Before He Wakes (9 page)

When Morefield showed no sign of renewing their relationship after Barbara left the company, Susan began to suspect that he was still seeing her, and she knew that was the case when she saw them together two months later.

Susan had never met Barbara, and she was certain that Barbara didn’t know about her affair with Morefield. Wanting to size up her rival, she got a mutual friend of hers and Barbara’s to invite the two of them to lunch.

“Money, money, money,” that was all she talked about, Susan later recalled. “She was going to have a Mercedes, she was going to have a beach house, she was going to do this, she was going to do that. A gold-digger, that’s what I thought she was. She wanted what Daniel’s wife had, the big house, the fine cars. She didn’t care anything about him.”

If Larry was ever aware of the reason Barbara left her job, he never told his parents. The explanation that Barbara later offered was that she wanted to make more money and had decided that the way to do that was in real estate.

She began studying to get a real estate broker’s license, and she got it before Christmas. But not until January would she get a job, and then it would pay by commission only.

With Barbara out of work, the family budget had been stretched even tighter. But her spending had not abated. Their credit cards were at their limits and they were deeply in debt. Larry told his parents that the bank had tried to repossess his Datsun. Barbara was supposed to have made the payments, but she hadn’t done it and hadn’t told Larry about it, using the money for other purposes. He had to get an emergency loan from his company’s credit union to save the car, and it had embarrassed him.

Matters didn’t improve after Barbara went to work at Kay-Lou Realty in Archdale, a bedroom community south of High Point. Kay Pugh ran the agency, which she had founded with a partner. She later had bought her out, but recently she had sold half of the company to another real estate broker who had affiliated it with the Century 21 network. Six agents were already working out of the office, and Kay really had no need for another, but she had little say in the matter. Her new partner, Wayne Mabe, who owned another real estate agency in north High Point, not far from where Barbara once had lived, had hired her.

Kay liked Barbara and although they were not close, the two got along well, perhaps because in Kay Barbara had found someone to admire. Only in her twenties, Kay seemed to have everything. She was beautiful, ebullient and charming. She wore only the most expensive clothes. She lived in a big house with a swimming pool and a heart-shaped lake in the back yard. She alternately drove a flashy yellow Cadillac, a Datsun 280Z, a Ford Thunderbird. Men loved her and many pursued her. Years later, when Barbara would try her hand at writing a romance novel, she would turn herself into Kay as her heroine. But Barbara didn’t know that it all was a facade, that Kay, who had come from a poor fundamentalist religious family, had made a lot of money but had spent much more, and that her personal life was in great turmoil—turmoil that eventually would boil over into Barbara’s own life.

Kay was not nearly as impressed with Barbara. She told friends that Barbara was “strange,” and that she didn’t seem to have what it took to be successful in real estate. Barbara came to the office regularly but rarely stayed for longer than half a day, sometimes only a few hours. She didn’t get many phone calls and developed few prospects. Her first month at work passed without her making a single sale—or getting a paycheck.

Other agents thought that Barbara was quiet and withdrawn, perhaps not outgoing or confident enough for sales. She spoke of being close to closing with some clients, but something always happened to subvert the sale. Sometimes she sat on a reception room sofa reading and not saying anything to anybody.

Another new agent, Carlton Stanford*, was best at bringing out Barbara, telling jokes, laughing, teasing in suggestive ways. “Carlton was just terrible about the way he cut up with Barbara,” an older female agent later would say. A pudgy, gregarious man, four years older than Barbara, Stanford liked to smoke marijuana and snort cocaine, although nobody at the agency later would admit to being aware of it, and within two years he would go to prison for a year for selling a small amount of cocaine. Barbara, who neither smoked nor drank and was now regularly attending services at a Quaker church, began going out with Stanford to make appraisals on houses. Sometimes she spoke to the other agents of showing houses at night, which most agents didn’t do. Her sales record, however, did not improve. A second month passed with no paycheck.

Early in March, Barbara joined others from Kay-Lou at a Saturday real estate convention at a hotel in Charlotte. It was only a one-day meeting and she would not be away overnight. Carlton Stanford also attended the seminar, which conflicted with a crucial Atlantic Coast Conference college basketball game that he wanted to see. He decided to skip some of the real estate sessions in favor of the game and rented a room so that he could watch it in comfort. He asked Barbara if she wanted to join him, and she accepted.

Settled on the bed in front of the TV, Stanford lighted a joint and offered it to Barbara. He was surprised when she accepted and took a drag. After they had finished, he was surprised again when Barbara began kissing him. Soon, Stanford later recalled, they were out of their clothes, but just as they were beginning intercourse, Barbara mentioned that she had just finished her period. “It just completely turned me off,” Stanford said years later. He lost his erection and couldn’t get it back even after lengthy oral stimulation. That, he claimed, was the end of his “one and only” sexual encounter with Barbara.

Later, he wouldn’t be able to recall who won the game. Or even who was playing.

Barbara didn’t talk much about her new job on Sunday visits with her in-laws, but on one visit, out of the blue, she hinted to Doris with an aura of mystery that strange things were going on in the upstairs rooms at the real estate agency, things she couldn’t talk about. Why did she bring it up? Doris wondered. Was something actually going on? Or was it happening only in Barbara’s mind? If Larry knew anything about it, he never mentioned it, and Doris was reluctant to bring it up with him. Was Barbara becoming unstable again?

It certainly seemed so. Barbara had never had much to say to Barbara Landrum, who was the receptionist at Kay-Lou and Kay’s sister. But one day soon after the seminar in Charlotte, Barbara was sitting on the reception sofa and began chatting. She wound up telling about coming home from a Tupperware party recently and finding her husband in bed with another woman. Since then, she said, she had been sleeping on the couch.

Barbara Landrum couldn’t understand why she was being told this. It was the kind of thing confided to a close friend, not to somebody with whom you’d never really had a conversation. She mentioned it to her sister. More of Barbara’s strangeness, Kay thought.

Not long after this, Kay told a friend that she was concerned about Barbara. She had run up a lot of bills, she said, and was doing a lot of financial finagling to plug holes and keep her husband from finding out about it, borrowing to pay off loans, writing bad checks, shifting money from bank to bank to keep the checks from bouncing. She was afraid that Barbara was going to get into trouble, she said.

While Larry may not have been aware of all of Barbara’s financial shenanigans, he at least knew that their debt was overwhelming, and he confidentially told his father that he was worried about it when his parents dropped by for a visit on a Sunday afternoon in early March. On this same visit, Doris noticed another peculiar thing. Larry had posed with the boys for a new portrait at a photo studio. Barbara had made it the center of a grouping of family photos on the living room wall. There were other individual photos of Larry, Bryan and Jason, but not even one of Barbara. Doris couldn’t help but wonder why Barbara would leave herself out of the happy family circle.

As the Fords were leaving, Doris saw that Barbara had put her arm in Larry’s. She seemed to be more affectionate toward him lately, often touching him or holding his hand. Maybe going back to church had brought about a change, Doris thought. Maybe, after all, Larry was going to have the happy family life that he longed for and deserved.

From the time Barbara had gone to work at the real estate agency, Larry’s energies had been concentrated on getting ready for the strenuous tests he would have to pass to win his black belt in tae kwon do. He devoted many hours to it, and Toby Wagoner, a friend from the class who helped him get ready for the tests, knew how hard he worked. Larry had time for little else, Wagoner said later.

Larry won his black belt in mid-March after more than four years of effort, becoming the first black belt Lou Wagner had taught in High Point. His entire class was proud and happy for him. Larry was the most popular member of the class, always good-natured, even-tempered. He never used profanity and was always helpful and patient with those of lesser abilities and experience.

“Didn’t matter how hard he was working on his own techniques, he would stop and help anybody,” Toby Wagoner said.

“This was the nicest guy in the world,” said Lou Wagner. “He never had a problem with anybody. That fellow didn’t have a bad thought in his head or a mean bone in his body.”

Two female members of the class were impressed by Larry’s family orientation, his obvious love for his sons, whom he sometimes brought to class. One of them, Emily Cornelison, had a daughter whom she brought to class with her so that her daughter could take swimming lessons at the Y pool, and she and Larry frequently talked about their children. Larry almost never discussed his personal problems with class members, but after he got his black belt, he mentioned to Emily that things weren’t going so well at home, although he didn’t elaborate. Larry had indicated the same thing to another class member, Kathryn Pugh (no relation to Kay Pugh), when the two of them were helping to teach a beginner’s class.

Larry was talking with Toby Wagoner and Kathryn after class on March 14 when he mentioned that somebody had been following Barbara home from work at night and that she wanted him to buy her a pistol because she was frightened.

“Why don’t we corner the guy at the end of your road and have a little karate chat with him?” Toby suggested.

Larry laughed. “I’ll just buy her a gun.”

On Monday, March 20, 1978, Barnie Pierce, minister at Cedarcrest Friends Meeting, got a call from Barbara. He rarely heard from the Fords, who had been accepted for membership but had not yet taken the final step to join the congregation. He had visited briefly at their house a few times but didn’t really know them well. Neither Larry nor Barbara had ever come to talk with him about any problems.

Now Barbara was telling him that twice in recent days somebody had followed her home from work at night, frightening her. She wanted to buy a pistol for protection, and she needed somebody to be a character reference so that she could get a permit. Would he sign? She would be happy to come and get him and drive him to Asheboro. It would only take an hour or so.

Pierce said that would be all right, and he would go with her.

The following morning, Barbara arrived at work and told Carlton Stanford that she needed a favor. She wanted him to go with her to buy a pistol to carry in her purse. She had told him more than a week earlier about people following her home.

“You have to get a permit,” he told her.

“I’ve already got it,” she said, showing it to him. He noticed that a minister had signed as a character witness.

Barbara said that she didn’t know anything about guns, and she needed his guidance.

That afternoon they went to Hunter’s Haven, a small gun shop just down the street from the real estate office. Carlton suggested that Barbara get a .25. It would be small enough for her to carry and handle yet powerful enough to offer an effective defense. Together they picked out a blue Sterling Arms .25 semiautomatic. It was a decent weapon, Stanford told her, not a piece of junk like the cheap Saturday-night-special .22s that were so common. Barbara also bought a box of shells.

After they left the shop, she asked Carlton for another favor. Would he show her how to use it?

He agreed, and they drove to the house of a friend of his in an isolated area of Randolph County, where he showed her how to load and handle the weapon. Both fired it several times.

As Stanford was demonstrating how to unload the pistol, he later said, he showed Barbara what he considered to be the number one cause of accidents with semiautomatics. People would sometimes remove the magazine without realizing that a shell would be left in the chamber. He showed her how to operate the slide and eject the cartridge that remained, then presented her with her newest possession.

“Be careful with it,” he said.

Larry showed up at the YWCA at seven-thirty as usual that night. He seemed to be in good spirits, and as always, he took time to help others with their workouts. During a break he told Emily Cornelison that he and his family were planning to go to the beach for the weekend, and he hoped that would help things at home.

Afterward, Larry sparred with Lou Wagner. Everybody who worked out with Larry was cautious about kicking him high because he wore braces on his teeth. As the two sparred, Larry took a kick high in the ribs, slowing him for a moment.

“You caught me a good one,” he told Wagner.

Both were winded when the class ended at nine-thirty.

Some of the class members always went out to eat after their workout. Larry rarely went with them, but they always invited him anyway. When they asked this night, he declined as usual. Two class members later would remember him saying that he had to go by his parents’ house, but he didn’t do that. He said good night, waved to his fellow class members and headed for his car wearing scruffy tennis shoes and his
gi
, the loose-fitting white uniform that he now tied at the waist with a black cloth belt.