Bubba and the Dead Woman

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bubba and Another Dead Body

  Friday

  The bullet missed Bubba Snoddy by a gap equal to the national deficit. Instead, it hit the side of the house with a loud zing and ricocheted off one of the tall columns supporting the top veranda. The sound of the gunshot whirred like a maddened bee and echoed loudly into the sultry night.

  Bubba ducked, a little after the fact, but he still ducked.

  Precious decided that the whole thing was too much for her and hightailed it back around the side of the house, peering over her shoulder as if a much larger animal with huge teeth was nipping at her heels.

  In the woods to the north of the Snoddy Mansion Bubba could hear someone fumbling around as he or she scrambled down a path of their own making. Bubba cautiously lifted his head but he couldn’t see any kind of light in the woods. The burglar had waited to shoot Bubba and then was taking off through the woods, apparently without a flashlight. Or perhaps they chose not to use one in order to remain undetectable in the gloom that was nighttime.

  Bubba rose to his feet, yelled for his dog to heel, and took off after the unknown individual. Precious kept back from her master a good long distance. She knew that discretion was the better part of valor. Someone was in the woods with a gun, and she knew that guns would hurt any dog no matter how good they were. Her master was clearly out of his mind. If she had been human she would have stuck her tongue out at his back disappearing into the tree line. But she wasn’t. So she didn’t.

  Bubba made almost as much noise as the burglar. He tripped over a fallen tree in the heavily overgrown thicket, full of every kind of growing ivy from honeysuckle to poison ivy and surrounded with dozens of trees from birch to cedar. Unseen animals took off for quieter locales as he clumsily blundered through three bushes and narrowly avoided a precariously leaning cedar. The woods on this side of the property hadn’t been cleared for over a hundred years, and Miz Demetrice liked the look of it, so it was left untouched. In effect, it was almost a dark, green jungle of trees, and that was during the daylight hours.

  Cursing and jumping around like a fool with a lit match in-between his toes, Bubba decided that having a flashlight would have been a good, if not tremendous, idea. He stopped for a moment, and the woods had become silent. Not even a cricket or a June bug was sounding off. The presence of strident humans had hushed the lush copse.

  His shin hurt like the devil, the skin on his arms felt like it had been scraped with sandpaper, and he was groggy from having so little sleep of late. Bubba was not only aggravated, but he was beginning to get really angry.

  The woods went on for several almost impenetrable acres in this direction as Bubba knew well from childhood excursions. On the other side of this lot was Farmer’s Road and a little strip mall where Miz Demetrice was inclined to purchase vegetables from a vendor set up next to it. It would be a good place to park a getaway car where people wouldn’t look at it overly instead of alongside the road beside the Snoddy Mansion, where everyone and his cousin would remember it being parked.

  Bubba decided that boxer shorts with Old Glory or not, he was headed for the strip mall to lay in wait for the burglar. The man might be hiding under a shrub right now, and Precious was next to useless. Nevertheless, the intruder would have to come out of the woods sooner or later. There couldn’t be that many cars parked at the strip mall at four in the morning. Bubba knew he could narrow his focus down considerably.

  He slipped through the forest, avoiding long strands of poison ivy that draped off trees like curtains from a window. His running shoes crunched a little on the vegetation-laden floor, but that couldn’t be helped. Carefully, he headed toward the north, following what he could see of the North Star. After a while, there was pink in the east, and the stars began to disappear. The crickets and cicadas resumed their noisy music, then the birds began to sing as well, but Bubba never heard his intruder again.

  Precious followed her master with a little whine of protest, but as she calmed down, she began to be happier about her location. Despite having gotten out of a warm bed she was in the woods with her human and having a good old time. This was clearly a dog’s life.

  Bubba hefted the baseball bat in his right hand. He was beginning to think that he had gone in the wrong direction when he suddenly saw the street lights of Farmer’s Road through the dense trees. Although the sun was coming up it was still twilight, full of long shadows and pockets of unfathomable darkness.

  He wasn’t the only one there. Off to his left someone else burst through the thicket and launched themself in the direction of the strip mall. Bubba bellowed appropriately and took off in heated pursuit. Precious howled and followed, ready to bite whatever was causing her master anxiety as long as they didn’t have a gun.

  The intruder, who apparently thought that he or she lost Bubba in the woods, screamed like a girl whose brother opened the bathroom door while she was on the toilet with her panties around her ankles. Then the person turned and shot awkwardly at Bubba again, missing by several bushes, two trees, and a provoked armadillo. Birds flushed from the trees, attempting to escape the noise of the weapon.

  Just before Bubba was the person who was so intent on scaring Miz Demetrice. The individual was barely visible in the dim night, a medium-sized figure dressed in black clothing. Bubba was just about to jump right on the intruder, rifle or not, when a large hole in the ground appeared before him, and he fell in, hitting his head on the side as he fell. Actually, the hole was already there, but if one asked Bubba at later time, perhaps when he had regained consciousness, he would have said, “That hole just jumped right out in front of me,” just like Newt Durley’s telephone pole.

  But he was unconscious. Therefore, he didn’t see the black-clothed person holding a rifle, run across Farmer’s Road, like the devil himself were behind him, and climb into a vehicle, which abruptly started and drove off. There were no witnesses except maybe Precious, who wasn’t saying anything to nobody.

  When Bubba came to, he heard whining which sounded like a broken fan belt. “Gotta adjust that fan belt,” he muttered. “Sounds like it’s ‘bout to slip like it was running on snail snot.” He opened his eyes. He knew he was in a hole because it was now daylight, and full daylight at that. Presently, he could plainly see that he was in a hole. There was black dirt all around him with roots and rocks interspersed in the earth. He knew that he had hit his head on something because he had a headache akin to someone pounding on his skull with an iron mallet. The whining, incidentally, came from Precious, who was lying on the side of the hole, her head resting on her paws, as she continued her vigil above her master, gazing down upon him with soulful brown eyes. Her unsaid question would have been something like, “Just what in the hell are you doing in that hole, hmm?”

  “On a scale from one to ten,” Bubba said conversationally to his dog, “I would have to say that this day is a one. A one being the worst day I ever had. I thought that would have been the day I broke the Major’s arm, but I was wrong. That was a one and a half. This is a one.”

  Precious lifted her head and cocked it, listening to her master’s voice. At least he was awake.

  Bubba climbed out of the four-foot-deep hole, bringing the baseball bat with him. All he was dressed in was a pair of boxer shorts with the picture of Old Glory across them and badly tied Reeboks. There were scrapes from the brush and trees across his body. There were mosquito bites punctuating several muscle groups. And he smelled like the earthy scent of eau de locker room. “Holy Jesus, I’m ready to go to town,” Bubba said with a weary chuckle and immediately wished that he had not done so. His head pounded like a demon was playing on kettledrums inside.

  He surveyed the hole he had fallen into and the immense tree root that he had cracked his head against. Someone had been digging on the property. Daylight trickled down through thick trees and vegetation; they were rays of light mottled with dust motes. Around him were a few other holes, all dug within the last few
days judging by the color of the freshly turned earth.

  Rubbing the sore spot on his head, not a sore spot, but a lump the size of a tennis ball, Bubba puzzled over the hole. It wasn’t a grave. It didn’t look like much at all. But there in the dirt pile next to the hole was a six-inch-by-a-foot piece of rusting iron. It looked like an old piece of a tiller. He picked it up, looked at the hole again, and then back at the rusting metal in his hands. He walked over to the next hole. In the dirt next to that hole was another piece of rusting metal on top. It was unidentifiable except that it was rusting iron of some type. Clarity came to Bubba suddenly. Someone with a metal detector was using it in the woods to find things long buried. Once they had recovered what was clearly a piece of junk they had stopped digging and discarded the trash.

  Lucidity uncluttered Bubba’s mind so abruptly he almost gasped. He knew what their ghost was after. It all made perfect sense now. But he bit the side of his mouth. What didn’t make sense was Melissa’s death. She couldn’t have seen anyone digging in the dirt, could she? But she could have seen someone searching at the house. The one night that Miz Demetrice, Bubba, and Adelia Cedarbloom were certain to be gone. The one night that someone could have had a free hand in finding something hidden. But there was the fact that the police had a phone record of someone calling Melissa from the Snoddy Mansion. Someone had to know that she had been coming.

  Bubba dropped the piece of tiller on the forest floor. Precious pounced on it, sniffing it eagerly. She was one hungry dog and felt as though her sacrifice to protect her master throughout the night was not properly appreciated. She dismissed the metal as inedible, not to mention, undesirable, and woofed softly to Bubba. Feed me, dammit. She put a wet, sloppy nose on his leg.

  He reached down with a long arm and scratched Precious’s head. She leaned into it. Now that’s more like it. It’s not Alpo but it ain’t bad.

  The pieces of the puzzle were still rumbling around in Bubba’s head. Some things began to make sense, and other things that he hadn’t connected to the whole situation were promptly connectable.

  But who’s behind it all? he asked himself. Who, dammit, who?

  Bubba walked to the edge of the forest where he could clearly see the strip mall. His intruder was all too likely to be long gone. But he looked out all the same. His mouth dropped open. Apparently, he had been lying in the hole for a long time. As he surveyed the mini-mall it appeared as though everyone but the kitchen sink was present going about their daily business.

  Off to one side were Miz Demetrice and Adelia arguing with the vegetable vendor over oranges. Adelia’s old Volvo was parked next to the vendor’s cart. Roscoe Stinedurf was filling up his truck with gasoline at the gas station on the other end of the strip mall. One of his wives, Bubba couldn’t tell them apart, was sitting in the cab of the truck nursing a baby. Neal Ledbetter was standing outside of the copy place, talking with, of all people, Lurlene Grady and none other than Noey Wheatfall, owner and operator of the Pegram Café.

  Bubba could faintly recall Lurlene talking about Noey’s plans to open up a new restaurant on the other side of Pegramville, and this was clearly it.

  Finally, up drove Sheriff John Headrick in his county car, and beside him sat Deputy Willodean Gray. They both got out and started talking to Roscoe Stinedurf as he continued to fill the tank of his truck.

  Bubba closed his mouth with an audible snap. Everyone was there but the Major, and then his mouth dropped open again. Out of the dry-cleaning store walked Major Michael Dearman, looking distinctly green in his gills, but there he was all the same. He was carrying his uniform in a plastic bag.

  Almost everyone who even remotely had something to do with the mystery of who murdered Melissa Dearman was there. Bubba was intelligibly dumbfounded.

  Precious whined loudly again. Bubba stepped back, broken from his reverie. He wanted to get back to the house before anyone saw him wearing only his shorts and Reeboks. He was sure he’d never hear the end of that if he didn’t beat his mother and her housekeeper home. God help him.

  That wasn’t his only immediate problem. Bubba’s subpoenaed testimony was due at one PM that day, and he couldn’t miss it. He looked up and decided that it was late in the morning. Besides which, the temperature was not at its hottest. Either that or a man should go around in boxer shorts more often.

  It was to his benefit that no one saw poor Bubba as he made his way back to the caretaker’s house, with Precious following at a cheerful pace. When he got inside his house, he discovered that while he had been chasing someone around the woods, someone else had been searching through his own house. After all, he had left it wide open.

  Bubba looked around his home in dismay. It was as if the Sheriff and his merry men, and one pretty woman of course, had come by to do their search again. Except this time, whoever it had been, had left things a little in disarray. Nothing was broken. Not that there was all that much to disarrange, but everything was either on its side, or on the floor, or put in backwards. He knew it hadn’t been the Sheriff and company.

  Willodean had been correct in her estimations. There was an accomplice. A devious accomplice who had waited until Bubba had been lured by the sound of the first guy banging around in the big house. Then what? Led him out into the woods where Bubba was supposed to get lost like the dumb redneck he was. Or fall into a hole?

  Bubba needed ibuprofen. And a shower. But first he fed his dog. She was grateful.

  An hour later he felt almost human. All that was left was to find some clothing that appeared halfway presentable. He discovered that he didn’t have any clean jeans. So he finally found a pair that he had worn the day he had come from the jail. They had been kicked under the bed by none other than Bubba himself, whose idea of laundry was to wait until each piece of clothing could stand up on its own or until Miz Adelia took pity on him, which was more often than the former.

  He picked up the jeans and the green button fell out of the pocket onto the floor with a little ping. Bubba picked up the button and looked at it. It still looked like something he ought to recognize. He had assumed it was one of his mother’s outfit’s buttons, but she had denied ownership. He shrugged. Perhaps it was Miz Adelia’s. He put it in back in the pocket of the jeans.

  Therefore, Bubba was mostly clean and presentable when he appeared before the Pegramville Grand Jury for his testimony. He was asked to present his side of the events of the night that Melissa Dearman was murdered. He was also asked about his involvement with her during his time in service.

  Bubba admitted all. After all, it was hardly a secret now. “Yes, I was engaged to Melissa Connor...Yes, I broke her husband’s arm. Only he wasn’t her husband then...No, I didn’t shoot Melissa Dearman...No, I don’t know who shot her, but I’d like to...Because it ain’t right, even if she did sleep around on me when we were affianced...Thank you, Mrs. Barnstable, I appreciate that...No, Mr. Rittenhouse, I still didn’t kill Melissa.”

  Finally, he was allowed to leave. Sheriff John was waiting outside as if prepared to arrest Bubba again. That thought confused Bubba. He already thought he was under arrest for doing Melissa in. The indictment itself seemed to be a way of saying, “Oh, by the by, you can go ahead and officially arrest Bubba Snoddy now. Here’s our golden stamp of approval.”

  Surprisingly, Sheriff John merely stared at Bubba for a long minute. Bubba’s natural inclination was to stare back. Their similar size made it easy for them to do so. However, it was Bubba who looked away first. He didn’t have time for manly games of show. Perhaps the Sheriff thought that some sort of police officer psychology would allow him to pierce Bubba’s mind with vengeful eyes that impelled the suspect into confessing all.

  Naw, thought Bubba. That would be stupid.

  Bubba stopped at the library which was about three blocks down from the Pegram County Courthouse. It was a right smart little building built in 1986 with funds provided by the Lion’s Club, the Optimists, and Miz Demetrice’s group of avid gamblers, who put aside t
heir obsessions for a time, to raise money for a worthy purpose. Federal funds provided monies for one librarian and two aides. And most of the books in the library were not too old.

  “Miz Clack,” Bubba greeted the librarian. Nadine Clack was sitting at the front desk shuffling through books. She was a short woman, not even five feet tall, and plump to boot. Despite the fact that she was in her early forties, her hair was completely white. Then there were the gold-rimmed Ben Franklin glasses that all librarians seemed determined to wear, that Nadine did, in fact, wear. Finally, it was a known fact to all of Pegramville that Nadine was not a woman with any kind of sense of humor, which put her in the same ilk as Nurse Dee Dee Lacour. Some would call her mean, but Bubba didn’t think that. She was stern. But she was never cruel. Little children kept quiet in her library. Hell, so did everyone else.

  “Bubba Snoddy,” Nadine said as she surveyed him through the spectacles which had slid down to the edge of her nose, causing her to tilt her head far back to see him.

  He looked around. The library seemed as empty as a crypt. He mentally chastised himself for using the comparison. It didn’t do a bit of good to make that kind of judgment. That was like asking God to kick a fella in the ass and pretty please with sugar on top, too.

  “Heard you had some break-in’s too,” he noted, all friendly like.

  Nadine stared up at Bubba though lenses that made her eyes look as large as a bug-eyed critter from the red planet. She waited for him to come to the point.

  “The archive section?” he asked.

  Nadine nodded slowly.

  Bubba came around to the side of her desk and sat down so that he wouldn’t be the cause of the crick that would surely result if she continued to look up at him in that fashion. “Look, Miz Clack, I know you’ve heard I’m in a bit of difficulty of late.”

  She nodded again. The expression on her stern face didn’t soften a bit.

  “I wonder if you can tell if any of your old papers are missing,” Bubba continued, even while she nodded.

  Nadine didn’t say anything else so Bubba added, “That would be Civil War era papers, maybe diaries from Colonel Nathaniel Snoddy, maybe?”

  Nadine finally spoke, “That’s correct, Bubba. I didn’t care to share that particular information with your mother.” So Nadine didn’t care to have a situation with Miz Demetrice. Miz Demetrice rubbed Nadine the wrong way and vice versa. Bubba could surely understand that.

  Bubba raised his eyebrows. “Well, I can appreciate that. Anybody been asking about those papers lately?”

  “No, dear, I suspect that’s why they stole them instead. The Sheriff seems to think that it’s kids pulling a prank, but it’s obvious that he’s a plain fool.” Nadine rested her arms on her desk and carefully adjusted her glasses on her nose. The better to see you with, my dear, he thought and almost laughed. My, what big eyes you have, Miz Clack.

  Bubba sat back in the straight-backed chair. He wasn’t surprised about the missing Snoddy papers. Nathaniel Snoddy had been his great-great-something-grandfather and had been prone to writing everything down. And that meant everything. He had written the weekly grocery lists and kept them in his diaries. He had written the state of the weather every day. He had even written about his conquests of women, irrespective of his thirty-year-long marriage to the long-suffering Cornelia Adams Snoddy. Miz Demetrice had gleefully cleared out most of the rotting papers by donating them to the historical society, which in turn stored their materials at the library, hoping that Nadine would eventually sort them out. Apparently she had.

  “That old legend again,” he muttered darkly. It seemed to surface every so many decades or so. The last time had been when there had been an article in...

  “People Magazine,” said Nadine, succinctly. “There was one person who displayed a certain interest in that edition. You know which one, the June edition of 19-something or other. He sat right over there not a month ago and made three copies at the Xerox machine.” She pointed at the table and machine, helpfully.

  “I thought Miz Demetrice told you to burn every copy,” returned Bubba grimly.

  “Now, that is not the attitude to display in attempting to uncover information from me,” Nadine warned in a level voice.

  “Because of thrice-damned gossip, I fell into a really, really deep hole early this morning, dug by some asinine fool,” said Bubba. It had seemed like a bottomless pit at the time.

  “Neal Ledbetter,” Nadine said, clicking her tongue. “Mr. Ledbetter seemed very interested in the Snoddy properties of late.”

  Bubba’s face was black with anger. He politely thanked Nadine, who watched him exit the library with a certain amount of concern. She was so concerned that she telephoned the fool of a Sheriff about the incident.

  Consequently, it was Sheriff John who found Bubba with Neal Ledbetter’s corpse in the realtor’s office.

  ~ ~ ~