Love and Suspicion Read online

  “Please,” Jolie answered.

  “I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning.”

  Jolie sipped her drink and again remained quiet for a time. “Michael said I wasn’t like the others...I mean, all of you. He truly loved me.”

  Andrea narrowed her eyes, “How old are you?”

  “A year older and ten years wiser. At least I’m not pregnant.”

  All three of the other women grinned and then Pamela said, “Michael will probably be here tonight if you want to flatten his tires or something.”

  “Or something,” Andrea muttered. “When he booted me out, I seriously considered super gluing his everything to his everything else, but Pamela talked me out of it. Believe me, we’ve thought of a hundred ways to make him pay, but he would just get even by forgetting to send our alimony checks. On the other hand, we’re always open to suggestions. Just don’t kill him, okay Jolie? That would be the end of our checks.”

  Jolie took two more sips of her drink before she asked Birdie, “Why didn’t you marry Michael? Obviously, you’re the one he truly loves.”

  “Marriage to Michael was always out of the question,” Birdie answered. She spotted a spilled drop on the bar, grabbed a rag and wiped it away. “All I need is a little companionship once in a while.”

  Jolie gasped. “You use him?”

  Birdie wrinkled her brow, and then smiled, “You could put it that way. It’s what lots of men do to women all the time.”

  “And Michael doesn’t mind being used?” Jolie asked.

  “Sure he does,” Birdie answered. “He gets mad, gets married and then comes back.”

  “But...” Jolie started.

  “Sweetheart,” Birdie interrupted, “I don’t love him. I never have.”

  “So you just mess up his marriages?”

  Birdie argued, “No, it’s not like that at all.”

  “Our marriages were already over,” Andrea said. “He ends them so he can go back to her.”

  “That’s true,” Pamela agreed. “He hasn’t been here since he married you.”

  Jolie downed the last of her drink and then pushed her empty glass toward Birdie. “I need a refill.”

  “Go easy, okay?” Birdie said. She made a fresh drink for Jolie, and then poured vodka in shot glasses for herself and the other two women.

  They could hear the full blast of a trucker’s horn in the far off distance and it made Birdie smile. “That’s Sadie. She’s just telling me the cops haven’t caught her yet.” She leaned a little closer to Jolie and whispered, “Speeding tickets.” She waited until the blaring horn faded in the distance before she held up her shot glass and said, “To Michael!” Andrea and Pamela lifted their glasses in salute, and then tossed the shots down.

  Jolie watched and then huffed, “I suppose I’ll have to learn to drink shots too.”

  “No,” said Birdie. “You have to get what you can in the settlement, move away and get a real life outside of Blue Falls. Michael is too old for you, too stupid and too impressed with himself to be a good husband for any woman.”

  “You sound like you hate Michael,” said Jolie.

  Birdie sighed. “I don’t hate him, at least on most days, but I sure would have been better off if I’d never met him.”

  Pamela nudged Andrea’s arm. “There’s a story in there somewhere and someday I plan to put Birdie in a room and not let her out until she tells me what it is.”

  “Holding someone hostage is against the law, I remind you,” said Andrea.

  “That’s the only thing that stops me,” Pamela said.

  Jolie took a deep breath. “You all seem so...I don’t know, so blasé about this whole thing with Michael. It’s like he can get away with doing anything he wants, no matter who he hurts, even you.”

  Pamela considered that for a moment. “I suppose he can, as long as he keeps signing the checks. In my case, he’s the father of my son, and depriving Alex of a father was not an option, even a father like Michael.”

  “And I’m the mother of his daughter, Gloria,” Andrea admitted. “Little girls need a dad too, not that having Michael for a father has done Gloria much good. You have no idea how often I have regretted that decision, but it’s far too late now. Now I just collect the check and try to keep the two of them from shooting each other. They’re at war, you know.”

  “I think both Alex and Gloria are very, um,” Jolie paused, “nice kids.”

  Pamela leaned forward and gave the youngest wife an incredulous look. “You’re not a very good liar. Alex becomes more like his cocky, overbearing, arrogant father every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son, but man do I pity the woman he marries. I have, and fully intend to keep preventing his wedding plans no matter what I have to do. I couldn’t save myself, but I sure can try to save my son’s victims.”

  Jolie softly giggled. “Victims?”

  “That’s what we are,” Andrea agreed. “When a man says he loves you, marries you, and vows to take care of you for the rest of your life, while all the time thinking of Birdie, then yep, you’re his victim.”

  Jolie looked to see if Andrea’s words were upsetting Birdie, but there was no hint of it in Birdie’s expression. “So he loves you, but you truly don’t love him?”

  Birdie put both hands on the bar. “Not exactly. If Michael is even capable of love, which I doubt, I am just the one he can’t have – you know, the challenge, the thrill of the chase, the conquering hero syndrome.”

  The door to the bar abruptly opened and a man walked in. As soon as he saw the four women together, he turned right around and left.

  “Guess I know what that’s about.” Jolie confessed. “I hate Michael now. I’d kill him but I’d get caught.”

  The other three laughed. “There are better ways to get even with Michael Woodbury.”

  “Such as?” Jolie wanted to know.

  “You tell her,” said Andrea.

  “Okay,” Pamela said. “I’m not confessing to anything you understand, but someone rubbed raw onion all over the seat of every pair of pants he owned, even his underwear. Boy was he mad about that.”

  “Yeah, and he still thinks I did it,” said Andrea. “I just wish I’d thought of it. You see, it’s the little things an ex-wife can do that count.”

  Birdie grinned. “After that, he got all paranoid. He was so afraid of Andrea he hired a bodyguard.”

  “And a private onion detective,” Pamela smirked. “He just couldn’t figure out how I got in the house.”

  “The detective didn’t figure it out either?” Jolie asked.

  “Nope,” Pamela answered. “Birdie gave our detective friend all kinds of bogus information and sent him half way across the state looking for people who had it in for Michael. Michael ended up paying him a fortune and still can’t prove it was me. The detective still stops by when he’s passing through.”

  A half smile was all Jolie could manage. “What am I supposed to do all day now?’

  “You’ll think of something,” Andrea answered. “Pamela paints and I am famous on the shopping channels. What I buy and don’t end up loving, I donate to charity. It’s my little way of giving Michael’s so called hard earned money away.”

  It was obvious Jolie was not much of a drinker and the booze was already making her words start to slur a little. “Isn’t it strange how Earl says nothing about the way Michael runs the company?” Jolie asked.

  Andrea scoffed, “Earl says nothing about anything, let alone what Michael does.”

  Birdy wasn’t so sure. “Yet, I bet Earl knows a lot more than he lets on.”

  “True,” Pamela agreed. “Earl still signs all the paychecks, or at least his lawyer signs it for him. On the first business day of each month, Earl spends an hour or so in his lawyer’s office. I’d love to be a fly on that wall.”

  “So would I,” said Andrea.

  “Does Earl’s lawyer do divorces?” Jolie asked.

  “Yep,” Andrea answered. “He did Pamela’s and
mine. I think he likes sticking it to Michael.”

  The hint of a new round of tears appeared in Jolie’s eyes. “Money is all well and good, but how do I stop loving Michael?”

  “That’s the hard part,” Pamela said. “That’s the really hard part.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE POOR YOU SHALL have with you always.

  Deputy Rod Keller couldn’t remember where he heard that saying, but it was certainly true, even in a prosperous town like Blue Falls. His usual route included the community’s poorer citizens, most of whom were farmers, although he had yet to be specifically called to that area.

  At just after ten, an hour and a half before Rod’s quitting time, the dispatcher reported a single mother who was having trouble getting her five-year-old to come in the house, so he headed down one of the dark rural roads. Rod might have missed the turnoff had the dispatcher not clued him in, on the one large in a row of three small mailboxes. He slowed, made the turn, and was not surprised to find the light in the yard not nearly as bright as those he had seen in front of more prosperous farmhouses.

  He pulled up to a small house that was nestled among several shade trees and stopped. Just to be on the safe side, he left his headlights on and got out. “Mrs. Richards?” he asked when the woman came out to meet him. One corner of her front porch had almost completely collapsed, causing her to hang on to a sturdy post so she could safely descend the three slanted steps to the ground.

  “I don’t mean to bother you, Deputy, but my son won’t come in the house again tonight.”

  Her smile was warm and she was not shabbily dressed the way he expected someone living in poverty would be. “He’s done this before?”

  “She lowered her voice. “His dad got run over by a tractor last year and the boy’s been mad ever since. I just can’t find the words to set it right for him. Normally, I haul him in, but I burned my arm.” She showed Rod the wide bandage on the inside of her left forearm.

  “No other children to help you?”

  “No, Willie is the only one.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “Yes, he’s in the barn. The thing is, when he won’t come in, I can’t go to bed and I’m exhausted tonight. It’s planting time and....”

  “I understand.”

  “Give him a good scare, will you Deputy? That’s what he needs, a good scare so he’ll start minding me.”

  With his cruiser headlights shining on it, the barn didn’t look in that bad of shape, although it could use a new coat of paint. Rod nodded to the boy’s mother, went to the barn and opened the door. It was a fairly good size barn, although it was completely empty of animals and equipment.

  The blond-headed boy sat on the floor about to fall asleep, when his droopy eyes widened at the sight of the deputy’s uniform. “You come to arrest me?”

  “You need arresting?” Rod asked. He crossed his feet at the ankle and sat down next to the boy.

  “No.”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  “What’d you hear?”

  Rod noticed that Nancy had come close enough to hear, but he ignored her. “I hear you committed a class fifty-two felony.”

  The boy’s eyes widened even more. “A what?”

  “A felony. When kids do a class fifty-two felony, they end up in jail.”

  Willie gulped. “Jail?”

  Rod reached over and brushed a dry leaf out of the boy’s hair. “You take not minding your mother, for example. Now, that’s a class fifty-two felony of the worst kind, especially when her arm is hurting. Of course, a class fifty-one felony isn’t nearly that bad. It all depends on what you’ve done.”

  “What’s a...the other one for?” the boy sheepishly asked.

  “Well, in that case kids get to stay home with their moms even after they get in trouble. A class fifty-one felony is when a boy loves his mother and just messes up a little. Do you love your mother?” Rod watched the little boy nod and was pleasantly surprised when Willie climbed into his lap. “I suppose I could knock the charge down if that’s what happened. She says you won’t go to bed. Is that right?”

  Willie bowed his head and nuzzled as close as he could into Rod’s arms.

  “So you messed up a little?”

  Willie nodded.

  “But you won’t let it happen again, right?”

  The child laid his head against Rod’s firm chest. “Can you be my dad?”

  “No, but I can be your friend.”

  Willie’s head sharply jerked up. “Really?”

  “Really. All of my friends mind their mothers, though.”

  “I can do it too, really I can.”

  Rod playfully rubbed Willie’s hair. “That’s good enough for me. How about we go tell your mom?”

  The boy scrambled out of Rod’s arms, ran out of the barn and to his mother as fast as his little legs would carry him. “Him going to be my friend,” he bragged.

  “Is he?” Nancy leaned down, and hugged her son as best she could without hurting her arm. She took Willie’s hand and then helped him safely up the steps. “Off you go,” She smiled when the screen door slammed and then turned to the officer. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, Ma’am “He tipped his hat and got back in his patrol car.

  Twice, as he slowly drove down the lane to the road, he looked in his rearview mirror at the pretty young widow still standing outside watching him.

  AFTER HIS SHIFT ENDED, Deputy Rod Keller loaded the Woodbury kidnapping file folders into boxes and carried them out to his car. Before he left the office, he wrote a note and left it on Millie’s desk. It was the first of several jokes he intended to leave each night just to brighten her day. Laughter was something he heard little of at his job in Texas. His old department was huge and he couldn’t remember ever meeting any of the dispatchers, although he spoke to them from his patrol car often enough. Some nights he took call after call from the dispatcher involving knifings, shootings, domestic disputes, and car accidents. Even so, there was little to laugh about.

  Rod hauled the Woodbury file boxes up two flights of stairs to his small apartment. It was located in one of the older apartment buildings a block from Main Street and the three rooms were nothing fancy. He laid his hat on a shelf, tossed his uniform jacket over the back of a chair, and then took the first set of files out of the box. He set them on his table, and then went to the small kitchen to make a pot of coffee and a sandwich.

  At last he was ready to get started.

  The first file folder contained three legal size yellow notepads on which the sheriff scribbled his handwritten notes. Every inch of the pages, front and back were filled with little room for anything else. Rod set that file aside for now.

  The first page of the second file folder held an 8 x 10 color glossy of Tiffany Ann Woodbury. She was dressed in a little green dress, white socks and white shoes. A lock of curled hair on top of her head completed the smiling picture of a happy, heathy baby girl. Next to the photo was a lock of her hair that the sheriff had taped to the folder. Rod went to his kitchen drawer, pulled out a magnifying glass and carried it back to the table. Painstakingly, he looked at every inch of exposed baby skin, but found nothing to indicate the child had ever been abused.

  He set the magnifying glass aside and turned the page. The second page consisted of a short summary and a list of file folders, with a numbering system in chronological order indicating where each section of the evidence could be found. As he continued to look through them, page after page of details began to draw a picture of what happened that night. As well, the sheriff had taken the trouble of drawing a sketch of the rooms on the bottom two floors of the Woodbury mansion, complete with where each window and door was located. Everything was locked up tight by the time the Sheriff arrived and no fingerprints were found on the sills or the frames. To get in through a window on the second floor, the kidnapper needed a ladder, and at least Earl’s ladder was still in the garage right where he always kept it. />
  Next, there was an extensive drawing and multiple photographs taken that night and the next morning of the front and backyard. A note indicated that Earl had a groundskeeper, a man hard of hearing, whom everyone loved. The harmless groundskeeper was the first to be eliminated as a possible suspect. The file further explained the extensive and immediate search of the grounds that night and again the next morning, but they didn’t find so much as a cigarette butt or a gum wrapper. A grid showed precisely where they searched, but they found no shoe prints, upturned dirt, or anything at all suspicious on the exterior of the house.

  After the FBI showed up, the sheriff noted that he felt he lost control of the situation. There were new men asking the same questions and doing exactly what his deputies and the city police had already done. Instead of stepping on the FBI’s toes, he sent his people out to canvas the neighborhood. The neighbors were hardly asleep with all the ruckus going on anyway. Their names were listed, but none reported seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary that night.

  In the meantime, the sheriff had the dispatchers notify all the neighboring counties of the baby’s disappearance. In the next county over, a car traveling at nearly a hundred miles an hour got pulled over, but a thorough search of the vehicle turned up nothing.

  At the crack of dawn, the sheriff widened the search grid to include all the nearby properties, and then later widened it again to include the heart of the town and the farmlands. No one said it, but by morning everyone feared they would be looking for a body.

  Rod skipped a couple of pages and then came to a list of everyone with whom the sheriff came into contact, and some he didn’t. It included names, addresses, details of the interviews and the sheriff’s impression of each. Those numbered 206. Rod ran his fingers through his hair. Two hundred and six, most of whom were probably scattered to the four corners of the world by now. It seemed an insurmountable number of possible witnesses and/or suspects to comb through. Even so, if the sheriff overlooked something, Rod was determined to find out what it was.