Authors: Ken Englade
“Before we go any further,” Joy asked, “do you really have it?”
“Yes, I do,” Carol said, sounding injured. “And it’s going to stay in that safety-deposit box. It’s not coming out ever.”
It appeared to her, Joy said, that Carol could get Garland off her back simply by agreeing to drop the assault charges against him, giving him back his truck, and reassuring him about the tape. However, Carol disagreed, insisting that Garland was going to keep harassing her.
“With that tape, I don’t really think so,” Joy scoffed.
Joy’s apparent lack of empathy infuriated Carol. “The man is sadistic,” she said angrily. “He’s crazy.”
He may be as unbalanced as Carol claimed, Joy retorted, but he was not crazy enough to want to go to jail.
“He’s schizophrenic,” Carol replied. “He is not stable.” He doesn’t care about going to jail, she added.
Joy sighed. Okay, she conceded. Garland was not mentally well. So what did Carol suggest? What did
she
think could be done to alleviate the situation?
Carol slumped and stared at the floor, confessing that she was at her wit’s end, that she was so frightened and confused that she could hardly think straight. What did she—Joy—think could be done? Carol asked.
Joy did not answer for several minutes, considering the possibilities. I’ll call him, she said finally.
Carol was shocked at the suggestion. “To do what?” she asked incredulously. “What are you going to talk to him about?”
“Tell him to stop all this craziness,” Joy said, explaining her logic. “It’s the only way anybody’s going to survive.” She would persuade him to leave Carol alone, Joy said, because that was the only way they all could get on with their lives with a minimum of trouble.
Carol was not convinced. In fact, she was not even sure Joy fully comprehended the seriousness of the situation. “You’re not with the program,” Carol spat, her voice shrill. “The man calls three times last Sunday. Three times! None of which was he polite, kind, sweet, or anything else. He was aggressive, hostile, and very willing to tell me what he’d do to me. Now, I don’t think getting him on the phone and saying, ‘Oh, you really shouldn’t do this,’ is going to do a lot of good.”
That
was where the tape came in, Joy pointed out. If Garland knew that the tape would be turned over to police if he continued to pursue Carol, it would be a tremendous incentive for him to leave her alone.
Although the argument made sense to Joy, Carol was not convinced. Garland was going to keep after her, Carol maintained, whether she dropped the assault charge against him or not, whether there was a tape or not. “He’s going to come after me,” Carol asserted, “whether it’s today, six months from now, or three years from now. He’s got a lot of patience. And he holds a grudge a long time.”
To Joy, no matter what her sister said, Carol’s biggest insurance policy seemed to be the tape. “I don’t suggest giving him the tape,” she said dryly.
Joy didn’t have to worry about that, Carol responded quickly; she didn’t plan to give Garland
anything
. “There’s not
one
concession I will make to him,” she said with finality.
Sounding puzzled, Joy said she didn’t remember what was on the tape.
“It’s the same conversation you two carried on,” Carol replied nonchalantly.
“Which was what?” Joy asked. “I don’t remember.”
It concerned Garland and Joy’s discussions about money.
“I’ve forgotten a lot of this, Carol. It’s been a long time.”
It had been a long time for her as well, Carol responded: nineteen months of being married to an abusive man. As far as she was concerned, that was nineteen months of pure hell, a hell that she never would have had to endure if it had not been for Joy. “You created this problem,” Carol told her sister accusingly, “and I suggest you find us a way out. In case you don’t know it,” Carol said, pointing a finger at her sister, “I am really angry with you.”
“I can see your point,” Joy said, attempting conciliation. “Yes, I started this, but you were willing at the time.”
“Willing?”
Carol said sarcastically. “You’ve lied to me. You deceived me. You didn’t tell me the truth. You didn’t come anywhere near telling me the truth. Now if I’d known you’d been stalking Larry for over two years, you think I would have had one thing to do with letting you have him call me at my house? Do you think one time I would have? No, I’d have punched your frigging lights out.”
If that was the case, Joy responded coolly, why had she not said anything before?
“I did, Joy,” Carol screamed. “And don’t even jack with me anymore because I’m going to tell you something. I’ll stand up and slap the pee-waddling shit out of you in about three seconds if you tell me that again. Don’t put that little innocent air on to me.” Joy had put her in jeopardy, Carol contended, by placing her in proximity to Garland. He had, she said, pursued her intensely and single-mindedly, refusing to accept it when she wanted to put an end to the relationship. “And you put me in this situation,” Carol screeched. “You did it. You didn’t have enough guts to tell me at the beginning you’d been planning this for years. Now you tell me that there’s nothing going on, and about Larry and Elizabeth.”
“That’s true,” Joy agreed. “That’s true.”
“Yeah,” Carol said, still steaming. “But, Joy, you know the way you told it isn’t exactly the way it was. Now is it?”
“The part about the sex is true, yes,” said Joy.
“Oh, yeah,” agreed Carol, “that part’s real true, Joy. But you see, you didn’t bother telling me you already had the man hired. You didn’t bother to tell me you’d been doing this for years, just waiting for a chance to get him.”
“To be very honest,” Joy said, “I didn’t really see any point in bothering you with that.”
“Well, Joy,” Carol said drolly, “you didn’t mind involving me with a frigging killer.”
Like fighters exhausted after a wild flurry of punches, the two sisters paused for breath, gathering strength for a battle that was still far from over.
“Joy,” said Carol, recovering enough energy for round two, “any person who would involve somebody else in a murder and not tell them that they’d been planning this for years, no, you’re not capable of telling the truth. I think you’re flat insane.” It was Joy’s fault, Carol insisted. Her responsibility. “Your greed is the reason I’m in this,” she said. And for what? she asked her sister. What was the reason? The necessity? “You could have walked away,” Carol said. “All you had to do was file, put up three hundred dollars, and you’re divorced. Instead, what did you do? You picked a way out that nobody who’s rational would have picked. And then you involve me in it. You didn’t tell me the truth. You simply said he was going to leave messages on the machine and to tell you so you could call him.”
“Well,” Joy managed to break in, “I didn’t know y’all were going to get chummy.”
“I didn’t
intend
to get chummy, Joy,” Carol said irately. “But unfortunately you sent me out there so somebody would know who I was. Why didn’t you go? Because you knew better. Because you knew you’d been around him for a couple of years and you knew he’s flat dangerous.”
“I’d never seen him,” Joy said defensively. “I’ve never seen the man.”
That was immaterial, Carol contended. What was important was that Joy had put her in grave danger by throwing her together with a man involved in a murder plot, a man who had not only arranged one murder and one attempted murder but who may have been discussing
with her sister
as many as five other murders, including Carol’s.
Joy waved her hand in the air, as if shooing away a fly. There weren’t to be any other killings, she said. She only said that because Garland did not know who she was and she was trying to confuse him about her identity. “I was just talking,” she promised Carol. Besides, she said, she was out of money and she was extremely weary of the whole cabal. “I wish I’d never done this,” she said sadly. “I’ve paid for it. Really, I have paid for it, not only monetarily, but mentally.” She paused and then repeated, “I’ve paid for this.”
Carol, her anger expended, seemed to have run out of steam. She, too, had paid for it, she said. “Physically and emotionally and mentally.”
“Okay,” Joy said, “we all know that. Now how do we stop it? What do we do?”
“I don’t know, Joy,” Carol said dejectedly.
They were silent for several moments, each lost in her own thoughts. Finally, after what seemed a long time, Carol spoke up. “Why didn’t you just divorce him?” she asked plaintively. “Joy, why did you ever start this? Couldn’t you just have divorced the man? He was out of the house. He was out of your life. Because you didn’t divorce him, I’m in the situation I’m in. Did you ever think of that?”
“Oh, he wasn’t out of my life,” Joy said testily. “Let’s don’t get on that. I said I made a mistake. I want to just work on the problems of today. I don’t want to go back five years. That’s not going to do anybody any good.” Arguing over what had happened in the past was not going to solve the problem in the present, Joy maintained. What they had to do was figure out a plan to resolve the situation.
It wasn’t going to be easy, Carol countered, not when they had to deal with a man as volatile as Bill Garland. “He’s crazy,” Carol repeated. “You don’t understand. It’s like watching two personalities at work. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde. They’re two distinct personalities and unfortunately Hyde is the one that’s out lately. And he’s out all the time now.”
Garland was not a man who was going to give up, Carol persisted. “He will continue to come after me. And if he gets tired of playing with me, he’ll just play with you.”
Joy nodded. “I’ve already been played with, so I know what it’s like.”
Carol stared at her sister. “Oh yeah,” she said, “well what if he decides to have you killed?”
Joy shrugged. “If he comes to kill me, he just comes to kill me,” Joy said. “There won’t be a dang thing I can do about it.”
“What if he threatens Chris?”
Joy shivered, thinking of her teenage son. “Well, if he does, he just does. I can’t stop him from doing anything. But,” she added quickly, “I think that just sitting here and not doing anything is certainly not going to make it any better. It’s not going to go away. And whether you realize it or not, we’re all in big trouble. You’re not invisible in all this.”
Carol jumped on the defensive. “Hey, Joy,” she said angrily, “I didn’t plot to murder Larry. I certainly didn’t plot to kill that woman. I didn’t even know she was dead.”
“No, but you participated,” Joy said, referring to the plot against Larry.
“You’d planned his murder two years before that,” Carol argued. “I didn’t instigate a plan to kill him.
I
didn’t have any reason to have him dead. I have no motivation—”
“Have you forgotten,” Joy broke in, “how you said you’d do it yourself, how you said you were afraid for your daughter and all that?”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Carol said hotly. “I said if he ever put his hands on Michelle I’d kill him out in front of God and everybody. I’m not going to go hire an assassin. I’d stand right out and kill Larry myself. Because if he put his hands on Michelle, he wouldn’t have to worry about it. The sun would never set on him. But I don’t go hiring an assassin, Joy, because I would have taken my chances with the courts.” Her advice at the time had been simple, Carol reminded her sister: “Divorce the son of a bitch.”
Joy glared at her sister. “You said, ‘I want him dead,’ ” Joy pointed out. “Have you really forgotten that?”
That wasn’t exactly what she had said, Carol contended. What she had said was, “If he puts his hands on my daughter, I’m going to kill him myself.”
12
Again, the two lapsed into silence. And again it was Carol who was the first to speak.
“You know there’s one thing that bothers me,” Carol said.
“What?” Joy said.
“Why wasn’t Larry first on the list?”
“I don’t know,” Joy said slowly. “Stupid, wasn’t it? I thought about that, too.”
“It would have been more logical,” Carol pointed out.
“Yeah, it would,” Joy agreed with a sigh. “I just want to get out of this shit,” she added. “Finished. Done. I don’t want to fool with this anymore. I know you don’t either, and I’m sorry. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could go back, but I can’t.”
Carol shrugged. “Did you ever tell Larry you knew about Elizabeth?” she asked.
“Mm-hum,” Joy mumbled.
“What did he say?”
“Oh, he denied it. He wouldn’t say anything.”
Inexplicably, Joy’s apprehension resurfaced. “Let me ask you something,” she slyly asked her sister. “When you called the other day on the phone, are you taping every conversation that we have?”
Carol did not answer directly. “I wasn’t home,” she said evasively.
“Were you taping it?” Joy persisted.
“Joy,” Carol said, “do you see a tape recorder on the phone?”
“I asked you a question,” Joy replied sternly, pointing out that she had been truthful with her and now it was Carol’s turn to be honest.