Chapter 1 of Charmville
(excerpt from Chapter 1 of Charmville, a novel-in-progress by Katherine De Lorraine)
Charmville town movie theatre
“Police in Charmville, VA, report that they are holding a local man suspect in the double-axe murder of a mother and daughter, Sylvia Jennings and Sarah Jennings, found dead in their separate homes around 11 a.m. this morning. They were proprietors of Lost Antiques. No motive has been established. Authorities have arrested Zack Gordon, former husband of Sarah Jennings. A bloody axe was found in the trunk of his car.”
Madeleine “Maddie” Noble stands, mouth agape, in the middle of her den thinking, “Sarah axed to death! And her mother? No! Why someone like Sarah? Oh, God! Her poor son! How will he handle losing his mother, grandmother, and having a killer father alive? The only abnormal deaths there used to be were suicides and maybe a hunting accident. But an axe murder? I thought it only happens in horror films or somewhere like New York or Chicago– not in a little town like Charmville, where everybody knows everybody.”
“Double –Axe Murder Victims Mourned” reports a newspaper Madeleine sees the next day. On one side is the picture of Sarah and her mother. Smiling into a mirror, the daughter looks like an angel dressed in a cream-colored, lace dress. Behind her stands her mother smiling into the camera. Across the page is a mug shot of the suspected murderer, Zack Gordon, from whom Sarah had been divorced several years. He looks like what the paper terms “a Charles Manson type” with wiry, gray and brown hair halfway down his shoulders and a matching, bushy beard. Lieutenant Wayne Jackson says when they received a call about the mother’s murder, he rushed to Sarah’s house. (He and Sarah were friends.) There he found her bludgeoned body. Gordon was apprehended within an hour, and a bloody axe found in the trunk of his vehicle. He denies the murders.
Little does Madeleine realize that this shocking connection is only one in a series of strange events that will unconsciously draw her back to live in her hometown. Since leaving Charmville twenty-five years ago, she has never wanted to return. A few months later she finds herself driving an overloaded Honda down the highway slower than her habitual five miles over the speed limit. She takes the last exit off the Highway 640 onto the road that leads to the middle of town. Glancing into the rear view mirror, she muses that this returning scenario is like watching herself in a movie, and Madeleine does not remember trying out for a part, much less rehearsing. ( continued)
Photo by waferboard:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waferboard/
