Death Sentence (15 page)

Velma, at long last, also found work. Soon after Beverly’s birth, Pam and Kirby moved to a small second-floor apartment on Seventh Street, not far from the trailer park, but Velma did not go with them. She had taken a job looking after an elderly woman who lived in the trailer park. The job provided a room, meals and a small weekly payment. But it was not without drawbacks. The woman had a mental disability that was rapidly growing worse, and looking after her proved difficult and frustrating. Velma had only one means of coping with difficulty and frustration. She soon was back to her old levels of medication, although she took care to make sure that neither Ronnie nor Pam found out.

Early in 1976, only a few months after Velma had taken on the role of caretaker, the woman she was attending had to be put into a nursing home. But the woman’s sister, a county nurse who had hired Velma, recommended her to another family.

Montgomery Edwards was ninety-four. Diabetes had cost him his sight and both legs. He was bedridden, incontinent and suffered from bedsores. He couldn’t feed himself, and all of his food had to be pureed. His second wife, Dollie, was eighty-four and could no longer take care of him. Dollie was short and stout and strongly opinionated. She was not in the best of health herself, having suffered intestinal cancer and undergone a colostomy. She offered Velma room and board and $75 a week to help her look after her husband and tend the house.

The Edwardses lived in a brick ranch house on the same street as Pam and Kirby, just a mile away on the edge of town. Pam was happy that her mother had found another position close enough that she could keep an eye on her. She was not working at the time and frequently dropped by the Edwards house to check on Velma. She enjoyed sitting and chatting with Dollie, and liked Montgomery’s company, too, when he felt up to talking, but he slept much of the time. Ronnie came every Friday to take his mother to get her hair fixed, to run errands and pick up her medicines.

Both Ronnie and Pam thought that their mother was doing much better, although there were occasional lapses when both could see that she had overmedicated herself. Once Montgomery’s son, Preston, called Ronnie to tell him that he’d taken Velma to Pam’s apartment because she had seemed to be intoxicated. If this was going to become a habit, he threatened, other arrangements would have to be made. Ronnie had another of his talks with his mother, and she took heed.

She even started regularly attending the First Pentecostal Church in Lumberton. The church van came for her on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, and she seemed to be making friends there. Both Ronnie and Pam were heartened by this development. Maybe she really was turning her life around.

Velma was still regularly seeing the doctor in St. Pauls who had been treating her for years. On March 11, she called Ronnie and told him she had an appointment and no way to get there. Could he take her? Joanna, who was eight months pregnant, decided to ride along.

After Velma had seen the doctor, she asked if she could drive back. She rarely got to drive anymore. Ronnie was tired and his mother seemed fine. He let her have the wheel. They were headed back to Lumberton on a two-lane section of U.S. 301 when Ronnie saw the brake lights flash on the car ahead. “Mama, watch him,” he said.

Velma, overreacting, locked the brakes. The car, a ‘67 Mercury Monterey, went into a skid and crossed the center line.

“All I could see was Ryder,” Ronnie later recalled.

The driver of the big yellow rental truck heading in the opposite direction tried to swerve to miss the car, but one fender hit the car dead center. The truck went off the road, overturned and skidded into a bridge railing, almost toppling into a creek.

Ronnie’s head hit the windshield, dazing him and leaving a big bow in the shattered glass. Joanna’s screaming brought him around. As he climbed out of the car he heard what he thought was water splashing, but realized it was his own blood.

He tried the back door, but it was jammed. He had to pull Joanna over the front seat.

“You’re bleeding, you’re bleeding to death,” she kept screaming as he led her to the side of the road. A small fire was burning beneath the hood and he realized if it spread his mother could be burned to death. He could see only from his left eye. His right was clogged with blood. He ran back to the car and found his mother rigid in her seat, her hands still on the steering wheel. He had to pry her hands from the wheel, but he managed to pull her out and drag her away.

He feared for the truck driver and had started toward the truck when one man grabbed him and another ripped off a T-shirt and started wrapping it around his head, saying, “Hey, man, you’re bleeding bad.” Then he saw the driver of the truck climbing out of the window, others rushing to help him, and he turned back to Joanna, who sat crying on the side of the road. That was when he remembered the baby.

Ambulances arrived and took all four to the hospital in Lumberton. Later, people who saw photos of the wreck in the newspaper would wonder how anybody had survived, but Velma suffered only minor cuts, bruises and cracked ribs, the truck driver even lesser injuries. Ronnie had glass fragments removed from his forehead and right eye and several cuts stitched. Joanna was uninjured, and the baby was fine.

Just over a month later, on April 14, Joanna returned to the hospital to deliver her child, a son, Michael James.* Velma was there when he was born, as was Joanna’s mother. Ronnie was with the grandmothers when they first were allowed to see the baby in the nursery.

“Oh, Ronnie,” Velma said. “He looks exactly like you did when you were born.”

Then she noticed the red splotches on the side of the baby’s head. They were in exactly the same spots as the cuts on Ronnie’s head from the wreck, and she feared that she had “marked” the baby. But the spots later faded away along with Ronnie’s scars.

With two grandchildren now, Velma seemed revived in spirit. Through the rest of spring and on through summer, she did better than Ronnie and Pam had ever dreamed. They even allowed themselves to think that maybe she could overcome her problems.

In September, Ronnie dropped by the Edwards house to visit and found his mother sitting at the kitchen table with a man. They were laughing and talking, and when his mother saw him, she said, “Oh, Ronnie, come here. There’s somebody I want you to meet. This is Stuart Taylor, Dollie’s nephew.”

The man stood, greeted Ronnie, shook his hand. He was not quite as tall as Ronnie, about five feet ten, but bigger, stout, maybe 200 pounds. His hair, combed back, was dark with a little gray, and he looked to be in his fifties. He was friendly and pleasant, and they all sat and chatted for a while, Dollie joining them. Velma seemed happy, on her best behavior. After Taylor had left and Ronnie was alone with his mother, she smiled and said, “He’s asked me to go out to eat with him.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“I know he’s separated but not divorced.”

“Well, are you going?”

She gave him another smile. “I’m thinking about it,” she said.

Velma did go out to dinner with Stuart Taylor, and she had a good time. For more than a month, she went out with him once a week, usually to a fish camp, steak house or barbecue place. Several times a week he would drop by the Edwards house to visit, and Velma always looked forward to seeing him. His appearances broke up the drudgery of her life.

Then, at the end of October, Stuart suddenly stopped coming. Velma heard nothing from him. After a couple of weeks she mentioned his absence to Dollie. Stuart and his wife were trying to work out their problems and get back together, Dollie told her.

Later, Velma would acknowledge that she felt a twinge of disappointment at the news, but she accepted it, wished Stuart well and put him out of her mind.

Ronnie wasn’t so certain that she had, although he didn’t quiz her about it. He could see that his mother was much less happy than when she was going out with Stuart. But other factors also were affecting her mood. Montgomery Edwards’ condition was getting worse, and caring for him was growing more trying. Velma’s relationship with Dollie also was deteriorating.

On his regular visits, Ronnie could see that Dollie was becoming more critical of his mother. She frequently complained that Velma wasn’t doing things right. She told her to do them in a different way, or made her do them over again. Velma was clearly resentful and snappish in return.

Ronnie heard some exchanges between his mother and Dollie that reminded him of the tiffs between Velma and Lillie, and later Velma would realize that she was feeling the same acrimony for Dollie that she had felt for her mother two years earlier.

As the situation grew worse, Velma sought deeper refuge in her medicines. She was going to bed earlier each night, finding it harder to get up each morning. She lived for the moments when she could be away from the house, attending church, running errands, visiting with Ronnie and Pam.

Late in January 1977, Montgomery suddenly declined, and Velma called an ambulance. He died at Southeastern Hospital on January 29. He was ninety-five.

After the funeral, Velma remained with Dollie, but with Montgomery no longer there to occupy the time and efforts of both, their situation had changed. Dollie searched for new chores for Velma. And the more she found, Velma later claimed, the more she found fault with the way Velma did them. At times Velma wanted to scream.

On Saturday, February 26, Dollie started feeling bad. Preston Edwards came to check on his stepmother, as he did every day, and Dollie told him that she thought she was coming down with the flu. She was vomiting and had developed diarrhea.

By Sunday night, Dollie was so gravely ill that Preston decided she should go to the hospital. Velma summoned an ambulance and rode with her. Dollie was treated in the emergency room and sent back home. On Monday she was worse still, and on Tuesday morning she was returned to the hospital by ambulance. This time she was admitted. She died in intensive care at seven that evening.

Later that night, Velma called Ronnie to tell him of Dollie’s death. Would he mind going with her to the funeral home to pay respects? She thought it important that her family show their sympathy.

That an old woman had died four weeks after her husband aroused no suspicions. What concerned Ronnie and Pam was where their mother would go now that she again had no place to live. More worrisome was that she would be at loose ends again. Her thirteen months with the Edwardses had given Ronnie and Pam hope. Despite occasional lapses, Velma had taken no severe overdoses during that time, had not been hospitalized once. Living with others, having responsibilities and work to perform, clearly gave her purpose and caused her to maintain a modicum of control over her drug intake. They knew that, without these restrictions, she was apt to quickly lapse into her old ways.

Pam and Kirby invited Velma to move back in with them until she could find a job and get a place of her own, though they had no extra bedroom and Velma had to sleep on a daybed in the living room. To the relief of all, the stay proved to be short. Only a week after Dollie’s funeral, Velma got a call from a woman who identified herself as Margie Lee Pittman. The minister at Velma’s church had recommended that she call.

Margie’s mother, Record Lee, had fallen in her carport on March 1 and broken her leg. Being in a cast and using crutches was hard on a woman of seventy-six. Margie’s father, John Henry Lee, a lifelong farmer, was eighty, and although he was still quite active, he couldn’t give his wife the care she needed. Would Velma consider coming to work for them?

Velma went for an interview on March 10. The Lees could pay only $50 a week, but she needed income to pay for her prescriptions and she accepted, stipulating that she had to have Sunday morning, and Sunday and Wednesday evenings off for church. She wanted one weekend free each month and time on Saturday morning to have her hair fixed and run errands. That was fine with the Lees. She moved in the next day.

The Lees lived in a three-bedroom brick house in the country just north of Lumberton. With the Edwardses, Velma had been forced to be subservient to Dollie, but she quickly took charge of the Lee household.

Not only did she assist Record with bathing, dressing and any other needs, she endeared herself by daily making Jell-O, one of Record’s favorite foods. Velma made the kitchen her own. John Henry had been doing the cooking until she arrived, but he was happy to get out of Velma’s way.

The Lees’ daughters, Margie, Sylvia and Frieda, couldn’t have been more pleased with Velma. She kept the house spotless, cooked good meals, cared for their mother like a baby, and whenever any of them came to have a meal with their parents, Velma never failed to say grace. They trusted her so much that they approved when their father told them he was going to allow Velma to drive their mother to her doctor appointments in his Cadillac.

Velma was not nearly so happy with the Lees as they were with her, however. Record talked a lot, mostly about the past. Her mind had begun to fail, and she sometimes couldn’t remember what had happened yesterday, or the day before. But the past remained as clear as the present. She talked so much that she began to get on Velma’s nerves. She also bickered a lot with her husband, Velma later would say, always over pointless matters, and that too bothered Velma. When she reached the point that she couldn’t stand it any longer, she took her pills, closed herself in her room and went to sleep.

Only a few weeks after Velma went to work for the Lees, Record Lee was looking through her returned checks when she spotted one she didn’t recognize. It was made out to Bo’s Supermarket for $50, and although it bore her name, she knew that she hadn’t written it. She showed it to her husband, who called the sheriff’s department. A detective was sent to investigate, but the Lees could think of no one who might have forged the check, or how it might have happened.