Bubba and the Dead Woman (28 page)

Bubba got out of the county car and walked around to open the door for Willodean. Willodean was not amused and used her own unhandcuffed wrists and hands to open the door for herself. She put her baton back into her belt, adjusted her shirt and said, “Let me do the talking, Bubba.”

The minivan parked behind the county car and Tee clambered out, followed by Mike, and Precious, who wasn’t about to let an opportunity pass her by again.

Consequently, there were four adults and one dog waiting at the front door when Mary Bradley answered the bell. Mary was in her forties with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She wasn’t trim and she wasn’t fat. She wore tight jeans and a t-shirt that proclaimed, ‘I’m still hot. It just comes in flashes.’

“Someone didn’t die, did they?” Mary asked calmly. “Unless it was my weird Uncle Felix. That man’s got screws loose that you couldn’t find with the most powerful magnet in the world. But he does have some money and no real children.” She considered and added, “That we know about.”

“No. No one died. At least not in your family. You
are
Mary Bradley?”

Mary had an expression on her face that said, ‘Heck, yes, I’ll play this game.’ “Yes.”

“Good. You remember a week ago Thursday?” Willodean said quickly. Bubba was getting antsy and she stepped on his toe to give him something to really think about.

Bubba looked down at her petite foot in its brown work boot and wondered if a fly had landed on his boot. But he did give Willodean points for accurately gauging his frame of mind.

“You mean the day Bubba went out and…” Mary stopped and looked at Bubba.

“Allegedly,” Mike put in.

“Right,” Mary said. “You’re that kid who tried to burn down the school.” Then she looked at Tee and saw the patch on the shoulder of his uniform. “And I know your wife from our knitting circle. How’s the pregnancy going?”

Tee smiled genially. “Poppiann’s real good. Snores a lot but that’s because she has to sleep on her back, and…” he stopped as Willodean turned and landed that terrible gaze upon him again.

“Last Thursday,” Willodean said slowly. “What was going on?”

“Well, I took my mother to Pokerama. She said she saw you there, Deputy,” Mary said amusedly. “Then I watched a DVD with my son.
Young Frankenstein
. You know that old Mel Brooks film. God, that’s my favorite. We burned the popcorn.” She giggled to herself. “Had to leave all the windows open for hours to get the smell out.”

Bubba bit his lower lip. “You were home all night,” he said firmly, not asking a question.

“Yeah, Bubba. I heard Mark Evans quit, but I don’t know why I didn’t get called to work.” She smiled. “I need all the hours I can get. Alimony only goes so far, you know.”

Frowning, Bubba started to say that he had called Mary. She hadn’t answered. He remembered very well because he knew that he hadn’t wanted to run the cash register in the store. Hell, he didn’t even know how before that night. As a matter of fact, the burn on his arm from the thrice-cursed hot dog machine was still healing.

“But h-ey,” Mary said with sudden clarity before Bubba could get into the first sentence. “That must have been the night my phone went dead.”

“Your phone went dead,” Willodean repeated.

“Sure. I don’t know exactly when but I had to call the phone company on Friday because I didn’t have any service. I went next door to the neighbors on both sides and they had service. I even checked to make sure the phone was plugged in correctly.” Mary shrugged. “The service guy came out on Monday.” She made a disgusted noise. “Said someone played a joke on me.”

“Let me guess,” Bubba said. He made a cutting motion with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. “Clipped your phone lines.”

“Right around the side of the house,” Mary confirmed. “Right where they go into the house. Kids I reckon.” She looked pointedly at Mike, who rapidly looked up at the sky.

“And this happened on Thursday,” Willodean said.

Mary’s face wrinkled in concentration. “I think so. I didn’t have to call anyone until Friday and I remember getting a call from a cousin on Wednesday. So on Thursday, I dropped Mama off you-know-where and then stopped off to get some KFC. My son got the DVD from Blockbuster’s and that was the whole kit and caboodle.”

“It didn’t matter if she knew about the phone wires being cut or not,” Bubba said slowly. “As long as no one could call this number from work and get an answer.”

“Holy crap,” Mike said. “Oh, sorry. I meant holy
carp
. But someone really was trying to set Bubba up. They knew he would call Mary so they cut her wires.”

Then Precious woofed to put her two cents in and then proceeded to chase her tail for a solid minute. Mary took the brief respite to ask Bubba, “Is it true what they say about the Snoddy Mansion, Bubba? There’s a sh-” she glanced meaningfully at Mike, “a bunch of buried you-know-what out there?”

Bubba glared meaningfully at Mary, who got the message and shut up.

Mary watched the two vehicles drive away and wondered what the Jolly Green Giant was going on. Then she went to call her mother and tell her all the gossip. Ten minutes later someone else knocked on the door and asked Mary where Bubba Snoddy had gotten to and Mary answered truthfully.

Willodean drove her county car to Mark Evan’s address and silently smoldered. Bubba didn’t say anything but she could feel his presence beside her like a very large, very solid rock. A rock that smelled of musk and dog. A rock that had a whole lot of bruises and cuts and bumps on it. Quite probably a rock that had been set up as a patsy to take a fall.

Willodean had seen the Snoddy Mansion. It was a ghost of what a southern plantation house was in its heyday. The paint was peeling. A couple of the columns were listing like the leaning tower of Pisa. The grass was overgrown and the Spanish moss had taken over the live oaks down the driveway. In addition, the caretaker’s house was ruined by the fire so recently set to it. To be even more precise, half the land was reputedly swamp and useless for anything except catching mosquitoes. “No offense Bubba, but I don’t get it. It’s a dump.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Pretty much. It’s going to fall into the ground soon and it’s going to be the Snoddy Hole. As soon as we find Mark Evans, I’ll tell you why someone wants the damn place. And it ain’t because they wanted it to be a Wal-Mart Supercenter.”

However, finding Mark proved elusive. His one room apartment was empty. The neighbor said that Mark was probably at the community college. The registrar at the community college said Mark was in Psychology 101. The Psychology 101 professor said Mark was absent because he needed some extra cash serving warrants and writs and such.

Bubba could tell Willodean was getting tired of it all. He could even see by the look in her eyes that she had visions of being very publicly fired were dancing merrily about in her head.

“Serving papers on folks?” Tee said to the Psychology 101 professor. All the students gazed on interestedly. It wasn’t every day that a pretty sheriff’s deputy, a large man with more bumps than a Motocross track, a large jailor, a teenager who looked like he was having the time of his life, and a Bassett Hound wandered into their classroom looking for one of their own.

One of the students raised a hand. Tee glanced at the young woman wearing a Jim Morrison t-shirt and said, “Yes, Ma’am?”

“Mark works for Minnieweather Process Serving,” she said proudly, sticking her chest out. She was a pretty young woman with blonde dreadlocks and bright blue eyes. Mike stared at her chest until Tee slapped him on the back of his head again. The dreadlocked blonde went on blithely, “Some of us do stuff for Minnieweather sometimes. Extra cash.” She smiled knowingly. “No one expects to get served divorce papers from me.”

“I wouldn’t expect to get divorce papers from you,” Bubba acknowledged wryly. “But first I’d have to be married.”

The blonde with the dreads handed a business card to Willodean. “I’ve heard of this guy,” Willodean said moodily. “He serves papers on
anyone
. And I do mean, anyone.”

Twenty minutes later the troop was standing inside a miniscule office looking at a man who could have been Colonel Sanders’ long lost twin brother right down to the white suit, black bow tie, and snowy goatee.

The sign on his desk proclaimed him to be Edward Minnieweather, owner and proprietor of Minnieweather Process Servers. Edward appeared mildly surprised to have this many people in his office, all at the same time, and one with hand cuffs still attached to his wrists.

For Bubba it was. Daniel Lewis Gollihugh was the biggest (7 feet tall), baddest (four felony arrests, two convictions, one dismissal, and one that was pending), most obnoxious (one of the arrests was for peeing on a police car while the police officer was in the car) individual in all of Pegram County. He went through wives like candy and was working on wife number six. Additionally, he didn’t care for authority (as significantly evidenced by his aggravated urination on an official vehicle). Finally, he had an infamous temper (upon learning of his latest wife’s wish to divorce him, he had dumped a load of cow manure in the back of her convertible Ford Mustang and slugged the mailman just because the unfortunate person happened to be delivering mail at the wrong time).

Every police officer in Pegram County knew about Dan Gollihugh. One didn’t go to his farmhouse property without backup of at least ten other officers in full riot gear. One didn’t go without having pepper spray, tasers, and the heavy-duty bean bag gun. It was very likely that the police would use all three in the process of apprehending Dan. And lastly one didn’t go to his place on a Friday or Saturday night whilst Dan was likely to be drunk on homemade rotgut and ten times more agitated than usual.

“Mark Evans went to serve divorce papers on Dan last night around nine PM,” Edward said by way of explanation.

“That poor, poor bastard,” Tee said pityingly, referring to Mark Evans, not Dan Gollihugh.

Even Mike had heard of Dan. “What did Mark ever do to you?” he asked Edward derisively, as if Mike knew both Mark and Dan personally.

“I told the kid to wait until this morning,” Edward said hastily. “Told him three times, but he said he had a psych class on Saturdays he didn’t like to miss. Something about the cute blonde with dreadlocks who does work for me sometimes.”

“Yeah, she’s awful cute,” Mike murmured, thinking of her Jim Morrison t-shirt.

Willodean and Bubba were still staring at Edward. Bubba said, “You sent Mark Evans to serve divorce papers to Dan Gollihugh, and Mark is now in the hospital because Dan made mincemeat out of him. Would that be about right, fella?”

Willodean nodded firmly in agreement of Bubba’s question.

Edward nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Bubba unhurriedly scanned the room. In the back of his mind he was looking for the eleven herbs and spices that made up Colonel Sanders’ secret chicken recipe. It wasn’t there. Truthfully, he was running out of ideas and patience. Melvin Wetmore and Mary Bradley’s statements were enough to cast a shadow of doubt upon Bubba’s guilt. As a matter of fact, Willodean was looking upon him with an expression akin to pity.

Pity.
Bubba frowned. He didn’t want
pity
from Willodean. And he needed a whole lot more than a little doubt to clear his name. Sheriff John wasn’t going to go for it. As a matter of fact, Bubba would be elevated to the level of master criminal for such inventive planning.

“Can he…uh…talk?” Mike said. “Whathisname? Mark?”

Edward shook his head. “Dunno. Cracked ribs. One broken tibia. A fractured collarbone. A shattered patella. Three missing teeth. Three fingers sprained. Believe Dan stomped on his hand at one point in time. And…well, finally, Dan decided to put poor Mark back into his car.” Colonel Sanders’ long missing twin brother grimaced in compassion. “Via his head through the front windshield. I went to visit him this morning and he’s one of those machines that injects morphine directly into the veins. Mark didn’t flicker a single eyelid while I was there.”