Nashville: The Mood (Part 12)

By Donald H. Carpenter

Is Nashville simply Music City? The capital of Tennessee? A state of mind? A sea of corruption? A world of happiness, ordinariness, hypocrisy, vicious gossip, and political skullduggery? Where politics, religion, sex, academics, and crime cross paths in such a way as to be almost indistinguishable? Enter a world of uninspiring public officials, soulful prostitutes, scheming professional classes, and tormented preachers.

The Church of Mesmenology is continuing to gain momentum, the new mayor is settling in, the longtime editor of the city's only newspaper is slowly being forced toward a door, and Vanderbilt's Department of Gossip studies is having gossip problems of its own.

The Sodomy Society is about to become politically incorrect, intrigue is raging in corporate corridors, strange billboards continue to pop up, and even murders are happening here and there.

Hop aboard!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald H. Carpenter
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215535578

Donald H. Carpenter

Donald H. Carpenter is a former certified public accountant who is the author of six books: Dueling Voices, I Lost It At The Beginning, 101 Reasons NOT to Murder the Entire Saudi Royal Family, He Knew Where He Was Going (?), Man of a Million Fragments: The True Story of Clay Shaw, and LANNY. He is currently working on a fictional series about Nashville.

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NASHVILLE: THE MOOD

PART 12

by Donald H. Carpenter

Copyright ©2023 by Donald H. Carpenter

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

Cover design by Charles Hooper

Printed in the United States of America

NASHVILLE: THE MOOD

PART 12

About two weeks ago, the weather was hotter than normal, on some days much hotter. That phenomenon had been going on throughout the year, but it was broken by spells of cooler weather, sometimes even cooler than normal, so no one paid too much attention to it. Then, suddenly, about a week and a few days ago, the temperature suddenly dipped sharply and a cool front moved in, bringing massive amounts of rain.

Normally, when such a phenomenon occurred, it was over within two days at most, often just one day. But this time, strangely, the rain hung in there, even as the dip in temperature hit a nadir and began to move upwards a bit. Instead of the tremendous rains that had opened this new weather period, the rains were simply heavy, day after day, going on for much of the day. It was quite unusual for Nashville, where rains were normally interrupted by bouts of mere heavy dark clouds, partial sunshine, even perfect days. But this time it stayed long enough that a mood settled over the city and seemed to affect the spirits of the general population. People seemed less humorous; their external demeanor seemed unhappy.

In a neighborhood on the north side of town, about two blocks off of Dickerson Road, Debbie Ann Rassinger had definitely decided this was going to be the day. Her boyfriend of nine months had begun to grow more and more abusive. He had always been very controlling, seeming to try to keep her confined to the residence, monitoring her phone calls, and only allowing her limited computer usage. He even screened calls from her family, such that no one had heard from her in months.

The two had met at a sleazy bar, just north of downtown, one lazy afternoon. After drinking heavily, the two became involved, and her boyfriend had soon, immediately really, wanted her to move in with him, and she had done so. Most women would have very soon considered that a mistake, given the boyfriend’s often brutal behavior. But Debbie Ann Rassinger had her own plan, always had.

It was an interesting relationship, not an uncommon one in the Nashville area. The couple obviously barely knew each other, and were unfamiliar with each other’s family and friends prior to meeting. But if an outsider could have studied the relationship closely as it was ongoing, and been able to enter into the minds of the two individuals, they would have discovered a somewhat gruesome plan, or rather plans. Debbie Ann’s boyfriend had a longstanding pattern of abuse. Had it been possible to find all of his ex-girlfriends, it is doubtful that even one would have denied his abusiveness. Often, that was the reason the relationship broke up. On the other hand, Debbie Ann Rassinger’s background was a little more mysterious.

She had come from a small town on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains in East Tennessee. She hadn’t really known her father, even though he lived on the other side of the very small town she grew up in. Her mother, never off welfare rolls, rarely held a job for longer than a week. Both sides of her family were dirt poor, seemingly showed no ambition to change that through learning skills or holding jobs, and were often in trouble with the law. Most of the offenses were relatively minor, involving small property theft, or loan fraud, but there were some violent encounters. Eventually, Debbie Ann had moved away with a boyfriend who brought her to Nashville.

But even before that move, there were whispers about Debbie Ann in her small town. One of her early boyfriends had passed away suddenly, at the age of thirty-two (Debbie Ann was nineteen at the time). The boyfriend had no known health conditions prior to his death, and a routine autopsy showed nothing unusual. He was soon buried uneventfully.

Shortly after his death, Debbie Ann had moved to another small town about twenty miles away, not far, but far enough to be in a different circle of whispers, rumors, and half-truths. Within a year and a half, her boyfriend in that town had also passed away. He was even older, forty-six, at a time when Debbie Ann was twenty, going on twenty-one. As with the previous boyfriend, a routine autopsy showed nothing nefarious, but this boyfriend had had some heart issues, and the coroner concluded that the death was related to that.

News of that second death made its way back to her home town, and for the next few years Debbie Ann lived in relative obscurity, but dogged by rumors, with no real investigation into either death. Five years passed with a series of new boyfriends, then Debbie Ann moved to Nashville at age twenty-seven.

Her time in Nashville was somewhat mysterious, because she seemed to live off the grid in many ways. She had social media accounts, but she didn’t post very often on them. She never owned her own computer, instead using those of acquaintances or going to the library. She didn’t use credit cards or checks; she was totally cash-based, although she did have a series of bank accounts that were opened and closed over the next couple of years. She held down minor jobs for small periods of time; the longest period was three months at a fast food outlet.

And she had a series of boyfriends during that time. None of the relationships lasted more than a few months, some only a few days. Had someone been able to observe her regularly during that period, they would have seen Debbie Ann moving into and out of various residences and separating from various men on a seemingly continuous basis. Eventually, she met her current boyfriend, and the two seemed to hit it off. She moved in with him, and for a while things seemed OK. But Debbie Ann always had that plan in her mind.

Debbie Ann’s boyfriend had no real plan, not really. But he had a normal mode of operating when it came to female relationships, always had. His basic attitude was that he was the boss, and whatever he said went, and he tolerated no back talk, or usually even any alternate suggestions about how to do something and when to do it.

Debbie Ann had sensed this almost immediately upon meeting him. In fact, the boyfriend’s behavior followed a pattern she had known in most of the men in her life. Almost all of them had been controlling, quick to temper, physically abusive, and generally intolerant of other opinions. Often, those men didn’t even want to hear an opinion from their female interests.

Debbie Ann’s plan was different. There was a chicken-and-egg aspect to her thinking—had she developed it as a result of the abuse she encountered from relationships, or was there something deeper, something within her own character that caused her to develop plans like this? Regardless, her plan had generally served two purposes: it could terminate an abusive relationship in its tracks, and it could lead to financial gain. Indeed, Debbie Ann had collected life insurance following the deaths of the two boyfriends who had passed away. The amounts were not gigantic—fifteen thousand dollars in one instance, and twenty-five thousand in another—but her success in collecting those monies had caused her to think even bigger.

With her current boyfriend, she had begun to formulate a plan soon after meeting him. Recognizing the familiar pattern of his violent and dominating behavior, she knew there was no option other than simply leaving, hiding out, moving to another part of the city, or out of the city completely. She didn’t want to follow any of those options; she had begun to like Nashville during her relatively brief stay. And so, combined with her earlier successes, her boyfriend’s behavior pushed her in the direction of direct action.

At least that was how she justified it in her own mind. Would she have gone through with her plan even if her boyfriend had turned out to not be violent and controlling? Reasonable people might differ on that, but no one would ever know for certain, and that wasn’t the type of issue she dwelled upon. For her, the plan of action was clear. She was confronting a situation she didn’t like, one that she might could turn into her financial advantage if she took the right actions, and that was all she needed to know.

She had her method down; the only question was whether to vary the method, try something new, or go with the tried and true. After giving the matter a significant amount of thought, she decided on a compromise solution. The method of operation would generally be the same as with her previous two boyfriends who had passed, but the specifics of at least the main ingredient of her plans was something new, something she hadn’t tried before but had merely read about, or seen on a television show or two, or five.

Her two previous boyfriends had been milk drinkers, and it was easy to disguise strychnine in a milky mixture, although she had proceeded very cautiously at first. Once she had convinced herself it had worked, she had become bolder on the second attempt, using a greater quantity and knocking things out in one set of actions. She considered that again this time around.

But her current boyfriend was not a milk drinker; he drank mostly clear liquids where a powder could not be easily disguised. However, he did drink fruity-flavored drinks and soft drinks on a regular basis; one shelf of the refrigerator was often filled with them—strawberry, orange, grape, even peach. That seemed to call for a different method this time around, and she quickly zeroed in on antifreeze as the method. From watching television, she knew it was somewhat widely used, but that it could be detected. The key would be to downplay the need for an autopsy, make the death look as natural as possible, and hope for the best.

She knew that her boyfriend kept several thousand dollars in a simple checking account. It was his only major asset, other than his used vehicle, but it would do for now. And of course he had several books of unused checks that she could take with her and gain a little more advantage in the early going.

She knew what she had to do, so she reflected on the plan that morning and decided on a step-by-step approach. She would give her boyfriend a drink upon his arrival from work—whatever flavor he chose. She would make up a nice large glass of it, chilled properly the way he liked it, and pour in the