by C. L. Bevill
Bubba started to search in earnest. He went through the hospital from top to bottom. He went back to the cafeteria and appropriated the keys from Dr. Adair’s belt. Dr. Adair didn’t budge as the keys lightly jangled. He opened doors with the keys and then relocked them. He searched the entire southern wing. He stopped at the doors to the northern wing because they were blocked with warning tape as well as nailed shut with three 2x4s. He even tugged on the 2x4s to make sure they were well connected and they were.
By the time he made his way back to the cafeteria, the rest of the group was stirring in fits and starts.
Dr. Adair rubbed his eyes. “Where’d you go, Bubba?”
“Looking for Leeza and Thelda,” Bubba said. He tossed Dr. Adair’s keys to him. The doctor caught them with a confused expression on his face.
“They’re gone,” David said. He stood up and put on the Inverness coat. He finished his adjustments by tilting the deerstalker hat just so.
“Nice detecting, Sherlock,” Tandy said. Her fingers trembled as she shook out a Marlboro. “You know, this is my last pack of cigs, and when I go cold turkey, the world might end. The murderer should be afraid of me.”
“He could have done it,” Abel said, pointing at Bubba. “We were all asleep, and he dragged them out without us hearing. They’re probably in little pieces in a shallow grave behind the hospital.”
“That seems unlikely, silly bean,” Cybil said. “He doesn’t have a shovel.” She yawned sleepily. “Besides it’s not like we were doped up.”
Dr. Adair winced. Everyone looked at him.
Peyton examined his cup by holding it so that he could see the dregs inside. “Did you drug us, Doctor? What kind of doctor are you? What kind of lawsuit insurance do you have?”
“I’m a licensed psychiatrist,” Dr. Adair protested, “and everyone was getting hysterical. It was just a little medication to calm the nerves.”
“That’s what they said before they took them to the ovens at Auschwitz,” Abel accused. “I don’t know how I ever came to be at this place. My family talked me into it. I should have never listened to them. I could be perfectly depressed at home with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a little coke chaser.”
“Why were you asleep then, Doc?” Bubba asked.
“I had a little of the milk before,” he admitted. “I’m not sure why I fell asleep.”
“I have to go to the little grade-b movie actress’s room,” Tandy announced. “Any nonmurdering individual wish to accompany me?”
“I could pee,” Cybil said.
“Me, too,” said Ratchley. “Three’s a good number.”
Bubba watched the three lumber out the cafeteria door. “More coffee? Without special additives?”
“I’ll help you make it,” Peyton said.
David said, “I’ll just be a third disinterested party.”
Bubba managed to make the coffee without the kitchen or any part thereof being blown up. He brought the pot out into the cafeteria and people helped themselves. By that time the three women returned.
“You say you were looking for Thelda and Leeza,” the doctor said.
“I dint find them,” Bubba said. “They ain’t anywhere that I looked, and I looked into everything I could including the bathrooms.”
“They weren’t in the closest bathroom,” Tandy said as if Bubba hadn’t just said that.
Dr. Adair paced the floors anxiously. Bubba could practically read his mind. The man was wondering about the legal ramifications of not only having a patient murdered, but losing two more. It wasn’t going to look good on his resume.
“Maybe they went for help,” Abel said. He shook his head. “I should have never come here. I mean, it’s not like my family really cares or anything. They just didn’t want the bad publicity. Wait until the publicity gets out about this.”
Dr. Adair moaned.
Bubba took David aside. Peyton followed, and they crowded into a corner with a ficus plant. Precious tried to nose her way into the group and succeeded by nipping one of David’s ankles.
“David, er-Sherlock, we have to know what all these people have in common,” Bubba said. “Mrs. Ferryjig, Hurley Tanner, and Blake whatshisknickers.”
“Blake Landry,” David said. “They were all associated with the hospital. They were all in the mental health system. Mrs. F. and Hurley were both independently wealthy, but I don’t think Blake was. The man drives an old Pinto, for goodness sakes.”
“Could the Blake guy be collateral damage?” Peyton asked. “Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“It’s possible he knew something that someone else didn’t want him to blab about,” David suggested.
“Why trap us all here?” Bubba asked.
“Easy pickings,” David said. “One place. Nowhere to go. Most of us can’t hike out in the dark.”
“The killer wants to kill someone here and now, ifin he or she ain’t done it already,” Bubba said, thinking of Thelda and Leeza. “Thelda ain’t independently wealthy, is she?”
David nodded. “Dogley is an expensive place. Her children just wanted her to be safe and have the help she needs. Plus no one really enjoys the Shakespearean insults that much.”
“I enjoy them,” Peyton said. “You can say, ‘Yo dickhead,’ or ‘You odiferious fen-sucked strumpet.’ I rather liked that it wasn’t a typical insult.” He looked at Bubba and David staring at him. “What? I talked to Thelda earlier. Kind of.”
“What about Leeza?” Bubba asked.
“Bubble gum money,” David said. “Seriously her family makes bubble gum. It’s the kind that has something crunchy in the middle. She said she has a swimming pool in the shape of a wrapped piece of bubble gum. She showed me a photograph. They’re very proud of their bubble gum-shaped pool.”
“So everyone dead or missing at Dogley, with the exception of Blake, is wealthy,” Bubba mused. “What about diagnoses?”
“All different,” David said. “They didn’t always go to the same group therapies. They didn’t have the same doctors. Some of them overlap. They didn’t have the same nurses. I looked into all of this when I first investigated Mrs. Ferryjig and Hurley.”
Bubba frowned. “Dint you say something about bein’ the last one with them two?”
“I played cards with Mrs. F. and dominoes with Hurley.” David’s face became pinched. “I had a word with Blake earlier. He wanted to ask how I was feeling, so we chatted for a few minutes. I had the impression he wasn’t impressed with the illustriousness that is the greatest detective of our times.” The British accent abruptly returned. “Pip pip,” he added for what Bubba assumed was authenticity’s sake. Bubba didn’t think a Brit would necessarily agree with the authentic part, but as he wasn’t British, he couldn’t really say for sure.
“Did you have anything to do with Leeza and Thelda?” Peyton asked.
“We sat together after Bubba fell asleep,” David admitted. “It’s not the best thing I could admit. I didn’t do it. You believe me, don’t you, Watson?”
“Of course, the greatest detective of our times couldn’t be reduced to base murder,” Peyton said before Bubba could say anything. Then he glanced meaningfully at Dr. Adair and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “but I’ve never trusted shrinks.”
“Thelda and I have been friends for the entirety of my stay at Dogley,” David said, “and I could never hurt a hair on her English Renaissance-abusive head.”
Bubba didn’t think David could hurt a fly, but evidence was mounting up and in a way that pointed at the formerly piratious superhero psychiatrist. “Did you play games with Leeza or Thelda?”
“Not tonight, but of course. Leeza preferred canasta, and Thelda was always good for Yahtzee. Oh, the insults she could toss out when she didn’t get five dies of a kind.”
“And Blake?”
“Gin rummy,” David answered woodenly.
“Anyone else here?”
David nodded.
“Who?”
<
br /> “Jesus, Abel, Ratchley, Cybil, Tandy, and sometimes Dr. Adair and I would play Cribbage while we worked on mental health issues.”
“Mebe I should have asked who you don’t play games with,” Bubba said.
“You and Peyton here.” David brightened. “But I’m always open for something new. I have a deck of cards, you know.”
“Forgive me, Sherlock,” Peyton said, “if I decide to pass on a rousing game of snooker with you.”
“We don’t have a snooker table,” David said.
Bubba cogitated. “David, I think you might have been right.”
“About what?”
“Someone’s trying to set you up,” Bubba said. “It don’t look good neither.”
“What’s that mean?” Peyton asked.
“It means ifin we don’t figure this out, then David’s goin’ to be as sorry as a mud-covered fella who stole a widow woman’s dog in a tornado.”
Chapter 12
Bubba and a Mounting Conundrum
Sunday, April 7th
“I reckon we need to hunt them two down,” Bubba said and offered one of Thelda’s sweaters to Precious. He’d retrieved it from Thelda’s room. She had quite a collection. Bubba stopped counting after twenty-three, and not one was the same color.
Precious sniffed delicately and then tossed her head about.
“Find Thelda, girl,” Bubba said to Precious. “Hunt. There’s a Milk-Bone in it for you.”
Precious sniffed again and then began to shift her head around. She positioned it about six inches off the floor and began to shift it back and forth, systematically skimming the area for a scent. After a moment she stiffened and bayed.
“Hunt,” Bubba repeated. There was a reason that as a pup Precious had been given to him and that was because Precious was one of the worst hunting hounds on record, but she had previously found Willodean for him, so he was hopeful. Furthermore, Thelda hadn’t been known to be cruel to the animal. In fact, Thelda made a point of scratching behind Precious’s ears when she thought no one was watching her.
Precious threw her head back and bayed again. The sound was loud and echoed in the room. Dr. Adair stepped back with an alarmed expression. The canine brought her head down and charged out the cafeteria doors with Bubba, David, Peyton, and Cybil in close pursuit. She went down a hallway, passed the bathroom with a distinctly unladylike snort, and trotted down another hallway, ending up at…
“This is Thelda’s room,” David said. Bubba knew that. He’d been there twice already, and although he knew that the woman wasn’t there, he looked inside to see if she had returned in the meantime. Nothing was inside the room except an inordinate amount of sweaters and a complete collection of Shakespeare’s unabridged works.
Bubba said, “Hunt, girl.” Off Precious went again. She returned down the hallway, turned left, and hurtled down another hall. The lights were few and far between in the hallway, but Bubba could see this was an area where most of the rooms were offices of some sort or another. The dog stopped at a door that said “Library” on the outside. She pawed the door and looked at Bubba expectantly. He looked. Thelda was not inside with the racks of books and magazines.
Bubba tried again. “Hunt, girl.”
Precious sniffed and snorted again. She tossed her head back and forth, and she trotted down a hallway at the fastest speed a canine of her distinct proportions could go. Finally, they ended up at the cafeteria again with Dr. Adair saying, “Did you find anything?”
Bubba sighed. “Good girl,” he said to Precious. He passed her a Milk-Bone, and she inhaled it with the alacrity of a vacuum cleaner. He knelt by her while she chewed the part she hadn’t already swallowed and stroked her back. “Ain’t goin’ to help,” he said to the people watching them. “Thelda lives here. Her scent is everywhere. Mebe ifin she was outside, but not in here. Precious will just track wherever the scent is strongest. Go in circles all night long ifin we keep doing this.”
“Her room, the cafeteria, and perhaps the library,” David said. “I should have deduced it earlier. Those are Thelda’s favorite places. Likely the hound would lead us to the dayroom, as well.”
“And Leeza has been all over the place, too,” Cybil said. She shook her head.
Bubba gave Precious a last scratch and stood up. He looked over the people in the room. Eight people. Eight suspects. One murder. Two possible murders. Two missing women. It was making out for a long night.
“I need some more coffee,” he said abruptly and went into the kitchen to brew some more. It might not taste great, but it would have caffeine in it, and it would help him keep awake until someone came through the front door in a law enforcement capacity. Peyton followed him and wrung his hands nervously. Bubba couldn’t help but notice that the wedding planner’s makeup had recently been reapplied with little extra curlicues on the ends of the wings above his eyes.
“What do you think of all of this, Peyton?” Bubba asked as he measured coffee.
“I think Texas is a lot more thought-provoking than I had hitherto given it credit,” Peyton said with a little laugh. “All these rich people in a rural Texan asylum. I wouldn’t have thought Pegram County such a hot spot. Bubble gum money. A Hollywood actress. That Abel fellow is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, did you know?”
“I did not know,” Bubba said. “How did you know?”
Peyton rolled his eyes. “I am a wedding planner, dear ignorant redneck,” he said imperiously. “I work in the city. New York City. We do weddings for all the best, i.e., richest families. One simply has to know who has the right amount of money to pay for the most extravagant affairs. The daughter of the president of Ultracon, Inc. had a wedding that cost three point five million dollars. I didn’t really approve of the peacocks in the wedding party. Those birds look far more attractive than they act in real life, let me tell you. And if you think Canadian Geese poop a lot, then you haven’t been around a peacock.”
“I reckon I ain’t.” Bubba gave up on measuring the coffee and just tossed all of it in. The stronger the coffee, the better off he would be. If he had to spoon it into his mouth, then that was just a cost of doing business in a mental institute with a murderer about. “Wait, I think Ma once said she sicced peacocks on my father. She said they were just like piranhas.” He shuddered briefly.
“They say Abel is in a big fight for power with his brother,” Peyton said. “Neither one has daughters of a marriageable age, so I didn’t really pay too much attention. They have sons, but both are married already and not likely to divorce. Usually we try to cozy up to the parents of the daughters, since the tradition is for them to pay for the wedding. Traditions, of course, vary, but you do never know where business is coming from.”
“Sounds like an iffy business,” Bubba remarked. He found a carafe and filled it with water from the sink. Then he wondered if he should use filtered water from the oversized refrigerator. He shook his head. It didn’t really matter.
“On the contrary,” Peyton said, “it’s a great business. I get to know all the people. I get the satisfaction of accomplishing a wonderful yet exhausting deed. Sometimes I take the hectic right out of the wedding for the participants. Your Willodean, for example, couldn’t be happier that she’s not doing all of the legwork.”
“Me neither,” Bubba said, “but you done got all these questions. Do I want grayity grey gray, do I want three types of almonds on dry white toast?”
Peyton’s hand fluttered in front of his chest. “I just want you to have the best wedding possible.” His voice almost broke, and Bubba glanced at him in alarm.
“You dint reckon on getting all wrapped up in this,” Bubba said, referring to the hospital and all of the recent idiosyncrasies.
“No, I did not,” Peyton said. “I figure if I stick close to you, I will not only survive, but will have a great story to tell Ginger. Publicity would be good. I can see the headlines. ‘Wedding Planner Plans a Fabulous Wedding and Unmasks a Murderer, Too.’” His face wrinkled. �
�There’s got to be an upside to this.”
Bubba poured the water in the right spot, figured out how to turn the coffee machine on, and pushed the button. He almost smiled when the machine began to percolate without blowing up or something equally insidious. Then he turned back to Peyton. “You know about Abel. What do you know about some of the rest?”
Peyton shrugged. “The rich ones I can discuss. It’s all about who can afford the best weddings in my business. Leeza is into the bubble gum business. Really they’ve branched out in candy, too. You know about Tandy, right? Her net worth is about twenty million. She made a bundle on Bubble People. She took a cut of the profits instead of a salary, and it paid off. Of course, The Deadly Dead did pretty well, too. Oh, my God, you’re the redneck zombie in there, aren’t you? That’s just so kitschy!” Peyton paused to smile, then went on blithely, “I don’t know if she took a cut on that one. She doesn’t really seem the type to get married, so I didn’t really pay attention to her bottom line after that. Thelda, the one with the sweaters, comes from family money. They like to make sure she’s all taken care of. Jesus is a mystery. I mean, I don’t even know his real name.” Peyton paused, clearly to think about it. “Your David the Sherlockian is a member of old money, thus his tenure in these vaulted halls of mental inscrutability.”
Bubba happened to know that David used to be a mailman, but maybe it made sense that he came from money, the same money that paid for his continued residence at the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being. It wasn’t likely that Dogley had a scholarship program.
“You know anything about Dr. Adair or Nurse Ratchley?”
“Nothing springs to mind, but then my mind tends to focus on wedding-related issues.” Peyton looked at the coffee machine. One of his fingers delicately touched the side of his nose. “Is it supposed to smoke like that?”
Bubba said a bad word and went to get the fire extinguisher.
* * *
David paced back and forth in front of the cafeteria windows. He nervously puffed on the empty calabash pipe. His deerstalker cap listed badly to one side. The Inverness coat was critically rumpled. The black circles under his eyes gave notice that he was tired.