by C. L. Bevill
“Lou Lou remembers a lot about what happened decades ago, dear,” Miz Demetrice said. “She just doesn’t remember what happened yesterday or this morning.”
“Should we be telling Willodean Gray about what we’re doing?” Bubba said wonderingly.
Miz Demetrice smiled. It looked like a predator’s smile. It also made Bubba nervous. “Why don’t we see what we find out first,” she suggested calmly. “There are other boards that we all served on as well. The historical society board could be just something coincidental.”
“Did you send other men to prison on account of their embezzlement?” Bubba snapped and instantly regretted the words.
“None that didn’t deserve it,” Miz Demetrice shot back, and Bubba couldn’t resist a small smile. It sounded like Ma was back.
“Okay then,” he said. Bubba glanced at Brownie. “Ma, we don’t have any surgical tools in the house, do we?”
*
It turned out that Lou Lou Vandygriff still smelled exactly like mothballs and cat urine. The house was as neat as a pin, but the smell was pervasive. She didn’t recognize Miz Demetrice, but she looked at Bubba and said immediately, “Elgin. How pleasant it is to see you again.”
Lou Lou Vandygriff was well into her eighties. She had steel gray hair that was gathered into a neat bun at the back of her head. She wore a simple cotton dress of a bright blue with flowers embroidered on the shoulder. She didn’t have stockings on, but her feet were clad in Homer Simpson slippers. The large bald head was the part where the foot was inserted.
Bubba blinked. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the slippers or because Lou Lou thought he was Elgin Snoddy. He hadn’t realized that he had more than a passing resemblance to his father.
The sitter motioned them into the room. She had introduced herself as Mattie Longbow and was in her early thirties. Bubba vaguely remembered her from school. She had been several years ahead of him, with two brothers he’d often played with in junior high school. Mattie said, “Go ahead. Sit down. I’ll get some sweet tea.”
“Bring some lemons,” Lou Lou said as if Mattie was a servant. Mattie said indulgently, “Yes, ma’am. Cut some fresh ones up this morning.” She went into the hallway, and her footsteps echoed back.
Brownie shuffled his feet, and Bubba said, “This here is Brownie Snoddy. He’s Beauregard’s grandson.”
“Beau has a grandson,” Lou Lou repeated doubtfully. Confusion flared in her clouded eyes. “Oh, no. He can’t be old enough to have a grandson. His son surely.”
Brownie said, “Papa died in prison. Is there something the matter with her head?”
“Hush, Brownie,” Miz Demetrice said swiftly. “I’ll explain it later.”
“And this is Jane…uh…Smith,” Bubba said, referring to Miz Demetrice. His mother’s eyebrows went up, but she smiled wryly. “She’s one of Miz Ruth Lee’s friends.”
“Pleased, my dear,” Lou Lou said graciously. Then she led them to a cluttered but shipshape living room and motioned at the red velvet couch. “Go ahead, Elgin. It’s been a month of Sundays since we spoke.” She smiled wistfully. “It was the Harvest Ball where you danced with that lovely girl, Demetrice. Do you still see her? She’s got such lovely blue eyes, cornflower blue.”
Bubba steeled himself. “I married her,” he said.
“Oh,” Lou Lou said. She sat in a matching chair at the end of the living room, and a hand fluttered in front of her face. “Oh, of course you did. I remember the ceremony. Very beautiful. She was the most beautiful Snoddy bride I’ve ever seen.” She chuckled. “And I’ve seen several. I was a bridesmaid for Miz Ruth Lee, you know.” She gestured at the wall behind her. It was covered with a dozen or more framed photographs. All were clearly society events of some sort or another. “I have a photo of the wedding party up there. Miz Ruth Lee had a dozen bridesmaids. They had an ice sculpture of flying doves at the reception. Too bad it melted so quickly.”
Mattie brought a tray of glasses in and passed them around. She passed Lou Lou a plate of freshly cut lemons, and then she gave Brownie a glass of lemonade. He sipped it and made a face. “This tastes like—” he started to say and saw the expression on Bubba’s face. “Really good lemonade,” he finished lamely.
“It’s good to see you all up and about, Miz Lou Lou,” Bubba said after Miz Demetrice made expectant shooing motions at him.
“Up and about?” Lou Lou repeated. “I’m as chipper as the day I graduated from grammar school.”
“Of course you are,” Bubba said firmly. “I apologize that I haven’t been by to see you lately. It’s been a busy year.”
“Yes, yes. There was the Summer Festival with the Bayou Billy lookalike contest. Then there was the Golden Leaves Days of Fall. Then there was the charity work for Christmas. I never tire of seeing the orphans’ faces when we bring them the Christmas presents.” Lou Lou smiled in remembrance.
“Miz Ruth Lee was wondering about the…uh…minutes for the last historical society board meeting,” Bubba said, stumbling on the lies. Lies weren’t his forte, and he’d never liked telling one. Life was spicy enough as it was without adding red pepper to the pot.
“The minutes,” Lou Lou said. “Of course. You mean the results of the Christmas Days of Pegram County charitable proceeds. A tidy amount for last year. Nearly a hundred thousand dollars. Our best year ever.”
Miz Demetrice shook her head sharply at Bubba. “Wrong year,” she mouthed to him.
“Miz Ruth Lee was thinking of the year that there were…some problems with the funds collected,” Bubba said carefully.
“Oh, you mean Mr. Roquemore,” Lou Lou said unhappily. “Such a dreadful event to occur. A man like that dipping his fingers in benevolent coffers. I try to put that business out of my head. You know, he’s up to Huntsville Penitentiary. A man of his former stature serving hard time with all those murderers and rapists. A sorry, sorry thing.”
Bubba was trying to think of a reputable reason to have a list of the members of that year’s board. “Miz Ruth Lee just wanted to double check the figures for the orphanage. We wouldn’t want those kids to miss out on a single dime, now would we?”
Brownie slurped his lemonade and watched Bubba like Bubba was a professor teaching a particularly interesting class. Here Bubba was, telling lies to a little old lady, in front of a precocious ten-year-old, would-be sociopath. I’m going to hell, Bubba thought.
“Why would you be interested, Elgin?” Lou Lou tittered and covered her mouth with a liver-spotted hand. “It seems to me that all you’re interested in is pretty girls and a decent bottle of liquor.” She glanced at Brownie. “Don’t you get that way, young man. It’s all glamorous for a bit and then you’ve got no liver to speak of and you’ve caught some dreadful disease. Then your wee-wee falls off.”
Brownie shook his head faithfully. His eyes were large and horrified. Obviously, he hadn’t known that was possible. “No, ma’am. I won’t,” he said as he protectively crossed his legs.
“I’m just running errands for Miz Ruth Lee,” Bubba said. “And I’ve met the right woman now. No more running around for me.” Miz Demetrice’s eyes rolled at that one. Elgin Snoddy hadn’t stopped running for even a minute. He’d been a refrigerator motor on an August day in the middle of the hottest Texas summer.
“Well, it’s good that you’re taking an interest in the social aspects of our community,” Lou Lou said. “Like your pretty wife. Demetrice cares so much about those who are less fortunate. She does justice to your name.” Confusion clouded Lou Lou’s eyes again. “You did marry her, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bubba said. “Didn’t want that one to get away.”
Lou Lou tittered again.
“The minutes?” he reminded her.
“Of course, of course,” Lou Lou said, a tad defensively. “I keep all of the stuff out in the large shed. There isn’t a bit of room in here.”
Mattie made an abrupt noise and stared at Bubba and Miz Demetrice.
&n
bsp; “Girl,” Lou Lou said, “would you show them the shed? The boxes are clearly labeled. The minutes will be in a folder. If you’ll just return those sheets as soon as Miz Ruth Lee is done with them, I’ll be beholden. We need to keep those records straight. It is a 501 (c) 3 organization, and even we have to file our tax returns.”
Mattie stood and gestured at Bubba and Miz Demetrice.
“Boy,” Lou Lou said to Brownie, “why don’t you stay here and tell me all about your hobbies.”
“I like drawing on people,” Brownie was saying to Lou Lou as they went down the hallway. “I think I’d like to become a surgeon,” Bubba heard, followed by, “Sharp knives are very kew-ool.”
Mattie paused at the end of the hallway, where a door led to the backyard. “I don’t know what year she’s living in,” the caregiver said, “but it ain’t today. Bless her heart. Dang, it’s good to see you again, Bubba. I’ll tell my brothers I saw you. They both live in Grand Prairie, working at the GM plant there.”
“Good to see you, too, Mattie. Tell Rob and Lew I said hey,” Bubba said. Then he looked out the back door, trying to see the shed. He couldn’t see one. “Have the records been moved?”
“No, it’s not that,” Mattie said.
Miz Demetrice opened the door and stepped out. She made a shocked sound. Bubba stepped out and saw off to the left, where a shed had once been. It was now a pile of blackened ruin. There were a few twisted metal pieces of the roof remaining. The rest was soot and ash.
“It burned down last week,” Mattie said. “Right in the middle of the night. One of Miz Lou Lou’s sons called the fire department and put out some of it before the house caught fire. They think it was kids that did it.”
Bubba said a dirty word. “Kids, my ass,” he added vehemently.
~ ~ ~
Chapter Seventeen - Bubba Has to Ruminate About Things
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, four hangman’s ropes…
Wednesday, December 28th -
Someone had been thinking ahead. Bubba suspected that wasn’t a good thing for any of the rest of them. Someone had been planning the murders for years, perhaps even a decade or more. Someone had waited for all the coins to fall into their proper slots. They had maneuvered themselves into a position where they could be up close to the action.
Bubba frowned to himself. He was driving the truck home, closely following Miz Demetrice’s Cadillac. Brownie was sitting beside him happily showing Precious photographs of surgical procedures that made Bubba’s stomach twist in wretched ways. Oh, he was going to pay for that, too.
He concentrated on the road even while his thoughts wandered. The shed had been burned the same day that the letters had been postmarked. Why? There were other ways of ascertaining the members of the Pegramville Historical Society Board. Even Miz Demetrice had proffered several names that could be possibilities. She couldn’t remember everyone, but she knew that several still lived in the area. One or two might have been dead. Two were in retirement homes because of their age and infirmities. There had always been a tendency for people who had served on the community service boards to be older. Demetrice had been the youngest at the time.
The murderer didn’t want them all forewarned. Or even worse, the murderer didn’t care if they were, but he or she wasn’t going to make it easy for the police or for Bubba and Demetrice Snoddy.
How had the murderer known that the police wouldn’t believe Bubba or Miz Demetrice? By pointing a finger at them. If Bubba hadn’t conveniently stumbled across the first body, then something else could have been arranged. An anonymous phone call saying that they’d seen Bubba dragging something large over the lawn at city hall? Maybe. Perhaps killing in the midnight hour wasn’t just happenstance but a risk taken by the killer in order to catch Bubba at a time he most likely wouldn’t have an alibi.
If the murderer knew that, then the person had been watching the Snoddys carefully. Bubba had gone to work at the garage. He had tried to woo Willodean Gray. He had kept up the property as best he could. Sometimes he had gone fishing. He had played fetch with his dog almost every afternoon. He had chased folks off the back forty because they had flashlights, metal detectors, and shovels. My life sounds a little tame, he thought with surprise.
Bubba didn’t like it much, but he needed to think like someone intent on the worst kind of revenge. Christ, he cursed inwardly. Someone else after some complicated revenge. That’s one way of livening up my life.
Why send the letters with cryptic warnings? The person wanted Miz Demetrice scared because they hated her most of all. Bubba frowned harder. It could be understood how a soul would feel some disrespect toward his mother. After all, she had a master’s degree in being a royal pain in the ass. She didn’t temper her words much in the last few decades.
His frown faded into dry humor. Just so, Miz Demetrice could be kindness personified, often in blameless anonymity. Anyone who really knew the lady was well aware that she was mostly bark and very little bite.
All of that aside, Bubba needed a game plan. Number 1: Find the others who were targeted. Number 2: Tell the police about it. Number 3: Kiss Willodean on her luscious lips and lose himself in her warm embrace. Number 4: Keep his mother out of trouble and out of the way of a killer. Number 5: Discover the mysterious identity of a murderer. Simple.
Not simple, Bubba silently contradicted himself. He looked at the setting sun and wondered how the day had gotten away from him. He was tired and hungry. He wanted to sit on the porch and throw a ratty chewed up tennis ball for Precious until she fell over with her sides heaving. He wanted to think about nothing much at all with the exception of Willodean Gray.
When he pulled up at the Snoddy Mansion behind Miz Demetrice’s Cadillac, he found that Fudge was dismantling part of the exterior wall. Several other people were standing there watching his cousin with varying expressions of interest and greed on their faces.
Miz Demetrice got out of her car and said with exceptional irritation, “I was only gone a few hours!”
“Fudge!” Bubba bellowed out of the window of the truck before he threw the door open and emerged fully ticked off. Brownie winced. Precious winced and tried to hide under Brownie. Brownie shoved her aside and tried to hide under her. In a moment of complete cooperation, they instead both decided to hide under the bench seat of the truck. Two smallish butts stuck out with four legs wiggling frantically in order maximize concealment.
“What?” Fudge yelled back with a maul in his hands. “This wall is definitely hollow. I could hear it when I knocked on it.”
Bubba walked up to Fudge and then glared at the witnesses. The two other men were no one he knew, but they had a certain look to them. One was wearing a t-shirt that said, “We hunt, therefore we am.” and held a shovel. The other one had a metal detector in his hand. They both appeared as though they’d been wandering through the woods. One was smart enough to have his pants tucked into his boots. Texas chiggers were still about even in December, and they loved to crawl up a man’s pants, and the numerous poison ivies still exuded their itchy toxins even if they weren’t green at the moment. They both had ball caps on and an air of avariciousness was barely contained in their eyes.
“These here fellas were telling me about Colonel Nathanial Snoddy, Bubba,” Fudge went on, gesturing with the maul. He whispered out of the side of his mouth, “He hid gold somewhere on the property. They say it was buried, but it could have been put into the walls of the house.”
Bubba looked at the hole. He was going to have to borrow some of the lumber from the rebuilding of the caretaker’s house in order to cover this up.
Miz Demetrice said icily, “Fudge, Colonel Snoddy was a fruitcake. Ain’t simpler than that.”
“But Auntie D.,” Fudge protested, “these here fellas are from the University of Texas, and they say they’ve done prodigious research.” He glanced around. “I had to look up the word ‘prodigious,’” pronouncing it, “pro-dig-u-us.” Then he gestured
fervidly with the maul again. “Virtna looked up their names on the Internet, and they’ve got published works on Pegram County history.”
“Fudge, dear,” Miz Demetrice said. Her voice had gone from icy to subarctic. Penguins would have shivered at the tone. Walruses would have fled for their very existence. “Colonel Snoddy was a syphilitic noodle brain. You won’t have to look that word up because I’ll explain it to you. He had syphilis, a venereal disease, and had had it for years. Not only were all the bells and whistles in his head not working, but he fell out of the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down. His mind was gone. He brought a wagon full of worthless iron ore back from the war. It wasn’t good for anything except rusting in a heap. Your great-uncle, Isaiah, or was he your great- great-uncle? Anyway, Isaiah Snoddy was a rabid Democrat and stole a truck from the then governor of Texas because he supported Dwight Eisenhower. The Snoddys dug a hole to bury it and found the entire load of pig iron, still in the wagon. All the Snoddys had a good old laugh about it. Even Cornelia Adams Snoddy wrote in her diaries that Nathanial was nuttier than a California pecan farm.” She paused. “Although she didn’t use those exact words.”
“But,” Fudge said and he looked at the two men.
“Historians from the University of Texas,” Bubba said carefully and looked at them. The phrase should have been complimentary, but coming from Bubba’s lips made it sound like a combination of a curse and the stuff that comes off the bottom of a garbage dumpster.
One had the decency to turn red. “A lot of Union gold did go missing,” one said. He was the one who wore the “We Hunt, therefore we am.” t-shirt. The hunt on the shirt didn’t refer to going after squirrels.
“I’m a guest lecturer from Dallas,” he said quickly. “My name is Donald Gruntfest. There was a significant amount of gold that Colonel Nathanial Snoddy’s regiment is reputed to have stolen.”
“Yeah,” said Fudge. Bubba could hear the ka-ching going off in Fudge’s brain.
