by C. L. Bevill
Miz Nadine tapped her fingernails on the desk. “Possibly you’ve got a point. Your mother has been here for an hour already. I believe she’s more determined than a tick after Lent.”
“That’s Ma,” Bubba agreed and excused himself. He came up behind Miz Demetrice as she was feeding a microfiche into a machine. She glanced up and saw his reflection in the monitor. Fortunately the small room was empty save for the pair of them.
“Oh, crab apples,” Miz Demetrice commented mildly.
“This is it, Ma,” Bubba said calmly. “You’re going to spill them beans one way or t’other.” He looked over her shoulder and saw that she was in the society pages of a newspaper. There were pictures of balls and Christmas festivals and folks getting engaged.
His mother turned to look at him. Some of Brownie’s handiwork was still visible although it was obvious that Miz Demetrice had been regularly scrubbing away at her face. He suspected that Brownie hadn’t shared the fingernail polish remover idea with his parents or his great-aunt. Even Aunt Caressa hadn’t managed to get the whiskers completely off her face.
“Got some sleep then?” she asked instead of answering.
“Yes, I slept. Then I got connived into taking Brownie with me,” Bubba said.
“Brownie’s in the library?” Miz Demetrice asked with amazement. “And the building hasn’t been burned down yet?”
“You’re the queen of avoiding answers, Ma,” Bubba said firmly. He hooked a chair with his leg and pulled it up next to his mother’s seat. “Just tell me already.”
“I’m not proud of myself,” Miz Demetrice said clearly. Her blue eyes stared at him. They were the same color as his. He glanced down and saw that her hands were shaking. That was the part that frightened him. Ma wasn’t the type of woman who was shamed easily.
“You know something?” Bubba said. He patted her hand awkwardly. “Protecting me. That time has passed. There’s what? Eight other folks with eight letters and someone who wants them dead.”
“I came from poor stock,” Miz Demetrice said. She wrapped her hands around Bubba’s hand and squeezed. “There isn’t shame in that. You know that a handsome fella named Elgin Snoddy swept me off my feet when I was eighteen years old.” She smiled faintly. “He had the name, the money supposedly, and the prestige. Although it turned out that the prestige was gilt and a thin coat at that.”
Bubba nodded. He’d heard the story before. For a few seconds he was purely mistrustful. It sounded like his mother was trying to divert the issue again. However, it was her way of leading into the answers he wanted.
“I had some rich relations, mind you,” Miz Demetrice went on. “Gave the good gifts, and they spent some time teaching me the difference between a soup spoon and a garnish knife. The finger bowl is not a dish full of lemonade. The bone dish is not for bubble gum.”
She sighed, and it was a heart wrenching noise. “I was expected to take my part as a Snoddy wife. And I did. There were boards and charities and society benefits over those first years. I took my duties seriously.
“And there was once where something did happen. I haven’t thought about it for years because it didn’t come up. And when I did think of it, well, I knew it couldn’t be this person.” Miz Demetrice sighed again.
“Why not?” Bubba said. “I’m jumping here, but I’m thinking it had something to do with Christmas. Something to do with you, Steve Killebrew, Beatrice Smothermon, and Sheriff John, right?”
Miz Demetrice tapped the monitor, and Bubba looked at the screen. She scrolled so that the photograph there became larger. It suddenly became clear to him that he was looking at an obituary of a man who’d been dead for fifteen years. “Because he’s dead. Died a long time ago. And as far as I know, a dead man cain’t murder anyone.”
~ ~ ~
Chapter Sixteen - Bubba’s on the Hunt
Wednesday, December 28th -
His name had been Matthew Roquemore. He’d been an accountant. Once upon a time he’d served on the same boards as Miz Demetrice, Steve Killebrew, Beatrice Smothermon, and John Headrick.
Bubba scratched his head as he stared at the monitor. The obituary didn’t say how Matthew Roquemore died. It said he had been a longtime resident of Pegram County, but he’d died in Dallas, Texas; however, he was buried in the local cemetery. Someone had returned him to the place he’d lived so many years. Leaning in for a closer look, Bubba saw that Matthew Roquemore had been predeceased by his ex-wife and his two children, Morgan and LaNell. The entire family was dead.
“Roquemore,” Bubba murmured. “I don’t recollect him. Ain’t no Roquemores who still live here, am I right?”
“No,” Miz Demetrice agreed sadly. “I believe there’s an uncle over to Nardle.” Nardle was a town about thirty miles away.
“This man had something to do with you all and Christmas and all the other people?” Bubba was tired of repeating it, but he wanted things crystal clear in his head.
“The Pegramville Historical Society Board for the benefit of local charities,” Miz Demetrice answered calmly. “There were twelve of us. That certainly fits. The charity we usually benefitted the most was the Christmas Festival. Then it was known as the Christmas Days of Pegram County. The monies went to a local orphanage.”
“But this man is dead,” Bubba said. “Just as you said. Ain’t one for vengeance if you’re six feet under.”
“I thought perhaps that one of his children might—” Miz Demetrice said and trailed off. She had obviously caught the sentence in the obituary about his ex-wife and children pre-deceasing him. “All these years later. I haven’t thought about Matthew and his family for a long time.”
“Why would he want to get back at the lot of you?”
“Do you understand pride, Bubba dear?” Miz Demetrice turned away and stared at the black and white photo of a man long since dead.
“I understand that my pride sometimes gets in the way of things,” Bubba admitted. “My pride nearly got me thrown into Huntsville for murders I didn’t commit. Melissa paid the price for my arrogance.” Melissa Dearman had been his ex-fiancée and the one Lurlene Grady/Donna Hyatt had lured back to Pegramville to murder. The fallout from the murder would have caused Miz Demetrice to sell the property in order to support his legal bills, or that had been the general cockamamie idea. It hadn’t worked, and Bubba knew that Donna Hyatt’s machinations had been a waste of human life.
His mother frowned. “I hardly see how that could have been avoided. That dratted Hyatt gal didn’t tell you she was going to murder your ex-fiancée so they could come up with a skewwhiff plan to buy this property cheaply, just to look for Civil War gold that never was here in the first place.”
“There’s responsibility, Ma,” Bubba said gravely. “And there’s re-spon-si-bil-ity.”
She nodded somberly. “I thought that when I married your father that I was obligated to be a society wife. The emphasis is on society. My mother-in-law, your grandmother, Ruth Lee Snoddy, took me under her wing when I came into the family. My richer relatives worked with me as well, putting the polish on me. Miz Ruth was always the one with an iron will. It was the people from the higher echelons who were accountable for the welfare of those from the lower ones.” Miz Demetrice smiled wretchedly. In that moment, Bubba thought she looked a hundred years old.
“Granny tried that with me as well,” Bubba said. “I recollect her attempting to talk about serving for the good of the public. But as I was about six years old at the time, I don’t believe I understood her meaning.” But Bubba and Miz Demetrice knew that it had rubbed off on him. He tithed to his church on time, and he always helped with local charitable organizations, even though he didn’t speak of it.
“I fell into a position for the historical society board. Miz Ruth was well pleased in giving up her slot so that I could get my feet wet.” Miz Demetrice continued to look at Matthew Roquemore’s photograph. “And I took it seriously. Oh, so seriously. Orphans needed our help and desperately. Some of those child
ren didn’t have shoes. Some of them had been eating dirt soup where they’d lived.” She made a noise that Bubba thought was a despondent chuckle. “Elgin thought my sincerity was comical. A girl from poor stock helping those in worse situations. He said it was like the blind leading the blind.”
“Pa was an adamant jackass,” Bubba said dryly.
“At the time I didn’t see that,” Miz Demetrice offered sardonically. “It might have saved me some misery if I had. In any event, I was implacably earnest about helping those orphans. They were truly needy.”
Bubba waited while his mother trailed off again. He knew exactly how she could be when she was deadly serious. There were certain situations that impacted her tremendously. The enormously underprivileged touched a place in her heart. She knew that there but for the grace of God she walked. Over the years as an adult, the pair had had adult conversations, and occasionally his mother would mention the impoverishment of the life she’d had before she’d married Elgin.
“I had become a Snoddy,” Miz Demetrice continued with a slight rasp in her voice. “And Snoddys helped those in need.”
Bubba waited again.
“I think you were in elementary school when I discovered that one of the members of the board was embezzling funds, and I was outraged,” Miz Demetrice brought her hands together and clasped them tightly. Bubba reached over and patted gracelessly. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I was righteous. I was incensed. The members of the Pegramville Historical Society Board were not poor people. They all had houses and not houses that moved on wheels. They didn’t have hand-me-down clothing and nickel shirts bought from garage sales. Their bellies didn’t bulge from malnutrition. They didn’t scrape the food scraps from dumpsters at the back of restaurants.”
There was an echo of the rage his mother had felt all those years before. Those “who had” didn’t do dirty deeds to those “who didn’t have.” The fact that the Snoddys were barely a step above the ones “who didn’t have” didn’t matter. Elgin lived off the meager trust funds established by his grandfather. Bubba’s father would have cheerfully and drunkenly depleted them into nonexistence had he not been limited to how much could be withdrawn in a calendar year. Then he had died, and it had been a moot point.
“The other members of the board were inclined to let the man repay the embezzled funds and let bygones be bygones,” she said carefully. “I was not. I bullied and threatened. This man, this pillar of the community, this person who should have been a sterling example of the right thing to do, was nothing but a common criminal. Why should he escape the consequences of his actions simply because he had the clout of a well-to-do family? He was no better than Tom Bledsoe, the man who picks wallets in the local taverns every Friday night. Finally, the man was charged with his crimes. He pled guilty to get a lighter sentence, and he went away for several years. I was…happily reassured by my actions. I was morally vindicated. I had done the right thing.” The last sentence was said as if she were repeating words that she had used to bolster herself in years past.
“So he went to jail,” Bubba said. He pointed at the obituary. “Matthew Roquemore was the embezzler.”
“Served five years in the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville,” Miz Demetrice said. “And he was supposed to do a five-year stint of parole as well. There were fines, too. He was to pay the monies back and in addition, another $25,000. His house was sold to pay off the fines, and I believe his children’s college funds were liquidated.”
“He committed a crime,” Bubba said cautiously. His mother felt culpable; he could see it reflected in her eyes. But the crime hadn’t been hers. It was possible that the board could have treated Matthew Roquemore with leniency. But he had been stealing money from children who had nothing. Bubba couldn’t bring himself to condone the long-dead man’s actions. It had been like someone who had been beating a defenseless puppy with an oversized whip.
“His wife divorced him over the scandal, although the historical society board kept everything under wraps. It wasn’t even mentioned in the papers. The judge closed the proceedings. I believe the family told people they were moving to the city and that was it.” Miz Demetrice’s face was carefully blank. However, Bubba was reading in-between the lines on her mien. “The news spread though. Gossip in Pegram County is rampant. People knew. His ex-wife moved away with the children. He was released eventually; it wasn’t a long sentence. Then he died.”
“You blame yourself for his death?” Bubba looked again at the obituary. “It doesn’t say how he died.”
“He hanged himself,” Miz Demetrice said. “I looked it up before you got here. It’s in the Dallas papers. Hanged himself in the halfway house he was living in.” She made an incoherent noise. “He didn’t leave a note.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Bubba said firmly. “A man makes choices. He made the wrong choice and paid for it.”
Her knuckles were turning white as she clasped her hands tightly together. “A man does make his choices. So does a woman,” Miz Demetrice said, and her voice was as neutral as her expression. Bubba knew full and well it wasn’t that Matthew had committed the crime; it was that he had committed the crime against abandoned children who didn’t have a pot to pee in.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Bubba repeated. “No one made that man do what he did. Not you and not anyone else. He was held accountable, and God will make judgment of him.”
“I thought,” his mother’s voice cracked and hesitated. “I thought maybe Matthew Roquemore had come back to get even. But the letters don’t sound like him. He was a tightly wound soul. If it had been him, he would have taken a rifle and come to the house and simply shot all of us and then turned himself in.”
“His children maybe?” Bubba said.
“Only the two,” Miz Demetrice said. “And they’re all gone.”
“How did they die?”
“An auto crash,” she said. “There’s a little article in the paper, just a few lines really, a few years before he was released.” She paused and added, “It really was a shame.”
“Why do you say that?” Bubba stared into his mother’s face. Her expression was pinched and deathly white.
“The reason why he embezzled the money?” Miz Demetrice laughed, and it was an abject noise. “His business had been bought out by a larger corporation, and he was out of work. He didn’t tell anyone for months. So he took the money to buy Christmas presents for his children.”
And Bubba couldn’t think of what to say to that because it had been a genuinely sorry state of affairs.
*
There were a few things that Bubba decided to do to follow up. Since Matthew Roquemore and his family had passed, it was unlikely that their ghosts were causing the deaths of those in the present. But he couldn’t eliminate the situation as the motive of the present-day murderer. Perhaps another living relative who was holding a grudge?
First and foremost, they needed to identify the remaining targets. Bubba grilled Miz Demetrice about the Pegramville Historical Society Board and found that it had disbanded years before because of a general lack of interest. Another historical society had taken its place. The name was similar, but the members varied greatly.
“But,” Miz Demetrice said, as they walked out of the library, “I have a thought.” She paused to look at Brownie. The child had a large book under his arm entitled, Surgical Procedures Throughout the 20th Century: Photographically Detailed. Bubba had an inkling that Virtna might object, but Brownie had sincerely promised not to attempt any of the procedures that he found in the book on any living thing. Bubba had subsequently realized that he had allowed Brownie an out by not including dead things, but what were the odds of Brownie coming across something deceased?
Bubba stopped to think about it. In past years he would have said, “Nil. Zip. Nada.” But in the last year corpses were appearing in Pegram County like cameras on a nude beach at Spring Break. “Not on dead things either, boy,” he added rapidly.
&nbs
p; Brownie shook his head gravely. “Not on dead things either,” he avowed. Bubba caught the sly glint in the boy’s eyes and wondered if he’d missed a loophole.
Miz Demetrice glanced at Bubba and then at Brownie. Her eyes went a little large when she caught the name of the book Brownie was holding, and she sighed. “There was secretary of the board,” she said as Brownie ran to Bubba’s truck to show the book to Precious.
“A secretary,” Bubba repeated, unable to get the mental image of a ten-year-old boy lasciviously wielding a scalpel out of his head. Lock my bedroom door tonight, he vowed silently. Maybe a chair underneath the knob, too.
“Lou Lou Vandygriff served as the secretary for the Pegramville Historical Society Board for all the years that I can recollect,” Miz Demetrice said. “She kept minutes, records of attendees, board rules, et cetera.”
Bubba snapped to the moment. “Okay. Lou Lou Vandygriff,” he said. “I remember her. Her stockings were always falling to her ankles. And she always smelled like mothballs.”
“Bubba!”
“She did. And cat urine.”
“She liked her cats,” Miz Demetrice said. “She broke her hip when you were in the Army, and she never bounced back. But she’s still living in her house on Turtle Street.”
“Does she still have all those cats?” Bubba asked warily. Cats didn’t really like him.
“Only a few left,” Miz Demetrice answered with a little smile. “Her kids managed to farm out the rest. She’s got a caregiver who’s with her 24 hours a day. Alzheimer’s, I believe. I haven’t visited her much because she doesn’t remember me at all. Seems to upset her more than anything else.”
“We’re going to talk to a woman in her, what, eighties, who has Alzheimer’s disease and doesn’t remember much about something that happened decades ago?”
