by C. L. Bevill
Bubba smiled winningly at Willodean. It was his best smile, the one he had practiced endlessly in a mirror when he had been sixteen years old. It was the smile which had broken the hearts of cheerleaders all across Pegram County. “I wonder if you could answer a question for me, Ma’am?” ‘Gentility without ability is worse than plain beggary,’Miz Demetrice said regally on more than one occasion. It still sprang to Bubba’s mind once in a while. One needed to be tactful and quick-witted in order to get the answer that one might need.
“No, I won’t go out with you, Bubba Snoddy,” Willodean answered tiredly.
“That wasn’t it,” Bubba said. So much for that smile. “I wanted to know if it’s true that Major Dearman was really in Italy when his wife was murdered.”
Willodean abruptly stopped walking and turned to Bubba. The expression on her face clearly showed the surprise of his question. He stopped the truck from motion, and pushed Precious back across the seat. She was intent on smelling up the latest human to cross her path, even if that included clambering over her master to get to that human. “Good looking Basset Hound,” Willodean commented mildly. She allowed Precious to sniff her fingers first, and then scratched her head appropriately.
“Her name is Precious,” Bubba said. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Willodean’s eyebrows went up. “Precious? That’s not exactly the name I would have pictured you giving a dog.”
“Rambo didn’t seem to fit a Basset Hound,” Bubba said wryly.
She laughed, and Bubba sighed...again. It was a nice laugh. An honest laugh. He almost giggled. What in God’s name is wrong with me? he asked himself.
“Bubba, I can’t just keep giving you information like this,” Willodean stated. “If the sheriff finds out, I’m history. There’s a strict rule about nonessential communication with suspects outside of interrogation.”
“Look, Deputy Gray,” Bubba started. “You’re the only one who’s willing to talk to me. Sheriff John and Deputy Simms ain’t looking for anyone else to have done this thing to Melissa, so I have to do it. If I didn’t do it, then the most logical suspect is the husband, am I right?”
“You’re right, but he was in Italy. Without a doubt.”
“I figured as much. I don’t think he hired anyone to do it, either. He’s as broken up as a man can get, over the death of his wife. I think I don’t have a single suspect, anymore.”
“What about Neal Ledbetter?”
“He was at the Red Door Inn during the time period.” Bubba grimaced. “He might be trying to scare off my mother, but he didn’t kill Melissa.”
“Perhaps he has an accomplice who was there that night?” she suggested.
Bubba nodded. “Yeah, but how do I find that out?”
“Well, I’ve got some time tomorrow to spend tracking down the origin of the stereo equipment, and if we can place him as the one who bought the stuff, I can shake him down for why it was in the house, attempting to oh, fraud someone out of their rightful property.” She reached up with a delicate hand to scratch her head. “But right now, Bubba, I need to get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
Bubba nodded again. “I’ll wait until you’re in your car.”
Willodean stared at Bubba again, but finally went to her car without saying anything else. She climbed in a Jeep Wrangler, and drove off without acknowledging Bubba again.
Bubba patted Precious’s head. “She’s cute, ain’t she?” The dog didn’t agree or disagree, but merely watched as the Wrangler’s lights disappeared into the night, vexed that she didn’t automatically get her way.
Miz Demetrice wasn’t at home when he got there, which was hardly surprising. It was, after all, Pokerama night, despite all the po-lice involvement, of late. Who was his mother to come between the card-sharking women of Pegram County and their Thursday night fun? Not she, on the contrary, she would be there egging them on in the face of danger. ‘So what if the police are all over my son,’ she’d say, or even yell boisterously. ‘We deserve Pokerama! Come on, Ladies!’
Bubba took his dog on a patrol of the big house. Miz Demetrice had reported no further break-ins since the last time, and he wondered if he had managed to scare off their would-be ghost. All of the windows and doors were secure. He left the front veranda and back porch lights burning brightly, but didn’t think that would deter an individual if he was intent on burglarizing the place.
But that wasn’t it exactly, considered Bubba. Someone wanted to frighten Miz Demetrice off. A little old lady alone in her mansion should be pretty easy to scare. It made Bubba more and more angrier. It also made him laugh because those people didn’t know how determined Miz Demetrice could get. If it were Neal Ledbetter, then he would have a hard lesson learning that Miz Demetrice wasn’t going to leave Snoddy Mansion unless she wanted to leave, which presented another problem.
If I were someone who wanted the old lady out, Bubba thought watching Precious patrol the bushes near the front veranda. And the old lady wouldn’t be scared off. Then what would be the next step?
Why I’d have to kill her, answered Bubba. That would be the only answer. If I wanted something badly enough. He rubbed the side of his face a little. The bruising was starting to go down. He could see just a bit out of his left eye, where it was all black before. In a few days the colors would begin to turn from purple to greenish and then eventually disappear altogether.
Precious was on the trail of something mobile. In the light from the veranda, Bubba saw a rabbit explode from a bush and hightail it across the yard, with Precious in close pursuit. But the dog’s stumpy legs were no match for the rabbit, and gave out half-way down the drive-way. She snorted and sniffed around for a minute and began trotting back to her master.
Bubba didn’t care for the path his mind was taking him in, but it was logical. All it depended on was how far someone was willing to go. And since Melissa had been killed by someone, then it was also logical that that was how far someone was willing to go. So why not Miz Demetrice next? Why not, indeed?
He leaned down to scratch his dog’s head, and beckoned her to follow him back to the caretaker’s house. He was tired, hungry, and smelled like he had taken a bath in a distillery. When Bubba was done with a meal, a bath, and feeding his dog, he went into his bedroom and slept like the dead, snoring so loudly that even his dog didn’t care to be in the same room as he was.
However, not long later Precious was baying loudly.
“Shut up, you damned dog,” Bubba muttered irritably. Wasn’t it a nice dream he was having with Deputy Willodean Gray wearing a white negligee, and her long black hair cascaded over her shoulders and...
Precious bayed again, scratched at the door.
Bubba opened an eye. The door was shut. The dog had inadvertently closed it, in an effort to get out. She was up on her hind legs, scratching away, and baying clamorously. She looked over at Bubba and realized he was awake. Down she went, and up on the bed she clambered. She stood astride her master’s chest, and licked Bubba’s face, trying to tell him that someone was outside.
His eyes were an awful chore to open, but Bubba did so, looking at the clock on the night stand. Its luminous digits said it was fifteen minutes after four AM. He brushed the dog off of his body. Precious thumped to the floor and returned to clawing at the door. Bubba rolled out of bed, clad only in boxer shorts, and pulled the door open. Precious disappeared out the door, down the stairs, baying all the way.
Bubba pulled the baseball bat out from behind the door, and followed his dog. Precious was a little frantic now, as she nudged her body against his front door. She snuffled around, and pressed her body against Bubba’s legs. Bubba commanded her to shut up. The dog, who wasn’t one to obey commands overly, did so immediately, much to her master’s surprise.
All of the lights in the house were off, and Bubba looked out into the night. The back porch light on the big house was off, unlike the way he had left it. He knew his mother wouldn’t turn it off, so it was a good bit
of figuring that told him that their little inquisitive buddy was back. Additionally, he couldn’t see Miz Demetrice’s car parked in its regular spot.
Bubba went out his own back door, taking the time to slip his size twelve Reebocks on his feet. He whispered to Precious, “If you can keep quiet, you can come.”
The dog panted at him. Bubba made a face. “Keep your big trap shut, understand?”
Precious seemed to be in some accord with her master, even if she did not nod or otherwise acknowledge this command.
Bubba slipped around the side of the caretaker’s house, keeping to the deep shadows. Precious followed at his heels, for once in complete harmony with him. He was hoping that the nightly visitor would keep doing whatever it was he was doing inside the house, instead of being frightened away. He wasn’t worried about the man having a gun, since he or someone else had planted it in Bubba’s woodpile, sometime before.
But hey, thought Bubba, there’s that rifle, and the shotgun, and didn’t Mama own three eighteenth century muzzle loaders, too? He looked at the baseball bat he held. Then he looked at his boxer shorts, a cloth rendition of old glory emblazoned across his lower body. Oh, the hell with it, decided he, determinedly swinging the bat once into his fist.
Bubba got past the wide open yard by scuttling around his old Chevy truck He almost dropped the baseball bat once when Precious abruptly stuck her cold, wet nose on the back of one of his calves. The closer he got to the house the louder the sounds of noises could be heard in the house. This was undoubtedly the noise that had awakened Precious.
Someone was methodically tossing the house, looking for something. Bubba considered this for a long minute. He was standing next to the back kitchen door, where he could see, even in the darkness, the light bulb of the fixture had been removed and dropped to the ground, where it had broken into many pieces. He tried the door. It was open.
Among the things that I need to do, added Bubba. Is to change the locks. He didn’t know how their burglar got a set of keys, but the locks hadn’t been changed or renovated for forty years. Some of the Society for Preservation of the South had sets, in order to come and go from the house during the spring and fall tours. Bubba had a set. Miz Demetrice gave Doc Goodjoint a set ten years before. Miz Demetrice and Adelia both left their keys all over kingdom come, from the grocery store to hanging from the locks themselves. They had been duplicated so many times that every man, woman, and child in Pegramville could have their own sets.
Inside the house was full of darkness. The sound of banging drawers drifted down the long hallway. Bubba had spent his whole life or most of it, clambering up and down every nook and cranny of this house. Their curious friend was in the living room, searching the built in cabinets that dated back before the Civil War. He was throwing the empty drawers on the floor. Something glass broke on the Persian rug-covered floor.
Precious emitted a low growl beside Bubba, evidently picking up on her master’s anger.
Bubba had every intention of sneaking up on the unsuspecting burglar or whatever the hell he was. Then he might proceed to break some bones and generally make everyone an unhappy camper all the way around, before he called the Sheriff’s Department to pick the trash up.
He was halfway down the long hall, when the noises abruptly stopped. Precious made a keening sort of growl that lifted the hairs up on the back of Bubba’s neck. When he reached the door to the living room, he carefully looked around the edge, and saw nothing.
There was no one in the living room. But the drawers to the built-in’s were askew. Some were on the floor. Some of the fine crystal that Miz Demetrice collected was shattered on the floor around the marble and brick fireplace.
Bubba couldn’t understand how the man had gotten past him. There wasn’t another exit to the living room, and the windows were fastened shut.
Precious let out a howl, as someone crashed by the bushes just outside the window. Bubba yelled at his dog to follow him, and took off down the long hall, ran out the kitchen door and around the side of the big house.
The mysterious burglar took careful aim at Bubba’s half-naked figure, and shot at him.
Chapter Thirteen - Bubba and Another Dead Body –
Friday
The bullet missed Bubba Snoddy by a gap equal to the national deficit. Instead, it hit the side of the house with a loud zing, and ricocheted off one of the tall columns supporting the top veranda. The sound of the gunshot whirred like a maddened bee and echoed loudly into the sultry night.
Bubba ducked. A little after the fact, but he still ducked.
Precious decided that the whole thing was too much for her, and hightailed it back around the side of the house, peering over her shoulder as if a much larger animal with huge teeth was nipping at her heels.
In the woods to the north of the Snoddy Mansion, Bubba could hear someone fumbling around as he or she scrambled down a path of their own making. Bubba cautiously lifted his head, but he couldn’t see any kind of light in the woods. The burglar had waited to shoot Bubba, and then was taking off through the woods, apparently without a flashlight. Or perhaps they choose not to use one in order to remain undetectable in the gloom that was nighttime.
Bubba rose to his feet, yelled for his dog to heel, and took off after the unknown individual. Precious kept back from her master a good long distance. She knew that discretion was the better part of valor. Someone was in the woods with a gun, and she knew that guns would hurt any dog, no matter how good they were. Her master was clearly out of his mind. If she had been human she would have stuck her tongue out at his back disappearing into the tree line. But she wasn’t. So, she didn’t.
Bubba made almost as much noise as the burglar. He tripped over a fallen tree in the thickly overgrown thicket, full of every kind of growing ivy from honeysuckle to poison ivy, and surrounded with dozens of trees from birch to cedar. Unseen animals took off for quieter locales, as he clumsily blundered through three bushes, and narrowly avoided a precariously leaning cedar. The woods on this side of the property hadn’t been cleared for over a hundred years, and Miz Demetrice liked the look of it, so she left it alone. In effect, it was almost a dark, green jungle of trees, and that was during the daylight hours.
Cursing and jumping around like a fool with a lit match in between his toes, Bubba decided that having a flashlight would have been a good, if not tremendous idea. He stopped for a moment, and the woods had become silent. Not even a cricket or a June bug was sounding off. The presence of strident humans had hushed the lush copse.
His shin hurt like the devil, the skin on his arms felt like it had been scraped with sandpaper, and he was groggy from having so little sleep of late. Bubba was not only aggravated, but he was beginning to get really angry.
The woods went on for several almost impenetrable acres in this direction, Bubba knew well from childhood excursions. On the other side of this lot was Farmer’s Road, and a little strip mall, where Miz Demetrice was inclined to purchase vegetables from a vendor set up on the side of the mall. It would be a good place to park a getaway car where people wouldn’t look at it overly, instead of alongside the road beside the Snoddy Mansion where everyone and his cousin would remember it being parked.
Bubba decided that, boxer shorts with old glory or not, he was headed for the strip mall to lay in wait for the burglar. The man might be hiding under a shrub right now, and Precious was next to useless. Nevertheless, the intruder would have to come out of the woods sooner or later. There couldn’t be that many cars parked at the strip mall at four in the morning. Bubba knew he could narrow his focus down considerably.
He slipped through the forest, avoiding long strands of poison ivy that draped off trees like curtains from a window. His running shoes crunched a little on the vegetation laden floor, but that couldn’t be helped. Carefully, he headed toward the north, following what he could see of the North Star. After a while, there was pink in the east, and the stars began to disappear. The crickets and cicadas resumed the
ir noisy music, then the birds began to sing as well, but Bubba never heard his intruder again.
Precious followed her master with a little whine of protest, but as she calmed down, she began to be happier about her location. Despite having gotten out of a warm bed, she was in the woods with the man, and having a good old time. This was clearly a dog’s life.
Bubba hefted the baseball bat in his right hand. He was beginning to think that he had gone in the wrong direction, when he suddenly saw the street lights of Farmer’s Road through the dense trees. Although the sun was coming up, it was still twilight, full of long shadows and pockets of unfathomable darkness.
He wasn’t the only one there. Off to his left, someone else burst through the thicket, and launched themselves in the direction of the strip mall. Bubba bellowed appropriately and took off in heated pursuit. Precious howled, and followed, ready to bite whatever was causing her master anxiety, as long as they didn’t have a gun.
The intruder, who apparently thought that he or she lost Bubba in the woods, screamed like a girl whose brother opened the bathroom door while she was on the toilet with her panties around her ankles. Then the person turned and shot awkwardly at Bubba again, missing by several bushes, two trees, and a provoked armadillo. Birds flushed from the trees, attempting to escape the noise of the weapon.
Just before Bubba was the man who was so intent on scaring Miz Demetrice. He was barely visible in the dim night, a medium sized figure dressed in black clothing. Bubba was just about to jump right on the intruder, rifle or not, when a large hole in the ground appeared before him, and he fell in, hitting his head on the side as he fell. Actually, the hole was already there, but if one asked Bubba at later time, perhaps when he had regained consciousness, he would have said, ‘That hole just jumped right out in front of me,’ just like Newt Durley’s telephone pole.