Irreconcilable Differences

Characters:

Lee Williams - 48 year old retired deputy sheriff, now a private Investigator in Fightin' Creek, Idaho

Sherry Wilson - Lee's client, age 46; librarian at the Kellogg County Library

Frank Wilson - Sherry Wilson's philandering husband, age 53; an attorney

Lori Lee - Frank Wilson's attractive blonde secretary, age 28

Cassandra Donovan - Sharon Donovan's stepmother, age 39; neighbor; AKA: Connie Thompson, Cassie, Cass

Sharon Donovan - Cassandra Donovan's stepdaughter, age 18; neighbor

Robert Rowden - Stateline Motel manager; AKA: Robert the Rodent

Lynne Davenport - Lee Williams' attorney, age 29;

Justice Nancy Carpenter, age 43; Federal District Court Judge, District of Idaho

Sheriff Stony Holmes; Sheriff of Kellogg County, Idaho

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The librarians at the Kellogg County Library are used to seeing me come in at least twice a week. I know most of the full-time librarians by name. They've become accustomed to my rather unusual requests for all sorts of information. In fact, some of them may enjoy speculating among themselves about the reason behind some of the requests. Small-town, north Idaho gossip.

My name is Lee Williams. I'm a private investigator. In this day and age, a PI is required to be an information manager and researcher. He (or she, there are many women PIs) needs to be more proficient with a laptop computer than with a gun. Thus, I spend a great deal of time at the library and online digging up information. I was a deputy sheriff and detective with the Kellogg County Sheriff's Office for over twenty years. That gave me the local knowledge and contacts to make the transition to private investigator after being injured on duty and medically retired in 1999. I was fortunate to have been involved in the technical side of investigations for the sheriff's office. As a result of numerous federal training grants, I attended a wide variety of obscenely expensive and exotic technical surveillance and countersurveillance courses sponsored by several government agencies. One agency even tried to persuade me to come to work as a technical agent after retirement. But, I am a "local" through and through. Don't get me wrong. I was more than happy to take the feds' money (okay, the taxpayers' money) and attend their training courses, but I knew only too well that going to work for them would stifle any and all creative thinking. Besides, they wanted me to move to northern Virginia and work far too close to what J. Edgar "Do you like my dress?" Hoover liked to call the "Seat of Government." Consequently, I elected to retire comfortably in Fightin' Creek, Idaho, and earn a modest living conducting private investigations.

Fightin' Creek is in economically depressed northern Idaho. Methamphetamine production and residential burglaries have replaced logging and silver mining as the principal industries here. It is still a small town occupied primarily by home-growns. If you weren't raised here, then you've retired here from California. Many if not most of the under-25 crowd that has grown up here is still firmly anchored in the 1950's. Just like their parents. The kids' idea of success is graduating before being thrown out of high school and then getting a job at just above minimum wage for the next forty years. Far too many of the men aspire to little more than buying a pickup with a snow blade on the front in the winter and a boat trailer on the back during the summer. Many of the women are desperate to get married and pregnant, preferably but not necessarily in that order. Nearly all of them are one-pack-a-day cigarette smokers, a diversion made readily available by the low price of nearly untaxed cigarettes sold on the Indian reservation. Welcome to Fightin' Creek, Idaho, where the local time is still fifty years ago.

[Monday, August 12]

I was at the library digging up some financial information about a local company when Sherry Wilson, one of the librarians, approached me. She seemed to be a bit upset, certainly not her usual self.

"Lee, could I have one of your business cards, please?"

It was an odd request, particularly because she asked so seriously.

"Sure. What's up?"

"I'd like call and make an appointment to come talk with you about a personal matter. I think I need to hire you."

It was clear from her tone of voice that she didn't want to go into any detail at work. I dug a card out and gave it to her.

"How soon would you like to meet?"

"Within the next day or two if you can. It's really important."

"Sherry, you don't have to call and make an appointment. Would you like to stop by after you get off work today?"

"If that would be convenient for you, I'd really appreciate it. I'm off at three this afternoon. Would half-past three be all right?"

"That would be fine. I'll have a cup of coffee waiting for you."

Sherry and I are both coffee drinkers. We run into each other at the Fightin' Creek Starbucks quite often where she buys a grande beverage with a name only a chemical engineer could understand.

She forced a tight smile. "By the way, how much do you charge?"

"Your visit this afternoon will be free. Once you get to the office, we'll discuss your matter. If we both decide that I can help, then we can talk about a retainer and my rates."

She seemed relieved and thanked me profusely.

Sherry Wilson is an interesting lady. She's about 46, brown hair cut a little too short for her height, 5'-08". I'd guess she weighs about 135 pounds, but the way she dresses, it's hard to see her shape to tell for sure. Her modest loose attire is comfortable and businesslike but certainly not fashionable. It projects the prim and proper librarian image well. She wears brown tortoise-shell glasses and very little makeup, so her already elongated and somewhat angular face seems rather severe. She has a smallish mouth with narrow lips that give her face an almost pinched appearance accentuated by the small lines surrounding her lips and eyes. Someone meeting her for the first time would describe her demeanor as professionally detached, not warm but not cold. She may seem a little standoffish at first. With a master's degree in library science from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she's well educated. Obviously she had not been born and raised in Fightin' Creek.

Sherry is actually very nice, but it's sad to say that many men would not give her a second glance. Well, that's not quite true. One did, about twenty years ago. She's married to Frank Wilson, one of the most expensive attorneys in the county. He has hired me occasionally to do some investigative work. Frank pays on time, but he's a real jerk. One gets the sense that he spends more in a week on himself than he does in a year on Sherry. He has political aspirations to be a state senator in the short term, but that is just a stepping-stone to his real objective, a federal judgeship.

Frank Wilson was born and raised in Fightin' Creek. How he managed to graduate from high school and get a degree from the University of Idaho in Moscow has puzzled many people. Even more mystifying is that he managed to graduate from the U of I law school and pass the Idaho bar exam. He married Sherry while he was in law school and she was a librarian at the university. My personal opinion is that Frank got a better deal than she did when they married.

Promptly at 3:30, Sherry walked into my office. My secretary escorted her in and then left, closing the door behind her.

"Hi, Sherry. Please, sit down. Would you like that coffee I promised? It's mine, not Starbucks."

"No, thank you." She was all business and got right to the point.

"I am pretty sure Frank is cheating on me. I would like for you to find out if he is. And if he is, then with whom." Her tone of voice was surprisingly calm. She did not seem emotionally distraught.

"What makes you think that?"

"There have been times when I call his office get his voicemail. Usually his secretary answers the phone, but frequently it seems that both she and Frank are gone at the same time. It may just be coincidence, but my intuition tells me something is going on."

"So you assume he's having an affair with his secretary? It seems to me that so far you really don't have much to go on. And Fightin' Creek is still a small town. It would be pretty hard for someone as prominent as Frank to carry on without someone noticing and probably gossiping. How long have you suspected that this has been going on?"

"About six months this time."

Again, no emotion. She was almost casual about it. Most PIs would have to drag that kind of statement out of many women. Sherry said it very matter-of-factly and without any prodding.

"You said 'this time.' Have there been other times when you've suspected infidelity?"

"Suspected?" she spat it out. "I walked in on him with a woman attorney about five years ago. Right on the desk in his office. Frank and I had it out then. He promised that he would never stray again. I don't think I really believed him, but I didn't want to leave him, either. It isn't that I love him any more, I don't. I haven't for a long time." She became a little more hesitant, almost sad. She spoke very softly. "He hasn't even touched me for a couple of years now."

Since private investigators are not marriage counselors and since we also have to pay the rent, I decided to help Sherry by investigating rather than counseling.

"All right. If I uncover anything, how much information do you want from me? Do you just want me to confirm or refute your suspicions, or do you want names, dates, times and places? And if I do confirm what you suspect, what do you intend to do?"

She looked me straight in the eye and then spoke with an eerie coldness. I actually felt a shiver, the kind you feel when you sense that someone is waiting to commit murder in a dark alley.

"If he's having an affair with someone again, I'll own him for the rest of his life."

There was absolutely no doubt she meant exactly what she said. Cold.

She went on, "I want every detail you can come up with, no matter how ugly or salacious it may seem. Frank's a very good attorney, and I'll have an uphill battle in divorce court even with irrefutable evidence. Frank graduated from the U of I law school, and as you probably know, most of the local lawyers and judges did, too. It's the quintessential old-boy network."

She was right about that. I had some personal concerns as well. Regardless of the outcome, if the results of my investigation against a local attorney became public record, I could kiss good-bye any more work from the local lawyers. But when Sherry looked at me, those brown eyes stirred something. My first attraction for a woman comes through messages from her eyes, not the shape or age of her body, and believe me, I was getting a very strong sexual message from Sherry. I shook it off. It was probably just my unreasonably long and totally unintended excursion into celibacy that was sending conflicting biological signals.

But, back to business.

"To get the kind of evidence you will need means doing surveillance. Surveillances are very expensive because they consume so much time, and I have to tell you, more often than not their results are inconclusive. I will probably have to follow Frank for a couple weeks, maybe longer. To take your case, I would need a two thousand dollar retainer. I charge eighty dollars an hour for surveillance, credited against the retainer. I will give you an item-by-item surveillance report with dates and times along with photos. You can call me daily on my cell phone for updates."

She didn't hesitate. She took out her checkbook and wrote out the retainer. We completed and signed a representational agreement, then had my secretary witness it.

"Sherry, there are some things you can do to help the surveillance be more productive. I take it from what you are saying that Frank comes home at night and seldom goes out alone."

She nodded and said, "That's right. And he's also home on weekends. If he's messing around, it's probably during the workday."

"All right. Then what I'll do is pick him up when he leaves for work every day and put him to bed a night. Once he's in for the night, you can call me on my cell phone. That'll stop the clock and save you some money. But if he goes out, or if his habits change, please call me right away so I can get back on him. Also, does he have a planner? A Daytimer or Dayrunner? Something he keeps with him to record his appointments and billable hours?"

"Sure. He carries a black leather Daytimer with him all the time."

"Can you get a look at it? In fact, is there any way you can photocopy the pages for preceding months and up through today?"

"Hmmm. I'm not sure about getting the current pages, but I know he stores previous months in a binder in a file cabinet at home. I should be able to make copies of those pages fairly easily during the day while he's at work."

"Fine. That's a good start. Once you have the copies, look them over and see if anything appears unusual to you. Then call me and we'll arrange to meet so you can give the pages and your observations to me. Can you describe the car he drives?"

"He has two. One is a light blue Mercedes sedan. The license number is 'LAW 1'. The other car is a red BMW. Its license is 'LAW 2'."

Well, that makes it easy. Mercedes and Beemers stick out like sore thumbs in Fightin' Creek. I'd be able to follow Frank even if I needed a white cane and seeing eye dog.

"Do you know what kind of car his secretary drives?"

"I'm not sure. I think I've seen her in a white Subaru. I'm just not sure, though."

Well, forget about following the secretary. North Idaho is the white Subaru capital of the world. They breed them up in Bonners Ferry and Sandpoint.

"No matter. I have enough to get started unless you can think of anything else."

"No, not right now. When will you start watching him?"

"If he's at work now, I can pick him up this afternoon. Let's see. It's four o'clock now, so I should be able to be in place by 4:30. Now, here's a business card with my cell phone number on it. I keep the phone with me all the time and by my bedside at night, so call any time you need to pass along any information."

She looked at the card with a puzzled expression. "This isn't your business card. This is a card from Henderson's Hardware."

"The telephone number on that card is mine. I don't give retained clients my detective agency business card. You never know who might find it and start wondering why you have it. In fact, you should destroy the business card I gave you at the library. Incidentally, the email address on the Henderson card is also mine. I am the only person who reads that email. Even my secretary doesn't know about it, so if you want to email something to me, use that."

Sherry looked and me and smiled for the first time during their visit.

"You know," she said, "If I were cheating on my husband, I would not want you on my tail."

She recognized the double entendre before I did, then blushed and stammered, "That didn't come out the way I intended it. What I meant was..."

I dismissed her comment with a light laugh, though for a moment, I wondered if (and maybe subconsciously hoped) it had been a Freudian slip. "No need to explain. I know what you meant. And thank you for the compliment. Sherry, I'm very serious about calling me at anytime you need to pass along information or to find out where your case stands. I'd prefer not to call you at work. Do you feel comfortable having me call you at home when I know Frank's not there?"

She thought for a while. "You know, calling me at home probably is not a good idea. If Frank became suspicious, I wouldn't put it past him to tap our phone line. You knew he had some gadgets to do that, didn't you?"

Oh, I certainly did. In fact, I was the one who found them in the ceiling above his office during one of the debugging sweeps I had done for Wilson. Of course, since Frank was a former client, it would have been unethical to divulge that to her.

"What kind of gadgets?" I asked with my best angelic innocence.

"I don't know. He never showed them to me. He just said he had found them in his office one day. When I asked why he didn't turn them over to the police, he said it would cause too much trouble."

She was right about that. The equipment, very expensive equipment, I had found was from a company in Florida that sells only to law enforcement and the government. I had told Frank that. At that point, we both concluded that some law enforcement agency was bugging Frank or his office. That's when it seemed prudent for me to distance himself from Frank Wilson. Contrary to popular fiction, real-world private investigators do not like to become involved in criminal investigations, especially when their client is an attorney not highly regarded by local law enforcement and may, in fact, be the subject of a criminal investigation.

"Do you have a pager?" I asked Sherry.

"Yes, Frank got it for me several years ago. I don't know why, though. He hardly ever pages me. Actually, the head librarian pages me more."

I took the pager from her and copied the number.

"Fine. If I need to have you call me, I'll page you with a string of nines. If it is urgent, it'll include a 9-1-1 page."

She took her pager back, then looked at me. The coldness in her eyes was gone.

"You know," she said, "This is almost like being a spy. I think I'm actually going to enjoy this. I'll call you as soon as I have his Daytimer information."

With that comment, she stood up to leave. Before she left, she extended her hand. Always businesslike. But this time her grip was softer and warmer, and she held it a little longer than a business handshake. Again, eye contact. Then she turned and left.

At 4:40 p.m. I pulled my Ford F-150 pickup (trailer hitch, no snow blade) into a parking spot in the shopping center lot across from the Law Offices of Wilson & Associates, LLC. Frank's Mercedes was in the parking lot. I parked where Wilson would be unlikely to see me and then sat back with a cup of coffee and my 35 millimeter camera. At 5:03 p.m. he came out, alone, got in his car and pulled out of the parking lot. I stayed at least two cars behind him, but even in heavy traffic, following the Mercedes was a snap. At 5:42 p.m. he pulled into his garage at home and closed the door behind him. About twenty minutes later, my cell phone rang. It was Sherry saying Frank was in for the night. She also said that he usually left for work at 8:00 a.m.

[Tuesday, August 13]

Tuesday morning the diligent if bleary-eyed investigator was back in the vicinity of the Wilson's house promptly at 6:00 a.m. Sure enough, at 8:06 a.m. the garage door went up and out came the Mercedes. It was easy to recognize Frank at the wheel. He drove through one of the closet-sized espresso stands that seem to have popped up all over Fightin' Creek, then he went to his office. Once again, I parked so I could watch Wilson's car and the door to his office without being seen. At 9:30 a.m. Sherry called on the cell phone. She was noticeably excited.

"Frank got home last night and said he felt like he was coming down with a summer cold. He had a couple drinks, then took a dose of Nyquil, then went to bed. Between the bourbon and the Nyquil, he was out like a light. Anyway, I took his last twelve months of Daytimer sheets down to Kinko's and copied them. He was so wiped out that I figured it was safe to take his Daytimer with this month and the next two months and copied them." She was talking quite fast. I started to say something, but she kept on talking.

"I stayed up almost all night going over his Daytimer, and there are some interesting things missing. His appointments and work record all look normal, however some of the work records show no billable hours."