Stabs to the Heart

By Jennifer Brown

Mystery psychological thriller about a privileged, talented woman, who let abusive, evil men into her life.
She was destroyed by abuse and attempted murder, physical violence and theft of her life and character.
Explains the Chinese torture method of killing by slowly catching falling knives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Brown
• Release date: Mar 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311422873

Jennifer Brown

Jennifer Brown is a retired attorney, law judge & district attorney. A trial attorney she handled many criminal cases, including homicides. She has broad legal knowledge & was admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court. She now directs recovery programs in many states to help people to find life-coping skills. She is also an Honorable Kentucky Colonel.

Book preview

Stabs to the Heart

By Joan Duncan

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Joan Duncan

Ebook formatting by Jesse Gordon

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Prologue

Life is a song – sing it. Life is a game – play it. Life is a challenge – meet it. Life is a dream – realize it. Life is a sacrifice – offer it. Life is love – enjoy it. Life is love - until it is lost.

* * *

Experiences do not determine who you are, but you determine your experiences. Ralph Marston.

If you conduct your life through conflict, you make yourself a victim of conflict. Ralph Marston.

I can resist anything except temptation. Oscar Wilde.

Judge each day not by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton.

I hope you dance….and if you stumble, make it part of your dance. Unan.

* * *

Hello. My name is The Honorable Constance Carrington. I live in this shelter for the indigent, with tattered clothes and my old dog, as stiff in limb as I am, but still so faithful. I see the open sky through missing shingles in the roof of this abandoned shack that houses me now. My body is ravaged by pain and the cruelties of life. I eat from market store and restaurant left-overs that I can forage from dumpsters or beg from places for food.

I see startling sunrises as well as dark nightfall through the same open roof. I can walk with a cane and still manage to live alone in this hovel of a house. There is a small stove in the middle of the only room and, if I am lucky, my neighbors will bring me firewood for some warmth and to cook some food. I receive a small check each month which almost covers my essentials, but I can get some supplies left in containers behind stores and from unwanted trash left outside to be collected. It is a meager life, but it is all I have now. I have two mouths to feed, my own and my dog. An impoverished life quite different and distance from the privileged life I lived in the past. From a lovely dream to a nightmare of a life, all in my lifetime.

Most of my concern is for the needs of my small dog, Ginger, who sits next to me and follows me wherever I go. She is still quite handsome, with beautiful rust colored fur and large, soft black eyes. We often talk together and go for walks to commune with nature. It is safer that way. People would not understand my plight.

Without any relatives close by, I settle for the attention of my faithful dog, who never questions me. She gives me nothing but her love. It is restful to have such an agreeable companion. Never a complaint, never a criticism, never a nasty word. The perfect friend and therapist. I am indeed lucky to have her. I can talk to her about anything, and she is always delighted to listen to me. And she keeps me warmer at night in the bed we share together.

Did I ever think I would be living this way? Well, I seldom thought about it in my youth because I took a privileged life for granted. But surely I never thought life would bring its secret displeasure to settle squarely on my head and cover me like a dense, dark cloud. In time, that severe displeasure entirely enveloped me, from head to toe. I may soon leave even this humble life I must endure for the present. When many hardships pursue, it is impossible to outdistance them. So, I am caught in an unknown never-never land, too old to go back to my prior, privileged life, and too poor to resist being propelled into my now meager, poor existence of a life.

It was not always this way of life for me. In the beginning life was like a charm bracelet, with golden, sparkling mementos for all the wonders that occurred in my life. In time, those golden sparkles began to become dull and physically worn. Life that shone through prisms of over-bright and many colored lights now descended into rays of misty grey and blood red. The canvas of my life that was first painted by a master, has been passed over, smeared and worn by time’s many stabs at the canvas, blending it all into discordant colors.

Every day I awake to dream of just a glimpse of the better times of my former existence. Some times were very beautiful and full of all kinds of glorious and inviting secrets. Life shone and sparkled with reflections from the emanations of glorious sun rises over sparkling waters. Wonderful things happened that I fondly remember.

But there were also those sad and discordant dark times to suffer through, like deep valleys and dark pits of despair that gradually overcame and defeated even the most favored times. All of life’s secrets were not beautiful, but many were exciting and challenging. Some were even terrifying. But they were all special.

You may wonder why I carry the title of Honorable before my name. It is because I was an attorney and administrative law Judge in my former life. Now my existence is on the ash heap of life, ready to be discarded and cast away. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

When I was young, I saw glimpses of a life that was ‘more’ than wonderful rather than ‘less’ than wonderful. I actually lived that life of more and I did not listen to those occasional discordant voices in the past that warned me that life could become dangerously less.

Gradually the voices of less overcame and drowned out the voices of more. For a while there was an overlap of those voices in my life, when times that seemed to be less became more and vice versa. The voices of more brought glory and power, but the voices of less brought confusing alarm and despair. With time, the voices of more were conquered by the frightening voices of less. I was left in my pitiful, needy existence of so much less that I presently endure and that I can no longer escape. The voices of more are now entirely overcome and silent.

For a season, I happily followed the voices of more. Indeed I did have a superb life containing more. Gradually life lapsed into disconnect, until the slippery slope of my life led to having less and less. I tried not to listen to the voices of less, even when disguised by a promise of more. But in time any connection with more was broken. I disintegrated into a defeated, painfully abused wretch with less, and I found myself here, in this hovel of an abode. All my friends and family have fled and all hope is gone. I stand on the deep abyss of death. Soon that abyss of less will be victorious and will swallow me up, the victor in this battle for my life.

There is magic in life’s secret promise of more. I asked myself if I benefited from those promises. Like hidden keys to parts of a secret garden called life, I could choose which key to use to enter the part of life’s garden that attracted me most. At times a key opened the most glorious places and people, who made my life sing a special song, lifting me from the ordinary into the sublime.

Other times a key to life’s secrets opened the dark and foreboding door that led to suffering and painful experiences of less. Life was not always that loyal and trusted friend I wanted who did not deceive me or cause problems. When life stabs, it stabs deeply, sometimes without offering a way to recovery.

So, life faced me, saw that I was vulnerable, and took a sharp knife to hurt me more than I could endure. It seems I did not always choose the key to open the door of life containing more, but my hand was guided toward each particular key by a force beyond my control. And so, my path led to unknown places and secret adventures of more in the beginning and those events of deeply abusive pain of less in the end.

What wonders of delights and pain existed in each compartment of my life? There were almost too many to relate. I thought I could go on forever in my secret garden of more in life and it would never stop. But all things, good and evil, must slow down with time and come to an end.

I am now at the end of one of those secret adventures of life. Time has become misty and indistinct, like the smudged and smeared canvas my painter eventually abandoned. Those prior exciting times slowly faded away into less, never to return.

As a girl, I dearly loved those special, little secrets to carry in my bosom, like precious, glittering jewels and fragrant flowers. Life was lived in vivid, bold, beckoning Technicolor. I lived and laughed through many episodes of dances with love, in an inviting life of more.

Now, I merely exist, as a dying and wilted rose, torn and cut from its place in my secret garden of life. I do not want to relive those episodes of adventures of more or abuses of less, because my wants and needs have so changed. I am content to be alone and watch sky and nature in peace, with the friendship of my little dog. I need nothing more in life. I am in the final season of my existence of less and must accept it.

I will relate some of those secrets, so they can be shared. You will walk beside me, and so enjoy sharing my special adventures and experience those precious, rare pleasures, along with painful hurts carved into my life’s canvas. Walk with me, as I go through my garden of pleasure and life of hell. I am still The Honorable Constance Carrington in my dreams that no one can take away from me, nor steal from my heart.

To my special friends who care for me and

Encouraged me to write this book about family

And friends

* * *

The people and incidents described in this book are purely fictional. Names, characters, locations and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictionally. Except for known public figures or places, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is unintentional and entirely coincidental.

Chapter One

Beginnings

Life is a song – sing that special song.

* * *

All families sing a special song in a chorus of family members. Some family songs are melodious, some are discordant. But families are known by the songs that they sing together.

Constance was a very small child, appearing slightly sickly and forlorn when she was born. She did not cry much, but only looked longingly at whoever was close to her crib. She yearned to be held and loved. Her mother was slight in build and quiet in nature, but she did love her child when she did not have to work at her family’s business.

Constance, called Connie as a pet name, did not speak often nor make demands. She was an easy child to rear and obedient to her elders.

After weathering the first few years of growing up, nature took pity on Connie. She blossomed like the roses she loved and became a fairy sprite, skipping around and expressing delight at the wonders of nature. She smiled a winning smile and was loved by everyone in the family, including her stalwart grandfather. He rarely smiled, except when Connie was around, and then he delighted in his little girl.

Connie sang along in her family chorus, making harmonious music with the other family members. Each person in the family seemed to know his or her part to sing. The family business improved and her mother did not have to work as she did when Connie was young. Mother and child enjoyed time and life together. They lived in a lovely stone manor house on three grassy, landscaped acres. After family business success, the family moved into a larger granite mansion, with formal gardens, fountains to offset the flowers, and twenty four acres of woods and trees in a special suburban area, sheltered from urban intrusion.

Connie had hazel eyes and long curly brown ringlets cascading around her oval face, encircled with a garland of flowers she wore on the top of her head like a crown on a fairy princess. She was of average height and slight weight, active and intelligent. She dearly loved her flowers, animals and family. She loved to play with animals and was followed by her tiny dog, Lily Belle, a little white furry creature that was unhappy unless she was with Connie. She caught balls Connie threw, held pretend races around the lawn and displayed the tricks she learned, like walking on hind legs and pirouetted around and around like a ballerina. Connie liked to play hide and seek with her dog.

Now Lilly Belle, go around to the far end of the porch and hide. I will try to find you and give you a biscuit. Lilly Belle did as she was told. Connie made a big fuss over her dog when she found her. Then they celebrated by a doggie snack and a roll together on the lawn. Connie’s mom liked to watch them play together. They presented the perfect bucolic scene.

Connie had a brother named Evan, a year and one-half younger, who had blond hair and blue eyes. He was also slight of build, but grew up to be tall and handsome. He was a sweet kid, but quiet and kept to himself. He and Connie played together, but her brother was more interested in sports, like golf, and liked to play games with his dad. Perhaps he doted on his father when his dad came home. Their dad was seldom home, but at sea in the Coast Guard.

Connie loved to participate in family activities when everyone was home and both children looked forward to the family being together. Her family always gathered together on Sunday afternoon for a splendid early dinner, usually a large roast of beef, turkey or ham. After dinner, the family played games together. They liked sedate games, like croquet and horseshoes, or hide and seek. There were many shrieks and squeals when the hidden object was found. After an afternoon of family fun, everyone had treats, like hot chocolate, toasted marsh mellows and cinnamon cider.

How did I ever have such a delightful daughter, thought Connie’s mother. Her father was never here when I needed him. In fact, he was not a father at all, being away at sea so long. I never heard her father say that he loved his daughter. I had all the joys and duties of raising our two children by myself.

Thank God we were a close family and all lived together, so we had a network of love to surround us. Yet there always seemed to be a shadow lingering overhead to destroy the perfection of a lovely sunny day. One family member was usually missing, and he was Connie’s father. That shadow may become a portent of things to come for her.

Connie was very close to her mother. My mom was so kind and encouraging to me. She and I shared so much together. She played games with me and provided books to read. We often had long talks and visited interesting places. She worked so hard, but gave me as much of her spare time as she could allow. We were indeed close-knit friends in a close family.

The best times together were in the activity house at the bottom of the hill from our former house, next to a small stream that ran along the outer perimeter of the three acres of lawn. It contained a stone fireplace in a large beamed room, where we played games, put together puzzles, read books and toasted goodies over the fireplace. It was a magical place to spend a childhood, with magical activities, shared with family laughter and fun, with good humor.

Connie’s family was singing their family song all in harmony and in joyous notes. Each member knew his and her part in that chorus, usually conducted by Connie’s grandfather.

Connie’s mom was somewhat of a celebrity. She was an achiever. She was called Willy, a diminutive of Wilhelmina, & was very active in gymnastics and other competitive sports. She had such a drive to excel in various sports, that she made several world records and achieved many awards. She played badminton and golfed. She made a world record in high jumping and speed skating. She was on the U.S. Olympic team in gymnastics, as was her sister, Connie’s Aunt Ruth. But her mother and aunt were unable to attend the Olympic Games because their father, Connie’s grandfather, refused to pay the costs of their trip to the games held in Berlin that year.

Connie’s mom thought back to when she was young. She was born in Austria in a middle class family, close to the home of her father’s family. Her mother came from Southern Germany and her father from Vienna, Austria. They were a hard-working and religious family.

My mother was such a saintly woman, said Connie’s mom. She came from a rector’s family in southern Germany, where people were thrifty and hard working. She never complained and was sweet and kind to everyone. She was the prettiest girl in her small town. When my dad came through town selling jewelry and watches, he spotted my mother and decided she was the one for him.

After a brief courtship, my mother told me they were married in the church in which her father was the rector. Then, they moved to Vienna, Austria, where my dad and his family lived. He had a large family and lived in a big flat near the Hapsburg Palace, which was the home of Emperor Franz Joseph of the Hapsburg dynasty. My father encountered the Imperial Emperor occasionally strolling nearby, as my father walked to work. In those days, people walked everywhere, unless they took the trolley around the Ringstrasse that surrounded Vienna’s inner city.

Vienna was a beautiful city, with palaces, a riding school for Lipizzaner horses, a grand opera house, and much music and balls. It had beautiful baroque buildings and was famous for its pastry, as well as its waltzes. It was a city of light, dancing, music and splendid architecture.

My father bowed to the Emperor, greeted him, and the Emperor lifted his plumed hat in reply to the greeting. Those were the good old days when the world was at peace and people were civil. Imagine. The Emperor of the huge Austrian Empire, strolling down the street without any guards and talking to his people, all before World War I. It must have been an unusual and awesome sight. It is so different today.

Every Saturday evening, my parents enjoyed a social evening together. One night was spent at the orchestra, where Strauss was still very popular, as well as opera and ballet. They visited St. Stephan’s Church, the most beautiful baroque church in the city. They loved the arts and Vienna offered the best.

Other times they attended balls that were romantic and filled with wine, women and song. There were women with fine jewels and gowns. Men wore formal clothes. Men kissed women’s hands. That suited my father quite well, because he was in the jewelry business and had acquaintances everywhere. So Viennese, so continental, so cultured.

Connie was not aware of what went through her mom’s mind. She had enough to fill her own little world with acres of flowers and lawn to play in, and a loving family to surround her with security and attention. She blossomed along with the flowers. It was evident this little girl would become a budding beauty.

What really stands out in my mind are the adults that I mingled with. There were no kids living near me, so I played adult games with the adults in my family. I read adult books and went to adult museums, restaurants and homes. We played tennis and rode horses. The only children’s places I liked were the circus and the merry-go-round. At age 12, I fancied I was quite grown-up. I read adult books, like ‘Anthony Adverse’ and ‘Anna Karenina.’

I can remember reading ‘The Great Gatsby’ and feeling so sorry for Gatsby. He was always rowing his life’s boat upstream against the current, and experiencing personal failure. He had a dream, but never achieved that dream he worked so hard to reach. It was always just out of his reach, no matter how hard he tried to capture his dream. Sometimes I feel very close to him.

Indeed, Connie hoped she would experience that dream for her life, while she found herself rowing upstream most of her life. She would find many failures among her distancing dreams. But she was young and just starting to seek life’s Nirvana and was not yet thrust into life’s sweeping, swift currents.

Let’s see. In our household there were my parents, my mom’s parents, my brother and my maiden aunt. We all lived in a very large house in the middle of acres of trees, flowers and lawn. The house contained works of art, hand-painted vaulted ceilings with cherubs and clouds, and wisteria growing over the stone balustrades around the stone paved porch. The gardens were specially planted with imported trees and flowers.

There was even an entrance hall with a large floor mosaic of a scene in Greece, and dragon-shaped, wrought-iron lamps that hung on either side of the huge stone entrance fireplace. There was an elevator to each of the three floors of the house, because in prior days, the third floor had been used as a ballroom.

Life was ideal and lovely. I did not have a care in the world. I wondered if this lovely life could go on forever. As I was a child growing up, it seemed that it would.

So, Connie enjoyed all the things little girls enjoy and treasure in their hearts. Life was good for a while. She was not aware of the twists and turns her life’s currents would take later.

People ask me, said Connie’s mom, since I am of Austrian descent, how Germany affected my family. I usually laughed at that question, because my family sailed to America in 1909. I was only three years old when we sailed to America. My father detected all was not well in Germany and decided to migrate to the United States years before the start of World War I. He even corrected the oath of Citizenship when he became a citizen. He suggested it be amended to sever allegiance with the ‘then’ current government of the appropriate country of origin, not just from a named regime. Our U.S. State Department used that suggestion in its Oath thereafter.

That became a peculiar voyage, because the only place my father could book passage to the United States then was to Baltimore. A lot of people were immigrating at that time. He did not know a soul in that city. He was fortunate, however, because his favorite aunt, who was his father’s older sister, owned many houses in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He set out for Philadelphia, later inherited real estate from his aunt and started a new manufacturing process in that city. He was fairly successful and acquired a large mansion with many bedrooms in the Main Line outside of the city, living there very well.

I remember he even drove a Lincoln Continental with gold-plated fixtures and a gold winged victory figure on the front of the hood. Those were the best of days. But even the best of days do not last forever.

Connie did not foresee there would be changes in the good life she lived. She was petted and spoiled. She had her little white dog, Lily, who followed her like her shadow. She played house with Lily, who was patient with Connie beyond belief. Sometimes Connie pretended Lily was sick and Connie was her doctor. She wheeled the dog around in a toy baby carriage with a bandaged paw. Connie played games with her dog. Lily also liked to hunt for squirrels in the woods. She chased them, but never caught one.

Oh Lily, stay put in that carriage. How will you ever get well? Be a good patient. Show people how well behaved you are. I am your doctor and know what is best for you. If you are a good doggie, you can go to the beach with us in the summer.

I do look forward to spending the summer at the beach, where we have a nice brick house two blocks from the beach. The house had four bedrooms and three baths, with a small garden surrounding it. It even had a back room for a maid, but we used that room as a family room to play games. The entire family spent the summer there, except my poor granddad, who had to travel to Philadelphia after each weekend to take care of his business. He departed on Sunday evening and returned on Friday night to be with us at the beach house.

Except for my granddad having to work, we had a wonderful time every summer. Our next door neighbor was a retired opera singer. She gave me singing and piano lessons. My brother took violin lessons, but neither of us was very good as a musician. Our teacher had a house with the most delightful Chinese antiques that I loved to examine, because she traveled all over the world when she performed in operas on the stage.

Then, our neighbor across the street was a former actress and girlfriend of a mafia boss in Philadelphia. She had an amazing library with a full series of the Wizard of Oz books. I could borrow those books and read them any time we were not out on the beach. I knew I would miss these lovely summers when they stopped, since I was having such a good time.

Every Friday we went to a special restaurant to eat seafood. My brother Evan and my granddad liked flounder and ordered it every time we visited a restaurant. Lobster was my favorite dish. My grandfather liked to invite me to dine with him. When I ordered lobster, he finished his dinner of flounder before I could finish my lobster. I took forever to pick through the entire lobster, so my grandfather waited for me to finish by walking on the boardwalk until I was finished. He was so patient with me, although that was not his long suit with others.

Afterwards we spent time walking on the boardwalk, looking in all the store windows, and watching people as they passed. There were several, very grand hotels next to the boardwalk. We occasionally dined in one of their special restaurants, where we could look out at the people strolling past, with sea and sand in the distance landscape. We had such good times experiencing all those interesting family events together.

My mom would laugh with the children and dogs playing on the beach. We all commented on the attire of various women we saw walking along the boardwalk, like peacocks strutting with their colored feathers, furs and best attire. In those days, people dressed up.

I thought I was just as adult as my mom, but I was only a young girl. We ate salt water taffy and looked at the sights, including the blind girl who dove from a high platform into the ocean on a horse. I liked to watch the huge neon sign of a globe with red, radiating waves of flashing lights, announcing that the waves covered the earth. It was such fun growing up with those I loved and spending summers at the beach.

Connie was too young to realize that there would never be another time to experience quite like that again, because the family and the world would change, not always for the better. But she enjoyed that season of her young life, growing up with such fond memories and innocent secrets she held dear.

Those times were to end after the country engaged in World War II and travel was more restricted. Gas became scarce. But times were not yet oppressive and life at the beach was still enjoyed by the family.

Life was still a song and the family was singing it together as a chorus each day.

Connie did miss her dad, but he was usually away at sea, and Connie seldom saw him. He was an unpleasant man, who displayed only two emotions, which were criticism and anger. Occasionally, those emotions included rage. He never told Connie that he loved her as his daughter.

There was only one gesture of alleged kindness Connie remembered from her father. Connie was mistaken that her dad was being kind.

When she was eight years old, he took Connie to see the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was held in Philadelphia in one of the old, magnificent cinemas built years prior in the gilded-age style. The cinema had crystal chandeliers, velvet drapes, and gold railings on the stairs, with huge lights to show the name of the movie, similar to the style in Hollywood. Connie was impressed with the trappings that enhanced the theater. She never saw such opulence.

Connie enjoyed the movie, but was afraid of the wicked witch. That witch gave her nightmares every night for weeks thereafter. She expressed her fright of that witch to her dad.

The witch, the witch! She will catch me in her hands that look like claws. She is always after me and I am so afraid of her, that I cry out in my sleep in terror.

Well, life is not always a bowl of cherries, even for kids. You must think you are as delicate as a garden flower. Well, you are not. Wake up to what the world is like. I silently laughed at you when you showed such fear of an animated witch. It was worth the trip to see you afraid. Maybe you will be a better little girl, if you know that a witch may ‘get’ you sometime.

Her dad knew how his little girl would react to this scary movie and he enjoyed her fear, as a way to control and abuse her. He simply did not like females and put them down as often as he could, especially in devious ways. He was a handsome man in appearance, but very mean spirited in disposition.

Connie