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 Safecracker, written in 2019, is my seventh novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Fred Martin, a 1972 graduate of Boaz High School, returns to his hometown after practicing law and living in Huntsville for over thirty-five years with two goals in mind. First, to distance himself from the loss of Susan, his wife of thirty-seven years who died in 2013 of cancer. And second, to partner with his lifelong friend, Noah Waters, to crack the safes of Elton Rawlins and Doug Barber, two men who got under their skin as high school football players.
Little did Fred and Noah realize the secrets the two old Mosler safes protected. Who murdered three Boaz High School seniors in the fall of 1973? Is a near-half-century-old plan to destroy Fred’s sister and steal the inheritance from a set of 44-year-old illegitimate twins still alive and well? How far would Fred’s mother go to protect her family?
What starts out as an almost innocent prank turns life-threateningly serious the more Fred learns and the more safes he cracks. All the while, he falls in love with Connie Stewart, his one-date high school classmate who may conceal a secret or two herself.
Chapter 54
“Have you ever stopped to think how an entire life can be changed by the tiniest of things?” Angela asked Rebecca as she sped up to avoid stopping at the busy Boaz-Walmart/Highway 431 intersection.
“I guess, but let’s don’t play your silly little game. What’s cooking in that pea brain of yours?” Rebecca could always speak some truth through her smart-ass remarks.
“My life and yours would most likely have been radically different if it hadn’t been for a young Connie Stewart overhearing her Aunt Julia’s end of a phone conversation where she said, ‘Cincinnati?’” Angela said, with nervous hands and feet, wishing she had insisted on driving. Ever since the Foley, Alabama wreck that took the life of Elton Rawlins, Rebecca’s reaction was to drive more radically. Odd.
“What about another angle. If we hadn’t been in color guard together during Connie’s senior year, we wouldn’t have become good friends. Then, she wouldn’t have shared with us that lead.” Rebecca was right. Everything seemed to spawn from a long-line of preceding causes.
“Now that I think of it, if Connie’s Aunt Julia and Rachel Roden hadn’t been such good friends, then there would have been no such conversation between the two secretaries who worked for the two best doctors in Boaz.” Angela pulled on her seatbelt as Rebecca drove at least twenty miles over the speed limit and was darting in and out of cars. “Slow down, it’ll be okay if we’re a few minutes late.”
“Shut up and let me drive. I hate not being on time. I used to believe in miracles. But, the call from Dr. Vickers in Cincinnati to Dr. Calvert concerning Deidre’s past medical history was the real clue. I’m just thankful Rachel was cunning enough to open the sealed envelope and discover Dr. Calvert was mailing dear Deidre’s medical records to an obstetrician in Cincinnati. She was sly, resealing the envelope and dropping it off as usual at the post office on her way home.” Rebecca slowed when she saw the Boaz squad car with lights flashing buzz by like they were sitting still.
“I still think I’m right. All that stuff could have gone on without ever affecting our lives the past, nearly fifty years. I say if Connie hadn’t shared, we would never have learned where the damn bitch Deidre Martin had moved right after Christmas our senior year.”
Rebecca now was driving ten miles under the speed limit. “And, we would have never learned that she had twins and best of all, that one of them, our dear and precious Carson, God help his soul, had the good fortune of being adopted by the wealthiest woman in Cincinnati.”
Angela fumbled in her purse and found a tube of Maybelline’s Baddest Beige lip color she had discovered during her and Rebecca’s latest trip to the Gold Strike Casino Resort in Tunica two weeks ago. “Girl, our forty-five-year-old plan has evolved. Who would have thought what started as a sick but justified plan to destroy the Deidre bitch would transform into a potential goldmine for the two lonely ladies who both lost their beau?”
“I’ll girl you. Without the full cooperation of the double C’s, we sure as hell won’t strike gold.” Rebecca added, turning right on Highway 75 in Albertville.
“The sweet Carson’s days are numbered. That’s a done deal. The other C, Pastor Caleb Patterson, the current guiding star of Boaz, I predict, won’t be as much of a problem as you’re thinking. He needs the money badly. Man has a bad gambling habit.” Angela, mostly hair-brained, could spin some solid logic when she was thirsty.
“He also is addicted to his stellar reputation. You may be right. He might cooperate to protect his community’s standing. We’ll see. I hope the hell they are here. Rebecca said, turning down an old logging road past the late Dr. McCrory’s Animal Clinic.
The Pencil Driven Life 