by C. L. Bevill
Bubba directed the light around the dim room, and nothing jumped out at him. “I guess it done bin cleaned out years ago,” he said, his voice echoing eerily through the room.
“I guess,” Dan said. “As soon as folks stopped seeing the workers coming out here, they prolly came out and took a little five fingered discount. It’s what I would have done, ifin I had known about it. Of course, I wouldn’t do it now.”
“I don’t think the coons would mind,” Bubba said.
“We ain’t gone on that side of the building.” Dan pointed at the opposite wall.
“Prolly ain’t goin’ to find nothing,” Bubba said with a little bitterness. It had been a long shot at best. No one would really know when the note had been inserted into the air cleaner’s box. It could have been the day after the factory closed or twenty years before the factory had shut down. The part itself could have been sitting on some unknown shelf for years before it had been sold.
But Justin Thyme worked here. Justin Thyme had been murdered. Justin Thyme had extra money from something. Penny had said, “I figured someone was giving him some money to keep his mouth shut about something.”
Bubba hadn’t initially thought about the strange connection between the two events. There was the mysterious note, and there was Justin’s murder, which might not have really been a death at all, considering all the tomfoolery going on in the Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival.
If someone hadn’t tried to blow Bubba up and then called him about it, Bubba would have never thought about it. Justin knew something, and he had been murdered for it. He had been blackmailing someone for murder. What does someone blackmail another person for?
Mostly money. So the murderer was someone with money. Also the murderer was someone with something to lose.
Bubba picked his way across the large room. Dan followed behind, carefully placing his feet where the cement was still solid. In places, the water had made the floor crumble away like a giant had squeezed it within his mighty fist.
“Who’s got money and something big to lose?” Bubba said.
“I used to think ya’ll had money,” Dan answered. “But I reckon you don’t really. And I’m perty shore you don’t have much to lose neither.”
“Who else?”
“Well, the mayor’s got some ready cash,” Dan said. “I think his mother invested in Apple in the ‘80s. She might have invested in Home Depot, too. But she ain’t givin’ much to John Leroy, Jr., so I guess it’s public service for him.”
Bubba threw a skeptical look at Dan. “You know something about investin’?”
Dan shrugged. “Folks talk about everything in the klinky. Investin’ is a proper way for a felon to make a few bucks legally. I put a thousand bucks in shares of Cisco.”
“Fixin’ cars ain’t so bad,” Bubba said.
“The only way I know how to fix a car is to throw someone at it,” Dan remarked, “and that don’t work well.”
Bubba made it to a set of doors, and as he pushed one open, the hinges failed, and it fell on its side with a boom that echoed the storm outside. Dan winced. “Like I said, I ain’t a-feared of much, but this place is doggoned creepy.”
There were several rooms on this side of the building. They floated from one to another. The darkness wasn’t overpowering, but windows and exterior light obviously hadn’t been a prime consideration when the company had built the factory. Most of the rooms were empty but for scraps and shadows. Occasionally there was some broken piece of furniture or shelves that had been stripped from the walls and systematically destroyed. There was more graffiti. Names in multicolor decorated the walls. Someone had drawn a giant picture of a phallus.
“Ralph C. hitting all the genders,” Bubba commented mostly to himself.
“Now why is Ralph growing pot when he can draw so good?” Dan asked. “Artistic fella like that should be making a livin’ drawin’. Ain’t that right, Bubba?”
Bubba tilted his head. “Mebe there ain’t a market for that sort of art.”
“There is in the joint,” Dan said.
There was another lightning strike, and the walls shuddered with the accompanying thunder. Glass tinkled in the distance. Another window had bitten the dust.
“Think this is where they put parts and such?” Bubba asked.
“Ain’t never worked in a factory,” Dan stated. He looked at the walls. “It’s convenient to the main floor. I reckon it could be.”
“Ifin I’m right, then Justin came in here and took old parts.”
“Mebe Justin took them back in the day,” Dan suggested. “Had ‘em sitting around for some years and decided to sell them to make a buck. I don’t expect he knew there was a note inside one. Why would he open a box meant for the engine of an ol’ truck?”
Bubba’s shoulders slumped. He had been certain that this is where it had started. There had been an isolated room in this building where someone had been placed and contained. In his mind’s eye, the factory was closed, and no one was there to hear anything. A woman could scream and scream and no one would know differently. But if Dan was correct, and of course he could be, then it might have been Justin who had kept some poor individual locked up somewhere else, in an old building at the back of some isolated property along with all the things he had begged, borrowed, and stolen.
Another lightning strike split a nearby tree, and the wood screamed as it splintered away. Thunder roared
Dan shook his head. “It’s like someone is tryin’ to tell us something.”
Bubba found a small door and pushed at it. He caught the door before it fell and gently put it to the side. The door knob fell away and hit the cement floor. He panned the flashlight around the small room. There were steel shelves still mounted to the walls in that room. Only dust balls and an old black trash bag remained on them. He started to withdraw but paused. Turning back deliberately, he slowly looked at every inch of the room, using the flashlight to illuminate all of its secrets.
“What?” Dan asked.
“No windows. Only a little door. Shelves. Ifin I was going to keep a woman captive, I might put her in here,” Bubba said slowly.
“Keeping a woman captive ain’t good for your karma,” Dan stated.
Bubba ignored Dan. Something caught his eye. He wouldn’t have seen it if he wasn’t six feet four inches tall. Dan might have seen it, but he hadn’t come into the little room. There was something on the very highest shelf, something tucked way back into the wall. The average person wouldn’t see it, nor would they have thought to reach up there to check when they were clearing out everything they could put into the trash bags they had brought with them.
Bubba reached up and touched a box that was about six inches by six inches square. The cardboard was moldering, and large pieces fell away as his fingers made a connection. In this humid place without air conditioning, it hadn’t lasted as well as the other boxes of auto parts. That, in itself, revealed that it had been years since the other parts had been swiped from this room. He tucked the flashlight in between his shoulder and cheek, and reached up with both hands. Carefully, he brought it down, holding it as if it was the greatest treasure.
The logo was less distinct. The part number was long gone, but he could see the illustration on the front. It was a carburetor. He ought to know. He had rebuilt the one in Ol’ Green more times than he could count. It was unmistakable. The box was identical to the others.
Dan ducked his head and looked. “There’s something else up there.”
Bubba handed the box to Dan and reached up again. His fingers touched roughened paper. He pulled and some separated. With both hands he found the edges of the object and gingerly tugged. There wasn’t much left of the cover, but there was another illustration that could be seen. He held a decomposing book in his hands. It was about the size of an average sheet of paper, but the paper had curled with moisture and was thick in his hands.
Dan peered over his shoulder. “Hey, looks like your truck.”
“It’s a shop manual,” Bubba said. “I got a reprint at home. It’s the third one I’ve worn out.” He put the moldering book back where he had found it. He was grasping the flashlight in his right hand when some marks on the rotting walls caught his attention. He would have assumed it was more graffiti, but it was simply a name scratched into the plaster. He probably wouldn’t have seen it at all if the shadows hadn’t moved because of the movement of the flashlight’s beam.
It was a name. A simple name that started with an M.
Bubba reached for his pocket. He pulled out the baggie and looked at the note. It didn’t look exactly the same, but then scratching one’s name on the wall wasn’t the same as writing a note and signing one’s name on the end.
Putting the baggie back, he touched another folded sheet of paper. It was the list that Kiki had given him. He pulled that one out and unfolded it. The name wasn’t on there.
Dan said, “What is it?” He peered closer and saw the same letters. He said the name with all the avid curiosity of a child. He didn’t know what it meant any more than Bubba did.
“I don’t know,” Bubba said. But the first thing he was going to do was have Kiki look all the women who had died or vanished in the last twenty or thirty years with the unassuming first name of Mary.
Mary. I already know three Mary’s and mebe some others I ain’t yet thought of. Bubba touched the letters again. It was scratched into the plaster at the level that an adult woman might write it at. The letters weren’t rushed but pushed into the flaking material. Years before, the plaster had been as hard as a rock and the woman could have used anything to leave a sign of her presence. All that was left were four simple letters.
But Bubba knew. He had hit pay dirt. Murder-mystery pay dirt. A few more shovelfuls of effort, and he would have the answers that had been eluding him.
He folded up the list, replaced it in his front pocket with the note. Then he stepped out of the room and shut the door.
More lightning flashed. The abrupt noise of thunder careened through the building, and Dan jumped a little.
“Like I said, this place is weird,” Dan said, still holding onto the antique carburetor. “Right now, I don’t reckon you could shove a greased-up BB up my tuckus.”
“All we need is some spiderwebs and some woo-woo music,” Bubba said.
“And a dead body.”
Bubba snorted. He took three steps into the short hallway. There was one door to the left. It hung open. It was a large closet with metal shelves hanging at odd angles. There was what appeared to be a bird nest inside. The bird had obviously used bits of paper found there to construct it. The bird was long gone, leaving little gray feathers and bits of nest-worthy things found in the factory.
He looked into the second door. There was another office or so he surmised. The desk in this one had been wood. Now it was a pile of wood. Someone had sawed parts of it off and used it for a small fire beside the desk. The drawers had been used, too. Burnt nails and blackened desk knobs were left in the makeshift fire ring. There was a hole in the wall that had been made by rain and natural erosion. Bubba could see into another room.
Bubba backed out of the room and bumped into Dan. Dan was standing very still and alone. “Say, Dan, let me just look in that other room and see—”
It occurred to Bubba that Dan was unnaturally still. It didn’t seem right that someone as big as Dan would stand still. If he did, he might be mistaken for a mountain. Bubba looked at Dan’s immobile shape and followed the line of his sight to the corner where the shadows had concealed something.
Bubba had overlooked the corner, but the dim light spilling in from the ceiling revealed two things. One was that the storm had passed by, and the sun was beginning to come out again. The other was that Dan hadn’t been kidding when he said something about a dead body. They didn’t really need a dead body.
The factory already had one.
Chapter Twenty-two
Bubba Goes to Jail (It Had to
Happen Once in This Book)
Wednesday, August 22nd
Bubba and Dan stared at the dead man for a good long while. One never really knows what to say when one sees a dead man, although Bubba had a lot of experience with it, and he would have thought he would know what to say. He did not. He kept hoping he wouldn’t see any more dead people, but that was his lot in life. Regardless of what they didn’t say, the two men simply stood there and stared at the dead guy for a bit.
Unsurprisingly, this was immediately followed by the police bursting into the area with oversized guns, held in hands and pointing at them. Big Joe even had a flashlight lined up with the top of his revolver so that he could actually hit something in the gloom.
Big Joe pointed the very same large revolver at Bubba and yelled, “Caught you red-handed, Bubba!”
Bubba glanced at his hands. One held Dan’s flashlight, but neither hand was red in the least bit. In fact they were kind of pinkish tan with callouses. The backs were tanner with a light dusting of dark hair. “We were about to call you,” Bubba said, looking back up at Big Joe.
“Sure you weren’t!” Big Joe yelled. Bubba began to wonder if he appeared to be deaf, and Big Joe was compensating.
The twin police officers, Smithson and Haynes, both said, “Yeah,” at the same time.
Dan said, “We just found this here fella.” He pointed at the dead man, who wasn’t getting any livelier.
Big Joe’s eyes settled on Dan and he barked, “Crap! I mean, carp! It’s Daniel Lewis Gollihugh! Call for back-up! Send in the marines! Bring the Hungry-Man cuffs!”
Bubba glowered. So did Dan.
“How did you know we were here?” Bubba asked.
The tip of Big Joe’s revolver wavered between Bubba and Dan and ultimately decided that Bubba was the bigger threat. “There was a call to the station,” Big Joe said, keeping half an eye on Dan. “Drop that weapon, and put your hands up!”
“It’s a flashlight, not a weapon,” Bubba said. He would have twisted his hand to show Big Joe, but Bubba thought he might get shot, all things considered. Big Joe meaningfully shook the end of the revolver at Bubba. Bubba abruptly dropped the flashlight and raised his hands.
“I’m goin’ to want that back,” Dan grumbled. “Flashlights don’t fall off trees, and that’s a good un. It’s got an LED light in it.”
“Be quiet, Dan,” Big Joe said. “I don’t want no trouble outta you. Ifin you come quietly, I swear you’ll have the number four platter from Holey Mole’s. The extra-large one with guacamole and sour cream on the side.”
Dan thought about it. “They gots four tacos on that one, Bubba. Plus two enchiladas, a bean burrito, and a peach empanada. Fills a man right up. Tacos ain’t got faces, right?”
Once Officers Smithson and Haynes had placed handcuffs on both Bubba and Dan, Big Joe relaxed and looked at the body. “That there body is Justin Thyme,” he announced as if there had been some question of the matter.
“No kidding,” Bubba said. “Looks like he’s bin dead a few days, too.” He couldn’t help the sarcasm in his voice, “You know, since Saturday.”
“Since Saturday,” Big Joe said. “Smithson, go call the coroner. We need to cordon off this whole area. Then call the newspeople. We got to make sure they have a photo of me bringing Bubba and Dan out the door of this place. Should be on the front page.” He bared his teeth at Haynes. “Do I got spinach between my teeth?”
“We found the body,” Bubba said slowly. “We dint kill the man. You were there on Saturday. You said yourself I was wearing a pristine white shirt, so how could I have stabbed Justin?”
Big Joe chewed on his lower lip. His entire face flushed an unbecoming shade of pink as he considered it. He suddenly smiled. “I dint see the body, now did I, boy? You could have been setting up an alibi for yourself, am I right? Tell everyone that Justin is dead and then kill him later, or mebe you already done kilt him at that time?”
Dan shrugged. “That would be perty cleve
r.”
“Not helping me, Dan.”
“Bubba dint kill this fella. I’ve been around him for days, and he ain’t had time to break away and kill no one,” Dan told Big Joe.
“And you’re just an accomplice,” Big Joe told Dan, clearly feeling brave because the seven foot tall man was in handcuffs.
“I ain’t a liar,” Dan said, and the words were a deep rumble in his chest.
Even Bubba took a step backwards. “Say, Dan,” he said. “Big Joe will sort this all out. I reckon you’ll be out of jail before the sun sets.”
“We’ve got you setting up your alibi,” Big Joe said, sticking one finger up. “You’ve bin asking Penny Sillen about Justin.” He held up another finger. “You’re at the scene of the crime where the body is.” A third finger went up. “You’re denying everything, and only criminals deny everything.”
“I changed my mind, Dan,” Bubba determined. “Big Joe’s too stupid to figure out anything. We’re goin’ to jail for the next century.”
“I ain’t forgotten about the look-at-my-finger thing,” Big Joe roared. Then he looked at Smithson and Haynes. “Do what I tole you, and do it now!”
Dan stood there in handcuffs and cogitated about the situation. Finally, he said, “I bin right peaceful and all, but I don’t care to go back to the pokey. I dint kill that there man and I’m perty shore that Bubba dint neither.”
Big Joe didn’t reply. He was doing a cursory examination of Justin Thyme. “Poor bastard. Stabbed in the chest, just like Bubba said. How would Bubba know that unless he had stabbed Justin in the chest?”
“Because I saw him at the Murder Mystery Festival, and he had been stabbed in the chest,” Bubba said. “Justin said, ‘M-m-mare,’ and “M-m-m-murdered.’” He thought about that for a moment. “Don’t suppose he could have been saying, ‘Mary murdered’?”