Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note

by C. L. Bevill

  A sound trickled over to Bubba. It finally occurred to him that it was the sound of a ringtone. It sang, “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest! Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest! Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”

  Bubba didn’t need to look back to know that it was David’s cell phone ringing. The ringtone ended precipitously when David said, “Avast!”

  Bubba continued to push his way through the crowd. Honestly, he couldn’t imagine what all these people were waiting for. To catch a murderer? Well, Bubba had done it. It wasn’t that great. After all, people had been murdered in the first place so that one could then catch the killer. Imaginary murders didn’t seem like it would be that big of a thrill.

  “Bubba,” David said. Bubba hesitated and glanced over his shoulder. David held the cell phone out toward him. “It’s for ye. They asked for ye.”

  “Who did?”

  David shrugged. “Some fella. Didn’t sound like a pirate. Sounds kind of asthmatic. Lots of heavy breathing.” He demonstrated the breathing briefly, blowing through his puckered mouth. “Hoooooo-heeeeee.”

  Turning back, Bubba took the phone gingerly. He’d had bad experiences with cellular phones. They tended to fall apart at the drop of a Stetson. He pretty much destroyed every one he’d held in the last year. They weren’t made for a big man’s hands; that was a little known reality. Putting the cell to the side of his face, he said, “Hello?”

  He immediately recognized the voice on the other end. It was a very infamous voice. The words should have been, “Luke, I am your father, but I haven’t been paying child support, and I’m not going to your third grade play,” but they weren’t. The breathing came and went and the voice actually said, “Lose the note, or the next bomb won’t be for you. It might be for your mama or your pretty girlfriend. Ka-boom.” There was a click, and then there was nothing.

  Darth Vader had called Bubba Snoddy. Who knew?

  Bubba pulled the phone back and looked at the screen. A tiny pirate was doing a jig, Gangnam style. “How do you look at the number that just called?”

  “It’s blocked,” David said. “Me looked at it before I answered it. Me hates to get calls from telemarketers. Last week they wanted to know if me had athletes foot. Besides, me thought it might be Pip. She’s a bonny wench who doesn’t waste time.”

  “Would the po-lice be able to see who called?”

  “If the brigand didn’t call from a throwaway phone or a phone booth, mayhap.”

  Bubba handed the phone back to David.

  David regarded Bubba. “Yon ears are turning red. Be that a good thing or bad, matey?”

  “Bad,” gritted Bubba. Someone sounding remarkably like Anakin Skywalker’s evil half had called David’s phone to threaten Bubba. No, the person hadn’t threatened me. He or she had threatened Ma and Willodean. The only thing that might have been worse if the person had threatened Precious. Well, not really, but almost.

  Bubba’s impressive height helped him to see over the crowd. Miz Demetrice was actively organizing another press conference with Judge Posey and a few news anchors. He could imagine the leading line of the story; “Murder in Small Town Makes Governor’s Campaign Pop!” His mother stood there while she directed the activity, dressed in another one of her patently Snoddy dresses; the color of the sun with a smart white trim. Her shoes matched the yellow shade and were only a few inches tall. Her purse was a coordinating white. Her hair was neatly arranged in her typical chignon. She appeared as she usually did, as laid back as Robert E. Lee in a cavalry charge, in her element, directing others into action.

  Not far away was Willodean Gray, looking rightly authoritative in her uniform. It molded her shape in all the right places. She was speaking calmly to a couple with three children, obviously giving them directions to something or other. Her lovely face was friendly and open as she spoke to the family. Not only was she cute, but she had a good heart, too. The thought made Bubba’s heart go pitter-pitter-patter.

  Someone is threatening her. Someone is threatening Ma.

  Bubba’s ears got redder. He knew that if there was steam inside his head, it would be letting loose out of his ears about that moment.

  Someone who knew where Bubba was at the moment and who he was with, was threatening the two women. “How does a fella block a number?” His voice, as he asked the question, could be likened to two pieces of granite rubbing together.

  “Usually it’s because it’s a payphone,” David said matter-of-factly. “They do that from jail phones and the ones in the institute, so they don’t get return calls for free. Ye ought to know that, Bubba.”

  Bubba’s head swiveled unerringly. There were three payphones in the area. One was at the corner on the north side of the city hall lot. Two were inside the building. Anyone who had seen Bubba in the previous minutes could have made it to the phones. If they had been prepared, they might have had the device with them. How would they have gotten David’s phone number?

  “David, is that your cell phone number on your front door of your business?”

  “Sure,” David said, but Bubba had already turned away.

  Bubba pushed through the crowd. He was betting for the two inside payphones. They were tucked inside an old cloakroom beside a foyer in city hall. Lawyers used to use them as well as people who needed rides to and from city hall. Bubba had used them once or twice, but he was one of the few people left in the world who didn’t regularly use a cell phone.

  “Hey,” someone protested. H.H. Holmes looked at Bubba. “What’s your hurry?”

  Bubba shoved past the stalwart detective and plowed through crowds of people. “Get out of the way,” he said and then said it louder, “GET OUT OF THE WAY!” People tended to listen when he used the “big” voice. Folks parted like they were the Red Sea and he was Moses. Behind him he could hear David yelling, as well. “Yarrr, ye blubber-butted bootlickers! Ye cursed flint-locked menaces! Move yon scurvy arses!”

  Bubba could only hope that David didn’t feel compelled to pull out his saber and use it to plow the road in a sharply edged manner.

  Hitting the steps of city hall like a berserker, Bubba stormed up them three at a time. He threw open the doors with a loud clang. The action nearly frightened Ruby and Alice Mercer to death. They stood stock-still, shocked by the abrupt occurrence. Behind them was Edwina Kemper, H.H.’s partner in crime. Behind Edwina was Patsy Bumphill, who was Sheriff John’s secretary and an avid Neil Diamond groupie. Then there were three other women lined up behind them.

  Belatedly, Bubba remembered that the cloakroom that held the payphones was also the entrance to the women’s bathroom. Around Alice Mercer, he could see the entrance to the cloakroom, and around two other women who chatting with each other, he could see the edge of one of the two payphones.

  Yet another woman was using one phone. Bubba pushed past the line of women who obviously wanted to use the restrooms with running water instead of the understated elegance of a bathroom one could pick up and put down with a crane.

  “Bubba!” Alice Mercer called after him, a moment tardy in her response. “You scared the carp out of me!”

  Bubba put his hand on the shoulder of the woman using the payphone. She turned toward him with a jerk of surprise, and he saw that it was Leelah Waggoner. She was another employee of George Bufford’s and one of the few people in Pegramville who had actively supported him when everyone else was certain he had done in his ex-fiancée. She blinked at Bubba and said, “There is another phone, Bubba.” She paused and then said into the phone, “No, Mike honey, it’s just someone wanting to use the phone. You need to give the baby the right amount of Tylenol. It says so on the box. Mix it with some grape Kool-Aid, and the kid will drink it right down. I don’t care how many times he threw up on your best bowling ball. I’m going to be home exactly when I said I was unless the baby starts bleeding from the nose, ears, eyes or starts speaking an ancient biblical tongue while floating in the air. This was my turn to get out
with the girls as you good and well know. How many Mondays do I have off?”

  Bubba stepped back. He looked around. There were a bunch of women in the cloakroom. Most of them were staring at him with big eyes. “Who else was using the phone?” he demanded.

  No one answered.

  “Who else was using one of these dadgummed phones?” he demanded again.

  Leelah hung up the phone and turned to Bubba. “Several people have been using the phones, Bubba.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry Bubba, I dint take names,” Leelah said with a little frown.

  “I called my cousin,” Patsy said. “She wants to come to the festival and didn’t have a place to stay. She doesn’t like Neil Diamond much so I wasn’t sure, but hey, she’s blood.”

  “No one saw who else used these phones?” Bubba said, frustrated beyond belief. One name could have turned the tide. The thought of some anonymous, murderous individual threatening the people he cared most about made him so furious that he hadn’t stopped to consider how he looked or sounded. Frankly, he still didn’t care.

  “Lot of people have come and gone from here,” another woman said. “Even a couple of guys. I guess I ain’t the only one on God’s green earth without a cell phone.”

  He brushed his hair from his face and bit back another demand for information.

  Women stared at Bubba as if he had lost his brains. He felt as if he was a snail crawling across a barrel of hot tar.

  About to move back, Bubba saw David break in, shoving past Patsy and Edwina. David said piratically, “Wenches, ho!”

  “Ain’t no ho’s in here,” Ruby protested.

  Bubba took in a breath. He didn’t know whether he should tinkle or get off the potty. He looked around at the women again and then at the phones. They were tucked in the corner. There were dividers between them and the rest of the cloakroom so that the ones speaking on them could have a modicum of privacy. Everyone was so occupied with the festival that an individual could have easily come and gone without undue notice. He took a step closer as if the phones themselves could answer his urgent query.

  A little black box sat on the shelf under the phone that Leelah had been using. Bubba glanced at it, and then his ponderous gaze swung back to it. About four inches long by two inches wide and an inch thick, it had little wires hanging from it and seemed to be fairly innocuous.

  Immediately, Bubba didn’t really care for the way it looked. It seemed as though if someone touched it, like if someone had touched the gate to an antebellum estate, it might do something very bad. It would be a thousand times worse in a contained space with a bunch of people who only wanted to relieve their bladders.

  “Everyone needs to get out of here,” Bubba announced as if he was making a comment about the weather. There was no direct reaction.

  “I need to pee,” Patsy said. “And I mean, I need to pee. My back teeth are swimming.”

  Yelling “Bomb!” wasn’t what Bubba considered a good idea. He didn’t think it would be nice if some of these women were trampled, so he said the next best thing he could think of, “Brad Pitt just drove up outside in a limo! He said he just dumped Angelina Jolie and is looking for a real woman!”

  “Arr! I love Brad Pitt!” David bellowed and dove for the cloakroom door. Ninety percent of the other women followed eagerly.

  Bubba said to Patsy, “Go tell Sheriff John there might be a bomb in here.”

  “I can pee in the porta-potty!” Patsy remarked and scrambled for the door. The other three women in the room decided that was also advisable and left immediately. One tripped over an errant roll of toilet paper that had apparently come with her, and Bubba helped her to her feet as she simultaneously ran and pulled up her jeans.

  Once the area was absent of anyone else, Bubba went to block the door and wait for the police.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bubba’s Road is Paved with Good Intentions

  Monday, August 20th

  “Luke, I am not your father,” Big Joe said into the device. Then the chief of police breathed heavily for effect. “Hoooooo-heeeeee.”

  “That is not a bomb, Bubba,” Sheriff John said to Bubba.

  “Sorry,” Bubba said but the word was far from contrite. In fact, his tone of voice was sorely aggrieved and frustrated; it was all wrapped up in one little word. His mood could be connected to one pertinent fact. He couldn’t see his mother as they stood outside, and for the moment, he wanted to see his mother. He needed to be certain she was well. He had wanted to leave immediately, but Big Joe had threatened him with violence, and Willodean had jumped in to protect him, so Bubba held back. But the dam was about to burst.

  “I kin understand why the boy would be a tad jumpy,” Big Joe said in Darth Vader’s voice as he held the device up to his mouth. The voice that came out on the other side was purely James Earl Jones. “Hoooooo-heeeeee.”

  Bubba felt an urge to stick the device in a location on Big Joe that was not appropriate to mention in polite society. Without Vaseline, he added to himself.

  “Why did you want to know who was on the payphone, Bubba?” Willodean asked him from the other side.

  Bubba was again stuck in the middle of a crowd. Once the police had determined that the voice changer was not a bomb, they set about interrogating him properly. Fortunately for Bubba, the consensus was that the previous evening’s bomb had rattled his brain and made him wound up tighter than a Gibson guitar.

  “Someone called me on David’s phone,” Bubba muttered to Willodean. “Played a nasty little trick on me using that there voice-changing thing.”

  “What kind of trick?” Willodean persisted.

  Bubba sighed a little as his mother waded into view. Miz Demetrice was loaded for bear. She chastised Big Joe, Sheriff John, the Republicans, the Democrats, society in general, and there was even a glancing blow at the Boy Scouts of America, although Bubba couldn’t fathom how they were involved or in what way they could possibly be responsible. Once his mother had ascertained that all was well with her only child, she started in again on Sheriff John and Big Joe. “You call this festival secured?” she said. “Bombs, bodies, and bad business, oh my.”

  “These are not the law enforcement men you are seeking,” Big Joe said through the device. “Hoooooo-heeeeeee.”

  “Something in the milk ain’t clean,” Miz Demetrice decided.

  “Just a trick,” Bubba said to Willodean.

  Willodean put her hands on her waist and glared knowingly at him. “I don’t believe I like what I’m not hearing, Bubba.”

  People were watching Bubba. He was well aware of the fact. There were a hundred and more looking at him, wondering what was happening. Some of them were heavily invested in the festival and wanted to know if what was going on had to do with the mysterious note. The level of excitement was like wildfire running rampant through the attendees, and everyone wanted in on the action.

  However, there was at least one person who wanted to know if Bubba was going to blab to the police and, therefore, put two people’s necks on the chopping blocks. Bubba didn’t care to tell lies, but when the occasion warranted it, he didn’t mind doing it.

  “Right sorry,” he said to Willodean. “I got jumpy on account of last night. It weren’t nothing.” He looked out at the crowd. “It was nothing,” he said louder. “I reckon my head got bumped harder last night than I thought.” On the inside, his gut winced with what he was about to say. Then he added deliberately, “Ah shucks.”

  Miz Demetrice turned from chastising Big Joe and studied Bubba with a mother’s unerring gaze. “Boy should have gone straight home,” she pronounced. “Looks like he could use shoes to go with those bags under his eyes.”

  “I’ll give you a ride home,” Willodean said, and Bubba glanced at her just in time to see a significant look pass between his girlfriend and his mother. It made a shiver run down his spine. Willodean is in cahoots with Ma. The world may be about to end.

  “Arr, matey,” David cal
led to Bubba, “I be off to do some wee festival business. Catch you later, bucko.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, Bubba dear,” his mother called after him, as well, with a practiced matriarchal eye settling on his large frame. If her eye had been a laser-guided weapon and he had been an enemy tank, he would have been a little blackened crater in the earth.

  “Can I borrow your cell phone, Willodean?” Bubba asked politely as they walked away from the other police.

  Willodean gave him such a look before she pulled the little phone out of one of her pockets. He gingerly grasped the cell phone and tried not to react to the expression on her face. Bubba took a moment to figure out the phone. Then he took another moment to say a prayer about not destroying her phone. He took another moment to remember Kiki’s number. Kiki answered on the third ring, all the while Willodean was energetically and transparently eavesdropping.

  “Hey,” Bubba said quietly to Kiki.

  “Bubba, dude,” Kiki said. “I haven’t found anything yet.”

  “I know. Listen, this might be a little more involved than I thought.”

  “Involved?” she repeated.

  “Well, I just got a call from the person we’re interested in.”

  “A call. M called you?”

  “Not our writer. The person responsible for the writer’s…” he searched for a word that would confuse Willodean, “…conclusion.”

  Kiki was silent for a moment. Willodean tried to stare down Bubba. He pursed his lips and blew the lovely sheriff’s deputy a kiss. Her face twisted into an annoyed grimace. Her hand twitched over the can of mace attached to her Sam Browne belt.