by C. L. Bevill
That was, until Melissa had shown up dead, almost on his doorstep. She had been using a rental car. Had she flown in from wherever they were stationed now?
What had Melissa wanted with Bubba? Bubba couldn’t imagine that Melissa wanted to declare her rediscovered love for him. She had been too pragmatic for that. She had had her life mapped out for her. Her husband would make major, then lieutenant colonel, and most certainly the rank of colonel. If it were possible he would wear the star of a general. Then he would retire and start as a consultant to a lucrative defense contractor, with the family at home, doing officer’s wifely things. Perhaps he might dabble in politics, with his serene, beautiful wife at his side; his two point five children would be on his other side. That had been the world that she had been on her way to. Perhaps she had genuine feelings for Michael Dearman, Bubba didn’t know, and didn’t care to know for the last three years. But what in the name of God had ‘Lissa been doing in Pegramville, looking for him?
Because, as sure as the day was long, Melissa hadn’t known anyone else in this small town hundreds of miles away from the big cities, perhaps a thousand miles from where she presently lived with her husband and family. Because, as sure as night falls, she was here to see him, and him alone. Because, as sure as the leaves will fall in autumn, Bubba was the only one who knew Melissa and had the only reason to kill her.
Bubba was the one Sheriff John was looking at with a rapt, disconcerting eye, because Bubba almost certainly could be the only one who had any reason to kill Melissa Dearman.
And Bubba was going to jail on a permanent basis unless he could figure out who had killed Melissa and damned quickly.
Bubba snapped back to the present with a precipitous feeling that left him feeling discombobulated. His path became clear to him. He had to solve the murder, before the sheriff solved him, solved him right onto death row, waiting for the deadly drip to take him into the next world. A place where he couldn’t do a damned thing about who had really murdered Melissa Dearman.
His first stop was the Pegram Café where Lurlene was working. Bubba needed to use the phone as well as flirt shamelessly with the blonde haired thing. After a man had spent a time or two in the jail, a pretty, young, encouraging woman was just the trick to make things seem a little more pleasant.
Lurlene dropped a plate of eggs, hash browns, grits, and bacon unceremoniously on the counter when she saw Bubba coming through the door. She threw up her arms and shrieked, “Bubba!” Then she leaped into his arms and kissed him. He was, after all, a big man, and caught her very nicely. “They let you out!” she yelled.
Bubba winced. She had yelled directly in his ear. “Yes, Miss Lurlene, I noticed that.”
“Well, Bubba, what are they going to do?” she asked, still in his arms. She studied him carefully with her warm, brown eyes.
Bubba looked around at a crowd of interested faces. He thanked the Lord above that the Pegram Café was a small café, with only enough room for twenty people. However, every chair was full at nine in the morning on this particular morning and their attention was focused fully on Bubba. He waded through the crowd, accepting the odd, “Good to see you, Bubba.” “Did they torture you, Bubba? That’s what Miz Demetrice said.” “We knew you dint do it, Bubba.” Finally, he deposited Lurlene back at the counter, where she blushed furiously, picked up the dropped plate of eggs and fixings, and went back to work.
Noey Wheatfall, the cook and owner of the Pegram Café, came out with a white chef’s hat on his head and a white apron wrapped around his torso. He grinned at Bubba, and said, “Hey, Bubba, did you see the paper yesterday?”
Noey was a good-looking man, about ten years older than Bubba. He had dark brown hair cut short, and the eyes to match. He wasn’t as big as Bubba, but he wasn’t a short man either. He was also married with four children, all of whom could be found in the café helping out in the summer time. His wife, Nancy, also was a hard worker. She spent most of her days at the manure factory as a secretary, and her evenings helping at the café. Bubba liked Nancy, but had never quite taken a liking to her husband. If he had had to put a reason to it, it would have been that Noey always seemed a little too slick, a little too smiley, and a little too eager with the ladies on nights when his wife was off doing something else. But Bubba hadn’t really thought about it before, and the thought only sat with him now because Noey was looking directly at him and asking, “That was some kind of headline, huh?”
“I didn’t see it,” Bubba lied and immediately asked himself why he had lied.
But Noey slapped him on his back blithely and said, “Meal on the house, Bubba. Being innocent is hard work, ain’t it?”
“I already ate, Noey,” Bubba said. “I just came in to see Miss Lurlene and use the payphone.”
“Hell, use the phone in my office,” Noey replied cheerfully. Then his face twisted. “Don’t those folks over at the jail let you make a phone call?”
Bubba smiled weakly at the other man and followed him into his office. Noey left promptly without saying anything else. He dialed his phone number and waited for Miz Demetrice to answer.
Adelia Cedarbloom answered the phone about twenty rings later. Adelia was his mother’s housekeeper as well as confidant as well as general dog’s body. She gave him a cold hello, and told him that his mother was talking to their state representative at the town twenty miles down the road. “About you, course,” she answered when Bubba asked why. Bubba told her that he had been released from jail, and would be home presently, if Miz Demetrice deigned to telephone.
“Thank the Lord almighty!” said Adelia wholeheartedly. “I have heard about what happens to men in places like that. It is a good thing that you are much bigger than most. You know that if you went to prison, as big as you are, you could have yourself a bitch.”
Bubba asked her to repeat herself. He thought that maybe he had something in his ears, because she couldn’t have said what he thought she had said.
“You know, you could run the place, because no one would dare mess with you,” Adelia explained patiently. “When a man controls another man, that other man is called a bitch. I heard it on television.”
“Have you been watching those daytime shows again, Miz Adelia?” asked Bubba.
“Of course not. There’s too much trash on that show. I don’t believe they could find so many people who are sleeping with their girlfriend and their girlfriend’s other boyfriend at the same time. They just make that trumpery up.” Adelia’s voice was indignant, but obviously she still watched the show, like a dirty little secret in her closet, kind of like the dirty little secrets on the show.
Bubba wasn’t positive, but had an idea that the dark haired, dark eyed forty-ish woman who had been with Demetrice for the last twenty years, was a co-conspirator in the infamous weekly, Pegram County Pokerama. The game was getting to be so well known that they moved it to a new and previously unused location each week. The phone at the big Snoddy house rang off the hook the day before the game, so that Bubba didn’t dare answer it, if he happened to be in the house. But mostly Bubba wouldn’t answer it because Adelia would beat him to it, and give him a don’t-you-dare look besides.
It had been true that he had been expecting the police to show up at the Snoddy place, but for an altogether different reason than the one which actually had occurred.
Adelia continued to speak on the other end of the telephone, “I’m sure glad you’re coming home. All kinds of trouble makers out here, lately.”
Bubba sat down heavily in Noey’s chair. “What do you mean, Miz Adelia?”
“Saturday night, Miz Demetrice, had to shoot at someone trying to steal something off the front porch. Your mama ain’t so young anymore that she should be getting knocked down from shooting that blasted elephant gun. Her posterior was so bruised, she couldn’t sit down most of Sunday. She said that someone was messing around the property last night around midnight, too. Like that be something new around here. Precious was howling up a storm, mi
nd you. Miz Demetrice decided to keep her in the big house last night, and weren’t it a good thing, too.”
Bubba digested this information. “Thank you, Miz Adelia. I’ll be home tonight. I’ll take care of it.”
“You best do so, before Miz Demetrice up and kills someone.”
The phone line was buzzing in his ear, before Bubba realized that Adelia had hung up. But Bubba was thinking about his mother. Miz Demetrice had a mighty fine temper when she was so thwarted. She could be vexed about certain matters for months. Last year alone, she would cross the street, rather than walk on the same sidewalk as Susan Teasdale. Susan’s offense was that she wore the exact same hat as Miz Demetrice to the big church social on Easter Sunday. Of course, Susan had known full well that she was wearing the same hat as Miz Demetrice. She had done so specifically to infuriate Miz Demetrice, for reasons that dated back three decades. It had been something about Susan dating Elgin Snoddy before Miz Demetrice, and just look who ended up marrying him, and becoming the infamous Snoddy matriarch.
Bubba snorted to himself. Susan had gotten the better end of the bargain, but Miz Demetrice sure wouldn’t admit that. Susan had married a Baptist preacher, who had a church on the far side of Pegramville, and was doing very well, thank you. But the gist of all of it was that Miz Demetrice held a grudge. Hell, she probably couldn’t even remember why she disliked Susan to begin with.
But back to the point that Bubba had been so laboriously making in his head. If Miz Demetrice’s one and only child had been hurt, and there had been no doubt that Bubba had been hurt badly, she would have held a grudge against Melissa Dearman, no matter why Melissa had come calling past 10 PM on a Thursday night.
Bubba could picture it in his mind. Melissa pulls up to the Snoddy house, and sees Miz Demetrice there, hurrying to go to her poker game. Melissa introduces herself. Miz Demetrice rushes into the house, finds Elgin Snoddy’s old Army .45, and returns to shoot Melissa in the back. All in the name of revenge upon her only, beloved son.
Bubba snorted again. Then he laughed. Then he laughed harder. Noey even peeped into his office to see just what in the name of God Bubba was laughing at, and had he lost his mind? When Bubba was done laughing, he wiped a tear away from his eye. He had laughed so hard, his eyes had watered, and his gut ached.
The truth was that if Miz Demetrice wanted to kill someone, she would have shot them in their face. It was even more likely she would have clubbed them right between the eyes with a baseball bat. Then she would have called the police herself, and confessed immediately. The fact of matter was that when Melissa had driven up to the Snoddy place Miz Demetrice had been long gone and at her floating poker party, already taking someone’s social security money from them with an evil smile.
It wouldn’t be hard to verify. Probably ten women could attest to when Miz Demetrice arrived, and ten more to when she left. As soon as he verified that fact, Bubba would make a list of suspects. Who had access to the grounds? Who had motive to kill Melissa? Who had a gun? Who would want Bubba framed for a murder?
Chapter Five - Bubba Still Makes a List -
Still Monday
Bubba Snoddy made his list. The problem was that it was a small list. Miz Demetrice Snoddy was at the top of the list. For all of the reasons he had listed mentally before, she was at the very top of the list. She was the pinnacle of Mount Everest on the list. She had motive. She had the weapon. She had opportunity. However, all he had to do was to verify her alibi, and she would be crossed off.
Then there was Adelia Cedarbloom, listed for the same reason as his mother. She would have felt the same indignant anger over Bubba’s abrupt dis-engagement and exit from the military service as Demetrice had. Adelia also had the motive. She had access to Elgin Snoddy’s military .45 caliber handgun, the same as his mother. She might have been present when Melissa Dearman had driven up, and introduced herself to the housekeeper. Perhaps Adelia had just been trying to scare Melissa off. But Bubba realized that whoever was chasing Melissa hadn’t wanted her near her rental car. She had been going in the opposite direction. No, it was no accident. It was murder, no doubt about it.
Then there was Lurlene Grady, listed for the same reason, but then Bubba crossed her off, because he didn’t think she was capable of producing a violent, shoot-someone-in-the-back anger that had been necessary to accomplish the task. Then Bubba put her back on his list because he thought maybe it had been jealousy. Lurlene might have the motive. They had dated several times. Six official dates, to be precise, and Bubba didn’t want to forget that. She very well could know about Bubba’s history. Working at the Pegram Café was like working in a gossip factory. Anyone that Bubba cared to point at on the street probably knew the story, although Bubba had only told his mother, and she had sworn up and down on a stack of bibles that she had only told Adelia. Three-quarters of the population of Pegramville probably went into the Café during the odd day, in order to catch up on their daily ration of gossip, and maybe pass it on it on to the Café’s waitresses or whomever else was there to listen. But what had Lurlene been doing from 10 PM to 1 AM on Thursday night and early Friday morning? And had she felt sufficiently angered by Bubba’s ex-fiancée to do such a thing? And how would she have known that Melissa would be anywhere about? Bubba would have to find out.
Bubba added another name to his list. Major Michael Dearman. In every crime drama he’d ever seen on television or at the movies, the husband was the first logical suspect. Yeppers. The spouse was the number one killer of murdered significant others. So here was the mental scenario that Bubba came up with, concerning Major Dearman as the killer. Melissa had decided that Bubba had been, after all, the love of her life. She was going to visit him, and tell him so, begging him to forgive her, and run away to live in Bubba-like happiness. The insanely jealous major follows, and in a rage, kills his wife, practically on Bubba’s door step, leaving the self-same Bubba to take the rap, while he slips out of town unseen and unnoticed.
Bubba considered. Or maybe Melissa had grown tiresome. Perhaps the major hadn’t made lieutenant colonel in a record amount of time. He hadn’t been nominated for such and such award. He got a bad evaluation. He was making the officer’s wife look bad to all the other officer’s wives, so she was on his back. So the major wanted Melissa out of the way. And looky here, here was Bubba to take the rap. All he had to do was to get Melissa out here and then shoot her dead on the Snoddy property. Then he would wait for the bad news and let the insurance money flow into his bank account.
Sighing, Bubba scratched that theory out with a savage pen stroke. But how would Major Michael Dearman know about the missing .45 caliber handgun? He wouldn’t. If he were a smart murderer, and Bubba thought that he had to have some brains in order to be a major, then he wouldn’t take the chance of the slug being found, and identified to the correct murder weapon. But then it could have all been a spur of the moment murder.
Bubba’s head was starting to ache as if he had drunk a jug of moonshine the night before.
From the Pegram Café he hoofed it home, relieved Adelia of the burden that was his dog, Precious, and retreated to his domain, the caretaker’s house. He and the dog walked carefully around the crime-scene area still taped off with canary yellow tape that was labeled ‘Police line – DO NOT CROSS.’ Bubba scowled when he saw that Melissa’s rental car was still parked at the side of the house. Precious was cheerfully oblivious, content that her master was home and pranced in the only way that a basset hound can, long ears flopping in the air and jowls going every which way.
When Bubba entered the caretaker’s house, his own home, he immediately noticed that it had been searched. It was a Spartan home with only the necessities. So cleaning the house didn’t take much out of Bubba, which was just the way he liked it, thank you very much. The oak plank floors only needed a sweeping here and there. Some of the oil paintings, cast-offs from the big house, on the walls, needed to be wiped off upon occasion to keep dust from growing so large that an extra pla
cemat was necessary at the dining room table. Once a year, Adelia showed up to do all of the floors and all of the windows, whether it needed it or not.
It was a house with two floors and a simple veranda. It didn’t look much like the small stable it had once been. The first floor was a living room with a walk through hallway that led right to the back door. This was commonly referred to as a shotgun hallway, because one could fire a shotgun from outside the front door and hit someone outside the back door, provided both doors were conveniently open and one wished to shoot the other person. The kitchen was in a cubby hole out back, with not nearly enough room for a man as big as Bubba to turn around in. On the second floor were two bedrooms. One was empty, and the other held Bubba’s bed, upon which he tended to sleep diagonally or his feet would stick out on the ends, and a simple armoire.
But with all of the sparse furniture and fixings, he could tell that all of the things had been moved around. The downstairs were more obvious. The ratty couch had been moved a few feet away from its original position. The rug it sat on was cockeyed, from someone yanking it up to look underneath. Pictures hung crooked. The book that Bubba had been reading had been dropped carelessly to the floor, bending some pages in the process, and left that way. He picked it up, and straightened up the folded pages, then replaced the book on the coffee table.
They were looking for the gun, thought Bubba. The gun that killed Melissa.
There was a little desk in the corner. It was called a lady’s desk, because it was about the quarter of the size of a regular desk. It was a delicate thing made out of mahogany, and shined to a dark brilliance. It had used to belong to Miz Demetrice when she had been a child. His mother had given it to Bubba when he was in elementary school. Bubba once thought he might like to give it to a daughter of his own, but he didn’t think that was much likely these days. Bubba went to it, and rolled up the cover. Then he got out writing paper and a pen.