Bubba and the Dead Woman Page 16

  But he was unconscious. Therefore, he didn’t see the black-clothed man, holding a rifle before him, run across Farmer’s Road like the devil himself were behind him, and climb into a vehicle, which abruptly started and drove off. There were no witnesses, except maybe Precious, who wasn’t saying nothing to nobody.

  When Bubba came to, he heard whining which sounded like a broken fan belt. “Gotta adjust that fan belt,” he muttered. “Sounds like it’s ‘bout to slip like it was running on snail snot.” He opened his eyes. He knew he was in a hole, because it was now daylight, and full daylight at that. Presently he could plainly see that he was in a hole. There was black dirt all around him, with roots and rocks interspersed in the earth. He knew that he had hit his head on something because he had a headache akin to someone pounding on his skull with an iron mallet. The whining, incidentally, came from Precious, who was lying on the side of the hole, her head resting on her paws, as she continued her vigil above her master, gazing down upon him with soulful brown eyes. Her unsaid question would have been something like, ‘Just what in the hell are you doing in that hole, hmm?’

  “On a scale from one to ten,” Bubba said conversationally to his dog. “I would have to say that this day is a one. A one being the worst day I ever had. I thought that would have been the day I broke the major’s arm, but I was wrong. That was a one and a half. This is a one.”

  Precious lifted her head and cocked it, listening to her master’s voice. At least, he was awake.

  Bubba climbed out of the four foot deep hole, bringing the baseball bat with him. All he was dressed in was a pair of boxer shorts with the picture of old glory across them and badly tied Reeboks. There were scrapes from the brush and trees across his body. There were mosquito bites punctuating several muscle groups. And he smelled like the earthy scent of eau de locker room. “Holy Jesus, I’m ready to go to town,” Bubba said with a weary chuckle, and immediately wished that he had not done so. His head pounded like a demon was playing on kettledrums inside his head.

  He surveyed the hole he had fallen into, and the immense tree root that he had cracked his head against. Someone had been digging on the property. Daylight trickled down through thick trees and vegetation, rays of light mottled with dust motes. Around him were a few other holes, all dug within the last few days, judging by the color of the freshly turned earth.

  Rubbing the sore spot on his head, not a sore spot, but a lump the size of a tennis ball, Bubba puzzled over the hole. It wasn’t a grave. It didn’t look like much at all. But there in the dirt pile next to the hole was a six inch by a foot piece of rusting iron. It looked like an old piece of a tiller. He picked it up, looked at the hole again, and then back at the rusting metal in his hands. He walked over to the next hole. In the dirt next to that hole was another piece of rusting metal on top. It was unidentifiable, except that it was rusting iron of some type. Clarity came to Bubba suddenly. Someone with a metal detector was using it in the woods to find things long buried. Once they had recovered what was clearly a piece of junk they had stopped digging and discarded the trash.

  Lucidity uncluttered Bubba’s mind so abruptly he almost gasped. He knew what their ghost was after. It all made perfect sense now. But he bit the side of his mouth. What didn’t make sense was Melissa’s death. She couldn’t have seen anyone digging in the dirt, did she? But she could have seen someone searching at the house. The one night that Miz Demetrice, Bubba, and Adelia Cedarbloom were certain to be gone. The one night that someone could have had a free hand in finding something hidden. But there was the fact that the police had a phone record of someone calling Melissa from the Snoddy Mansion. Someone had to know that she had been coming.

  Bubba dropped the piece of tiller on the forest floor. Precious pounced on it, sniffing it eagerly. She was one hungry dog, and felt as though her sacrifice to protect her master throughout the night was not properly appreciated. She dismissed the metal as inedible, not to mention, undesirable, and woofed softly to Bubba. Feed me, dammit. She put a wet, sloppy nose on his leg.

  He reached down with a long arm and scratched Precious’s head. She leaned into it. Now, that’s more like it. It’s not Alpo but it ain’t bad.

  The pieces of the puzzle were still rumbling around in Bubba’s head. Some things began to make sense, and other things that he hadn’t connected to the whole situation were promptly connectable.

  But who was behind it all? he asked himself. Who, dammit, who?

  Bubba walked to the edge of the forest, where he could clearly see the strip mall. His intruder was all too likely to be long gone. But he looked out all the same. His mouth dropped open. Apparently, he had been lying in the hole for a long time. As he surveyed the mini-mall it appeared as though everyone but the kitchen sink was present, going about their daily business.

  Off to one side were Miz Demetrice and Adelia arguing with the vegetable vendor over oranges. Adelia’s old Volvo was parked next to the vendor’s cart. Roscoe Stinedurf was filling up his truck with gasoline at the gas station on the other end of the strip mall. One of his wives, Bubba couldn’t tell them apart, was sitting in the cab of the truck, nursing a baby. Neal Ledbetter was standing outside of the copy place, talking with all people, Lurlene Grady, and none other than Noey Wheatfall, owner and operator of the Pegram Café.

  Bubba could faintly recall Lurlene talking about Noey’s plans to open up a new restaurant on the other side of Pegramville, and this was clearly it.

  Finally, up drove Sheriff John Headrick in his county car, and beside him sat Deputy Willodean Gray. They both got out, and started talking to Roscoe Stinedurf as he continued to fill the tank of his truck.

  Bubba closed his mouth with an audible snap. Everyone was there but the major, and then his mouth dropped open again. Out of the dry-cleaning store, walked Major Michael Dearman, looking distinctly green in his gills, but there he was all the same. He was carrying his uniform, which must have gone in by the hourly service, in a plastic bag.

  Almost everyone who even remotely had something to do with the mystery of who murdered Melissa Dearman was there. Bubba was intelligibly dumbfounded.

  Precious whined loudly again. Bubba stepped back, broken from his reverie. He wanted to get back to the house before anyone saw him wearing only his shorts and Reeboks. He was sure he’d never hear the end of that if he didn’t beat his mother and her housekeeper home. God help him.

  That wasn’t his only immediate problem. Also Bubba’s subpoenaed testimony was due at one PM that day, and he couldn’t miss it. He looked up, and decided that it was late in the morning. Besides which the temperature was not at its hottest. Either that or a man should go around in boxer shorts more often.

  It was to his benefit that no one saw poor Bubba as he made his way back to the caretaker’s house, with Precious following at a cheerful pace. When he got inside his house, he discovered that while he had been chasing someone around the woods, someone else had been searching through his own house. After all, he had left it wide open.

  Bubba looked around his home in dismay. It was as if the sheriff and his merry men, and one purty woman of course, had come by to do their search again. Except this time, whoever it had been, they had left things a little in disarray. Nothing was broken. Not that there was all that much to disarrange, but everything was either on its side, or on the floor, or put in backwards. He knew it hadn’t been the sheriff and company.

  Willodean had been correct in her estimations. There was an accomplice. A devious accomplice who had waited until Bubba had been lured by the sound of the first guy banging around in the big house. Then what? Led him out into the woods where Bubba was supposed to get lost like the dumb redneck he was. Or fall into a hole?

  Bubba needed ibuprofen. And a shower. But first he fed his dog. She was grateful.

  An hour later, he felt almost human. All that was left was to find some clothing that appeared half way presentable. He discovered that he didn’t have any clean jeans. So he finally found a pair
that he had worn the day he had come from the jail. They had been kicked under the bed by none other than Bubba himself, whose idea of laundry was to wait until each piece of clothing could stand up on its own or until Miz Adelia took pity on him, which was more often than the former.

  He picked up the jeans, and the green button fell out of the pocket onto the floor with a little ping. Bubba picked up the button and looked at it. It still looked like something he ought to recognize. He had assumed it was one of his mother’s outfit’s buttons, but she had denied ownership. He shrugged. Perhaps it was Miz Adelia’s. He put it in back in the pocket of the jeans.

  Therefore, Bubba was mostly clean and presentable when he appeared before the Pegramville Grand Jury for his testimony. He was asked to present his side of the events of the night that Melissa Dearman was murdered. He was also asked about his involvement with her during his time in service.

  Bubba admitted all. After all, it was hardly a secret now. “Yes, I was engaged to Melissa Connor...Yes, I broke her husband’s arm. Only he wasn’t her husband then...No, I didn’t shoot Melissa Dearman...No, I don’t know who shot her, but I’d like to...Because it ain’t right, even if she did sleep around on me when we were affianced...Thank you, Mrs. Barnstable, I appreciate that...No, Mr. Rittenhouse, I still didn’t kill Melissa.”

  Finally, he was allowed to leave. Sheriff John was waiting outside, as if prepared to arrest Bubba again. That thought confused Bubba. He already thought he was under arrest for doing Melissa in. The indictment itself seemed to be a way of saying, ‘Oh by the by, you can go ahead and officially arrest Bubba Snoddy now. Here’s our golden stamp of approval.’

  Surprisingly, Sheriff John merely stared at Bubba for a long minute. Bubba’s natural inclination was to stare back. Their similar size made it easy for them to do so. However, it was Bubba who looked away first. He didn’t have time for manly games of show. Perhaps the sheriff thought that some sort of police officer psychology would allow him to pierce Bubba’s mind with vengeful eyes that impelled the suspect into confessing all.

  Naw, thought Bubba. That would be stupid.

  Bubba stopped at the library, which was about three blocks down from the Pegram County Courthouse. It was a right smart little building, built in 1986 with funds provided by the Lion’s club, the Optimists, and Miz Demetrice’s group of avid gamblers, who put aside their obsessions for a time to raise money for a worthy purpose. Federal funds provided monies for one librarian and two aides. And most of the books in the library were not too old.

  “Miz Clack,” Bubba greeted the librarian. Nadine Clack was sitting at the front desk, shuffling through books. She was a short woman, not even five feet tall, and plump to boot. Despite the fact that she was in her early forties, her hair was completely white. Then there was the gold-rimmed, Ben Franklin glasses that all librarians seemed determined to wear, that Nadine did, in fact, wear. Finally, it was a known fact to all of Pegramville, that Nadine was not a woman with any kind of sense of humor, which in fact, she was of the same ilk as Nurse Dee Dee Lacour. Some would call her mean, but Bubba didn’t think that. She was stern. But she was never cruel. Little children kept quiet in her library. Hell, so did everyone else.

  “Bubba Snoddy,” Nadine said as she surveyed him through the spectacles which had slid down to the edge of her nose, causing her to tilt her head far back to see him.

  He looked around. The library seemed as empty as a crypt. He mentally chastised himself for using the comparison. It didn’t do a bit of good to make that kind of judgment. That was like asking God to kick a fella in the ass, and perty please with sugar on top, too.

  “Heard you had some break-in’s, too,” he noted, all friendly like.

  Nadine stared up at Bubba though lens that made her eyes look as large as a bug-eyed critter from the red planet. She waited for him to come to the point.

  “The archive section?” he asked.

  Nadine nodded slowly.

  Bubba came around to the side of her desk and sat down, so he wouldn’t be the cause of the crick that would surely result if she continued to look up at him in that fashion. “Look, Miz Clack. I know you’ve heard I’m in a bit of difficulty of late.”

  She nodded again. The expression on her stern face didn’t soften a bit.

  “I wonder if you can tell if any of your old papers are missing,” Bubba continued, even while she nodded.

  Nadine didn’t say anything else so Bubba added, “That would be Civil War era papers, maybe diaries from Colonel Nathaniel Snoddy, maybe?”

  Nadine finally spoke, “That’s correct, Bubba. I didn’t care to share that particular information with your mother.” So Nadine didn’t care to have a situation with Miz Demetrice. Miz Demetrice rubbed Nadine the wrong way, and vice versa. Bubba could surely understand that.

  Bubba raised his eyebrows. “Well, I can appreciate that. Anybody been asking about those papers lately?”

  “No, dear, I suspect that’s why they stole them instead. The sheriff seems to think that it’s kids, pulling a prank, but it’s obvious that he’s a plain fool.” Nadine rested her arms on her desk, and carefully adjusted her glasses on her nose. The better to see you with, my dear, he thought, and almost laughed. My, what big eyes you have, Miz Clack.

  Bubba sat back in the straight backed chair. He wasn’t surprised about the missing Snoddy papers. Nathaniel Snoddy had been his great-great-something-grandfather, and had been prone to writing everything down. And that meant everything. He had written the weekly grocery lists and kept it in his diaries. He had written the state of the weather every day. He had even written about his conquests of women, irrespective of his thirty yearlong marriage to the long-suffering Cornelia Adams Snoddy. Miz Demetrice had gleefully cleared out most of the rotting papers by donating them to the historical society, which in turn stored their materials at the library, hoping that Nadine would eventually sort them out. Apparently she had.

  “That old legend, again,” he muttered darkly. It seemed to surface every so many decades or so. The last time had been when there had been an article in...

  “People Magazine,” said Nadine, succinctly. “There was one person who displayed a certain interest in that edition. You know which one, the June of 1978 edition. He sat right over there, not a month ago, and made three copies at the Xerox machine.” She pointed at the table and machine, helpfully.

  “I thought Miz Demetrice told you to burn every copy,” returned Bubba grimly.

  “Now, that is not the attitude to display in attempting to uncover information from me,” Nadine warned in a level voice.

  “Because of thrice-damned gossip, I fell into a really, really deep hole early this morning, dug by some asinine fool,” said Bubba. It had seemed like a bottomless pit at the time.

  “Neal Ledbetter,” Nadine said, clicking her tongue. “Mr. Ledbetter seemed very interested in the Snoddy properties of late.”

  Bubba’s face was black with anger. He politely thanked Nadine, who watched him exit the library with a certain amount of concern. She was so concerned that she telephoned the fool of a sheriff about the incident.

  Consequently, it was Sheriff John who found Bubba with Neal Ledbetter’s corpse in the realtor’s office.

  Chapter Fourteen - Bubba and the Fire –

  Friday Through Saturday

  The truth was that Bubba Snoddy found Neal Ledbetter’s corpse in the offices of Ledbetter Realty just about 45 seconds before Sheriff John Headrick found Bubba.

  Bubba was standing in front of the only desk in a what was a tiny office, with one of his hands held out, ready to shake a warning finger at Neal on account of his actions of late. But, Bubba was really late. For that matter, so was Neal. Literally.

  Someone had blown a hole in Neal’s head. He sat in a high-backed, leather chair with his head leaned back against the rest as if he were taking a break. His eyes were shut, and if Bubba hadn’t seen the blood splatter on wall and the tiny hole in between Neal’s eyes, he might have
thought the other man asleep.

  It was about thirty seconds before Bubba could believe what he was seeing. The office door had been open. The radio on Neal’s desk was playing an eighties pop station out of Dallas, something about ninety-nine red balloons. There was a Cross pen in Neal’s right hand as if he had just signed a real estate contract with a client. He was dressed as he always dressed, white shirt, black tie, and a gold watch around his left wrist. Bubba presumed absently that the dead man had a set of slacks on underneath the desk, which was not visible to him, and he wasn’t about to step around to look. There was a cup of coffee sitting on some paperwork just to Neal’s left. It was only that little dot there on his forehead, the color of a dark penny and no bigger than the tip of Bubba’s pinky, that proclaimed to one and all that something was wrong.

  But in the bright afternoon light that streamed through the only window showed there was a huge circle of blood on the cream colored wall directly behind Neal’s head. It was as if someone had taken a paint brush heavily laden with crimson paint and flicked it against the wall. It was slightly above his head, as if someone had shot the realtor from below where he was sitting, or, realized Bubba abruptly, if Neal had been standing up when he had been shot.

  Bubba was frozen. Here was his suspect, and he was as dead as dog meat. He was deader than the Dead Sea scrolls. He was as dead as Abe Lincoln’s corpse. He was really really really dead. And the worst part for Bubba was that he finally realized in all the time he stood there that someone was going to very likely yell accusingly, “Hey, Bubba Snoddy shot this one, too!”

  Then Sheriff John stepped into the office behind him. Murphy’s Law, number unknown: Whenever a person is standing in front of a murdered individual and has a motive and was very recently known to be angry with said dead individual, then the local law enforcement will, in fact, step into the room at the most inopportune moment. With the following qualifier: whether one did the deed or not, but especially if he didn’t. Bubba was going to have to write Murphy a note about the latest law.