by C. L. Bevill
“It would have bin nice to tie up all the ends, just like the Christmas Killer did,” Bubba said. “Have a big ol’ confession.”
“The judge do give a good speech,” Dan said. “I reckon he would be a good governor, even if he might be a murderer. But he’ll be a worm in the next life. Maybe a maggot. Or ifin he’s bin real bad, he could be reincarnated as one of my ex-wives.”
Speech. Speech. Speech. Dan had shown Bubba the photograph of Judge Posey giving a speech in Dallas on Sunday night. Sunday night had been the evening that the gates had been booby-trapped. The judge couldn’t have planted the bomb. But remember who wasn’t in the picture? Why, yes, I do. Miz Posey wasn’t in the photograph because she was down in Pegram County doin’ illegalities. Her family name is Nunngesser, which happens to be the name of a demolitions company in Dallas, and does that suggest that she knows something about blowing things up? Yes, indeedy, it does.
Miz Posey was also a weightlifter. She was an expert at the snatch and the clean and jerk. She could have cleaned Justin Thyme’s clock and then come back to jerk his body away on account of the fact that Judge Posey was over on the stage playing campaigning politician. With people carrying “bodies” about for the Murder Mystery Festival, who would be the smarter?
Why, no one would. And she had been wearing an apron before Justin’s murder and then she wasn’t wearing an apron after Justin’s murder. Why was that? Because she got the apron bloody and left it with the body at the old factory. Oh my.
If Bubba were to find Judge Posey’s schedule, would he also find that all the times things had happened, Miz Posey was nowhere to be located?
Why, it seemed like good odds. I should go buy a lottery ticket based on them odds.
The only real question left was whether Judge Posey knew about all of it? It didn’t seem realistic or likely that he was innocent. A man has a wife who’s got money. A man doesn’t want that wife but his secretary instead. The first wife has to go, but her money’s got to stay. It was, after all, his family’s factory. How could Constance Future Posey keep Mary Posey’s disappearance from the judge? Maybe say she went on a trip when Constance had Mary locked in that little room in the factory? Maybe Justin Thyme had been an accomplice. Maybe the as-yet-unknown William Johnson had been, too. Perhaps both men had guarded Mary until whatever Constance had wanted signed, was signed.
None of them had counted on a note stuck in an old part. None of them had thought that part would come back to the area like a bizarre boomerang. None of them knew that Bubba would never let the matter go.
Now what Bubba really needed was someone to come back in so he could tell them and get this matter underway to be settled.
“You don’t suppose that explosion has something to do with the other explosion?” Bubba said to Dan, clarity descending in a rush. One explosion was happenstance. Two explosions was someone up to no-dang-good.
Dan shrugged. “I ain’t never had nothing to do with explosions. Exceptin’ one time we took an old water heater and put a bunch of aerosol cans around it, then poured gasoline over it.” He chuckled. “Pat Myas burned off all of his eyebrows and half of his hair. His mama drew eyebrows on him for the next three months. I could have told them fellas on Mythbusters a thing or two before they did that very same thing.”
The doors opened, and a woman walked in, carefully closing the doors behind her. Bubba didn’t recognize her right away. She was wearing a blonde wig, oversized sunglasses, and a “Get Your Bubba On!” t-shirt with jeans. She was also carrying a good-sized box.
“Guess them people in the front ain’t at their station,” Bubba said as soon as he realized who the woman was and making a better guess at what was inside the box. He would have slapped himself in the forehead if his hands weren’t attached by cuffs to the chain around his waist.
The woman pushed her sunglasses back and stared at Bubba and Dan for a moment. She glanced around and ascertained the empty courtroom. “Great,” she said. “No one else to kill. I dislike having to do that. Now I really need to move along quickly.”
“Buddhism teaches us to seek to eliminate ignorance by understanding where all our problems come from,” Dan announced. “Ya’ll could do that, and then you wouldn’t have to kill nobody. Who you goin’ to kill?”
The woman only hesitated for a moment as Dan spoke. She came through the gallery and passed the bar where only attorneys were typically permitted. She looked around and carefully put the wooden box in front of where Bubba and Dan sat. It was about ten feet away, far out of their respective reaches. She looked up at Dan consideringly and pushed the box about a foot closer. Then she sat on the floor and opened it up.
“What’s in the box?” Dan asked.
“Nothing good,” Bubba said.
The woman chuckled and began to whistle. Bubba recognized the tune as “Burning Down the House.”
“You know, Miz Posey,” Bubba said, “I kin see who you are.” And I’m beginning to think yer as crazy as the loonies but possibly even more crazy on account that most of them don’t think about killing anyone, let alone in a courtroom that will have a ton of people in it, in a matter of minutes.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered.
“Ifin you had just let it alone, I probably wouldn’t have found out anything,” Bubba said. But hey, she probably planned it all out. The judge called the court in at night. The outside explosion. Quickly, she ducks in here and sets another bomb and kaboom, all her problems have done blown up, along with a perty good portion of the courthouse.
“She’s the judge’s wife?” Dan asked. “I don’t recall her having blonde hair.”
“It’s a wig,” Bubba said hurriedly. “You wouldn’t have had to kill Justin Thyme or even have tried to kill me. There was only an M on the note and no way to know where it came from.”
“The bomb at the gate was just a warning,” Constance Posey said absently, fiddling with wires. “And that damned Justin Thyme would have blabbed sooner or later. I should have killed him years ago instead of paying him off.”
“That’s a bomb?” Dan finally figured it out. “Ifin that thing goes off here, we won’t be able to get away.”
“That would be her point,” Bubba said.
“She’s a killer?”
“Yes, Dan, she’s a killer.”
“I’m ready to die,” Dan announced. “I will come back as something able to change my karma in a positive way.”
“This is an old form of explosive,” Constance said conversationally. “It’s more powerful than TNT and is used in some plastic applications. The family has tons of it in their business storage. But I did have to go shopping for some of the other items.”
“So informative,” Bubba muttered. He rattled the chains actively to see if there was any give. Dan simply sat there.
“It’s really the impact of the explosion that causes the most damage, although if one puts shrapnel in it, it’s really a major death sentence,” she said fondly. “My father used to give me some of this stuff to play with when I was in elementary school.”
“I had Tinker Toys,” Bubba said. “There might have been a G.I. Joe.”
“I played with sticks and old newspapers,” Dan said. “I had one Tonka Truck that was perty beat up.”
“The best part is to set the fuse into the material and then set the timer.” Constance smiled to herself as she worked rapidly.
“And she weightlifts, too,” Bubba said to Dan.
“A well-rounded woman,” Dan committed. “Too bad about her karma.”
“Let’s see,” Constance said with grim finality. “Thirty seconds ought to be enough for me to get out. Maybe a whole minute on the safe side. Let me just— ”
The courtroom doors burst open, slamming against the door stops. Another woman blew inside like a Tasmanian devil. Her auburn hair was askew. Her make-up was running down her face. Her blue eyes flashed fury directly at Dan. Her gold lame dress was rumpled and her matching high heels scuffed. Bubba
thought he might have seen her before, but he wasn’t certain.
“Trixiebelle!” Dan yelped. He attempted to cross his hands over his lap, but the cuffs prevented it.
One of Dan’s wives, the latest one. Trixiebelle held up a sheath of paperwork as if it were an axe that she was about to bury in her husband’s skull. “Daniel Lewis Gollihugh!” she yelled bitterly. “You’re goin’ to sign these papers right now!”
“I ain’t signing nothing,” Dan declared.
“Mebe you should come back later, Trixiebelle,” Bubba suggested. “We’re in the middle of something here.”
Constance was frozen for the moment.
“Hell no, I’m not coming back later!” Trixiebelle bellowed. “Cole Kutz wants to marry up with me, and I cain’t on account of him!” She pointed with the paperwork directly at Daniel Lewis Gollihugh.
Dan began to rumble deep in his chest. It was an alarming sound, not unlike what one hears when a volcano is about to erupt.
Constance looked at Trixiebelle with alarm. The missus Hizzonor’s hands perched over her box of explosives as if debating whether to go ahead and blow it up or not.
“Who’s Cole Kutz?” Dan barked. “I ain’t never heard of him, and how does a fella want to marry with a woman who’s already matrimonied up?”
“Meditation now?” Bubba suggested.
“Shut up, Bubba!” Dan yelled.
Trixiebelle pulled up her shirt to reveal a tattoo. It had the name Cole emblazoned across her abdomen, surrounded by a flaming heart. “I had it done over the tattoo of your name,” she said slyly.
Dan stood up and wood loudly cracked.
Trixiebelle abruptly took a step backward. More wood cracked.
“Stop that,” Constance commanded.
“I don’t give a flying flip who your husband is, lady!” Dan roared at Constance. “And I don’t give a damn about no goldurned box that you say has some stupid explosive in it!” He yanked on the chains again. He transferred his sulfuric glare to his wife. “Trixiebelle, how could you do that to my tattoo?”
“You have six women’s names all over you!” Trixiebelle yelled back. “Dreama’s name is on your ass! How’d you think that made me feel?” Dan obviously didn’t like the direction of the conversation, and he vigorously twisted his body left and right. More wood cracked and mahogany flakes careened into the air. She accurately gauged the intent in Dan’s eyes, threw the papers at him, and fled on six inch tall heels that clattered unevenly across the marble floor.
Bubba stared at Constance. He knew the moment she decided to go ahead and blow them up. She stabbed a finger into the box and scrambled to her feet. “Oh fiddlesticks,” Constance said almost matter-of-factly. “Now I have to go find that woman and kill her, too.”
Dan roared again, and the chains parted from the wood entirely. He dove for Constance as she fled the well area of the courtroom. Bubba was dragged along with him, saying, “Calm down, Dan. We got to get to that bomb. Calm down!”
“First, I’m goin’ to throttle the one with the bomb! Then, I’m goin’ to spank that danged Trixiebelle until she cain’t sit down!” Dan bawled, dragging Bubba along in his wake. “The hell with nonviolence! The hell with being a vegan! I want a triple cheeseburger with a steak and egg on top! Don’t care ifin cows have a face!” He continued to make noises that sounded like thunder spewing from his chest. Bubba yanked back, using all of his body weight to draw Dan backwards, trying to get to the bomb.
Constance paused in the doorway and looked back at Bubba and Dan. Dan was dragging Bubba along in his wake. Bubba said, “Remember what Buddha said, Dan!”
“SCREW BUDDHA!” Dan yelled.
Bubba looked at the bomb again and then back at Constance.
Constance Posey stood straight up in the doorway. Her mouth opened into a wide “O” of amazement as if something had caught her utterly by surprise. There was a massive clunking noise that reverberated through the large courtroom, and everyone was immobilized for another long moment. Bubba glanced at the bomb again. He was only about five feet from it. He wasn’t sure what to do with the bomb, but maybe he could do something, anything. He looked back to Constance and watched her fall over, like the last of a very long row of dominos.
Miz Demetrice stood behind the slumped body of the judge’s wife, capably holding a humungous legal tome in her hands. She abruptly dropped it and charged past a stunned Dan and Bubba. She knelt beside the box on the floor of the well and said, “Well, look at that.”
Deftly, she pulled two wires out. Two seconds later, the beeper went off, and Bubba nearly fell over with the shock of it all. Miz Demetrice reached inside the box and pushed a button. The beeping stopped. “Kitchen timer,” she said. “Interesting use of an everyday household item.”
Sheriff John, Big Joe, Officers Smithson and Haynes rushed into the room, trying not to trip over Constance Posey’s unconscious body. “What the expletive deleted happened?” Big Joe yelled, except he didn’t use the words, “expletive deleted.”
Miz Demetrice said, “Where is that boy, Brownie, when we really need him?”
“Ma,” Bubba said, “that’s a bomb, and you should get away from it.”
“Of course it’s a bomb,” Miz Demetrice said scathingly. She pulled her handbag from around her shoulders and dug in the oversized bag for a moment. Finally, she pulled out a cream-colored book. As it so happened, Bubba had seen one of those books before when he had been in the Army. His mother’s copy was somewhat more tattered and the edges dog-eared. The title was fairly simple. It said TM 31-210 on the top, followed by Department of the Army Technical Manual. The large title under that said IMPROVISED MUNITIONS HANDBOOK.
Dan said in a more moderate tone, “Mebe ifin I could get a sammich, I’d feel a mite better about things. Two sammiches even. Curly fries, too. Mebe some cheesy grits like Ma makes. Pecan pie would top that off nicely.”
“Arr! What madness be this?” David yelled from the back of the courtroom. “The judge just about ran us over in his stupid GMC Typhoon! You’d think judges could see a pirate going about his business! Blimey sea bilges!”
Willodean slipped past the gape-mouthed police officers and went to hug Bubba. Bubba patted her lovely head as he stared at his mother. Miz Demetrice shrugged. “Some light summer reading,” she stated. “It never hurt to be well-informed about a variety of subjects.” She waved a hand to fan her face. “Well, that was more excitin’ than a porcupine at a nudist colony.” Then she looked around, and her shoulders settled into a gloominess that could not be mistaken. “Guess we need a new candidate for governor, don’t we?”
Epilogue
The End of Bubba (Until the Next One, That Is)
Saturday, August 25th
Bubba watched the final ceremony of the 1st Annual Pegramville Murder Mystery Festival. His tuckus was cheerfully parked in a camp seat and one of his hands held a bottle of RC. Sitting next to him in another camp chair was Willodean Gray. She was delightfully out of uniform, in that she wore a middy shirt that said “Honey Badger Don’t Care,” with a picture of a snarling Honey badger below the words. He didn’t care too much about the message because he was enjoying the view of her belly button, which was an innie. She was also wearing a pair of cut-off jeans that showed her splendiferous legs. Bubba occasionally looked away from the ceremony to admire her shapely figure in all its glory.
“I cannot believe they want to do this again next year,” Willodean said and took a slug from her RC Cola. “There were ‘dead bodies’ everywhere. That finale was just…bloody. I didn’t know a psychopathic sheep herder would want to do that to a person, much less five.”
Bubba would have shrugged, but there didn’t seem to be a point. “I just hope Ma doesn’t try to push another political campaign on us at the same time,” he said.
“She gave up on that when that fella from Houston started his run for governor. He’s paralyzed from the waist down, and he’s got eight adopted children. The kids raise money for hi
s election with lemonade stands and car washes. She said he was a shoo-in. He’s practically a saint.”
“Moon Pie?” Bubba asked.
She took one and began to unwrap it. She paused to pass him one. “You want one?”
“Shore.” He took one. “Mmm. Banana, my favorite.”
“Look, that H.H. Holmes and Edwina Kemper got the most points,” Willodean said, observing the proceedings.
“Mmm-hmm,” Bubba said as he bit into a Moon Pie. Precious bumped his knee, and he broke off a piece to give to her. It vanished as if inhaled by a nuclear-powered vacuum. Precious’s head retreated under his camp chair. She knew where it was safest.
“Big Joe brought in a specialist from Dallas,” Willodean said. “Fella with a cadaver dog, if you can believe that arrogant pain-in-the-rump sprang for the bucks that it cost. Anyway, his animal found two bodies buried out behind that factory. He’s pretty certain that one is Mary Posey. The other one is Myrtle Cratelayer. She had her purse buried with her.”
“Myrtle was one of them names on Kiki’s list,” Bubba said. “She was the only missing woman whose name started with an M.”
“She was also a notary public,” Willodean said and took another drink from her RC.
“Same notary public that notarized Mary’s last will and testament,” Bubba deduced.
“Same one,” Willodean agreed. “Justin Thyme was one of the witnesses on the will, and Constance Nunngesser was the other one. I guess Constance wasn’t feeling up to murdering him, too, and paid him off for years. Justin must have thought he hit the jackpot when the judge announced his run.”
“So why was Justin coming to see me? After all, he hadn’t heard about the note,” Bubba said.
“Sheriff John told Steve Simms, who told Mary Lou Treadwell, who told about a million people, which is why Justin knew that you had the note. Maybe Justin figured out that Constance’s cheese just slid off the cracker and was hedging his bets.” Willodean shrugged eloquently.