by C. L. Bevill
“Ain’t goin’ to snow now,” Bubba said.
“Something’s going on,” Granny announced, eying Bubba and Bam Bam in turn. “Are we getting paid or what?”
Bam Bam shrugged in a very uncomfortable and awkward-looking gesture.
“You got this?” Bubba asked.
Bam Bam shrugged again. If anything, it was more uncomfortable and awkward than the previous time.
Bubba left the group talking about bodies and what Bam Bam had to hide. Precious’s toenails clicked on the floor behind, and it took Bubba a moment to realize that something else was clicking. He looked back to see David following him, his high heels making a similar noise to the canine’s nails.
“Where are you going, David? I mean, Snuggles?”
“Going with you, Bubba,” David said firmly. “You need a wing woman. People underestimate me until it’s too late. Remember the mind powers I had when I was the Purple Singapore Sling?”
Bubba remembered that. “What did you do with all those purple clothes?”
“Boxed ‘em up. Never know when the PSS might turn up again.”
“Okay, you kin come but no fluttering your eyelashes at Ralph Cedarbloom, and if anyone asks, you’re still David Beathard, or you’re goin’ to get me in big time trouble with Willodean.”
David ran his hands down the sides of the leather bustier. “I could see how she might be intimidated by me. She’d be in big trouble if she saw the fan dance.”
It was more like Bubba would be in big trouble.
Bubba closed his eyes for a moment and bit the side of his cheek. He was getting hungry again, and his head was beginning to pound from all the thinking he was doing. All in all, what had started out as a very nice day was turning into a corker.
“Do you have any aspirin, Snuggles?”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Bubba sat on the front porch with Miz Adelia Cedarbloom as she stared at David playing with Precious on the Cedarbloom’s front lawn. David had extracted the well masticated tennis ball from the glove box, and Precious has perked right up, knowing that some humans, crazy or not, were properly worshipping of the doggish goddess. It made for an interesting sight because Precious didn’t always return the tennis ball, and sometimes she didn’t want to give the ball up to the man dressed in a leather skirt and bustier with little strappy booties on his size-ten feet. David’s feet threatened to twist out from underneath him as he yanked on the ball, and Precious bit down harder to keep her most prized possession.
“I don’t think I would have recognized him,” Miz Adelia said. Bubba had accidentally said David three times in the course of the initial conversation with the old family friend.
“I think he’s lost weight,” Bubba said.
“No,” Miz Adelia said. “It’s just the bustier. It compresses the waist. Are those diamonds on his eyelashes?”
“Rhinestones,” Bubba said. “Where’s Ralph?”
Miz Adelia glanced at Bubba, and Bubba tried to compose his face into a mask of neutrality. She was a woman in her forties with dark hair and dark eyes, and she never seemed to lose her composure. She was a perfect foil for Miz Demetrice. Oftentimes they worked together in a way that suggested they had known each other all their lives and in the lives they’d had before these ones. “What are you up to, Bubba?”
“Oh, circumstances beyond my control,” Bubba said. “I was supposed to be making a crib right now. I think I could have gotten a couple hours of work in on it. Kin you see that wood in the back of the Chevy?”
Miz Adelia acknowledged that she could see the wood in the back of the Chevy.
“I bought that from Farmer Nillan. He’s got a barn full of reclaimed wood,” Bubba explained. “Also some vehicles and such, but I wasn’t really interested in that three-wheeled thing he’s got.”
Miz Adelia nodded and looked back at Bubba. They didn’t say anything for a long time and then Bubba’s stomach groaned. “I don’t reckon there’s any of that Spam casserole left, Miz Adelia,” he said.
“Oh no. The grandchildren hoovered it. It was gone in—” she looked at her watch— “twenty-three minutes. I almost didn’t get a piece. I think there’s some watermelon surprise that Mary Jean Holmgreen brought over the day before yesterday. I don’t think I ever saw watermelon, gelatin, and Cheetos in that combination before, which is why there is some of that left.”
“That woman shore likes her Cheetos,” Bubba said, and his stomach said a few nasty words in response to eating anything that was a combination of watermelon, gelatin, and Cheetos. “Also her cheap wine. And I seem to recall that she put ice cream in that, too.”
“Good times,” Miz Adelia said.
“Sorry about your mother,” Bubba said.
“I know, dearest Bubba,” Miz Adelia said. “The Lord giveth and the Lord take away, and it’s not ours to understand why.”
“Seems like the Lord is doing a lot of taking away of late.”
“Amen.”
“Ma was at Bazooka Bob’s trying to unionize the strip, er, exotic dancers,” Bubba commented. Maybe if his stomach growled again it would realize that nothing was doing and it would stop.
Miz Adelia chuckled despite herself. Then she stopped chuckling. “Is that where you acquired David Beathard AKA Snuggles?”
“Snuggles Palomino,” Bubba completed. “He does a fan dance.”
Miz Adelia gestured in a fan dance sort of way around her body. “Really. They hired one of those people from Dogley to do that. Obviously, I need to go there and watch that show.”
“It’s that fella from Dallas who he’ped me when Willodean went missing. But then David he’ped, too. So did a lot of people.” Bubba frowned and scratched his head.
“Bam Bam Jones, right?”
“Right.”
“And you want to talk to Ralph because…?”
“Oh, this, that, and the other,” Bubba said carefully. “It ain’t that I don’t want to tell you, Miz Adelia. It’s that you have so much on your plate already.”
Miz Adelia nodded. Her mother was dying. Her mother had been dying for a long time. It was entirely probable that her mother would continue to be dying for years. It didn’t mean, however, that anyone had to like it, and well, no one really did. “Reckon Ralph went down to the lake. You heard tell about his latest patch?”
“Houseboat with a greenhouse,” Bubba verified. He hadn’t really believed it until Miz Adelia had confirmed it.
Miz Adelia shrugged. “Seems like it’s bound to take on water, but no one asks me about such things. In any case, he brought an ounce by earlier when you were here, so Ma is happy. She’s got a very large hookah she uses for the pot. She also likes the brownies with the special ingredients. Did you know your mother makes tea with—”
“Okay,” Bubba interrupted because there wasn’t a better response for that, and he didn’t want to know about his mother’s special tea. “I best be off. Like to get home before dark today. Still have things to do.”
Miz Adelia presented one of her cheeks for him to kiss and he got up and did just that before he collected his crossdressing friend and his noncrossdressing hound and drove toward the lake.
Chapter 13
Bubba and Something a Mite New
Tuesday, August 22nd
Lake Plooey wasn’t a natural lake because Texas had a dearth of natural lakes. (Depending on who you were talking to, the answer of how many actual natural lakes there were in Texas might be as few as one – Caddo Lake in Northeast Texas – or include a few others that were little more than ponds caused by exuberant beavers making big dams.) Plooey was once a river’s bend, and when the Sabine River had changed course an unknown amount of years before, it had formed what was called an oxbow lake. The original river meandered off and left the U shape where it was, and there it still remained. The third mayor of Pegramville, Ernest J. Plooey, made it into a reserve, so that he could fish on it whenever he so desired, and eventually Lake Plooey had become a state park.
At one point in time the Army Corps of Engineers had fiddled with it as well as dredged it, and the lake had been deliberately increased in size and depth. Finally, someone else had stocked it with an assortment of bass and trout, and all the fishermen were happy. Bubba himself had spent a number of hours fishing at Plooey.
There was a marina at one end, complete with a boat launch and a pavilion with a very nice picnic area. Bubba could even recollect seeing a few weddings there. (He was very certain that not one of those weddings had included a dead body.) The trees that surrounded the park were all old-growth hardwoods and the squirrels were plentiful. If one got there early enough, deer could be seen getting their ration of water from the lake itself.
All in all, it was one of Pegram County’s prettiest places to spend a few hours. And now Ralph Cedarbloom had made it his personal floating pot patch. Somewhere the goddess of irony was laughing her tushie off.
Bubba parked in the lot next to a Ford F-150 truck that was painted generously with streaks of green, black, and brown. The fully loaded gun rack in the rear window confirmed the owner’s interest in dear stalking, as did the sticker on the bumper that read “I’d rather be HUNTING!”
David Beathard and Precious tumbled out of the passenger’s side of Ol’ Green, and David paused to glare at the antique truck as if it had personally caused him to totter and reel on his high heels. Bubba would have asked about the recent transition to Snuggles Palomino, but he didn’t know how to broach that subject any more than he had when David had been a pirate or even when he’d been Sherlock Holmes. (“So, David, what’s that like, having falsies?” or “Um, David, exotic fan-dancing woman, what’s up with that?” both seemed trite and falsely empathetic. No, it was better to just be quiet, accept that David was Snuggles for the moment, and go with it. Too bad that didn’t work with the whole murder issue.)
Precious trotted off for the nearest tree so that she could sniff it properly and leave her distinctive urinary remnant for other canines to snuffle. However, there were a lot of trees, so she was visibly dismayed. At first, of course. Then she went to work. There was nothing like a good challenge to stir up her dander.
Bubba eyed the marina, which was visible through a thicket of tall pines, and said, “There’s a few houseboats there.” He strode in that direction and then had to slow down because David simply couldn’t walk that fast in his high-heeled booties.
“So you found another body,” David stated.
“After Bam Bam found it,” Bubba snapped.
“How many is that, anyway?”
“Lost count.”
“We should start carving lines in a tree for each time,” David suggested. “Then you wouldn’t lose track.”
“We should not do that.”
“And does Willodean know?”
“She does not know.”
“You should tell her before she finds out another way.”
Bubba stopped on the dock and looked up at the skies. Somehow the day had slipped all the way away, and the sun had fallen beneath the horizon in the west. The very first star had appeared in the gradually darkening heavens. If he wanted to be precise, it was Venus and not a star at all. It was a big faker star. It looked like a star. It twinkled like a star. It practically yelled at one that it was a star. If stars made noise, it would have made noise like one. Nevertheless, it wasn’t a star. Liar.
In truth, Bubba didn’t care about stars or Venus for that matter, but he didn’t want to talk about whether Willodean should know what he was doing or what he wasn’t doing. He didn’t want to talk about whether he should have just told her when she’d stopped in at Bazooka Bob’s earlier. He didn’t want to second guess himself because he was terribly afraid that he should have told her when he’d had prime opportunity. Sure he knew all this now, just like a Monday morning quarterback.
And now Bubba was mentally kicking himself in the hindquarters because, instead of heading home to hearth and wife, he was at Lake Plooey looking for the local pothead and hanging out with a loony. (David was good company, but Bubba couldn’t help thinking about who was going to see Bubba with a tall strawberry-haired woman and put two and two together to get sixty-four and a half. Furthermore, if those persons who didn’t use a calculator got it into their head to tell someone else what they’d seen, it was only a matter of time before Willodean heard about it from some overanxious, blabbermouthed third party.)
“Let’s get this over with it,” Bubba grated.
David shrugged. “You should see my fan dance,” he said. “It’s pretty good. When I’m all done, I show the audience my goodies. It’s a lot of fun. They’re usually really surprised. I have fake boobies painted on my chest and there’s a battery-powered device that twirls and lights up. It goes on my—”
“DAVID!” Bubba interrupted before the other man could say more.
Bubba took a deep breath. He didn’t want to see David’s goodies. He didn’t want to know about David’s goodies. He didn’t want to know about what was painted on David’s chest, and he most certainly didn’t want to know about a battery-powered device that twirled and lit up. “That’s it, right?” he asked instead of responding to David’s statements. Bubba gestured at the oddest-looking houseboat tied to the long marina’s deck.
The houseboat in question was a smaller one and painted in a mishmash of colors ranging from day glo orange to neon green. (It could have competed with Bazooka Bob’s sign.) It looked to be made from aluminum and some other stuff that Bubba couldn’t identify. The main cabin was cordoned off with plywood and someone had spray-painted on the wood “Under construction!” The end closest to the dock even had a name in large black letters that could easily be read: In Decent Seas. It took Bubba a moment to get the pun.
David giggled. “In decent seas,” he said and then repeated it faster. “Bwahaha,” he added, catching himself. “Sorry, that was from when I was a super steampunk villain. Er, I mean from when I was a steampunk super villain. Whatever.”
“Bet you never got those cogs and wheels off of your phone,” Bubba said, looking for a gangplank. Ralph had thoughtfully not provided one. It was likely that he thought that if there wasn’t an obvious way onto his houseboat/floating pot patch, then government agents wouldn’t be inclined to discover his illegality. (The words that would be said at such an occurrence popped unwanted into Bubba’s mind. DEA Agent #1 would say, “Look, the illegal houseboat slash floating pot patch of which we have illicit information on from an informant who only wanted to be a Good Samaritan.” DEA Agent #2 would remark, “But there’s no gangplank. What will we do?” DEA Agent #1 would respond, “We will do the only thing that we can do.” DEA Agent #2 would ask, “What’s that, oh wise and wondrous fellow agent?” DEA Agent #1 would state emphatically, “We have no way to get on the boat, so we must go home and make s’mores.” DEA Agent #2 would say with finality, “Sounds good. Let’s roll.”)
Bubba jumped across the gap leaving David to glare at him and then at his high heels in turn. Precious whined piteously until Bubba muttered, “Just a minute.” He jumped back and helped his dog across. Then David made a kind of expectant noise, and Bubba held out a hand for the other man. Somewhere, somehow, someone was probably taking a photo or a video of him doing this very thing. Then he would be blackmailed.
David had to do a shimmying hop across the gap because his leather skirt was too tight to make the leap into the swinging door just off the transom. He hitched it up a couple inches and then yanked it down as soon as he was across the breach.
Once Bubba was certain that neither man nor dog was going in the drink, he called, “Ralph!” He heard a distinct thump and a thud beyond the plywood barrier as if someone was quickly trying to cover things up. Then there was a weak, “We don’t want any! I got my Avon last week! I don’t need no Tupperware, and I don’t read magazines unless you’re selling Hustler!”
“Ralph!” Bubba called. “It’s Bubba Snoddy. We needs to talk!”
“Bubba?” The plywo
od groaned as Ralph moved it to one side. Two brown eyes looked out and stared first at Bubba and then at David and then at Precious and then went back to David. “Hey, baby,” he said to David.
“Talk,” Bubba reminded, “before someone sees us here.”
Ralph pushed the plywood out, stepped around it, and then pushed it back in. “Come on top of the poop deck. I got chairs to sit upon. I also have binoculars in case of folks coming when they shouldn’t be coming.”
“You know the upper deck isn’t really called the poop deck, don’t you?” asked David.
“You can call it anything you like, sweetheart,” Ralph said as he leered at David. It occurred to Bubba that Ralph didn’t recognize David. Bubba was pretty certain that Ralph knew David or at least had met him previously, so it was a little funny, and Bubba wasn’t in a hurry to correct him. Ralph offered his arm to David, and David giggled under his manicured hand as he took it.
“I think it is called a poop deck,” Bubba muttered. “Like on a sailing ship. It’s a deck that forms the roof of a cabin in the rear of a ship.”
“This is a boat, Bubba,” David reminded him airily. “Remember I know all about ships.”
“How’s that?” Ralph asked.
“I used to be a pirate,” David informed him.
“Ooo,” Ralph cooed. “You can batten down my hatches any time you’d like.”
Bubba wanted to use swear words that he hadn’t even thought about in six months. All it took was a simple case of a murdered guy to bring out the worst in him.
In a few minutes they were all sitting in plastic chairs on the top level. Ralph popped open an Igloo and presented David with a bottle of beer. “This here is Anchor Steam beer. It was made in San Francisco. I know a fella who travels from San Francisco to New Orleans twice a year, and he always stops to buy some, er, stuff from me. Brought me four six packs of it. Also brought me some other stuff I ain’t never tried before, but I aim to have some a bit later just to see what happens.”