Bubba and the Dead Woman (25 page)

Bubba, on the other hand, was aware of people staring, and a few trying to greet him, but he was too tired and angry to be much of a gentleman. He did, however, stop to help an older woman he didn’t know, by putting her bags in the back of her minivan. The older woman, who wasn’t from Pegramville, said, “Thank you kindly, sir.” And drove away, leaving him to feel maybe a little better.

After all, would a murderer stop to help a lady with her luggage?
He didn’t think so.

Bubba returned to his truck and his faithful dog, Precious. Precious sat in the passenger seat, as far as she could get away from her master. He hadn’t been very nice to her. Not only that but he smelled very interesting, and he wasn’t inclined to let her stick her wet nose anywhere she pleased, and that put her out tremendously. Then there was that one human’s presence in her seat. The one called, ‘Miz Adelia,’ was often directed by the one called ‘Mama’ to give Precious baths, which she didn’t like, and sprayed perfume on her, which was even worse than baths. The worst insult of all was that that human talked to her as if she were merely a dog. Things like, ‘Oo-ums-good-puppy-wuppy-uppy.’ It was time to show her master the extent of her disdain. As soon as he wasn’t looking she fully intended to pee on something that belonged to him.

Unfortunately, Bubba did not notice her dogly disdain. He wanted a strong cup of coffee, some decent breakfast to stop the empty ache in his stomach, and the sight of a beautiful woman to make it all go away. Since he couldn’t feast his eyes on Deputy Willodean Gray, he would feast his eyes on the next best thing, Lurlene Grady. He stopped by her apartment, and one of her neighbors told him that she was filling in down at the café for someone who had called in sick. Thus, he went by the Pegram Café and discovered it was chock full of more gawking, gaping, nosy people.

Bubba entered the small café, and the room instantly silenced. He looked around, keeping a blank look on his face, as if he didn’t notice everyone suddenly being quiet. He recognized several people there. Noey Wheatfall was looking through the kitchen window at Bubba, a dark lock of hair hanging in disarray over one eye; an expression of interested curiosity was on his face. Lloyd Goshorn and Foot Johnson were sitting together at a table with full plates of food before them. Both had paused mid-bite to look at the spectacle of Bubba Snoddy entering a public place. Foot had his mouth wide open, showing the large bite of scrambled eggs covered with ketchup therein. Mayor John Leroy, Jr. sat at a booth with Judge Stenson Posey, and both were goggling at Bubba like two small children. Bryan McGee seemed to have transcended the laws of physics by beating him here from the train station, to include dumping his sister-in-law at his house on the way. Even librarian Nadine Clack sat at the counter with a cup of tea in her hands, and her head arched around to look at what everyone else was looking at.

It was almost impossible but Bubba managed not to bark, “Just what in the hell do you people think you’re looking at?” He settled on the certified Snoddy glare, making sure that no one in sight was spared, and threaded his way through the tables to the counter. There were two empty stools on the end. He selected the one on the farthest side away from the next person, in order to put off conversation from eager beavers.

After he sat down, Lurlene hurried in with a stack full of plates running down the length of both of her arms. She was rushed, a little sweaty, and appeared to be working hard this morning serving the breakfast crowd. Even the too-tired Bubba noticed that the waitress looked to be plumb worn out, as if she been out a little too late the night before. She hesitated when she saw Bubba, but smiled at him. It was, perhaps, the first smile he’d seen out of a person this day, and like the woman he’d helped at the Amtrak station, it made him feel a little less like a monster ambling around the town, grunting menacingly, and looking to eat the next hapless, human being who stumbled in front of him.

General conversation resumed behind him, and Bubba didn’t look around to see what, or who, they were talking about. He really didn’t need to know because he already knew. He could feel eyes burning holes in his back. A whole lot of holes in his back. And it didn’t help that Noey was periodically looking through the kitchen window every so often as if Bubba were going to lose his mind in Noey’s very café, which would be followed up with a mass murder on the spot.

Bubba knew what it was. One murder might be justified. After all, the woman had cheated on him, in their very own bed. What kind of Texan would stand for that? It might have been a fit of rage, wrong all the same, but comprehendible. But the other murder, although to a disliked individual such as Neal Ledbetter, was a murder spree, and here was the prime suspect in their midst. Wanting to eat with them, wanting to act normally, and wanting to be treated normally. Well, that was stretching what was commonly and socially acceptable. One didn’t associate with persons such as
that
.

Bubba had just become
persona non Pegramville grata
.

Lurlene stopped in front of Bubba with a coffee pot in her hand and a cup in the other. “Here you go darlin’,” she said, pouring coffee in the cup and sliding it in front of him. “You shore look like you need this. I heard about the fire. But I didn’t want to get all in the way of the firemen. They did say that no one was hurt, so I wasn’t too worried about you. My lord, I was up half the night when I heard.”

Bubba drank in the coffee, and also in the appearance of Lurlene. Her blonde hair curled nicely around her head. She had pinned it up at the base of her head, but ringlets had escaped and draped themselves around her neck. Her face was flushed, as if she had been running, but she looked as attractive as ever in the tight, little uniform that all the Pegram Café waitresses wore, showing off all the right curves in the good spots. And here, she was, concerned about his welfare, unlike the rest of the town.

She said something while he was lost in his thoughts, then she repeated, “You want something to eat?”

“The special’s okay,” he answered. Maybe it was the way she was looking at him, but he suddenly noticed that Lurlene looked oddly familiar. She looked like someone he’d seen recently. She looked like a picture he had been looking at in the not-too-recent past. Her doe’s eyes scrutinized him in a manner that said she was real interested in him at the moment. Not in the way a gal looks at a man she’s been dating, but in a way that he couldn’t quite get. If he had to put a word to mouth, he would have said, ‘That would be a predatory look, I reckon.’

“Eggs scrambled?”

“Yeah.” No romancing or wry repartee this morning, because not one single fancy word came to Bubba’s thoughts. It was like having a big, black hole on the top of his head. There was that odd deja vu and his extreme tiredness holding him back.

Lurlene hesitated again, and then smiled at him, showing her white teeth. “We should get together, tonight,” she whispered. “Just you and me, big boy, hmm?” She hurried off before he could say anything.

Bubba’s eyes were as big as saucers. He nodded slowly. Up and down. Up and down. He knew exactly what she was talking about, and even though he was as tired as a man can get without falling flat on his face, there was a little surge of energy.
There ya go. Someone
does
care about me. And I might even get lucky.
Except a sudden mental image of Lurlene appeared in his mind. Lurlene and Willodean and a whole mess of chocolate Jell-O pudding. Their hair was blowing in an imaginary wind. Lurlene took a moment to look back at Bubba, and in that moment, she looked exactly like a playboy model poising for a photographer. She looked just like…

He was dimly aware that conversation had halted again when Lurlene had swung by to pour the coffee, take his order, and proposition him. Bubba settled his face into a neutral expression and glanced over his shoulder. Everyone in the café, bar none, was gazing at Bubba with the oddest expressions on their faces. It was as if they didn’t know exactly what to make of him. He could have been a Martian, who wandered into the Pegram Café to ask directions to Venus, and his flying saucer was parked outside with a dog sticking her head out the window.

Bubba turned back to his coffee, and tried to think. He was all out of plans. He was all out of suspects. Even his own mother, for whom he would still take the blame, hadn’t killed his ex-fiancée and the pesky real estate agent. Or, he reconsidered, she hadn’t killed Melissa, he was sure of that. Neal Ledbetter was still up for grabs. He frowned to himself. Of course, Miz Demetrice hadn’t murdered Neal, either. He knew that.

So he was back to the eternal question, or actually two eternal questions. Who had killed Melissa ? Who had shot Neal in the middle of his forehead? Neal, most of all, didn’t make much sense. He was just that, a nettlesome real estate agent. He had tried to bribe Judge Posey once. He had tried to get Mayor Leroy to influence the city council about re-zoning several pieces of land around Pegramville, a dim-witted scheme that had failed miserably. He had invited himself into the mansion until Miz Demetrice pulled out her Browning shotgun. He had planted that equipment in the house with the express purpose of scaring the Snoddys off. All of which showed what a foolish man Neal had been. Since he had been a fool, he thought that other people were just as foolish. Only he would have pranced around a mansion in a sheet, moaning and howling. Only he would have placed speakers that wailed, and groaned, that could easily be traced back to him.

Therefore, if Neal had been such a great big fool as all that, didn’t it stand to reason that his accomplice finally figured out that his foolishness was a huge liability in the plan? So Neal was guaranteed the status of worm food by the nature of his own feebleminded actions. Or perhaps, that there had been a second plan after all, not to split the booty three ways, but only two. And if that was the case then it was likely that another body would turn up soon, because someone probably wouldn’t want to share the loot.

Bubba finished his coffee and didn’t even notice that Lurlene filled it up again. His eyes were staring off into the distance, as if lost in another world. It wasn’t until she served him a platter with eggs, bacon, sausages, and hash browns heaped on it, that he abruptly came back to the present. And it wasn’t until he reached for the Tabasco sauce that he saw something that he had missed before, because he was simply so fatigued, because it was taking every single bit of energy that he had to simply sit there at the counter and eat.

There was a coat rack almost in front of him, behind the counter, where the employees put their coats and purses. He stared at a garment hanging on it for the longest time. It hung from one arm of the rack in his direct line of sight. He knew what it was. He recognized it for what it represented, and the puzzle fit itself together. But his mind was so exhausted, he wasn’t sure if he weren’t imagining things after all. Every bit of it made sense, a sick kind of twisted sense, but sense all the same.

“Hey,” Bubba said, having an epiphany.

Then some other damn thing happened.

Chapter Seventeen – Bubba Has an Epiphany and Goes to Jail…Again

Saturday Once More

Bubba was aware that the conversation in the Pegram Café died out again as he stared at that last thing that had niggled him so. It petered slowly off, as if the customers gradually realized that something else was happening. He didn’t know it, but they had watched Sheriff John Headrick pull up to the café in his county car, get out, and walk slowly around Bubba’s truck. They saw him pet Precious as she stuck her head out the open window. She slobbered as he scratched her under her jowls. They also saw Sheriff John reach in the back of the Chevy truck and pull out a hunting rifle.

Sheriff John held the rifle for a long time, sniffed the barrel end, and then looked inside the café with serious, searching eyes. The occupants of the café hushed as if with a magic wand. Sheriff John carefully put the rifle in his car, and entered the restaurant. As he stood in the door, his eyes immediately sought out Bubba sitting at the counter. The sheriff moved forward quietly and stopped just behind Bubba.

“Hey, Bubba,” said Sheriff John.

Bubba took a drink of coffee. It dawned on him that no one was moving around him. Everyone was standing shock-still. Lurlene was watching from the swinging kitchen doors with large brown eyes, and a little ‘O’ of surprise. Noey Wheatfall stared at Bubba with a most intent expression through the slot where he slowly slid the food out for Lurlene to pick up.

There didn’t seem to be a lot of choice in it for Bubba. He looked over his shoulder at Sheriff John. “Hey, Sheriff.” The sudden noise made several people jump.

Sheriff John didn’t have a friendly look on his face. No, he was angry, by the way Bubba judged it. He looked all done in. “Let’s take a walk outside, Bubba,” said the older man. It wasn’t a request.

Bubba gazed at his half-finished plate of food. The eggs were done just the way he liked them, with the Tabasco flavoring them nicely. “You mind if I finish this?” He pointed with a fork. He himself wasn’t in an ingratiating mood.

Sheriff John’s eyes didn’t move from Bubba. “Go ahead, Bubba. You might as well.”

With that Bubba finished his breakfast. He poured a bunch of ketchup on the hash browns and scooped them up with his fork. He piled down the eggs. He ate every bit of the sausage and the bacon. When he was done, he finished his coffee, and pulled out his wallet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sheriff jerk just a bit, so he slowed down to show him that it was merely his wallet.

Bubba left ten and five dollar bills for Lurlene, because he thought tipping should always be good for good service and there hadn’t been anything wrong with the service. And in all of that time, no one even moved, not even to eat their rapidly cooling meals, or drink their luke-warm coffees. They watched Sheriff John watching Bubba as if they expected an old time Western shoot out.