Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (11 page)

At school, Quinton knew that David was interested in Heather, too, but didn’t know the relationship had progressed beyond flirtation. Yet remarkably, neither man seemed jealous of the other. Quinton watched David courting Heather and assumed it was all just a matter of the conquest and wanting to get Heather in bed. “The motive for David had always been the sex part,” Quinton says. “I never thought he was interested beyond that.”

Oddly enough, rather than trying to keep Heather and his rival separated, David pressured Quinton to go out Friday nights with them. He got angry when Quinton didn’t go, calling him “pussy” and “henpecked.” As always, David played the part of the planner, supplying Quinton with excuses for Tammey. In hindsight, it appeared that David enjoyed watching his friend flirt with Heather, knowing Quinton didn’t know that she was David’s lover.

At lunchtime, Heather ate with a small group near the front office, and at times she talked about David. He didn’t wear a ring, and at first some of her friends didn’t know that he was married. “It seemed like everyone realized quickly that something was going on between them,” says a coworker. Like Belinda, Heather was a good teacher, well liked by the students. She was creative, once using butcher paper to build a large apple-tree display in the school’s hallway, and she had a self-deprecating sense of humor, e-mailing around dumb blond jokes to friends.

Before long, the chatter around David and Heather’s relationship spread, as other teachers noticed the two talking in the hallways. Still, there wasn’t the rampant gossip that some would have expected. “When Heather talked about David, a lot of us assumed he was separated or something,” says one coworker. “They didn’t seem to be keeping anything a secret. It was pretty out in the open.”

“They were definitely together,” says another coworker. “At the happy hours, we started treating them like they were a couple.”

As David’s tiny daughter grew within her womb, Belinda prepared for Erin’s birth. Debbie offered to make crib sheets, a quilt and bumper pad, and Belinda picked out a bright blue-and-white check, with a yellow alphabet print to coordinate. One Monday Belinda arrived at Katy High exhausted, telling the other teachers that all by herself, she’d painted the entire nursery a hue she laughingly dubbed “Big Bird Yellow.” Gradually, that fall Belinda, again alone, worked at shelving the nursery closet. Yet there was one thing she wanted David to do, one task she couldn’t do alone. She’d seen a decorative shelf in Stacy Nissley’s daughter’s room, and Belinda wanted one like it in Erin’s nursery.

One weekend, while they were out running errands, Belinda brought David to Nissley’s house to show him what she had in mind. Stacy opened the door and welcomed them in, but instantly sensed that David had no interest. Shrugging, as if bored, David trekked upstairs behind Belinda to see the shelf, barely grunted, asked no questions about how it was constructed, and then quickly shepherded Belinda out the door.

“He didn’t seem interested,” Stacy’s husband said, stating the obvious. The following week, Stacy thought Belinda looked disappointed when she mentioned that David still hadn’t bought the wood.

It was a cool autumn day when Sheree rode her bike in the neighborhood and saw Belinda in front of the Round Valley house. The two women hugged, glad to see each other, and then talked about their work and families.

“Is David excited about a little girl?” Sheree asked.

“I’m not sure,” Belinda said, sounding doubtful.

Sheree looked at Belinda. They’d known each other for four years, and Sheree realized Belinda was troubled. To ease her friend’s concerns, Sheree remarked that there was a special bond between fathers and daughters, and that David would fall in love with his baby girl. “Our daughter has my husband wrapped around her little finger,” Sheree commented. “You’ll see.”

Despite Sheree’s good intentions, Belinda didn’t seem reassured.

“Well, maybe after Erin’s born, David will be that way, too,” she said, sounding as if she harbored misgivings. That day, as she did with so many others, Belinda described her deep disappointment in her marriage; David was rarely home, and when he was, he rarely seemed interested in helping her get ready for the new baby. Belinda had put together the crib, painted the room, and prepared alone. When Belinda mentioned the shelf she wanted him to put up on the nursery wall, she said, “This baby will be in college before David gets it done. I’m not waiting on him much longer.”

As she rode off on her bike, Sheree thought it was probably machismo on David’s part. “I figured he wanted all boys to play football,” she says. “That a little girl was cramping his style.”

At work, David, ignoring that Belinda was pregnant, complained to Quinton that she was getting fat. David went on to say she was angry with him for being gone so much. If that were true, he didn’t let it change his plans. When Thursday afternoon came around again, he pushed Quinton to skip the JV game and go to happy hour with him. Quinton refused, later estimating that he only went once. That didn’t stop David, who taunted him constantly, calling Quinton “henpecked” and telling him to “control your woman.”

Unaware his friend was sleeping with Heather, Quinton continued to have feelings for her, and they spent parts of the school day writing e-mails back and forth. Later, it would appear to have been something of a game for Heather, who flirted with Quinton, even kissed him, and then taunted David by repeating what his rival said, as if pitting one of the men against the other, edging up their competition with her affection as the prize.

There seemed little doubt that Quinton and David were battling over the attractive blonde, yet it seemed such a strange situation, hard to understand. Two highly competitive men were vying for the same woman, yet without any apparent animosity. At times, they picked each other up to drive to Heather’s apartment and even walked to her classroom together. Perhaps David relished Quinton’s ignorance. David was the one bedding her, while Quinton fantasized and flirted.

There was, however, something else; Quinton had a different perspective on his relationship with Heather, at least as far as Tara Hall could see. “It never really looked serious between Quinton and Heather, just a lot of flirting,” says Hall. “I never had the impression that either one of them thought it would go anywhere.”

Back at the Hastings Ninth Grade Center, the gossip swirled around David and Heather, as threatening as linebackers rushing an unprotected quarterback. By then, most of the faculty at the Ninth Grade Center realized David was married, and that his wife was expecting a baby. “A lot of us were disgusted,” says a coworker. “About how he was a jerk, messing around with Heather while his wife was pregnant.”

Acting oblivious to the storm around them, afternoons in the field house, when they had their conference period together, Heather Scott’s two suitors sat in the same room at individual computers, e-mailing the object of their attentions. At times, the flirty e-mails flitted back and forth between David and Heather, Heather and Quinton, at rapid speeds. What Tara Hall saw wasn’t a woman torn about interfering with two marriages of fathers with children. “Heather seemed flattered by all the attention,” says Tara. “She was really enjoying having the two of them both interested in her.”

That fall at Katy High, Belinda wore a red turtleneck and maternity overalls on Fridays for the pep rallies before the games, along with funny hats and her red heart-shaped sunglasses. On the night Hastings played Katy High School, Belinda sat in the stands with the Temples. All day long she’d been getting e-mails from coworkers, asking what team she’d cheer for, Katy or David’s team. She took it all in stride, laughing it off, even wearing a shirt made of half of a Hastings shirt and half of a Katy High shirt. The weather was cold and windy, and Tammey noticed that despite the turmoil in her life, Belinda cheered wildly for David’s team. “You’d never know that so much was going wrong in her life,” says Tammey. “To the world, Belinda couldn’t have looked happier. And, as always, she was devoted to David.”

Yet there were those moments when some friends caught a glimpse of the toll the stress took on her. At a grocery store that November, Evan wet his pants and threw up. Frantic, Belinda left her cart and fled the store, sobbing. “I just lost it,” she told a friend. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. All I could do was cry.”

When they were together, Heather would later say that David didn’t mention Belinda. The only time she’d claim David talked about his family was one night after a football game when Heather brought up the subject, asking if he had children. David told her he had a son and “one on the way.”

“I felt sick to my stomach,” Heather would say later. Yet that didn’t cause her to stop the affair. Instead, it would appear, she continued to ignore the fact that David wasn’t a free man, that he had commitments. When he brought her home after happy hours, perhaps she was able to forget about the pregnant wife and the little boy waiting at home.

And at Hastings, the e-mails continued to fly.

At 1:16 on Wednesday, November 4, Heather e-mailed David and Quinton: “What is going on with you two? Anything new? Have a good afternoon…. H.”

Most of the time, the tone of her e-mails was breathy and casual, and she used ellipses scattered throughout, as if she were in too big a hurry to finish a thought. When David e-mailed back, Heather replied minutes later that she’d heard from an old boyfriend, and that she’d told him “I was dating someone…even though I’m not…. What is it with you guys?” Perhaps she didn’t consider what she was doing with David dating, since they arrived at the happy hours separately.

“Don’t compare me with some fool who would let you go, because he is an idiot,” David e-mailed back. Later, he asked about plans for that Friday night, wanting to know where they were going after the football game. “It just depends on what you want to do,” Heather answered, saying she was looking for someone to go to the game with. “I’ll either find someone…or I will meet you guys and if you want, just let me know where. Quinton even said he was going out for a little while. I am afraid of what people will say if I do meet you guys out…. H.”

“I’ll be surprised if he actually goes,” David e-mailed back about Quinton.

Over a period of twenty-four minutes, David and Heather e-mailed back and forth twelve times. Her last e-mail to David that afternoon, at 1:39, asked, presumably about their sexual liaison, “Does Quinton know anything about you and me?”

One minute later, David responded, “He has no idea.”

“Nearly everyone in the Hastings Ninth Grade Center knew David was e-mailing Heather,” says Quinton. “I knew about David’s e-mails, too, but so was I e-mailing her. I knew for me that it didn’t mean anything, and I thought it didn’t for David either.”

Even if he didn’t try to hide the affair, flirting openly in front of others, David appeared to think he could quell any gossip simply by denying it, as on one day at the school, when he asked one of the teachers to make copies for him.

“Ask your girlfriend to do it,” the woman responded.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he replied pointedly. “I’m married.”

Perhaps it was such an exchange that started the e-mails off on November 5, when Heather wrote David: “I was just going to talk, since you two are deathly afraid to come near me now!!!…Tell Quinton [that] it sure is obvious that he is afraid to talk to me…. Just kidding!! I guess he should be scared[,] if his wife is getting reports on his behavior!!!!” Despite its serious subject matter, that e-mail ended with a “
.”

Perhaps that e-mail was written after Tammey asked Quinton about the woman the coaches’ wives were calling the “Barbie bitch.” When Tammey questioned her husband, he responded in a way that raised a red flag; Quinton said the teacher had a good figure and dressed well. “That was something Quinton normally wouldn’t notice about a woman, how she dressed,” says Tammey. “That was something new for him.”

While Quinton may have been concerned about his wife asking about Heather, David admitted to no such qualms. When he e-mailed Heather, he typed: “I’M NOT AFRAID OF ANYTHING.”

“What’s up for after the game?” Heather responded, and David replied: “A lot of people are going to Sherlock’s.”

At that, it would seem, their plans were set, and on yet another night Belinda cheered in the stands for her football-hero husband and his team, while Heather watched the game with friends, anticipating going out after with Belinda’s husband.

Late afternoon on Wednesday, November 11, of that year, 1998, Belinda and Stacy were at McDonald’s with other friends and their children when Ginny Wiley, Evan’s baby sitter, walked by. Wearing a pink-and-white-striped maternity top, her belly round, Belinda rose to hug the girl. “We have a little girl on the way,” Belinda gushed. As they talked, Wiley thought Belinda actually glowed from the excitement of the coming baby.

When Ginny turned to leave, Belinda laughed and said, “Be good, kid.”

Only later would Ginny realize those were the last words Belinda Temple would ever say to her.