Bubba and the Dead Woman Page 4

  Bubba took the lunch from her and tossed it on the single bed. She offered a smooth, creamy cheek to him, and he kissed it through the bars. “Tell me what you heard, and I’ll tell you if it’s true.”

  So Lurlene told him some things, and Bubba made various noises of disbelief, awe, and amazement as he rediscovered Pegramville’s unrelenting thirst for high confabulation. Even Mike and Newt were amazed at the potpourri of rumors circulating.

  By the time Lurlene had departed, Bubba was feeling better already. After all, he wasn’t really under arrest; he was just waiting for the sheriff’s department to get all their tape recorders going and such. After a fine lunch of a meatloaf sandwich, a serving of spicy home fries, an apple, and a large brownie, a man was just about ready for everything.

  In fact, not a half hour after Bubba had finished brushing off brownie crumbs off his white T-shirt, Sheriff John returned with Tee and let him out. The next three hours were spent in a small room off of Sheriff John’s main office with a large mirror on one side. Bubba asked about the mirror in a congenial way, but the sheriff and his deputies weren’t up to answering questions of that nature from a ‘suspect.’ Bubba knew it was a one way mirror, and silently vowed not to pick his nose or scratch his balls, that is, if he could remember not to do so.

  Sheriff John did not participate in the questioning, but remained curiously absent. Bubba thought it was patently obvious that the man was watching from behind the one-way mirror. In any case, it was a deputy named Steve Simms who did all of the talking. Deputy Simms wasn’t originally from Pegram County, and Bubba didn’t know much about him, except that he liked to give speeding tickets to tourists a little too often using a diabolical speed trap on the far side of Pegram County. But, Bubba realized, the man must have been promoted, because here he was asking Bubba all kinds of questions about dead women lying in tall grass.

  Bubba thought privately that Sheriff John should have done the questioning. First, Deputy Simms, a man of about the same age as Bubba and seventy pounds lighter, used a condescending manner that only succeeded in making Bubba clamp up like a fixture on a radiator hose. Second and most importantly, Simms gave away more information that he got. It was this information that made Bubba realize that he was in a serious world of hurt. It wasn’t just a ‘Hey, explain yourself, Bubba’ kind of situation, but one that was far, far worse.

  Among the tidbits that Simms managed to let go was that Melissa Dearman had been shot between ten PM and one AM the night before. Bubba knew perfectly well that Bufford’s Gas and Grocery didn’t have an operational video camera surveillance system in order to alibi his whereabouts, and there were gaps that would have more than allowed Bubba to run off and shoot his ex-fiancée dead. Two, a forty-five caliber gun had been used in the killing of Melissa Dearman. Three, a M1911 Colt .45 handgun was registered to Miz Demetrice Snoddy, and it could not be produced by the same. It had belonged to Elgin, a gun he had brought back from his exploits in Southeast Asia, in a little country called Viet Nam. Three, Simms knew that Lloyd Goshorn had wandered into Bufford’s at half-past ten the previous evening. Furthermore, Lloyd had told them about the blonde haired woman to whom he had given directions. She had asked for the corner of Wilkins and Farmer’s Roads, not the Snoddy place, but the corner closest to the Snoddy estate’s front gates. As well, it seemed likely that Simms had a good idea that Martha Lyles had been in just about 12:20 AM to buy lottery tickets. Perhaps, Simms even knew that two drunks had been picked up by Smith’s Taxi service at 2:15 AM.

  Simms was too surprised to put a blank look on his face when Bubba volunteered for a lie detector test. He had to stop questioning Bubba for a while to go outside the interrogation room to confer with Sheriff John. Apparently they all concurred, and Bubba was escorted back to the jail by a deputy he hadn’t met before.

  Her name was Gray, and Bubba was instantly transfixed. She was about as short as a woman could be, without someone calling her a midget. About the size of his own mother, a woman who came up about knee high to a grasshopper. But that was where the resemblance ended. Her lustrous black hair was done up in a tight bun that coiled on the base of her neck. Hazel-green eyes regarded Bubba with the calm objectiveness of any law enforcement officer escorting a prisoner. She was slim, almost boyishly so, with her uniform fitting like a glove, intelligibly showing that she was, in fact, no boy. Bubba couldn’t get enough of staring at her face, heart-shaped face with rich, pouting ruby lips. Any thought of blonde, curvy Lurlene Grady went straight out of his mind like it was cement dropped in a pond. He shook his head vigorously.

  “What is it?” she asked, holding the door open for them. Bubba was in hand cuffs, and couldn’t do the courtesy. He was in heaven; her voice was that of an angel, soft, throaty, attractive. Furthermore, and most painfully to him, he only had the time it would take them to walk from the main sheriff’s office back to the jail, which was cattycorner to the main office, perhaps two minutes at the most.

  “I’m Bubba Snoddy,” he introduced himself, going through the door.

  “I know,” she replied, obviously not impressed, following him with a guiding hand on his shoulder.

  He regained his good humor momentarily. “It’s just that I thought I knew just about everyone from ‘round here.”

  “I’m new,” she responded, still obviously not impressed.

  Bubba had heard about the luscious Deputy Gray before, but having not seen her before, hadn’t paid much attention to the talk. The day mechanic over at Bufford’s had raved about wanting to be arrested by her. His own mother, Miz Demetrice, had made a comment about the sheriff’s department being sued by someone over sex discrimination in their hiring practices, and promptly hiring a woman in order to counter their lawsuit. “I’ve heard. What’s your name?”

  “Deputy Gray,” she said, dryly and handed him over into the custody of Tee, who giggled like a little girl when Deputy Gray signed the form. That was okay with Bubba, he kind of felt like giggling like a little girl himself, when she flashed those same green eyes at him.

  Bubba spent a quiet Friday night in the pokey, with Tee coming in about six PM to tell him that Miz Demetrice was picketing in front of the jail, screaming something about Attica. He let Bubba out to go out front and convince his mother that he hadn’t been molested once, or even tortured with rubber hoses by the law enforcement officials.

  “Not even a fingernail removed with pliers?” Miz Demetrice asked, disappointed.

  “Nope. I’ll take a lie detector test in the morning and they’ll probably let me out,” he told his mother, kissed her on her forehead, encouraged her to drive home carefully, and scooted her off with a wave of his hands. He watched his mother slowly walk down the sidewalk, her picket sign dragging on the ground beside her, and returned to the jail, where Tee was watching from the door. “Thanks, Tee.”

  Then Bubba slept one of the best nights he had for a long time. When morning came and he passed the lie detector test with flying colors, Sheriff John and Deputy Simms were so angry they refused to let him out of the jail until Monday.

  Chapter Four - Bubba Makes a List –

  Monday

  There was nothing in the world like the sweet, wondrous smell of freedom, Bubba Snoddy thought as he walked out of the Pegram County Jail.

  Bubba had been in excellent company while he was incarcerated temporarily. Certainly, he hadn’t been bored. What seemed like half the town had stopped in to chat, or just to take a gander at Bubba Snoddy, the infamous blue-beard of Pegramville, suspected murderer of no less than a dozen young virgins, until Tee Gearheart had explained to them that Bubba was only being held for questioning. Not only that, but there had only been one dead woman involved, and she surely had not been decapitated on the night of the full moon in the Sturgis Woods.

  Newt Durley stayed until Saturday night until his sister bailed him out, and had been a hell of a chess player. Furthermore, Bubba had relearned some of his algebra with Mike Holmgreen, which had been interest
ing even if the Mike’s grandmother, Mary Jean Holmgreen, had winked lasciviously at Bubba on her way out of the jail, after visiting with her grandson.

  Bubba had just plain ignored Sheriff John Headrick’s irritating, accusatory glances, as the man wandered into the jail half a dozen times, knowing full and damned well that his prisoner was being held illegally. Each time, Bubba had just given the older man a grin and a wave like he was having the time of his life. He wasn’t ready to tell his mother to go find an ambulance-chaser yet. No one had come into beat him or threaten him if didn’t confess. And three hours of questioning plus two hours spent at the lie detector test wasn’t much to speak of in the way of a painful stay at the jail.

  Tee had showed Bubba the Pegram Herald on Saturday, with its headline story about the murdered woman, except in the paper she was still officially unidentified. The headline proclaimed in inch high type, ‘Murder in Pegramville!’ There weren’t many details, but the paper had tried to make it the second coming of Jesus Christ, although it was hard to match the huge headline with a story that was only marginally longer than the headline itself. On Sunday, the paper still hadn’t identified Melissa Dearman, and Bubba wondered if the Herald’s crack news reporting team, Maude and Roy Chance, were sleeping on the job. After all, they hadn’t even tried to sneak into the jail to interview the main suspect. And they certainly hadn’t cross-examined Miz Demetrice. Bubba knew full well that his mother likened news reporters to denizens from the lowest level of a murky pond, and wouldn’t hesitate to pull out her twelve gage shotgun for mobile target practice, if she was so inclined.

  Meals were a delight with the Pegram Café and Lurlene Grady providing the service. Although, Bubba briefly thought of the beautiful Deputy Gray, first name unknown, and Tee wouldn’t tell him, he was still enamored enough of Lurlene such that her presence was a welcome change to all the gawkers, Sheriff John’s glaring, and Mike’s algebra lessons.

  However, when Bubba retrieved his wallet, belt, shoe laces, and the like from Tee, and walked outside the jail on Monday morning, he was happy to see the daylight from the other side of the bars. He was more than happy; he was relieved.

  Deputy (First name as yet still unknown) Gray even passed him on the way out, and Bubba found himself tipping his hat, though he most obviously was not wearing one. He was positive that the black haired, hazel eyed vixen’s lips had twitched in an involuntary smile, if only for the briefest of seconds. He was also positive that she wasn’t wearing a wedding band on her left hand.

  Ah, life was good. Even if it was only for the moment. Bubba had other fish to fry, other smelly fish that were rotting on a comparative level with the local manure factory on a hot Texas day. Sheriff John had his sharp-sighted eye on Bubba as the prime suspect in the murder of Melissa Dearman and it didn’t seem as though Perry Mason, in the guise of Raymond Burr, was going to appear and get the real murderer to confess while on the witness stand.

  Abruptly, Bubba’s good mood left him. While he was inside, and basically helpless, he could forget the dead woman who had once meant so much to him. Now he would be forced to remember her, or face consequences that he was not responsible for.

  It was true that Melissa and Bubba had lived together in an apartment for about two months, just about three years before. It was also true that Melissa had ambitions for Bubba that Bubba hadn’t even realized. Put simply, Melissa wanted more. More status. More money. More of some unnamable quantity that spoke of position and power. Specifically, she wanted Bubba to become an officer. He had more than adequate qualifications to apply for Officer Candidate School. He had refused, not once but half a dozen times.

  Bubba could understand where Melissa was coming from. She’d grown up poor, so poor that her parents had lived from hand to mouth. The Army had been her only way out of poverty, and once she’d had a taste of being someone who controlled other soldiers at the advanced rank of staff-sergeant, she wanted more. The Army was a great equalizer. Anyone could aspire to rank, if only they’d play the prestigious game of politicking.

  On the other hand, Bubba hadn’t grown up dirt poor, but he did understand poverty. In rural Texas, it had been all around him as a child, and still was as an adult. Miz Demetrice had wanted Bubba to understand and comprehend what it meant to be poor, so that he would better appreciate what he had. The Snoddy’s themselves weren’t much above poverty. The Snoddy Mansion was on the verge of being a rambling wreck, and falling in on itself. From a distance it was only a blurred image of what it must have looked like before the War Between the States. Any of their supposed wealth was tied up in one hundred acres of overgrown land, to include ten acres of mosquito-infested, swamp land, not to mention dozens of acres with holes dug haphazardly over the landscape like the crater strewn face of the moon. It wasn’t much of a legacy, but Bubba had never minded.

  He had told Melissa all of that, years ago. The Army had been his own kind of escape, away from people talking about other people so often that it was an avowed fact that half of the ears of the population of Pegram County were burning at any given time. The Army had its own gossip system, but one that left alone those who cared to work and do a good job, which was something Bubba enjoyed doing. Hell, he had taken pride in doing so. But he knew once he became an officer all of that would go away, and politics would come into play. Melissa had wanted the politics of being an ‘officer’s wife.’ She had longed for it, and finally she had gotten it, but not with Bubba Snoddy.

  Instead, she had seduced their commanding officer, Michael Dearman. Right in Bubba’s own bed in their shared apartment. Sergeant Snoddy had returned home from work early. His first sergeant had let everyone go early, and lo and behold, what had Bubba found?

  One fiancée in bed. One captain in the self-same bed with the fiancée. Two naked people in bed together. One naked fiancée doing stuff with one naked captain that Bubba thought reserved for himself and his fiancée.

  Upon this traumatic scene, Bubba had temporarily lost his mind. A wave of red had roared over his vision, causing him to lose all reason, logic, and everything he held dear to his heart. The next thing he had known he was holding Captain Dearman’s arm, grasped in one of Bubba’s huge fists, with the other man shrieking, beside him, and Melissa was wrapped around Bubba’s neck, screaming into his ear, “Bubba! Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him! Please, Bubba!”

  Bubba had been standing there, holding the broken arm of his commanding officer, with his fiancée on his back, pounding on him with her fists, and had a vision of his own father beating his mother. Elgin Snoddy had been a handsome dickens with the devil’s own temper when he drank, and he drank often. Too often. Bubba had only been three or four when his father had had his heart attack, but he could distinctly remember those times when Miz Demetrice had to cover up her pretty arms and delicate throat, even in the heat of summer. She had to hide what her husband had done to her in his drunken fits of rage, that he always felt so sorry for afterwards. Even at that tender age, Bubba had been ashamed of his own father. It had been at that very moment that Bubba pictured himself in his father’s place, losing his temper so violently that his loved ones would suffer terribly. And he had been ashamed of himself.

  “Oh, my God,” Bubba had muttered. “What have I done?” He had let the captain’s arm go, and Michael Dearman had dropped to the floor like a buffalo shot with an elephant gun. Melissa had slid off Bubba’s back and wrapped herself protectively around the officer crumpled on the floor. They consoled each other, still naked as jay birds, but uncaring of that fact.

  “Oh, Bubba,” she had said, looking up at him with sad eyes. “We were going to tell you. I swear. This weekend. We’re going to get married. Me and Michael.” She had stroked his head, as the man on the floor struggled to overcome pain and regain a little composure.

  “You got your officer, then, ‘Lissa?” he had asked, numbly. It was the one thing that had popped into his head. It had been the meanest, most cruel thing he thought that he had ever said to an
other human being. Although it was true he still regretted the words.

  Melissa had stared up at him with her large, blue eyes, eyes so blue they had reminded him of the afternoon skies in spring. Her chest had been heaving with exertion; her honey-colored hair was askew. She hadn’t said anything to him. As a matter of fact, it had been the last time she had said anything to Bubba at all.

  Bubba had called an ambulance and the police, in that order. The captain’s arm had looked to be broken, and indeed it had been. He had spent a night in the local jail, before the military police came to collect him. They called it a general discharge under other conditions than honorable. Before a month had passed, Melissa had received her own general discharge and married Captain Michael Dearman. A spiteful part of Bubba had wondered if it were in order to avoid charges pressed against the officer and Melissa herself. After all, Michael Dearman had been Melissa’s commanding officer, as well as Bubba’s. And Bubba had found the two of them in bed together, obviously fraternizing with each other. On another level, the captain and Melissa had been in as much trouble as he had been.

  So Melissa Dearman nee Connor had gotten her officer. There had been a few people, Army buddies, who had written to Bubba once or twice. One had stopped over last year on his way to another post. They had told Bubba that Melissa and the captain seemed to be happy. She had gotten pregnant last year, and given birth to a boy. The captain had been promoted to major and went to some battalion on another post, taking his family with him, the temporary scandal seemingly not affecting his career ladder. To be certain, Captain Dearman hadn’t been the first to marry an enlisted woman, nor would he be the last. Bubba hadn’t heard anything else about them and he hadn’t cared to hear anymore.