Barbara’s friends were unaware of any sexual comments at work, but they were well aware of her strong interest in sex. They had been surprised and bemused by her candor about it. She boasted about how much she liked it and laughingly said that she couldn’t get enough.
Russ’s close friends also knew that Russ and Barbara had a lusty relationship. When locker-room and golf-course talk turned to sex, Russ sometimes acknowledged that Barbara was quite a number. Almost more than he could handle, he laughingly admitted.
He even joked to his parents about it. One day when Barbara was complaining in their presence that she was tired, Russ grinned and said, “Yeah, she was tired all day yesterday, too—until she got into bed.”
While Russ seemed satisfied with his sex life, strain was beginning to show in other areas. He needed to make more money than he was paid as a coach and driver’s education teacher, and in June of 1981, he left the school system to take a job at Durham Sporting Goods. He didn’t last a week before deciding that he was no salesman. He acknowledged to himself that he was born to coach, poorly though it might pay in the public schools, and he went asking for his job back. Somebody else already had been given his position, but he was rehired and assigned back to Holton Junior High School, where he had begun his coaching career. This time he not only would coach football and baseball, but also would serve as the school’s director of athletics. This would hardly pay the mounting bills, though.
One reason for this was that Barbara decided to enter sales herself, even though she had done so miserably selling houses. That summer, Russ mentioned to Harry Welch her experience in real estate. Harry was always looking for good salespeople at the radio station. Russ said that he would send Barbara around to talk with him. She was only working part-time now as a secretary and not making very much money at it. Barbara came to talk to Harry soon afterward, and he hired her to sell commercials. She would draw $150 a week as an advance against commissions until she could get a clientele established. A good salesperson, Harry told her, could make a lot of money.
Barbara quit her job at Moore Business Forms the following day without giving proper notice, saying she’d found a full-time job. She didn’t even bother to say goodbye to the other secretary, who didn’t realize she’d quit until she asked what had happened to Barbara.
Barbara began her new job in late August bubbling with enthusiasm. She came to the station every morning and left with her sales materials, always expressing great confidence. She attended staff meetings religiously, often reporting that she was just about to land some big new account. But something always seemed to happen not only to keep the big accounts from signing, but the little ones as well.
A week passed. Then another. Then a month. And Barbara still hadn’t sold a single commercial. As the weeks wore on with the same results, Harry realized he had made a serious mistake. He couldn’t afford to keep paying Barbara $150 a week to produce nothing, but how was he going to handle this awkward situation without losing Russ’s and Barbara’s friendship?
Another aspect of Barbara’s pattern of deceit emerged that summer as well, when Doris, Al and Aunt Erma went to Russ’s and Barbara’s new beach cottage with them. They had bought a three-bedroom house on stilts just two streets back from the ocean at Long Beach—where Barbara’s parents also had a cottage—well away from the beach near the inland waterway. Barbara went to the beach in a bikini that Aunt Erma considered to be scandalous, so brief that it even embarrassed Al. The skimpy swimsuit also allowed Aunt Erma to notice a tiny scar on Barbara’s lower belly, and she asked her about it.
It was just from some minor surgery she’d had to have after Jason was born, Barbara explained.
“Doris, she’s had her tubes tied,” Erma said when the two of them were alone.
If that were so, had the pregnancy and miscarriage Barbara had announced soon after her marriage been real? Imaginary? Just a lie? Of course, Doris and Erma knew that tubes that had been tied sometimes could be untied, and perhaps that had been the case. Still, it was more reason to be wary of Barbara and anything she said.
That was why, when Barbara announced she was pregnant again, they were skeptical. They were also worried because Barbara seemed to be duping Russ, who was so easygoing and trusting.
Although he loved Bryan and Jason as if they were his own blood, he continued to want children of his own, and not long after Barbara went to work at the radio station, Russ excitedly announced that she was expecting again. Barbara talked about her pregnancy for several weeks and even discussed borrowing maternity clothes from Alissa Sommers. One day she came to her in-laws’ house wearing a maternity top, although, Doris noted, she showed no signs of needing one. When she said that she had begun craving squash cooked with onions, Doris obligingly fixed them for her.
If the baby was a boy, she told one friend, he would be Allison Russell Stager IV; if a girl, still Allison. This friend knew that Barbara had had her tubes tied after Jason’s birth, but Barbara had told her within a year after her marriage to Russ that she was planning to have surgery to allow her and Russ to have children, so she was not surprised when Barbara told her that she was pregnant again.
One Sunday morning in the Sunday School class that Bill Gordon taught, Barbara rose when the time came for special prayer requests. With tears welling, she emotionally spoke of how much this pregnancy meant to her and Russ, and asked the class members to pray that she would carry the baby to term.
Only a week later, Russ and Barbara came to church in a somber mood and informed their friends that Barbara had suffered another miscarriage. Words of consolation seemed to be of little help to Barbara, and although Russ was upset as well, he appeared to be more concerned about her emotional state than his own. After all, he confided to his friends, she could get pregnant again.
Although Barbara would indeed claim to be pregnant once more, again to suffer a miscarriage, causing Russ to give up the dream of having children of his own, he never would learn that she had been lying all along.
Russ was too trusting, which perhaps spurred Barbara on. Was there no limit to the deception she could carry off? Could that be what emboldened her to turn to an even more dramatic and implausible hoax?
13
The audacity of it would intrigue people later. How did Barbara think she could possibly get away with it? What was the point of it? How could she do such a thing to close friends, and especially to Russ? Was it a symptom of a deep character flaw? A cry for help? A deep need to be found out, castigated and cast out of her marriage and circle of friends, which secretly she thought she didn’t deserve? All of these were questions that people would be asking when the truth finally was revealed about Barbara’s book.
Friends first began to hear in the fall of 1980 that Barbara was writing a book about her first husband’s death. But it would not be until early in 1982 that the news would become an event.
That was at a regular Wednesday family supper at Grey Stone Baptist Church late in February. Russ couldn’t contain his pride as he and Barbara joined Harry and Terri Welch in the buffet line.
“We’ve got some great news,” he said.
“What?” Harry asked.
“It’s really heavy-duty,” Russ said, grinning, teasing the moment.
“Well, don’t just stand there, tell us,” Terri put in.
“Barb has sold her novel.”
The title of the book was
Untimely Death
, and she had written it under the name B. T. Stager, Russ explained. It had been accepted by a major publisher, Doubleday, and Barbara was expecting an advance of more than $400,000.
The Welches could hardly believe their friends’ good fortune, and they began spreading the word. Soon all of their friends and many members of their church were aware of it. Everybody was happy for them.
All of their close friends were eager to read the book, but Barbara was coy about letting anybody see it in manuscript. There was still work to be done on it, she indicated, telling some that the editor couldn’t decide whether it should be told in the third person, as she had written it, or in the first person. She would rather everybody wait to read it until the book came out. She couldn’t say yet exactly when that was going to be. Soon, she was sure.
When Harry asked Russ what the book was like, he said he hadn’t read it yet either. Barbara didn’t want him to, he said. But he was going to design the book jacket from her description, and he was excited about that. Later, he brought his design for Harry to see. It was the face of a clock with only one hand sprouting from a tombstone in the center. The hand pointed straight up at the hour thirteen. Sad faces around the clock’s periphery looked onto the mounded grave spreading out from the tombstone. Harry was impressed.
In March, only a couple of weeks after telling Harry and Terri about the book, Barbara told Harry that she would have to quit her job at the radio station. She really didn’t have to work, she said, now that she had all the money coming from her book. Besides, she needed time to plan for the book’s release. She would have to be traveling a lot to promote it.
Harry was relieved. Not only had Barbara been drawing a weekly advance for months without selling even a single commercial, but he had begun getting calls from companies that she had been soliciting saying that Barbara had bought merchandise from them on credit and hadn’t paid for it. Harry had known that he was going to have to get rid of Barbara, but he had been putting it off, trying to figure some way to do it without angering Russ arid losing his friendship. The book was granting him a graceful way out.
Early in April, as if in celebration of their new prosperity, Russ and Barbara joined Croasdaile Country Club, the most exclusive in Durham. They were sponsored by the Welches and Bill and Carol Gordon, who lived at Croasdaile. They paid an initiation fee of $1,250. Monthly dues would be $80.
Another person who wrote a letter of recommendation for Russ and Barbara’s membership was Irwin Breedlove Jr., a lawyer who had been a high school friend of Russ’s. He, too, was well aware of Barbara’s book.
In February, Barbara had gone to Central Carolina Bank seeking a substantial loan on a ninety-day note. As proof of income, she had carried along a letter that bore the letterhead of Doubleday & Co.
The letter was signed by an editor named Frances Dubose, and it confirmed the acceptance of Barbara’s book for a price of $100,000, of which $25,000 would be paid on first printing in March 1982, the remainder ninety days later.
“Sales of additional printings, paperback rights and royalties will be forthcoming in a separate certified letter,” the letter went on to say.
Uncertain that the letter could serve as a legal contract, the bank passed it on to Breedlove for an opinion. He met with Barbara and reviewed the letter before informing the bank that “letter contracts are valid in form and are customarily used as the initial document in the publishing business.” Barbara could rely on it for payments once her book was published, he said. The bank let Barbara have the money.
Soon after joining the country club, Barbara attended a ladies luncheon for new members. Carol was sitting beside her.
“Let’s go shopping this afternoon,” Barbara proposed. “I just completed a sale this morning that was so big that I probably won’t have to work again for a year.”
“That’s great,” Carol said, going on to congratulate her. Such success! And on top of her big book deal, too. Carol knew that Barbara worked at the radio station for Harry, but she wasn’t sure exactly what she did, and now she asked.
“Oh, I sell ads,” Barbara said.
Later, when the Gordons were alone with the Welches, Carol told Harry, “I want to work for you.” When Harry looked at her as if he didn’t understand, she said, “I want the same job you gave Barbara, where you sell one ad and don’t have to work for a year.” Harry, she noted, looked at her strangely, but he said nothing.
Both the Gordons and Welches liked Barbara’s children and found them to be among the best mannered they’d ever known. But they thought it strange that they had never heard the boys mention their real father. Barbara never talked about Larry either, although she had told both Terri and Carol privately about the circumstances of Larry’s death. Neither had any idea what Larry looked like, though, because they had never seen a picture of him.
After Carol had begun visiting regularly in Barbara’s house, she realized that there was not a single photograph of Larry there anywhere, not even in the boys’ rooms. She knew that Russ was not the jealous type and never would begrudge the boys a connection to their dead father.
“Have you got a picture of Larry?” Carol asked one day out of curiosity. “I’d like to see what he looked like.”
Almost reluctantly, Barbara fetched a snapshot of Larry from a dresser drawer. He was standing by a sign on a mountain trail, alone, smiling. A nice-looking man, Carol observed, handing the photo back.
“I kept thinking she’s going to say something about this man,” Carol recalled later. “She never said, I loved him, he was a good father, nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Instead, Barbara quietly returned the snapshot to the drawer.
Carol couldn’t understand Barbara’s detachment about this man who supposedly was the subject of her book. But that wasn’t all that she had been wondering about.