by C. L. Bevill
“Then what?” Agent Monday prompted.
“I looked in the window to check on it, and the body was gone again. I don’t know who moved it that time,” Jeffrey said.
Bubba thought, looking at his mother and his aunt Caressa who both grimaced, I do.
“So I was looking for it all over, and out pops Newt Durley, right from underneath the house,” Jeffrey said. “It was the damnest thing. He had the body dragging along with him. Newt was more freaked out than I was. Never saw him run so quickly before.”
The belt buckle.
“And can you believe those kids got to Morgan before I did?” Jeffrey asked.
I kin, Bubba thought.
“You saw what they did,” Jeffrey said, sounding outraged on Morgan’s behalf. “Is that anyway to treat a dead body?”
No.
“All those fireworks attached to the dead body,” Jeffrey said.
It was a waste of fireworks, Bubba thought, giving Brownie the stinky eye. Brownie had the good grace to appear abashed. He held the racket he’d been carrying all day in his hands and stared at the ground, red-faced.
Sheriff John nodded. “I think that covers about everything.”
Dan Gollihugh staggered in holding Lloyd Goshorn under one arm. “Don’t start without us,” he said. Dan had a black eye and he looked a little banged up as he corralled what was probably the only two empty chairs left.
“What happened to you?” Bubba asked Dan.
“That little ol’ lady took offense to something I said,” Dan said, rubbing his eye.
“You mean, Willodean’s sister, Hattie?” Bubba asked.
“I might have accidentally touched her bottom when I tripped in a hole,” Dan said. “Only accidentally. I am married again now. I don’t mess around on Trixiebelle. Anyway, I had to grab on to something.”
That very same woman strode across to him. Her sequined dress sparkled in the sun and her heels were four inches high showing the elegant length of her legs. “Daniel Gollihugh,” Trixiebelle said. “Where have you bin and what happened to your face?”
“Just he’ping Bubba,” Dan said. “That po-lice woman thought I was flirting with her and took exception. You know how clumsy I am.”
Trixiebelle swept her hair over her shoulder and sat in his lap. “Best you keep away from them po-lice people,” she admonished. Dan nodded.
Lloyd looked sideways at Dan and inched away incrementally.
“So Lloyd,” Bubba said, “you was doing work at Jeffrey Carnicon’s place when your identification vanished?”
Lloyd took a moment to think about it. “Yeah, how did you know?”
“Just a guess,” Bubba said.
Lloyd frowned. “You goin’ to kill me, Bubba?”
“Nope.”
Miz Demetrice nudged her sister with her elbow and Bubba wondered why. Cookie said, “Boo BAH!” loudly as she squirmed in her mother’s arms. Fudge reached for the baby and Cookie grinned as she went into them. “Boo bah,” Cookie said again.
The quartet abruptly stopped. It was a thirty second pause before they began the wedding march.
Jeffrey crossed his handcuffed wrists over his chest and said loudly, “I want a lawyer.”
“Shut it,” Sheriff John said amicably.
“Two lawyers,” Jeffrey insisted stridently. “I get a phone call!”
The quartet paused for a moment.
Brownie said, “No problem.” He leaned back and reached out with the racket, past Kiki Rutkowski in the second row, and touched the side of Jeffrey’s face in the third row. Jeffrey was so dumbfounded that he simply sat there, and both Sheriff John and Agent Monday watched with confusion. Then Brownie pressed the little red button on the side of the racket’s handle.
The electrical current crackled noisily as it surged into Jeffrey’s body. Jeffrey convulsed once, made a noise like R2-D2 had when the little robot had been shocked by the Jawas, and fell over so that his head hit Agent Monday’s shoulder. Monday awkwardly held the man’s body up while looking at Brownie in an incredulous fashion. He checked Jeffrey’s neck and said, “He’s unconscious.”
Brownie pulled back immediately and twirled the racket in his hand. “It’s an electric bug zapper in racket form,” he explained to Bubba. “I only had to do a little work to it to up the voltage. Some minor re-engineering, you know. I’m goin’ to write a paper about it.”
Bubba stared at Brownie for a long moment, and then gestured at the quartet to resume their playing.
Fudge muttered, “Rumford Samuel Snoddy, Jr.,” and Brownie sank down into his chair.
Bubba sighed and looked down the long aisle. Everything else faded into the background as he saw that the sun had emerged from a brief cloud to reveal Willodean in all her bridal glory. She held her father’s arm and they waited for a moment as the music continued to play its immortal notes. The various pieces of Kevlar had vanished. Someone had fixed her hair and her lovely face only had one minute patch of dirt on her cheek, not that it mattered to Bubba.
There was a communal sigh that emerged from everyone who was there.
Bubba smiled because he couldn’t do anything else. Watching his fiancée walk down the aisle pretty much eliminated everything else from his mind altogether.
It should go without saying that the rest of that day went perfectly, but it needs to be said regardless. The rest of that day went perfectly.
– The End –
Note from the Author: Thanks to all my readers. Thanks to all the Facebook fans who help me out when I can’t think of another way of putting the color red or when I have a grammar question or when I need a pick-me-up. Thanks to all the people who keep me going, specifically my husband, Woodrow, and our daughter, Crescencia Rose. Our cats probably helped, too, but not in the way they would imagine.
A very hearty thank you to the beta readers notably Suzanne Gossett, Brynn Shipp, and Denise Tiblis. If mistakes were made, and they probably were because there can’t not be mistakes, they are all mine, and no one else’s.
In other bat news see me at www.clbevill.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/CL-Bevill/135805749827314?ref=hl or email me at [email protected]
Sincerely,
Caren
About the Author: C.L. Bevill has lived in Texas, Virginia, Arizona, and Oregon. She once was in the U.S. Army and a graphic illustrator. She holds degrees in social psychology and counseling. She is the author of Bubba and the Dead Woman, Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas, Bubba and the Missing Woman, Bayou Moon, and Shadow People, among others. Presently she lives with her husband and her daughter and continues to constantly write. She often leaves Easter eggs in her stuff just to see if anyone notices. For example, once she jumped off a two story stack of hay bales because her friends challenged her to hit the pile of loose hay to one side. (It was a very large pile of loose hay.) The neck pain went away after about two weeks and her mother never did find out, but the friend’s father had to come and get the other one with a ladder because she was too afraid to jump or even climb back down. C.L. Bevill can be reached at www.clbevill.com or you can read her blog at www.carwoo.blogspot.com.
Other Novels by C.L. Bevill
Mysteries:
Bubba and the Dead Woman
Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas
Bubba and the Missing Woman
Brownie and the Dame (3.5)
Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note
The Ransom of Brownie (4.5)
Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies
Bubba and the Ten Little Loonies
Bubba and the Wacky Wedding Wickedness
Bayou Moon
Crimson Bayou
Paranormal Romance:
Veiled Eyes (Lake People)
Disembodied Bones (Lake People)
Arcanorum (Lake People)
Death Twitches (Lake People)
The Moon Trilogy (Novellas):
Black Moon (The Moon Trilogy 1)
A
mber Moon (The Moon Trilogy 2)
Silver Moon (The Moon Trilogy 3)
Cat Clan Novellas:
Harvest Moon
Blood Moon
Crescent Moon
Hunter’s Moon
Shadow People
Sea of Dreams
Mountains of Dreams (Dreams 2)
Suspense:
The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager
Black Comedy:
The Life and Death of Bayou Billy
Missile Rats
Chicklet:
Dial ‘M’ For Mascara
Urban Fantasy:
Deadsville