Bubba and the Dead Woman (21 page)

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.

Bubba didn’t move. He didn’t even hear Sheriff John softly open the door and step into the small office, standing behind Bubba as quiet as could be. Bubba continued to stare at the body as if he had never seen one before. The truth was that, before viewing his father’s at the mortuary and seeing Melissa Dearman in the yard, he hadn’t. This was twice in a month, and he was not exactly fond of the experience. Only morticians and police officers were supposed to be looking at dead people, certainly not Bubbas.

The wind from the open office door shifted the air around the room and Bubba got a whiff of what a dead man smelled like. He had smelled death before. In the rural area that Pegramville was located in, there were hunters galore, and it was common to run across something having been cleaned or something recently dead. Bubba reckoned that it had in no way whatsoever prepared him for the real tamale. He was in a closed space with a man who had been dead for at least several hours, and the quick, fast food he’d grabbed just before testifying at the Grand Jury didn’t want to keep itself down.

There was a sound like a gulp that issued forth from Bubba’s mouth. “Ulp-urp,” he said. Sheriff John accurately summed up the situation and stepped aside for Bubba, even while holding the door open, standing as far back as his large body could allow him to, in the small space available.

Bubba stumbled into the parking lot, one hand over his mouth. Then he lost everything that he’d eaten that day, and some of what he had had the day before. He was bent over the side of his truck, resting one hand on the chrome bumper, heaving his guts out, when someone reached down and gently soothed the hair back from his forehead. He was too sick and miserable to look up.

After a while, someone said, “All done?”

Bubba nodded wretchedly. A hand passed him a handful of wet wipes. He used them to clean off his face. He looked up and saw Deputy Willodean Gray looking down at him with a good deal of compassion in her lovely face.

“It doesn’t smell very good,” she murmured, correctly guessing the reason he had been so sick. She had, on the other hand, seen quite a few dead bodies, and knew better than to stay in a confined space with one that had been dead for more than a few hours.

Bubba shook his head. He wasn’t sure if it were from being violently ill or the sight of the beautiful black-haired, green-eyed deputy that made his knees shake, but he didn’t dare try to stand up. “I didn’t do it,” he muttered.

Sheriff John nodded at Bubba as he stood behind Willodean. “I don’t think you did, Bubba.”

“Well, that’s about the best news I heard all month long,” Bubba grumbled, knees still a quiver.

Sheriff John twisted his face up. “Don’t be thinking that I believe everything you got to say, Bubba Snoddy. That man’s watch is broken. The time is stopped at 1 PM on the nose. I seen you myself, and so did twelve people on the Grand Jury. It sure would be a feat to be able to kill this man and testify at the same time.”

“How can you be sure he died at 1 PM?” asked Bubba.

“Shut up,” muttered Willodean out of the side of her mouth. “Are you trying to get a one-way ticket to Huntsville?”

Sheriff John smiled grimly. “Doc Goodjoint will tell us the time of death. After all, the body was inside for four hours, give or take. It shouldn’t be hard to come up with a Basel temperature for him.”

“A what?”

“Bodies cool down after a person has died. Whatever Neal Ledbetter’s temperature is now, will tell us how long he’s been dead,” Willodean explained helpfully.

“Miz Clack gave me a call from the library about you being a mite touchy about Neal Ledbetter,” Sheriff John interrupted, pausing to glare at his deputy. She returned his look with a level one of her own. “She seemed to think you might do the boy some harm. Although that would kinda be hard to do, seeming as he’s already as dead as dead gets.” He crossed his arms over his massive chest. “That’s a pretty dead kind of fella.”

“I didn’t kill him,” repeated Bubba. He finally felt well enough to rest against the front of his Chevy truck, and wiped the sweat beads from his forehead.

Sheriff John ruminated for a long minute, obviously thinking about what it would take to have Bubba be the murderer. He decided that Bubba must not be, because the sheriff himself had seen him at the County Courthouse, as plain as the nose on his face. Sheriff John wasn’t a dummy; he knew something funny was going on. What he couldn’t figure out was whether or not Bubba was involved. Two murders in Pegram County just doubled their homicide rate for the last year. It made an elected official look kind of bad, and here was his token female deputy consorting with the prime suspect of one of the murders.