Murder at the Foul Line (25 page)

Then when I was lying on the king-sized bed in the Marriott swallowing those pills, it hit me how there was no way Kyle was
ever going to pitch another fit over the Visa bill or the other million things he blamed me for, like his whole entire life,
which I used to be dumb enough to think was my fault. And then it hit me how it was Mawmaw that was gonna get stuck with that
huge Visa bill. And how it was Jarrad that was gonna get stuck with his friends saying his mama had murdered his daddy, which
is worse than what I had to put up with in school because of my name and that was bad enough, calling me Toilet Paper and
“Please don’t touch the Charmain.” Plus jokes about my parents being trash and roadkill. Trying to
write a letter for Jarrad to read when he was old enough was the last thing I remember.

My lawyer said a suicide attempt didn’t look good for me in some ways, and did look good in others. The way it did look good
was it showed I wasn’t in my right mind and was full of remorse and confusion and maybe had acted “on impulse” and wasn’t
trying to get away with something. The way it didn’t look good was I’d left a note for Mawmaw asking her to apologize to Mr.
and Mrs. Markell for me and say I hoped they could forgive me for killing their son but not saying anything about how shooting
Kyle was a accident, or self-defense, or spur-of-the-moment, or too much to drink, or some other reason why it wouldn’t be
Murder One. Plus setting fire to Kyle with kerosene—my lawyer said that had the look of a cover-up.

I guess it was a cover-up, just not enough of one. But it’s true, I couldn’t stand the idea of Mawmaw and Jarrad (when he
was old enough) thinking I killed anybody, much less my husband, and I guess that’s why I tried to get rid of his body. I
figured if Kyle was just gone and everybody thought he’d run off to Hawaii or something, then Mawmaw wouldn’t get her life
ruined and Jarrad would have, I don’t know, a chance, I guess. When I tried to explain my reason to Mawmaw in the hospital,
she said my Mama and Daddy hadn’t had half a brain between them but she had used to think I did have some brains. But I’d
handed them over to Kyle to wipe his feet on. She said there
wasn’t
no reason for acting the way I had, and I had to accept I’d acted crazy and move on from there.

But I will swear this on a Bible. I
never
thought Mr. and Mrs. Markell would drop by our house that afternoon (which is something they never did, and Kyle sure never
told me he’d asked them to supper) and find Kyle only half burnt up. I figured
that brush pile would burn on through the weekend—nobody lives near us and besides Kyle liked to keep trash burning out back
so you couldn’t smell his marijuana. I’d figured by the time anybody showed up, I’d be gone to Heaven or probably Hell, considering,
and Jarrad would be at Mawmaw’s safe anc sound, and when Kyle wasn’t at Creekside Ford on Tuesday, because he had Monday off,
somebody would call the house, and then one of his coworkers would come over and think he was gone. I
never
figured Mr. and Mrs. Markell would be wandering through my kitchen by four o’clock on Sunday, and they’d see the smoke and
walk out to that brush pile. Because that is something parents should never have to see. Their son burning up in his backyard.
And I do apologize for that.

Another thing that didn’t look good for me was my brother Tanner and the fact that I’d borrowed Tanner’s gun three whole days
before I used it to shoot Kyle with. My lawyer called it “our elephant in the kitchen.” Before Tilden Snow got to be my lawyer,
I admitted in my statement that I took the gun out of Tanner’s refrigerator and brought it home with me. “That gun implies
premeditation, Charmain, which is why Goodenough’s going for first-degree homicide.” He (I mean Tilden Snow) couldn’t stop
trying to get me to say something that wasn’t true about that gun. “Charmain, go back to that time frame. I want you to let
me know when I say something that correlates to your motivation.” I swear that’s the way he talks; sometimes even the judge
looks at him like he’s nuts.

But when Mr. Snow says, “Okay, go back,” I say I’m not going anywhere. He doesn’t listen any more than Kyle did. “Maybe you
took the gun because you didn’t want your brother Tanner to get in trouble with it.”

I say, “No, I didn’t.”

“Maybe you took the gun because there’d been crime in the isolated rural area you lived in and you felt afraid to be in the
house with Kyle gone.”

I say, “All I
wanted
was to be in the house with Kyle gone.”

He jumps on this. “So maybe you felt afraid to be in the house
with
Kyle and wanted that gun for self-defense.”

I shake my head.

He sighs. “Maybe you weren’t even aware you took the gun.”

I say, “Now, Mr. Snow—”

“Tilden.”

“How could I not know I took it? That thing weighs a ton.”

He never did ask me to tell him why I
did
take the gun out of Tanner’s refrigerator. But he made that a rule from the very start. The day we met, he said, “Charmain,
don’t answer any questions I don’t ask you. Don’t tell me anything I don’t tell you I want to know. Do you understand?”

I shrug. “Sure.” And that was the end of honest communication. That’s what the marriage counselor I got for me and Kyle two
years ago said good relationships was based on. Honest communication. But that marriage counselor was a moron, plus started
hitting on me every time Kyle went to the toilet (which was pretty often and the reason why good money got sniffed straight
up his nose). All I hope is, that moron’s marriage-counseling business has already gone bust. It can’t be real good for business
when one of your patients shoots her husband in the head and sets fire to him. I told Mawmaw back when I quit the marriage
counselor, “That man didn’t respect me any more than Kyle did.”

That’s when she said the thing that was haunting me from right then till a year later when I pulled the trigger on Kyle. She
took my hands in hers that were like tree bark they were so rough, and none of the paraffin wax dips I give her could do a
thing for them. She said, “Charmain, you listen to me. Since I was eleven years old I been cleaning out other people’s toilets
and the only way I can stand it is, I get the respect of the folks I work for and if I don’t, I don’t work for them no more.
Listen to me, you got to
earn
respect. But when you do earn it, you make sure they give it to you. They can’t make you turn any which way they want to.
You got to learn that, honey. You’re my only hope that thirty-five years on my knees with a scrub brush wasn’t just a gob
of spit in a week of rain. You got to learn that.”

I said, “Mawmaw, I’m trying.”

She said, “I know, baby. You’re my hope. Because the Savior knows your brother Tanner is nothing but your daddy born again
to torment me.”

My lawyer felt about the same way about Tanner as Mawmaw. He said Tanner looked bad for us. First of all, he had a record
of crime and violence that Mr. Goodenough could use to show a bad family background or bad genes or whatever. Second of all,
Tanner had told the police he’d
advised
me to shoot Kyle and had said he’d be glad to shoot Kyle himself if I didn’t want to. After he blabbed this total lie at
the police station (and Tanner would always say any wild thing he could think of to get attention), for a little while the
police got the idea in their heads that Tanner
had
shot Kyle. They kept trying to get me to admit I was just pretending I was the one had killed Kyle, instead of my brother.
They accused me of lying to protect him because he had a record and I didn’t. The police chief came to the hospital after
my suicide attempt, questioning me about that.

I go, “I’m sorry. But I am not a liar. And I wouldn’t lie for my brother about something like this.”

The police chief, a nice man, with a little smile like life was one big joke, said, “Wouldn’t you lie to protect him, Mrs.
Markell? Isn’t that a Luby family trait? I remember when your brother shot ya’ll’s cousin Crawder Luby in the chest at point-blank
range following an argument over a girl in the parking lot of Lucille’s Steak House.”

I say, “Tanner was never charged with shooting Crawder.”

“That’s exactly right. Tanner drove Crawder to Piedmont Hospital and tossed him out in front of the emergency entrance. Now,
when we came to interview your cousin Crawder, he claimed he had no idea who’d shot him. That’s why we never could charge
Tanner with that crime because his cousin that he
shot
stood by him. So, yes, Charmain, I think you Lubys will lie to protect each other.”

“Well, I won’t,” I said.

Pretty soon they had to believe me because it turned out Tanner was off with Crawder the day I shot Kyle. They’d gone deep-sea
fishing off of Wrightsville Beach and had run out of gas and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. That’s why Tanner’d given
me his Mercury Cougar to keep till he came back. At least I thought it was his. Now I see he was hiding it out.

So then the police believed
I
shot Kyle and wanted to know why. Was it for money? Was there another man in my life? But by then Mawmaw had got Tilden Snow
III to represent me and every time I’d open my mouth he’d say, “Don’t answer that, Charmain.” Mawmaw got him because she knew
he and his daddy and grandpa were all lawyers, and they knew her from back when she was the White Tornado in their house.
He took my case on what he called pro bono.

According to my cousin Crawder, Tilden Snow III only did it because it was a good way for him to make his name as big as his
Daddy’s, since newspaper and TV people were crawling all over us at my trial. That was a little bit because they said I don’t
look like your regular-type killer, plus had been a Teen for Christ, even if some big snoots in town called my family white
trash, and Mrs. Markell didn’t think I was good enough to marry her son Kyle since he’d been a big basketball star in high
school and started out that way in college and scored eleven points at the NCAA tournament Sweet Sixteen game. He could of
kept on playing too if he hadn’t got caught using cocaine.

But the other thing was two people in Creekside besides me had murdered somebody this same year and it’s not that big a place.
So we were getting a reputation. A Mexican man used rat poison on his wife, which folks thought was a accident at first because
that part of town did have rats you couldn’t kill with a pitchfork unless you hit them with a sledgehammer first. But then
they found the rat poison in his wife’s Maalox. Then Lucas Beebee (who was crazy and everybody in town knew it) used a chain
saw on a Jehovah’s Witness and put her toes and ears in a flower arrangement on his mother’s dining room table. A friend of
the victim was there for the Beebee Easter buffet and recognized this woman’s earbobs in the ears and called the police. So
Kyle’s murder was number three in a year and instead of Creekside, North Carolina, which is our real name, they started calling
us “Homicide, U.S.A.” for a joke.

So Mr. Goodenough the D.A. said he was going to make an example out of me and he sure has tried. He’s been elected District
Attorney in Creekside for twenty years running and they say it’s mostly because of his name. I remember those campaign
billboards from when I was little:
HE’S GOODENOUGH FOR YOU
.

At my trial the D.A. said I had broke every vow I took in church when I promised to love and honor Kyle till death do us part.
He said I was a black mark on the holy name of “Wife.” Every chance he got he told the jury how Kyle had been a basketball
star and played for the ACC because around here that’s like saying you taught Jesus how to walk on water. He held up that
souvenir basketball Kyle had from the Sweet Sixteen game that I’d shot a hole in and he carried on about it almost like it
was worse I’d shot the damn basketball than shot Kyle in the head. That’s when I could see Dr. Rothmann on the jury start
to fidget in her seat like she wanted to tell the judge to make the D.A. stop talking so much about how this was the very
same basketball that Kyle had shot that three-pointer with, with two seconds left in overtime. Dr. Rothmann even rolled her
eyes at the ceiling when the D.A. said how I’d cut short a promising young man’s great career in pro basketball when even
the newspapers knew it was drugs cut short Kyle’s career when he had to drop out of college his sophomore year and no pro
basketball team had given him the time of day since. He couldn’t even have held on to his job at Creekside Ford if his uncle
hadn’t owned it.

Now, my brother Tanner is so dumb he figured it would look better for me if he told the police he gave me the gun to take
home because Kyle hit me all the time and I was scared of him. The truth is, I don’t believe Tanner even knew I took his pistol
out of his refrigerator that day.

And Kyle didn’t hit me. Oh, he said he was going to hit me all the time, but he didn’t have the guts. His style was more stuff
like kicking my dog JuliaRoberts when I wasn’t looking.
Or pouring nail polish on my new winter coat and saying Jarrad did it when Jarrad was so little he couldn’t even walk yet.
Or making fun of me in front of his stupid buddies at Creek-side Ford. Or smacking Jarrad in the face when he was a tiny baby,
which is the one time I ever slapped anybody in my life, when I slapped Kyle as hard as I could except it mostly just got
his shoulder and he laughed at me.

So I couldn’t help Tilden Snow with his plan to use the “battered wife syndrome.” The only 911 ever got called from out house
was me getting the ambulance for Kyle when he sniffed too much cocaine and knocked over his trophy case and almost bled to
death from broken glass. Course if I’d let him die that time maybe me and Jarrad would be in Disney World right this minute,
staying at the Polynesian Resort.

I don’t mean to make it sound like I wanted a fancy life. And maybe this is what I would of tried to explain to Dr. Rothmann
if there’d been a way for her and me to talk. I could of took not having things, easy, no problem, if I’d had somebody that
loved me, even liked me. Because you can hit somebody without laying a hand on them, which is what Kyle kept doing to me.
That’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about what Mawmaw said about how I was her only hope and had to earn respect. So I told
Kyle he had to respect me more and not make me feel small. But he laughed at me and said, “Yeah, well, maybe I would if you
stuck a gun in my face.”