Bubba and the Dead Woman

by C. L. Bevill

  Ten minutes later, Bubba was walking into his home. For most of the afternoon he slept on the couch downstairs, his big feet sticking way off the end, but there was no one but Precious there to notice. He woke up to the phone ringing to hear Adelia Cedarbloom telling him that some ‘po-lice’ officers had been in taking fingerprints off the dining room windows and making plaster molds out of footprints from the mud underneath the same windows.

  Bubba nodded thoughtfully. Deputy Willodean Gray had come through for him. When he wandered out onto his front porch, he found that she had returned his brown Stetson and left it in one of the Adirondack chairs there. He fingered the brim where she must have touched it with her shapely hands and sighed before taking it back inside.

  There was a call from Lurlene Grady, and Bubba spent almost a half hour speaking to her, though most of the conversation went in one direction, from her to him. She wanted to know all about jail, and all about being suspected of murdering someone, and had she really been his ex-fiancée, and why hadn’t Bubba told her about that woman before? Bubba’s answers were along the lines of, ‘Yep,’ ‘Nope,’ and ‘Maybe.’

  He couldn’t help a brief mental comparison between two women. One dark. One light. One sassy. One talky. Bubba shook his head like a wet, old hound dog. Man, you don’t want to go there, he told himself. So he did not.

  Since he had skipped lunch, Bubba went over the big house to eat dinner with his mother. Adelia had made Yankee Pot Roast, which made her laugh uproariously when she did so, for some unknown reason. Something about irony and the Civil War. However, only Miz Demetrice and Bubba sat down to dinner in the cavernous dining room.

  Bubba got a big piece of roast beef, a mountain of new potatoes, and a teetering pile of carrots and proceeded to drown the entire dish in gravy. Miz Demetrice nibbled on the roast beef and several carrots, staring at the bruises on her son’s face.

  “Miz Adelia is as fine a cook as ever,” Bubba said.

  His mother nodded. “You know Bubba, my lawyer came by today. You know, Mr. Petrie.”

  Bubba knew Mr. Petrie. He didn’t think much of Mr. Petrie. The lawyer reminded him of a mortician. He was always dressed in a three-piece, black suit, even when the humidity and the temperature were three digits, and everyone else was positively dying from heat stroke. He wore a black derby, a black tie, and wingtips. He fawned over Miz Demetrice as if gold pieces would pour out of her mouth into Mr. Petrie’s hands. And damned if Bubba knew the man’s first name. It was always Lawyer Petrie or Mr. Petrie, esquire. So basically, Bubba kept his mouth shut. Something about discretion being the better part of valor.

  Miz Demetrice rolled her eyes at her son. “I know you know Mr. Petrie. Well, don’t worry. I haven’t given him control of the Snoddy fortune yet.” She laughed. “You know that man still thinks we have a fortune. Anyway, he mentioned that he was aware of your plight, and offered to be your lawyer.”

  “Lawyer Petrie does family law. Not criminal law,” he added unnecessarily.

  “You’re my son.”

  Bubba accidentally bit his tongue, and cursed appropriately.

  “Well, I didn’t get you out of a cabbage patch.”

  Bubba said, “No one is saying you did, Mama. Lawyer Petrie isn’t an expert in criminal law.”

  “He’s a lawyer.”

  “He’s an idiot.”

  “Mr. Petrie says the grand jury is convening soon to see if you will be indicted.”

  “Doc Goodjoint said you were over at his office on Monday,” Bubba said, spearing a carrot with his fork.

  Miz Demetrice gave her son a piercing look that only a mother could give to a son. She took a delicate sip of red wine. It was a New Mexican vintage she had recently ‘discovered.’ “You should have some of this.”

  “He told me what he told you.”

  “Well, Bubba, honey, I didn’t want you to worry,” Miz Demetrice explained.

  Bubba sat up in the chair. “Listen, Mama. I’m in a world of hurt here. I can’t explain to you how in trouble I am in right now. I’m so screwed that...”

  “I get the picture, Bubba. One doesn’t need to be so graphic,” his mother protested.

  “I’m the only one who has any reason to kill Melissa,” Bubba started and his mother cut right in.

  “You’re the only one who has a reason who doesn’t have an alibi,” Miz Demetrice corrected primly.

  “Who better than me?”

  Miz Demetrice considered her son carefully. “I’d like to think that Sheriff John has a little more intelligence than you give him credit for. Else you’d be in jail, yet.”

  Not much was said after that. Bubba wasn’t sure why his mother didn’t mention the swollen face and black eye, but he was thankful. He cleaned up the dinnerware, while Miz Demetrice put leftovers away for Adelia. Then he kissed his mother on her cheek, checked all of the locks on the windows and doors of the big house, and made his way over to the caretaker’s place.

  It was about midnight when his phone rang. He answered it sleepily on the third ring.

  His mother’s voice came across the line, in a falsetto. “Bubba,” she whispered in a high-pitched squeak. “The ghost is back. Come on over, quick.”

  Bubba threw himself out of bed and tripped over his dog, who responded with a pitiful yelp. He pounded down the stairs, clad only in boxer shorts, and out the front door, before Precious knew what was up. He ran across a fog filled yard toward the big house, looking around for intruders running away. The kitchen door was ajar. Just as he was about to open it, the blast of a shotgun knocked him on his butt.

  “Goddamn it!” he roared. “Mama, it’s me!”

  Miz Demetrice stuck her head out the kitchen door. Her face was contrite. “Did I hit you?”

  Bubba brushed splinters off his chest. “You called me. Where did you think I would come in at?” He looked down. No blood. “Mama, you’re a lousy shot.”

  Miz Demetrice shrugged. “It’s rock salt. I’m only interested in scaring. I came down to let you in and saw a big shadow.”

  Bubba glared at his mother. “In case you haven’t noticed I’m a big man who casts a big shadow.”

  “Big baby, too,” his mother said proudly. “Eleven pounds two ounces. Nearly split me in half.”

  He stood up, brushing off bits of wood and glass with his hands. Then he carefully walked through the debris into the house. “You leave that door open, Mama?”

  “The kitchen door?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You locked it on your way out,” she stated. “I didn’t touch it.”

  “Someone’s been in here, then. It was a few inches open.”

  “Then my ghost is gone,” she declared. “Dammit. I wanted to shoot him on his sheet-covered ass. Teach him to try and scare a little, helpless, old woman.”

  “Little, helpless, old woman?” Bubba repeated skeptically. “What woke you up?”

  “You’re not going to believe this, but the sounds of moaning and chains rattling.”

  Bubba stared blankly at his mother.

  “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  It took Bubba almost an hour before he found what he was looking for. It was a neat, tiny sound system that was activated by a lack of motion. Twenty minutes after its sensors, placed in the long hallway, the staircase, and the bedroom door, detected motion, the tape was activated. The speakers were hidden behind some plants, a bookcase, and a spittoon. It was a costly little affair, too, not something a man could purchase from a local hardware store.

  Bubba showed it to his mother. Then he played the tape. It was about ten minutes of moaning, wailing, and some chains rattling.

  Miz Demetrice wasn’t impressed. “We’ve never had a chain-rattling ghost at the Snoddy Mansion,” she said indignantly. “Someone needs to do their homework a little better.”

  Bubba put the whole thing into a bag, put his mother back to bed, and prepared to spend the night on the living room couch, where like his own couch, his feet
stuck off by too damn much. But he didn’t really care about that.

  Chapter Nine - Bubba and the Subpoena –

  Wednesday

  Trouble was Bubba Snoddy’s middle name. His name might very well be Bubba T. Snoddy. He could legally change it and no one would even make a comment. As a matter of fact, they would all agree whole-heartedly and toast his decision with a keg of Coors. Consequently, because of Bubba’s should-have-been middle name, he was not particularly surprised at the reaction he received when he reported the break-in at the Snoddy place to the police department on Wednesday morning. The emergency line operator, who was not Mary Lou Treadwell, laughed at him merrily, and disconnected the telephone.

  “Say, Mama,” said Bubba mildly. He put the phone carefully back into its receiver; not even slamming it into its cradle, although he that was precisely was he was tempted to do.

  His mother was sitting in the kitchen with him. She didn’t have a crick in her neck from sleeping on a couch that was precisely two and a half feet shorter than her actual height. Dressed in a peacock blue robe with matching slippers, she delicately sipped from a cup of coffee. The color of the robe and the slippers was almost exactly the color of her eyes, the same eyes that her son had. Her white hair was in curlers, the only time Bubba would ever see her without immaculate make-up, hair flawlessly styled, and wearing smart clothing that would put the local Sunday churchgoers to shame. Her son thought it was amusing, even if Miz Demetrice did not.

  “Yes, dear,” she responded. She needed her coffee in the morning, in much the same way that a junkie needed a fix of heroin. It was much the same as her son did. Foul moods from either Snoddy were common before the deliverance of the most holy of caffeine products into the blood stream. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please, the big cup. No, the big cup.” She passed him the really big cup. He drank gratefully from it, sighing with relief at the influx of the much needed additive substance into his body. “I believe you should call the police about the break-in. They’re not disposed to listen to me.” He had roamed all the way around the house and had not found where the intruders had gained entrance. Obviously they had gone out the kitchen door, which Bubba had found ajar. He wondered if they had made a copy of someone’s keys. He knew that his mother was prone to leaving her keys on any old table in sight for days on end, because she was always losing them. Accordingly, she had at least three different sets of house keys.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Miz Demetrice pointed out thoughtfully. She pondered, “What do I pay taxes for?”

  “Not for much,” Bubba remarked dryly. His head felt like a swollen-up balloon, about to burst at any second from having too much air put into it. His eye was swollen completely shut, and Miz Demetrice had made a comment about the sheer variety of colors showing on his face. (“My, I didn’t know a human being could turn all of those colors, at the same time. My goodness gracious.”) Coffee alone wouldn’t do much for it. He knew exactly where a prescription bottle of 800 mg. ibuprofen was located in his house, and as soon as the holiest of coffee was drunk, intended to generously avail himself of the painkillers.

  But Bubba knew that his state of trouble was not limited to the inclination of the emergency line operator to listen to him. His grand list of suspects had petered out. Not only had it petered out, but it was almost nonexistent, lying in a crumpled ball somewhere outside the Sheriff’s Department. His mother hadn’t done it. His mother’s housekeeper and cook hadn’t done it. And Major Michael Dearman had been surprised to see Bubba here, where his wife had died. So the chances were significant that he hadn’t done it, either.

  The final suspect on his list was Lurlene Grady, and Bubba was almost ninety-nine point nine percent certain that she hadn’t done it, either. Lurlene wouldn’t know which way a gun was supposed to go, much less been able to hit a moving target at ten feet. She liked her fingernails long and painted, and complained when she had to open the truck door by herself.

  So here was the thing. Bubba was counting on an unknown someone who was trying to scare his mother off the property as a witness. He reasoned that if their midnight ghost had, in fact, been the murderer, he wouldn’t be crazy enough to come back night after night. After all and if that were the case, he had murdered someone. If one followed that logic further, then why not murder Miz Demetrice and her know-it-all son, as well. Since the haunting attempts were just that, attempts to scare them, and half-assed at best, Bubba knew that the perpetrator had to be something just short of a bumbling idiot.

  Just like Neal Ledbetter, the real estate agent with an eye on providing Pegramville with a Wal-Mart Supercenter, instead of one fifteen miles away. A man with an eye for the immediate advancement of his own personal wealth, no matter who got in the way. A man who was dumb enough to wear a sheet, and leave a sound system around as proof of his crackbrained plans.

  Bubba looked at that very system, now lying encased in plastic wrap on top of the chef’s block in the middle of the kitchen. He couldn’t find a baggie large enough to put all of the pieces into it. But there it was. He had very carefully dismantled it, touching only the edges where his own fingerprints would not remain. He would deliver it to the Deputy Willodean Gray, as time permitted, and as his impending incarceration permitted. With any luck at all, a man as stupid as Neal, would have left fingerprints on it, and his fingerprints would be on record for accomplishing some other stupidness elsewhere in this world. That all in account, then the beauteous deputy could interrogate the man to her little heart’s desire and help Bubba out in the process.

  “Mama,” he started. Miz Demetrice looked up. “You could help me.”

  “What?”

  “You could talk to Michael Dearman or the Connors about their alibis,” he said.

  His mother stared at him thoughtfully. “What makes you think that they’ll tell me, any more than they’ll tell you?”

  Bubba made a face. A disbelieving face. This was his mother to whom he was speaking. Miz Demetrice had an illegal poker circle going, though which thousands of dollars passed every week, and every participant, including a sheriff’s deputy, kept unswervingly mum about. She regularly petitioned the state’s politicians for whatever bit of nonsense she was involved in, to include cloth diapers versus disposables, the promotion of a monument to Miss Annalee Hyatt (one that portrayed her ample charms in all of their naked glory), and kicking the present-day mayor, John Leroy, Jr., out of office, on any given day of the week. That one included a proposed public butt booting ceremony, in which John Leroy, Jr., would have his hind end kicked by the man with the biggest foot in the county. But then Bubba was digressing. “You could find out if he has an alibi. You could find out if the Connors are gay, swinging, neo-nazi’s who have tattoos of Charles Manson on their hinies, if you really wanted to. The Conners are the only other people who might have some motive or perhaps a clue as to who might have done it. I’ll be damned if I know why, though.”

  Miz Demetrice arched one eyebrow in recognition of the backhanded compliment. “Well, I can be influential.”

  Bubba nearly choked on his coffee.

  A half hour later he was feeling the assuaging effects of not one, but two 800 milligram pills of ibuprofen. He had showered, shaved, and dressed in a spiffy manner. His best blue jeans, a pearl-gray western shirt, belt with his biggest belt buckle, his least-battered boots, and his trusty Stetson. Now all Bubba needed was a dog, which was ready and waiting, a pick-up truck, which was also ready and waiting, and a cute cowgirl, which was not ready and waiting.

  But a sheriff’s deputy would do, thought he of the bedecked rural outfit. Then he considered. He was almost, almost, ashamed of himself. There was a perfectly good woman and a waitress, Lurlene, awaiting his manly presence, and all he could think of was a short, sassy, skinny, dark-haired woman. And big, green eyes, he added mentally. Nice green eyes.

  Thus, he took Lurlene out to lunch at the Dove’s Nest, which was a little hole in the wall restaurant inside an antique
mall, in a town about fifty miles away from Pegramville, and thirty miles outside of Pegram County. She had some sort of Nuevo American salad involving grapes, ginger, and watermelon. He had a meatloaf sandwich that made his mouth water from a mile away. They talked about a great many things, which included exactly how Bubba’s face had gotten beaten up, and to which Lurlene responded with sympathetic pseudo-language noises with which one would address any child under the age of two (“Poor, little-widdle-Bubbie. Didums get a widdle smack on the facums?”). But Bubba was attempting to lead up the one thing he wanted to know. In a roundabout way that wouldn’t alert an ant to the presence of an elephant about to step upon him. All subtle-like.

  Bubba, however, had just about used up any amount of subtleness that he possessed. “Miss Lurlene,” he said. Here was the only start of which he could think. Certainly, it sounded pathetic, even to him.

  “Yes, Bubba,” she murmured, fluttering her eyelashes. Bubba had to admit that she had nice eye lashes. They were long and only lightly accentuated with mascara. They very much supported her pretty brown eyes. Even if they didn’t compare with...stop it, you dang, old fool.

  “You work pretty hard at the Pegram Café, don’t you?” Well, hey, that was just as clever as a fox in the hen house.

  “It can be hard. Did you know that Shirlee Bufford is thinking about filing for divorce?”