04.Die.My.Love.2007 (18 page)

“Dean asked me to show Piper what I did.”

When Tooke received Piper’s résumé on his e-mail, he replied, “You’re overqualified. You’d be interested in this work for about fifteen minutes. It’s way under you.”

Piper called back and said she was just divorced and returning to Texas. “I’m in my mid-forties building a law practice, out of bullets and selling the gun for cat food,” she said.

Tooke laughed, and made arrangements to show her the ropes.

They met at a restaurant on Lake Conroe, a dammed- up river turned into a pine- tree-lined lake an hour north of Houston. They sat outside at a table on the deck and talked.

The son of an attorney, Tooke, who lived with his three dogs in an apartment near the lake, had graying hair and wore his glasses low on his nose. He had a soft Louisiana accent with a slight lisp, and a thoughtful manner.

That afternoon at the restaurant, he and Piper went over maps and rec ords Tooke brought from a job he was working, and he explained how the work was done. There were interesting benefits. Piper could set her own hours and be paid by the day. If she worked full- time, she could earn $60,000 a year. The current project Tooke was working took him ninety miles south every day, to the Galveston courthouse, 134 / Kathryn Casey

to do his research. Before long Piper was meeting him there, watching him and learning the ropes. Soon she was on her own, signed up as a contractor with the oil company on the Galveston project. When the checks started coming in she had the freedom that having money brought. The fi rst time Tooke met Tina, she thanked him for helping Piper, saying that before he’d begun working with her, “Piper couldn’t get her head up off the bed.”

With Tooke, Piper rarely talked about Fred, and when Tina mentioned Piper’s marriage, she told him that it had been to an abusive husband. A protective man, Tooke’s heart went out to Piper. Before long he thought he sensed a spark between them, as men often did with her. When he asked her about going out together, however, Piper turned him down, saying she didn’t date men she worked with.

“It’s like church and state,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Richmond, the children had become such a visible part of Fred’s life that at UR the graduating class even gave him an award: “Most likely to leave the classroom during an exam to take a call from one of his children.”

Laughter filled the banquet hall when, as the award was announced, Fred was outside in the hallway talking on his cell phone with one of the kids.

Jerry Walters and Piper remained close, and that summer, 2004, he thought she was doing better than he’d ever seen her. She seemed to be thriving working with Charles Tooke, getting her life back together. She seemed happy, and she was painting again, including a portrait of the two of them together.

Finally, life seemed to be going well for both Piper and Fred.

In Richmond, Fred, too, was dating. Perhaps he’d heard of the Internet matchmaking craze from Piper, because some-DIE, MY LOVE / 135

how he ended up on the same website she and Tina had used, Match.com. Fred had dated one woman briefly, a school secretary, and a few women he’d met through a local dating service, but those relationships hadn’t gone anywhere. That summer, he met a woman named Charlene, a single mom who lived in Ashland, not far from where Piper had rented a home just before her move to Houston. They’d started slowly, Fred telling people that he worried about getting involved.

He knew he had a disappointing track record: two marriages and two divorces. Among worries that he had a tendency to pick the wrong women, he also considered the possibility that a woman might be attracted to him simply out of sympa-thy for a single dad with three kids. “I want someone who’s really going to love me,” he told a friend. “Not someone who feels sorry for me and wants to take care of the kids.”

It was a happy time. One day, Fred and Charlene took their kids to Paramount’s Kings Dominion, an amusement park with roller coasters and rides. By the fall when the children were back in school and Fred began teaching again, he and Charlene appeared to be getting serious, talking on the telephone each night before going to sleep.

In Harlingen, an old friend of Piper’s heard that Fred was dating. She wondered what would happen. “Piper’s children were Piper’s children, and she wasn’t going to share them with another woman,” she says. “We all knew that.”

Still, at least on the surface, all seemed to be on track for Piper that fall. She was caught up on her bills and was even current on her child support. She’d whittled down the arrears by nearly $3,000 to just over $7,000. Tooke enjoyed working with her, eating lunch in small restaurants in Galveston and walking through the Island City’s many antique shops. At such times, Piper rarely talked about the children, although Tooke asked.

At the end of September, Piper e-mailed Fred and asked 136 / Kathryn Casey

if she could have the children during the Columbus Day weekend, and he agreed. Her plan was to fly to Virginia and take the children camping in the mountains.

Friday afternoon, October 8, the day Piper was scheduled to pick up the children, the security alarm went off at Fred’s house, and Mel walked over to make sure everything was all right. She met Fred outside, and he told her he thought it was triggered by work at the next door neighbor’s house. For a while they stood in the fall air and talked. He told her about Piper’s plans to take the children camping in Washington State Park. “I don’t know why she can’t visit with them here and let them do what they have planned,” he said. Paxton, twelve, was scheduled to participate in cotillion, a formal dance program he enjoyed, and that weekend, Callie, eight, had a soccer game. It was hardest on Jocelyn, fi fteen, who had been asked to homecoming and now wouldn’t be able to go. Their oldest wasn’t happy about her mother’s change of plans.

“I don’t know why Piper can’t do what other moms do, take Joce to get her hair and nails done, let her go to the dance and be happy for her,” Mel commented.

Fred agreed. Of course they both knew that Piper wasn’t like other mothers. When she was with the children, she expected their complete and undivided attention.

Still, Piper appeared to finally be maturing. She had a

“real job,” Fred said. And she was dating someone. More than during the past painful years, Fred appeared optimistic.

From there the conversation turned to Fred’s new girlfriend, Charlene. He talked of their plans to attend the ballet that weekend. He smiled softly and looked happy. “I had the impression that it was getting serious,” says Mel. “They were growing close.”

Later that day, Piper arrived in Richmond, stopped at Steve Byrum’s house—the friend who’d helped her pack for the trip to Texas—to pick up camping gear he’d agreed to DIE, MY LOVE / 137

lend her. From there she picked up Jocelyn, Paxton, and Callie at the Hearthglow house. Fred helped her load the car before they left to drive into the mountains, and later the children would say that their parents were friendly, if a little quiet.

Camping must have been invigorating that weekend. The Virginia scenery, always spectacular, was showing the fi rst reds and golds of fall, and the air was crisp and clean. On Monday, Piper drove the children back down the mountain and returned to Steve Byrum’s town house. By then Steve was on a business trip, and he’d asked Piper to put the gear away and leave his key in the house. Instead, she and the children stayed at Byrum’s that Monday night. The next morning she drove the children to school, and then left to catch a plane home to Houston.

When Steve returned to his town house and found his gear piled on the pool table, he was furious. Reevaluating his friendship with Piper, he came to the conclusion that she was using him. “Every time she called me, she wanted something,” he says. “I’d had enough of it.”

Back in Houston after the trip, Piper and Charles were again in his SUV, traveling to Galveston to work. But something had changed, something about Piper. She was bubbly, excited about the fun of the weekend, the thrill of having spent time with her children. On the way home, Piper said she wanted to look for couches for her living room, and they stopped at the Foley’s Furniture Ware house, on I-45. Inside, they walked the aisles, laughing and mimicking an old married couple, Piper commenting on the couches and Tooke answering, “Yes, dear, you’re always right.”

“You’d make such good spouse material,” she teased him.

“Well, you keep me in mind,” he said.

That afternoon Piper found two beige leather couches and 138 / Kathryn Casey

a matching love seat for the living room. Charles lent her $1,000 to pay for them, and they loaded the couches in a rented trailer and drove them to her house in Kingwood. On the way there, Charles played a CD he’d just purchased: k. d.

lang’s
Hymns of the 49th Parallel.

Looking back, it would seem to him that one song in particular struck a chord with Piper, Lang’s mournful rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” with the verse:
Maybe there’s a God above,

But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.

In Kingwood, Piper enlisted the aid of a neighbor to unload the couches. The furniture fit the room perfectly, wrapping around the fireplace. Afterward, Piper and Charles arranged and rearranged the room and sipped wine. Then Piper, who’d never before shown Charles a photo of her children, flashed dozens she’d taken on the camping trip on her computer screen. In the forest, the children were apple-cheeked and smiling, and as she and Charles looked at the photos, Piper shone with affection.

That Thanksgiving, Piper’s sister Jean was marrying in Texas. And Piper and Charles planned what each of the children should wear. For Paxton, Piper thought a blue sport coat with a clip-on tie.

“No, get him a real one,” Charles advised. “He needs to learn to tie one.”

For Jocelyn, they decided, a little black dress, and for Callie something fun.

Not long after Piper and Charles sat down to eat carryout, soft music playing in the background, Jerry Walters walked in. Charles had heard about the on-again, off-again man in Piper’s life, but he hadn’t met him before. Although they’d dated others all summer, Jerry and Piper were getting close DIE, MY LOVE / 139

again. He wasn’t sure where that would take them, but he enjoyed spending time with her. In Piper’s living room, the two men had an uncomfortable moment, and Charles quickly left. After he was gone, Piper also showed Jerry photos from the trip, narrating the weekend for him. Jerry thought he’d never seen her happier.

Later, Charles would look back on that evening at Piper’s and remember the stunning watercolors she’d painted of her children, scattered throughout the house. He was impressed with her artistic talents. But another of her paintings would come to mind: a painting of a solitary woman in a boat, rowing on an angry, bloodred sea.

In mid-October one of the neighborhood moms ran into Fred at the middle school, where Paxton was in the sixth grade. The previous May, Fred had planned the fi fth grade graduation celebration for Paxton’s class, with a party that included water balloons. It had all been great fun, and Fred made friends with many of the moms and dads. This day, he and the neighborhood mom started talking. Knowing Fred had been through so much turmoil within his own family, the woman easily confided in him, telling him she worried about her son, who’d been disruptive at home, refusing to do as he was told. Fred listened, then calmly said, “You know, it’s going to be all right. He’s a good kid, and he’ll be fi ne.”

Something about the way Fred talked with her made the woman feel better, and she walked away thinking that after all Fred had been through, if he had faith in the future, shouldn’t she?

It had been eleven years since he’d left Austin, but Fred was still in love with Halloween. Throughout the turmoil of the separation and divorce, the holiday had provided brief respites from the pain. The previous year, Fred had taken his children and Mel’s oldest daughter, Chelsea, to Ashland Berry Farm for a hayride and to pick pumpkins. It was an 140 / Kathryn Casey

all-you-can-carry pumpkin patch, and while the children laughed, slightly built Fred had managed to carry in his arms more than a dozen pumpkins, from small to large, when he crossed the fi nish line.

At home that October, 2004, as they did every year, Fred and the children got ready for the holiday, pitching in to rake the yard and stuffing faded jeans and an old shirt to make a scarecrow and pumpkin bags they positioned below the trees.

There were carved jack-’o-lanterns and white-sheeted ghosts wafting in the crisp fall breeze. Bob and Doreen McArdle, the next door neighbors, watched, and were struck with how happy Fred and the children seemed.

They weren’t the only ones that fall to see Fred with the children and believe that perhaps they’d come through the worst. Others noticed that Fred and the children appeared to be putting the pain of the divorce behind them. Even Mel didn’t fret about her neighbor and friend as often. And she’d stopped worrying about Piper and Tina, fearing that they might do something to Fred or the children. “It all seemed to have worked out,” she says. “Fred was hopeful, we were all hopeful, that the worst was over.”

Meanwhile in Houston, that Monday night before Halloween, Jerry picked up dinner at La Madelaine, a small French, wood-paneled restaurant, and brought it to Piper’s house in Kingwood. They ate and went to bed. The next morning, Tuesday, Jerry was struck again by how happy Piper seemed, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. He kissed her goodbye and left.

The following morning, Piper left for work in Galveston.

She brought with her Tina’s live-in boyfriend, Mac. The DJ

was taking a break from the broadcast business and considering a new career. Piper agreed to teach him the oil business, training him as a landman, as Charles Tooke had trained her.

Monday and Tuesday, they traveled back and forth together to Galveston, calling Charles often to ask his opinion. Mac DIE, MY LOVE / 141