Bubba and the Wacky Wedding Wickedness (The Bubba Mysteries Book 7) Read online

  Bubba and the

  Wacky Wedding Wickedness

  By C.L. Bevill

  Published 2016 by C.L. Bevill LLC

  ©2016 by Caren L. Bevill

  Bubba and the Wacky Wedding Wickedness is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The order of the Bubba mystery series is as follows:

  Book #1: Bubba and the Dead Woman

  Book #2: Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas

  Book #3: Bubba and the Missing Woman

  Book #3.5: Brownie and the Dame

  Book #4: Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note

  Book #4.5: The Ransom of Brownie

  Book #5: Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies

  Book #6: Bubba and the Ten Little Loonies

  Book #7: Bubba and the Wacky Wedding Wickedness

  Ideally they should be read in order or bad things might happen like meteors falling out of the sky, or possibly someone might stub their big toe, maybe a paper cut, or the reader will be somewhat confused.

  “I specifically stated none of those were invited to this wedding.

  It was on the invitations, I’m quite certain.” – Miz Demetrice

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Other Novels by C.L. Bevill

  Prologue

  Bubba on the Subject of Dead Bodies

  Friday, April 26th

  “Pegramville used to be a right pleasant place to live,” Bubba Snoddy said wistfully. “Pegram County, too. Used to be the worst thing that happened was something like Dan Gollihugh peeing on a po-lice car whilst the po-lice man was still inside. Law enforcement officials don’t look upon that kindly. I reckon it’s those Neanderthal genes still bouncing around in our DNA. Don’t be wanting another fella marking their territory and all.”

  “Dan can be a very scary individual,” said the other person in the room.

  “Shore,” Bubba agreed. “Dan stands a hair above seven feet tall, and that gap between his front teeth is rightly terrifying.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines when Dan picks someone up and throws him across the bar as if the other person weighed no more than a small child. He took out half the glasses, and his head dented the cash register.”

  “That was Laz Berryhill sliding down the bar one ladies night at Grubbo’s, and it was a long time before Laz had a notion to mess around with Brownie Snoddy.”

  “Must have knocked some nonsense right into his skull. After all, who is stupid enough to mess around with your, what is he, a second cousin or something?”

  “He’s my cousin’s son, and I don’t know what that means officially, but he’s blood kin, bless his heart.” The last part was said in the southern method. “Bless their heart” was typically the same as adding “the poor dumb bastard” to the end of a statement. It was also added to politely excuse oneself for being insulting. He don’t have enough brains to give himself a headache, bless his heart. However, Brownie did have plenty of brains, and he used them in a way that would have made extreme super villains rapaciously jealous. (It was said that Brownie’s Boy Scout Leader, one Marlon Tarterhouse by name and who had lived in Monroe, Louisiana, was on the verge of a mental breakdown. The man had abruptly moved to Barrow, Alaska for the very specific reason that it was the United States’ northernmost town and lay some 320 miles above the arctic circle, presumably out of Brownie’s malevolent reach. Apparently, Scout Leader Tarterhouse hoped that Barrow’s remoteness would preclude Brownie’s presence. Whether Brownie made it to Barrow or not, remained to be seen in Bubba’s humble opinion.)

  “Is Brownie coming?” The other person sounded mildly alarmed. Certainly the subject of Brownie was alarming enough to disturb even the most placid of individuals.

  “Oh, yes, he’s already here. His folks arrived yesterday, with both Brownie and the new baby.”

  “I’ll alert the media. People need to be warned.”

  “Prolly a good thing to do,” Bubba said. “Can we get back on subject?”

  “Of course. How do you feel about it?”

  “How do I feel about what?”

  “What you wanted to talk about.”

  “I feel sick. I bin dreaming about it. I keep thinking I’m going back in the woods and I’ll find one of those goshdarned holes that treasure hunters keep digging on the back forty, and it’ll have a little surprise in it. Well, not a little surprise, but one about five to six feet tall and weighing in accordingly.”

  “Do they still dig holes?”

  “Of course. Ma spread the word about Colonel Snoddy bringing Union gold back to the Snoddy Estate all them years ago, and how he buried it somewhere. You know. I tole them news people over and over again about how it was really a load of rusting iron ore and how Nathanial Snoddy was deep in throws of late stage syphilis. Sometimes the colonel thought his wife was the anti-Christ. Once he accused her of being Ulysses S. Grant. The colonel even threatened to shoot a local pastor with one of the cannons on the front lawn of City Hall. I do believe he would have done it, if he had been able to find a cannon ball. But Lord Almighty, there ain’t no gold, and did I mention it’s getting worse, on account of the Internet? There are treasure hunting sites that specifically mention the coordinates of Snoddy Mansion and say we’re saying there’s no gold so we can search for it and keep it to ourselves.” He emitted a long suffering sigh of purest condemnation. “I think we would have found it by now. Found everything else including that truck my great-great-uncle stole from some politician and buried it. Buried it, by God. What does that say about the Snoddys?”

  “It says you have a history of creative, interesting relatives.” The other person nodded, and Bubba knew that “creative, interesting relatives” was another way of saying “cracked, rip-roaring crazy folk.” Of course, that would always remind Bubba of…

  “My mother,” Bubba said. He paused to consider his mother. Miz Demetrice Snoddy had not been born a Snoddy, but she had squeezed herself into the family as if she had never been apart from it. In fact, she regularly made reference to the various and sundry ways she had “killed” her late husband, Elgin Snoddy, despite the fact that he had died of a heart attack. (Elgin had been a fan of too much liquor and fried foods, and had spit in the face of the old chestnut stating that only the good died young.)

  Recently, Miz Demetrice had been up to things that Bubba did not wish to contemplate. Smuggling orphan children into the United States, waving a red flag at the DEA’s bull-like attributes, and regularly running a high stakes and illegal floating poker game under the banner of the Pegramville Women’s Club were all her hobbies when she wasn’t protesting some political agenda or bailing her son out of the local jail. “I don’t know what to
say about my mother,” he finally said.

  “She told me that she killed your father by using a lightning rod during a thunderstorm,” the other person said, “which is a helluva way to do someone in.”

  “He had a heart attack,” Bubba said vehemently.

  “Have you ever considered why it is that Miz Demetrice comes up with all these ways to ‘metaphorically’ kill your late father?”

  “Because he was a metaphorical peckerwood who beat her when he was drunk and sometimes when he was sober, too. It was a blessing when God took him away.” Pa was probably roasting weenies in hell when it came down to brass tacks.

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “I feel like my mother is just fine. Can we just get back to the other thing, please?”

  “Very well. Tell me about your belief that this very bad thing will happen to you again.”

  “It’s happened, wait, how many times has it happened before?”

  “There was your ex-fiancée and Neal Ledbetter,” the person said. “There was that man in the Santa sled, but of course I remember him. And that poor old woman who was merely a tool in the great drama of bloody revenge.”

  “Beatrice Smothermon,” Bubba supplied the name. She had been a friend of Miz Demetrice’s.

  “There was a man who worked for DMV who was murdered by Nancy Musgrave and her brother.”

  “Dint happen in Pegram County,” Bubba said, “but I reckon he should count, too.”

  “The judge’s first wife and the man who blackmailed Constance Posey.”

  Bubba sighed. “Yeah, but the director fella wasn’t really murdered, so that cain’t count.”

  “You did find his body, and he was dead. Dead dead.”

  “Okay,” Bubba mumbled.

  “But there was only the one murder out at the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being.”

  “The one that we found. There were the others that Landry did in order to put his wacky plan into play. Also, I wasn’t alone when we found the doctor,” Bubba protested, “but I was alone when I found Blake Landry.”

  “Who wasn’t really dead, you recall.”

  “Who knew his family was such a bunch of psychotics?”

  “Bubba, you know you’re not really paranoid if someone is really after you,” the other person stated philosophically.

  “It’s just that it’s such a big day tomorrow,” Bubba said. “What if the worst happens? What if, you know?”

  “One of the most important concepts I’ve ever learned,” said the other person, “was that of self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  Bubba had once taken psychology 101 in college and vaguely recalled the term. “Do tell.”

  “Well, it was the sociologist, Robert Merton, who developed the theorem. In a nutshell—” the other person stopped to giggle— “no pun intended, it’s when someone believes something will happen, then it will happen because they believed in it. Usually it refers to something bad. Let’s say, if a teenager believes he will fail his driver’s test, then he socially and psychologically sabotages himself to fail the test, and voilà, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs.”

  “It’s not like finding a dead body is something I can make happen,” Bubba said dryly. “I can’t produce one out of the ether.”

  “You could if you caused someone to be dead,” the other said.

  “I’m not planning on killing anyone,” Bubba said.

  “There you go. If you’re not planning on killing anyone, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “But what if…”

  “Shmah. What if the sun suddenly goes supernova? What if aliens suddenly decide to invade? What if the President decides that he prefers smooth peanut butter over crunchy? These are all important what-if situations, but we can’t live our lives saying ‘What if?’ all the time.”

  “I understand,” Bubba said, “but no man has gone through what I’ve gone through in the past few years. It’s statistically impossible.”

  “Nothing is statistically impossible, Bubba. It’s statistically unlikely, but not impossible.”

  “Let’s just say it’s unlikely and then wham, there’s another dead body,” Bubba said. “I mean, do I attract them? Am I a dead body magnet? Is there something about me? It’s not like I’m in a position that would lend itself to that.”

  “Like a coroner or something like that.”

  “Exactly. I’m an auto mechanic. I’m getting married tomorrow, and I think a little honest paranoia and anxiety is warranted. In fact, it’s downright American to be suspicious and apprehensive.”

  “It’s not abnormal given prior circumstances.”

  “Okay, I kin feel like this. Check. Great. What do I do about it?”

  “Don’t find another dead body.”

  “I’m not sure I kin do that,” Bubba said. “I mean, how kin I make myself be a little less anxious?”

  “Did you know the top ten events that make us most stressed?” the other person asked. “It’s surprising, really.”

  “That’s not really part of my bedtime reading.”

  “Okay, death, of course. Typically the death of a spouse which the studies officially detach from the death of a relative. Then there’s divorce, injury, being fired from a job, being jailed, and marital separation. I think you can see why all of those would be stress producing.”

  Bubba had gone through some of the items, and did understand why they could be stress producing.

  “But then there’s items that you wouldn’t guess would be stressful, too.” The other one clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth. “Retirement, for example. Very stressful, too, but in different ways.”

  Bubba’s mother had retired from regular work, but she hadn’t stopped moving forward, so he didn’t quite get that one. Miz Demetrice was rarely stressed; conversely, stress often brought out her very best analytical thinking and reactions.

  “And marital reconciliation is extremely stressful.” The other person sighed heavily. “Will it work out? Is she still cheating on me with the Hell’s Angel from Anaheim? Am I going to get genital warts because, well, you know.”

  Bubba shrugged.

  “But marriage is the one I’m talking about. Getting married is considered a significant stressor in most human beings’ lives.”

  Naw. The only thing stressful about getting married was that dead bodies kept flinging themselves in the path down the aisle. A fella could step over them, but what about the bride in her big dress? She cain’t step over them. I’m digressing.

  “I can see the disbelief on your face, Bubba. I’m just saying that you’re experiencing a certain amount of anxiety because of all these other events in your life, and consequently you’re looking for something to blame it all on.”

  Bubba stared at the other person. “You mean, I’m stressed out because of the wedding, and I’m blaming it on the possibility of finding a dead body.”

  “Exactly,” the other person cried. “Quickly, how do you feel right at this moment?”

  “Better, actually,” Bubba said. “Like a load of cement was taken off my shoulders.”

  The other one nodded solemnly.

  “Thanks, David,” Bubba said.

  “Oh, I’m not David,” David said.

  They were in the small parlor of the Snoddy Mansion. Bubba lay on the velvet covered chaise lounge and a folding chair had been provided for David. On one side of the room was a tall, oak, built- in bookcase with a wide variety of reading material for one’s entertainment. Bubba knew that his mother used the room to read on the odd five minutes that she had to herself. Bubba also knew that Colonel Snoddy had once used the room as an office, and in this room, had personally penned a prolific and memorial list of all the voluptuous assets of the town’s most infamous prostitute, Miss Annalee Hyatt. (“Her wondrous breasts are as round as the moon and their pale luminosity is similar to the shine of a prize sow’s ass.”)

  Bubba sat up from where he had been reclining and ref
lected on David Beathard. David once had been a postman, but lately he was a resident of the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being. Sometimes he was other things, like a superhero, a pirate, Sherlock Holmes, and a psychiatrist. (Once he was supposed to be the first lady, but Bubba had never personally witnessed it.) The psychiatrist was very helpful at the moment, but David wasn’t dressed like what Bubba imagined a psychiatrist would wear. Instead, he wore a heavily decorated brocade tailcoat. The tail was neatly tucked to one side so he could sit down. The sleeves came to a neat end and ruffled white sleeves poked out impudently. The pristine white ruffles matched the white jabot at his neck that nearly obscured the front of the vest, which was a brown velvet with two rows of bronze buttons. The pants were black fall front trousers. The bottoms were tucked into a pair of black boots. (Preacher boots were the style that Bubba recalled, but danged if he could remember where he knew that from.)

  David stood up and plucked a hat from a nearby Jacobian table. The hat was black and almost a half a top hat, with a small grouping of colorful feathers attached to the side. He adjusted a brass monocular on his face and stared back at Bubba. The brass eye suddenly whirled and clicked as it adjusted itself automatically. A specialized lens of no more than a ¼ inch in diameter extended itself and focused on Bubba. (What kind of batteries does that use?)

  “It was helpful to talk it out,” Bubba said. He wasn’t sure what persona that David was into. It was equal parts Victorian gentleman and Mad Hatter with a splash of Jules Verne.

  “I’m a steampunk super villain,” David announced.

  “But you were a super hero before,” Bubba said. David had been The Purple Singapore Sling, sometimes known as The PSS, and had dressed accordingly all in purple, while fervently lauding his super human powers. Fortunately for all involved, the persona hadn’t lasted long, although The PSS had been rather helpful in solving a certain mystery.