Letter to Belinda

by Tim Tingle

  She threw the buckets and digging fork into the bottom of the pool, and then climbed down the ladder. She already knew where to dig, because she had been watching. She knew that this area had no pipes, and that the gravel was deep enough to bury the body. She had to move some of the loose reinforcement rods they had laid out, in order to roll up the plastic sheets that covered the gravel. She started digging with the fork, and was horrified to realize that the gravel was packed so tightly that it was going to be very difficult to dig. She climbed out of the pool and got a pick out of her tool shed, and it worked better than the fork, but it was still difficult. Sweat poured off her, as she labored to loosen the gravel, and then hand-load it into the buckets. She toiled frantically for almost an hour, and only had the hole about half-dug, before she stopped. She looked at her watch and realized that there was no need to panic. Though it was tough, she had plenty of time. It was only 10:30.

  She climbed out of the hole and went to get a drink of water. She rested on the deck railing and looked into the hole. It would have been a lot easier to let Travis do this, but that wasn’t an option. He was gone to England, and this was her project. She had killed him, so it was up to her to clean up her own mess. She was just glad that Travis had told her how to do it, or else she would have done something stupid, and gotten caught. Actually, she wasn’t out of danger yet, was she? Only if everything went as planned! Endowed with a new sense of urgency, she put down her glass, put her gloves back on, and returned to hole.

  She toiled for over an hour, digging non-stop at the hard packed gravel. It was amazing that loose gravel could be as hard packed as this was. Now she understood why they used the hydraulic jackhammer to pack the gravel. It made it as hard as concrete. She had tenaciously dug out a roughly five foot long, by three foot wide hole, down all the way to the sandstone bedrock, which was about three feet deep. Then she stood up to look at her work, and to straighten out her sore back. As she caught her breath, she asked herself a strange question: What’s a pretty gal like you, doing in a place like this? What got you to this point? You are out here in the middle of the night burying a body, which you have sawed up like a pile of fire wood, with a CHAINSAW! You cut up another human being with a CHAINSAW! What got you to this point? Stupidity, just plain and simple! Doing things that you knew better than to do! No self-control. Apparently no morals! My God, you are trying to raise your two girls to do right, and then you do something like this? What would you say to them, if THEY had done something this stupid? There was no answer to that one. She had herself completely stumped. The only possible answer was, that they could never, never find out about this, or else she would never be able to stop them from doing whatever stupid things they decided to do. And knowing them, if they found out about this, they would do something that was totally ‘off the wall’ stupid, just because they knew that she could not say a thing about it. Teens were that way, especially her teens. They were quick to jump on anything that smacked of parental hypocrisy!

  Oh well. She glanced at her watch. Time to get back to work. And it was time to do the dirty deed of hauling the body. The almost full moon looked down on her accusingly. The Man in the Moon sees everything, doesn’t he? Good, bad or indifferent, he sees it all! What would he say, if he could talk! All the dirty deeds he’s seen! Humph! No doubt, he’s seen what I’m doing now, a thousand times or more! He’s seen millions of lovers falling in love! He’s seen it all! Well, he’s about to see one more body go into the ground!

  Reluctantly she climbed out of the hole and headed for the freezer. She stopped on the back porch to gather her courage. Girl, just get him under that concrete, and this whole nightmare will be over! She went to the kitchen to get a roll of black garbage bags. The box said ‘maximum strength, for no messy spills’. I certainly hope there are no messy spills, she thought.

  She opened the freezer door, hoping that he was gone, and all she saw were bags of frozen vegetables. She had bought the vegetables and packed them in around the body, to keep someone from seeing the body, if they should look into the freezer. She opened one of the garbage bags and began throwing in bags of peas and carrots, baby limas, chopped turnip greens, broccoli and field peas, until she had it as full as she dared, then started filling another bag with the same vegetables, when an arm appeared. She unceremoniously grabbed the hard frozen arm, pulled it out of the mix and dropped it onto the wooden porch floor. Next she found the head. She tried not to look at it as she picked it up. With her leather work gloves, the head felt no different than a frozen pork shoulder. She put it into one of the bags of vegetables, to keep it cold. Then she saw the severed penis, so small and insignificant, yet the root cause of this entire mess. She threw it into the bag too.

  That revealed the torso, the biggest part to be handled. She pulled it loose from the surrounding vegetables and slipped a garbage bag over it, then tested the strength of the garbage bag, by pulling it out of the freezer by it. She positioned herself to pick up the dead weight, and carried it across the porch, down the steps, and threw it into the hole. She climbed down into the hole and lugged the torso into her hole, and positioned it there, still in the garbage bag. There, the biggest piece is in place!

  She returned to the freezer, saw the arm still lying on the porch, and opened another garbage bag to put it in. She dug in the freezer, and found both legs, and the other arm, and put them all into the same bag, and lugged it to the pool as well. She threw it in, then climbed down and lugged it to her hole and placed it. There was plenty of room for the remaining bag. She was climbing out of the pool to get it when the phone rang.

  Who could that be at this hour? She raced to the kitchen to answer it.

  “HELLO!” She realized too late that she had answered with an almost fanatical tone.

  “Mom, is that you? This is Fay.”

  She couldn’t believe it. Her girls never called. Why, in God’s Name, were they calling her now?

  “What do you want, Fay?” Her voice was still much too intense, and her irate tone scared Fay.

  “Mom, are you okay? Did I interrupt something?”

  “What? No! What could you possibly interrupt me from doing at one in the morning?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just that you sounded . . . I don’t know. I thought you might have a friend over, or something.”

  “Me? A friend?”

  “Yes, Mom, like a man-friend?”

  “No! No, I was just watching TV. A really scary movie!”

  “What’s the name of it?”

  “I don’t remember!”

  “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”

  “Chainsaw? Why . . . what do you mean? Why are you calling Fay? Do you need money? Have classes started back yet?”

  “No, the classes at Georgia Tech don’t start for another two weeks. No, the reason I called is that, . . . well, I hate to have to tell you this, but we sort of wrecked our car!”

  “You ‘sort of’ wrecked your car?”

  “Well, totaled it, actually.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “I’m okay. I was driving. But Kay had to go to the hospital. The paramedics said she might have had a concussion, so they sent her there as a precaution.”

  “Kay had a concussion? Oh my God! Where are you, Fay?”

  “Right now we are at the Regional Hospital in Marrietta. Look, I don’t think it’s bad, but they want to keep Kay overnight for observation. So I thought I had better at least call you to let you know about it.”

  “Well yes, of course! So, this hospital is in the town of Marrietta?”

  “Yes, just outside of Atlanta.”

  “I know how to get there. You stay at the hospital with Kay, and I will be there in three hours.”

  “No, Mom. You don’t have to come here, really. She’s okay!”

  “If they are keeping her overnight, then she’s not ok
ay! And I want to be there to see for myself! You stay there at the hospital, and I’ll meet you there!”

  “It wasn’t our fault, Mom.”

  “What?”

  “The accident, it was the other guy’s fault. He ran a red light and T-boned us in the intersection. They said he was killed.”

  “None of that matters right now. I just want to be sure my two girls are all right. I’ll be there in three hours.”

  She hung up and went to change clothes, but then remembered what she was doing before the phone rang. She had to finish what she was doing, before she left for Georgia. Disposing of that body seemed almost petty, compared to what had happened to her daughters. She didn’t know what she would do if something happened to her twins. For the past eighteen years, as the world had been unkind to her, the twins had been her main reason for living. No, she wasn’t a perfect parent, but she had done her best, with what she had to work with, and she loved her twins more than anything. Right now, her only thought was to put this stupid Judge where the sun didn’t shine, and get over to Marietta to see about her girls.

  She picked up the remaining bag of parts, and slung it over her shoulder, and headed to the pit. There were several bags of vegetables in the bag with the parts, but that was okay, because there was plenty of room left in the hole. She doddered down the ladder and packed the final bag into the hole, then dumped two buckets of gravel back into the hole over the bags, and worked it down into the nooks and crannies. A third bucket was required to bring the level up with the rest of the bottom of the pool. She stood back and looked at it, and was impressed. No one would suspect that something had been buried there.

  Now she was left with seven buckets of excess gravel to do something with. She knew she couldn’t leave them there, so she labored to carry them up the ladder, out of the pool, and to the big gravel pile over beside the fence, where she dumped them. No one would ever know that she had done this, because there was a lot of gravel there already. With all seven buckets disposed of, she again made sure the gravel in the bottom of the pool was level, then rolled out the plastic, just like it had been before she started. Then she took a few of the steel reinforcement rods and laid over it, to hold down the plastic. There, just like she had found it! No one would suspect a thing. In fact, the body would probably still be frozen the next day when the cement was poured.

  She climbed out of the pool, and returned to the back porch, where there was still a big garbage bag of frozen vegetables sitting on the porch. She opened the freezer and threw the bag back inside, before it thawed. When she got back from Georgia, she would probably clean up the freezer, and donate it, along with the frozen vegetables to some charity, like the Jimmy Hale Mission. She certainly had no intention of using it herself, knowing what had once been in it!

  She went and turned off the contractor’s generator, and the lights died, and blessed silence returned to the river. She wanted to stand on her deck and savor the deliciously beautiful night, and the fact that that cursed body had been disposed of, but she had no time. She had to get busy. She had to shower, and change clothes, and then she had three hours of driving ahead of her.

  12

  It turned into a four hour wait for the plane to arrive. There was no explanation given for the delay, but British Airways apologized for it, and distributed vouchers so their passengers could eat dinner at any of the concourse restaurants. It was almost 7 P.M. when they were finally told that they were about to board. It would be a six hour flight, and would be around 9 A.M London time when arrived at Heathrow Airport. This meant that Sunday was going to be a long, long day, and they needed to sleep as much as possible on the trans-Atlantic flight. Drew wanted to see the sights as they flew, but they were quickly over the dark ocean and there was nothing to see.

  Lois was seated next to Mrs. Parker, so they talked long into the evening after everyone had eaten, and then settled in for a nap. And a short nap it would be, as they were flying east, and crossing many time zones. The morning of the new day would break very quickly.

  Travis woke when Drew asked him if he wanted breakfast. He opened his eyes to see the breakfast cart beside him.

  “Just coffee for me, and a cup of ice.” He held his cup as the stewardess poured it full of steaming coffee. He silently stirred in the cream and sugar, as Drew ate a full breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice. He looked at his watch. It was actually about 2 A.M., Alabama time, but he knew by the rising sun, that it was probably about 7 A.M. where they were, about an hour from London. Having dissolved the cream and sugar, Travis added the ice to cool it off. Drew watched him with interest.

  “Why do you do that, Dad?”

  “Why do I do what?”

  “Why do you fix up your coffee, then cool it off with ice? I have noticed you doing that all my life, but I never knew why. You don’t like it hot?”

  “I can’t drink it hot. I thought you knew the reason why. I thought my whole family knew why. Your mother never told you?”

  “No one ever told me why.”

  “I guess I just assumed that everyone knew. The reason is that I only have about half the intestines that everyone else have, so I can’t drink any hot beverage.”

  Drew waited, thinking he would continue the explanation, but it didn’t come, so he asked. “What happened to your intestines, or were you born that way?”

  Travis thought it was incredible that Janice had not told them about his reason for not drinking hot beverages, so he explained. “When I was in Vietnam, I was wounded five times.”

  “Yeah, I saw your five Purple Hearts, and all those other medals.”

  “Well, the last time I was wounded, I almost didn’t make it. My intestines were blown all over the place. The field surgeons did well to save what they did. As a result, I can’t drink hot beverages. I know that’s giving you a short answer, but you probably don’t want to hear the details.”

  Or he doesn’t want to give the details, Drew thought. “Actually Dad, I’d love to hear the details!”

  “Believe me, you don’t want to hear them while you’re eating breakfast.”

  “Probably not, but later maybe. Why don’t you put all those medals in a frame, and hang them on the wall?”

  “The sock drawer is good enough. I know where they are, in case anyone wants to see them. Each one represents things that I would rather forget.”

  Drew suspected that there were old demons lurking below the surface, so he changed the subject.

  “So this is Sunday morning already?”

  “Yeah, we lost some sleep coming over here, but we’ll gain it back when we return, next Sunday.”

  “When is your first book signing?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m supposed to call the Jester Books representative tonight, after I get to the hotel. I hope they will give me enough time off to enjoy this trip. I’ve never been to England before either.”

  “Where will you be doing your book signings?”

  “At large book stores, like Books-a-Million, or Barns & Noble’s, only it will be British book stores. I have a letter here from Jester that tells.” He took a folded paper from his shirt pocket and read from it. “Ever heard of Borders, Blackwell’s or Waterstone’s?”

  “I have heard of Borders, but not the other two.”

  “According to this letter, from the Jester promotions department, I will do signings at three Borders locations, one in London, one in Manchester, and one in Dover. I’ll also do a Waterstone’s, and Blackwell’s, both in London. These have no dates, but I assume they will coincide with the days that we will be visiting those places.”

  “So, how famous will you be in England, because of this book?”

  “I won’t be famous at all. Hardly anyone keeps up with this sort of thing.”

  “But you said it was up to #3 on the English Bestsellers List.”


  “That doesn’t mean anything. That was two weeks ago. I’ve probably dropped completely off the list by now. I just want to help boost my book’s popularity, so that I can get a good contract on my next book.”

  As Travis was finishing his cup of coffee, Fred Cunningham came doddering down the aisle with a newspaper under his arm.

  “How are you making it Travis?”

  “Doing good, Fred. I slept a couple of hours. Maybe that will help.”

  “Yes, we’ve got a long day ahead of us. What about you, Drew? Did you get any sleep?”

  “Not a bit. I’m too excited!”

  “Well, you’re young. You can get by with less sleep. Try not to think about the fact that it’s like, 3 A.M. back at home! Oh, by the way, Travis, the reason I came to see you. Did you see the London Times?”

  “I looked at the headlines, not much more.”

  “So you didn’t get back to the business section? Here, check this out. I’m getting dizzy, so I’m going back to my seat. And congratulations!” He handed Travis a section of the London Times, and returned to his seat.

  “Congratulations for what?” Travis asked, and Fred just smiled at him. Travis put down his coffee cup and opened the paper. He saw nothing unusual, until he opened to page 5, and there was a picture of him!

  “That’s the photo out of the back of my book!”

  “What does the paragraph under the photo say?”

  “It says: ‘The #1 best-selling author in The Isles this week is actually an American. Travis Lee’s Horror/Thriller, ‘The Relic’ (published by Jester Books) ascended to the top spot this week, and seems destined to stay there awhile, amid rumors that Lee will be personally autographing his book at five of England’s largest Booksellers. His appearances will be:

  (1)Monday, 2 P.M. at the Borders Store at Piccadilly Circus.

  (2)Tuesday, 12 Noon, at the Borders Store in Manchester.

  (3)Thursday, 10 A.M. at Waterstone’s Booksellers, SE Trafalgar Square.