Dance of Death (16 page)

The two dancers were so close that when Renee wanted another tattoo, she asked to have Cynthia's lip prints tattooed on her neck. She thought it would be sexy and different. She had chosen Cynthia's impressions because her lips were always fuller than hers. From an outside appearance, it looked as if Renee and Cynthia had done a lot more than they actually had. Inside the Silver Fox, Cynthia would tip Renee while she was on stage dancing and Renee would return the favor and pay Cynthia extra attention. It always seemed to raise the customers' curiosity and increase the numbers of dollars in their garters.

Renee's specialty at the Silver Fox was the shower dance, where she would shower behind a glass petition wearing only a thong. Using Pert shampoo—because it glowed under the black lights—and rinsing with a handheld nozzle, she did it alone, or with another girl behind the glass with her. She was a most desirable temptress, and received many offers for sex and private parties. Two deejays and another man, who always brought the dancers bouquets of flowers every night, had also propositioned her for sex. One of the dancers had also wanted Renee to join her and her girlfriend for a threesome. Other customers had offered to take her out to dinner, to vacation in Grand Cayman, and one even told her he would pay what she made in a week's salary to come and clean his house naked. He was married, but said his wife wouldn't mind her doing that.

Renee had gotten real friendly with the other dancers and developed a special attraction with another girl in the club. Courtney Wolford was a real knockout with long brunette hair, brown eyes, and her cherub face. Renee had seen Courtney's Web site featuring Courtney posing partially nude with adults toys for sale and the option to pay and see more. Her husband, Bruce, worked as a bartender in the club and said he was the one who had set the site up. He offered to do the same for any girl in the club. There were rumors circulating within the dancer's dressing room that Courtney was having some problems. Renee could see Courtney was getting as thin as fishing line.

Renee learned later that Bruce had a job working with computers in addition to his bartending at the club. Since Brent and Renee were now into computers, Bruce had promised to show them a few technical options. One night, they were all talking on the computer and Bruce hacked into their computer and pulled up everything they had on their hard drive. Suddenly all the Pooles information was staring at them from their monitor. Brent was amazed at the knowledge Bruce had acquired about computers and wanted to learn more.

Eventually the Pooles had a camera installed on their computer and would use it to IM the Wolfords while on the Internet. The two couples talked about others who had used the camera for the purpose of Internet sex and suggested they might try it. Renee really liked Courtney and they had talked of being intimate, but it never took place. Brent was also chomping at the bit for a threesome with Courtney, but he wasn't having much success, either. He was well-endowed and thought it would help their case if he e-mailed her a picture of himself nude and his shaven penis. But when she saw it, she e-mailed him back and said he was way too big for her.

Renee knew all about her husband's fantasies with Courtney. She wasn't sure how Courtney felt about it, but Bruce had told her he dated others in the club and participated in extramarital affairs on a regular basis. So, she wasn't surprised when he started making little sly remarks to her and making flirtatious advances toward her. She figured Brent and Bruce had secretly set up a “trade-off,” an agreement to switch partners. When Courtney told Renee that Bruce had the hotel room all set up and was just waiting for her, she went along with it. She remembered seeing a camera facing the bed while she and Bruce were having sex, but she never saw the little red light flashing. She had no idea that Bruce would be filming it until he showed her the remote control afterward.

Renee and Bruce were determined not to allow what had happened between them to mar their friendship. The Pooles would remain friends with the Wolfords, continue to talk in the club and communicate over the computer. Bruce would occasionally make reference to their affair, just flirting or joking, but that was about all. Renee still believed Brent had set up her affair with Bruce so that he could have his wish to be with Courtney. The way she saw it, she was just basically “following orders,” as she usually did when it came to Brent.

It has been said that animals were a good representation of human character traits. The peacock, for example, is a vibrant example of pride, and whenever he senses he has an audience, he spreads his brightly colored feathers and struts about proudly for all to see. As if such strutting were not enough, he also makes a loud, almost screeching sound, seemingly to ensure that all eyes are turned his way. But unlike the peacock, people who proudly strut their stuff and seek complete adulation and fawning from others soon learn that such unadulterated displays of pride quickly lead to their doom and demise, and this inevitably becomes their ultimate undoing.

It was bound to have happened to the Pooles when Renee's mother kept calling their house at night, but there was no answer. Marie told Jack she knew their daughter was working as an exotic dancer. She could just feel it in her heart. When they rode by the Silver Fox and saw her car parked outside, she immediately called Brent's mother. “Guess where your son has my daughter working?”

“Oh, my, that is going to kill us!” Agnes exclaimed. “Especially Bill. He's a deacon in the church.”

Even when Brent was working the second shift, he and Renee would drop Katie off at the Pooles' until late in the night or pick her up the next day. Marie cautioned Agnes about keeping Katie, allowing them to go off in directions she knew nothing about. Renee had admitted on the nights the Pooles had kept Katie, she had been dancing. On some nights, Katie had gone to an all-night day care and stayed there until after one in the morning.

Jack Summey was furious with his daughter and refused to speak with her as long as she continued dancing at the club. For weeks, when she walked in one door, he would walk out the other. Brent's sister, Dee, tried to talk with Renee about how being an exotic dancer would affect her marriage and about the example she would be setting for Katie, but Renee didn't like to talk about it. Dee could also tell from Brent's reaction to her questioning Renee that there was a line of questioning that she had not better cross. It was kind of like they were aggravated that anyone had found out about their being involved in this activity. Actually, some of Agnes's friends had seen a program on television about the strip clubs in Winston-Salem and had recognized Renee as she twirled around the brass pole at the Silver Fox. They told Agnes after the program aired that the news was probably spread all over town about her daughter-in-law.

But look at how much money I'm making
was always Renee's response to those who confronted her.
Where could I find a job that pays that much money for so few days' work?
Renee ultimately did decide to stop dancing, but swore she wouldn't stop seeing her friends.

With Renee no longer working at the club, it seemed she and Brent had lost interest in each other again. One day in March 1998, when Renee was missing her old life, she called Cynthia and invited her out for dinner. It just so happened that her boyfriend, Thomas Pedersen, and his friend John Frazier arrived home just as they were leaving and asked to accompany them to dinner.

Although John had been a regular patron at the club, Renee said she didn't remember him. She was told he worked at Champion Products in Winston-Salem as a computer technician and lived about forty miles from her house. John was very witty, polite and very attentive to Renee. Before dinner was over, they had exchanged phone numbers and agreed to see each other again.

If Brent was pretending there was no one else in his life, Renee made no bones about the other man in hers. MBPD detectives were told by another dancer at the Silver Fox, Tonia Grubbs Atwood, that Renee had stopped dancing in the club for a while, but returned sometime in March. She had overheard Renee in the dressing room talking about how bad she hated being married. Renee was dating John Frazier at the time; she was the fourth stripper in the club he had dated.

Tonia knew that Renee hadn't told Brent about her relationship with John, that they had just started off talking, and seemed to hit it off perfectly. John was twenty-eight—four years older than Brent—but Renee didn't think he was any more mature. He just paid her a lot more attention.

Renee and John started out talking on the phone and then she started visiting him at his house. It was always while Brent was working in the evenings. She would take Katie with her to visit, and the three of them would watch Disney movies or run errands together. Renee liked John and found him very entertaining. He was always a big joker and enjoyed being the life of the party.

Renee continued seeing and communicating with John almost every day for the first four months of 1998. Tonia remembered John had been cheating on Renee with another dancer while she was absent from the club, but Renee found out about it and had it out with the girl. That night, Tonia said, she had heard Renee complaining in the dressing room about what had just happened with her and John's girlfriend.

“Renee was like, ‘Oh, I need a vacation. I need a vacation.' Then someone, a redheaded girl—and I can't remember her name—entered the room. I guess Renee had a child, because this girl asked where her child was going to start play school, and Renee told her she wasn't going to play school. That she wasn't sure where she would be moving. So, the other girls asked if she and her husband were moving, and Renee's like, ‘Well, my husband's not moving, but I'm definitely moving. I don't want to be with him anymore. He's driving me crazy.'”

During the three days in May 1998 that Renee had moved in with John, Tonia's roommate overheard her talking with Brent on the phone in the dressing room at the club. She was screaming at him, saying how bad she hated him, and that she was not coming home.

“I'm not coming home tonight, but I will be back tomorrow night,” Renee had yelled out. Brent must not have liked her response, because she then told him, “Well, you're just gonna have to learn to live with stuff like this because I'm tired of being with you. And I don't want to be with you anymore.”

Tonia said that the next day, Renee had come into work again; two days in a row was a rarity for her. But this night, she was with John Frazier, Cynthia Hanson and some other people. They were showing everyone the tattoo of Cynthia's lips on Renee's neck. She said Renee and John were acting like a couple, embarrassingly hanging all over each other. And when she and Cynthia went into the dressing room to fix their hair or do whatever they needed to do, Renee said, “I think that I really like John. He seems to be a nice guy and he knows the kind of things I like to do.”

“Well, what are you going to do about Brent?” Cynthia had asked.

“I'm not really sure what to do with him,” Renee then answered. “I do know that I would like to continue seeing John, but I'm sure if Brent finds out, he's not gonna be very happy at all.”

Tonia went on to say that the next night when Renee was dancing at the Silver Fox, she had several messages stuck on the mirror above her stuff. One was from Brent and one was from John. She said she watched Renee call John first and heard her say to John over the phone, “I don't know how he got our number. What all did you say to him?” She stated she had to leave and go back on stage for two songs for about ten minutes. When she came back to the dressing room, she heard Renee then talking to someone else she believed was Brent. She remembered hearing Renee say, “I hate you. I wish you were dead. And I hope I never have to see you again.”

Tonia told police she didn't see much of Renee after that. For some reason, she just quit working at the club. But that wasn't unusual. That sort of thing happened to entertainers all the time. “One day, they'll drop out and you just won't see them anymore,” she said, guessing that was what had happened to Renee.

Like many couples who choose to dishonor their marital vows, Brent and Renee had come to a crossroads in their relationship. They discovered that unless they changed their lifestyles and rededicated themselves to one another, their two left-handed rings would never guarantee things would be right in their marriage. Their families had heard the grumblings way before now, but what they didn't know was that Brent and Renee's relationship was in deeper trouble than they had realized. They found out the night Brent came home from work and his house was empty. Renee had taken Katie and moved out.

Later, when Renee and Brent reconciled, it wasn't the money that had driven her back to Brent, she said. She had worked since she was fourteen, and was never accustomed to anyone supporting her completely. She was making good money as a dancer, was used to having her own spending money and could make a living if she had to. But she had come back to Brent because she truly loved him and wanted to make her marriage work.

“There was a time when I tried to overdose on pills right after I broke off with John,” Renee would admit years later. “Brent and John were mad, but were taking it out on me. Brent was giving me hell about John and John about him. I went to John's house and told him, ‘You have got to quit all this stuff. You're about to push me off the edge. If you don't quit, I'm going to kill myself.' ”

Renee said she got a paring knife, put it to her wrist and cut herself. It bled, but didn't hurt. She was ready to quit, ready to give up. Frazier came back in and saw the blood, then told her he didn't think she had the balls to do it. She asked him why, if he wanted her so bad, was he doing this to her?

Brent was to be home at midnight. Renee had just put Katie to bed and was sad and depressed. She had a bunch of pills: Valium, uppers and downers. She took a handful of pills and tried to kill herself. She was very mad at herself for giving up, but had already made up her mind she wasn't going through this anymore. The next night, she went into work and thought about how it wasn't working with Brent because he didn't want to let the marriage go. He wouldn't give up and John wouldn't leave her alone.

“I felt like shit for putting my marriage through all that. I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to take the easy way out, so I took pills for three days. I wasn't sure if I was awake or if I was dreaming. I never told Brent; he just thought I was depressed. A couple of weeks later, he took me to the emergency room for my depression, and when I was asked by the physician if I had any thought of suicide, I said yes. Brent was shocked to learn that. My purpose in leaving Brent and having an affair was to change his eyes and be sure that he was willing to change to help me keep our marriage together. And as we worked on things between us, my thoughts subsided and we talked of having a baby. It gave me hope and meant things were going to be okay. That was the sole intent and purpose of our beach trip—to put our marriage back together.”

One night, John and Brent had gotten into an altercation at the Silver Fox over Renee. John had threatened Brent, called him a “pussy” and tried to get him out of the car and into a fight. Brent refused. A few hundred yards down the road, he stopped at a Mr. Waffle restaurant and told Renee he couldn't live like that anymore. She agreed, and they talked about getting a restraining order against John to make him leave them alone. But Brent cooled down and took a let's-just-wait-and-see attitude.

But when the Pooles got home around 2:00
A.M
., the phone rang. They both knew who it would be on the phone. John talked with Brent and said he just wanted to know what was going on with Renee. Brent then handed the phone to Renee, and John asked her, “Are you going to stay with that asshole?”

 

 

As Renee stepped out of the police car at the Carolina Winds Hotel on the northern end of Myrtle Beach, she knew things for her were only going to get worse. Looking down at her hands, she hadn't realized it until then, but she had bitten at her fingers and shredded what little nails she had left. Her fingers were bleeding at the quicks. They looked awful.

Renee looked forward to seeing her daughter and taking her back to North Carolina. It had been a long night and she wondered what her little girl was doing just then. She was relieved to see her parents' car in the hotel parking lot. Hopefully, her mom had already gotten Katie up and out of bed and changed her flannel nightgown by now. Maybe she had already given Katie a bath, so Renee wouldn't have to.

She suddenly remembered she had left the stuffed animal Mary Stogner had given her. Katie would ask if she brought her something from the store and she wished now she hadn't left it at the police station. Perhaps the little stuffed animal would have kept Katie preoccupied, at least until she and her parents could figure how they were going to handle this delicate situation.

Renee clutched at her stomach. It felt so hollow. As she stepped off the elevator with the police officer, she turned toward the hall leading to room 604 and tried to pull herself together. Her feet felt like they were glued to the carpet that led to the hotel room and it took all the strength she could muster to move forward. She was terrified at the thought of having to tell her little girl that she was never going to see her father again.

The expression on Renee's face said it all.

Just how do you tell your child that there had been a terrible accident and that a bad man on the beach had murdered her father? How can you ask a child to say goodbye forever?