to call Bert Mullahully, the town’s only cabbie, and hope that he had cleaned out his taxi from the excesses of the previous night’s bachelor party. Also, he was going to have to hope that Bert Mullahully would actually show up, since he wasn’t happy with what had happened.
Bubba looked around. There were dozens of people around, coming and going, with lots of flutes and beers, and canapés. A taxi minivan wasn’t going to do the trick. They were going to need a bus. Possibly two buses. The big kind with the bathrooms on board. Who was he supposed to call about that? Greyhound?
There had to be a few sober people in residence. And someone with a cellphone.
Bubba went inside, avoided well-wishers, circumvented people with trays of canapés, and trays of mimosas, and found his way into the kitchen to find Miz Demetrice arguing with Miz Adelia.
“There is not,”
Miz Adelia said.
“There is,” Miz Demetrice said.
“I quit,” Miz Adelia said.
“You’re fired,” Miz Demetrice said.
“Bubba,” Miz Adelia said, “your mother has finally gone around the bend, she’s nuttier than a squirrel’s cheeks in autumn, and she’s got a hole in her marble bag as big as the iceberg that done sunk the Titanic. Lord have mercy.”
Cookie said, “Bah HOO!” Unambiguously, she appreciated a spirited discussion about the state of craziness within a family.
“What is it?” Bubba asked wearily.
“Your mother says there’s another dead body,” Miz Adelia said. “I thought ya’ll was joking before. Or slightly tipsy.”
Lawyer Petrie sat in one corner of the kitchen, looking innocuous, and still sipping from a cup of coffee. “I was tipsy,” he said. “In fact, I may still be tipsy. I call foul on the whole idea of coffee sobering up a man.”
“You were completed liquored up, befuddled, and crocked to the gills,” Miz Adelia said.
“She won’t stop making food,” Miz Demetrice said to Bubba.
“Stop making food, Miz Adelia,” Bubba said. “The wedding is off.”
The entire kitchen suddenly became silent. Mostly it was Jasmine, Caressa, and a few other people that Bubba knew in passing. He would have groaned if he thought it would have helped. Any one of those people might tell the wrong person and it might get back to Willodean before he could speak with her. “Ya’ll need to keep your mouths shut,” Bubba said to them, “and shoo people off. Ma, I need a phone.”
“Mine is upstairs in my bedroom,” Miz Demetrice said. “It’s in the underwear drawer.”
“Miz Adelia?”
“I don’t have a cellphone, boy,” she said crossly. “What am I goin’ to do with all this food? Seriously, you ain’t had some kind of fussing with Willodean. You should call her.”
“I will as soon as I find a phone,” Bubba said. He looked meaningfully at the other people in the room.