Brownie and the Dame

by C. L. Bevill

  Bubba shook his head. “Sorry, Brownie. I done saw that book you had the last time you visited. I didn’t know you could do some of those things with only rubbing alcohol and baking soda.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Brownie said arrogantly. He looked at Janie. “Did you know that the Boy Scouts don’t have an improvised munitions patch? It’s positively shameful.”

  “I did not know that,” Janie said. “But you should talk to the bomb squad at the DPD.”

  “No, no, no,” Bubba protested. “Brownie don’t need to talk to the bomb squad until he’s twenty-one and far away from the Snoddy Estate.” He considered. “Maybe ifin he signs some sort of waiver absolving the Snoddys of all blame, too.”

  “Well, we’re kind of busy right now anyway,” Brownie said. He went to Bubba and wrapped the much larger man’s arm around his shoulder. “Just lean on me, Cousin Bubba. You should rest up a bit. Explosions shore take the spit and vinegar out of folks.”

  “You would know,” Bubba muttered.

  Once Bubba was ensconced on the couch, which was about three feet too short for his six feet four inches, Brownie and Janie backed away and waited. Bubba closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest as if posing for a scene from a vampire movie. Miz Adelia hurried back with a glass of water for him and muttered all kinds of things under her breath.

  “Is the hair on his face supposed to be gone?” Janie whispered to Brownie.

  “Shh,” Brownie said. “Folks get real upset-like when you mention that to them.”

  Janie cast Bubba a look. “I’ll try and remember that,” she mumbled, “in case the situation ever comes up.”

  Brownie shrugged. “I reckon we ain’t getting out of here for the rest of the day. Let me show you what you can do with suitable types of household chemicals in the proper proportions.”

  Janie grinned. “Sure.”

  As they passed the living room where Bubba was being examined by Dr. Goodjoint, they heard Bubba say, “Doc, can you write a note to Willodean saying my head ain’t up there?”

  Chapter 9

  Brownie and the Perilous Pandemonium

  Thursday, April 5th

  The very next morning when Brownie got up and attempted to open his door, he realized someone had nailed his bedroom door shut. How they had accomplished this task without waking him up was something he would only question much later. Furthermore, he did not question how he knew the door was nailed shut and not merely stuck. Well, that was the way Brownie thought, and it was thusly so. Someone in the Snoddy household was having a good time at Brownie’s expense. It didn’t matter that he had played jokes on them well before that because it was happening to him now.

  The thing Brownie was most sorry about was that he hadn’t first thought of the jokes played.

  However, Brownie had a mystery on his plate already, not that that fact made it any easier to open his bedroom door. At one point in time during his struggle to open the door, he thought he heard stifled giggling coming from nearby. Finally he managed to pry the pins on the hinges loose by wedging the edge of a plastic sword in-between the pin and the hinge and levering them apart. The door was only nailed shut by two nails on the side that opened, so the entire thing fell to one side, and Brownie glared down the hall angrily.

  “That ain’t funny!” he yelled. “I could have been trapped in there! For hours! I could have starved to death! I could have peed in my underwear!”

  There was muffled thumping that sounded suspiciously like someone hitting the wall to keep themselves from laughing. It was a sound Brownie had heard a time or two before.

  Janie yelled up the staircase, “Brownie! Miz Adelia made smiley face omelets and biscuits! DPD’s cafeteria never makes food this good!”

  Brownie sighed. What’s a budding private dick to do?

  What I need to do is hurry up and get down there before everyone ets all the smiley face omelets and scarfs up all the biscuits. Miz A.’s biscuits are almost as good as her cinnamon rolls.

  Wiping drool off his cheek, Brownie hurried.

  After breakfast was served, Brownie tried staring down the various occupants of the Snoddy Mansion for clues as to who was the perpetrator of the practical jokes. Staring didn’t work very well with any of them. Miz Demetrice only raised an elegant eyebrow in response. She’s good at that, Brownie admitted. I should practice that. Ma would flip ifin I did that the way Auntie D. does.

  Bubba appeared as though he was in a state of shock and didn’t seem to notice that Brownie was staring him down. His hair was still standing up in maddened clumps that had resisted combing or soap and water. There was still black embedded in his skin, but it looked as though it had been scrubbed raw in an attempt to get the substance off. He had a cup of coffee wrapped in both large hands, and there was a twitch in the vein on his forehead. I reckon I should stay away from Bubba today.

  Miz Adelia swept in and out of the kitchen, keeping busy. She didn’t look at anyone in particular and did not notice Brownie’s blatant attempt at intimidation. The phone kept ringing from the hallway where the main unit was connected, and Miz Demetrice was clearly fed up with all of the balderdash.

  Janie rubbed her hands together gleefully and tucked into the omelet, not paying any attention to Brownie’s “look-o-doom.” She’d gotten to pick out her own fixings and she was happy. “It’s like one john and four hookers at a police line-up!” she exclaimed cheerfully.

  Brownie supposed that was a good thing although he wasn’t sure what a john was, other than a first name. Miz Demetrice winced when Janie said it, but Bubba’s lips quirked into an involuntary smile that quickly vanished when his mother glared at him.

  “So it’s Thursday,” Bubba said, as if expecting a certain response.

  Miz Demetrice said, “So it is.”

  “I like Thursdays,” Miz Adelia remarked as she retrieved a feather duster from the butler’s pantry nearby.

  “Thursdays are good, I guess,” Janie said right after she swallowed a gooey lump of egg, cheese, and diced ham. “This omelet is good.”

  Thursday meant Brownie had only four days to solve the case. Three if he didn’t count Thursday. If he messed around, he’d be gone back to Monroe before he could spit twice and say, “Ain’t no atheists in foxholes,” as his Papa Derryberry liked to proclaim. Brownie had to get out in the field and cadge the crime scene for clues. He had to shake down potential evildoers. He needed to get things done.

  When Janie had inhaled the omelet, she nudged his arm. “Come on,” she muttered.

  Miz Demetrice made them help clean up, but Brownie didn’t really mind. After that, he and the dame am-scrayed for the office. He only paused to snag the fedora from the counter on the way out.

  “Did you get some new lowdown?” he asked, adjusting the fedora on his head. He eyed Janie. She was wearing a new t-shirt with the words “If you run, you’ll only go to jail tired.”

  Brownie glanced at his plain blue t-shirt and worn Levi’s. The suit hadn’t been washed again because Miz Adelia had been busy with other things. Dang. I need some t-shirts with clever things on them. Like “If wishes were fishes, we’d all have a fry.” Naw. That ain’t good. Like a t-shirt covered with fake bullet holes. Yeah. Blood coming from the holes, too. Mebe some brain splatter, too.

  “There’s something going down tonight,” Janie whispered. She glanced over her shoulder. “Miz Demetrice and Miz Adelia are so nervous they’re shaking like a man on a fifty-cent ladder. Auntie Wills hinted about it. I heard her talking on the cell on the porch. She wants me to stay here tonight and stay here proper. As a matter of fact, she rented two movies for us to watch, and she bought the fixings for hot fudge sundaes. Bubba is supposed to stay home with us and keep us all tucked in.”

  Brownie’s forehead twisted into a grimace. “What did they rent? Wall•E and The Smurfs?” He was disgusted. How was a sleuth supposed to solve a mystery with all this interference?

  “I drew the line at
Cinderella,” Janie said. “I wanted to get Police Academy 1 & 2, but Auntie Wills looked like she might puke so we went with The Adventures of Tintin and Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

  “We need to make a clean sneak from this icehouse,” Brownie murmured, although Creature from the Black Lagoon sounded decent. Any title with the words “creature” and “black lagoon” in it had to be something good to watch.

  “Back to the Moose Lodge,” Janie agreed.

  “You got it, sweetheart,” Brownie said.

  “How are we going to ditch Bubba?” Janie asked.

  Two minutes later both children peeped around the corner of the door to the living room. Bubba was back on the couch. Miz Demetrice leaned over him and said, “You’re sure about this?”

  “Shore,” he agreed. “What kind of trouble could they be?”

  “Plague, pestilence, apocalypse,” Miz Demetrice named easily. “The boy seems to attract it. The girl is right behind him.”

  “Not right behind you,” Janie disagreed in a low voice from right behind Brownie. Miz Demetrice, and Bubba did not hear her.

  “I’ll make certain they stay on the estate,” Bubba said. “We’ll go fishing or something. Chase down treasure hunters or such. Say, Ma, have you seen my dog?”

  “Precious was in the kitchen this morning,” Miz Demetrice said thoughtfully. “I let her out a little while later. You’re going to have to put that hound on a diet.”

  “She’s been acting out of sorts lately,” Bubba noted.

  “She fits right in this family, then, doesn’t she?”

  “That’s true.”

  Brownie tugged Janie away from the door. “We need some supplies for our attack, cupcake,” he said.

  “Do we get to blow something up?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The law is more lenient on juveniles than on adults,” Janie stated. “So if I break the law now, it’ll be covered by my minor status later. In other words, let’s go do something illegal.”

  “We’re goin’ to catch the dastardly perpetrator of the missing items,” Brownie said. Normally, he’d be overjoyed at Janie’s sudden desire to commit felonious activities, but he had other things on his mind. “Miz Adelia needs her spatula back. Heck, Mrs. McGee said those were her very favorite boulder holders. Lissa was crying about the p-p-penguin.” He paused. “I don’t think Kiki cared one way or the other about the cherry tree.”

  “We can catch the perpetrator and do something illegal at the same time?” Janie said hopefully.

  “Have you ever ripped the ‘Do Not Remove’ tag off a mattress?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll start with that.”

  * * *

  The two children spent most of the day avoiding Bubba, which wasn’t hard. Bubba was still moving at half-speed. He didn’t really want to go fishing, and he wasn’t interested in pursuing trespassers on the Snoddy Estate. He did perk up when Willodean Gray called but slumped back on the couch.

  “Janie,” Bubba said at suppertime, “does your auntie like me?”

  Brownie imitated a fake gagging reflex. That isn’t like regular cooties. That’s ATOMIC cooties!

  “Boy, I’m goin’ to snatch you bald,” Bubba warned Brownie.

  “She goes out with you, right?” Janie said innocently.

  Miz Demetrice and Miz Adelia had mysteriously vanished just before supper. In corroboration with their absence, there was an uncanny silence as the telephone stopped ringing.

  “I mean, ifin a fella has a few…issues, Willodean wouldn’t hold that against him, would she?” Bubba asked.

  “If a fella had a first degree felony conviction, Auntie Wills wouldn’t be happy with it,” Janie offered. Bubba appeared confused. Janie added, “Murder, kidnapping, assault with a weapon, and the like.”

  That made Bubba think hard. Brownie seemed to recall that his cousin had a run-in with an Army officer once upon a time that might have been considered felonious.

  “What about lesser felonies?”

  “I think Auntie Wills knows all about your past, Bubba,” Janie said. “I think if she had a problem with it, she wouldn’t go out with you at all.” She thought about it. “She also might shoot you. Heck, she smashed you over your head and still kissed you, didn’t she?” The expression on her face denoted her sincerity and certainly the sincerity of her aunt.

  “How about ifin things just…keep happening to me?” Bubba waved his hand in the air like it was a magic wand. “Stuff. You know.”

  “Did you make the bomb and cause that bomb to explode yesterday, Bubba?” Janie asked in the frank manner of a detective. Brownie was impressed despite himself. Time and time again Janie had proven her worth as an investigator and detective. She might be a girl, but she was a smoking-cool girl.

  “Of course not,” Bubba said. “I’d have to be nuttier than squirrel’s poopoo to do something stupid like that.”

  “Auntie Wills knows that.”

  Bubba shifted on the chair in the kitchen. He grunted.

  “You okay, Bubba?” Brownie asked. “You seem like someone stole your candy.”

  “I got bruises on my bruises, boy.” Bubba moved gingerly. “I dint realize that ifin something blows up right near you, you go soaring through the air, and I ain’t had access to a flying trapeze.”

  “Dint the doctor give you some pain medication?” Brownie asked, and he tried like heck to imitate Janie’s innate air of innocence.

  Bubba eyed him doubtfully. “It’s on the counter. Bring me the bottle and a glass of water, would ya?”

  “Shore,” Brownie smiled and went to do just that.

  They watched as Bubba downed the water and the pills. Then they moved into the living room and put Creature from the Black Lagoon into the DVD player and watched as the girl in the white bathing suit swam across the surface of the Black Lagoon, and the creature followed her like a puppy dog.

  “You’d think she’d look down,” Brownie said. There wasn’t any blood and guts in the movie. In fact, the movie was in black and white. The beginning had a shot of a ripped-up tent with a suggestion of blood and guts, but they just kept showing the reaching clawed hand and playing DAH-DAH-DAH music until the swimming scene. Then there was a lot more DAH-DAH-DAH music. Brownie didn’t think it was all that DAH-DAH-DAH!

  “She’s swimming in a black lagoon,” Janie said. “It’s blackity black black. She can’t see down.”

  “I could see down. Also I’d have a machine gun with me in the lagoon. A fella’s got to be prepared. That’s what Scout Leader Marlon Tarterhouse always says. Plus, a flamethrower wouldn’t work underwater. ”

  “A machine gun wouldn’t fire in water,” Janie said with supreme knowledge.

  Brownie tossed her a glance. Dang, she probably would know, too.

  “The creature likes her,” Janie said wistfully. “It probably just needs a big huggie.”

  Brownie crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m goin’ to toss up a sidewalk pizza, and Auntie D. is goin’ to kill me. Bubba, don’t you think— ”

  There was a resounding snore for an answer.

  Both Janie and Brownie turned their heads in perfect concert to look at Bubba. His head had fallen onto the back of the couch. His mouth was open, and his hands rested palm up at his sides. He didn’t look very comfortable.

  “He ain’t dead, right?” Brownie asked.

  “He wouldn’t be snoring if he was dead,” Janie scoffed.

  Brownie shrugged. “Just don’t seem right around here ifin someone ain’t dead.”

  Janie shrugged. Brownie knew she couldn’t argue with that.

  “Bubba?” Brownie said. “It’s a pure-D shame I ain’t got access to my Sharpies.”

  Bubba snored again.

  Brownie moved a little closer and said in Bubba’s ear, “Bubba?”

  Janie moved in on the other side of the couch. She said into the opposite ear, “Bubba, you’ve got a booger.”

  “Big one,” Brownie added. “
Green with black speckles. It’s hanging down from your nose like a plumb-bob. Pretty disgusting. It’s a booger chandelier.”

  Bubba didn’t move.

  “There’s one of those creepy-crawlie bugs wiggling over your cheek, Bubba,” Janie said. “You know, the kind that burrows under.”

  Brownie said, “Lays its eggs under the skin, too.”

  Bubba didn’t move. In fact, he snored again. His lips fluttered as the air passed through.

  “Is he fooling us?” Janie asked.

  “I think that medicine was heavy-duty,” Brownie said. “Plus he took four when he only should have taken two.”

  “Why the heck did he do that?”

  “Prolly cause he thinks since he’s a big fella he needs twice as much.” Brownie pointed. “Daddy does that, too. Had to take him to the ‘mergency room last year on account that he mixed aspirin, Tylenol, and Midol. Ma was fairly mad. She said it made her tushie want to chop stove wood. Look at the way he’s sitting. He must have landed on his tuckus after the explosion happened.”

  Janie nodded. She observed Bubba carefully as if she was detecting him. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. Suddenly she yelled into his ear, “BUBBA!”

  Bubba snorted suddenly and turned his head away. He muttered, “Purt shore that’s a blue camel pole-jumping a herd of purple hyenas.” His eyes didn’t open, and his head lolled back onto his shoulder.

  Brownie nodded appreciatively. He glanced at the movie. “We’re just goin’ to check out the Moose Lodge for our perpetrator, Bubba, while you watch the rest of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Don’t say nothin’ ifin that’s okay with you, Bubba.”

  Bubba didn’t say nothin’.

  Brownie stood up. “And there we go.”

  * * *

  They made it to the Moose Lodge just in time to see a group of older women disappearing inside. Although the parking lot was still empty, there was activity from inside the building. They could hear the muffled boom of a stereo system and occasional incessant laughter.

  Brownie and Janie parked their bicycles on the far side of the lot. The sun was starting to go down, and Brownie wondered if they had missed the perpetrator’s criminal activity. Those dang grown-ups and all of their stupid rules.