Killer Nashville Noir

by Clay Stafford

  As Marjorie passed the Lincoln and saw Jack, she jerked from Heather and made a dash towards a neighbor’s house.

  Jack’s heart flew into his throat as he watched Marjorie cross in front of the Lincoln, but he did not move. The heat blew from the car vent into his face. Marjorie didn’t make it far. Heather quickly subdued her.

  Jack felt his legs shaking. He thought he was going to pee on himself. Jack twisted his head as far around as he could, following them, as they walked around the SUV, a confused expression on his face, before he decided he needed to get out and help.

  “What are you doing?” Jack asked holding onto the SUV to keep from slipping on the ice. “We’re supposed to take her in her car!”

  “Her car isn’t here,” she said. “It’s at her father’s. He’s working on it. That’s why Stencil picked her up tonight. I’ll put her in my car.” Heather had already opened the trunk.

  “In your car? That’s not the plan! We’re supposed to take her car! She’s supposed to have driven there alone. Then killed herself. Why are you putting her in the trunk?”

  “Do you think she should drive? Help me.”

  Marjorie jerked as Jack came over. He grabbed her feet; she kicked. “Be still!” Jack ordered. As usual, Marjorie didn’t listen. “This isn’t right.” Marjorie moaned, the gag kept her from yelling out. He couldn’t get hold of her legs. Marjorie kicked. Jack’s feet flew out from under him on the ice. He hit the ground and rolled like a ball, all 379 pounds of him.

  “Hurry up.” Heather held Marjorie by her shoulders and tied arms. Jack jerked every which way, finally got to his feet, and stumbled snow-covered and wet over to Heather, where he tried to hold Marjorie’s flailing legs and lift her off the ground. He had not picked up anything this heavy in years. They tossed Marjorie into the trunk of the Camry.

  “Why did you tie her hands?”

  “What did you expect me to do?” Heather asked. “We should have tied her feet, too, but then we’d have had to carry her.”

  “Won’t…that…leave marks? It’s supposed to look like she killed herself, that she drove her car there alone, and jumped off the cliff. If there’s no car, how did she get there? If they see her hands have been tied…if they see bruises or anything…”

  Marjorie kicked from inside the opened trunk. Occasionally, a leg would fly into the air meant for either Jack or Heather.

  “I tied her with pantyhose, stupid. Pantyhose don’t leave marks. Obviously, you’ve never been tied to a bedpost.”

  Jack blinked.

  Marjorie kicked wildly.

  “Is that my gun?” Jack asked.

  “Of course, it’s yours,” Heather said. “It’s not mine. I don’t have one. I got it over at your house. You have several. You can spare one. Your toupee fell off.”

  Jack jerked around. His coiffure lay crumpled like a dead cat in the middle of the road.

  Heather closed the lid, leaving Marjorie in darkness.

  • • •

  Plans had changed.

  Heather was supposed to have clandestinely met Jack after the reunion and together they were to have driven to Shad in Jack’s rental car. They were to get Marjorie, who wasn’t supposed to have attended the reunion, drive Marjorie’s car and Jack’s rental car to the lake, push Marjorie off the cliff into the water (if water was there this time of year), and then drive back in the rental so Heather could get her car and return to Murfreesboro unseen. Jack would have the alibi of the reunion and Sean, Heather wouldn’t be in the picture at all, and Marjorie’s death would look like suicide. Instead, in anger Heather had come to the reunion to confront Jack about her name in the newspaper, Heather was driving her car with Marjorie in the trunk, Marjorie’s car was in the shop, Jack was following along behind, and it was snowing on top of ice, none of which was supposed to have happened.

  • • •

  As they drove out of Shad heading up Highway 56 towards the junction, Jack’s past flooded over him. Nashville had a statue of naked dancing nymphs. Chattanooga had soldiers large and small. And Shad had a thirty-foot-high colossal statue of a titanic-gray fish sculpture representing a one-pound-or-less fish. With snow on its head—aside from I-65’s plastic Nathan Bedford Forrest—it was the gaudiest thing Jack had ever seen. The early morning mood lighting of the lamps shining up from the bottom of the recycled car tires made it even worse.

  Jack passed his parents’ house. A light was on in the kitchen. His father was probably up. Maybe his mother. He had not spoken to either of them in years. His father had thought his only son should have become a coal miner just like him and Jack’s grandfather. Jack’s father was out of touch. He didn’t approve of Jack’s business dealings, saying Jack had cheated many family friends out of their retirement investments. Not true. Investments bring risk. Towns like Shad, towns founded upon digging fuel out of the earth and building railroads to ship it out, were slowly turning into ghost towns no less deserted than those tumbleweed-infested places in the West. That’s why people had lost their investments. In 1871, when Jack’s great-grandparents had emigrated from Switzerland, Shad had been a prosperous town. Now, it was row after row of deteriorating houses, some filled, some abandoned, some falling down, in one of the most beautiful parts of the entire state.

  Jack thought about his childhood, Marjorie’s childhood, Heather’s childhood, even Heather’s deceased husband Howard’s childhood. It was natural. They had all grown up together.

  • • •

  When they opened the trunk, Marjorie’s face was swollen from tears. She shook. From fear? From cold? Heather had not let her get a coat.

  “Gruetli-Laager is only several miles from here,” Heather postulated. “How’s this? Stencil took her to the reunion. Everyone saw them. They saw her nibbling on his ear. He took Marjorie to her house, then maybe to his house. Could be a neighbor saw him and her go into her house. Somewhere along the way, he killed her and dumped her here. Maybe things got rough. Pantyhose? Bedposts? That could happen.”

  Wouldn’t that be something if Stencil Berchman became a suspect in the death of Marjorie? Jack hadn’t thought of that. Marjorie kicked, ramming Jack’s fingers against the inside of the trunk as he tried to do his part to lift her out. “You should have tied her feet.”

  As they pulled Marjorie from the trunk, both lost their hold on her and she fell, first hitting the bumper of the Camry, and then falling the rest of the way facedown onto the snow-covered pavement. She lay there sobbing into the mixture of asphalt, gravel, undissolved road-crew salt, and frozen mud, her face caked white as though covered with fungus.

  “Get her up,” Heather ordered. Jack lifted her to a standing position. “Now, get in your car and follow us.”

  “Up the access road?”

  “Are you going to walk with us? Up the hill?” Heather surely knew the answer to that. Jack had meant to drive Marjorie’s car, then walk down. “I’m not doing this alone. If you don’t think my car will get stuck, then drive mine instead of your SUV. We can stuff Marjorie back into the trunk.”

  Marjorie moaned.

  Jack looked at his rented Lincoln SUV (huge, V8, new tires) and then at Heather’s Camry (lightweight, 4-cylinder, tires needing replacing since Harold had died) and then at the falling snow.

  “If we’re gonna do that, then let’s all ride up in my car,” Jack said.

  “And risk her being tied to you? Don’t you think the cops’re going to go over your car? Your rented car? If the suicide is questioned? If Stencil’s involvement is questioned? She could lose a hair. Something that traces her back to you. That’s suspicious. You don’t want her in your car.”

  Jack looked at Heather stupidly.

  “Your estranged wife whom everyone knows you no longer have anything to do with? Don’t you watch CSI? Think it through, Jack. You rent an SUV, her hair appears in it? Do you want to go to jail? That’s why I put her in the trunk of my car and not yours. No one is going to suspect me. Marjorie and I haven’t seen each ot
her in years.”

  “Other than tonight.”

  “I left early. People saw me leave.”

  Jack just stood there.

  “It’s cold Jack. We’re walking. Good grief! Walk with us. Or drive. Just do something. It’s freezing.” She pushed Marjorie and the two of them began the short ascent towards the cliffside.

  Jack pulled his coat around him. The snow was falling heavily. Heather had a point. Ideally, maybe he should walk, but he didn’t want to. He watched Marjorie, pitifully climbing the hill, shaking from the cold, Heather pushing her along. He felt nothing. No love, no nostalgia, not even empathy. Marjorie deserved what she was getting. He deserved to be happy for once. With Heather.

  “Come on, Jack,” Heather called. Her voice echoed through the trees posing in the increasing white.

  Jack cringed at the sound of her voice and looked around. No sign of others.

  “Walk or drive,” Heather shouted.

  • • •

  As Heather and Marjorie trudged along the frozen mud tire ruts cut by numerous hikers, campers, lovers, and illegal hunters, Jack followed behind in his rental Lincoln, warm, illuminating the way, and obliterating Marjorie’s last walk. Jack could see Heather’s mouth moving when she turned her head to the side, but with the windows up and the heater fan on full blast he could not make out what she was saying. Occasionally, Marjorie would appear to sob as she stumbled slowly like a death row inmate plodding down that last corridor and, every now and then, Heather would give her a shove to speed her up. If Marjorie had had sex with Stencil the police would discover that. It would further tie Stencil to the crime. The night was getting better and better.

  “Shove her again,” Jack mumbled.

  Jack looked at his odometer. It was less than a tenth of a mile. He wanted to finish this and get out of there before the snow and ice got too thick. The grade was nearly straight up. He should have asked for a set of snow tires.

  • • •

  Jack scanned the limestone cliffs, white with snow and glowing in the moonlight as though it were day. Before them was a hundred foot drop.

  Marjorie was on her knees, begging, at the edge of the drop-off. The outcropping beneath her was pure rock. The cold cut into her legs. Her face was almost blue. The wind knifed them all.

  “Oh, I got this for us,” Jack said to Heather, holding out an envelope.

  Heather, holding the gun on Marjorie with one hand, took the packet from Jack with the other. She couldn’t open the envelope one-handed and with gloves.

  “It’s two plane tickets,” Jack said proudly, louder than necessary. He said it with the same glee of his innuendoed confession at Shoney’s, but this time Marjorie would not be recording it to play for the judge in court. “To St. Croix.” He pointed to the tickets. “Where it’s warm. The beach.”

  Marjorie bawled.

  Heather handed the packet back. “I don’t believe in suffering, Jack. Even for Marjorie. You’re being cruel.”

  “Of course, I put them in Sean’s name.” He smiled, slightly hurt at her reaction. He looked at Marjorie, her face white in the SUV’s high beams. “And paid for them with cash. It would look funny to see them in my name just before Marjorie’s suicide.” He wanted to kiss Heather so badly he could not stand it. He wished she would impulsively grab him like she had in front of Marjorie’s house. Maybe they would do it. Right here. Right now. In the freezing cold. Warmed by their passion. Right in front of Marjorie, before she took the big hop-skip-and-jump.

  Marjorie called out again as though she knew what he was thinking.

  “Hush,” Heather said as she thumped Marjorie’s head with the end of the gun. “Jack, are you sure we want to do this?”

  “We’re this far now.”

  “I was all for it,” Heather said. “But now, it seems so…real. Maybe…”

  “You don’t think that Marjorie will go to the police first thing?” Jack asked, pulling his coat around himself to keep out the wind.

  Marjorie sat up. She shook her head, no. She moaned. Her eyes pleaded.

  “Of course, you would.” Jack squatted down next to Marjorie. From the snow’s reflection of the moonlight and the SUV beams, they had no trouble seeing each other. Marjorie could see Jack’s loathing as he saw her desperation. “If we let her go, she’ll run straight down the road to Stencil, won’t you? And Stencil has money.” He looked at Heather. “Both of us would rot in prison. There’s no way we can turn back now. Let’s push her off.” He grabbed Marjorie by the arm.

  “Jack…” Heather cautioned. “Don’t throw her yet. We have to make it look as though she did this to herself. The pantyhose. The gag. Take those off.”

  “If we leave everything on, they’ll think Stencil did it.”

  “Let’s don’t play games. Let’s keep it simple.”

  Marjorie began to grunt again, knowing the end was near, pleading for them to change their minds before they did something they couldn’t take back.

  “This is what it comes down to, Marjorie,” Jack whispered. “You messed up. You didn’t listen. I told you I’d kill you. And now, I have somebody to help me. That’s even worse, isn’t it? Especially since it’s Heather. She and I are going to have a wonderful life without you. With your insurance money, of course. No matter what happens to my business, I have that. It’s mine. I can’t help but thank you for that.” Jack stood. “Take off her gag,” Jack ordered Heather as though he were the one holding the gun. “Untie her wrists. Let’s push her over. I want to hear her plead for her miserable life as she takes the final step.”

  “You take them off,” Heather answered. “I’m holding the gun in case she runs.”

  Jack didn’t move. Heather wondered what he was waiting for.

  “Good god, Jack, do I have to do everything? Let’s get this over with. I’m cold. Take her straps off.”

  Jack still didn’t move.

  Disgusted, Heather held the gun and untied Marjorie’s gag with her free hand. “Hold still.” Marjorie tried to move her head to get away from Heather’s fingers, but Heather skillfully unknotted the gag. The pantyhose fell from her mouth to the ground.

  Heather lifted Marjorie to her feet.

  “You’re such a fool, Jack,” Marjorie said taking off her own loosely tied hand restraints.

  Heather lifted the gun and pointed it towards Jack’s head.

  Jack’s gut told him that something was all wrong. “Heather, what are you doing?”

  Heather laughed.

  “What is this?” Jack said. “Heather, I’m meeting my partner after this. Sean. If I don’t show up, Sean is going to wonder. He’ll come looking for me. He’ll call the police. Things are going to look suspicious. Heather, let’s push her off and get on with this.”

  “No one’s pushing anyone,” Marjorie said.

  “Is this another one of your tricks?” Jack yelled at Marjorie. To Heather, “Are you in on it?”

  “You don’t get it, do you? Jack?” Heather asked. With her free hand, Heather pulled Marjorie’s face to hers and kissed her firmly on the lips. Marjorie kissed back.

  Jack stood, watching them in shock, the snow settling on his broad immobile shoulders. “What are you doing?” They finally came up for air. Jack noticed a slice of white under Marjorie’s sweatshirt. Not a bra strap white slice. She was wearing long underwear.

  He didn’t get it. “Look. I’ll go. We’ll just forget all this ever happened.”

  “And I’m sure you won’t run straight to the police,” Marjorie mocked.

  “I think Sean will understand,” Heather said. “Considering you killed him tonight.”

  “What?”

  “Your business went bad.” Heather said. “It was in the paper this morning. Your world fell apart. You were afraid you were going to jail, remember? You couldn’t stand the embarrassment. You couldn’t stand losing everything. You and Sean had arranged a trip to Monteagle. It made sense to Sean; you were going to your high school reunion. You saw your w
ife—whom you kicked out of the house, yet wouldn’t sign the divorce papers—with the man you’ve hated most all these years. People saw me go antagonistic with you at the reunion tonight. I’ll say I broke up with you. Everything added on top of everything. Afterwards, I left the reunion—I didn’t come or leave with you—and drove back to Murfreesboro. Alibi for me. Stencil and Marjorie went to her house. Alibi for them. You left alone. Your graduating class saw you arrive alone and leave alone after I had long gone. You looked defeated, maybe hiding what you were feeling. Maybe you were depressed? Angry? You killed your business partner with your gun, this gun, in a parking lot off Dixie Lee Highway. You blamed him for destroying your livelihood, your reputation. You drove to Shad to say your goodbyes and do a little remembering. And then you drove out here. Up this access road in your rented SUV. Alone. To end it. With your gun. The one you used to shoot Sean. Marjorie collects the insurance money. All those questions you wanted answers for over the last several months? There you go.”

  “Sean and I are meeting people tonight,” Jack said, as if he had not heard that Sean was supposed to be dead and that he was supposed to have murdered him. “People are going to miss me.”

  “What people?” Heather asked. “The girl Sean was picking up? From Healthy Hands Massage? That’s the only ‘people’ I know Sean was expecting. I heard you talking to Sean on the phone, about him coming with you, though you didn’t tell him he was your alibi. We all know about Sean, what he likes to do on his business trips. I went straight to Walmart, bought a prepaid phone. I called him myself. I told him you said for me to call him. He called me back on the phone to verify. Even tonight. He was very cautious. He called me before he would let me get in the car. I talked to him several times. I’d call him. He’d call me. And I killed him. With your gun. As he had never met me before…”