Before He Wakes (16 page)

By the time Barbara returned to work after Christmas, not only had she still not repaid the salary advance, but her house payment check had been returned once again for insufficient funds.

Confronted once more, Barbara said that she would take care of it.

But the next day, December 28, she called to say that she would not be able to come in because she had to undergo a D&C (dilatation and curettage of the uterus) and minor breast surgery at Durham County Hospital. She called shortly after noon to say that the surgery had gone fine and she was at home resting. She would not be returning to work until after New Year’s Day.

Suspicious, her supervisor called her doctor and the hospital. The doctor said he knew nothing about any surgery scheduled for Barbara, and the hospital reported that Barbara had not been admitted and was not scheduled to be. Concerned, the supervisor audited Barbara’s cash drawer and found two $100 bills missing.

When Barbara reported to work, she was summoned to a meeting with her supervisor and branch manager. Confronted with her lies, she had no explanation. The unpaid salary advance, she said, had been slipping her mind. A problem with an insurance check that was supposed to be deposited in her bank account had caused her house payment check to be returned, but that had now been worked out, she assured them. She couldn’t understand how her drawer could be short $200 and asked for a chance to find it.

Barbara had run out of excuses as far as her bosses were concerned. If she paid back the advance, made good on the bad check and shortage, she would be allowed to resign, and no further action would be taken. Barbara agreed to the terms, and while her supervisor checked with her bank to see if her balance was adequate to cover the bad check and the new check that she wanted to write for the salary advance, she was allowed to search her records and cash drawer for the missing $200. Unable to find it, she was given one more day to come up with it and turn in her equipment and uniforms.

The next day, Barbara called to say that her son Jason had found the $200 in an envelope with some other papers in the trunk of her car. She would return it after a job interview that she had scheduled in Raleigh. Later, she called to say that she had been delayed in Raleigh and would be there as soon as she could make it. She arrived shortly before four o’clock and turned over her uniforms, office key and a Security Savings envelope containing two $100 bills.

Her supervisor was not surprised when, a week later, a check that Barbara had written to cash for $170 and cashed from her own drawer on her last day at work was returned for insufficient funds.

Later that year, Barbara’s sister-in-law would tell a member of Larry Ford’s family that Barbara’s whole family had been concerned about her during this period. Barbara nearly had a nervous breakdown right after Christmas, Mary Terry said, and she had been making a lot of unexplained trips back to High Point. They figured that Barbara was still grieving over Larry’s death and probably was going back to visit his grave, which by then bore a tombstone Barbara had ordered saying, “
WE WILL MEET AGAIN
.”

Barbara, meanwhile, was careful not to let Russ know about any of these troubles. She clearly was intent on marrying him, and the only thing keeping her from it was Russ’s upcoming divorce.

Russ’s mother, though, was concerned about the impending marriage. She thought Barbara was pushing Russ into it too quickly, that he hadn’t really had time enough with Barbara to make sure she was the right choice.

Doris had first heard of Barbara the previous fall when Russ stopped by Vickers Electronics, where Doris then worked for her brother-in-law, Wesley Vickers, who was married to her sister Erma, Russ’s favorite aunt. Russ started talking about this neighbor he had been taking out. She had two children, and he wasn’t sure whether he should keep seeing her.

“If you have to ask somebody, don’t,” said Aunt Erma, who never was hesitant to speak her mind.

Soon afterward, Russ brought Barbara to his parents’ house for Sunday dinner. Barbara’s younger son, Jason, came with them. Jason was four and Doris was struck by how cute he was in his little suit and bow tie. Barbara seemed shy and didn’t say much.

It was only a few weeks later that Russ came by the house alone and asked his mother, “How do you feel about a ready-made family?” Doris was a little taken aback. She knew how much Russ loved children and how much he wanted his own, and she realized how much he must care for Barbara to be considering this step. She hadn’t expected Russ to become so serious so soon, but he had dated Jo Lynn for six years before their marriage and that hadn’t worked out. She and Al had known each other for only two months before their marriage, and it had been lasting and happy.

“Russ, if this is what you want, it’s all right with me,” she told him.

What he liked most about Barbara, Russ emphasized to his mother, was that she was a good Christian, and that was the primary quality he was looking for in a wife. Doris had strong views about religion, and she didn’t mind letting anybody know about them. She wasn’t hesitant to ask others about their religious convictions either, particularly if they were going to matter to a member of her family. One day only weeks before Barbara and Russ were scheduled to be married, Doris called Barbara and asked if she would stop by the house and help her empty a rug cleaner because Al wasn’t at home and she couldn’t handle it herself. Doris waited until Barbara was about to leave to get to the real point of asking her over.

“Barbara,” she said, “are you a Christian?”

For a moment, Barbara looked at her, saying nothing, then glanced away.

“Usually,” Doris recalled years later, “if you ask someone that who’s not a Christian, they’ll hem and haw about it. When I asked her, she hemmed and she hawed. She said, ‘I have been to church all my life.’ I looked her straight in the eye. I said, ‘That is not what I mean, Barbara.’ She looked down, sort of rubbing her foot back and forth. She said, ‘I know what you mean. I just came back from a retreat at Ebenezer Baptist Church.’ She never said yes and she never said no.”

This only confirmed Doris’s suspicions. It worried her because she knew that Barbara had convinced Russ of her devout Christianity, and if she was deceiving him about that, what else might she deceive him about? But Russ was firmly committed to marrying Barbara, she knew, and nothing she could do would change that. A prospective mother-in-law had to be careful about what she said for the sake of future tranquility, and she never brought it up to Russ.

Russ and Barbara were married in the large Parlour Room at Grey Stone Baptist Church on March 17, 1979, only a few days after his divorce was effective and just five days before the first anniversary of Larry’s death. Barbara wore a pale blue floor-length dress. Joe Wolfe, one of Russ’s buddies on the men’s softball team at the church, was best man. Malbert Smith, Russ’s longtime pastor, presided. The ceremony was held at a portable altar placed before the fireplace. Bryan and Jason stood with Barbara’s parents at their mother’s side. Marva provided a silver punch bowl for the reception that followed, and Aunt Erma remarked that if she were so accustomed to such elegance, she should at least have known to have it polished. After the reception, Russ and Barbara drove straight to a room at the Ramada Inn on I-85 where he had worked as a lifeguard while he was in high school. Later that afternoon, they flew to Florida for a weeklong honeymoon, leaving Barbara’s sons with her parents. “Are you really going to see Mickey Mouse?” Jason asked as his mother departed.

After the honeymoon, Barbara and the boys moved into Russ’s house, and she put her house on the market. She also took another job, the first since her dismissal from the bank. She became a secretary at Harris Inc., a beer distributing company. She would keep the job for fewer than six months, however. Later, her boss wouldn’t be able to recall why she left, but on future job applications she claimed that she resigned to spend more time with her children.

Barbara had not told Russ anything about the problems that Larry’s death had brought her, except to say that her in-laws had kept her from getting some insurance payments promptly. He knew only that Larry had accidentally shot himself and was unaware that Barbara had been suspected of murder. He knew nothing of what had been happening in Randolph County.

Barbara, however, had been keeping in close touch with the situation. And when she learned upon returning from her honeymoon that Sheriff Mason, prodded to do something by the insurance company, had publicly announced that the investigation of Larry’s death was at an end, she was quick to act. She collected copies of news reports about Mason’s decision and sent them to Equitable Insurance on April 2, along with a letter requesting payment of the double indemnity clause in Larry’s policy.

“I feel, due to the enclosures, that there should be no further delay in Equitable making payment,” she wrote. “Since the case has been closed as accidental, there should be no further investigation. After all, it’s been well over a year. I would appreciate it if the check could be sent immediately. Please advise.”

The insurance company already had heard about the sheriff’s announcement, and a company representative, Albert Finney, called Mason on April 3, before receiving Barbara’s request.

“He advised no new evidence had been found,” Finney wrote in a report of his conversation with the sheriff. “The death has been ruled accidental. In his judgment, the case was closed and [he] did not think anything would turn up in the future.”

The company saw no option but to pay off the policy, and on April 27 it mailed a check to Barbara for $27,791.61, including interest. All told, Barbara received $119,020.63 in insurance payments from Larry’s death. She also was receiving more than $800 monthly in Social Security payments from Larry’s account for the support of Bryan and Jason, payments that would rise over the years to more than $1,400.

As soon as Russ and Barbara returned from their honeymoon, Bryan and Jason began calling Doris and Al Meemaw and Papaw. It was clear that they had been instructed to do so. Doris had never heard the boys mention their paternal grandparents, and that concerned her. She pulled Barbara aside to talk about it.

“We don’t want to take the place of their other grandparents,” she said.

“They don’t care anything about those boys,” Barbara said.

“Any time the Fords came up,” Doris later recalled, “she would talk about them like a dog.”

In truth the Fords were longing to see their grandchildren and had made numerous attempts to reach them by telephone. Each time they had been told by Marva that the boys and Barbara were not available. The Fords hadn’t given up. Doris had written a series of letters to Barbara and the boys and had sent all of them gifts at Christmas. But she wondered if Barbara had even let the boys have their presents, and early in the new year, she had written again to ask if the gifts had been received. Barbara finally had sent a letter of thanks that offered a bit of welcome news about the boys, but she had failed to mention that she was getting married again and that Bryan and Jason were about to have a new set of grandparents.

Russ knew how much his mother and father wanted to be grandparents for real, and only a couple of weeks after the honeymoon, as he and Barbara were having Sunday dinner with his family after church, Barbara shyly mentioned that she was pregnant. Russ was beaming happily.

Aunt Erma was there, as she often was, and she didn’t hesitate to speak up. “There is no way you would be able to tell that this soon,” she said.

Aunt Erma held old-fashioned ideas about morals and couldn’t imagine her nephew sleeping with somebody before marriage. She was looking Barbara straight in the eye.

Barbara glanced away, saying nothing.

“Oh, she got one of those tests at the drugstore,” Russ jumped in to say.

Not long afterward, Russ told his mother that Barbara had miscarried, but Doris couldn’t help but wonder whether she actually had been pregnant.

In Russ, Barbara had found somebody who was almost her equal as a spender, and combined with the insurance money she had received, this only exacerbated her compulsion and sent her into an even more reckless spree.

Soon after their wedding, Russ and Barbara decided to buy a new house. His house held too many memories of Jo Lynn and his failed relationship with Sybil. A new house would be appropriate for the new life he and Barbara would build together, and they began spending much of their free time searching for the right one.

By May, they had found it. The two-story brick and frame house was set amid pines, oaks and maples at 5514 Falkirk Drive in a subdivision called Heather Glen. It had three bedrooms, three baths, a huge living room and a study. The master bedroom was enormous, with a spacious sitting area. The house wasn’t exactly what they wanted, but that could be fixed with remodeling. They paid $84,500 for it and moved in after Russ sold his house in June.

In July, Barbara received $9,115.78 from the final settlement of Larry’s estate, and she and Russ began remodeling their new home. They enclosed the garage, making it into a recreation room with a pool table and a fireplace. The carpet in the house was perfectly good, Doris noted, but not good enough for Barbara. She had it pulled out and more expensive carpet put down. Doris and Al took the old carpet for their cabin at the lake. Russ had beautiful living room furniture, but he and Jo Lynn had bought it, and that, especially, had to go. To please Russ—who, like his family, loved Williamsburg and often visited there—Barbara was planning a subdued, traditional decor, although her own tastes were more modern. Doris and Al took the cast-out furniture for their family room, paying them for it, although they knew that the money they gave them would be only a fraction of the cost of the new furniture Barbara was buying. Later, Doris and Al also would end up with Russ’s and Barbara’s twenty-one-inch TV, after a big-screen television with a videocassette recorder was installed in the new recreation room. VCRs were not widely available then and few people could afford them. Soon Russ and Barbara had added a room with weight-lifting equipment at the back of the house.