by C. L. Bevill
Think woman, she told herself because all she could smell was slightly acrid, like ozone had been fried by something shorting out. This is important. His hair was dyed because she could see the different color of the roots and most women her age would recognize that aspect instantly. He’s a natural dirty blonde. Furthermore, those little marks at the jaws are surgical scars.
Most women her age recognized those aspects instantly.
Miz Demetrice took a step closer, reached out with a Ferragamo pointed toe pump, and nudged him. His hand, which had been resting on his stomach, fell to the side. A small clump of hay fell on the floor.
“I’m speechless,” Miz Demetrice said. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. I’m having a moment here. John, can I call you John since I don’t know your name, it’s not right that you’re dead and you’re here in Bubba’s living room and all, but I cain’t be having you mucking up my only child’s wedding.” She gulped down the remainder of her mimosa and put the flute down on a nearby occasional table. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and considered the situation. “I’m not one for breaking the law—” she stopped to roll her eyes— “mostly, but here, I see a need for following mandates to the exact letter.”
The front door opened abruptly and Miz Demetrice jerked. She glanced around and couldn’t see anything with which to cover the body. She looked over her shoulder and saw, “Caressa.”
Her older sister was about the size height and weight as Miz Demetrice; Bubba called them knee high to a garden gnome. Their hair was a similar snowy white that revealed their addiction to beauty parlors to eliminate those pesky darker hairs that beleaguer such grand dames. Miz Demetrice often said that her sister’s biggest failing was that she snored like a cat throwing up a hairball, which was sometimes even true. She wore a Boss jacket and sheath in deep garnet with black piping which matched her Kate Spade patent pumps.
“I just cannot get over Bubba getting married,” Caressa said, dabbing at her eyes. “Your only child, my only nephew and heir, except for my sister-in-law’s sons who don’t really count because they’d just assume to push me in a nursing home and take over my husband’s fortune. Those money-grubbing little bastards.”
“Caressa, dearest,” Miz Demetrice said, trying to steer her sister back to the door, “let’s just get a few more mimosas, heavy on the champagne, and all will be better, I’m quite certain.”
“I know, I know,” Caressa said. “I cain’t help myself. It’s one of those days in your mind that will never go away. Did I say how much I adore your suit?”
“You helped me pick it out at Bloomingdales the same day you bought yours,” Miz Demetrice reminded her.
“Well, all that shopping does a body in, so I cain’t remember everything,” Caressa said and boo-hooed again. “Cain’t an old lady shed a tear on a wedding day?”
“Of course she can not,” Miz Demetrice said, trying her best to shift her body closer to the front door all the while trying to herd Caressa with her. (Herding cats was the way that Miz Demetrice would think of it.) “Today is a day of celebration, a day of remembering all that is best with man, of wishing the best for one’s relatives, be they son or nephew. We should not be crying, but laughing in exhilaration. We should be witnessing the great and bold event of—”
“A dead body in Bubba’s living room,” Caressa said. Her blue eyes had settled upon the remains and weren’t apt to move away.
“That, too.”
“Do corpses rain from the skies here in Pegram County, dear sister?” Caressa enquired politely.
“Yuck it up,” Miz Demetrice said. “You kin see we have a real problem here.”
“You mean Bubba killed that poor deceased individual?”
“No, Bubba didn’t kill anyone,” Miz Demetrice snarled. “How kin you think that of your only beloved nephew and heir? Didn’t he fix your car the last time you were here?”
“Are you saying mechanics can never be murderers?” Caressa asked cannily.
“I’m saying Bubba isn’t a murderer, and besides I cain’t rightly say how that man—” she jerked her right index finger at the cadaver—“died. It’s not like there’s a sign.”
“I suppose one should call the po-lice,” Caressa suggested.
“No po-lice,” Miz Demetrice said promptly. “That will ruin the wedding.”
Caressa pointed at the remains. “You don’t think that won’t ruin the wedding?”
Miz Demetrice was well aware that the expression that transformed her face was one of cunning and scheming craftiness. She had practiced that ability for decades and furthermore, Caressa’s eyes opened wide and her older sister took a step back.
Miz Demetrice said, “It won’t ruin the wedding if there isn’t a body to be found.”
Caressa looked around. “Wherever will you put it?”
“Someone will see if we try to cart it off somewhere, like for example, to the swamp,” Miz Demetrice said thoughtfully.
“We?” Caressa repeated. “People always said I was the one who got you into trouble, but they never really knew the truth. This isn’t a large house, dearest Demetrice. I would suggest a closet, but there’s none to be found.”
Miz Demetrice walked down the hallway to the kitchen and opened the door to the miniscule pantry. Caressa trailed behind her, nervously rubbing her hands together. Miz Demetrice leaned into the pantry and her eyes started making notes of what she saw. The shelves weren’t even half full and she made a note to herself to run to Sam’s Club to get a selection of canned goods for the happy couple for when they returned from their honeymoon. She indicated the floor to her sister. “There,” she said.
“There?” Caressa repeated with a smidgeon of confusion. “That particular pantry was never intended for hanging meat, dearest.”
“Not in the panty,” Miz Demetrice said. She toed the trapdoor that nearly blended in with the rest of the hardwood flooring. The giveaway was the chrome inset ring handle set squarely in the middle of the floor. “Crawlspace,” she pronounced victoriously. “Come on. I’m going to need your help. That man looks like he’s almost the size of both of us put together. And that door is about half his size.”
Caressa glanced down at her suit. “Does Bubba have an apron and some gloves?”
“Oh yes, Adelia made sure he was well provided for in the way of cleaning supplies.”
“Okay then, it’s time to paint your butt white and run with the antelope,” Caressa said in a way that made Miz Demetrice smile broadly.
Bumping fists didn’t seem fitting, but the two sisters did it anyway.
They had just finished stuffing the body down the door when they realized they were being watched from the kitchen doorway.
Chapter 9
Bubba and the Litigious Law
Saturday, April 27th around 10:45 AM
Bubba was abjectly glad that he wasn’t wearing his wedding suit when he reached the end of the driveway because it would have become dusty and sweaty, not necessarily in that order. Cookie was actively chuckling as he slowed down, and he absently patted her head. Precious barked wearily behind him. Somewhere in the pursuit the canine had lagged off and slowed to a drooping trot.
Who knew a woman in four inch heels could run so fast? (He didn’t really want to catch her, just get her and the other fella off the property before they bothered his mother, or worse, Willodean.) Furthermore, the man with her ran even faster, leaving Daisy Dillworthy far behind in his attempt to put as much distance between Bubba and himself as possible. The man, whose name Bubba ascertained was Collin as evidenced by Daisy calling his name repeatedly in her attempt to get him to wait for her before Bubba caught up. (Daisy had used several variations to include, “Collin A-Hole! Collin Buttmunch! Collin Dweebmyer! I’ll get you, you sorry SOB! WAIT FOR ME! Don’t you dare leave me? I hear banjo music from DeliverANCE!”)
Bubba hadn’t really intended on chasing the pair of reporters down the entire driveway, but seeing as they had pa
rked almost all the way down by the gate and he wanted to make sure they got completely off the property, he’d been obligated. A Snoddy never backed down from a challenge unless a grenade or Brussels sprouts was involved.
Scrambling into a Jeep Wrangler parked nearly at the end of the driveway, Collin started it with a roar. He ground the gears on the Wrangler before accelerating into a 180 degree turn so that the car was pointed in the correct direction. He took out part of an oleander bush and a three clumps of grass in the process, and only missed a Cadillac and a Lincoln Continental by a matter of inches. The vehicle paused about for a whole twenty seconds so that Daisy could throw herself into the passenger’s side, losing one of the four-inch heeled pumps as she did. While in the act of saving herself from certain redneck doom, she’d also thrown in a number of swearwords in particularly vile combinations. She directed them alternatively at Bubba and Collin in turn. Collin’s ancestry was only marginally more contemptible than Bubba’s because her fellow reporter had, in fact, almost driven away without Daisy.
The Wrangler sped out of the remnants of the gate, slinging gravel in all directions as Collin clearly tried to not lose control. Evidently, Collin had some sort of idea that Bubba was going to fling himself on top of the Wrangler’s hood and reach through the windshield to get those pesky reporters.
“I’m not Ahr-noold, plus I’ve got a baby strapped to my chest,” Bubba muttered. Cookie thought that was funny and laughed again. He put his hands on his hips and caught his breath. He needed to exercise a little more. All those days of fishing wasn’t doing his heart any good. Plus having ten pounds of baby to carry wasn’t a bad motivator. His days as toddler chaser extraordinaire were rapidly approaching and he needed to be in tiptop shape in order to keep up with future generations of Snoddys. (They might very well be like Brownie.)
The Wrangler slowed down about twenty feet from the gate to avoid a Chevy Malibu whose horn blared warningly. The passenger window of the Wrangler went down and Daisy yelled in Bubba’s direction, “If you see that other guy we came with, tell him we left without him!” Then Collin hit the gas again and the Jeep leapt away.
The Chevy pulled up beside Bubba and out of the open window, Tee Gearheart said amicably, “Ifin I’d known you was going to run out to meet me, I would have said not to go to all that trouble.”
“News reporters,” Bubba explained.
Tee was the Pegram County Jail’s head law enforcement officer. He was about six feet tall, but he weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds, if he had cared to name a neighborhood, which he mostly did not. His wife, Poppiann, sat beside him, ducking her head to see what Bubba was doing. She waved and then put a hand into the back seat to soothe their toddler in the child seat. Junior was their first child and Tee couldn’t be more proud.
“I understand,” Tee said. “Them folks make a fella so mad one would think someone peed in their grits.”
“Uh,” Bubba said. “Parking’s better out behind my house, Tee, otherwise you’ll have to park way out here.”
Tee brightened. He wasn’t one to partake of an exercise session without first having the nagging session with his wife. Parking closer to the Snoddy Mansion rightly appealed to him. “Well, let’s hit it and git it,” Tee said. “I hear tell ya’ll have canapés.”
“Bubba,” Poppiann said, “whose baby is that?”
“This here is Cookie,” Bubba said.
Cookie waved her little chubby hands in response.
“Cookie,” Poppiann repeated doubtfully. “She’s prettier than a pink-eyed mule, but ain’t that Brownie Snoddy’s sister?” She said it in a way that sounded as if she was asking if the devil had a sibling.
“She ain’t up to much yet,” Bubba defended. “Cain’t even crawl yet.”
“Yet,” Poppiann said. “Best get along, Tee.”
Tee waved as he drove down the driveway.
Bubba turned and trudged back. Precious clambered up from the nice patch of grass upon which she’d collapsed and followed. He should have asked Tee about what the big secret was, but Poppiann probably would have restrained him. I’ll get Tee alone and ply him with mimosas and canapés. He’ll squeal like a worm who don’t want to go fishin’.
“Dang it,” he muttered suddenly when he saw a USPS Grumman LLV parked at an angle to a chinquapin oak. The oak had a fender sized dent in its trunk. A bag of mail had fallen out of the back because the roll door was half way up, and Bubba remembered that Lawyer Petrie had said something about stealing a mail truck. He said, “I left a half-drunken family law attorney alone in the house with the corpse.”
* * *
Bubba was sweating by the time he trotted back to the caretaker’s house. He’d been detoured by three people who stopped to ask him, 1) who the baby was, 2) when had Willodean given birth, and 3) was it true that there would be a troupe of African elephants performing a series of tricks involving giant, flaming rings and half-naked ladies with sequins in all the right (wrong?) places.
Of course, once Bubba was in the house, he discovered that 1) the front door had been left unlocked again, 2) the half-drunken lawyer was nowhere to be found, 3) there were no troupes of African elephants and there were no half-naked ladies with sequins in the right/wrong places, and 4) there was no body in his living room, dead or otherwise.
Then Sheriff John Headrick crashed into the house, pointing his weapon at Bubba. The sheriff was one of the few men in Pegram County who was taller than Bubba at six feet five inches. He tended to add to that height by wearing boots with an inch tall heel. He also tended toward gray. His hair was gray. His eyes were gray. Sometimes his skin was gray. He was likely sorry he didn’t wear a gray uniform. (Khaki had always been the uniform color of choice for the Pegram Sheriff’s Department.)
“Bubba!” Sheriff John cried. “Mary Lou Treadwell said you called 9-1-1 and then hung up! What’s wrong?” He saw the baby strapped on Bubba’s chest and pointed his handgun in another direction which made Bubba feel a whole lot of better.
Bubba shook his head. “I said I would call Mary Lou back,” he said, as if that was a perfectly reasonable response to calling 9-1-1 and then hanging up without saying anything else. “Wait, isn’t Mary Lou invited to the wedding? I wouldn’t have dreamed of not inviting Mary Lou and her husband to the wedding.”
Sheriff John straightened up from the shooter’s stance he was in and pointed his gun at the floor. “You don’t call 9-1-1 to talk about the weather, Bubba.”
“Well, there was a—” Bubba sighed— “you-know-what.” When he put it like that, he felt a lot better about saying it.
“There’s a girl from the next county over coming to take over from Mary Lou so she can come to the wedding,” Sheriff John said. He put his official sidearm back into its holster and snapped the flap into place. “I don’t know why the new girl didn’t get an invite. Her name is Parthenia. She said it was because her father met her mother at the Parthenon in Greece when he was stationed there. I think I’ll set her up with the new deputy. I cain’t recall his first name.”
“It’s probably because I don’t know her, or because Willodean doesn’t know her, or because her family doesn’t know her, or because my family doesn’t know her, or because she hasn’t arrested me, and/or she doesn’t live in Pegram County.” Bubba sighed again. “So about the you-know-what.”
“The you-know-what,” Sheriff John repeated. He still had a raspy voice from someone trying to hang him with a rope from a 2,000 year old tree. Since Bubba had saved him that time, Sheriff John was inclined to be a little less unfriendly toward the younger man.
“It was in the living room,” Bubba said.
“Did you know you have a baby attached your chest?” Sheriff John asked as if he was asking if Bubba knew he had a booger hanging from one nostril.
“You want her?”
“Depends.” Sheriff John took a step forward and stared at Cookie. She stared back and then waved a chubby little arm at him. Evidently, sh
e knew the law when she saw one. She blew an epic sized spit bubble in his direction in a distinctly disdainful fashion. “Whose baby is that?”
“This is Cookie,” Bubba said. “She’s Brownie’s little sister.”
“God have mercy!” Sheriff John said and immediately stepped backward. He waved his hand across his face. If he had been catholic he would have crossed himself. “She doesn’t look evil.”
“She’s young,” Bubba admitted. “Mebe it skips her on account of Brownie getting the bulk of all that evil.”
“Mebe.” Sheriff John shook his head. “Just keep her away from my service weapon and all kinds of household chemicals.” He paused to shake his head again. “Now what about the you-know-what.”
“It was in the living room,” Bubba repeated. “Twice.”
The expression on Sheriff John’s face was something Bubba would have called skeptical. “What, did it get up, walk away, and then come back? Rinse twice and repeat, kind of like?”
“I don’t know because I didn’t see it leave. I didn’t see it come in the first place. I didn’t see it come back. I didn’t see it leave again. Mebe if we just sit a spell it’ll wander back in.” Bubba patted Cookie’s head because she made a whimpering noise in response to his raised voice. Precious nosed his leg. She had meandered in after Sheriff John, looked intent for a moment, and then dismissed all the drama as something a dog didn’t need to be concerned with. “But my throw rug is gone,” Bubba added.
“The throw rug in the living room,” Sheriff John said.
“I figure the first time it was used to drag the you-know-what away,” Bubba said. “That rug was a gift from my cousin Taffy. She made it out of scraps of clothing I wore as a child including some Sheriff Woody underwear. No, I don’t know where she got the clothing, but she swore it was all things I loved. Taffy is a little on the odd side.” He paused. “You know, like the rest of the family.”