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 the house and out onto the porch. Careful to pull the front door shut behind him, he jumped into his car and drove away while death filtered slowly throughout the rooms.
It was dusk. Dew was already settling upon the grass, and the sun, like Humpty-Dumpty, was about to fall beyond the horizon as Rafe Dixon drove into the yard and parked beneath the tree near the back door.
J.C. came out of the barn just as Rafe crawled out of the cab. Glory swung her legs out and then slid out of the seat, stretching wearily from the long ride. It felt good to be home. She couldn’t wait to get in the house and trade her ropers for slippers, her blue jeans for shorts and the long-sleeved pink shirt she was wearing for one of J.C.’s old T-shirts. They went down past her knees, and felt soft as butter against her skin. They were her favorite items of clothing.
Their errands had taken longer than she’d expected, and she’d told herself more than once during the day that if she’d known all her father had planned to do, she wouldn’t have gone. She leaned over the side of the truck bed and lifted the nearest sack into her arms.
“Right on time,” Rafe shouted, and motioned his son to the sacks of groceries yet to be unloaded from the back of their truck. “Hey, boy, give us a hand.”
J.C. came running. “Daddy! Look! I found another arrowhead today.”
Both Rafe and Glory turned to admire his latest find. Collecting them had been J.C.’s passion since he’d found his first years ago. Now he was an avid collector and had more than one hundred of them mounted in frames and hanging on the walls of his room.
“That’s a good one,” Glory said, running her fingers over the hand-chipped edge, and marveling at the skill of the one who had made it. In spite of its obvious age, it was perfectly symmetrical in form.
“Groceries are gonna melt,” Rafe warned.
J.C.
