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 57
Sunday morning, I woke to an empty bed, not my own. Sunlight was streaming along the edges of the closed, natural oak blinds. Connie could never stay in bed this late, even for a repeat intimacy lesson. Wow, Connie sure was a fast learner.
Just as I was pulling on a pair of running shorts, shame I wasn’t a runner, Connie came in her master bedroom looking like she had a different take on last night’s session. “Angels a dad.” I shook my head. I was only half awake. My ears must have been still asleep. Connie saw my face, my confusion.
“Fred, listen. Concentrate. Angela is dead.”
She walked closer. “Did you understand? Angela is dead. Mr. Hayes across the street shared the news. We both were outside fetching our newspapers.”
“How, what happened? She looked healthy as a horse.” That was a little disrespectful.
“Owen said he had heard it at McDonald’s. You know, old men love coffee and gossip.”
“So, it might not be true?” I was still a little mentally wobbly.
“Seems it is. I’m calling Rebecca, she’ll know.”
I walked to the kitchen and poured a large cup of black coffee. After Connie motioned me away, I returned to Connie’s bathroom for a shower. As I walked by her giant closet I almost entered to take another peak inside her old Mosler. I changed my mind and ambled out to the sun room while she completed her call sitting in the den.
A few minutes later, Connie joined me in the sun room’s swing. “Rebecca said she received a call from the Boaz Police Department this morning that Angela Barber had called 911 a little before 3:00 a.m. saying she was dying. The police found a note saying she, Angela, couldn’t live with herself any longer, now that Doug’s gun had been stolen. The note asked the police to call Rebecca and tell her she was sorry.”
I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the strange coincidences. If someone wanted to kill themselves, why would she call the police and run the risk of them thwarting her plan? Also, I was curious how, and when, Angela had discovered the gun was missing. Doug’s gun. Even that, saying the gun was Doug’s felt odd. “Not to be too morbid, but did the police say how Angela died? What killed her.” I had to ask.
“Overdose. When the police arrived, she was lying on her couch. There was an empty bottle of Ludes. I hadn’t heard that word in years. The real term is Quaalude or Methaqualone. It’s a drug, I don’t think it’s a barbiturate, but still, it depresses the central nervous system. It was popular back in the late sixties and early seventies. Doug must have kept a stash of them.”
As I was listening to Connie’s long description, my gut took a nose dive. My conclusion wasn’t close to scientific but every time in the past this had happened, I knew I was on the right trail, the one that would lead to a truthful discovery. Vanessa’s statement paraphrases her mother, “Elton Rawlins dies in that mysterious car wreck in Foley, and then Doug Barber is murdered. There’s got to be a connection.” My gut was telling me the deaths of the two bastards Noah and I learned to hate as high school football players, was somehow connected to Angela’s suicide. Unsurprisingly, I felt my lawyer hat sit tighter on my head. Suicide? Who says Angela died by her own hand?
Connie wouldn’t have it any other way. While I pondered her Birmingham News, Connie showered and dressed. Ten minutes later, she stuck her head through the door and announced she was headed to Rebecca’s. “We’ve lost our best friend. Sorry, but we have to bear this burden side by side. I’ll call you later.”
By six-thirty, I was inside Martin Mansion. No security system to deal with. Dad had given me a key when I moved to Boaz in 2014. Even without it, Dad, and his dad, and probably his dad, had always kept a front door key hidden, hanging on a nail inside the old well-house.
It was the weekend of the family’s annual pilgrimage to Panama City Beach, Florida. Ever since I had moved back to Boaz, I had joined Dad (mother when she was alive), Deidre and Ed, and their kids and grandkids for a long and relaxing four days and nights at the Beachside Resort. But, this year was different. There was simply too much family tension for me to endure. Now, standing, pondering the same smells, silent sounds, and furniture arrangement in the grand living room, I’m reminded of Dad’s plea on Thursday for me to come along to Florida. I felt so damned selfish. A sinking feeling washed all over me; this could be his last trip to the Gulf, or, anywhere outside Boaz. Mother’s death, and probably mine and Deidre’s ongoing rift, was wearing him down.
No doubt it was Luke’s discovery, that mauve-colored letter he had read to me during our last time fishing, that triggered the little demon’s prodding. What else might I find inside Martin Mansion?
I walked out of the living room, through the kitchen, and down a long narrow hallway to Dad’s study, a converted little room in the center of Martin Mansion that was the front room of the original cabin great-granddad Stonewall had built in the late years of the nineteenth century.
I sat at Dad’s old oak desk, a gift from his father before I was born. The middle drawer was locked but that didn’t deter me. Dad would never carry the key around with him. He hung keys on nails. I walked over to a closet with a rugged pine door oddly built. With a eight to ten inch wide board across the top to give the door the needed height. It was like the builder, Stonewall Martin, didn’t have long enough vertical boards. Or this was just his way.
I opened the door and saw several of Dad’s old coats and pants, clothes he used working outside in the garden. I felt along the inside of the door frame thinking this was a good place to hang a key. I pushed Dad’s clothes back to the right. No key on the left wall. Then, pushed them back to the left. No key. But, there was another door. Similar to the oddly built closet door. Strange.
I stepped over several pairs of Dad’s boots and turned the white marble-looking door knob. It easily turned but I had to put a little shoulder into forcing the door open. I almost lost my balance when the door suddenly swung forward. If the light from Dad’s westward facing windows hadn’t been at the right angle I would likely have stepped off into an open stairwell.
I activated my iPhone’s flashlight, and eased down the stairs. When I reached the bottom, I pulled a string attached to a simple, one-bulb socket. It dawned on me I was standing in the original cellar of that first log cabin built when Stonewall, wife, and litter of kids arrived from Wadley, Alabama in the mid-1890’s. I could recall only one time I had ever been down here. In front of me was a set of shelves holding a few old jars of canned peaches. On the lid was scrawled 1974.
I turned and walked toward the rear of the cellar, what would be the rear of Dad’s overhead library, around a giant hand-cut post holding up an equally giant hand-cut beam. I couldn’t have been more shocked if I had seen a mountain lion. She was nestled under the staircase and semi-hidden by a wall of horizontally nailed pine boards, probably from the same stack of wood Stonewall had used to build his oddly constructed doors. The safe was the smallest version the Mosler Company had built until a few years ago. A baby compared to all the Model T20’s that I knew were popular in at least three local residences and one church.
I had been a member of the Martin family for almost sixty-four years. How was it that I had never heard there was a Mosler buried in the bowels of Martin Mansion?
The Pencil Driven Life 