Bubba and the Dead Woman (12 page)

Bubba spent another fifteen minutes being stared at by the five year old child with an obvious case of chicken pox and his indignant mother, before they were called in. Looking at the child mildly scratching at his face with mittens duct-taped on his little hands made Bubba want to scratch like an old hound dog. He lazily scratched the side of his nose.

Doris came back out about ten minutes after that, and called to Bubba as she left, “You come see me, hear?”

Nurse Dee Dee made a noise that sounded suspiciously like she had smelled something bad and was trying not to breathe. Then she motioned him to follow her into a waiting room, where she took his temperature, his blood pressure, and his pulse. “What’s a matter with you?” she demanded in a sour tone that denoted clearly that she thought 99% of the patients in to see the doctor were full of tomfoolery and monkey business.

“Now that’s a long list, by some people’s standards,” he remarked idly. He started to name, “Too lazy. Too dumb. Too...”

Nurse Dee Dee, who was a short, plump woman with a lack of humor that was notorious throughout the entire county, snapped, “Today. What brings you here today?”

Bubba pointed at his eye, which was just about swollen shut. “Something came in contact with my eye.” He almost smiled at her. Almost. His lips twitched.

Nurse Dee Dee muttered something under her breath that sounded like, “I’ll just bet.” Then she disappeared out the door. A few minutes later, the doctor swept in.

Doctor George Goodjoint was an elderly man who had attended Harvard and Johns Hopkins for his various degrees, including a couple in medicines and one in philosophy. Then he had returned to practice general medicine in the small farming community he loved. He was a shade less than six foot tall, tended to stoop because of a curvature in his spine, and possessed a shock of white hair that he liked to periodically sweep back over his forehead.

Miz Demetrice had always gotten along fine with the doctor and he with her, which was why he came to supper at the Snoddy place about once a month. Bubba suspected it was because both of their spouses were dead; they had to have someone else to argue with. Consequently, Bubba tended to avoid his mother’s monthly dinner affairs as if his life depended on it. No one could be sure who would attend, or what would happen in the evening. But her own and only son knew nine times out of ten it was some sort of mayhem. One memorable evening ended with a duel fought with two hundred year old muskets, and with the entire household incarcerated in the county jail another time for repeatedly disturbing the peace. All of which would occur with his mother and the good doctor egging everyone else on, and bets on exactly how many squad cars would be deployed from the Sheriff’s Department.

Doc grinned at Bubba, using one gangly hand to turn the younger man’s head toward him, examining the swelling on his face. “Got any teeth loose, boy?”

“Lower molar,” mentioned Bubba. He pointed with one hand.

Doc reached inside Bubba’s mouth with two long fingers, and liberally wiggled the tooth back and forth. Bubba grunted. “Yep,” Doc said. “That’s a loose tooth all right. It’s my professional opinion, based on years of advanced training in the area of human medicines and years of practice, that you should have a shot of twelve year old scotch, and then go see a dentist. Now lemme have a look at that eye.”

He peered into Bubba’s swelling eye. He pulled out an orthoscope and shined a light in the impaired eye. He made several noises sounding like, “Uh-huh. How about that. Mmph.” Then Doc leaned back and said, “You didn’t come here about your eye. That eye is fine. Keep putting ice on it today, and it’ll be okay in about a week. It ain’t the first black eye you had. Nor, do I suspect, will it be the last.”

Bubba crossed his arms over his chest. “I been having problems with impotence,” he dead panned. “I believe my pecker is dead.”

Doc choked until his face turned the shade of purple that was just about the color of eggplants at the grocery store. “Jesus, Bubba, why don’t you just say you want to know about that Dearman girl. I know that’s why you’re here. You as slow as molasses in the wintertime. Your mama was here on Monday, asking about her. And I’ll tell you the same thing.”

Bubba waited patiently. Finally, he asked, “Which is?”

“Not a goddamn thing.” Doc barked with laughter. “Impotence. At my age, little surprises like that are enough to give a man a coronary.” He patted the breast of his white jacket, as if he were knocking on wood for good luck.

“Or the brandy and cigars you and Miz Demetrice share.”

“Or that, too,” Doc agreed, a little smile curling his lips. He flipped his alabaster white hair back over his forehead and out of his eyes. “Missed you out on Thursday.”

Bubba knew what Doc meant. Doc had been out to the Snoddy Mansion to take a look at Melissa’s dead body, pronounce her dead, and all that consisted of his coroner duties. Bubba had been a little too preoccupied to walk up and give a friendly howdy. For some reason.

“Sheriff John is about to put my head on a platter and serve it up to the grand jury,” Bubba pointed out, calmly. He gazed directly into Doc’s eyes. No lie about that. It was exactly what the sheriff of Pegram County was about to do to Bubba. Furthermore, Sheriff John was going to do it with wondrous glee in his heart and immense self-satisfaction that a murderer had been apprehended.

Doc placed himself carefully in a chair. Bubba remained perched on the examining table. The two stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Doc said, “That Dee Dee Lacour is going to come in here and ask what in the hell is taking my old bones so long to look at a little, insignificant black eye. She’s a mean woman. Don’t ever marry a mean woman. They make your life a living hell. Glad I’m not married to her. Bad enough that’s she my nurse.”

Bubba thought about what Nurse Dee Dee could do with her question and decided not to offer the thought up to Doc, just in case the older man was of a mood to follow up on the suggestion.

Doc sighed. “Melissa Anne Dearman was killed approximately at ten-thirty PM on that night. Her body temperature relates that information, however, it was a warm night, and taken statistical probabilities into account, I would give Sheriff John and Deputy Simms about an hour leeway. Here comes another however, Bubba. But there was a witness who places her at Bufford’s Gas and Grocery at around 10:15 PM to 10:30 PM.”

Lloyd Goshorn
, thought Bubba.
Nothing I haven’t thought about before.

Doc went on, “So we can say with reasonable certainty that Missus Dearman died between 10:30 PM and 11:30 PM. Personally, I would say closer to 10:30 PM. She died almost immediately upon being shot. There was very little bleeding from the wound so that would indicate this was so. Furthermore, the murderer shot her as she was running away, and from a distance of about ten feet. It was either a lucky shot or the shooter was a damned fine shot.”

Bubba was a good shot. He placed third last year at the Turkey Shoot, scoring just below a local police officer and the mayor’s sister. Sheriff John had been there, shooting as well. So had Simms. So had half the town folk. But then the thirty-eight revolver Bubba had used belonged to Bubba’s cousin, Harv, over in Louisiana, who had come to visit with Miz Demetrice. Bubba didn’t even own a handgun. Or even a rifle.

“Otherwise, she wasn’t harmed. No defensive wounds. No bruising. Nothing to suggest that any other damage occurred to her before or after her death.” Doc sighed again. “They won’t ask me this, Bubba, but it sounds like a crime of passion. A spur of the moment kind of thing. A man in a fit of anger might shoot a lady in the back.”

Bubba was getting tired of people giving him a look that suggested that while he might be justified in killing an ex-fiancée who had slept with another man in their own bed, that he was also a murderer. “I...didn’t...kill...her.” He clamped down so hard that his jaw audibly popped.

Doc sat up straight in his chair. “Christ Almighty, Bubba Snoddy. I didn’t say you did. I’m telling you what the sheriff is going to say to the grand jury, and what ninety-nine point nine percent of the population of Pegramville is thinking. Boy, if you didn’t shoot her, then who in the hell would have?”

Bubba thanked the doctor, not knowing how to answer a question that had been plaguing him endlessly since he had found Melissa dead in the long grass of the overgrown Snoddy gardens. He paid the bill to a disinterested cashier, ignored Nurse Dee Dee’s sullen face, and left by the same way he’d come.

Precious was just as eager to see him as she always was. She drooled on him as much as she could, before getting her fill, and retreating to the passenger side, to observe the local flora and fauna they passed in the truck. She stuck her head out the open window and panted lustfully.

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.”

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...”

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.