Bubba and the Dead Woman (15 page)

Obviously to Bubba, Miz Demetrice was feeling a mite curmudgeonly. “That sheriff get his paws on your little black book?” He was referring to Miz Demetrice’s list of poker numbers, which included names of participants, dates of games, money earned, and places where games had been and were to be held.

Miz Demetrice sniffed at him. Then she whispered to him, “It’s in my garter.”

“Jesus Christ, Mama,” he expelled forcefully, taking a step backwards. “Did you have to tell me that?”

“They searched through my drawer of privates,” she said indignantly. “I nearly bashed Sheriff John’s head in with your grandfather’s mahogany cane. Their warrant didn’t say anything about that man putting his grubby, no account fingers through my underwear. I’m going have to take a flame thrower to the whole lot.
Sheriff.
Hah.”

“Speak of the devil,” Bubba muttered, as just that individual came striding around the edge of the big house with two deputies following closely on his heels. One of the deputies was Steve Simms, and he was smiling so widely it seemed as if a little kid could fall right in.

“Don’t you try to run, Bubba Snoddy!” Simms yelled, suddenly, from half way across the yard.

Bubba sighed. “Who’s running?” he asked, mildly. It was quite the humid day outside, and he wasn’t inclined to exercise lately anyway.

Even Sheriff John was mildly annoyed. As the three men reached Bubba and Miz Demetrice, he said, “Put a cork in it, Simms. Bubba ain’t going anywhere, ‘cepting with us.” Sheriff John held up a clear evidence bag, holding a gun in it. “Do you recognize this, Bubba?”

Miz Demetrice took a step forwards, peering closely at the gun in the plastic bag. “Why, that’s Elgin Snoddy’s .45, Bubba,” she muttered. She pointed at the handle. “You can see where he made notches for every...well, he made notches for...it wasn’t men he killed, anyway,” she finished abruptly, a faint stain of red colored her face. “It was for every time he went to Tokyo on leave. That rotten, dead bastard. If I hadn’t garroted him before, I’d certainly garroted him now.”

“Actually, I don’t believe I ever saw it before,” Bubba mentioned. He hadn’t. His mother had kept it hidden away, and for some reason, the demon-like child he had been hadn’t thought to search his mother’s closet for goodies such as that. Either that, or he had instinctively known what she would have done to him, had she found out that he had been in her closet. Who said children were stupid?

“It was hidden in
your
woodpile,” Simms stated, looking directly at Bubba. Simms held his five foot, eight inch frame up as tall as it would go. Both of his thumbs were tucked into his gun belt, and Bubba longed to comment that he could never get to his service revolver in time, if he kept his thumbs there. But that was like going into Miz Demetrice’s closet. The police would not care for a statement like that. Bad things would happen, if such was uttered.“Anyone could have put it there!” Miz Demetrice shrieked. “It’s not like it’s locked up. Half the county has been wandering through the Mansion on tours and such, and knows about every inch of the two houses.”

“Be that as it may,” started Sheriff John.

Miz Demetrice interrupted, “That’s circumstantial evidence, Sheriff John.” She was possessed, as if a woman on a holy mission. She shook one of her tiny fists at the law enforcement official as if that would take care of business all by itself. Unfortunately, it did not.

Sheriff John sighed a deep sigh that indicated that he sincerely wished that he was anywhere but in this place at this time. “Bubba, you’re under arrest for suspicion of murder. Turn around, please.”

Precious, who had since woken up from her trip, had chased Mark Evan’s Mustang down the road for about one hundred feet. She had almost caught it, when she decided that from the smell of it, it wouldn’t be worth eating. She had sniffed her way back to the Snoddy place, taking time to mark each and every one of the police cars’ wheels, when she heard Miz Demetrice yell out something, and came on the double. She parked herself in front of her master, and bayed at the police officers, long ears flying out.

Sheriff John said agreeably, “You want to control your dog, Bubba.”

Simms took a step forward, and pulled a leg back to kick Precious out of the way.

Bubba said, “
I wouldn’t do that
.” It was a quiet, cold voice that warned of a great many things. If there was a rule in the south, another man didn’t mess with someone’s truck, his dog, or his woman, in that precise order.

The exact pitch of Bubba’s voice made Simms shiver just a second. He reconsidered his actions. He didn’t really care to kick a dog, but this whole arrest was getting to be a farce. The sheriff was being cowed by a damned dog, and old lady Snoddy alike. It was making Simms impatient and itching to wipe that obsequious look off the suspect’s face. But then there was Bubba, bigger than life, well, bigger than a whole lot of life, looking down the end of his patrician nose at Simms as though he could wrap the other man up in a knot ready for Christmas. “Uh,” Simms said, his limited range of vocabulary abruptly failing him.

Miz Demetrice reached around her son and grabbed a hold of Precious’s collar. The dog continued to bay and bark, but the woman dragged her back a bit. Bubba reached down and scratched his dog on her ear. She whined and suddenly sat down on the veranda, looking balefully between her master and the other humans in their uniforms.

Bubba turned around and presented his wrists to Simms. Simms extracted his thumbs from his gun belt, which wasn’t a quick thing to do, and fumbled for his hand cuffs. He couldn’t seem to get the fastener unconnected. Sheriff John watched for a long minute, swore, and hand cuffed Bubba with his own set. “You give those cuffs back to me, after he’s processed, Simms,” was his only tired remark.

Then Bubba went back to jail. He was carried away in the back of a county car, as his mother yelled mild obscenities and vague threats about lawyers and governors and such.

“Here’s my wallet, and hey, I been looking for that pocket knife,” he passed over the contents of his pockets, methodically patting each pocket for anything he’d missed. He added a lead sinker, a Susan B. Anthony dollar, and a large green button, he’d found on his porch this morning. “Oh, yeah, you want my belt, too. I ain’t got boot laces today.”

“Make sure you take a picture of his ugly mug, so he cain’t blame us for them bruises,” Simms sputtered, unable to think of any kind of witty repertoire with which to respond.

Tee laughed at the odd expression on Simms’ face. “Bye-bye, Deputy,” he called, waving a hand the size of a dinner plate at the perturbed deputy. “Come on, Bubba, you can have the window with the cell. We had to rearrange the cells again, because we have to get ready for a woman or two.”

Bubba walked in front of Tee toward the cell indicated. “A woman?” he repeated. Tee didn’t get too many women in the jail. Every now and again someone might be picked up for a DUI or bashing in their husband’s skull a mite too much, but mostly it was only men.

“Yeah, somebody’s wife finally complained to somebody over to the capitol about the Red Door Inn, and they’re doing a raid this evening,” Tee said amicably. “Not that I go by there on account that I am lawfully and honorably married and very much in love with my darling Poppiann, but it’s a crying shame. That place is a monument to Miss Annalee Hyatt.” Tee placed his hand reverently over his heart.

“I saw Miz Cambliss yesterday,” Bubba said. “I bet somebody told her. She’ll have her girls playing tic-tac-toe or something, when them boys show up.”

“It’s the locals, who’re doing the raid, tonight,” noted Tee. “Their hearts won’t be in it. But they don’t have room at the city jail, so they want to reserve a few of our cells. I have a prison matron coming in tonight, just to take care of them.”

About nine PM that night, Bubba watched as a female prison matron escorted Doris Cambliss to the cell farthest away from his side. It was blocked off with linen curtains so that she could have some privacy. Apparently, she had been at the Red Door Inn by herself, because none of her girls were with her. Of course, that meant that she had been tipped off and Bubba wasn’t surprised at all.

“Evening, Miz Cambliss,” Bubba greeted as she walked past, with the matron holding her arm tightly. The prison matron glared at Bubba. Bubba smiled at her, too, for good measure, even though she looked to be a mean, spiteful woman.

Doris said, “Hey, Bubba. You didn’t tell me you’d be in here, today.”

“You know those damned, pesky po-lice officers, Ma’am,” he said. “You never know when they’re going to take it upon themselves to search an honest, God-fearing individual’s property.”

“Yeah,” agreed Mike, simply because he felt like he was missing out.

Bubba grinned at the teenager. “You met Mister Mike Holmgreen, Miz Cambliss?”

“Pleasure,” floated back to them, across several empty jail cells. The matron locked the cell, and wandered back out, glowered at Bubba as she did so.

“Ma’am,” said Bubba. He would have tipped his hat if he had had one. But this time, unlike others, he remembered that he did not.

“Bubba,” Doris called in her throaty voice. “I cain’t believe they’d arrest me on suspicion of running an establishment of ill repute.”

“Me, neither, Miz Cambliss,” Bubba called back. “But these people have a mind that they’ve determined that some responsible, aboveboard kind of folk just
have
to be doing
something
wrong.”

“But, I heard them deputies talking about you, dear,” she said. Bubba could see her face pressed up against the bars. She sure didn’t look right in the jail. She was dressed in a yellow silk dress with matching shoes, looking as pretty as any woman could, with her jet-black hair in a stylish coiffure, and her make-up immaculate. “They said, the gun they found didn’t have your fingerprints on it.”

“They sounded a mite worried about your case, and arresting you a bit prematurely, shall we say?” She laughed softly, amused by the general ineptitude.

Bubba considered this carefully. He had, after all, never seen his father’s M1911 .45, much less handled it, or fired it. How much evidence could these people provide depicting innocence on his side before they decided that just maybe-Bubba hadn’t actually shot his ex-fiancée, Melissa Dearman? He had passed his polygraph test. He didn’t know about the gunshot residue test, but knew damned well they couldn’t say he had shot a weapon when he hadn’t, and now, none of his fingerprints on the murder weapon.

“I don’t suppose you happen to recall which of your gentlemen callers happened to visit on last Thursday evening,” he said as tactfully as he could. Could the police officers twist that into an illegal statement if they happened to be listening? He didn’t think so.

Doris thought about it for a minute. Either she was going to say that she didn’t know what Bubba was talking about, or she was going to answer him, depending on how she took it. “You thinking of someone in particular, Bubba Snoddy?” she called after a long pause.

Mike was watching Bubba with great interest.

“Noey Wheatfall,” Bubba said.

Doris let out a laugh. “No, sugar. He was barred about six months ago. For a minute I thought you might be talking about our regular Thursday night customers. I got one who’s a mite attached to, shall we say, infant garb.”

Bubba had to think for a second about just what Doris meant by someone who was attached to ‘infant garb.’ Abruptly, his twisted with understanding. “Who?”

“You know, Neal Ledbetter,” she said. “And Mister Mike Holmgreen, if you ever feel like you want to visit the Red Door Inn, it is best to keep a tight lip on anything we say here.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Mike called weakly. It was true that he had plans for the Red Door Inn. He had been planning on it since he was sixteen years old and found out about the place.

“
Neal Ledbetter
was at your place on Thursday night?” asked Bubba.

“Sure, until after two AM. I had to kick him out myself.” Doris’s laugh was like her voice, throaty and sexy. “Every damned Thursday night, because his wife is off playing poker with your mama.”

“Appreciate that, Miz Cambliss,” replied Bubba. “They got anything on you?”

“No, and I’m planning on suing the socks off them, dadblamed po-lice officers. They’re going to have to let me go, as soon as my lawyer shows up, and they don’t have a damned bit of evidence to show that I’m anything but an honest bed and breakfast owner.” Doris’s voice was positive and self-assured. Bubba knew that someone had warned the madam, long before any law enforcement official had even stepped a single foot into her establishment. They would have to do a lot better than that in order to catch her red-handed, or in her case, red-doored.