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 69
Dad’s funeral was Saturday afternoon, two days after Deidre and I let him die. She made me consent to letting Youth Pastor Robert Miller conduct the funeral. I think it was some sort of long-ago but still-surviving allegiance to his grandfather, the pastor of our youth, Randy Miller, the brother of my hero and friend.
It was another week before Bobby called. As expected, the four bullets were the ones that had been stolen from the Department of Forensic Sciences nearly half-a-century earlier, the ones that had killed Johnny Stewart. I wasn’t surprised they had been fired by the mystery Smith & Wesson Connie had requested I remove (along with the cash) from her old Mosler. What I wasn’t expecting from the ballistic testing was the revelation the same pistol had killed Randy Miller. I hadn’t known that Grayson Bolton had retrieved and delivered to Bobby any paperwork related to Randy’s death in 1989.
After Bobby’s call, I was reminded Deidre had given me a small envelope with a thank-you note and a cash honorarium to give to Robert Miller, now the new pastor of First Baptist Church of Christ. Instead of heading home from Walmart, I drove to Sparks Avenue and the church’s parking lot closest to the parsonage. There was a large U-Haul truck backed up alongside the giant house with two men struggling to move a heavy-looking dresser down the extended loading ramp. Pastor Miller was barking out, respectively, orders to pick the piece up and not to slide it.
The new pastor saw me and ignored my presence until the dresser was safely on level ground. He waved the men off towards two chairs and the shade of an old oak tree beside his new home.
“Thanks again for a wonderful job at Dad’s funeral.” I said, handing him Deidre’s envelope. I could contort facts with the best of them. I also knew that honey opened more mouths to truth-telling than vinegar.
Without responding, he stood, peeled back the white flap and removed the card and a check. It seemed to take him a minute to read Deidre’s note. I wished now I had read it. What all was there to say other than ‘thank you for sending Dad off to bask in the glory of God until we meet again,’ or some other similar nonsense.
Robert asked me to join him under the oak, insisting the two men go raid the refrigerator in the basement until he was finished.
“Deidre said you might have some questions. She authorized me to share my grandfather’s belief on how important it is to forgive.” I guess that’s what Deidre had included in her long thank-you note.
I really didn’t want to hear a sermon. I had questions I wanted to ask, but, out of respect for the youth pastor of my tender, teenage years, I listened.
Pastor Robert shared how his grandfather was a die-hard believer in journaling, in writing things down. He apparently encouraged others to do so. I guess Angela Ericson had taken his advice. Robert revealed how his grandfather had recorded his sessions with a woman who had allowed hate to enter her heart. It soon became clear the woman was my mother. Before Robert concluded his remarks, I learned the box of mauve-colored stationary had originated with youth pastor Randy and had been a gift to mother. I recalled the two ‘go and sin no more’ letters I had found, one in Rebecca’s safe, and one in Angela’s. Robert wasn’t exactly clear, but I gathered his grandfather had written and handed out several almost-identical letters, including one to mother.
The final thing Pastor Robert said to me as the two men returned from the basement was, “you can rest assured your mother was forgiven for the death of my uncle Ricky.”
I sat under the giant oak for several minutes after the pastor and his two helpers returned to the U-Haul. Once again, I felt like a stranger to my own life, the life I had grown up beside but not fully inside.
Walking back across the parking lot to my car, I wished I had never moved back to Boaz from Huntsville. If I hadn’t, I probably would have been better off. Some time it is simply better not to know the truth. Mine and Noah’s lamebrain idea to peek underneath the top layer of Elton and Doug’s cockiness had unleashed an avalanche of secrets that forever shattered the respect I had for the Martin reputation.
In truth, I didn’t steal anything from the old Moslers I had cracked. My safecracking had stolen my manipulated memories of a once-in-life love for Susan and revealed the putrid underbelly of a city long controlled by five powerful families. Thoughts of the worst side of my own family weren’t much better.
The Pencil-Driven Life 