Clue-full

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Devon - one year later and six months post-divorce:

I stood in the stream, watching the man twenty or so yards away, removing the hook and fly from a beautiful rainbow trout. It looked to be in the fourteen-inch range, most definitely a keeper.

"It's about time," I teased. "You've done nothing but toss back cutthroats all day."

"Ha-ha," Peter smiled at my dig. "I appreciate you guys' patience. I think it's time to head back to the house and get these babies cleaned up for dinner."

Later, with our bellies full of freshly caught fish, we sat around the fire pit. My attorney, Robert Williams, my private investigator, Dan Wilkins, Pete, and me. Three of us with a two-hundred-dollar bottle of whiskey and Pete with a very expensive single malt scotch he'd never been able to afford before now.

Wilkins filled the silence and light mood. "I don't understand something," he mused. "If Mariah's irrevocable trust was recorded when she turned twenty-six, why go through all the trouble? You could have stayed married to her and 'happily ever after,' and all that crap."

"Holy shit!" Peter almost had to spit out a mouthful of that delectable nectar. "How can you even ask that? You're the fucking PI."

"I know," Dan shot back, "but that's why I'm asking. She seemed a nice girl from what I saw. Devoted - at least as much as someone her age can be. If she ever cheated, well then, divorce her and take her money. Fuck, I had two wives that were each worse than her."

Peter looked at me to continue the story. "She would have never remained faithful," I shrugged. "Too much of her father in her. She was already becoming a bitch in the short time we were together. Her father had the prenup, and as a PI, I'm sure you know at least a few others in your line of work, who could have been paid to gather false evidence against me. Not enough for some kind of criminal proceedings, but certainly enough to uphold the prenup.

"So, I needed to be preemptive. Strike while the iron's hot, so to speak. Plus, I needed to make it ironclad. No 'maybes,' or unknowns. And finally, the timing had to be perfect - shock and awe to throw off her family."

Wilkins shook his head. "What a cunning malicious bastard you are." He raised his glass in a mock toast.

Robert Williams chimed in. "Clarissa was a variable that almost sunk the ship." He reminded us.

"Yeah, that's another thing," Dan said, swirling the golden liquid in his glass. "That seemed a little too elaborate, like overkill."

"In a way it was," Pete looked at him. "I had real feelings for that girl." Peter gave a long reflective pause. "However, when it comes to eight million dollars, or her, it was no contest.

"I loved her," he continued. "But Devon and I needed her, and she's always been a little ditzy. First, she had to believe she had sex with Devon. That was critical. We needed her to never consider being drugged at the party. Her sense of right and wrong, along with feelings of intense guilt helped guide the narrative, and make a bad, bad girl out of Miri."

"But you had already sweet-talked and seduced Miri, by then," Dan questioned. "Why not just have sex with her and record it?"

"She could have used the seduction to her advantage," I interrupted. "Not to stop the divorce, but to put herself in a better light to keep her inheritance. Playing the victim and making Peter look like the bad guy."

"Which of course, I was!" Peter held up his glass for another toast. "But remember, over those first few months, I talked her into much more than sex. I talked her into leaving Devon. She knew her father would be much happier with me as a son-in-law. Plus, my cock is huge compared to my buddy here, and I know how to use it."

I rolled my eyes at my close friend. He'd always been a braggart. Fuck him, I was now rich.

"After Peter talked Miri into the scam of putting Issy and me together at the party," I added. "He convinced Miri that he had someone at the party who would drug us, put us in the same bed naked, and let our imaginations wander. They could be together at the Hilton that night, with the knowledge they were playing their spouses, instead of the guilt that I hoped Miri would have felt. As it turned out, she felt zero remorse, so I felt vindicated in my plan."

"It took a lot to convince her too," Peter said reaching over toward me for the bottle. "But once I did, I knew we'd have sex again. That was the entire point. I needed to get her to have sex with me in her own marital bed. The party and the Hilton were just opening the can of worms. Of course, she knew nothing about the home security cameras operating when the house alarm was off."

"Elaborate, indeed," Wilkins said to himself, thinking it through.

"Miri had to think she was playing me," I added. "Playing a game that only she knew the rules to. I had to go into 'actor' mode, playing the jilted, betrayed husband. And I did. I'd long ago found my shyster lawyer, no offense, Robert."

He laughed. "None taken."

"Then it was just down to a good gumshoe." I looked at Wilkins who was basking in the complexity of our plan. "I needed more than a simple sex tape in my bedroom. You provided the 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' intel I desperately needed. How and when my wife and best friend conspired against me."

His facial expression changed to one of recognition. "Still, you did that Issy chick wrong." I guessed even a PI had a conscience. "And she cleaned Pete out in the divorce."

"Don't worry about her," Peter interjected. "We took good care of her in the end." Dan was looking from Peter to me.

"You want me to tell it?" Peter asked me. I nodded.

"What she got from the divorce was chump change," he began. "Half of everything is relative. We didn't have all that much, to begin with. But she's doing very well now. Like a half-million good."

I looked at Dan's bewildered face. "You ever see Ocean's Thirteen?" I asked him. "That diamond award secret shopper that Clooney and Pitt needed to be the fall guy? What did they do for him in the end? At the airport in the final scene?"

Dan's face now showed understanding. "So, you gave her money? Did you let her in on the scam?"

"Nope," I answered confidently. "Just sent her a check and a note telling her how sorry I was for all the trouble, and what a dick her husband Peter had turned out to be. Pete kicked in two-fifty, the same as me. I told her I'd gotten a sizable chunk of money, and nothing would please me more than for her to have it and start a new life. She deposited the check four days later."

"What about Miri's old man?" Robert asked seriously. "I heard what he whispered in your ear after the judge's ruling. He's out for blood."

Milton's seething anger and facial expressions had been my favorite part of the divorce proceedings. Well, anger mixed with shock. The court case wasn't too far along when he determined that I, along with Pete and probably a few others had run the table on him and his precious daughter. Unfortunately for him, the way Robert, my attorney laid it all out, the fact that my loving wife betrayed me with my best friend were irrevocable facts, and my conspiring to get her fortune was - just that - a conspiracy theory. Besides, we were there to sort out the details of our divorce, and prenup. Milt was stuck and he knew it.

Miri's face was priceless as Peter was called as one of our witnesses. His practiced responses to Robert said only enough to imply that while he'd certainly wanted Miri and flirted with her, she never denied him. After the testimony, Milton shook his head and immediately left the courtroom, probably wondering how he could have raised such a stupid girl.

Of course, Miri's attorney tried to prove that Issy and I had sex first, breaking the marital arrangement.

That was blown out of the water, when Robert provided the receipts from the Hilton, and recordings provided by Dan, of Peter and Miri's treachery.

"I met him for lunch the next day," I replied proudly. "Told him if he thought I went through all that trouble to ruin his daughter and take her money, what made him think I didn't have a lot of help? Did he really want to risk coming after someone who might be several steps ahead of him? I reminded him that he lost absolutely nothing in the transaction, just his daughter. And that he had plenty of money to set her on the good path, maybe even one that helped her find a rich future congressman, or the like."

"I'm glad you didn't tell me about that meeting," Robert said. "And I wish you still hadn't."

"I'm not worried about it," I told him nonchalantly. "You shouldn't be either. Milton fell into that family money, but he's no fool. He can't prove we scammed Miriah, and we beat him at his own prenup. I don't believe he'll come after me either. Of course, he'll need some time to get over the publicity that his slut daughter caused."

"Shit, Devon," Dan reflected, "how long have you been planning this whole thing?"

"About two years ago, the thought came to me," I said. "But I waited another year to see if Miri would live up to expectations or let me down. By that time, I knew she'd end up a self-centered bitch, even if she was just beginning to display those tendencies. By the time her trust matured, I'd end up a hapless husband, until she had no more use for me. Did you all notice that she never shed one tear in court? She already sees herself as an elite, and free to build a new life with someone far better. That was what I envisioned back then and that's when I started to hatch a plan and talked to Peter."

"And here we are on Pete's one-hundred-and-twenty-acre ranch in Montana." Wilkins gave the final salute and one last toast before we turned in for the night. "Tomorrow we'll be riding horses alongside bison."

"Don't forget the high-class hookers I lined up for tomorrow night," Peter said, reaching over to fist-bump me. "You boys might want to make sure there's extra padding in your saddles."