Warren Butterfield Pt. 02

"Not till after midnight. Why?"

"Just wondered if you would be home before I went to bed," Megan replied. "Do you want me to fix you something to eat for when you get home?"

"Just make me a sandwich and leave it in the fridge. What are your plans for tonight? You going to the club?"

"No. I am going straight home. I'm going to take a nice long bath and curl up in bed with a book."

"Wish I could join you," I said.

"I do too."

After that we had a pleasant conversation ending with Megan saying, "I love you."

After I put the phone down I wondered why Megan had called. That was the first time I could remember her calling to ask when I was going to get home. I decided it was probably nothing so I went back to what I was doing.

I got home at 12:15 AM and I pulled my car - actually I was driving Megan's old Toyota Camry - into the garage next to Megan's Lexus. When I got out of the car I could hear the ticks and pings engines make as they cool down. What caught my attention was that Megan's car was making the same noises. I put my hand on the hood of her car and it was hot. It appeared that Megan had gone out and she must have gotten home just before me.

Megan was in bed asleep or pretending to be asleep when I looked into the bedroom so I headed to the kitchen to get something to eat. I got a beer and the roast beef sandwich Megan had made for me out of the refrigerator and took them to the kitchen table. As I ate I thought about what Megan may have been up to that evening and decided to ask her about it in the morning.

Although I didn't get to bed until after one o'clock I was up drinking coffee at 6:30 in the morning. I had showered and dressed without waking Megan and was on my second cup of coffee when she came out to the kitchen.

Megan poured herself a cup of coffee and joined me at the table. "What time did you get home last night?" she asked. I was pretty sure she already knew but I played along.

"About 12:30," I said.

"Was the sandwich I left for you okay?"

"It was very good, thanks," I said. "What did you do last night?"

"I told you what I was going to do when I called you," Megan said.

"Oh, right. Take a long bath and curl up with a book. Is that what you did?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Just wondered if you changed your mind and did something else."

"Well, I didn't. Why are you acting so strange?" Megan said.

My mind was buzzing. What the hell was going on? Megan had just lied to me. I decided not to confront her about the lie right then. I sensed that whatever was going on it wouldn't be good for our marriage and I just wasn't ready to deal with that yet.

Megan called me again that evening before she left work. We just chatted about things in general and then she asked what I would like her to fix me for my dinner. I was worried. Why was it suddenly so important for her to know when I would be home?

I managed to make that night a short night and got home at 11:15 PM. Megan's car was in the garage and the engine was cold.

The next day the pattern repeated itself. Megan told me she was going to stop at the club to play tennis but she would be home by seven o'clock. When I got home at midnight her car was in the garage and the engine was cold. I began to wonder if I could have been mistaken about her car on Monday night.

On Thursday Megan call at five o'clock to chat. She told me what was going on around the medical center where she worked and I asked her if she was playing tennis that night.

"No. I am going to stop on the way home to buy groceries and then I am going to stay in and watch some television tonight."

When I got home just after midnight I found Megan's car ticking and pinging as if it had just been shut off. I didn't even bother checking on Megan. I knew she would be in bed pretending to be asleep. I was so angry as I ate my sandwich that I had a difficult time swallowing.

When I got into bed Megan rolled toward me and in a sleepy voice asked, "What time is it?"

"One o'clock. What time did you get home?" I said.

"I got home at six."

"You didn't go out tonight?"

"No. Why?"

"Just curious," I said

I was now convinced that Megan was having an affair. Was it Carl Tredwell or had she found someone else. Whoever it was I was willing to bet that Trish had somehow instigated the whole thing.

I was going to have to find out for sure what Megan was up to before I confronted her. The only evidence I had of her doing anything was her lying about being out on Monday and Thursday nights and the only proof I had was that her car engine was still hot when I got home. She could make up all kinds of lies to cover that up. Could my life get any worse? That was a question I didn't even want to think about.

Chapter 17 - It's Not the Fall That Hurts, It's the Landing

The following week was a repeat of the previous week. Megan called me each day around five o'clock to ask what I wanted to eat when I got home and just like the week before, on Monday and Thursday her car engine was still hot when I arrived home.

The following Sunday afternoon I played golf at the club with Mace and Buck. After we completed our round we sat in the bar and had a few beers.

"What's that matter with you, Butter?" Mace asked. "You look kind of down."

I hadn't been planning on telling them about my problems but I tried to answer Mace and it all just came out.

"You can't really believe that Megan is cheating on you," Mace said.

"What else am I supposed to think?" I said. "Four times now I have come home to find her car engine still hot and each time she has claimed that she stayed in all night."

"What did she say when you asked her about the car?" Buck said.

"I never asked her."

"Why not?" Buck said.

"I don't have any other evidence yet. I don't want her to know how much or how little I know until I have more proof," I said. "I don't want her to be able to deny anything when I do confront her."

"What are you going to do?" Mace said.

"I don't know. I can't get away from work so I can't follow her. I have to find a way to see where she goes on those nights."

"You know I would love to help you, Butter, but I can't," Buck said. "I'm a cop. If I followed her and someone found out I would be up shit creek."

"I know and I would never ask you to do anything that would put your career at risk," I said. "This is my problem and I have to figure it out myself. Sorry I'm not better company today. I think I'll head home and see what the women in my house have come up with to make my life a living hell tonight."

The three of us walked out to the parking lot and put our clubs into our cars. We stood and talked for a few more minutes and then Buck said he had to go pick Paula up from her girl friends house.

When Buck was gone Mace said, "Can you get out for a while tonight?"

"Why?"

"I have something I would like to show you. Can you meet me at the Blue Grass Transport office in Covington around seven tonight?"

"I'll be there but can you give me a hint as to what this is about?"

"I might have a solution for your problem," Mace said.

"Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"I'm not sure this is legal so I didn't want to get Buck involved."

"You certainly have my curiosity piqued," I said. "I'll see you at seven."

I arrived home from the country club at three o'clock to find Megan, Trish, Brandon and Carl Tredwell sitting out by the pool. That isn't exactly right. Megan, my monster-in-law and Tredwell were sitting by the pool and Brandon was doing cannon balls into the pool trying to get everyone wet.

I studied the scene outside to see what I could learn. The pool chairs were lined up so that Trish was sitting between Tredwell and my wife. I wondered who arranged the seating, Trish or Megan?

I watched the quartet outside for about twenty minutes before I decided to go out and join them. I wasn't happy about finding Tredwell at my home but they were doing nothing that was obviously inappropriate.

"Oh, good, you're home," Megan said as soon as she saw me coming out of the house."

I forced a smile onto my face and said, "What's going on out here?"

Megan started to say something but Trish cut her off. "Megan was playing tennis with Carl this afternoon so we invited him over for dinner."

Megan looked uncomfortable and Carl just smiled and said, "Good to see you again, Warren," as he stood to shake my hand.

I was just about to say something nasty when I got drenched by one of Brandon's cannon balls. Instead of apologizing, the little shit just laughed while Trish looked at him lovingly.

I don't know about the other three but I was sure that Megan knew that I was pissed by the expression on my face. I managed to count to ten before I said anything. Actually I counted ten horribly painful things I would like to do to Brandon before I was able to speak without shouting.

"Nice one, Brandon, maybe I can do the same for you one day," I said through gritted teeth. "Megan, I am not going to be able to stay for dinner. I told Mace that I would give him a hand on a project he is working on tonight."

"Why don't you tell Mace that you can't help him tonight because you have a dinner guest," Trish said.

"I promised Mace I would help him before I found out we were going to have company for dinner."

I turned and went back into the house followed close behind by Megan. As soon as the door closed behind her, Megan said, "Do you rally have to go?"

"Megan, why is he here?"

"Trish asked Carl to come over. She feels sorry for him because he is alone all of the time since his wife left him," Megan said.

"Trish didn't invite him over because she feels sorry for him. She invited him over to cause trouble between you and me."

"Don't be ridiculous. I know that you and Trish don't get along very well but she would never do anything to harm our marriage."

"You believe that and you tell me I am being ridiculous?" I said. "I am going to take a shower.

After showering and getting dressed I got a cold beer and joined my stress providers out by the pool. For the next eternity I listened to Carl Tredwell go on and on about how much Megan's tennis game had improved and how, with Megan as his teammate, they were almost sure to win the club tournament in August.

I couldn't understand why Tredwell was playing Megan so hard if he, as I suspected, was the one she was having an affair with. Maybe Carl was just nervous and didn't know what else to talk about or maybe it was all a show for my benefit. I was beginning to not care.

At six o'clock I decided that I had as much of their company as I could stand.

"Gotta go," I said as I stood up. "Mace is waiting for me. I shouldn't be too late. Megan, will you wait up for me?"

Megan said that she would but I really didn't care if she did or not. Our marriage was falling apart and I no longer felt the need to save it.

"Nice seeing you again, Tredwell," I said.

Chapter 18 - Mace's Idea

It was only 6:30 when I crossed the river into Kentucky. I still had a half hour before I was supposed to meet Mace so I went to Burger King for dinner. I knew I could have had a much better dinner at home but the company is much better at Burger King.

I arrived at the offices of Blue Grass Transport just before seven o'clock and Mace was there, waiting for me.

"You've never been in our dispatch center, have you?" Mace said.

"No. You've never invited me in until now."

"Well, technically no unauthorized personnel are allowed into the dispatch center but since I am the director of the center and I'm the one who made that rule, I am making an exception for you," Mace said.

The dispatch center was not at all what I expected. I was expecting it to be a small office in a warehouse with a couple of desks cluttered with papers and clipboards. The dispatch center was more like what I would expect to find at the Houston Space Center. The room was about fifteen feet by thirty feet with a twenty-foot long control console that ran down the middle of the room. There were three desktop computers built into the console with a chair at each workstation. Three small desk lamps, one at each workstation, provided the only light in the room along with six large flat screen LCD monitors mounted on the wall in front of the console.

The center LCD screen displayed a map of the US interstate highway system. The other five screens displayed maps of Lincoln, Nebraska, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.

"What do you think?" Mace asked.

"Pretty impressive," I said. "Why are those city maps the ones on display?"

Mace went to the nearest workstation and started typing something and suddenly five different city maps were displayed.

"We can bring up any city we want," Mace said.

"What do you do with all of this?" I asked.

"This is how we keep track of where our trucks are and the status of our shipments."

I could tell that Mace was proud of the center and I told him so.

"This was my baby. I went to an industry convention in Vegas a few years ago and saw a demonstration of a center like this. I came back and talked my uncle into letting me build this center."

"I am impressed."

"From here I can locate any truck in our fleet at any moment in time twenty four hours a day."

Mace punched a few keys and little red and green numbers appeared all over the interstate map.

"The red numbers are trucks from our fleet that are not on the road at the moment. This being Sunday, most of the fleet is not moving. The green numbers are the trucks that are currently in transit."

Mace used the mouse and highlighted green number forty-seven in Colorado. When he clicked on the number the US map disappeared and was replaced by a map of Colorado. Using the scale at the side of the map, Mace was able to zoom into the exact location of the truck.

"Truck forty-seven is on I-70 thirty-five miles west of Denver. The truck is currently headed east," Mace said.

"How does that work?" I asked.

"GPS. Global positioning satellite."

"I know what GPS is but how does all this work?" I said pointing at the maps and the console.

"All of our trucks have a GPS transceiver installed in the cab. Every fifteen minutes my computer automatically sends out a broadcast through our satellite uplink to query the transceivers in each truck to find its location. The GPS then determines the location of the trucks and that information is transmitted back here via satellite again. The software in the computers does the rest.

"In addition to the automatic queries, I can query any truck at any time just like I did truck forty-seven."

"So how many trucks do you have?"

"We currently have 235 trucks. At any one time only about fifteen to twenty of them are here at the warehouse. The rest are scattered around the country."

"Pretty neat. I guess I never realized how hi-tech dispatching trucks had become."

"I know. It's hard to believe that it wasn't that long ago that tracking our trucks was done using routing sheets on a clipboard. They had to use CB radios to communicate with the drivers. I am glad I never had to deal with that."

"I enjoyed the tour and all, but that's not why we are here, is it?"

"Actually, this is why we are here," Mace said. "Remember I told you that we have 235 trucks in the fleet. Well, as of last Tuesday we have 234 trucks on the road. Truck number 137 was in an accident Tuesday and is in the shop down in Lexington waiting for repairs to be made. It looks like it will be off the road for at least two weeks."

"Where are you going with this?" I asked.

Mace turned back to his workstation, brought up a map of the Cincinnati area, then he brought up the numbers of all of the Bluegrass Transport trucks in the area. When Mace clicked on truck number 137 the address of the building we were in popped up on the screen.

"Truck 137 is in the repair center in Lexington but what is more important to you is that the transceiver for truck number 137 is right here in my desk," Mace said. "My idea is to have you put the transceiver into Megan's car. Then I can loan you my laptop so that you can link through the Internet to my computer here in the dispatch center. You will have authorization to monitor transceiver 137 from the laptop but I can only let you use it until truck 137 is ready to go back on the road. What do you think?"

"I'll be able to see where she goes using your laptop?"

"Right."

"That would be great but if Megan finds out I put a tracking device in her car the shit will hit the fan."

"That is a risk but I think you can put the transceiver under the hood of her car where she is unlikely to find it. You'll have to decide if you want to take the risk," Mace said.

"Given what I expect to find out, the risk of Megan discovering the transceiver is not important."

Mace explained how to install the transceiver in Megan's car and then he showed me how to access the tracking computer using his laptop. Feeling a little uneasy about what I was planning to do, I picked up the transceiver and Mace's laptop and headed home.

Chapter 19 - Laying the Groundwork

I arrived home around 9:30 PM and I slipped quietly into the house to see where Megan was. Seeing that she was in the bedroom watching television I went back out to the garage and installed the GPS transceiver in her car.

As soon as I walked into the bedroom Megan turned on me.

"Why were you so rude to Carl?" Megan said.

"When was I rude to him?"

"It was your whole demeanor. You barely spoke to him and then when you left you called him Tredwell instead of Carl," Megan said.

"So? What's the big deal?"

"Calling him by his last name like that is disrespectful."

"I happen to think that his coming to my house to flirt with my wife shows a lack of respect for me."

"What the hell are you talking about? He wasn't flirting with me. We were just talking. Friends do that, you know?"

"Just talking, huh?" I said. Then a falsetto voice I continued. "Oh, Megan is such a good tennis player... Megan gets better everyday... Megan will be the best tennis player at the club... Megan can walk on water..." Then back to my normal voice. "Don't you think he was pouring on the compliments just a little too thick?"

I waited for Megan to respond but she didn't. It looked like she was actually thinking about what I had just said.

"A word to the wise, Megan. You had better pay closer attention to what Trish is up to before it's too late. That is if it is not already too late."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Megan asked.

"Just think about it and in time you will understand," I said. "I am going to my study to read for a while."

"I thought we were going to...ah... Didn't you ask me to wait up for you when you left?" Megan said.

"It's hard to think of making love when you are being eaten up by other worries," I said.

"What other worries?" Megan said.

I said, "We'll talk tomorrow," as I walked out of the bedroom closing the door behind me.

To be continued.