Bubba and the Dead Woman (32 page)

“But here’s the funniest part,” continued Lloyd as they waited for the bartender to bring them the drinks. “Colonel Nathaniel Snoddy is no longer haunting the Snoddy Mansion, rattling chains, and coming through the secret door in the living room.”

“No?” breathed the wife.

“He’s over at the bordello, only it ain’t a bordello no more, the Red Door Inn,” Lloyd was sincere. “It’s a Bed and Breakfast, with Miss Doris Cambliss running the place. That’s where you can see the colonel waiting for his one and only true love, Miss Annalee Hyatt, the savior of Pegramville from the rampaging, murdering Union troops. He waits for her in front of her portrait, a full length one of the lady in all her wonderful glory in the living room of the Red Door Inn. Maybe when she comes to him, he won’t haunt the place no more. So there he sits, waiting for her, all ghostly like, pale and agleam, only seen in the latest hours of evening with an eerie greenish glow, as if from the gas lights of the late 1800's. People have been seeing him for weeks. On nights like this one, with the moon shining through the lead glass windows, so you don’t even need a light to walk through the house at midnight. The night as calm and silent as can be. You’ll see.”

“That’s where we’re staying,” the husband whispered excitedly. The pair of them were a goggle, mesmerized with the intricate story of murder, mayhem, ghostly hauntings, and stolen Union gold. It would make a fantastic movie, but it was a great tall tale.

Lloyd nodded, smiling to himself. So what if he aggrandized the truth a little. He considered, well, a lot. What were some colorful, trumped up additions to a good story? What difference did it make if the story got longer and more embroidered each time he told it and got some whiskey in him?

Maybe that wasn’t really the way it happened. But it was the way it should have. It should have.

The End