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 68
After almost a day at the hospital, there were two things I had to do: overnight the bag of four bullets to Vanessa and go see Connie. I had no doubt, yesterday she had sensed something had short-circuited in our relationship. This was why she hadn’t returned my texts or calls for nearly twenty-four hours.
After I left the post office, I pondered how I wanted to manage Connie. I had to know her side of the story before I walked away. Damn, why the hell was trust so important to me, a man living a double life? My plan coalesced as I turned right off Ross and onto Sandor Drive.
My mind did a double-take when I saw her garage door open. My heart almost stopped when I noticed Hoyle Harrison’s old Toyota Camry inside the garage parked beside Connie’s nearly new Maxima. Something screwy was going on.
I parked behind Connie and almost headed for the laundry door entrance at the back of the garage. Instead, I walked down the sidewalk to the front door. It was slightly ajar, just like she had left it the first time I had come to discuss a long-term health care policy. For some reason, I rang the doorbell. Considerate me.
I didn’t wait long. My most pleasant thoughts were the two of them were out back and Connie was showing Harrison her collection of roses. That’s why she hadn’t heard the doorbell.
I eased in and announced my entry. No response. I walked across an over-sized den and across to the sun room. I didn’t see a sign of either of them. That’s when I heard the gunshot. My mind said to keep going towards the front door and get the hell out of there but when I reached the hallway, my feelings for Connie turned me right. What I saw when I entered the giant master bathroom was blood curdling. No doubt it was the blood.
Harrison was lying face-up blocking the entrance to Connie’s walk-in closet. I had no doubt he was dead; the pool of blackish blood proved no one could have survived. Connie was sitting propped up against the back wall beside an open pocket door. The door on the old Mosler was open. Both racks of clothes had fallen to the floor. Connie was still holding a pistol. I concluded she had managed to fire it to get attention after I rang the doorbell.
Connie’s injuries weren’t as apparent as Harrison’s. But, as I’d heard mother say a hundred times, “she’s got that death look.”
“Oh baby, what have I done to us?” Connie whispered as I knelt beside her. It was then I noticed a pair of jeans tied around her left thigh.
“No, no, no.” I stood on my knees and removed my iPhone from my right front pocket. I dialed 911 and surprisingly, Connie slapped my phone to the floor.
“Fred, let me die. I deserve it.”
I retrieved the phone, backed away and dialed. In two sentences I summarized the situation. Seconds later, the gruff female voice said, “the police and an ambulance will be there in a few minutes.”
I saw Connie fighting to stay conscious. Her face was white as a ghost. “Fred, do me one final favor, take the money bag and the pistol. Inside the safe. I left you a letter. Never tell. Please know I love you.” With those words, stated slowly, slightly above a whisper, the lovely Connie’s chin slumped against her chest.
Favor? She had made a request, a dying request I assumed. No doubt she had her reasons. I stood and stepped across Connie’s slumbering body to face the giant Mosler. Unlike the last time I had peered inside, now there were two duffel bags smashed together at the bottom of the safe. I didn’t see a pistol or a letter. I quickly removed the bags and raced outside. Against my better judgment, I locked them both inside the trunk of my car, my legal mind reminding me how much police liked searching cars.
I knew the neighborhood was about to light up and sound off but notwithstanding the coming parade, I walked over to Harrison’s Camry and once again was surprised. In his back seat was a cardboard box, a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt box. Textbooks. School. Inside was no doubt the film cartridges from the Boaz High School safe. At least, that was my quickest and best bet.
Less than fifteen seconds after I placed the box alongside the two duffel bags in my trunk, I heard the shrill sound of two sirens.
I lucked out. The two young police officers virtually ignored me even though one took a brief statement. I think it had something to do with Alfa and the recent interviews Nell and I had conducted at City Hall to implement its supplemental health care program. Even though I was free to leave, I stuck around waiting to learn how Connie was doing.
The zipped-up bag riding on the gurney broke my heart and flooded my mind with a laundry list of good times the two of us had experienced over the past few months. For some reason I was awash in grief, blaming myself for what seemed like a dozen deaths.
I reached out my hand and touched the dark heavy plastic of the body bag as the two EMT’s pushed it by my car. While they were loading her in the back of the ambulance my legal mind tried to figure out what had happened. Just a few minutes ago Connie was alive. Although she had a gunshot wound in her thigh, she had been able to tie it off. She had also been able to hear (I assumed) the doorbell and fire off another shot to alert me to her presence.
Just as the EMT’s backed out of the driveway the two officers exited the front door and walked over to me. “We’re sorry for your loss Mr. Martin.” The taller one said. It was then I noticed the shorter one holding an evidence bag. It contained one of Doug’s bottles, one just like the ones I had in a box on the top shelf of my kitchen pantry. Then, it made sense, a little sense. Connie’s death was intentional. She had taken an overdose of Quaalude-300. My gut knew this.
Our conversation was cut short by the arrival of an overgrown van with “Marshall County Forensics Lab” painted on the side. “Sorry, Mr. Martin, but we have to ask you to leave. This is a crime scene.” The taller officer said to my complete surprise. Did they not know that the murder suspect could be standing right in front of them? Unlike Huntsville, or any other large city, small towns possessed a unique but ignorant respect when it came to crime.
By 3:45 p.m., I was sitting in my kitchen with two empty duffel bags and a table full of cash, yet another Smith & Wesson 38 caliber ‘Chief’s Special,’ and a two-page mauve-colored letter hand-written by Connie and addressed to me.
The first long paragraph was how she had fallen in love with me during our first and only high school date. She confessed to manipulating Susan and apologized. Although her words seemed conflicted, I concluded she had truly loved me despite her deceptions.
The remaining page and a half revealed surprising details, many occurring nearly half-a-century ago. But, initially, she described what had happened only two days earlier. When she had met Tyler on the verge of collapse jogging down Highway 168, instead of turning around to return to Boaz, the two of them had returned to the old logging road where Pastor Caleb had ended his life. The reason? To retrieve the pistol. Someway, Connie knew it could tell a story, one that involved her.
I finished reading Connie’s letter and if it was to be believed, the Smith that was resting on my kitchen table was the one that had killed Johnny Stewart. And, Doug Barber. I started to credit Connie’s drug delusion with her fanciful little story, but then I reread the letter and finally acknowledged that it had been written long before Harrison had showed up.
Knowing how much pride Connie had in her stellar reputation, and that of her family, I started to understand the predicament she was in. Not only had her first cousin, Johnny Stewart, impregnated Deidre and Susan, he had done the same to her. Of course, she blamed it on the Quaalude-300’s, vehemently denying all consent. What was hard to picture was the level of revenge it had taken for her to pull the trigger. Four times.
But, I had to admit her letter wasn’t perfectly coherent. Connie’s motivation to exact revenge was also heavily influenced by the damning evidence Pastor Walter and Club Eden had on her. According to Connie, they knew she was one of four burglars who had not only stolen the Ericson’s coins and jewelry but had taken nearly a million dollars in cash they had skimmed from church contributions and God only knew where else.
It was the night of the Boaz-Albertville football game that changed Connie’s life forever. Not that she needed anything else, given she was already pregnant with another one of Johnny Stewart’s babies. It seemed she was present with Raymond Radford and his gang at the convenience store when Dad’s call came that Johnny was headed their way from Martin Mansion. Given the gruesome details she provided, I had no doubt she had witnessed the awful beating the Club Eden men had delivered.
I guess I could say, the most startling surprise came when Connie confessed to using the gun I now possessed to shoot her first cousin four times in the chest. She said it had been Franklin Ericson’s idea. He had argued it was fitting given Johnny’s notorious bragging about how he had won the bet whether he could bed four high school female classmates in as many weeks.
I was not at all satisfied with Connie’s explanation of why she had killed Doug Barber. Her statement, “I had to do it to keep the truth from coming out,” didn’t satisfy my curiosity. She had also left the question wide open how she acquired from the church this pistol that was lying two feet in front of me.
I got up and started packing the cash inside the duffel bags. All I could think about was, if the Smith I had just packaged in an extra U.S. Postal Service box I had bought just this morning, was the Johnny Stewart and Doug Barber murder weapon, how did it get back to the church and accessible to Pastor Caleb for him to use in blowing off half his own head? The only person who came to mind was Hoyle Harrison. Of course, that was mere speculation.
I stood on a stool and pushed the bags up onto the top shelf of my pantry closet. I walked into the den and sat down in my Lazy Boy. For the next two hours, I half-dosed and fully contemplated all that I still didn’t know. It was hard to concentrate on anything, but what had motivated Principal Harrison to go to Connie’s? I finally fell asleep without a single satisfactory explanation.
The Pencil Driven Life 