My sister Anne (she's the religious one in the family) tells me that I am a whore. I love her dearly, but what does she know? She's twenty-eight and still a virgin. It was my own fault though. I never should have taken Alan anyplace where someone who knows me could have seen us together, but see us together Anne did, kissing and hugging, and the next day she demanded to know what I was doing. When you have been caught there is no use in denying so I told her I was spending some quality time with my lover.
"My God Marybeth! Have you forgotten you are a married woman?"
"No Anne, I haven't forgotten although I'd very much like to."
"A lover Marybeth? You are cheating on John with a lover? Oh my God. My sister is a whore."
When she said that I lost what little 'cool' that I had and said, "Fuck you Anne" and walked away from her and hoped that she wouldn't do anything silly like tell John. He would find out soon enough, but I wanted it to be on my schedule and on my terms.
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I didn't consider that I was cheating on John when I had my affair with Alan; I considered it to be revenge. It is true you know, what they say about the spouse being the last one to know. I had no idea of how long it had been going on, but long enough for everyone that John worked with to know about it. At least that is the way it seemed to me when I attended John's company Christmas party.
We were sitting at a table with John's secretary Tammy and her boyfriend and I had noticed a lot of sidelong glances directed our way and I had also noticed what I can only call 'smirks' on some of the faces that looked our way. I found out why when I went into the ladies room. There were six stalls and three of them were occupied so I took the empty one on the far end. While I was in there the occupants of the three that had been in use finished their business and were at the sinks washing there hands and touching up their make up when one of them said:
"Can you believe it? John has the gall to sit his slut at the same table as his wife?"
"Tammy doesn't think she is a slut. She thinks she is the about to be the new Mrs. Bernard."
"That's what Sally thought too until he got tired of her and fired her."
"He can be such a dick head at times."
"At times? He has been an asshole since he has been here. Remember when he fired Patty because she wouldn't go out with him?"
"I wonder if Tammy's boyfriend knows he is getting a lot of John's leftovers?"
"Oh come on Marge, say it like it is (giggle, giggle) - sloppy seconds -(giggle, giggle).
"I feel sorry for John's poor wife. She looks like she doesn't have a clue."
"Yeah, well as much as I dislike John I'm not going to be the one to tell her."
As they left the room I sat there and stared at the stall door and I thought that Marge had been right - I didn't have a clue. When I got back to the table John and Tammy were gone and Tammy's boyfriend answered my unspoken question:
"They've gone to the bathroom."
Funny I thought, I just came from there and I sure didn't see her. Maybe ten minutes later John came back to the table and a minute or so after that Tammy reappeared. It was hard for me to do, but I managed to get through the rest of the evening without giving John or Tammy cause to suspect that I suspected something.
That night when we got home I did something that I hadn't done in our eight years of marriage - I told John I had a headache when he wanted to make love. Make love? Not bloody likely, he just wanted someone to put out the fire his lover started.
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The party had been on a Wednesday night and when I got to work the next day I called Marsha in Legal and asked her whom we used for our fraud investigations. She gave me the number to call and the name to ask for. I called the number and asked for Alan Pendergast and they told me he was out of the office. They took my name and number and said they would page him and have him call me.
Five minutes later there was a 'knock, knock' and I looked up to see a tall, good-looking man standing in the doorway to my office.
"Mrs. Bernard?"
"Yes, may I help you?"
"Alan Pendergast. I was downstairs talking with Marge when I was paged. I recognized the number and asked Marge who the extension belonged too and here I am. How can I be of service?"
"Unfortunately Mr. Pendergast, I find myself in need of a private investigator. I don't know if your firm handles domestic cases, but I thought that if you didn't you could recommend someone."
"Please call me Alan and yes we do have a section that handles domestic cases. What seems to be the problem?"
I told him about the party and what I'd overheard. "It is hearsay, but they seemed very sure of themselves in what they knew. I want to be sure also."
He took down some information on John and said he would look into it. Five days later he called me:
"I'm sorry Marybeth, but those women knew what they were talking about. If you want proof that you can take into court it will take another week or so, but if all you want is to know for sure we do have an audio tape."
"How did you do that?"
"They take a room at the Motel 6 on their lunch hour and then they go back to work. After work they go back to the room for an hour or so before your husband heads for home. While they were back at work we bribed one of the cleaning ladies to let us in the room to plant a bug. Now that we know their schedule I can get a couple of cameras in there. All I need is for you to give me the go ahead."
"Go ahead and do it Alan."
Alan dropped the audiotape of at my office later that afternoon. I debated on whether to listen to it in the car on the way home or wait until everyone was gone for the day and listen to it in my office. The last thing I needed was to lose it while listening to the tape while driving the car and hitting someone or something. I probably would have been better off if I had just taken Alan's word that John was guilty and not listened to the tape at all, but that's water under the bridge now.
When the office cleared out at five I waited ten minutes and then did a walk through the office to make sure that I was alone and then I went down to the third floor conference room and pushed the tape in the tape player.
