by C. L. Bevill
Edwina said to Doris, “And you’re…?”
“My name is Scarlet Looseknickers,” Doris said and tittered. Several other people tittered, too.
Stella Lackey laughed and lost her dentures again. Her son snatched them off the ground before Stella could grab them and said, “You cain’t put those back in your mouth, Ma, no matter how many seconds they were on the ground.”
Stella huffed and gummed her lips in a derogatory fashion.
Edwina conferred with H.H. They wrote a few notes and H.H. said, “We have to go to the Belly-Up Saloon.” The crowd cheered, and in approximately two minutes, they were all gone, leaving Bubba with Lloyd Goshorn’s body and Ol’ Green. Traffic had cleared as the crowd moved down Main Street.
“I didn’t know we had a Belly-Up Saloon,” Bubba muttered and glanced warily at Lloyd. “Sorry, Lloyd,” he mumbled. “Or Bob. Whatever.”
“‘Salright, Bubba,” Lloyd said.
Bubba’s head slowly turned toward Lloyd. Lloyd brought his smoldering cigarette up and took a long hit. With his free hand, he deftly pulled out the knife handle, revealing that it didn’t have a blade on the end of it. Liquid that looked suspiciously like ketchup dripped away.
“Christ Almighty!” Bubba bellowed and leapt to his feet again.
•
“The Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival?” Bubba repeated doubtfully. “How did I miss that?”
Doris Cambliss passed Bubba a cup of tea. She’d stopped to see if Bubba needed a ride back to the Snoddy Mansion on account of Ol’ Persnickety Green. He had. She took him to the Red Door Inn to check on some of her guests. Bubba had used her phone to call Miz Demetrice and also to arrange for Culpepper’s Garage to tow his truck to the Snoddy Estate where Bubba could perform an autopsy.
They had taken a brief respite in the largest living room of the Red Door Inn, and Doris had gotten a tray of tea and cookies.
“Your mama said you’ve been a might busy,” Doris said. “Cream or sugar?”
“Both,” Bubba said. “I need a little sugar high, I reckon. I thought the poor ol’ boy was really dead. I couldn’t think of who would stick a knife that large into Lloyd Goshorn.”
“It was the one-eyed little person’s sister who did it,” Doris said as she added condiments into the petite cup. “You know, a dwarf is now called a little person. It’s politically correct.”
“Okay,” Bubba said uncertainly. “I’ll try to file that away for future reference.”
“His sister was upset that Lloyd, er, Bob got her pregnant and then went back to his mistress, Charlotte Roundheels.”
Bubba took the tea cup and tried not to crush it in his oversized hands. He couldn’t think of anyone in the Pegramville area with the family name of Roundheels. “I’m a mite confused.”
“There’s about thirty of the townspeople who play roles in the murder mystery festival,” Doris explained patiently. “Martha Lyles, the elementary school teacher, gets to play Charlotte Roundheels.” She smiled. “I get murdered tomorrow. Wait until you see how I get it. It’s very bloody and dramatic.”
Bubba frowned. “Whose idea was all this murder mystery stuff?”
Doris bit her lip. “Well, there was so much publicity on account of the first round of murders, you know. Your ex-fiancée and all. Civil War gold. Ghosts in the night rattling chains. That did make the papers as far away as New York City.”
Bubba knew.
“And the Christmas Killer put Pegramville on the map,” Doris said. “Not that Pegramville wasn’t on the map before, but people actually have heard of it. The inn started getting reservations from all over the country and some out of the country. I’ve got three French ladies staying in the west wing. They love Agatha Christie, and they’re desperate to get a murder for themselves.”
Bubba took a drink of tea and grimaced. “Folks want to get a murder,” he said slowly.
“They want to be detectives,” Doris explained. “The festival will have about five to ten murders every day this week, with more on Friday and Saturday. Folks get to solve the murders, and they get points for various things. They get more points if they get the killer correct and if they unmask the killer first and all of that. At the end of the festival, the person with the most points gets to be the king or queen of the Murder Mystery Festival. They get a free t-shirt and get a photograph with them standing next to the chief of police and the sheriff. You wouldn’t believe the revenue the festival’s bringing in to Pegramville and Pegram County. They think there’s going to be over a hundred thousand visitors this week. They had to order twenty more Porta-Potties for city hall alone.”
Bubba swallowed the rest of his tea in one gulp. It wasn’t a very large cup.
“You really didn’t know?” Doris asked tentatively.
Looking at Doris, Bubba realized that the former madam was trying to say something without “saying” something. “You mean this whole shenanigan was Ma’s idea?”
Doris looked at the life-sized painting on the wall. It featured the nude figure of Miz Annalee Hyatt. She had been a prostitute credited with saving the town from the Yankees during the War of Northern Aggression. Bubba looked, as well. The gilt-framed, life-sized portrait revealed all of Miz Annalee’s charms as the painted figure bent over a large red velvet chair.
“Well, sugar, we might have gotten a little carried away,” Doris admitted with a weak smile. “It’s a recession, after all. Folks in Pegramville need cash just as much as anyone else. Some of those visitors are going to bring their cars to Culpepper’s Garage and they’re going to visit Snoddy Mansion and they’re going to keep food on people’s tables.”
Bubba couldn’t argue with that, even if he had so been inclined. “Did it have to be a Murder Mystery Festival?” he asked glumly.
“Well it couldn’t have been a Christmas Killer Festival,” Doris allowed. “After all, we have some scruples around here.”
•
Bubba managed to get home just about an hour later. The Snoddy Estate consisted of an antebellum manor brimming with Greek-styled columns, paint that tended to fall off by the pound rather than the ounce, and a lot of acreage chock-full of holes. The caretaker’s house behind the mansion was in the process of being rebuilt. Because of his lagging finance’s, the rebuilding was on the extended schedule.
Mysteriously, Ol’ Green had made it to the property before him. Exiting his ride, he thanked Doris Cambliss, shutting the door behind him. He watched as she drove off in her Lincoln Town Car.
Bubba’s head turned just as Precious loped around the corner of the mansion, baying fretfully. The Basset hound was ecstatic to see Bubba and showed it by licking him wherever she could reach with her tongue. She rose up on her hind legs and reached as high as she could.
“Who’s my wuddle-muddle-poochie cutie?” Bubba cooed.
Abruptly, Precious remembered that she was playing hard to get and got down, but not before she lightly bit his thumb. He hadn’t been able to take her to work with him, and she was stuck in the house most of the day.
“That’ll show me, right girl?”
The dog huffed, tossed her long ears over one shoulder, and trotted away.
Bubba went inside and took a few minutes to find something to eat. No restaurant service at the Snoddy place that night was to be had. Miz Demetrice was undoubtedly busy with the festival. Wherever his mother was located, Miz Adelia was likely backing her up.
Bubba glowered at the thought of the festival. No wonder Ma has been scarce of late. Up to her usual brand of skullduggery. He glanced at the hound, who was peering at him from the hallway, obviously waiting for him to feed her. He looked at her food bowls and found that they were empty. He took another minute to give the animal fresh water and some kibble. Precious took a minute to ascertain whether the kibble was acceptable to her canine regalness. It was.
Scratching the loose jowls as she ate, Bubba murmured, “Bet you knew about the stupid Murder Mystery Festival, dint you, Precious?”
<
br /> She paused to woof softly at him and then resumed her consumption of kibble. After all, a dog didn’t know how long the kibble would remain on the floor. Humans could take it in their hearts that dog food was now human food and take it all from her and then where would a God-fearing Basset hound be?
“You should have tole me,” Bubba added quietly.
Precious didn’t answer. She was manifestly occupied.
“I found a dead body that wasn’t really dead,” Bubba went on. “I nearly did something nasty to my tighty whities. They never would have been the same, girl.”
Precious made a noise that could have been agreement. Bubba gave the hound a good scratching and then went to make himself a sandwich. The bread was French. The beef was roasted. The cheese was Swiss. The mustard was Dijon. All was good, especially after most of it was on his way through his innards. He chugged a cola right out of a bottle. Somewhere Miz Adelia had found an endless supply of RCs in honest-to-God glass bottles. (It was Bubba’s concerted opinion that cola did not taste right unless it was drunk out of a chilled glass bottle.) A banana-flavored Moon Pie finished off the meal.
A Bubba-sized burp concluded the affair. The noise made Precious jump, and she twirled to glare at her master.
“Excuse me, girl,” he said.
He gathered up a few items and went out to work on Ol’ Green. There were two problems with the antique truck. One was that the brakes had failed. Two was that the engine didn’t want to start. It was true that he had been neglecting the truck’s daily maintenance in favor of doing the ninety million other things he had to do.
The biggest problem with owning a vintage vehicle, replete with vintage engine and vintage parts, was that one had to tinker with it on a daily basis. When one didn’t do that, even though one was a mechanic, one’s truck took exception and went kaput.
Bubba would have flipped a coin, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go searching for one. The brakes were the easier job. He already had an idea of what was wrong and could have kicked himself for not tending to the issue a week before. It took him about a half-hour to take the master cylinder off the bottom of the vehicle. It would take him about as long to put on the other master brake cylinder he’d rebuilt a year before. Then he would have to replace a clevis pin that was the part most often to fail. The original design had an inert flaw in that the simple little pin was constantly under pressure when the brakes were used. The design hadn’t been repeated, but owners of that particular model knew to check the pin first before anything else. Bubba had a box of brand-new clevis pins that had been used for the exclusivity of the truck’s brake pedal mechanization.
The sun had set before he was finished with that. He hauled out a long extension cord and set up a telescoping halogen work light so that he could see what he was doing. He also paused to spray a bunch of insect repellent all over his body because the mosquitos had declared him to be a banquet. He also chugged another bottle of RC because it was there.
About an hour after that, he saw some lights bouncing around in the forest. Clearly someone was tromping about in the dark. He paused to yell, “AIN’T NO GOLDURNED GOLD OUT THERE! Colonel Snoddy was a certified LOON! He dint bring back nothing but a venereal disease! AND IT’S A POSTED NO-TRESPASSING AREA!”
Precious had been sleeping on the veranda. Her legs were heavenward, and she snorted before scrambling to her feet and looking around to spot the danger that her master had spotted.
The lights paused for a moment and then went out straightaway.
Bubba rolled his eyes. “TURN YOUR LIGHTS BACK ON BEFORE YOU FALL INTO A HOLE, TURNIPHEADS!”
The lights came back on.
“Now prance back to your vehicles before I call the sheriff!” Bubba sighed audibly. Not that the sheriff would come out to see what was going on, but there’s always a chance of the stunning Willodean Gray showing up. He looked over his shoulder, but the lights were retreating into the woods toward the road they’d clearly parked upon. Too bad.
Precious woofed derogatorily into the darkness. She danced left and right on the veranda and then plopped herself down with a plaintive whine. She didn’t feel like chasing after intruders with shovels any more than Bubba did.
The night was hot, and the air felt like it had a thousand percent humidity. It wasn’t fit for man or beast or creepy-crawly. Bubba swore he’d seen a cockroach go down for the count while wiping its little insecty head with a handkerchief.
The next likely item of business on the truck was the air cleaner. Truly it didn’t sound like something a fella needed to attend, but the 1954 model had a special one that was cleaned by oil. Basically, it had an element inside it that consisted of copper gauze soaked with oil. As the air filtered through the element, the oil snatched up dirt and dust. It also had a piece that allowed the air inside the element, and as a consequence, the oil tended to evaporate. When all the oil evaporated, the engine wasn’t cleaned. Debris gathered and clogged it. The engine became ticked off. Then it died. The end.
I cain’t keep my own truck running, Bubba thought. I’m a BAD mechanic.
But Bubba knew that the oil bath air cleaner would have to be replaced eventually. It was hardly the first time the oil had evaporated. As long as Bubba had owned the truck, he had been in a constant state of learning about it. It had quirks, and it had peccadillos. Mostly it had idiosyncrasies. The plain truth of the matter was that he wasn’t a bad mechanic for not keeping the truck running. He was a good mechanic because it had been kept running for so long.
What was really good was that he had acquired a mess of parts not eight months earlier. Right around the time that the Christmas Killer had been delivering her deadly Yuletide bounty, Bubba had struck gold in the form of original Chevy truck parts in their original boxes. It had been a treasure hunt of vehicular proportion. When he’d received the boxes, he’d stuck them in the potato cellar and forgotten about them in the excitement of rampant murderers and all.
The oil bath air cleaner was flaked by an inherent case of rust and needed to be replaced. Auspiciously, Bubba had another one.
With a flashlight and a grumbling Precious following closely, Bubba went to the potato cellar, unlocked the combination lock, and located the large box of replacement parts. A smaller box with the air cleaner was old and foxed. The top had been chewed by various rodents, but the writing was clear, even as it was nearly sixty years old.
It was like discovering a diamond in the rough.
Bubba fingered the box and adjusted the flashlight under his armpit. “My precious,” he muttered lasciviously and chuckled.
Precious barked disapprovingly once.
Bubba brought it back to the truck and opened it up. The parts inside the box had been wrapped in heavy wax paper. They appeared as good as new. The simple design of the mechanism had maintained for years, and once Bubba had it installed and primed with oil, the Chevy would likely start again with a holler and a wheeze.
Bubba organized the parts and took the lid off the oil cleaner. He began to remove a wrinkled piece of paper on the inside of the cleaner and abruptly stopped. The piece of paper didn’t look like something the factory had put in it. Yellowed and furrowed, it looked like a simple letterhead. It seemed like something someone had shoved into the air cleaner in an effort to hide it.
The paper was nearly crumpled up and tossed, when Bubba hesitated. He slowly unraveled the single sheet and tilted it so that he could see the letters on the paper in the work light. The words on it didn’t make sense right away, but he frowned and concentrated on them. Slowly the meaning made itself clear inside his brain. He frowned harder.
The note read, “If someone finds this note, then I have been murdered. My name is M—” and the last letter, an M, trailed off as if the pen had been jerked away.
“Crap,” Bubba said. “I mean, carp.”
Chapter Three
Bubba Begins
(Without the Mask, the Highly Technical
Doodads, Alfred, and
Robin)
Friday, August 17th - Saturday, August 18th
The logistics of the note made Bubba wait. It also made him grit his teeth. The little voice in the back of his brain told him, “It’s a joke, you big doodlehead. It’s someone’s idea of a really bad joke. It’s like someone calling in a bomb threat to a school. It’s like when Foot Johnson tole Miz Baird she had a ration of cottonmouths in her outhouse, and the poor woman had to go to Doc Goodjoint three days later because she was afraid to go number two.”
Doc Goodjoint, the town’s only physician and a close friend of the Snoddy family, had said one simple thing about the occasion before they’d sat down to supper the following week. “Roto-Rooter,” the elderly doctor had imparted dramatically and succinctly. Then Miz Demetrice had added (because she didn’t care to let anyone else have the last word), “That isn’t a fit supper conversation, but I’m certain that ifin an individual were going to die poorly, then it would be by a massive ingestion of fiber, just like I did in Elgin Snoddy. He dint want to et all that Metamucil, but I made him whilst I held the two muzzleloaders upon him. Very sorry state of affairs.”
The note had been inside the air cleaner for a minimum of eight months. Bubba examined the note and the air cleaner at length. It was more than likely that the note had been in the air cleaner for much longer than that. The box had been packed in the original papers, and there had been dust and debris on them.
Sadly, the note had been there for years, possibly decades.
Bubba knew he couldn’t keep it to himself, even if it had been some sorry prank from times past. He put the truck parts back together as much as he could and left the air cleaner in the cab with the note.
Then he went inside with his dog. He showered and went to bed, only nodding off when he heard his mother’s Cadillac drive up. He heard Miz Demetrice saying from the bottom of the grand staircase, “I ain’t never seen so many folks murdered in all my life.” Then right before he fell asleep, Miz Adelia said, “Boy howdy, I’m dog-tired, too. And we’ve got to do this all over again tomorrow.”