Jessica Fall, OWP 1998

 

The doorbell rang just as Mary and two of her daughters were sitting down to eat. "I'll get it. You girls go ahead and eat." Mary stated as she rose from her place at the table.

She opened the door and found three policemen standing on her front porch.

"Mrs. Bradley?" Mary nodded her head warily. The officer flashed his badge and held up a piece of paper. "We have a search warrant to search the premises of 3309 Juliet Lane and Mary Bradley's Financial Service."

As the officer droned on reading the entire search warrant, Mary felt her knees weaken and her mind race. What was going on? Did this have anything to do with the visit from the Franklin brothers two days before? The entire conversation came flooding back to her. She remembered the awkward silence that filled the air before Bob Franklin cleared his throat and asked her, "Did your husband tell you anything about the situation with our parents?"

"No. What are you talking about?" To herself she remembered thinking, of course not. Will had shut her out of his life quite some time ago. "Well, about three to four months ago, our parents asked Will to withdraw $20,000 out the insurance annuity my Mom had deposited eleven years ago. It was taking a long time, and Will kept saying the insurance company was just slow processing the request. After almost two months went by, our parents called the insurance company to see what the hold up was. The company had no record of our mother ever investing that money. We confronted Will about it six weeks ago. After hedging around and making excuses, he finally admitted he hadn't deposited Mom's $45,000. Then he forged the insurance papers so we wouldn't know."

Mary remembered the questions that had jumbled through her mind. How could this be? Was it true? How could her husband of fifteen years keep this from her? What if it was true? What was she going to do?

Mary's mind snapped back to the present as she realized the officer was asking her where she kept her business records. "My clients' tax returns and financial status are confidential, and my husband doesn't have anything to do with my business or my office. Do you need to search that?"

"Mrs. Bradley, if you fail to cooperate and refuse to give us access to the evidence, we can charge you with being an accessory." the investigator said gruffly.

"Mom, what's going on?" one of her daughter's called from the kitchen as their dinner grew cold and forgotten.

"There are some policemen to look at some of your Dad's things. Go ahead and finish your dinner." To the policemen she said, "I have nothing to hide. You can look through whatever you need to." Mary began showing them around the house explaining about her accounting practice, showing them where to find all the boxes Will had brought home from his office when he was fired three months ago, explaining she had never been through any of those boxes .

"When will your husband be home?" the investigator in charge asked her rudely.

"Will said he'd be home about 8:00."

"OK. We'll stay until he gets home. We need to ask him a few questions. In the meantime, we can finish taking a look around. Your husband stole money. . ."

"Allegedly stole," interrupted one of the local policeman who gave Mary a reassuring smile.

"Yeah well, he "allegedly" stole money from a woman in Roseburg, a lady in Phoenix, and The Kiwanis Club." The investigator said in a gruff voice.

"Will said he paid the lady in Roseburg back, but she just didn't remember it." Mary defended.

"Yeah right." the investigator shot back.

Silenced, Mary continued leading the officers around, wishing they would get out of her house and leave them alone.

The three policemen finished their search and waited for Will to arrive.

The front door flew open as Mary's oldest daughter and her fiancee, home from college for the weekend, walked in. "Hi Mom! We're home!" They stopped short as they rounded the corner and saw three strangers standing in the kitchen. Mary introduced the police officers and explained their reason for being there.

After long periods of agonizing silence and stilted attempts at small talk, the investigator in charge stood up and said, "I think we've waited long enough. We'll talk to your husband another time."

Shortly after the police left, Will arrived home and was greeted by a cacophony of five angry and scared voices. "Will, where have you been? Dad, there were police officers looking for you and going through your stuff! What's going on? I don't understand!"

"Let's go downstairs. I think we need to have a family meeting. Corie," Will said to his daughter's fiancee, "You're going to be a part of this family soon, so you might as well join us." The family walked downstairs, and Will began, "Ten years ago, I was going through a hard time financially, and two sisters each invested $45,000 into an insurance annuity. One sister's money was invested; the other's wasn't. I gave part of that money to your Mom to pay for the monthly expenses. I always intended to pay the money back, but I got caught up in buying material things; I wanted the best for you guys. One thing led to another, and I had to borrow money from a lady in Roseburg and Phoenix to pay the first people back. They were the only people money was borrowed from, but I was never able to get caught up."

"This is going to hit the front page of the newspaper tomorrow." Will continued. "Since I am a city councilman, it's big news. I can take all this, but I'm sorry you guys have to go through this too. I never want to do anything to hurt you." He explained with tears in his eyes.

His family trusted and supported him that night, including Mary. They were willing to accept that he had made a mistake, and were ready to move forward.

A few weeks later, Mary was cleaning under the bed and discovered a briefcase with two combination locks, one on each side of the handle. She recognized the briefcase as the one her husband used ten years ago when they shared their tax practice. Mary wondered where it had come from. It couldn't have been here when the police came or they would have found it. What was inside?

"Lord," she prayed, "I need to know what's inside this briefcase. If you want me to know, please help me find the combinations to these locks." Mary opened her eyes and read the combination on the right side. It read 931. She moved the nine one click until the numbers read 831. Her heart pounded as she listened for the sounds of her husband coming home. Every sound made her jump and her heart leapt to her throat. Her heart beat faster as she thought about him finding her here with his briefcase. She knew she only had a few minutes. He never left her alone in the house for long, now that he wasn't working.

She focused on the combination for the other lock. She looked down. Her thumb covered the first two numbers. Without looking at the numbers, she clicked them two numbers down. She lifted up her sweaty hand; the numbers now read 777. That meant the original numbers were 997. She filed the numbers away in her memory so she could return them to the exact same spot, knowing he would spot any wrong number.

Holding her breath, Mary pressed the button, and the lock sprang open. She listened for sounds of her husband arriving home. Only silence answered her. Feeling like a criminal, she opened the briefcase. Inside was a folder with over two hundred pages detailing all the evidence the police had gathered. The pages were separated by tabs with people's names on the them: Fischer, Moon, Smithton, Lang, The Kiwanis Club, the Franklins. . . the list went on and on. The realization sank in that her husband, the man she had trusted and given 15 years of her life to, had been, and was still lying to her.

Hearing the garage door open, she quickly replaced the notebook and papers exactly as she had found them in the briefcase, turned both sets of the numbers to the original combination, replaced the briefcase in exactly the same spot, and returned to work cleaning, trying to pretend that everything was normal--that she didn't just find out her husband had lied and betrayed her trust.

Her heart beating wildly, she smiled and greeted her husband with a quick kiss. Inside she was panicking, wondering if he was going to find out and destroy the papers before she could read them. She tried to think how she could get him to leave her alone in the house long enough for her to make copies of the papers.

The next few days blurred together as Mary assisted her oldest daughter with plans for her upcoming wedding, spent time with the younger girls and taxied them around for their summer activities, tried to keep the house clean enough for her compulsive husband, and attempted to get her clients' monthly bills and paperwork finished. Despite her busyness, the paperwork in the briefcase and the questions surrounding her husband's betrayal were never far from her mind. It was extremely difficult not to confide in her friends or her oldest daughter. She did not want anything to ruin her daughter's wedding day.

Mary's opportunity to copy the evidence came the next Sunday when her husband and her daughters went to church and left her alone to take care of her "headache." She knew she had to act fast. She only had one hour to copy over 200 pages. Mary quickly retrieved the folder from the briefcase and ran downstairs to her office. Her shaking hands fed the first stack of papers into the copy machine's feeder. What if he arrived home early? She couldn't hear any sounds from upstairs with all the noise from the copy machine. Her heart pounded. With sweaty palms, she returned the first stack of papers to its original home and carefully fed the next set of papers into the feeder. What would she say if he caught her copying all his papers? She honestly didn't know what he would do to her. She had caught enough glimpses of his darker side&emdash;when his temper exploded, when he verbally cut his victim to shreds, when he gripped an arm, his eyes smoldering in anger. The next stack of papers went in. What if she put something in the wrong place and he found out? The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and her heart beat even faster, creating a searing pain in her chest. The next stack of papers. Her ears strained to hear some sound above the whirring of the copier.

Finally, all the pages were duplicated. Hiding the fresh copies in her office and clutching Will's folder tightly to her, Mary sprinted upstairs where she could listen while she checked and rechecked to see if all the papers were in their original places. Carefully, Mary replaced the folder exactly in its place, returned the combination numbers to their original spot, slid the briefcase to its precise location, and laid on her bed attempting to calm her frantically beating heart. Trying to think like a criminal, Mary mentally retraced her steps to see if she covered her tracks. Her mind then leapt to when she would have the time to read and analyze all those pieces of paper.

Mary's opportunity came a week later when a friend invited Mary to go to Portland. Even though she was bombarded with other duties and responses, Mary knew she had to take this opportunity to get away from her husband. While her friend was in class, Mary poured over each page of evidence detailing the truth about her husband's illegal activities over the past eleven years. She wondered how he could have kept this secret from her for almost two thirds of their married life. The pieces started falling into place. The excuses. His ability to give an answer or explanation to every one of her questions. His ability to verbally twist the conversation so the focus and blame were off him and onto her or someone else. A conversation popped into her mind. She had asked him about the $10,000 he had invested for her parents, who had never received an insurance policy. His answer was crystal clear in her mind, "I reinvested their money into another company with a higher interest rate. The insurance policy is on its way. Don't tell me you and your parents think I stole their money! How could you even think of such a thing! I can't believe it!" He had later shown her a copy of the policy, and had her parents sign it and a letter stating they didn't find fault with him. The policy had looked real to her, but what if it wasn't? She called the insurance company. Sure enough. They had never heard of her parents. Overwhelmed by sadness and a sense of loss and betrayal, Mary felt her chest tighten as tears poured down her face. How could she have trusted him? Why wasn't he honest with her? How could he rip off his friends and family? How could he steal money from her parents? That was their retirement money!

After returning home, Mary gave Will numerous opportunities to tell the truth, even asking him directly, "Is there anything else you need to tell me?" His answer was always no. Mary realized she'd have to set a trap to catch him because he would never voluntarily part with the truth. If she confronted him with it directly, he would deny it and convince her of his innocence with his smooth talking. Her stomach twisted in knots as she imagined how she was going to combat his ability to verbally twist the truth.

The trap was set. With her heart pounding, Mary told Will she had found his briefcase and asked him what was in it.

"Nothing." He replied.

"Oh really?" Mary retorted, her voice quivering as her shaking hands undid the combination. She opened the briefcase and inside, there was . . . nothing!

In a voice now quaking with anger, Mary said, "There may not be anything in here now, but there was at one time, and I've read every single page. I know you've been lying to me."

"No, I haven't. Those reports are filled with mistakes and false information. How could you doubt me--your husband?" Will defended himself, neatly shifting the blame off his actions and onto the police and his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Mary didn't believe him. He always had an answer and excuse for everything. She realized that was how he had covered his tracks so well. Two years later, after losing his job, his insurance license, his house, most of his material possessions, his family and their trust, and the trust of his friends, Will finally admitted that he made a mistake but continued his habit of blaming other people when things went wrong.