Bubba and the Dead Woman (8 page)

Bubba wasn’t sure what the script was for this particular phone call. Was he supposed to plead his innocence and pledge undying loyalty to all Buffords for the remainder of his life? So, he kept quiet. It wasn’t hard. He’d been practicing that respective trait for the last three years. It seemed to keep him out of trouble more than anything else. But he considered. Keeping quiet hadn’t helped him much in this most recent dilemma.

“Well, I cain’t have you besmirching the name of the Buffords, now can I?” George asked finally.

Besmirching?
thought Bubba.
Isn’t that what you do to a virgin?

George continued on. “After all, Bufford’s Gas and Grocery has been a Pegramville tradition for forty years, brought to town by my own father, George, Senior. He worked his fingers to the bone to ensure that his family had meat and potatoes on the table. Ifin this matter is cleared up, then you can have your job back, and we’ll let bygones be bygones.”

Bubba’s silence spoke volumes. At least it did to himself. George was beginning to think that Bubba was passively accepting of the firing, when Bubba finally said, “The hell we will.” Then he added congenially, “Oh, and George, the health department found a cockroach the size of a mouse inside the hot dog machine on Saturday. Maude Chance down at the Pegramville Herald is going to print up a fine editorial next week about it. They even got a picture of it next to a ruler. That health guy said he never saw a bigger roach in all his natural born days. Say hey to Miss Rosa will you.” He hung up the phone happily. Then he smiled to himself. Sometimes it was just the small things in life that made a man happy.

Bubba woke his dog up when he tromped over to the front door. Precious snorted once loudly, and scrambled to go with her master. She certainly wasn’t letting that man out of her sight again to do God knew what while she wasn’t around to serve and protect. She scooted out the front door just as it slammed shut, just pulling her tail out in time.

Skirting the crime scene tape and the rental car, Bubba went around to the big house. He went in through the side door, calling for Adelia. A minute later, he heard her hello distantly drifting down from the third floor. Bubba walked through the kitchen, once the center for activity for this grand southern home. There were three ovens, which could be fired with coals. There were two pantries, each bigger than Bubba’s living room. There was an old chopping block older than Miz Demetrice, Adelia, and Bubba put together. There were three sinks on one side. One was big enough to bath a ten year old child in. Bubba knew because he had that done to him when he was so muddy that Adelia hadn’t recognized him right off, and wouldn’t let him past the kitchen. Two dozen servants could have worked in here at once and not gotten in each other’s way.

Through the kitchen was the long hallway of the house. There were a great many doorways along this hallway. Down to the right was the grand dining room, where the walls were lined with fabric that once glistened with ruby and gilt shimmers. Down to the left was the main foyer where a majestic stairway curved its way upstairs, showing off the large cupola, lined with intricate woodworking of cupids and birds flying across the skies. A chandelier the size of a 1969 Volkswagen Bug hung down halfway the stairs, its lead crystal drops refracting the light as brilliantly as it did a hundred years before. There was a formal living room, a receiving room, a wardroom, a servant’s room, all to be found on the first floor.

Bubba reached the stairs in the foyer, and looked up. If only for an instant one could be fooled into thinking that a soul had stepped into the past. The stairs stayed polished, thanks to Adelia, as did the gleaming chandelier above, imposing grandly upon this entry. The garnet carpets looked as well tended as they had when Bubba had been ten years old. The marble tile in the base of the foyer was as polished as ever, showing creamy strains of the imperfections in its own imposing persona. He expected to see Scarlett O’Hara lifting up her colossal skirts, and rushing to the bottom of the stairs to greet him.

Instead, a woman no less striking, despite her lack of hoops and ribbons, leaned over the third floor railing and called, “Say, child, you know I’m not coming down until I’ve finished with these windows.” Adelia looked down at Bubba with a mock severe expression on her face.

So Bubba went up, taking three steps at a time. Precious woofed disdainfully, and followed at her own pace. This wasn’t what she called fun. Her long torso wasn’t made for stairs.

Adelia waited for Bubba. Presently, he was standing beside her in what had been known as the red room, cleaning one of the windows while she did the other. It had been one of the many guest bedrooms of the Snoddy Mansion, decorated entirely in crimson, from the walls to the curtains to the dressings on the bed. In lighter moments, Miz Demetrice called it the Whore Room, not only because of the color, but because some Snoddy ancestor used to keep his mistress here, while his wife was dying in her bed on the second floor. In its time it must have been a thing of dreams, this room with its scarlet colors, but now it was faded, and the gilt needed refinishing.

“How did the poker game go, Miz Adelia?” he finally asked, unable to think of some witty and unobtrusive way of getting the information he desired.

The older woman continued polishing the glass, almost as if she hadn’t heard him. Shortly, she said, “It went well enough. Though, Miz Demetrice swore that Wilma Rabsitt was cheating.” She leaned toward Bubba as he sprayed Windex on the window he was working on, and whispered, conspiratorially, “I think Wilma was just having a good game. For once.”

“You win much?”

“I won twenty dollars,” she announced proudly. “It took all night to do it, too. Once I was up over sixty. But your ma, she lost almost a hundred. Then Ruby Mercer called about you, and off she went. Everyone else got so frightened by the thought of the po-lice busting in all of us that the game broke up, then and there. There were a few who were late to work, anyway.” She pointed at the window Bubba was working on. “You missed a spot.”

“Thanks,” Bubba said, scrubbing the spot with a paper towel. “So you were there all night long.”

“I don’t think your ma nor did me get up more than twice to go the bathroom. And neither of us with the bladders of young women anymore.” Finally, Adelia figured out what Bubba was getting at. “Oh, Bubba Snoddy. If you want to know something you should just ask me.”

Bubba blushed, ashamed to be asking a woman he had known most of his life, and adored almost as long, if she was a murderer. Worse yet, he was ashamed to be asking her if another woman they both loved and adored was a murderer. Even a simple, ‘What was her alibi, and yours, too, by the way?’ was just as bad as the other.

Adelia took pity on him. “There was seven women at our table alone, sugar. Your mama, nor I, was not out of sight of most of these women, for no longer than five minutes at a time. But there’s no point in giving you their names.”

“Why not?” Bubba asked, and looked at her.

“You can ask the deputy. The sheriff’s deputy who was at our game. She lost more than your mama, and laughed about it so hard, she near wet her pants.”

“What deputy?”

“Willodean Gray,” Adelia answered slyly. “You
know
who she is.”

Bubba knew.

Chapter Six - Bubba and a Ghost –

Monday Furthermore then onto Tuesday – oh, glory!

Later, that day, Bubba was forced to endure the unsolicited attentions of his mother, as she returned from her trip to plead for assistance from her state representative on the scurrilous and baseless case of the formerly incarcerated Bubba Snoddy.

Miz Demetrice had been adamant. “I wouldn’t leave his office until he agreed to see me.” She made a noise, not unlike an hmph. “Next election, I believe my five hundred dollars will go to the opposition, even if he is some liberal Yankee who moved down here a mere twenty years ago.” But then she was sentimental. “Oh, Bubba honey, did they do anything to you? Those jails have perverts in there. You know what they say on the news about those jails. Men get the AIDS virus there. They beat folks with rubber hoses filled with rocks. And worse.” She had rushed over from the big house to the caretaker’s house, and burst in without even knocking, which was patently unlike her. Then she had launched herself at her son, throwing her arms around him, as if he was a life vest, and she was drowning.

Bubba gently disentangled his mother from around his waist, giving her an affectionate pat on her head. “Mama, I was alone in a jail cell for the whole time. We got our meals from the Pegram Café. I don’t believe I slept better than I have for a month of Sundays. And you know, that Newt Durley plays a mean game of chess, when he’s of a sober state.”

His mother looked at him skeptically. “Oh, Bubba, you’re not just saying that...”

Bubba rolled his eyes heavenward, asking for guidance and perhaps some patience. “You know Sheriff John and Tee Gearheart wouldn’t put up with any of that nonsense in their jail.”

Precious kept in the corner, half behind the couch and eyed Miz Demetrice warily. She knew what that particular human was equal to doing, and she was staying where it was safe, until the bomb had safely been defused.

Miz Demetrice considered this information. She could probably even agree with it. She knew Sheriff John. She knew Tee. Both were God-fearing, church-going men who didn’t cheat on their wives or lie overly. She nodded, finally satisfied that her only, beloved nestling had escaped unscathed from the villainous sheriff of Pegram County.

By the time Miz Demetrice was done fussing over her solitary child’s wretched experience, it was too late for Bubba to go to the jail to visit with Deputy
Willodean
Gray. His eyes almost misted with regret, and then with pride. Now there was a fine southern name for a woman such as her. Long, inky black hair. Green eyes that could have been carved from turquoise. A slender, figure with all of the right curves delicately placed...

Bubba shook his head violently, startling his mother. Now it was time to address his mother bluntly, “Mama, did you shoot Melissa Dearman?”

His mother had been expecting the question. She knew her son pretty well. She knew what he was capable of, and what he was not capable of was shooting a woman he’d once loved so much he had asked her to marry him. She also knew that Bubba was the one that Sheriff John was looking at, harder and harder. But also, since Elgin Snoddy’s forty-five was missing, and it had been her forty-five by way of inheritance, for some twenty odd years, that Sheriff John, and like as not, her son, would be looking at her, too. “Of course not, dear. If I were of a mind to kill a body, young Melissa Dearman being a good example of a body who needed to be killed, I’d of taken a chain saw to her and then put her poor hapless corpse into a wood chipper.” She smiled brightly. “Just like I did to your father.”

“Of course, dear. I lost over a hundred dollars and that dad-blasted Wilma Rabsitt was cheating like a son of a bitch.” Miz Demetrice adjusted her polka-dotted, silk dress and finally sat carefully down on Bubba’s ratty couch, like the queen she was, back straight, legs cross delicately at the ankles. Precious decided it was safe, and came out to sniff her shoes. Miz Demetrice offered the hound a hand to inspect, which the dog did, and then was scratched lightly behind the long ears for her efforts. The animal made a noise of contentment, and settled herself down beside Miz Demetrice just in case the human decided that more loving was in order. “Besides,” his mother went on. “You already asked Miz Adelia the same thing.”

“You know why.”

Miz Demetrice sighed. “I know why. I didn’t know what to say when the sheriff asked where I had been all night. He’s going to arrest me and Miz Adelia when he finds out.”

“What about the intruders while I was gone?”

“Well, who told you...oh, Adelia has got the biggest mouth, besides my own, of course,” Miz Demetrice chuckled. “Adelia left around five on Saturday, and around midnight someone was banging around downstairs as if they were dying. So naturally I got the shotgun and went downstairs to look, but by the time I got downstairs, they were gone. They must have seen all the lights coming on, and scrambled the hell on out of there. I went outside and let off a shotgun blast just to let them know they weren’t welcome to come a-skulking in the Snoddy Mansion, no more. It’s certainly not the first time we’ve have people come wandering over the property, looking for things best forgotten a century ago. Damn, ridge-crawling, rough-necked thieves, that’s what they are. And stupid to boot, listening to gossip about Colonel Snoddy and his disease ridden stories. These idjits heard you were in jail, and decided the pickings were rich that night.” She gave Bubba a satisfied look that told him how gleeful she was to have scared the ever living crap out of the morons who came looking for rumors on Saturday night. She would have rubbed her still-sore rump, but her son was staring directly at her, with an unfathomable express on his handsome face. “I keep that shotgun right by my bed.”

“They came back on Sunday night?”

“Then I was up waiting for them. Right at midnight, I heard one of the windows in the dining room being messed with and I let a blast go right through the wall of the living room.” She snickered loudly. “I bet they wet their pants, for sure.”

“I missed the hole in the living room,” Bubba commented dryly. “I’ll come over and sleep over there tonight.”

Miz Demetrice shrugged. She wouldn’t admit that that would make her feel a lot better. Whoever it was, who had dared to come back after two nights was either the world’s biggest fool, or the world’s greediest, and certainly up to no good. “Perhaps that would be a good idea.”

“I’ll be over later. Try not to shoot me, too.” Bubba glanced out the window. The sun was setting, and vivid clouds of purple slashed over the west. “What about Daddy’s forty-five?”