Bubba and the Dead Woman Page 2

  Bubba shrugged. It didn’t matter now.

  Not one for long farewells and intent on catching the middle half of the Tonight Show Lloyd took the opportunity to grab his smokes and slide out the door before Bubba even said goodbye. Bubba watched as the woman approached Lloyd on the far side of the asphalt, and they talked for a moment. She was standing in the shadows, and Bubba couldn’t rightly get a good look at her face. Lloyd motioned eagerly left and right, pointing as they spoke. It dawned on Bubba that Lloyd was giving the woman driving directions. She thanked him with a wave of her hand, and went back to her car. Lloyd watched, and then shuffled off toward his ramble-shack home a mile down the freeway.

  On the floor beside the stool that Bubba sat on, Precious snored away, her paws twitching as she dreamed of all things canine. The rental car’s lights came on, and the woman drove off, leaving Bubba to think of things in the past. These were things he didn’t care to be thinking of, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to prevent the thoughts from trickling into his mind as he sat in the silent and lonely gas and grocery store.

  As it turned out, he didn’t have a single customer until well after midnight, and that one, Martha Lyles, elementary school teacher, had awoken from a dream about winning the lottery. She had felt compelled to come down to the store in her bunny slippers to immediately purchase the numbers of which she had dreamt. It had taken Bubba a good twenty minutes and a lot of help from Martha to figure out how to work the machine that dispensed lottery tickets.

  Bubba lost any good humor he had left when a couple of drunks drove into Bufford’s Gas and Grocery around two AM, intent on purchasing cheap beer, and pretzels. Bubba didn’t care to let these two on the road, and wouldn’t let them leave until they had called a cab to pick them up, leaving their Dodge truck in one of Bufford’s undersized parking places. After that, there hadn’t been another customer until five, when the earliest working folks began to trickle in to buy coffee and donuts that they didn’t have to make themselves.

  Coffee, Bubba felt sure, was the one thing he could do, after he spent about thirty minutes looking for filters and coffee grounds. Unfortunately, when the coffee began to percolate, it smelled as though something had died in the coffee pot, rather than redolent from the fresh aroma of coffee beans.

  Only an hour late, Leelah Wagonner wandered in at seven AM sharp to relieve the night shift, finding a grumpy Bubba behind the counter, money sticking haphazardly out of the cash register, and Precious snoring to Kingdom Come underneath Bubba’s feet. Bubba had a look on his face that indicated that not only was he unhappy, but that he was also not pleased.

  Leelah, a married woman of five years with two toddlers causing havoc back at her mama’s house while Leelah’s husband, Mike, worked at the manure factory, deduced correctly that Bubba Snoddy was highly irate and agitated. She was late because of her kids deciding that tennis shoes made dandy containers for mud pies and Bubba did not look thrilled at her hastily muttered explanation.

  “Where’s Mark Evans?” she asked carefully, studying burns on Bubba’s arms that could only come from the hot dog machine. She knew because she had gotten some herself, when she had first started working at Bufford’s. And she was uncertain why Bubba Snoddy had thought to fill that machine up so early in the day, when it would most probably go to waste.

  If Leelah had asked, Bubba would have said he had put the hot dogs in because of some low-carb minded idiot who demanded one of the all beef weenies for his breakfast, sans buns. Bubba thought that was the culmination of his day because he determined that the hot dog machine was a diabolical machine invented by satanic hands in order to ruin mankind. It had finally become obvious to even Bubba that one was not supposed to insert one’s arms into the innards of the devilish device. His dark eyebrows drew together in a fierce frown and he finally answered Leelah’s question. “He quit.”

  “Why didn’t you call Mary Bradley?”

  “I did.”

  “So, she didn’t come in?” she said cautiously.

  “Mary didn’t answer the phone,” Bubba said softly. Precious woke up, and began to bay softly, sensitive occasionally to her master’s moods.

  “Uh, Bubba,” Leelah felt compelled to observe. “If the Health Department comes in and sees that dog in here, we’re going to hell in a hand basket.”

  Bubba gave Precious a nudge toward the door. “As far as I’m concerned,” he called back over his shoulder. “We’re already there.”

  Leelah, in all of her twenty-three years on the planet Earth, had never seen such a mess as what Bubba Snoddy had left in Bufford’s Gas and Grocery. The cash register was awry. There was a hot dog stuck in the self-propelled mechanism of the hot dog display. Coffee was strewn on the floor from the cash register to the back store room. Furthermore, the coffee smelled like an unholy cauldron from a witch’s circle. She shrugged, and began to clean things up before the big morning crowd came in. She only briefly looked out the large, glass windows when Bubba revved up the engine in his old truck, and peeled out onto the highway, leaving a trail of rubber ten feet long. Neither he nor Precious ever looked back at Bufford’s.

  Twenty minutes later he pulled into the Snoddy family estate. It consisted of one hundred and fifty year old mansion, replete with columns, flaking paint, and the odd termite, and a caretaker’s house out back. The caretaker’s house used to be a stable, but was converted just after World War II. Elgin Snoddy’s father, Lionel, had wanted to rent out to soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Dimson, and make a few bucks in the process. All he really accomplished was to convert a perfectly good stable into an oddball residence, which most normal folks didn’t care to rent, anyway.

  The grounds were still inundated with the last century’s plush gardening and landscaping. There was even a koi pond out back with koi that had grown into the size of trout, and a whole mess of water lilies that threatened to take over the entire pond. It was all Bubba could do to keep up with trimming the yard and gardens out of complete wilderness. He noticed with dismay that if he didn’t get his weed wacker out soon, the weeds were going to take over the front veranda of the Snoddy mansion, and a machete would be necessary to make one’s way to the front door.

  When Bubba parked his car, he also noticed with dismay that Miz Demetrice had a visitor, whose car was parked on the side of the mansion. A visitor whose blue Honda sedan had Hertz stickers on the sides, he observed with a growing sense of something he couldn’t quite identify. No, wait, he could identify it. Anger. It had been her.

  Obviously, Miz Demetrice had taken her right in, probably even dragged her over to the poker game, too, he thought. But there was a hesitation. It was after ten PM when he had seen the young woman at Bufford’s. Miz Demetrice should have been long gone from the Snoddy residence, and probably wouldn’t come back until every woman over the age of fifty in Pegram County had lost their sewing monies and most likely some welfare cash as well. Certainly, Bubba hadn’t seen Miz Demetrice crawl back into the mansion before noon after most poker nights.

  Bubba got out of the truck, and let Precious clamber down as well. Almost instantly, the dog began to howl again, snorting at the ground and shuffling around. She began to sniff around a pair of boots sticking out of the tall weeds at the side of the caretaker’s house. Then she fixed her master with a look that fully indicated that he should also come and take a sniff.

  Bubba took a step over toward the boots, and realized that they were attached to legs. Then the legs were attached to a torso. And the torso was attached to a...

  A man appeared beside Bubba, and looked down at what had Bubba dumbstruck. Precious barked at the man and backed off a ways, variously baying and barking as she saw fit. Bubba glanced up and saw the real estate agent, Neal Ledbetter, who had been pestering Miz Demetrice for months about selling the Snoddy lands, or at least what was left of the Snoddy lands. Neal had walked from the front of the property, where he had parked his Lincoln Continental, after following Bubba’s truck down th
e road a bit. Neal never was one to let it be said that he didn’t take every opportunity to talk a potential client into a sale.

  That man gazed down at the woman at their feet with an expression akin to pure befuddlement. Finally, Neal, not the most smart and congenial of fellas, looked back at Bubba and stated, “Bubba, that woman is as dead as road kill.”

  Chapter Two - Bubba and the Sheriff –

  Friday

  While Bubba Snoddy was standing wordlessly over the dead woman, Neal Ledbetter extracted a compact, cellular phone, and made a call to 911. Bubba barely heard the real estate agent saying to the emergency operator, “Yep, Mary Lou, this is Neal Ledbetter down at the Snoddy’s place. Yes, I am still trying to get them to sell their house. Well, you wouldn’t believe how stubborn and obstinate that Miz Demetrice can be. You would? You remember the time that she chained herself to the cannon in the town square? You know the one the mayor passed out next to? Yeah. That was...oh, yeah, there’s a dead woman out here at the Snoddy’s place.”

  Bubba took a half-stumbling step backward, suddenly discomfited in his sudden realization of how short life was, and how the past had come back to bite him on his proverbial white cheeks. Precious stopped her baying and approached her master with doglike concern. He hunkered down, and put his hand on Precious’s head. The dog butted his hand in order to promote the proper human-dog social interaction of petting. He absently scratched behind one of her large, floppy ears, and then behind the other. One of her hind legs scratched air in gleeful assistance.

  In the background, Neal was saying, “It’s the damnedest thing. She looks like she’s been shot in the back...Because she is on her stomach, lying down, Mary Lou. I can see where she’s been shot. I was in the Marines for four years. I know what a gunshot looks like...no, I never shot anyone when I was in the service. So the sheriff’s on his way, hmm? Good, what else has been happening? Someone broke into the library last week? Well, damn, what fer? Scattered around some of the old records? That sounds pretty stupid. Damned kids. Did you hear about George Bufford and his secretary, Hot Rosa?”

  Bubba might have listened but his mind was in another world altogether. There was a dead woman lying in the tall grass in front of his house. But not only that, he knew this dead woman. He had known her for years, although he hadn’t seen her for the last three.

  Her name had been Melissa Dearman. When he had first met her it had been Melissa Connor. Now she lay in the grass like a discarded toy. Her face was turned toward him, long honey-blonde hair spilling over her face and shoulders. What was truly disturbing was that her sky blue eyes were still open and staring just above her open mouth, a perfect ‘O’ of surprise. She seemed as though she had lain down in the grass a few minutes before, and would bounce up any second now. Clad in blue jeans, a blue chambray shirt, and leather boots, she seemed as willowy and attractive as she had ever been.

  Melissa hadn’t changed. He reconsidered. Except for being dead. Death changed everything, no doubt about that.

  Bubba’s eyes went down her slim figure to that which had killed her. A bullet hole was prominent on her body, in the middle of her back, right between the shoulder blades, only a little blood staining the blue of her clothing directly around the injury. He wasn’t about to turn her over to see if there was an exit wound, but he expected there would be. It looked to be a large caliber weapon that had been used.

  Bubba turned his head toward her neatly parked rental car. Melissa had gotten out of the vehicle, and then for some reason, the reason probably being some person with a large gun, had run toward the smaller house in the back. Long before she had reached what she might have thought was sanctuary, she had been ruthlessly shot in the back, and died immediately. The tiny amount of blood about the wound told him that.

  One of Bubba’s large hands was still and leaden on Precious’s head. She whimpered, and retreated to a nearby tree, to watch her master with an indignant look on her dogly face.

  Finally, he stood up, and glanced over at Neal, who finished his prolonged conversation with Mary Lou of the emergency line on how today’s society was quickly descending into the seventh level of hell. Neal clicked the ‘end’ button on the cell phone, and said, “Sheriff will be here P.D.Q., Bubba.”

  Bubba, Neal knew, was not a real talkative man, especially after he had returned from military service some three years before. It was Neal’s personal opinion that the Snoddys, especially the matriarch, Miz Demetrice, were mostly a bunch of snobs, who thought that their kaka didn’t stink. Of course, this opinion was tainted by the fact that Demetrice had three times refused to sell any of the Snoddy lands to Neal’s corporation, so that a Wal-Mart Supercenter might be built here. The nearest one was fifteen miles away and Pegramville needed one, by God. It was, after all, the best location in the town, with plenty of room for a huge parking lot, and a gardening section. It was dying, no pun intended, to be a Wal-Mart, if only Neal could convince the Snoddys of that. There was also the additional advantage of this particular venue being legal unlike other suggestions that Neal had received lately.

  However, Miz Demetrice had chased Neal off the front veranda with a shotgun over her arm the last time he had dared step on the property, and threatened to give the realtor a ‘shotgun enema’ if he ever returned. Where did a tiny, old woman learn a phrase like that? he wondered, awestricken.

  But Neal wasn’t the type to give up and having noticed Bubba this morning driving in front of him in his old, battered truck and Precious slobbering in the wind, half way out the passenger window, he had decided to give it the old college try. Certainly, Miz Demetrice wasn’t getting any younger, and Bubba might inherit the properties any time, given the fact that enormous jet-liners were falling out of the sky each and every blessed day. An individual never knew when one might fall on Miz Demetrice’s little, stuck-up head. So he parked his Lincoln Conny just in front of the big house, and ambulated around the building to have an influencing word with the younger Snoddy.

  Even so, there had come this other problem. A dead woman was lying in the grass in the garden of the Snoddy mansion with Bubba staring down at her as if he had never seen a woman before. Just as sure as anything Neal had ever seen.

  Bubba took another long look at Melissa, stepped forward, leaned and closed her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He didn’t say a word.

  Neal commented, “I don’t think you should touch her, Bubba.”

  Quite frankly, Bubba didn’t care what Neal Ledbetter thought. He snapped to his dog, “Precious! Heel!”

  Precious’s ears flopped as she obeyed. She recognized the tone of voice that her master had, and wasn’t about to disobey. She scampered up to Bubba and placed herself accordingly, just behind his feet.

  Neal watched as Bubba and dog tromped off in the direction of the caretaker’s house. Bubba entered the house and slammed the door with a resounding bang. The realtor looked around, surprised to be by himself. Well, he amended to himself, me and a dead woman. A little chill ran down his spine. He sure hoped that the sheriff would make it here quickly.

  Bubba came back out of the caretaker’s house with a sheet, throwing the door open with a loud thud. He reverently covered up the dead woman with the white cloth, and went back inside. A few minutes later, he came back out with a large cup of coffee, Precious following at his heels. He set himself down in an Adirondack chair on the porch of the house with a large thumping noise that threatened the entire house. Precious scooted under the chair, peering suspiciously out at Neal, who was standing in the middle of the garden with a dumb look plastered across his face.

  Neal, who could smell fresh coffee from five hundred feet, approached the porch as if there were a lit bomb sitting on it. His nose twitched and he moved toward the caretaker’s house. He took one step onto the porch steps when Bubba said in a low, but clear voice, “I wouldn’t.”

  The realtor froze in place, one foot half way to the second step. “Like to have a cup of coffee, Bubba, if
I might.” His own voice was almost a petrified squeak, breaking on ‘might.’.

  Bubba said, “Bufford’s Gas and Grocery has fine coffee. Especially the pot I made this very morning.” He gestured with his cup, not even looking at the other man. “It’s thataway.”

  Neal retreated to the far side of the yard, to the position farthest away from the woman’s body and Bubba, without actually being out of sight of both. Fortunately for his peace of mind, the sheriff drove up in a county car, even while he was retreating to his perceived position of safety.

  Sheriff John Headrick was another big man. He stood a whopping six foot five inches, and liked to add another inch by wearing cowboy boots with a little heel. He filled out his tan uniform as if he had been poured into it. His steel gray hair matched his steel gray eyes, which went along with his sun-grizzled face and skin. When he was mad, his flesh turned the exact shade of Pepto Bismo. When he was coldly aloof, he had skin the color of weathered leather.

  Known as Sheriff John to his loyal constituents and disloyal adversaries alike, he squeezed himself out of the county vehicle, studying the situation with a hardened look. He didn’t miss the realtor standing in the shade of the big Snoddy place, nor Bubba sipping coffee on the caretaker’s porch. Finally, his eyes caught the stark white of the sheet covering the woman’s body, with its two pathetic boots sticking out of the long grass in the garden.

  A few minutes later, he had her purse in his big hands, flipping through her wallet. The rental car had been unlocked, with a woman’s black purse sitting on the passenger seat for God and everyone to see. Here was her name, Sheriff John ascertained, and then just behind him, Bubba said, “Melissa Dearman.”

  Sheriff John looked up, his eyebrows growing together into one long piece. Neal was still skulking in the shadows, obviously cowed by Bubba’s presence. But Bubba himself had silently risen from the porch, approaching the sheriff without him even hearing his footfalls.