3 Bubba and the Missing Woman by C.L. Bevill

Author:C.L. Bevill [Bevill, C.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Bubba and Inevitability

Tuesday, January 3rd

It had been weeks but the Snoddy Mansion was finally devoid of people.

Only hints of the masses of people who had recently wandered there remained. There were remnants from the onslaught that had been Hurricane Brownie, and the police had raided the kitchen of the last cinnamon roll, leaving only sugary crumbs to mourn their passing. The hardwood floors were dirty and chairs askew. The Christmas tree was turning brown, and the needles were falling like snowflakes in a Northern blizzard.

The Louisianan Snoddys had absconded days before, headed for the bright lights of a distant media torrent. Miz Demetrice’s sister, Caressa, had made tracks for Dallas, certain the air there was safer in general. Miz Adelia had thrown her hands up in despair and fled for the sanctity of her home, promising to return the following day with two of her nieces for a major overhauling of the state of cleanliness. She had stomped out to her car, saying over her shoulder with no little amount of vehemence, “We’re gonna lick this calf all over again!”

Alone at last. Miz Demetrice sat on the front veranda eyeing some wood rot on one of the columns and wondering if it was too late to donate the entire mansion to some historical society that had access to lots of cash. She had returned from Dallas without her son but with a feeling of dread permeating every inch of her bones.

It was the unspoken that bothered her. Bubba was tilting out of control. He grasped at straws, no matter how remote. Even through her anger, she could see her son’s façade was like a piece of fragile glass. If anything pulled just a tad more, he might break into a thousand fractured pieces.

And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty-Bubba back together again…

There had been several searches for Deputy Willodean Gray in the days since she had vanished into seeming nothingness. Lewis Robson had searched twice with his hounds. The second time was even less productive than the first because of successive rain storms since she went missing. Locals and people from as far away as Houston had come to volunteer for grid searches. They had crawled, walked, and lurched through hundreds of acres of bottomlands, swamps, and fields, all to no avail.

Examining other angles, Sheriff John pulled the GPS records for both Willodean’s phone and the county car she’d been driving. Both had revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Willodean’s family presented themselves for an uncomfortable press conference in front of a dozen news affiliates and begged the public for information. Her parents were gray-faced and as brittle as Bubba appeared to be. Donations had come in from many organizations, offering a significant reward for any information about Willodean Gray’s whereabouts.

Bubba stampeded up to Dallas to find the man who might be responsible and ultimately found nothing but an overnight stay in jail.

And now, what is the boy doing? Talking to someone else mysteriously. Won’t share anything with his mother.

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