Chapter Two
Bubba and the Sheriff
Friday
While Bubba Snoddy was standing wordlessly over the dead woman, Neal Ledbetter extracted a compact, cellular phone, and made a call to 911. Bubba barely heard the real estate agent saying to the emergency operator, “Yep, Mary Lou, this is Neal Ledbetter down at the Snoddy’s place. Yes, I am still trying to get them to sell their house. Well, you wouldn’t believe how stubborn and obstinate that Miz Demetrice can be. You would? You remember the time that she chained herself to the cannon in the town square? You know the one the mayor passed out next to? Yeah. That was...oh, yeah, there’s a dead woman out here at the Snoddys’ place.”
Bubba took a half-stumbling step backward, suddenly discomfited in his realization of how short life was and how the past had come back to bite him on his proverbial white cheeks. Precious stopped her baying and approached her master with doglike concern. He hunkered down and put his hand on Precious’s head. The dog butted his hand in order to promote the proper human-dog social interaction of petting. He absently scratched behind one of her large, floppy ears and then behind the other. One of her hind legs scratched air in gleeful assistance.
In the background, Neal was saying, “It’s the damnedest thing. She looks like she’s been shot in the back...Because she is on her stomach lying down, Mary Lou. I can see where she’s been shot. I was in the Marines for four years. I know what a gunshot looks like...no, I never shot anyone when I was in the service. So the sheriff’s on his way, hmm? Good, what else has been happening? Someone broke into the library last week? Well, damn, what fer? Scattered around some of the old records? That sounds pretty stupid. Damned kids. Did you hear about George Bufford and his secretary, Hot Rosa?”
Bubba might have listened but his mind was in another world altogether. There was a dead woman lying in the tall grass in front of his house. But not only that, he knew this dead woman. He had known her for years, although he hadn’t seen her for the last three.
Her name had been Melissa Dearman. When he had first met her it had been Melissa Connor. Now she lay in the grass like a discarded toy. Her face was turned toward him, long honey-blonde hair spilling over her face and shoulders. What was truly disturbing was that her sky blue eyes were still open and staring just above her open mouth, a perfect ‘O’ of surprise. She seemed as though she had lain down in the grass a few minutes before and would bounce up any second now. Clad in blue jeans, a blue chambray shirt, and leather boots, she seemed as willowy and attractive as she had ever been.
Melissa hadn’t changed. He reconsidered. Except for being dead. Death changed everything, no doubt about that.
Bubba’s eyes went down her slim figure to that which had killed her. A bullet hole was prominent on her body, in the middle of her back, right between the shoulder blades, only a little blood staining the blue of her clothing directly around the injury. He wasn’t about to turn her over to see if there was an exit wound, but he expected there would be. It looked to be a large caliber weapon that had been used.
Bubba turned his head toward her neatly parked rental car. Melissa had gotten out of the vehicle, and then for some reason, the reason probably being some person with a large gun, had run toward the smaller house in the back. Long before she had reached what she might have thought was sanctuary, she had been ruthlessly shot in the back and died immediately. The tiny amount of blood about the wound told him that.
One of Bubba’s large hands was still and leaden on Precious’s head. She whimpered and retreated to a nearby tree to watch her master with an indignant look on her dogly face.
Finally, he stood up, and glanced over at Neal who finished his prolonged conversation with Mary Lou of the emergency line on how today’s society was quickly descending into the seventh level of hell. Neal clicked the ‘end’ button on the cell phone and said, “Sheriff will be here P.D.Q., Bubba.”
Bubba, Neal knew, was not a real talkative man, especially after he had returned from military service some three years before. It was Neal’s personal opinion that the Snoddys, especially the matriarch, Miz Demetrice, were mostly a bunch of snobs who thought that their kaka didn’t stink. Of course, this opinion was tainted by the fact that Demetrice had three times refused to sell any of the Snoddy lands to Neal’s corporation, so that a Walmart Supercenter might be built here. The nearest one was fifteen miles away and Pegramville needed one, by God. It was, after all, the best location in the town, with plenty of room for a huge parking lot and a gardening section. It was dying, no pun intended, to be a Walmart, if only Neal could convince the Snoddys of that. There was also the additional advantage of this particular venue being legal unlike other suggestions that Neal had received lately.
However, Miz Demetrice had chased Neal off the front veranda with a shotgun over her arm the last time he had dared step on the property and threatened to give the realtor a ‘shotgun enema’ if he ever returned. Where did a tiny old woman learn a phrase like that? he wondered, awestricken.
But Neal wasn’t the type to give up, and having noticed Bubba this morning driving in front of him in his old, battered truck with Precious slobbering in the wind, halfway out the passenger window, he had decided to give it the old college try. Certainly, Miz Demetrice wasn’t getting any younger, and Bubba might inherit the properties any time, given the fact that enormous jet-liners were falling out of the sky each and every blessed day. An individual never knew when one might fall on Miz Demetrice’s little, stuck-up head. So he parked his Lincoln Conny just in front of the big house and ambulated around the building to have an influencing word with the younger Snoddy.
Even so, there had come this other problem. A dead woman was lying in the grass in the garden of the Snoddy mansion with Bubba staring down at her as if he had never seen a woman before. Just as sure as anything Neal had ever seen.
Bubba took another long look at Melissa, stepped forward, leaned, and closed her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He didn’t say a word.
Neal commented, “I don’t think you should touch her, Bubba.”
Quite frankly, Bubba didn’t care what Neal Ledbetter thought. He snapped to his dog, “Precious! Heel!”
Precious’s ears flopped as she obeyed. She recognized the tone of voice that her master had and wasn’t about to disobey. She scampered up to Bubba and placed herself accordingly, just behind his feet.
Neal watched as Bubba and dog tromped off in the direction of the caretaker’s house. Bubba entered the house and slammed the door with a resounding bang. The realtor looked around, surprised to be by himself. Well, he amended to himself, me and a dead woman. A little chill ran down his spine. He sure hoped that the sheriff would make it here quickly.
Bubba came back out of the caretaker’s house with a sheet, throwing the door open with a loud thud. He reverently covered up the dead woman with the white cloth and went back inside. A few minutes later, he came back out with a large cup of coffee, Precious following at his heels. He set himself down in an Adirondack chair on the porch of the house with a large thumping noise that threatened the entire house. Precious scooted under the chair, peering suspiciously out at Neal, who was standing in the middle of the garden with a dumb look plastered across his face.
Neal, who could smell fresh coffee from five hundred feet, approached the porch as if there were a lit bomb sitting on it. His nose twitched and he moved toward the caretaker’s house. He took one step onto the porch steps when Bubba said in a low but clear voice, “I wouldn’t.”
The realtor froze in place, one foot halfway to the second step. “Like to have a cup of coffee, Bubba, if I might.” His own voice was almost a petrified squeak, breaking on ‘might.’.
Bubba said, “Bufford’s Gas and Grocery has fine coffee. Especially the pot I made this very morning.” He gestured with his cup, not even looking at the other man. “It’s thataway.”
Neal retreated to the far side of the yard, to the position farthest away from the
woman’s body and Bubba, without actually being out of sight of both. Fortunately for his peace of mind, the sheriff drove up in a county car, even while he was retreating to his perceived position of safety.
Sheriff John Headrick was another big man. He stood a whopping six foot five inches and liked to add another inch by wearing cowboy boots with a little heel. He filled out his tan uniform as if he had been poured into it. His steel gray hair matched his steel gray eyes, which went along with his sun-grizzled face and skin. When he was mad, his flesh turned the exact shade of Pepto-Bismol. When he was coldly aloof, he had skin the color of weathered leather.
Known as Sheriff John to his loyal constituents and disloyal adversaries alike, he squeezed himself out of the county vehicle, studying the situation with a hardened look. He didn’t miss the realtor standing in the shade of the big Snoddy place nor Bubba sipping coffee on the caretaker’s porch. Finally, his eyes caught the stark white of the sheet covering the woman’s body with its two pathetic boots sticking out of the long grass in the garden.
A few minutes later, he had her purse in his big hands flipping through her wallet. The rental car had been unlocked, with a woman’s black purse sitting on the passenger seat for God and everyone to see. Here was her name, Sheriff John ascertained, and then just behind him, Bubba said, “Melissa Dearman.”
Sheriff John looked up, his eyebrows growing together into one long piece. Neal was still skulking in the shadows, obviously cowed by Bubba’s presence. But Bubba himself had silently risen from the porch, approaching the sheriff without him even hearing his footfalls.
It startled the older man and one of his hands twitched toward the pistol in his gun belt. Bubba watched the movement and stepped back with a calm and calculating look on his face. His large hands wrapped around the coffee for the other man to clearly see. Sheriff John returned his hand to the wallet and flipped it shut, replacing it into the purse with a smooth movement. “You know her, Bubba?” he asked.
“Yes,” Bubba answered. He took another long drink of his steaming coffee. He didn’t think he was going to be sleeping anytime soon and would need the caffeine.
Sheriff John’s gray eyebrows rose up eloquently. He and Bubba stared at each other from similar heights. Bubba was one of the few men around Pegram County who could do so. Furthermore, he wasn’t a man to be intimidated by the police, or the great man himself, Sheriff John Headrick.
“He was standing over her when I arrived,” called Neal from the other side of the yard.
Sheriff John didn’t look away from Bubba. “That so, Bubba?”
“I believe Mr. Ledbetter followed my truck almost all of the way from Bufford’s, after I got off from work today,” Bubba commented mildly.
“That true, Neal?”
“...Yeah.” Neal didn’t want to admit anything but did so grudgingly.
“Do you know what happened, Bubba?” asked Sheriff John, with a gesture toward the body.
“Did he read you his rights, Bubba Nathaniel Snoddy?” Miz Demetrice Snoddy shrieked from around the side of the sheriff’s car. She had heard the news from Alice Mercer, who was active in the weekly poker games. Alice, in turn, had been called by her sister, Ruby, who had been walking her dog, Bill Clinton, when Foot Johnson had stopped in his car to tell her. Foot Johnson had been over at the county building cleaning the offices there when Mary Lou told him. Mary Lou, the operator of the emergency line, was widely known to have a large problem keeping her mouth shut about the goings on of Pegram County no matter how many times Sheriff John had warned her.
Consequently, Miz Demetrice had hauled her five-foot-nothing frame out of the ongoing poker game with a loud, “What on God’s green earth is a-happening around this forsaken little pit?” and a “Wilma, don’t you dare look at my cards, you chicanery artist!” Then she had driven like the dickens to reach the Snoddy place before Bubba was ruthlessly murdered in a senseless shootout involving twelve deputy sheriffs, one SWAT team, and three Pegramville police officers, as Alice had informed her were all front and present on her property.
Miz Demetrice looked around with a slight air of disappointment. To her immense disheartenment, there was only one police officer, one browbeaten real estate agent who was giving her the stinky eye, and a sheet covered lump with boots. “What is going on around here, Bubba?” she demanded of her son, shaking her purse at the man who towered over her.
“Dead woman,” Sheriff John said succinctly. He towered over the petite Miz Demetrice as well, but he knew better than to get too close.
“Dead woman,” repeated Miz Demetrice. She stood up straight in her best flower-print dress with her hat askew, as though she had simply come from church. Her white hair was crammed up under the hat, and the worry in her blue eyes belied the calm in her voice. She turned her slim figure toward the sheet-covered body in the garden. “There’s a dead woman in my garden,” she stated unequivocally.
“Yes’m,” Sheriff John agreed solemnly. “Do you know who it is, Ma’am?”
“Sheriff John,” Miz Demetrice gazed upon the much taller man with scorn, “that woman’s got a sheet over her. How am I supposed to know who it is?”
Sheriff John sighed and turned to her son. “Bubba, what happened here?”
Miz Demetrice turned her blue eyes on her son. “Don’t say nothing, boy. We’ll get a lawyer. The best lawyer in East Texas. I’ll bet he hasn’t even read you your rights yet. Do you know how often the police abuse the rights of the underprivileged in this state alone? Who is that woman? What’s a matter with you, son? Can’t you speak to your own mother?”
Bubba took another drink of coffee and studied the world around him. It was a pleasant morning with only mild humidity. It was the kind of late spring morning that would have normally had him out on the lake with a fishing rod in one hand, a beer in the other, and Precious snoring up ‘Z’s at his feet. But instead, here he was.
His mother stared at him waiting for a reply as she had finally shut her mouth. Sheriff John regarded him as if Bubba had just crawled out from underneath a rock. Neal was malingering in the shadows of the big house because he was wondering if Sheriff John could protect him from Miz Demetrice once she realized that the realtor was once again on her property. And lastly, there was the dead woman lying only feet from them.
Bubba gestured at the dead woman under the snow white sheet that flapped gently in a spring breeze. His coffee had grown cold in his cup and he dumped it out. “That there is Mrs. Melissa Dearman, Mama. She was the woman I was going to marry when I was in the Army. You know the one I found in bed with an officer. The same officer whose arm I broke right before the Army decided that I shouldn’t be a sergeant anymore.” He vigorously nodded his head up and down at his mother as her face filled with comprehension. “That’s who the woman is.”
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