The unhurried sluggishness of his pursuit made him feel something other than boiling rage at her disappearance. Regret. Utter regret that he’d missed spending time with Willodean. The feeling made him sick.
Staring at Willodean’s little porch, he thought that it didn’t look any different in the middle of the afternoon. The swing was swaying a little in the breeze. The bronze wind chimes played an accompaniment. She should have been sitting there, ready to say something sassy to him.
Swinging his gaze to the other porch of the duplex, he noticed that the black brassiere was gone; instead, there was a pair of Smurf covered jockey shorts hanging from the flag pole. I got a pair just like those.
Unreserved resolve set in. Bubba didn’t have Sheriff John’s keys today. But he did have a need to look at the letters Willodean had received. Read the letters. Find a clue to the man’s identity and whereabouts. Find the stalker. Find Willodean. It was a mantra that he could live with…for the moment.
The door of the duplex opened, and a girl with blond hair in dreadlocks peered out at him. She looked at him and then out toward the old, green Chevy with the Basset hound sticking her head out the window. “Hey,” she said, “you’re the guy who came looking for Mark Evans in my psych class. I remember your dog, too.”
Bubba recalled the girl. She worked for Edward Minnieweather serving papers to folks in the Pegram County area. She had been wearing a Jim Morrison t-shirt then, and now she was wearing a Led Zeppelin one. And nothing else. Bubba’s eyes instantly went up to the roof of the duplex.
“Yeah,” he said. Nice new roof. The trim was just painted. “Found him, too. In the hospital. Didn’t have much to say neither.”
“Well, that guy he served beat the bloody hell out of him,” the girl said with a wry smile. “I talked to Mark last week. He just got another surgery on his hand, and he made up all of his psych work. I can’t believe he got a B in that class. To get a B, I would have sucked- well, I would have bent over backwards, and well, that doesn’t sound any better does it?”
Bubba wasn’t sure if it sounded any better, so he kept wisely mum on the subject. “Do you know the lady who lives there?” He pointed at Willodean’s door.
“Sure, Willy,” the girl said. “She’s the bacon. But she’s cool. She said if she smelled something wafting over, she would ignore it as long as it was in proportion to the situation.” She nodded firmly. “That’s kew-ell.”
“KIKI!” a voice bellowed from inside.
The girl glanced over her shoulder and then looked back at Bubba. “I heard your truck and thought it was the pizza guy.” Her bright blue eyes looked him up and down, determining that he didn’t have a pizza box in his immediate possession. “Guess not.”
“Do you have a key to Willodean’s place?” Bubba asked.
The girl, whose name was in fact, Kiki, studied Bubba. “You were with the cop that day you were looking for Mark.” She pursed her lips. “You had handcuffs on, and you had more bruises and bumps than Mike Tyson after a fight. Was it you that Mark tried to serve?” She shook her head and answered her own question. “No, it was that really big guy, Gollihugh.” She looked at Bubba again. “Of course, you’re a big fella, but that Gollihugh is supposed to be like seven feet tall.”
“Dan Gollihugh is seven feet tall,” Bubba said. “Bad temper, too. If Minnieweather sends you out to serve him, you might want to take a pass. Getting legal papers makes Dan as mad as a mosquito in a mannequin factory.”
“Most of the kids who work for Minnieweather kind of figured that out,” Kiki said with an amused nod.
“KIKI!” the voice bellowed again. “IS THE PIZZA HERE? I got the munchies wicked bad!”
“NO!” she bellowed back. The breeze blew a little harder, and the Led Zeppelin t-shirt fluttered in a way that showed just about everything and then some.
Bubba’s eyes went back to the roof. His own mother had, for some bizarre reason, recently told him something about feminine hair removal, and here was an example that was practically winking at him. One type was called a Brazilian wax, and one type was called a Hollywood wax. Kiki had one or the other, but he couldn’t remember which one was which. Furthermore, he didn’t care to ask her what the difference was. Even thinking about it made red flags appear on his cheeks.
“Why do you want a key for Willy’s place?” Kiki asked curiously. She smoothed down the shirt over her thighs, and Bubba sighed with relief.
“She’s missing,” Bubba said shortly.
Kiki frowned. “Missing? I saw her on…Wednesday. She borrowed our grill. She had a date, and they wanted to barbeque.” Her eyes examined Bubba’s contorted features. “That was you, wasn’t it? For the date?”
Bubba nodded. He couldn’t get past the lump in his throat. “There was a car wreck out toward the Snoddy Mansion. Her county car was pushed to the side of the road. We’ve been searching all night.”
“And the folks who were here yesterday,” Kiki said, “they’re her family, right?”
Bubba nodded again. “They’re out searching, too.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Kiki said. “Willy is good peeps. Even for a popo.” She shrugged. “But she never gave us a key. Hell, I wouldn’t give us a key.”
Bubba sighed. It had been a long shot. He could look under Willodean’s welcome mat and under the flower pots, but Willodean wasn’t the type to hide keys in obvious places; hence, the set of keys that she had given Sheriff John. “Thanks anyway,” he said and turned toward the other side of the duplex.
Kiki smiled at him and shut the door behind her.
Maybe there’s a window cracked or maybe the door will fly open by itself when my foot hits it in just the right place. Bubba smiled grimly. He’d fix the door himself, but he needed to look at those letters.
The other door opened again. Kiki was triumphantly holding up a Hello Kitty keychain. By all rights, the keychain should have been glittering in the sunlight like a disco ball but it wasn’t.
“I forgot,” she announced cheerfully. “The guy who lived here before Willy gave this to me.” She trotted out sans underwear and handed it to Bubba. “Bet Willy didn’t change the locks. Of course, she doesn’t really know that she can trust us. We would never rip off a sheriff’s deputy. Besides Willy is too Cool-and-the-Gang to mess with. My other roommate would sell his soul to get with her.”
Bubba made a growling sound in response to her statement.
Kiki laughed and dreadlocks went flying. “Oh, calm yourself, big fella. Willy said she was interested in one guy and one guy only, so who could that be, I wonder.” She twirled and went back inside, and Bubba inadvertently got a glimpse of rounded pink cheeks. It made his cheeks turn red again. He wasn’t sure about the color of his other cheeks.
Before another second had passed, Kiki stuck her head back out the door. “If you need more people to search, let me know. I’ll Tweet it so the whole world hears. My name is Kiki Rutkowski. I’m all over the Net.”
“Oh-kay,” Bubba agreed doubtfully. Kiki vanished again.
Bubba got inside Willodean’s house before Kiki could return outside. Does that girl understand that she doesn’t have underwear on?
Shaking his head, Bubba looked around. He went through Willodean’s mail lying on the coffee table. He searched through a small desk in a smaller bedroom. He looked through her garbage. He balked at her bedroom door. One day he was going to have to explain to someone that he had illegally broken into Willodean’s house. It was a similar reason to why he had stolen Willodean’s official county car, but it was still illegal.
Bubba’s moral code allowed for such. It was okay to hit Big Joe because Bubba knew that his family might be in mortal danger, and Big Joe wasn’t going to just let Bubba up and go. It was all right to commit a criminality when the higher moral ground needed to be taken. Accordingly, it was acceptable to break into Willodean’s home. But later on, he would have to expound on why that was all right to Willodean herself. He hoped that she understood, b
ut Bubba knew that it was a decision he would repeat over and over again if necessary.
But Willodean’s bedroom was her sanctuary. Crossing that precise line was like traveling the road to Ickyville. Besides, he didn’t think that she would keep a stalker’s letters in her bedroom. He looked at the nicely organized room with a large bed, two night stands, and a rocking chair.
For a long moment, Bubba couldn’t confine his curiosity.
Clearly, she favored maroon and gold in her bedroom. The bed had been made with a silk, maroon comforter that had probably been rumpled by Janie. Near the head of the bed, gold pillows were lined up next to ones that had been hand stitched with homey sayings. “A stitch in time saved nine” was emblazoned on one. “Never say never” was on another. A third one said, “In God we trust, and all others we run through the NCIC.”
A hefty sigh coursed through Bubba’s big body. He inhaled and thought he could smell her unique fragrance. Then his eyes settled on the isolated box sitting on the end of the bed. It was a hat box, and he recognized the maker. The Stetson logo was prominent. The red ribbon attached to the top was more prominent.
Bubba’s eyebrows knitted together in a frown. He stepped across the doorway and touched the box. It was new, and the logo shined brightly. There was a tag attached to the ribbon. He took a moment to turn it over. Janie’s words came back to him, “Bubba. But Bubba is the name on the…” Then her grandfather had shushed her.
The tag said, “To Bubba. From Willodean.” She hadn’t put any Xes on it, but it wasn’t necessary.
Last Sunday, Bubba had lost his Stetson hat to a mob of disconcerted city police officers just before one of them had kicked him, leaving the bump on his forehead. The hat had been trampled and lost to a couple dozen impertinent feet. Bubba had other hats, but he surely liked that one. In all the excitement and fuss of what had happened afterwards, he’d forgotten about it.
But Willodean hadn’t.
Bubba’s big heart pretty much turned over in his chest. It might have broken in two, but there wasn’t anyone else there to hear the crack, so it was hard to really say.
•
It was a long time later that he let himself out of Willodean’s home and locked the door behind him. He stood on the little porch and stared at the Hello Kitty keychain. He was about to turn to retrace his steps to the other side of the duplex, when the mailbox caught his eye.
It took Bubba a moment to figure out what the day of the week was and knew that the mail had been delivered. He flipped the box’s lid open and withdrew a sheaf of letters. One was an electric bill. Another was a credit card application. A third one was a card from Hattie Gray. The fourth one had careful block lettering on it and no return address.
He opened Willodean’s door again and put her mail on the coffee table with the rest. Then he picked up the fourth envelope and opened it without compunction. What the letter said made him want to crush the paper into a ball, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it.
Ifin that’s what Willodean’s been dealing with, then no wonder she’s flappable, he thought with a surge of anger coursing through him. Ker-ist. Bubba fingered the envelope, knowing he was getting his prints all over it. He hadn’t considered he should take it directly to Sheriff John. It was likely Sheriff John had the other letters. The question that resulted as Bubba’s mind worked was, Does Sheriff John need this one, too? Did I mess up by opening it?
The postmark said Dallas, Texas and was dated the 28th. Dallas was only a few hours’ drive away. This was sincere evidence. If the worst was to happen…Bubba closed his eyes, and his lips became a flattened grim line of pain, then Sheriff John is going to need this.
Bubba locked up Willodean’s house again and took the letter to a nearby 7-Eleven. There he made a copy of the letter and the envelope, while Precious bayed from the cab of the truck, indignant that she hadn’t been allowed out again. Finally, he dropped off the envelope and letter at the Pegram County Sheriff’s Department.
Robert Daughtry was sitting at the receptionist’s desk. His dirty, blonde hair was rumpled, and his shirt was askew, but Bubba didn’t hold it against him. The man stared at Bubba as if Bubba had grown a set of horns. Bubba would have checked, but he was certain his horns hadn’t come in yet. Instead, Bubba put the original letter and envelope on the desk.
“Give this to Sheriff John,” Bubba said. He was briefly reminded that Robert had been out at the place where Willodean had vanished from, watching avidly like a couple dozen other Pegram County residents. He’d been talking to Patsy, Sheriff John’s secretary, and Nadine Clack, the librarian with Ben Franklin glasses, had been unashamedly eavesdropping.
Robert’s eyes dropped to the letter and the envelope. “What’s th-th-that?”
“Something Sheriff John needs to look at concerning Willodean Gray,” Bubba said. “I touched it, so my fingerprints are all over the envelope, but I guess that’s water under the bridge and over the dam, too.”
“I-I-I,” Robert stuttered as he looked back up at Bubba.
Bubba figured that his towering over the desk was making the poor man nervous so he stepped back. “It was in her mail,” he added helpfully. “Tell Sheriff John I’ll call in to check with Miz Demetrice now and again, but I don’t have a cell phone and ain’t likely to sprout one soonest.”
“I-I-I- what?”
Bubba stared at the man. Robert Daughtry was older than Bubba and seemed a mite intimidated. Probably because I was accused of several murders and in jail about a half-dozen times, and now I look like I could chew up nails and spit out barbed wire fence. Hell, I’d make Rambo go a tick past apprehensive.
“Just give it to Sheriff John,” Bubba said as gently as he could. “I’ll be calling him.”
Robert gawked at Bubba as he turned to depart.
Bubba was a little surprised that someone hadn’t arrested him for something or other. After all, he didn’t usually come to the sheriff’s department unless he was in handcuffs. Well honestly, it felt a little odd.
•
The Snoddy Mansion was aflutter with activity. Fudge and Virtna were packing to leave. Fudge was gleefully speaking to Miz Demetrice as he collected a few of Brownie’s toys from varied locales. “Shore ‘nuff, Auntie D., it’s been right interesting being here.”
Bubba paused at the door to one of the largest living rooms. He cast an eye over his shoulder as Virtna carried a suitcase out the door. It didn’t appear as though the suitcase had an excess of questionable objects contained within it. But the Louisiana Snoddys were clever. Fudge’s truck was probably loaded to capacity.
Bubba didn’t feel like dealing with it. His mother was more than capable. He briefly looked at Miz Demetrice. She was absently listening to Fudge as she sipped a glass of merlot. It was somewhat early in the day, but seeing as Miz Demetrice didn’t have a prescription for Valium; the merlot seemed an acceptable substitute.
“Ain’t had this much excitement since Pa got arrested for robbing that bank,” Fudge went on blithely. “Pa was a dumbass, but I believe he had a good heart.”
Bubba’s Uncle Beauregard, Fudge’s father, had been a dumbass. He’d robbed the bank located next to a police station at lunch hour. As soon as he had pulled out his unloaded weapon, ten police officers were drawing down on him. He’d been fortunate that he hadn’t been shot on the spot. He hadn’t been so fortunate in jail because he’d died years later still on the inside.
“And well, Brownie caught a murderer,” Fudge said proudly, “with a stun gun he made from his own hands. That’s something else.”
“Something else,” Miz Demetrice agreed doubtfully and looked cautiously around for Brownie.
“I cain’t believe the calls we’ve gotten,” Fudge said.
Virtna brushed past Bubba and added, “We’ve set up a Facebook page for Brownie. He’s got over a hundred thousand friends.”
Fudge picked up something that looked like it was once a toy train. It had been chewed on or burned. Possibly both.
He examined it uncertainly and then tossed it into a bag.
Precious nosed against Bubba’s legs, and he reached down to scratch behind her ears. She took it in stride and then played hard to get. Turning her nose away, she trotted to the Christmas tree that was still in the corner and hid behind it.
Brownie came ripping through and abruptly stopped next to Bubba. “Say, Cousin Bubba,” the boy said to him. Bubba looked down and wondered if he could introduce Brownie to Janie, the would-be-Joe Friday. That would be really interesting. Could be fireworks.
“Yeah, boy,” Bubba said warily.
“I’m sorry about your friend being missing and all,” Brownie said sincerely.
Bubba ruffled Brownie’s hair. “Thanks, boy.” He would have added that everything would be all right, but Bubba wasn’t certain about that.
“Pa says I can come back in the summertime,” Brownie revealed gleefully. “I’ll bet she’s back by then. Maybe for Spring Break, too.”
Miz Demetrice cast Bubba a pained stare that denoted his forthcoming doom, and Bubba shrugged. What could the boy do then? He considered. Probably destroy city hall. Maybe make a bomb for fun. Won’t be boring.
Fudge and Virtna finished with expressive flair. Fudge grasped Miz Demetrice in his arms and hugged her. The older woman peeped while Virtna nodded approvingly.
Speedy hugs were transferred all around. Bubba saw that Miz Adelia peeked in and quickly absconded in what he could only assume was abject terror of being touched by Brownie. Aunt Caressa stuck her head in and promptly fled to Outer Mongolia.
Fudge paused to solidly punch Bubba in his shoulder. Bubba staggered and then absently rubbed his arm. “Hope they find that gal real soon,” Fudge said firmly. “But we’ve got a plane to catch. Ain’t been on a plane since that trip to Las Vegas and well, you know, they won’t let me in Nevada no more. Dang.”
Bubba took a moment to wonder where Fudge and his family were taking a plane to and why was the pair so happy. The answers weren’t immediately forthcoming, so Bubba let it go. Other things were lurking in the depths of his brain and crawling out to viciously poke him in the back of his eyeballs.
Bubba and the Missing Woman Page 8