Bubba and the Dead Woman Read online

  Miz Demetrice’s been busy with the telephones of late, decided Bubba. He smiled at his mother, trying to decide whether to be annoyed or amused.

  Also there for Bubba’s hearing was Major Michael Dearman, dressed in all of his military flair, and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Connor. The Connors seemed a little lost throughout the entire event. Dearman paused to glare at Bubba before he led his in-laws, who continued to look confused, out the court room doors.

  Then there was a smattering of those who were there for the indictment against the notorious Doris Cambliss and her Red Door Inn. There was general interest, like Sheriff John Headrick, and Deputy Steve Simms. There was personal interest, from Lloyd Goshorn, the around town handyman, from Neal Ledbetter, sans any kind of infant apparel, and Roy Chance from the Pegram Herald, scribbling on a note pad as if to save his life.

  There were quite a few other people wandering in and out of the court room. It was a regular circus. Or an insane asylum. It really depended on how one looked at it.

  His Honor, Judge Posey, dismissed the case of Doris Cambliss almost immediately. Not only had the local police officers failed to find any type of evidence that would indicate that she was running a brothel, but they didn’t have enough evidence to keep her in jail for even twenty minutes. In his soft, gentile, southern voice, Judge Posey apologized to Doris, even while he knew full well, that she was quite guilty of the crimes of which she had been accused. In the south, there was a gentle tradition of it’s only a crime if you get caught doing it. Sometimes it was known as the Eleventh Amendment. Thou shall not get caught. As the devious and cunning Doris had not only been not caught, she had gotten one over on the local law enforcement.

  Then her own lawyer served the local police chief of Pegramville, Sheriff John, and the prosecuting attorney with a $2.3 million dollar lawsuit, citing wrongful arrest, police discrimination, and the predacious calumniating of Doris’s general character. Otherwise, the lawyer was saying that the two individuals had besmirched her good name.

  Sheriff John looked at the papers with shock and exclaimed, “Just why in the name of God are you suing me?”

  Bubba wondered how they had come up with a figure of $2.3 million dollars.

  Doris’s attorney replied in a smooth, smarmy tone of voice, ever ready to instruct law enforcement on legal machinations. “She was in your jail, was she not?”

  Sheriff John said with feeling, “Goddamnit.”

  Judge Posey said, “Now, Sheriff, there are women and well, no children, but there are women present. I don’t care for that kind of talk in my court room.”

  Sheriff John, who had an annual budget of about $1.5 million dollars, and had a vivid and depressing visual image of said monies being flushed down a toilet, said, “$#@*&%!!” Then he added for good measure, “Bleep. Bleepity. Bleeping Bleep.”

  “Sheriff, get out of my court room before I cite you for contempt,” Judge Posey, his voice no longer so soft and southern. He smiled at Doris. “Sorry about that, Ma’am.”

  Doris smiled back. She knew that she would have to drop the lawsuit, or she wouldn’t get any protection from the law enforcement around Pegramville. But she didn’t mind seeking some well-deserved revenge in the form of ulcers and sleepless nights for the next few weeks to come. She waved at Judge Posey, who visited the Red Door Inn on Sundays, after church, whilst his wife was attending a weekly church board meeting.

  About a half hour after that, most of the people had cleared out. Lawyer Petrie was long gone, seeing no more viable work or monies that could be squeezed out the Snoddys. Bubba walked out with his mother, his Stetson firmly on his head, and the strangely familiar green button in one of his pockets. He pulled it out to look at it, puzzling over why it was bothering him. Lurlene was hanging on his other arm, talking animatedly. “I knew they didn’t have anything on you, Bubba. It’s so nice to see justice do just the right thing. How do you think I look in this yellow dress? I think it washes out my skin. Did you hear that the library got broken into? Someone was messing with all of the old papers in the back room. All of the Civil War stuff. I suppose some of them papers are valuable, but they must smell awfully bad.”

  Miz Demetrice was talking at the same time. “Thank God for small favors. Lawyer Petrie warned you, didn’t he? Bubba, did you get any sleep? Did you talk with that Cambliss woman? Did you know that Elgin Snoddy used to go there when it was her mother running the place? He used to say he was going to an Elks meeting, but since when do they have Elks around here? Honestly, boy, you don’t say much.”

  Bubba finally showed the button to his mother and asked, “You recognize this?”

  Miz Demetrice shrugged. “It’s just a button.”

  Lurlene clamped her mouth shut, annoyed that Bubba wasn’t dancing attendance on her. She looked at the button, and still said nothing.

  Bubba looked around, and then excused himself from the two women. Both women stared at his back as he walked over to Deputy Willodean Gray. She stood just outside the county courthouse steps, waiting for someone. She said to him, “I don’t have anything on that equipment, Bubba.”

  “How about the fingerprints on the window sills?” he asked, entranced by her lovely face. Black hair the color of jet. Green eyes carved out of turquoise. Lips that begged to be kissed. He sighed inwardly, certain that he had just felt the sweetly stinging impact of one Cupid’s arrows to his backside.

  “One was Miz Adelia’s. Another’s was your mother’s. Did you know that she was arrested at San Francisco for picketing Gerald Ford in 1975? Never mind. There were some unidentified ones, but we’ll need a body to go with them.” She bit her lip, and Bubba stared, fascinated. She clarified, “A live body, not a dead body. Listen, Bubba, I got to go.”

  Bubba nodded. “I need that intruder. I need him, real bad.”

  “I know, Bubba,” she said, looked around him, caught sight of something she didn’t like, and took a step back from him. Bubba looked back and saw Deputy Steve Simms talking with the District Attorney. Neither one of them saw Bubba talking with Willodean. She added, “I’m glad for you, though.”

  She turned and walked quickly away. Bubba looked back at his mother and Lurlene, and found both of them watching him in turn, enthralled by the whole event. He strolled back to them, pasted a smile across his face that erased about five years of stress, and asked, “Shall we go to lunch, ladies?”

  During the course of lunch at the Old Gray Goose Inn, which specialized in chicken-fried anything the size of a large dinner plate, Bubba found out that the Connors would share nothing with Miz Demetrice. She was the mother of the devil, as far as they were concerned, and for all they cared, he could fry in the electric chair.

  “I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Texas executes by lethal injection,” Miz Demetrice said sadly.

  Lurlene had ordered another salad. She paused with a fork full of lettuce and blue cheese dressing and pointed it for emphasis. “If you’re gonna execute someone, at least give him a choice.”

  The rest of Bubba’s chicken-fried steak covered with thick, creamy gravy suddenly didn’t look so appetizing to him. Lurlene went on, “I hear that Gary Gilmore got to choose between being shot, hanged, or electrocuted. Now that’s a progressive state.”

  Miz Demetrice, ever one to get involved in an open discussion, said, “Well, they do allow polygamy there.”

  “No, they don’t,” Lurlene asserted. Her features flushed with red. Abruptly, her half southern accent vanished, and she spoke as though was from some mid-western state, without any discernable accent at all. “Utah doesn’t allow it. They just don’t prosecute it much.”

  “Sounds like they allow it to me,” Miz Demetrice muttered. “Where did you say you were from, Lurlene?”

  “I was born in Georgia,” she stated proudly. “But then my Daddy brought the family to Washington. State, that is.”

  “Ah,” Miz Demetrice murmured understandingly, with a note of pity that Bubba hoped Lurlene couldn’t detec
t.

  Lurlene waved her fork warningly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, my dear,” Miz Demetrice said innocently. “I was merely trying to place your accent.”

  The younger woman suddenly sat up straight, having abruptly discerned that Miz Demetrice was trying to yank her chains. “This is very good salad,” she said, brightly, showing her teeth like a pit bull about to go for the femoral artery. Her accent returned to pseudo-southern. “How’s your steak, Bubba?”

  Bubba studied the lumpy, congealed mess that he formerly thought very palatable. “It was good.” He paused and said to his mother, “What about the major?”

  “Sorry, dear,” his mother said. “He took one look at me, and said I could go straight to hell.” Her blue eyes studied nothing at all for a moment as she considered her own statement. “Well, it wasn’t exactly what he said, but that was the gist of it.”

  Bubba nodded tiredly. Miz Demetrice could find out a number of things, but only if she had a foot in the door. Given a little time, he didn’t doubt that his mother could wiggle her way into the Connor’s lives, as well as Major Dearman’s, finding out every tidbit of information that he needed to know. There was a problem, however; he didn’t have the time to waste.Bubba had thought what occurred at the court house ought to have made him feel better. The Honorable Judge Posey had given away a lot of useful information. One, the polygraph results had been officially confirmed. He had passed. Or in technical terms, nothing he said was determined to be deceptive in nature. Two, Bubba’s gunshot residue test had been negative. Three, none of Bubba’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon. However, here was the bad part. Sheriff John had every intention of continuing to pursue Bubba as his main suspect. If maybe the evidence didn’t point right to Bubba, then the sheriff was gonna find some more that maybe did point right to Bubba. And that was even if Sheriff John had to point out to the jury that the evidence pointed right at Bubba. As if anyone in Pegram County didn’t already know he was the main suspect and had already been arrested for the deed.

  Sheriff John was looking for people who might have gone to Bufford’s Gas and Grocery and found it empty during the critical time period. Bubba knew that they wouldn’t find any, but people might confused after a week or two and think maybe they had passed the store that particular night and maybe it had appeared empty.

  Furthermore, Bubba was sure that Sheriff John or Deputy Simms could find someone who thought maybe that they had seen Bubba’s green Chevy truck driving that way around that time, even if they weren’t sure it was, in fact, on the correct night of the week. Bubba drove down that road all of the time. Sometimes when he had taken a break from mechanicking, he would drive himself home for a dinner break, and to watch the news and Jay Leno. If Sheriff John pushed hard enough, someone was going to say, “Well, maybe it could have been Thursday night last. No, wait, I’m sure of it. No, I’m not. Yes, I am sure.” Then in court the witness would be bull-doggedly determined that on the night in question the evil, wrong-doing Bubba Snoddy had been driving down by the creek toward the Snoddy place with an iniquitous expression on his face, as if he were unshakable in his attempt to murder the woman who had once done him so wrongly.

  Bubba had a lot of zippola. Sheriff John had a lot of circumstantial evidence which could theoretically send Bubba to a place that Texas was famous for, Huntsville, where the murderers are real regularly like fried on a stick. Or injected, if that made a body more happy.

  His Honor, Judge Stenson Posey, might be right about a jury of Pegramville citizens not being able to convict him, but Bubba sure as hell didn’t want to get to that junction to find out whether His Honor was correct.

  Bubba was abruptly brought back to the moment, when Miz Demetrice said loudly, “I have got to do things in preparation for tonight, dear.” In secret, mother talk that meant that the Pegram County Pokerama was back on, despite possible rigid persecution by John Q. Law. Perhaps the danger of being caught added to the excitement of the game. She had to make many phone calls, to decide where to hold the illegal event, and to round up tonight’s bringer of food and snacks. Poker was on, again! The Pegramville Women’s Club was back in action. Crime and evil doing abounded in abundance in the tiny town.

  Lurlene hinted that she would like to spend some time with Bubba alone, but Bubba was equally determined to proceed with the elimination of suspects. If his mother couldn’t talk to Major Dearman, then there was nothing stopping Bubba from doing so.

  So Bubba dropped his mother off, delivered Lurlene to her apartment, and ignored her look of spiteful resentment, and went searching for the major. He hoped that his former commanding officer hadn’t already left with Melissa’s body.

  He started off with Mary Lou Treadwell of the Sheriff’s Department, who told him that Michael Dearman was checked into the Red Door Inn. She wasn’t reluctant about giving out such information at all. Nosiree, Bob.

  Bubba clicked his tongue, and then chastised himself. The major probably didn’t have a clue as to the true nature of the bed and breakfast. When Bubba showed up there, he found Doris Cambliss dusting off the front desk, an 18th century Pennsylvanian Dutch desk with delicately carved nooks and crannies. She systematically polished it until it glowed.

  “Why, Bubba Snoddy,” she exclaimed, a chamois in her hand. “I didn’t think I’d see you again, so soon.”

  This afternoon, Doris was dressed conservatively in a silk flower print, with ivory Jimmy Choo pumps on her feet. A lovely ivory silk scarf was wrapped around her slender throat. Doris appeared every inch the prosperous bed and breakfast owner. Not a madam, to be certain.

  “It’s nice to see you outside of the jail, Ma’am,” Bubba said politely. It was.

  “And you as well,” she returned. It was, too.

  “I’m looking for one of your bed and breakfast clients,” Bubba said courteously. “Major Dearman.”

  Doris studied Bubba for a long moment, as if analyzing his expression could determine his intent. “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” she asked after sincere cogitation.

  “No, Ma’am. I just want to find out a few things,” Bubba said. He held his Stetson in front of him like a little boy. Like a little boy who towers over a much smaller woman and doesn’t take advantage of the disparity, Doris considered.

  Doris thought about it for a while longer and then silently determined that Bubba probably wouldn’t hurt the man under the circumstances. Too many witnesses and such. “He went out around three. Said something about wanting to get, how did he put it, shit-faced? That was it. Shit-faced.” She shook her head sadly. “Not a very nice term. But very succinct.”

  Bubba processed this information. There were about ten bars in town. There were two restaurants which served liquor as well. There were three liquor stores where the major could buy a bottle or two and proceed on his own at a location untenable to Bubba. “Do you know where he went?”

  Doris continued to study Bubba. She hoped that the younger man wasn’t in a mood, like his daddy could get before him. Doris had known Elgin Snoddy, and felt sincerely sorry for Miz Demetrice for all her gentile soft nature. But in the end, Elgin hadn’t broken the woman’s spirit, and Bubba wasn’t one to go around striking down those who couldn’t fight back. Bubba had gotten in a fight or two in his day, but she couldn’t recall him ever being mean nor malicious. However, he was on the verge of being put in jail, never to be let out again, if Sheriff John had his way. Who knew what he was capable of doing? She finally answered, “I believe he was going to cruise down Main Street, which means about three bars for you to search.”

  Bubba found a very much drunken Major Dearman in the last bar in which he looked. It was a little hole in the wall affair named, like a million others, the Dew Drop Inn. Bubba, who was getting tired of drunken Pegramville residents asking how it felt to get even with the woman who done him wrong and the smell of cigarette smoke permeating every bit of his clothing and hair, almost didn’t go in. He thought that
it was true that the major could have gone anywhere. Even to dime night at Grubbo’s, where Lurlene herself had an inclination. He was scowling as he parked his truck in a metered slot.

  But he walked into the Dew Drop Inn, allowed his eyes to adjust to the dimness, and looked around. There were about ten people in the bar. Indeed, the place probably would only hold twenty at best. A few were leaning up against the bar. A few were at tables. But it was the solitary man in a green uniform at the back of the bar, pounding on the juke box that caught Bubba’s attention.

  It was Major Dearman. He was three sheets to the wind. As drunk as a fiddler, pie-eyed, soused, jug-bitten, stinko, pissy-eyed, or in other words, staggering, blind, crapulent drunk. As Bubba watched him, he was wondering why the man hadn’t already been transported to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, for it was surely only a matter of time. The folks at the emergency room would have to pump out his stomach, and then things would really get messy.

  The bartender, a man Bubba whose name he couldn’t remember, yelled at the major, “Hey, soldier-boy, it don’t respond to fists! You gotta put quarters in it!”

  The major said, “I did, Goddamnit.” Then he fell on his table with an audible thump. It was unclear as to whether or not the table would take the abuse, but it did.

  There was a conspicuously large amount of space in between him and other customers at the Dew Drop Inn. A large area of empty tables circled the area in which Dearman sat, isolated, and drunk.