The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
In the summer of 2017, Katie Sims and her daughter Cullie, moved from New York City to Katie’s hometown of Boaz, Alabama for her to teach English and for Cullie to attend Boaz High School . Fifteen years earlier, during the Christmas holidays, five men from prominent local families sexually assaulted Katie. Nine months later, Katie’s only daughter was born.
Almost from the beginning of the new school year, as Katie and fellow-teacher Cindy Barker shared English, Literature, and Creative Writing duties for more than 300 students, they became lifelong friends.
For weeks, Katie and Cindy endured the almost constant sexual harassment at the hands of the assistant principal. In mid-October, after Cindy suffered an attack similar to Katie’s from fifteen years earlier, the two teachers designed a unique method to teach the six predators a lesson they would never forget. Katie and Cindy dubbed their plan Six Red Apples.
Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice. And, eternal friendship.
Chapter 54
“The worst cold wave in forty years is headed our way.” Gabrielle Deabler had said last Monday night a few minutes before 10:30. She is the Huntsville, Alabama WHNT News 19 meteorologist I have been following since the late Patrick Wilkins said, “you and the gorgeous Gabrielle could pass as sisters.” The only thing he had failed to mention was that I was the older sister and Gabrielle was much younger. Patrick’s statement was made at the end of a faculty meeting last August. Now, after three months of keeping abreast of local weather from Ms. Deabler and inspecting some teacher-photos of me from old school annuals, I was beginning to believe Patrick was right. I also knew she had been correct with her Monday night weather forecast. With temperatures hovering just above zero degrees on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, Boaz City Schools had closed. It was now Saturday morning and the thermometer outside on the patio gate beside the driveway read nine degrees. Clearly, the cold wave was breaking. By the time I passed Walgreen’s in Albertville on my return trip from Guntersville at 11:00 a.m., the temperature sign indicated a scalding nineteen degrees.
My visit with Cindy at the Marshall County Jail had been the most depressing hour of my life. Period. She was not doing well, physically, or mentally. Last Thursday night, a deputy had discovered her in a virtual coma lying on her cell floor. She had been rushed to Marshall-Medical Center North in Arab. By late yesterday afternoon, Dr. Ireland had finally gotten her blood pressure under control but was pleading, via phone with Sheriff Waldrup, to keep her in the hospital, on bed rest, until she delivered her baby.
Last night at 8:30, the hospital had discharged Cindy to the coldest weather in forty years. Our visit was the first time since her arrest that she had not repeatedly asked questions about her children. I knew, mentally, she was spiraling downward. The deputy came for her, an older man much more sympathetic than the other younger deputies I had met at the jail. He hadn’t attempted to interfere with my efforts to hug Cindy. As our bodies embraced, I whispered to her, “you don’t have to save me, say whatever you need to negotiate the best deal with the D.A.” As the deputy led her out, she turned and said, “friends are forever, so are their promises.” After I had walked out of the waiting room and into the frigid air, my depression transformed into determination. I had to do something to save Cindy.
Twenty minutes later, after passing Walgreen’s in Boaz, I turned right to McDonald’s and sat in the drive-through order lane for another five minutes before a large coffee was finally handed to me. Oh, the joy of simple pleasures.
I parked on the back side of the parking lot. I needed more time alone to think. My return trip from seeing Cindy in Guntersville hadn’t been the first time I’d brainstormed the best way to resolve our mutual problem, our criminal dilemma. Maybe it was the hot coffee, or the instant slimy condensation I felt as I removed the cup’s lid and held the steaming cup to my face. It was the idea a week ago that, until seeing Cindy today, I had poured into a quart fruit jar, attached and tightened its lid, and had set on the highest shelf in The Thread’s closet, no doubt a converted clothes-closet that Karen, Wayne’s wife, had used to store her cross-stitching supplies. Of course, my little jar was make-believe. But, the idea that now bounced around my mind was as real as Cindy’s depression.
Jeff Chandler of Jeff’s Car Sales in Leesburg was the absolute key to mine and Cindy’s future. Or, so I thought. If not our future, no doubt he was critically important to the plan I was seriously considering. If anybody deserves credit for seeding this plan, albeit unknowingly, it was Cindy. I think it was her ability to create two undeniable hookers that had, pardon the pun, set the stage. Apparently, those two actors had encouraged Jeff to slip into the mind and clothes of a character he was well-trained to emulate.
Without Tina, attorney Matt Bearden’s secretary/paralegal, I would never have had access to Alacourt, the State of Alabama’s Unified Judicial System that maintains case data, both civil and criminal, for each of the 67 trial courts throughout the state.
Jeffrey Scott Chandler was and is a convicted felon. In 2013, he was convicted in Cherokee County of two counts of receiving stolen property in the first degree. Receiving stolen property which exceeds two thousand five hundred dollars in value constitutes receiving stolen property in the first degree. This is a Class B felony that carries with it up to a twenty-year sentence. Tina apparently was tight with the Circuit Clerk of Cherokee County and had her fax a copy of the court’s file. She shared the complete file with me. It was, by the way, a public record. According to the Investigative Report, two undercover agents had, on two occasions, purchased stolen vehicles from his car lot, with Jeff, both times, describing to his high school buddies, in detail, how he was able to sell the vehicles so cheaply. Chandler’s honest openness came with a special bonus. A ten-year visit with the nice folks at the Alabama Department of Corrections. However, the need to share their limited facilities with more seasoned and dangerous criminals enabled Mr. Chandler to earn parole after only eleven months inside the high fences. Parole always came with its own promise. Violate one or more of a long list of terms and conditions and find yourself once again behind bars serving the remainder of your sentence. So far, Mr. Chandler had avoided the one-way bus ride to Kilby Prison in Montgomery, Alabama. The contents of the court file would be helpful given what the sly car salesman had attempted to do when the two hookers had purchased their tan-colored van.
After we had inspected the van, including sitting in the front seats and crawling into the back where two bench seats had been removed, we had spent almost thirty minutes test-driving to determine if it would blow-up after a bout of high speeds and rough roads. When we returned to the car lot Jeff had said, “I can make you a great deal on this shaggin-wagon, if you can keep a secret.” At first, Cindy and I hadn’t responded but kept walking around the van. Jeff had received a call, now it seems, a gift from God, and excused himself by walking back into his office. Cindy and I had discussed doing whatever it took to buy the van while in our role as two hookers. Looking back, it seems Cindy was prescient. Jeff returned and said he could save us a thousand dollars if we weren’t too concerned about the title. “It’s a little cloudy, comes from a dysfunctional family.” Obviously, we had bought the van thinking that doing so would convince Jeff we were for real, two loose ladies doing whatever it took to make a living, including buying a stolen van.
As we signed some make-believe papers the second key ingredient appeared. At the time, it was virtually meaningless, just the humdrum of daily life in a Southern town. Jed, Jeff’s father, walked through the office and said, “never again or your vacation begins.” Neither Cindy or I were interested in anything but getting out of there without being discovered or detected. We certainly hadn’t understood what he meant. That is, until Tina’s Alacourt search for ‘Chandler’ in Cherokee County.
Jed Cole’s past (I did not grasp the reason for the difference in last names) had not gone unconnected to the judicial system. His troubles were of the civil sort, a divorce action in 2009. Once again, Tina had given me a copy of the court file; I wanted to hug the Circuit Clerk. The file contained a motion by Jed (through his attorney) contesting the court’s award of Jeff’s custody to the Plaintiff, Jed’s wife. Long story short is a paternity test during the case proceeding determined Jed wasn’t Jeff’s father. The court’s final decree awarding Jed and his wife co-ownership of the auto lot was nearly as predictable as a loaded gasoline tanker truck parked beside a roaring house fire.
Last week as I seriously contemplated how I could use all this information to mine and Cindy’s benefit, it finally dawned on me that I needed to write a new story. One where Cindy and I had visited Jeff’s car sales and had test-driven the tan-colored van. With a clear objective in mind, and a slew of incriminating facts and smoldering family dynamics in hand, I had used one of my sick days to hang around Centre, Alabama. I had latched onto an older man who was the straggler among five others who had just finished a round-table discussion over coffee at Lanny’s Diner on West Main Street. As luck would have it, old Mr. Sandler had lived in Centre all his eighty-three years and knew pretty much everybody in town, at least those forty and older. He filled my ear with stories of how Jed hated his ex-wife and her son Jeff. What Jed hated more was having to deal with Jeff, who had purchased his mother’s half of Jeff’s Auto Sales. Jed and Jeff were constantly at each other’s throats, and both stubborn as hell. My favorite Sandler statement had been, “Jed would do anything to get rid of the asshole Jeff.”
After going for another large coffee through McDonald’s drive-through, I was confident I had acquired the ingredients to cook up an interesting little story, one I felt Jed Cole would find a pleasure to read.
Saturday night Maxine Fulton, Cindy’s Sunday School teacher, came for Anita and Arlon. The three were headed for fast food and hopefully a mind-grabbing movie. I think Maxine had called and offered her support every day since Cindy was arrested. Alysa and Cullie had gone to a basketball game with Lane and Kathy McRae and their daughter Lana. I had Cindy’s house to myself.
According to my internet search, it was an Audio Bug Transmitter Spy Gadget. For seventy-five dollars I could buy both items: an audio transmitter and receiver. According to the online description, “the small wireless transmitter is a super discreet unit with a built-in microphone and flexible antenna, enabling it to be easily hidden anywhere ….” Anywhere, including behind an 8 x 10-inch picture frame on the top shelf in a teacher’s office. The Audio Bug was no doubt a match to the one I had discovered last Tuesday in my small office at school.
After discovering the Spy Gadget comes with an earphone jack for on the spot listening, and an extra 3.5mm audio-out jack for recording to a digital audio recorder, cassette tape, or portable DVR, I submitted my order. I needed two of these adorable units. One to hide at a place I hadn’t visited in nearly fifteen years. The other needed to be returned to its home.
I was dreaming about the giant set of tweezers I had used (I had used latex gloves) to remove the Spy Gadget from the top shelf above my credenza, when the sounds of car tires rolling across gravel awakened me. It turned out to be two cars. Maxine and the McRae’s both drove up at the same time. I was happy for the noise, otherwise, I wouldn’t have had time to use the lone pencil on the coffee table to push the small transmitter back into the side pouch of my book bag.
The Pencil-Driven Life 