by C. L. Bevill
Bubba grunted absently. “Mebe y’all should stay off the mountain for a couple of days. I’ll stay up here tonight with Bert Mullahully and see what I kin see. Might be able to wrap this up quickly ifin we catch someone in the act.”
“You’re not going to shoot it with that elephant gun, are you?” Risley asked apprehensively. “I’m having visions of the ASPCA suing the production and Marquita and myself personally.”
“I ain’t the type to use a gun,” Bubba said, although it wasn’t exactly true. There were always too many people about with weapons, and he preferred using his brains when he could. Sometimes other folks even cooperated. And hey, he hadn’t been shot at since his wedding, so he was having a real streak of good luck.
Of course, thinking of his wedding reminded him of Willodean. He extracted his phone and examined it. The screen was cracked. and there were some innards showing that weren’t supposed to show. It wouldn’t even power up when he pressed the button on the side. More precisely it made a sound like a bear with his giggleberries caught in an electrified fence around a corn patch. It wasn’t pretty and everyone winced.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Risley said. He offered Bubba his iPhone after unlocking it. “Here you go.”
Bubba laboriously dialed Willodean’s number. She answered perkily, and he was immediately relieved.
“Hey sugarplum,” he said.
“What happened to your phone?” Willodean asked promptly.
“Someone thought I was the Boo,” Bubba said in the way of explanation.
“Oh.” Obviously Willodean understood immediately what he meant which meant that they were truly a great match.
“How you doin’?”
“Everything’s fine. The baby’s still inside my womb, although I think that child is playing soccer now.”
Bubba chuckled. “I’ll be home for dinner with something good.”
“Oh, Miz Adelia brought over a tuna fish casserole. It’s got potato chips on top.” Willodean paused. “It doesn’t smell bad, and it doesn’t look like it has asparagus and broccoli in it, so let’s just eat that.”
“I’ll stop at the phone store on the way home and then I’m coming back here after supper.”
“Did you see the Boo?” Willodean asked. “It’s all over Twitter, you know.”
Is that good or bad? “I seen something earlier,” Bubba said noncommittedly. He didn’t want to rile up his wife. (If it was called Twitter, then why didn’t people twit instead of tweet?) “You don’t need to worry. Stop looking at Twitter.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, “but I’m getting sick of this bed, and I can only watch so much Netflix.”
Bubba chuckled again. “You’ll be wanting back in it when the baby’s up four times a night.”
“Or you’ll be,” Willodean warned.
Simone came into the room and looked at Risley in a meaningful fashion.
Bubba said his goodbyes quickly and handed the phone back to Risley.
“Have you seen Marquita?” Simone asked quickly. “She was supposed to meet me at the set, and she didn’t show. I went looking for her, but the last anyone saw her she was headed for her RV.”
“Did you look there?” Risley asked.
“Of course,” Simone said. “First thing. Empty. And her phone goes straight to voicemail.”
Risley tried his phone. “Just in case,” he said. About fifteen seconds later he said, “Straight to voicemail.”
“Told you,” Simone muttered.
Risley frowned. He looked at Bubba. “This doesn’t sound good.”
It didn’t sound good. What was worse was that they spread out and looked everywhere for Marquita, and they couldn’t find her.
Chapter 11
Bubba and the Tunnels of Doom
Marquita’s abused Range Rover was still parked at the front of the mountain next to the grimy Mercedes Benz that turned out to be Risley Risto’s. Bubba looked inside the Rover and around it and even under it, but nothing particular leaped out at him. He went and looked at her RV, too. He spoke with Simone Sheats, Tandy North, and Bert Mullahully. Each told a slight variation of the same story. Simone, Tandy, and Marquita had walked down from the Hovious place. They’d split up at the gut truck where Tandy had gone to her trailer, and Simone had gone inside the makeup tent. The last Bert had seen of Marquita she had been walking toward her RV.
“It’s a Ford Dynamax with a 6.8L v10 engine,” Bert said confidentially. “That bad boy will sleep six comfortably and has a convection microwave that will cook a twelve-pound turkey.”
Bubba stared at Bert for a long moment. “Did you see her go inside the RV?”
Bert chewed on his bottom lip. “No, I don’t reckon I did. Am I goin’ to lose my job? This ain’t a bad job, and I git to brag about it. I mean, when I’m driving the taxi, I get lots of drunks and there was this one time when all these fellas were drinking Pink Pantie Droppers and they threw up in the cab which smelled so bad that...hey, you were there.”
“I remember,” Bubba said. He turned to look in the direction of the RVs. There were three of those and various other trailers and some tents. The place was oddly empty, but then, Marquita had sent almost everyone away for the remainder of the day. He cast a look over his shoulder at the blackened weathervane on the very tiptop of the house. It was an elaborately scrolled arrow that spun with the wind’s whimsy and must have dated from the original construction of the house as a hunting lodge. “You seen the moron triplets?”
Bert grimaced. “They’re not triplets.”
“Have you seen them?” Bubba repeated.
“Shore. Laz came past about a half hour ago. Got some water and discussed this here article about jazzing up your bathroom. It turns out his mama wants to do something with her bathroom in her mobile home in the junkyard and—” he trailed off when he perceived that Bubba was glaring at him.
“Laz went back into the tunnels,” Bubba said.
“Said he still had work to do to get it ready for filming for next week,” Bert said weakly.
“I’ll need a flashlight,” Bubba said.
Bert patted his chest and checked his pockets as if a flashlight would magically appear. “I ain’t got one.”
Bubba looked around and strode over to the makeup tent. Inside Simone was curled up in one of the camp chairs talking to someone on her cellphone. She looked up as Bubba entered and said, “Yes. I understand. That’s a go, right?”
She listened for a moment and then said, “Talk to you later.”
Bubba waited for her to disconnect the call and asked, “Y’all have a flashlight I kin borrow?”
“Flashlight,” she repeated. “Yes, I have several. You never know when you need a flashlight.” She stood up and went to a set of plastic bins where she opened three drawers before she found one full of cheap dollar-store flashlights. These were the kind with two AA batteries and the reciting of a prayer that the connections weren’t corroded. She handed him one and he held out his hand for another one.
“Just in case,” he said.
“Oh, you’re going into the tunnels.” Simone frowned. “You know we’re not going to really film much in there on account of safety issues. Someone dug those tunnels out with a pickax and a handful of pixie dust.”
“Do you think Marquita just suddenly decided to go to a bar?” Bubba asked. “Without telling anyone or taking her Rover or answering her phone?”
Simone sighed. “No, that isn’t her. I’m going to start checking some of the snares. After you fell in the one, Marquita had them marked with caution tape until we’re ready to use them, but maybe one was missed. She could have hurt herself and can’t get out.”
“Take Bert with you,” Bubba said. “Tell him I said to go with you, and ifin he has a problem with that, I’ll have a problem with that, and he don’t want me to have a problem.”
“Roh kay,” she said doubtfully.
Bubba nodded and headed back toward the house. He glanced over h
is shoulder to see Simone joining Bert at his makeshift post near the trailer that served as Marquita’s office. Then Risley appeared. The three began to speak just as Bubba rounded the corner.
He changed his mind just as the house came into view and went to where he’d first seen the Boo that very morning.
Bubba stopped on the bridge where Tandy had gotten her foot caught on something. He looked at that distinctive branch that Risley had pointed out. It was indeed about eight feet high, and the Boo’s head had brushed it as he’d stood there threatening them.
Bubba ran the scene in his head. Marquita was directing Tandy. Tandy was on the bridge complaining about the babbling brook. Fog rolled over the ground aplenty. The Boo appeared by the tree with the pointing branch. Growl. Snarl. Bleeping bleepity bleep. Growl. Whine. Bubba charged. He jumped over Tandy and after the next step went into a hole.
Bubba absently rubbed his solar plexus. It felt like someone had hit him dead center with a log.
Precious nosed his leg and whined. Bubba knelt to pet her to let her know all was mostly well in the world. “I reckon it’s some fool playing some games,” he murmured to her. “Alls we have to do is figure out who, and we kin go home. But Marquita…” he trailed off. His chest hurt and not because of the earlier blow. It hurt because he really didn’t want to find a dead body. He especially didn’t want to find Marquita’s dead body. Part of it was because Marquita was a woman and part of it was because he liked her as a person.
Bubba shook his head and stood up, listening to the brook babbling at his feet. It was no use inviting trouble. She wasn’t lying in the deep grass with her feet in the air, so it didn’t necessarily follow that she was dead. The real problem wasn’t that she could be dead, it was that Bubba had found too many dead bodies, and he was paranoid about the issue.
He stepped over the bridge and looked down for the hole. It wasn’t a huge hole in width but it was deep. (Six feet and change since his head had just poked above the edge.) It was marked with yellow tape just as Simone had said. There was a complicated metal device in it that appeared to be the kind of thing that would launch a jack-in-the-box out of the box, and he supposed it had to do with the special effects for the movie. It was also probably the thing that he had hit with various parts of his body.
Bubba stopped and glanced back at the bridge. It looked whole and hardy as if someone had repaired it for the film. The boards were neatly placed and screwed in with galvanized screws and a handrail went across one side. He stepped back to where he could examine the entire bridge. The footers on either side were old. The cement was aged in a way that couldn’t be faked. The support beams were similarly aged, but the crossmembers were fresh. He could still smell the pinesap from cuts in the treated boards.
But Tandy had caught her foot or her ankle on something, and it had prevented her from running away from the Boo. She’d even knelt and tugged at it before threateningly holding up a lighter. Bubba hadn’t seen exactly what had been caught because the fog had been heavy at the time, but he’d assumed that the wood had broken and her ankle had been trapped.
Had someone repaired the bridge already?
Bubba stared at it as he came to an unwanted conclusion. He glowered just a bit and settled his shoulders. That was one thing, but more importantly was where the Boo had disappeared. He rounded the hole in the ground and picked his way to the tree where the Boo had been.
Looking up at the pointing branch, Bubba placed himself carefully. He looked back at the brook and the bridge. Without the fog the place looked inviting. The sun spilled through the trees showing dancing dust motes floating about. All one needed was a fishing pole to catch a few trout. There might be a catfish or two swimming within the deeper holes, and sure enough, he saw a ray of discombobulated sunlight catch the shimmery scales of an errant fish.
Bubba was going to have to remember to check this stream out when the baby was old enough to teach to fish. (Girl baby, boy baby, it didn’t matter. It would be a fishing baby.)
In the meantime, he looked back in the direction of the heavy brush. There hadn’t been a lot of noise, so the Boo hadn’t dived into the deep woods and hauled tushie for Tuscaloosa. They would have heard the branches breaking even over the noise of the stream. If the Boo hadn’t gone that way, it meant there was another route of escape. That meant another hole.
Bubba hadn’t thought to go after the Boo earlier. He’d been thinking about his chest, his hound, and a thousand other things.
Like Willodean and the baby.
Bubba set himself up a pattern and started following it back and forth until he found the entrance to the tunnels he suspected was close by. It was camouflaged cleverly in that it was a piece of plywood painted in woodland colors and covered with brush that someone had glued onto it. There was a rope handle that had been painted brown and green and blended in. He yanked it open and peered down into the darkness.
After a moment his eyes adjusted, and he could see a set of stairs carved into rock and earth. They went down as down could be, and the tunnel didn’t reveal itself because of the darkness. There weren’t any lights strung along this section.
But Bubba had a flashlight.
Precious nudged past him and peered into the tunnel. She sniffed twice and barked her deep baying woof. “BAAA-ROOO!” she trumpeted.
“You say Timmy fell down the well, girl?” Bubba said.
Precious promptly nipped his ankle and immediately went down the stairs like she was a bowling ball with moderate control. It was kind of the way she was built. Long and low. Thump. Thud. Thump. Thud. It showed that she was interested in something down there, and she was going with or without her master.
Bubba turned on one of the small cheap flashlights and immediately wished he’d kept the Maglite. “I don’t suppose you’d like to track Marquita, Precious,” he tried.
Precious yipped.
“Even ifin I tole you she had steak or something like that?” Bubba went on. He cautiously descended into the darkness not thumping or thudding like his hound but gradually because the steps were uneven and not made by any kind of standard that would get a pass from a housing inspector. Furthermore, the dollar-store special didn’t really light up anything except two feet in front of him. By the time he reached the bottom he couldn’t see more than a foot in front of him, although he could hear Precious snuffling about.
He could also hear the brook. Oddly it seemed louder from underneath than it did outside. Since the tunnel only went in one direction, Bubba followed it guardedly and came to the reason why the brook sounded louder. He knew Foggy Mountain was powered by a spring and here was another one that had created its own set of tunnels.
Bubba ducked his head because the tunnels weren’t meant for six-foot four-inch men in any shape or fashion. He put a hand to the wall and found the marks that showed other people had worked the walls of the tunnels around the stream. Old Man Hovious or one of the hippies had spent time down here with pickaxes and shovels. Possibly it could have been even older since there was an indication of mining here, too. With his foot, he nudged a piece of heavily corroded rail.
The hunting lodge had been built here first, but that didn’t mean that the first occupants had been the owners of that lodge. In fact, Bubba happened to know that indigenous Native American tribes also mined for various substances. This mine could be a hundred years old or a thousand.
Precious trotted out of the darkness and barked at him. She seemed to be saying, “Come this way, dumb ass. Do I have to lead you everywhere?”
There was only one way to go so Bubba went. His hound seemed to be having a good time. Her eyesight was better than his in the dark even if the flashlight worked marginally.
Precious stopped and snorted. She stuck her nose around the wall and put a paw up. She scraped there and came away with a package of beef jerky. It crinkled loudly, and Bubba leaned in to see what else was hidden in the small carved opening in the wall.
There was a lantern, the el
ectric kind with LED lights and a nifty handle that allowed it to be used as a lantern or like a flashlight. There was even a hand crank to power it up and a USB port in case a fella wanted to charge his iPod or his cellphone, provided that fella had remembered to bring the USB cable with him which a fella hadn’t, in fact, remembered to do. (And provided the phone wasn’t already broken.)
Bubba took a moment to prop the little flashlight between his head and his shoulder and cranked the lantern’s handle several times. Then he switched it on and was pleasantly surprised at how bright the LED lights were. It revealed the tunnel and the spring-fed stream and graffiti on the walls.
J. Reynolds had marked his name in 1898. There was a pink-and-purple peace sign that had a 1970 on the bottom of the ring. There was also a neon-orange arrow that pointed to Bubba’s left and that one looked a lot more recent than the others. In fact, there was a drip from the paint that could have still been wet.
The tunnel was humid enough to keep the paint wet, but Bubba suspected that someone had been through here very recently, and they’d painted arrows to ensure that they didn’t get lost.
Precious pawed the pack of beef jerky.
And they thought to bring snacks, too.
Bubba brought the lantern around and saw a few other things in the cavity. He reached in and lifted something up. It wasn’t really heavy because it was made mostly out of aluminum, but it was something a fella didn’t see every day. He adjusted the lantern so he could better see the item in his hands as he turned it this way and that. There were straps on one end and a rubber platform on the other. If someone put them on, then they might very well be exactly the thing they wanted to be.
That made sense, too.
The truth of the matter was there really wasn’t a mystery to all of this Boo stuff.
Bubba glowered again. It was because of one of two reasons. Either this was just a stunt cooked up to keep him occupied, and Bubba didn’t think he was that popular, or this was a stunt cooked up to garner publicity.