by C. L. Bevill
“Of course,” Nancy replied. In the library Miz Demetrice had gone silent. His mother was aware that people were standing at the door where they could hear her speaking on her cell phone. Miz Demetrice could be circumspect when she had an inkling, not that it was a common occurrence.
Nancy tilted her head and smiled grimly at Bubba. “It’s too bad about the Christmas Festival though.”
“Well, having a fella murdered right at the Christmas/Nativity scene does put a…damper on festivities,” Bubba put out. “It ain’t right surprising that the city decided to cancel the revelries.” Poor Steve. It was a sorry situation that he was dead, but even Bubba knew that Steve would have loved to know that he was going out with a bang. He would have loved the attention. The only problem that Steve would have had, besides the foul little setback of being murdered, was that he couldn’t wear his “The ballot is stronger than the bullet. - Abraham Lincoln” t-shirt so that everyone could have applauded his ever present political maneuverings to the very end.
The social worker hesitated a moment while Miz Demetrice said to the person on the phone, “I’ve got to go now, dear. Don’t do anything rash. I’m not sure if that will work…in our favor. I’ll come see you tomorrow, and we’ll figure out what to do next. Goodbye now.”
“Perhaps someone had an issue with Christmas itself,” Nancy suggested gently. “In order to put a murdered man in such a place, it would have been sort of a slap in the face to the whole idea of a merry Christmas.”
Bubba stared at Nancy. He hadn’t thought about it at all. What did Christmas have to do with a murder victim? It was a good question. Someone had put Steve Killebrew there in the scene, as if that was exactly where they had wanted him to be. One of the rumors had related that Steve hadn’t been killed on the spot. Someone had murdered him elsewhere and transported his body. It wasn’t a big task for a big strapping kind of guy like Bubba, but Miz Demetrice wouldn’t have been able to manage it. After all, Steve had been about two hundred pounds of…well, dead meat.
It had been in the back of Bubba’s head that someone had done it to Steve just so that his body would be found quickly. But why not just call from a payphone to report a dead body wherever Steve had been murdered?
Lots of possible answers to that. Steve could have been murdered at the murderer’s home or business. The murderer didn’t know where a good anonymous payphone was to be located. Neither do I, for that matter, thought Bubba. The killer wanted to make a point, just like Nancy suggested.
Miz Demetrice made a noise inside the library and then came to the door. She studied both Bubba and Nancy with that familiar mulish expression on her face. Then neutrality settled over her features like she had suddenly landed in Switzerland. “Miz Musgrave,” she said formally.
“We appreciate your kindness, Mrs. Snoddy,” Nancy said properly. “Perhaps we’ll have another chance to work together. I realize how much of a…trial…my patients can be, and I apologize if we’ve caused you excessive trouble.”
“Not at all,” Miz Demetrice said smoothly. It wasn’t a lie, Bubba knew. His mother had had much rowdier dinner parties than this one had been. One memorable occasion had ended in a duel fought with muzzle loaders owned by one of the Snoddy ancestors. Fortunately for the attendees there was a considerable amount of liquor involved, and both contestants were abysmal shots, missing each other by the proverbial broad side of a barn door. “The three dears are vastly entertaining and truly mean no harm to others.”
An odd look crossed over Nancy’s face. Bubba had turned his head slightly and seen it before it brusquely vanished. He would have called it…concerned? Concern crossed with abject curiosity perhaps.
With that, Nancy Musgrave took her charges, loaded them in the institute’s large white van and toted them away, presumably back to the hospital for their evening ration of medications.
Everyone else seemed to simmer down after that. Fudge took a bottle of whiskey into the large living room and guarded it jealously. Virtna ignored the lure of antique hunting and comforted Brownie with awkward sayings. “There. There. You look as unhappy as a tick that just fell off a fat dog. You should be smiling like a possum eating grapes. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a bit.”
Brownie snuffled and latched onto Precious as if she was a baby’s blanket. Precious whined uncertainly and stared at Bubba as if begging him to rescue her, but Bubba wasn’t inclined to move from one of the more comfortable chairs.
Aunt Caressa fell asleep next to the huge brick fireplace after stoking it up unbearably. She was perpetually cold, and everyone else was ready to strip down to bare skin when she was done. It turned out that she did snore like a cat throwing up a hairball.
Miz Demetrice sat next to a window with a book that she wasn’t reading in her lap, contemplating nothing at all. Bubba would have confronted her, but he had a wretched headache, and he didn’t feel like going through more of her shrewd badinage. He was thinking sincerely about what Beatrice Smothermon would have gotten that would have caused her to screech about it; it was something that Miz Demetrice had gotten as well. What could it be?
The next morning he happened to be making coffee in the kitchen and searching through the cabinets for aspirin when the phone rang. He picked it up with an aggrieved, “Hello?”
“Bubba?” Miz Demetrice said anxiously.
“What’s wrong, Ma?” Bubba said immediately. He hadn’t heard her car leave, but then the pain medication had pretty much knocked him tushy over tin cups for the remainder of the night.
“Oh, Bubba, I never knew that it would feel like this,” Miz Demetrice said urgently. “Even when I stabbed your father with a pitchfork back in the day, it wasn’t like this.”
“Mama?” Bubba said straightaway. “Where you at?”
“I went to Beatrice Smothermon’s house,” Miz Demetrice said faintly as if someone was listening.
Then there was a long silence.
“Ma?” Bubba barked. “Ma? You still there?”
“Yes, Bubba dear,” Miz Demetrice said. “Well, that’s the thing. Beatrice is dead, and I found her, just like you’ve been doing to all those other folks. It feels just horrible.”
~ ~ ~
Chapter Six - Bubba is a Suspect…Again
Monday, December 26th -
Bubba’s truck had been returned to the Snoddy Mansion on Christmas Day by one of his friends from Culpepper’s Garage. Although his buddy hadn’t cleaned out the remnants of Hurricane Precious as it had roared through hapless Tupperware containers, Bubba was glad to have the vehicle back. He didn’t really want to ask Fudge if he could borrow his truck so that he could go rescue Miz Demetrice from her unspeakable discovery of a dead body. Not that Bubba would have asked Fudge; he would have taken the vehicle because time was of the crux.
The keys were still in the Chevy, and the truck started with only a reluctant rattling moan of protest. He beat hot feet to Beatrice Smothermon’s house just a few miles away, on the edge of Pegramville proper. It was a large place, not as big as the Snoddy Mansion, but not nearly as decrepit looking either. A Southern colonial, or something that Bubba would have guessed was a Southern colonial style, it had red brick walls and was something like a 1 ?-story structure. Shiny white columns supported a gable in the front where a car could be parked. In fact, two cars sat there cohabitating as if they were married. One was Beatrice’s Ford Taurus. The other was Miz Demetrice 1987 Cadillac Coupe Deville.
The police were portentously absent. Bubba had a thought. Perhaps his mother had only called him and not anyone else. From his past history he knew that was a bad idea. Additionally Big Joe would start running down the same scenario that had led Bubba to having his head bounced off an impressive piece of outerwear for a human’s lower appendages.
Bubba couldn’t be concerned with that at the moment. He was thinking about his mother. The phone had disconnected after her frantic call, and she wouldn’t pick up again. His anxious efforts to call Miz Demetrice back had
resulted in immediate rollovers to her voicemail. The truck spit gravel everywhere as he slammed on his brakes just behind the Cadillac and the Ford. Then he threw himself out of the vehicle, yelling, “MAMA! Where the hell are you?!” He brought a length of hard ash wood that he left in the truck just for the purpose of dissuading individuals from being upset with him. Or in this case, it had the purpose of dissuading individuals from hurting those whom he loved.
“Calm down, boy,” the woman in question said firmly. Bubba spun and saw that she had been standing outside by one of the large columns supporting the gable. He hadn’t seen her because she was wearing a smart white dress with a green belt strapped around her petite waist. She had blended right in. “I’m all right.”
Bubba froze for a moment. He lowered the ash wood. “You wouldn’t pick the phone up,” he said numbly. “I just about lost my mind.”
“I was calling the po-lice,” she said and took a drag of the cigarette she held in one hand. Bubba was immediately shocked.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” he said stupidly.
Miz Demetrice sighed, took another drag, and stubbed the cigarette out under one of her expensive shoes. “I don’t usually,” she said plainly.
“And…Beatrice is inside?” Bubba couldn’t seem to help himself. The most inane things were popping out of his mouth. His heart was still thundering. He loved his mother and couldn’t imagine what life would be like without the fractious, vivacious Miz Demetrice. When she hadn’t picked up the phone, he had panicked.
In a minute he was going to ask about the weather, and then they were going to discuss the Cowboys’ chances in the next year for making it all the way to the Super Bowl.
“You see any one about, Ma?” he asked instead. What he really wanted to ask was, “Did you see the murderer, and who the hell was it?” but he managed to keep it inside.
“Naught but myself and the fireflies,” Miz Demetrice said unhappily. “And the fireflies have cut a chuggy.”
Bubba spared her a quick hug and let her go before she started to sob. “What were you going to do with the big stick, Bubba dear?” she asked with a choking lump in her throat making her voice husky.
“I aimed to take care of bizness,” Bubba said forcefully. “You all right out here alone?”
His mother waved at him impatiently. “I don’t reckon anyone else is here.”
Bubba went inside the house, careful not to leave his prints on the door or to touch anything. When he found the living room, he paused at the opening. He also found Beatrice, and she was, indeed, dead. Well and truly dead. He didn’t even need to check her pulse as he had planned to do. She had kicked the bucket, conked off, was pushing up daisies, and had cashed in her chips.
Or rather someone else had done it to her. Beatrice had been stabbed. Several times. Her dress had been light blue because Bubba could still see a bit of the color near the bottom. But now it was mostly blackish, and Beatrice’s expression was a frozen mask of surprise.
Bubba ran a hand over his face. There was a certain dreadful smell that seemed to permeate the entire room. He’d smelled it before when he had found Neal Ledbetter’s body sitting in his office as dead as disco. It made his stomach churn ominously, but he managed to keep the coffee he had drunk this morning right where it belonged.
Miz Beatrice hadn’t been gone that long but long enough for the natural state of decomposition to begin. The knife was sticking out of her chest, and Bubba wanted to yank the offensive thing out. He was dismayed that his mother had seen it as well. He knew exactly why she was standing outside under the gable, smoking another cigarette, and trying to calm her nerves.
What did Bubba know about Beatrice Smothermon? It was just as he had thought the previous evening. She was in her eighties, active in town social and political organizations, had served on many boards with Miz Demetrice, and probably some with Steve Killebrew. She wasn’t a mean or nasty woman but very resolute in the same manner as Miz Demetrice was indomitable. She had never married, and all of her assets would probably go to her nephews who lived about five miles away. There was nothing surprising about that; her nephews had doted on the old girl. They often came for Sunday dinner and stayed to mow her yard in the summertime. They would rake the leaves for her in the wintertime. Last year they had banded together to paint all of her trim in a pristine white that matched the pillars. The Smothermon boys had taken care of Miz Beatrice for years.
His mother had said that Miz Beatrice had gotten “something” just as she had. Miz Demetrice had told Miz Beatrice that “there was no need to do that.” Then there was something about Big Joe and advice not to doing anything “rash.”
His eyebrows knit together in a horrible frown. The knife was a cheese knife with a handle in the shape of Santa Claus laughing in a belly-wrenching manner. He looked around and didn’t see a cheese platter that went with the knife. Cheese knives usually came in a set. Miz Demetrice had a few around the house for entertaining. They were sets of six or eight with a coordinating platter upon which to serve the hors d’oevres. Didn’t Miz Demetrice have one set with Christmas coordinated cheese knives? There was a reindeer with a red nose, a sleigh, a snowman, and the rest he could not recall. And wasn’t one of the set a ho-ho-ho-ing Santa Claus, just like the one protruding from the poor woman’s chest?
Why stab Miz Beatrice with one of those?
Why put Steve Killebrew in a Christmas/Nativity scene dressed as Santa Claus?
His eyes scanned the room slowly. Bubba had an awful feeling. He wasn’t going to get another chance to look for clues. He let his eyes wander, and finally he settled on a clump of flowers. They were lying on the coffee table, as if someone had carefully put them down there. He knew what they were because they were so readily available at Christmas. Poinsettias. Their brilliantly red leaves were the color of freshly spilled blood. They were tied with a small, frayed, green ribbon.
Were the flowers something that Miz Beatrice had purchased, or had someone brought the flowers here? Furthermore, most people bought poinsettias in pots. The flowers would often last for weeks before falling away after the Christmas season was over. Why cut them and bind them like a typical flower arrangement?
Bubba lifted his head and cautiously retraced his steps to the front door. He used the edge of his shirt to open it. Miz Demetrice rapidly stubbed out another cigarette under her shoe. He studied her for a moment. White dress. White shoes. Green belt. A little white half jacket to keep off the December chilliness. Even after Labor Day. His mother didn’t care much about antiquated fashion rules. But if she had stabbed Miz Beatrice with a cheese knife, then her white dress would be as stained as the one the poor dead woman was wearing. Not that it mattered because to Bubba it appeared as though Miz Beatrice had been dead for hours. The blood was dark and coagulated.
He stepped out and took in a deep breath, happy to be outside. The air outside smelled like it might rain, and there was nothing like rain to wash some bad things away.
“Ma,” he said quietly, “you’ve got some explaining to do.”
Miz Demetrice’s face went slack for a brief second. Then there was a growing, blaring noise as sirens from the police came into range. She turned to look and said ironically, “They’re off like a herd of turtles trolling through a territory of peanut butter.”
The first car screeched to a halt behind Bubba’s truck. Big Joe got out of the patrol car, and Bubba wasn’t inclined to be the one to remind the Pegramville Chief of Police that Miz Beatrice’s property wasn’t located in Pegramville proper. But Big Joe’s beady eyes locked in on Bubba like he was a Predator locked in on members of al-Qaeda.
“Put the stick on the ground, Bubba!” Big Joe yelled immediately.
Bubba sighed and dropped the ash wood to the ground.
Miz Demetrice’s hackles went up instantly. “Chief Kimple, Bubba ain’t done nothing to no one. He got here just before you did, worried about me and all.”
“Miz Demetrice,” Big Joe rumbled
with his hand on his sidearm as if he would pull it on Bubba without hesitation. “I suspect you’re overwrought, and you ought to go home and rest a spell.”
“Why?” Miz Demetrice snapped. “So you can kick Bubba’s brains in again?” Then she whispered to Bubba, “You should have worn a helmet, dear. I should buy you one of those kind with the face plates, too.”
“Just stay put, Bubba,” Big Joe said commandingly as he waited. Another squad car pulled up behind the chief’s sedan, and out tumbled Officers Haynes and Smithson, some of Bubba’s very favorite police officers.
Another car pulled up, this time one of the official Ford Broncos that belonged to the sheriff’s department. Sheriff John Headrick stepped out and immediately towered over everyone else. Then Deputy Willodean Gray got out of the other side, and Bubba felt his heart lurch.
At another crime scene, Bubba thought. Poor Miz Beatrice, may she rest in peace. He could hear Big Joe’s words as if they were already spoken. Bubba Snoddy knew the deceased victim. Bubba had known Miz Beatrice all of his life. Once he’d mowed her yard on a weekly basis when he had been in high school, and her nephews had been toddlers. And despite the fact that she had never tipped, Bubba hadn’t held it against her.
Bubba Snoddy had interaction with the deceased victim. Sure, he had spoken to Miz Beatrice the previous week at Culpepper’s garage. He’d fixed the brakes on her Taurus. She had been her typical curt self, and she had complained about the cost, but Bubba didn’t make the rates at Culpepper’s. That was an issue Big Joe would have to take up with Gideon Culpepper. Personally Bubba thought the prices weren’t too inflated.
Bubba Snoddy had an argument with the deceased victim shortly before her untimely death. See the topic about Miz Beatrice complaining about the cost of her brake job. She seemed to think that coupons from Jiffy Lube were applicable to Culpepper’s Garage. But Bubba hadn’t argued with the grande old dame. He’d simply referred her to Gideon Culpepper with the sad knowledge that Gideon wasn’t apt to apply a discount even if it had been an immortal saint bringing her car in for a new set of brakes.
