Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (10 page)

T
he thing about Quinton and David is that they were so over-the-top competitive,” says Tammey. “They were always trying to one-up each other. They were good friends, but at the same time they were rivals, and David always had to be the top dog. David had to be the center of attention, and anything Quinton did, David had to do it better. Quinton laid a stone patio in our yard, and David extended his own patio with brick. David always had to have a better fish story. It was just who he was, and he had to be in control.”

Throughout the two years they’d been friends, David had continually tried to show Quinton up at work, David insisting that the coaching ideas were his. When in the fall of 1998 Quinton began flirting with a young teacher named Heather Scott, David was drawn to the same woman. Would he have been interested in Heather anyway? Perhaps. But certainly, his best friend’s interest in her didn’t dissuade him.

Heather had grown up in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her mother, Sandy, did office work, and her father was a Vietnam vet. After they divorced, Sandy married again, this time to Jeff Munson. When Heather was in the eighth grade, he moved the family to Franklin, Texas, a one-stoplight town of about 1,500.

It would later seem ironic that Heather and Belinda had so much in common. They were both twins with small-town roots. Like Belinda and Brenda, Heather and her sister, Shannon, were best friends. “They were both happy little girls. They’re identical but they don’t look alike,” says Sandy, their mother. “But they’re close. They always have been.” As girls, Belinda and Heather were both popular cheerleaders in their schools.

Although she’d once wanted to be a flight attendant, Heather majored in English and secondary education at Texas A&M University. Like Belinda, Heather had a boyfriend on the football team. After graduation, she signed on as an eighth-grade English teacher in Hearne, a small town not far from the university. In fall 1998, when she garnered Quinton’s attention, Heather had been in Houston one year. She’d arrived the fall before, following a high-school friend, Tara Hall, who taught in an Alief elementary school. Houston must have looked like a good place for a new beginning.

Although not beautiful, and with an angular face, Heather was attractive, with shoulder-length, curly blond hair, and a wide, white smile. At the time she moved into Hall’s Perthshire-Street town house, Heather had only recently ended a long-term relationship. At first, she appeared to devote her time to putting the past behind her. “She was kind of quiet, and she didn’t date for a long time,” says Tara, with dark, chin-length hair and a matter-of-fact manner. “Heather wasn’t like that. She didn’t go from man to man.”

Instead, Heather developed a close-knit group of girlfriends in Houston, mainly other teachers at Hastings. She was well thought of at the school, considered friendly and smart, and her sister and nieces came into Houston often to visit. For that first year in the city, when Heather went out, it was most often with Tara or her other girlfriends, to happy hours for drinks or out to dinner. During the quiet times, when Tara and Heather discussed their hopes for the future, Heather talked about wanting to have a family, and Tara always assumed her friend would have children. Sandy thought her daughter would as well, saying, “Heather always loved kids.”

One of the things her fellow teachers noticed about Heather Scott was that she dressed impeccably. Like David, she was meticulous about the way she looked. “Heather got dressed up to go to Target on the weekends,” says Tara. “It didn’t matter what she was doing. Everything she wore had to match.”

After a brief time living together, Tara noticed something else about her roommate; Heather didn’t take criticism well. Thin-skinned, she became defensive and angry at even the hint of disapproval. Tara thought that Heather didn’t have a lot of self-esteem and decided that if they were to remain friends, she couldn’t criticize her. “Heather worked hard and tried hard at everything she did, and it bothered her if anyone thought badly of her,” says Tara. “She was that way to the extreme.”

In the beginning, although they were both young and attractive, there was little exciting going on in Tara and Heather’s two-story town house. In fact, Tara describes living with Heather as quiet. Then, once the ninth-grade center opened, the situation changed. A smaller school with fewer faculty members, its teachers quickly bonded into a tight-knit group. The one Tara first heard Heather talk about was Quinton Harlan.

“Heather mentioned Quinton often,” Tara says. “I didn’t think it was anything serious, but his name started coming up. I’m not sure when I found out that he was married, but I did, and I knew they were flirting.”

A few times, Quinton stopped at their town house, sitting in the living room, talking to Tara and Heather. At school, Quinton popped into Heather’s room off and on during the day, to carry on the flirtation. Tara liked Quinton. He was fun to talk to, and he and Heather openly flirted. When Tara looked at Quinton, she wasn’t surprised; he fit the mold of Heather’s boyfriends in the past: tall, lean, and athletic.

Quinton and Heather interacted most often in the confines of the school, in the hallways, visiting each other’s classrooms. But then Heather branched out, spending more time off-campus with a group of the teachers. Why not? She was single, free to see whomever she wished. The gatherings were centered on Thursday-afternoon happy hours. Up to a dozen faculty and staff members splintered off after work. At times Tara met Heather, and they went to Pappasito’s, a Mexican restaurant with a bar and televisions, a pub called Sherlock’s, a microbrewery, and a sports bar, arriving after classes at four or five. Most were on the way home by six or seven.

“I wasn’t too sure what was happening between Quinton and Heather, but she started going out more,” says Tara. The weeks passed and the situation became even more complicated. “All of a sudden, Heather started mentioning Quinton’s friend, David. And then I met David Temple when he showed up at a happy hour.”

Later, Quinton would say that he started mentioning Heather to David. “He knew that I was interested in her,” he said, remarking that he and Tammey were going through a rough patch. “I guess you could say that it wasn’t a good time in our marriage.” The conversations came up casually, as the two men sat together in their office in the field house, adjacent to the football stadium. Since they shared a conference period, the two coaches spent time together, much of it talking. Looking back, Quinton would say that Heather’s name came up often.

Early in their friendship, Belinda had confided in Tammey that Quinton’s relationship with David might prove unhealthy for the Harlans’ marriage. At the time, Tammey wasn’t worried, trusting Quinton. But as Belinda had predicted, Quinton’s friendship with David, with the constant pressure to go out to bars and to rein in Tammey, took a toll. Tammey, who’d been with Quinton since high school, feared they were in dire trouble. “My marriage had started looking like the Temples,” she confides, explaining that the pressure was so overwhelming she believed she had no option other than to pull away from both the Temples, including Belinda. Just being with them, Tammey said, made her feel as if she and Quinton were being pulled into chaos. “I had to, to try to save my own marriage,” Tammey says. “I had to try.”

While Tammey sensed that all wasn’t well in her union, Belinda was still in a brief respite after the summer’s tense silence. Early that fall, Belinda, five months pregnant, looked happy, rejoicing in the prospect of a baby daughter. In late September, she walked through the high-school gym, where a group of girls played basketball. Despite her blossoming baby bump, Belinda grabbed the ball and dribbled it between her legs, then passed it over her head to the girl standing behind her.

“Gee, Mrs. Temple, you’re good,” one girl said.

“After the baby’s born, we’ll play some one-on-one,” Belinda promised with a laugh. That afternoon, she left the gym floor looking flushed and content.

Perhaps, at first, ignorance was a blessing.

Meanwhile, Tammey heard about Heather from the other coaches’ wives. If any of them knew about Quinton’s interest in Heather, the wives didn’t mention it. Instead, they talked about Heather as a threat, describing her as a groupie, hanging around the coaches. “They called her the ‘Barbie bitch,’” Tammey says. “They said she had a thing for football coaches. At first, I wasn’t worried about Quinton.”

Looking back, Tara would recall David first showing up at a Hastings happy hour sometime in September. That night, he was gregarious, acting the part of the congenial host, buying drinks and gabbing with his coworkers about school, sometimes complaining loudly about a seminar or in-service training he’d had to attend, calling them a waste of time. “At first, I didn’t see David zeroing in on Heather,” says Tara. “Then around Halloween, that changed.”

They were at Sherlock’s Pub, a trendy bar decorated with dark wood and hunter green walls, the night Tara noticed David’s attention focused on Heather. On weekends, bands play and the televisions scattered throughout are set on football games. During the week, the pub offers happy-hour drink specials. “I noticed David and Heather kind of pairing up,” says Tara. “I didn’t say anything to her about it, because she was guarded.”

Others noticed, too, as David and Heather sat together at a table or at the bar, talking quietly, off by themselves. On Thursday nights, David could easily stay out, simply by telling Belinda that he was at a junior varsity game watching the up-and-coming class of student football players and assessing their talents for the varsity team. In truth, Quinton was required to attend the junior games, but David rarely showed up. Instead, David sat with Heather, laughing, flirting, and buying her drinks, while Belinda waited at home with Evan.

The storm was building, and the respite in her troubled marriage would be brief for Belinda.

That fall, as Tammey pulled away from her, Belinda spent more time with a young teacher at Katy High, a basketball coach named Stacy Nissley. Stacy had a daughter at Tiger Land with Evan, and on Wednesday nights, as Belinda had once done with Tammey, she now met Stacy and a small group of other teachers at McDonald’s, where they ate burgers and watched their little ones on the gym equipment. It was on one such evening that Belinda confided in Stacy that all wasn’t well. David was rarely home. “I think we’re going through another rough patch,” Belinda said. “But I think we’ll get through it.”

As they talked, Belinda confided that David no longer appeared excited about the baby. At first he’d seemed delighted about the prospect of a daughter, but now, Belinda admitted, she had doubts that David wanted the child at all. Others, including Quinton and Tammey, noticed the same thing that fall. Where in the beginning David had acted thrilled about the pregnancy, he now barely talked about Erin’s arrival, and when he did, he acted as if he didn’t really want a baby girl.

Since they were only seen together at school, the other teachers at Hastings didn’t realize what was transpiring between Quinton and Heather. Faculty members were, on the other hand, gossiping about Heather and David and what others had noticed at those Thursday-night happy hours. “Everyone was talking about it,” says one coworker. “We all knew something was up.”

One of the other coaches’ wives had her interest piqued when she saw David on a Friday night, after a game. At nearly 11
P.M
., when the other coaches left for home, David stood outside the stadium, dressed and groomed, looking ready to go out partying. Later, it became evident that was exactly what he had in mind, and it wasn’t with Belinda.

Perhaps she never understood what was behind her husband’s actions that fall, why David abruptly decided he didn’t want her mixing with the other coaches’ wives. In the past she’d gone out to dinner with them before the football games and cheered with them in the stadium. Suddenly, that fall, that was no longer allowed. Belinda told Tammey that David ordered her to instead sit with his parents. Was it that David wanted to insulate Belinda from the gossip about him at Hastings that fall, as word spread throughout the faculty and he and Heather were a couple?

The other coaches’ wives wondered, but few asked Belinda why she and Evan no longer watched the games with them. Instead, some stopped to say hello to Belinda, gabbing with the Temples as well. At one of the games, the head coach’s wife, Kay Stuart, walked over to say hello to Belinda and ended up talking to David’s mother. That night, Maureen confided: “David was a challenge as a boy. We’re so thankful about how Belinda changed David.”

While the Temples were thankful for Belinda’s influence on David, Belinda still struggled, it would often appear, with trying to reconcile the vast differences in her husband: the loving, caring, attentive man who dropped to his knees on the fifty-yard line to propose marriage and the cold, often cruel man, who had turned her, in his presence, from her usual gregarious self into a shadow. Did he love her? Where was he on those nights when she waited for him at home?

“Does your brother come home on Friday nights after the games?” Belinda asked Cindi Thompson one day at school. Darren’s old girlfriend was a teacher at Katy High School, and Cindi’s brother was a football coach at another school. “Yes, he does,” Cindi said, explaining that her brother returned home shortly after the games ended.

“Belinda said that David had told her he was sleeping at the field house,” says Cindi.

Tara Hall began arriving home from being out with friends and finding David in their town house with Heather late on Friday nights. Sometimes they were curled up on the couch watching television with glasses of wine. Then, around Halloween, Tara came home and saw David’s truck on the street and Heather’s purse in the living room, but they weren’t downstairs. Instead David and Heather were upstairs together in her bedroom. After that, it happened often.

Years earlier at Stephen F. Austin, David had been generous first with Pam, then Belinda. Now gifts started showing up at the town house for Heather, flowers and perfume, often with little notes. “David treated her well. He was polite and kind to her,” says Tara. “I don’t think Heather had that in a long time from anyone. Lots of nights, they’d be upstairs when I got home, but by the next morning, David was gone.”