Biggest and Best

Copyright © 2012 Flavian

Chapter 1

It was something as simple as font size in a web browser that gave me my first clue that my loving wife of the past ten years might be unfaithful to me.

As a financial advisor, I am paid to notice the details of my clients' financial situations. I recommend appropriate strategies for them to follow in order to meet their long term financial goals in life -- strategies involving debt, credit, savings, investments, retirement planning, allocating funds for the kids' college expenses, and life insurance.

I have been very successful in this endeavor to the point where I am highly respected in the business community of our town. Referrals keep my business going and growing; not only here in town, but with clients in the surrounding towns and general community as well. Paying attention to details was a huge part of my success.

After marrying Claire and moving to her hometown -- from listening at various gatherings of her friends and from general talk in town -- I had found out over the years that she'd had a wild youth in her high school days before we met. She had been a cheerleader in high school and had hung with the A-crowd. Those folks only included the so-called cool set. They shunned anyone in the B-crowd as also-rans. Those folks did not figure in any of the invitations to their social events, which sometimes, evidently, had included wild parties involving drinking and at least heavy make-out sessions, if not outright sex.

Most everyone in town now seemed to agree -- and I had believed -- that she had finally settled down when we had married and put down roots as a couple here and had begun our family. She stayed away from the old wild crowd and actually had begun to cultivate friendly relations with the old B-crowd members, many of whom had visited our home and were part of the group that we, as a couple, called friends.

Domestic problems were not limited to any particular income strata or class of folks anywhere, and our town was no different. It seemed, though, that the old B-crowd folks were much more stable in their marriages than those of the old A-crowd. At least the family court docket reports in the local newspaper seemed to bear that out.

Unlike a lot of the folks in our town who had grown up here together and met their life partners while in school, I was a move-in. I grew up two states over. Claire and I were the same age and had met at Iowa State University. Neither set of our parents was happy with paying out-of-state tuition for us, but we had made them proud by graduating on time and with reasonably good job prospects after college.

I had been a Business major and Claire had majored in Interior Design. We had met and had maintained an on-again-off-again relationship starting our junior year. We had finally settled down to be a couple in our final semester of senior year. During graduation week, I had asked her to marry me, and she had eagerly consented. We had come back here to her hometown, and been married in a ceremony attended by her family and a lot of her long-term childhood friends.

At the reception following the wedding, I had enjoyed meeting her friends and relatives. I particularly noted that she was on extremely good terms with a lot of the guys she had grown up with. I also noted that, with few exceptions, a lot of the girls she knew were not as warm toward her.

Hearing one girl named Joy say that she was glad that Claire McNamee was finally married and out of circulation so that she wouldn't have to worry about 'Harvey' anymore -- whoever he may be; her husband, I presumed at the time -- gave me pause. But the activities surrounding the expected events at a typical wedding reception -- dances, bouquet toss, garters, etc. -- had me distracted. I had discounted those whispers whenever they had infrequently come to mind over the years -- until now, ten years later, as I looked back over our time together and reflected.

One incident at the wedding reception had stuck with me, leaving me with a bad feeling afterward. One of Claire's men friends, a guy named Dwight Newman, seemed to be holding her a little too intimately during a couple of the dances they shared. Dwight's wife, Carol, was standing next to me when Dwight and Claire were sharing a third dance of the day, and he seemed to have his hands a little too low on my new bride's back -- almost down to her ass, and she was not only not objecting, she was laughing with him the whole time.

Carol, who had been very nice to me during the reception, looked at her inebriated husband and his idiotic actions with my new bride in public. She had looked up at my frowning and annoyed expression and had put a restraining hand on my arm.

Carol had told me, "They used to be an item when they were in high school, Wade. And Dwight was a regular hellion here before he went off to college and came back as a schoolteacher. But you don't need to worry about him now. Sometimes, he gets a little carried away when he's had too much to drink, but I am pretty good at keeping an eye on him and keeping him from getting too far out of line. And this is still a relatively small town; his being a teacher in a public elementary school keeps him under the community microscope as well."

With that being said, she had gone out and cut in on the two dancers, peeling Dwight away from my new bride with a big smile. Dwight had acted momentarily surprised and irritated, but then he had smiled at Carol and given Claire a shrug before turning to dance with his own wife. Claire had immediately been whisked into the arms of another of her male friends to dance, just as her parents had approached me to tell me they were extending the open bar hours.

After the reception, Claire and I left for a honeymoon in Key West, and returned, tanned and sexually spent after screwing like rabbits for a week. We had enjoyed each other's company immensely, cementing our relationship with pleasant times spent together in pursuits outside the bedroom as well as inside.

Unlike some honeymoons I've heard about and read about, we did not have any episodes of the new bride being hit on and isolated from the husband for hanky-panky, nor did we experience any unpleasantness concerning her overexposure at the beach or pool. There were no 'true confession' moments following the wedding, since we had already discussed our past sexual histories together and had opened ourselves to each other -- warts and all. Well, almost all. I'll get to that.

While Claire had evidently had a more colorful sexual history than I, we reassured each other that we were both over our seasons of sowing wild oats and were now single-focused on loving each other. Our honeymoon was simply a very nice and loving time for both of us.

We came home to Claire's hometown and I went to work for a national brokerage that had established an office there. Dillard's, a retailer at the only mall in town, hired Claire to be one of their consultants and buyers for the home store side of the business dealing with home furnishings and accessories. Her dad was the assistant manager in charge of the retail clothing side of things for the store -- family members working at the same business in a relatively small town? No problem.

Once in a while, we would encounter some of Claire's old A-crowd friends -- it is sort of inevitable in a town of this size. Claire would be polite and make sure to introduce them to me and me to them. But, she seemed to be trying to separate herself from the old wilder side of life that she had lived in her teens and seemed to be trying to avoid the old crowd. She also seemed to me to be opting instead toward cultivating new friendships among her acquaintances within the old B-crowd.

Her high school graduating class organizes reunions every five years. We had missed the Five-Year reunion because of the requirement of my job that my wife and I attend a national sales and award meeting in Kansas City -- Claire had been somewhat pissed at having to miss the reunion because of my job. But I had only been with the company for about one year, and I did not want to screw anything up because of a social misstep.

For the Ten-Year reunion, we had to miss because of a minor infection Claire had contracted following the C-Section delivery of our second child -- an infection that had her recovering in the hospital on the day of the event.

The Fifteen-Year event was fast approaching and it appeared as if nothing would keep us from this one -- Claire was very excited at the prospect.

The missed Five-Year reunion was only one reason for our annoyance with my employer. Other reasons, mainly internal regulatory requirements, seemed to be holding me back from helping my clients in the best ways to meet their financial life goals.

After about three years of working at the local branch office of the national brokerage, I took a risk by resigning and established my own financial planning business. And I guess the extra hours that I spent during the next two years after leaving that brokerage, getting my client base into place, and getting my reputation established, paid off. I was able to settle back to a reasonable pace in a relatively short period of time.

The good thing about doing what I was doing was that I could do it locally and rarely had to travel. Most of the banking and investment stuff I could handle via correspondence, teleconferences, email, and online transactions. Only a few times a year did I have to travel to meet with the life insurance companies for which I recommended products to my clients. I also had to travel a couple of times a year for, uh, other reasons; but I will tell you about those later.

Now, after a little over ten years in the work force, with the last seven of those years being my own man in the world of financial planning, I can say that my wife and I are on our way to being very comfortable financially in the short and long terms, barring any disasters, like a death -- or maybe a divorce.

About those 'other reasons' for travel to which I alluded earlier. Sometimes I was required to travel in order to meet with 'special clients' to discuss confidential financial arrangements. Allow me to explain.

In my sophomore year at Iowa State, I had helped a guy who became a good friend -- Sonny Giancomo -- avoid a major confrontation with the law. We did not know each other very well before showing up at the same party one weekend. But we became fast friends after I helped get him out of a window, despite his heavy state of intoxication, and through and out of the back yard of the house during the mêlée involving a police raid because of an anonymous tip about drugs at the party.

Like most college parties at the time, there was an abundance of drugs at this one. Several people were arrested and a couple of them pointed vaguely to the name of Salvatore 'Sonny' Giancomo as the source of the majority of the stash that was confiscated.

Sonny and I were having pie and coffee at a Denny's a couple of hours later when he finally sobered up enough to thank me for getting him out of the house before the police had arrived. He promised me his eternal friendship and loyalty if I would continue to be a loyal friend in return.

He had speed-dialed a number on his cell and had spoken to someone who I later learned was an attorney for Sonny's family -- by that, I mean his extended 'familia.' The lawyer had stepped in with local authorities and Sonny had not even been required to show up at the police station to answer the inquiries related to the vague claims of those who had tried to finger Sonny as the source of the drugs. The whole matter was simply ... dropped.

Sonny was the son and heir apparent of the man who ran the local and regional businesses and activities that helped to transform the provenance of the extended family's finances from 'dirty' to 'reasonably clean.' In other words, Sonny's dad basically oversaw the money laundering efforts of a branch of what, at one time, had been part of the Gambino crime family. It was called something else now, but I have not yet been informed what, and it does not really matter as long as I keep them happy.

From that night on, I maintained a relationship with Sonny that continued into the present. Through that connection, as well as through my own business dealings in the world of finance, I had become quite adept at the establishment and management of domestic as well as off shore accounts and other financial avenues for the movement and holding of assets that 'special clients' wanted to keep secret.

Today, I maintain quite a lucrative off shore deposit of my own assets -- unknown to the Feds as well as my own wife -- accumulated from helping Sonny's family to clean up the look and feel of their incomes, and they compensate me very well for that service. I have used my skills to help several other prominent legitimate clients to establish off shore accounts as well, helping a couple of them keep from suffering tremendous losses during particularly ugly divorce cases.

So, my business dealings leave me in a position of not having to worry too much about my family's financial outlook for the future. As for day-to-day expenses, we have the appearance -- one that I work hard to maintain -- of being a typical family dealing with balancing a family budget and being frugal in our purchases.

Claire, in addition to her job at Dillard's, has a franchise for Majestic Jewelry and arranges for different ladies in the community to host Majestic Parties in their homes -- similar to Tupperware Parties. She and the other Majestic representatives gather to make presentations at the homes of various ladies in the community periodically and to take and place orders which are fulfilled mainly online. Yeah, with my income and with her income from Dillard's, along with her part-time income, financially, we are doing okay; actually a little better than okay, but we don't flaunt it.

And now, back to my current situation ...

Within my home, I handle the management of the household finances for our family using a commercial accounting software product. When I say 'our family' that includes our daughter, Mindy, 7; our son, Paul, who just turned 5; Claire; and, of course, me -- my name is Wade Sloan. The computer in the library of our house is top-of-the-line and I keep it up-to-date with regular online updates of the operating system, anti-virus software, and our other software applications.

The ability to notice the details that I mentioned earlier has helped me deal with my own life situation very well for as long as I can remember. But when the font size in the web browser showed me something I had not been aware of up to that point, I came to the conclusion that I had not paid enough attention in one area of my life. That area was the one dealing with my wife's activities and daily routine; the activities and routine that she had may have been skillfully manipulating in order to cheat on me, it would appear at first glance.

A 'blink-out' of power had caused the computer to be interrupted at an inopportune moment. It was just as I had been in the process of re-starting the computer to allow for online updates that I had downloaded to be applied to the operating system. Thus, when it finally re-started again after the 'blink-out' the display settings were out of whack -- with icons out of order and screen resolution set way too big. I reset those items to the settings I preferred and attempted to open an internet connection.

When the browser opened, a box asked if I wanted to go to the page on which I was last working. I clicked 'OK' and was taken back to the login page for the bank site where I monitor our checking account online, and had been working while the computer updated in the background. When the spreadsheet-style listing came up showing the recent checks we had written and the recent debit card purchases, I noticed that the font size was smaller than we normally keep it. Before I readjusted it to the size I was used to seeing, I noticed two details that I otherwise would have missed due to their normally being cut off by the column width.

My wife keeps her calendar on the computer with scheduled events, having a notification feature that pops up during the day with sufficient and timely notification for her to prepare and, if necessary, travel. On one particular day that I was remembering from the previous week, I was aware of her plan to attend a Majestic Party hosted at a lady's house on the east side of town. Remember, I am pretty good at noticing and remembering details. Claire had evidently stopped to purchase some food items on the way back from the party from the grocery store chain that we typically use.

The grocery chain that we frequent has two stores in our community -- one on the east side of town and one on the west side. Because she had used the debit card for the purchase that day, the bank screen showed the transaction. Because of the smaller font size, I was able to note something about that transaction for which I would otherwise have been clueless.

The store number for the store at which she had made her grocery purchases was for the one on the west side of town instead of the one nearest to the party location on the east side -- from which Claire had come afterwards -- supposedly; I recognized it because I sometimes stop there for items on the way home. Additionally, that evening, she had purchased gas at a convenience store on the west side, the location now visible because of the smaller font -- a fact that would have been screened from me by the column width limitation otherwise.

In my formative years before college, I had come to cling to a couple of quotes from famous people that had served to establish part of my outlook on life. In high school, a girl who was supposed to be going steady with me had burned me. She had sneaked around with one of the football team captains before I caught her and dropped her like a bad habit. From that incident of broken trust, I had adopted the late President Ronald Reagan's approach to dealing with the Soviet Union when it came to nuclear weapons disarmament: "Trust, but verify."

In my junior high years I had been bullied a bit. Following my considerable growth spurt in my high school years, I had been able to inflict considerable pain and physical discomfort on those who had sought to continue said bullying. From that period in my life, I had adopted a line from John Wayne in his role as John Bernard Books in the movie, 'The Shootist.'

"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them."

If Claire, my supposedly loving and faithful wife, was misleading me in any way about her activities, I would be very disappointed and angry. Because of what I was seeing on the computer screen, I was going to have to institute a positive regimen of verifying her activities. If she was, in fact, cheating, then I would need to inflict harsh retribution on her and the one -- or ones -- with whom she was cheating. After all, I won't be wronged or insulted; and I could be very vindictive if it turned out that this was the case.

"So, you want her followed and checked out?" asked Sonny when I called him the next day from my office.

"I guess that is what it is going to take, Sonny. I have already missed out on just where she went on Thursday, the day that she was on the wrong side of town.

"Maybe you can track her electronically with a GPS-type thing or something like that. That way, she wouldn't spot a tail, nor would any of her friends. As small as this town is, and with almost everyone knowing who everyone else is, an out-of-towner would stand out like a cat at the dog pound."