When You Call My Name

Ever thankful that Larner’s Mill was too small-town in its thinking to ever put up a gate or a lock, Carter drove right through and up to the pit without having to brake for anything more than a possum ambling across the road in the dark.

When he got out, he was shaking with a mixture of exertion and excitement. As he threw the suitcase over the edge, he took a deep breath, watching it bounce end over end, down the steep embankment. When he lifted his wife from the trunk and sent her after it, he started to grin. But the white bedspread in which she was wrapped stood out like a beacon in the night. He could just imagine what would hit the fan if Betty Jo turned up in this condition. He had to cover up the spread.

It was while he was turning in a circle, looking for something with which to shovel, that he saw the bulldozer off to the side.

That’s it, he thought. All he needed to do was shove some dirt down on top. Tomorrow was trash day. By the time the trash trucks made the rounds and dumped the loads, she’d be right where she belonged, buried with the rest of the garbage.

It took a bit for him to figure out how to work the bulldozer’s controls, but desperation was a shrewd taskmaster, and Carter Foster was as desperate as they came. Within the hour, a goodly portion of dirt had been pushed in on top of the latest addition to the city dump, and Betty Jo Foster’s burial was slightly less dignified than she would have hoped.

Minutes later, Carter was on his way home to shower and change. As he pulled into his garage, he pressed the remote control and breathed a great sigh of satisfaction as the door dropped shut behind him.

It was over!

His feet were dragging as he went inside, but his lawyer mind was already preparing the case he would present to his coworkers. Exactly how much he would be willing to humble himself was still in the planning stage. If they made fun of him behind his back because he’d been dumped, he didn’t think he would care. The last laugh would be his.

Days later, while Betty Jo rotted along with the rest of the garbage in Larner’s Mill, Glory Dixon was making her second sweep through the house, looking behind chairs and under cushions, trying to find her keys. But the harder she looked the more certain she was that someone else and not her carelessness was to blame.

Her brother came into the kitchen just as she dumped the trash onto the floor and began sorting through the papers.

“J.C., have you seen my keys? I can’t find them anywhere.”

“Nope.” He pulled the long braid she’d made of her hair. “Why don’t you just psych them out?”

Glory ignored the casual slander he made of her psychic ability and removed her braid from his hand. “You know it doesn’t work like that. I never know what I’m going to see. If I did, I would have told on you years ago for filching Granny’s blackberry pies.”

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.