Bubba and the Dead Woman (20 page)

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 their 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.

But he was unconscious. Therefore, he didn’t see the black-clothed man, holding a rifle before him, run across Farmer’s Road like the devil himself were behind him, and climb into a vehicle, which abruptly started and drove off. There were no witnesses, except maybe Precious, who wasn’t saying nothing to nobody.

When Bubba came to, he heard whining which sounded like a broken fan belt. “Gotta adjust that fan belt,” he muttered. “Sounds like it’s ‘bout to slip like it was running on snail snot.” He opened his eyes. He knew he was in a hole, because it was now daylight, and full daylight at that. Presently he could plainly see that he was in a hole. There was black dirt all around him, with roots and rocks interspersed in the earth. He knew that he had hit his head on something because he had a headache akin to someone pounding on his skull with an iron mallet. The whining, incidentally, came from Precious, who was lying on the side of the hole, her head resting on her paws, as she continued her vigil above her master, gazing down upon him with soulful brown eyes. Her unsaid question would have been something like, ‘Just what in the hell are you doing in that hole, hmm?’

“On a scale from one to ten,” Bubba said conversationally to his dog. “I would have to say that this day is a one. A one being the worst day I ever had. I thought that would have been the day I broke the major’s arm, but I was wrong. That was a one and a half.
This
is a one.”

Precious lifted her head and cocked it, listening to her master’s voice. At least, he was awake.

Bubba climbed out of the four foot deep hole, bringing the baseball bat with him. All he was dressed in was a pair of boxer shorts with the picture of old glory across them and badly tied Reeboks. There were scrapes from the brush and trees across his body. There were mosquito bites punctuating several muscle groups. And he smelled like the earthy scent of
eau de
locker room. “Holy Jesus, I’m ready to go to town,” Bubba said with a weary chuckle, and immediately wished that he had not done so. His head pounded like a demon was playing on kettledrums inside his head.

He surveyed the hole he had fallen into, and the immense tree root that he had cracked his head against. Someone had been digging on the property. Daylight trickled down through thick trees and vegetation, rays of light mottled with dust motes. Around him were a few other holes, all dug within the last few days, judging by the color of the freshly turned earth.

Rubbing the sore spot on his head, not a sore spot, but a lump the size of a tennis ball, Bubba puzzled over the hole. It wasn’t a grave. It didn’t look like much at all. But there in the dirt pile next to the hole was a six inch by a foot piece of rusting iron. It looked like an old piece of a tiller. He picked it up, looked at the hole again, and then back at the rusting metal in his hands. He walked over to the next hole. In the dirt next to that hole was another piece of rusting metal on top. It was unidentifiable, except that it was rusting iron of some type. Clarity came to Bubba suddenly. Someone with a metal detector was using it in the woods to find things long buried. Once they had recovered what was clearly a piece of junk they had stopped digging and discarded the trash.

Lucidity uncluttered Bubba’s mind so abruptly he almost gasped. He knew what their ghost was after. It all made perfect sense now. But he bit the side of his mouth. What didn’t make sense was Melissa’s death. She couldn’t have seen anyone digging in the dirt, did she? But she could have seen someone searching at the house. The one night that Miz Demetrice, Bubba, and Adelia Cedarbloom were certain to be gone. The one night that someone could have had a free hand in finding something hidden. But there was the fact that the police had a phone record of someone calling Melissa from the Snoddy Mansion. Someone had to know that she had been coming.

Bubba dropped the piece of tiller on the forest floor. Precious pounced on it, sniffing it eagerly. She was one hungry dog, and felt as though her sacrifice to protect her master throughout the night was not properly appreciated. She dismissed the metal as inedible, not to mention, undesirable, and woofed softly to Bubba.
Feed me, dammit.
She put a wet, sloppy nose on his leg.

He reached down with a long arm and scratched Precious’s head. She leaned into it.
Now, that’s more like it. It’s not Alpo but it ain’t bad.

The pieces of the puzzle were still rumbling around in Bubba’s head. Some things began to make sense, and other things that he hadn’t connected to the whole situation were promptly connectable.

But who was behind it all?
he asked himself.
Who, dammit, who?

Bubba walked to the edge of the forest, where he could clearly see the strip mall. His intruder was all too likely to be long gone. But he looked out all the same. His mouth dropped open. Apparently, he had been lying in the hole for a long time. As he surveyed the mini-mall it appeared as though everyone but the kitchen sink was present, going about their daily business.

Off to one side were Miz Demetrice and Adelia arguing with the vegetable vendor over oranges. Adelia’s old Volvo was parked next to the vendor’s cart. Roscoe Stinedurf was filling up his truck with gasoline at the gas station on the other end of the strip mall. One of his wives, Bubba couldn’t tell them apart, was sitting in the cab of the truck, nursing a baby. Neal Ledbetter was standing outside of the copy place, talking with all people, Lurlene Grady, and none other than Noey Wheatfall, owner and operator of the Pegram Café.

Bubba could faintly recall Lurlene talking about Noey’s plans to open up a new restaurant on the other side of Pegramville, and this was clearly it.

Finally, up drove Sheriff John Headrick in his county car, and beside him sat Deputy Willodean Gray. They both got out, and started talking to Roscoe Stinedurf as he continued to fill the tank of his truck.

Bubba closed his mouth with an audible snap. Everyone was there but the major, and then his mouth dropped open again. Out of the dry-cleaning store, walked Major Michael Dearman, looking distinctly green in his gills, but there he was all the same. He was carrying his uniform, which must have gone in by the hourly service, in a plastic bag.

Almost everyone who even remotely had something to do with the mystery of who murdered Melissa Dearman was there. Bubba was intelligibly dumbfounded.

Precious whined loudly again. Bubba stepped back, broken from his reverie. He wanted to get back to the house before anyone saw him wearing only his shorts and Reeboks. He was sure he’d never hear the end of that if he didn’t beat his mother and her housekeeper home. God help him.

That wasn’t his only immediate problem. Also Bubba’s subpoenaed testimony was due at one PM that day, and he couldn’t miss it. He looked up, and decided that it was late in the morning. Besides which the temperature was not at its hottest. Either that or a man should go around in boxer shorts more often.

It was to his benefit that no one saw poor Bubba as he made his way back to the caretaker’s house, with Precious following at a cheerful pace. When he got inside his house, he discovered that while he had been chasing someone around the woods, someone else had been searching through his own house. After all, he had left it wide open.

Bubba looked around his home in dismay. It was as if the sheriff and his merry men, and one purty woman of course, had come by to do their search again. Except this time, whoever it had been, they had left things a little in disarray. Nothing was broken. Not that there was all that much to disarrange, but everything was either on its side, or on the floor, or put in backwards. He knew it hadn’t been the sheriff and company.

Willodean had been correct in her estimations. There was an accomplice. A devious accomplice who had waited until Bubba had been lured by the sound of the first guy banging around in the big house. Then what? Led him out into the woods where Bubba was supposed to get lost like the dumb redneck he was. Or fall into a hole?

Bubba needed ibuprofen. And a shower. But first he fed his dog. She was grateful.

An hour later, he felt almost human. All that was left was to find some clothing that appeared half way presentable. He discovered that he didn’t have any clean jeans. So he finally found a pair that he had worn the day he had come from the jail. They had been kicked under the bed by none other than Bubba himself, whose idea of laundry was to wait until each piece of clothing could stand up on its own or until Miz Adelia took pity on him, which was more often than the former.

He picked up the jeans, and the green button fell out of the pocket onto the floor with a little ping. Bubba picked up the button and looked at it. It still looked like something he ought to recognize. He had assumed it was one of his mother’s outfit’s buttons, but she had denied ownership. He shrugged. Perhaps it was Miz Adelia’s. He put it in back in the pocket of the jeans.