He was still laughing as their father entered the house by the back door.
“Honey, are you ready to go?” Rafe asked. “We’ve got a full morning and then some before we’re through in town.”
She threw up her hands in frustration. “I can’t find my keys.”
Her father shrugged, then had a thought. “Did you let that pup in the house last night?”
The guilty expression on her face was answer enough.
“Then there’s your answer,” he muttered. “What that blamed pooch hasn’t already chewed up, he’s buried. You’ll be lucky if you ever see them again.”
“Shoot,” Glory muttered, and started out the door in search of the dog.
“Let it wait until we come home,” Rafe said. “I’ve got keys galore. If you don’t find yours, we’ll get copies made of mine. Now grab your grocery list. Time’s a’wastin’.”
“Don’t forget my Twinkies,” J.C. said, and slammed the kitchen door behind him as he exited the house.
Glory grinned at her brother’s request, then did as her father asked. As she and Rafe drove out of the yard, they could see the back end of the John Deere tractor turning the corner in the lane. J.C. was on his way to the south forty. It was time to work ground for spring planting.
Carter was playing the abandoned husband to the hilt, and oddly enough, enjoying the unexpected sympathy he was receiving from the townspeople. It seemed that they’d known about Betty Jo’s high jinks for years, and were not the least surprised by this latest stunt.
As he stood in line at the teller’s window at the bank, he was congratulating himself on the brilliance of his latest plan. This would be the icing on the cake.
“I need to withdraw some money from my savings account and deposit it into checking,” he told the teller. “Betty Jo nearly cleaned me out.”
The teller clucked sympathetically. “I’ll need your account numbers,” she said.
Carter looked slightly appalled. “I forgot to bring them.”
“Don’t you worry,” the teller said. “I can look them up on the computer. It won’t take but a minute.”
As the teller hurried away, Carter relaxed, gazing absently around the room, taking note of who was begging and who was borrowing, when he saw a woman across the lobby staring at him as if he’d suddenly grown horns and warts. So intent was her interest, that he instinctively glanced down to see if his fly was unzipped, and then covertly brushed at his face, then his tie, checking for something that didn’t belong. Except for her interest, all was as it should be.
Twice he looked away, thinking that when he would turn back, she’d surely be doing something else. To his dismay, her expression never wavered. By the time the teller came back, his impatience had turned to curiosity.
He leaned toward the teller, whispering in a low, urgent tone. “Who is that woman?”
The teller looked up as he pointed across the room at Glory.
“What woman?” she asked.
“The blonde beside that old man. The one who keeps staring this way.”
The teller rolled her eyes and then snorted softly through her nostrils.
“Oh! Her! That’s that crazy Glory Dixon and her father.”
Dixon…I know that man. I hunted quail on his place last year with Tollet Faye and his boys.
The teller kept talking, unaware that Carter was turning pale. He was remembering the gossip he’d heard about the girl, and imagined she could see blood on him that wasn’t really there.
“She fancies herself some sort of psychic. Claims that she can see into the future, or some such nonsense. Personally, I don’t believe in that garbage. Now then…how much did you want to transfer?”
Carter was shaking. He told himself that he didn’t believe in such things, either, but his guilty conscience and Betty Jo’s rotting body were hard to get past. He had visions of Glory Dixon standing up from her chair, pointing an accusing finger toward him, and screaming “murderer” to all who cared to hear.
And no sooner had the thought come than Glory un-crossed her legs. Believing her to be on the verge of a revelation, he panicked.
“I just remembered an appointment,” he told the teller. “I’ll have to come back later.”
With that, he bolted out of the bank and across the street into an alley, leaving the teller to think what she chose. Moments later, the Dixons came out of the bank and drove away. He watched until he saw them turn into the parking lot of the diner on the corner, and then relaxed.
Okay, okay, maybe I made a big deal out of nothing, he told himself, and brushed at the front of his suit coat as he started back to his office. But the farther he walked, the more convinced he became that he was playing with fire if he didn’t tie up his loose ends. Before he gave himself time to reconsider, he got into his car and drove out of town. He had no plan in mind. Only a destination.
The small frame house was nestled against a backdrop of Pine Mountain. A black-and-white pup lay on the front porch, gnawing on a stick. Carter watched until the puppy ambled off toward the barn, and then he waited a while longer, just to make sure that there was no one in sight. Off in the distance, the sound of a tractor could be heard as it plowed up and down a field. As he started toward the house, a light breeze lifted the tail of his suit coat.
He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he told himself that something must be done, or all of his careful planning would be for nothing. If he was going to ignore the fact that Glory Dixon could reveal his secret, then he might as well have called the police the night of the crime, instead of going to all the trouble to conceal it.
Planks creaked upon the porch as it gave beneath his weight. He knocked, then waited, wondering what on earth he would say if someone actually answered. Then he knocked again and again, but no one came. He looked around the yard, assuring himself that he was still unobserved, and then threw his weight against the door. It popped like a cork out of a bottle, and before Carter could think to brace himself, he fell through the doorway and onto the floor before scrambling to his feet.
Now that he was inside, his thoughts scattered. Betty Jo’s death had been an accident. What he was thinking of doing was premeditated murder. Yet the problem remained, how to hide one without committing the other. He stood in place, letting himself absorb the thought of the deed. And as he gazed around the room, his attention caught and then focused on the small heating stove in the corner.
It was fueled with gas.
He began to smile.
An idea was forming as he headed for the kitchen. His hands were shaking as he began to investigate the inner workings of the Dixons’ cookstove. It didn’t take long to find and then blow out the pilot light. As he turned on all the jets, he held his breath. The unmistakable hiss of escaping gas filled the quiet room.
With a sharp turn of his wrist, he turned even harder until one of the controls broke off in his hands. Let them try to turn that baby off, he thought, and hurried out of the kitchen.
Carter wasn’t stupid. He knew that almost anything could ignite this—from a ringing telephone to the simple flick of a light switch when someone entered a room. And while he had no control over who came in the house first, he could at least make sure the house didn’t blow with no one in it.
With his thumb and forefinger, he carefully lifted the receiver from the cradle and set it to one side. The loud, intermittent buzz of a phone off the hook mingled with the deadly hiss behind him.
Now that it was done, an anxiety to escape was overwhelming. Carter ran through