Everything She Ever Wanted (23 page)

On New Year's Eve, 1973, Tom and Little Carolyn Allanson's custody and

support hearing was on the court docket.
 
Tom was shocked to find that

his parents not only were not going to testify for him, they took the

stand on behalf of his wife.
 
They never mentioned Carolyn's accident

that wrecked their vehicle, but Walter hinted on the witness stand that

Tom sometimes drank too much.
 
In fact, Tom neither drank nor smoked.

He listened incredulously as his own blood relatives convinced a judge

that he was at fault, and that he should pay what he considered

excessive and impossible support and alimony to his nearly ex-wife.

Later that night, Tom stormed over to Norman Berry Road to confront his

wife and parents.
 
He was no angel; he could be a real hothead when he

felt he had been injured.
 
Walter later claimed that Tom had "cussed

out" Big Carolyn that night.
 
It was more likely that his epithets were

directed toward his father.

"I'll";", They had a major blowup, and Walter again ordered him out of

the house.

When Tom left that night, it was the end of something.
 
He would never

again have even a civil relationship with his own father.
 
It was as if

his father had disowned him and adopted the woman who'd tried to blow

his head off.
 
Tom couldn't understand that.
 
Carolyn was the one who

had wrecked his mama's car, but his daddy now seemed to want her around

all the time.

She had a perfectly good apartment of her own to go to.
 
Tom remembered

Little Carolyn's smug smile as she watched his banishment.
 
He was hurt

and he was mad, and his future seemed like a long, grim tunnel ahead of

him.
 
All he had left of his blood kin were Paw and Nona.
 
He had no

one else'he could count on-only Pat and her parents, the Radcliffes-and

he was grateful for all of them.

The fact that his father had warned him about Pat, had called her a

slut and a harlot, only made Tom want her more.
 
He saw his father as a

jealous hypocrite.
 
"I wouldn't listen," he said.

"That was like telling a teenage boy to not think about sex.
 
I'd look

at Pat in those little miniskirts and halter tops and .
 
. .

all I can say is she would have corrupted a preacher.
 
I was

vulnerable.
 
She needed someone that was good with horses, and somebody

who could shoe her horses free and somebody who could sell her feed

free.
 
I was just an easy mark.
 
Some woman comes along and tells me

she loves me, and of course I said, 'You love me?
 
Well, all right!

You've got me."
 
By that time, I didn't think anyone would love me ever

again."

And so in 1973, Tom chose to see an entirely different Pat than the

woman his father had warned him about.
 
Beyond his recognition that she

was a woman who marked her territory and took what she wanted, he had

found her kind and gentle and as frail as a rose battered in a storm.

She wasn't well, but she fought desperately to keep going.
 
She fainted

easily, slipping to the ground so softly.
 
When that happened, Tom felt

helpless and protective.
 
All he could do was pick her up and carry her

into the house and lay her down as gently as possible on the sofa.

There was another attraction.
 
Pat had introduced Tom to sex unlike

anything he had ever known before.
 
When they were together, she seemed

to forget how sick she was and strived only to pleasure him.
 
No other

woman had done that for him.
 
He was besotted with Pat.

Pat's daughter, Susan Alford, and her husband, Bill, returned from a

trip once to find their apartment occupied.
 
They saw first a huge pair

of boots and then a triumphant Pat and a sheepish Tom, who was hastily

tucking his shirt into his jeans.

"There, Tom!"
 
Pat said for everyone to hear.
 
"You've had sex before,

but you've never had anyone teach you how to make love until I came

along All of them, save Pat, were embarrassed, and Susan bustled around

to make iced tea while Bill made awkward conversation.
 
Tom was glowing

like a teenager in the grip of a consuming crush.

Two days after the New Year's Eve custody hearing, Tom's father wrote

him a curt letter on his law office stationery.

_7anuary 2, 1974

Tommy: This is to inform you that I talked to Mr. Turner this morning

and he informed me that your wife was awarded all of the furniture and

household appliances, including the refpigerator and freezer in Mrs.

Lawrence's basement, and that you not be allowed to remove the same.

Your wife also asked me to look after this refrigerator and freezerfor

her,- so this puts me in the position of being her bailee.
 
Therefore,

I have put my own lock on this basement to insure that these two

appliances will not be removed until such time as I get a Court Order

instructing me to do otherwise.

If you intend to be your usual bull-headed self and remove them ... I

intend to file charges against you and anyone who assists you ...

for breaking and entering and theft....

While you have some help I suggest that you move your junk ;@ from the

garage and my backyard, and return the fan that was loaned to you.
 
Any

of yourjunk, equipment or othenvise that is left ... after _7anuary 15,

19 74, will be placed on the street for the City to pick up.

You will please give Mrs. Lawrence your back door key as you are

forbidden to enter the house.

Walter 0.

Allanson Allanson also sent a letter to the East Point police, warning

them that he would file charges against his son and anyone who might

help him try to remove appliances from his grandmother's basement.

Tom didn't want furniture and appliances; he wanted only a few of his

more portable belongings.
 
But he had to be careful about what he chose

to retrieve from his former life.
 
If ever there were an acrimonious

divorce, Tom's divorce from Carolyn was it.
 
According to Margureitte,

Carolyn bombarded the house on Tell Road with calls.
 
"I'd only met her

once at a horse show some time ago-never thought anything about her one

way or the other-and [she] called us and called us at all hours of the

night and day."

Tom didn't make that much money to begin with, and he had to give five

hundred dollars every month to Carolyn, a fact of life that Pat

resented fiercely.
 
Carolyn just wouldn't let them be.

Pat and Margureitte complained that if the money didn't arrive, or even

if it did, they were still being plagued with harassing calls from

Tom's ex-wife demanding more money.

Pat detested Little Carolyn because she had once had Tom and because,

technically at least, she was still married to him.
 
Pat had begun to

call him "my Tom" or "Pat's Tom."
 
And Tom thrived on her

all-enveloping possessiveness; he had never had a woman love him like

that before.
 
He was overwhelmed by the syrupy writings she composed

for him.
 
All her o's were carefully traced hearts.

Pat was convinced that Little Carolyn was consumed with jealousy when

Tom bought the Zebulon farm for her, and again when they were married

at Stone Mountain.

Margureitte agreed with her.
 
Without coming right out and saying it,

after the murder Margureitte tried her best to let Detective Zellner

know her personal theory about Tom's daddy and his daughter-in-law.
 
If

that wasn't cause for murder, she didn't know what was.
 
And that, she

felt, would explain why Walter hated Tom enough to just as soon kill

him as look at him.
 
Walter had purely terrified Margureitte.
 
She

shuddered to think about Pat out there all alone at Kentwood when he

had come down and blatantly exposed himself to her.

If ever a man had a right to be bitter and resentful toward his father,

it was Tom.
 
But Tom was gentle; his hurt went inside.

He would never have murdered his own parents.
 
Never in the whole wide

world.
 
It wasn't fair that he was locked up.
 
If there was anyone

behind the shooting of Walter and Big Carolyn, Pat and Margureitte both

insisted they saw the fine hand of Little Carolyn Allanson.
 
They could

not understand why the police weren't using the information they had

given about her.
 
They were convinced that they had all but handed the

investigators a blueprint for murder, and they were annoyed that none

of them recognized it.

There is nothin neat about murder; its untidy ravels can never 9 be

woven back into the fabric of time perfectly.
 
Blood can eventually be

scrubbed away and property disposed of.
 
But questions seem always to

be left begging for an answer.
 
Even with a suspect in jail accused of

the murders of Walter and Carolyn Allanson, the East Point police

investigators still had a great deal of work to do.

On Sunday evening, July 7, George Zellner received a call from Little

Carolyn.
 
She had remembered something that she heard the night of the

murders, something she had not told them before.
 
Talking at the police

station with Zellner and Gus Thornhill, Carolyn was considerably calmer

than she had been in their earlier sessions.
 
Her version of the events

just before the shooting had not changed substantially, but she now

remembered more.
 
She had heard Daddy Allanson yell upstairs that he

had "him" cornered in the hole, but she had never remembered a name for

"him" before.

"Did you ever see your father-in-law while he was in the basement?"

Zellner asked.

"No, sir."

"But you heard him?"