Lettie's Wager

Her non-answer was telling.

I pressed on, "Did you ever see the tickets? Or the booking confirmation? How did you know he even had the trip booked?"

Lettie looked sick to her stomach when I asked this. Realization was dawning and my wife was finally starting to understand Teague's scheme. It was time to drive the point home the way Pa would have.

"Lettie, have you considered what would have happened if you had spent the weekend doped up with the agreement that he could do anything he wanted to you?"

Her expression was puzzled. She clearly hadn't. She was thinking it would be like one of those "nothing below the waist" steamy romance novels she liked. The lovers languishing on a bed in an embrace after some unspoken activity described as "passion" whispering sweetly about what their "passion" meant to them both. She wasn't thinking about what a degenerate like Teague would do.

I said, "The terms were 'anything he wants', right?"

"Yes, Andy."

"Is there any kind of sex you refuse to do?"

She blushed and looked at the floor. She answered, "You know that there is."

I said, "The stakes you agreed to were that you couldn't refuse him things that you regularly refuse me. You don't like it when I come in your mouth, do you? What if Boden wanted to come in your mouth all weekend? And not just to spit or swallow it out. What if he wanted to make you hold his semen in your mouth for hours before forcing you to swallow it? You agreed to do that."

She looked utterly disgusted.

I said, "You and I have never had anal sex. I touched your anus once and you didn't talk to me for three days for thinking you were that kind of girl. What if Boden wanted to butt fuck? What if that's all he wanted, and he spent the whole weekend putting his cock in your ass, and then making you to lick it clean? You agreed to do that."

She looked very distressed on top of her disgust.

I asked, "What would prevent him from getting other people involved? What if he got you high on coke, and then invited every one of those mini-me scumbags he hired into the marketing department over for some complimentary action? You agreed to do that."

Her expression turned to horror and she visibly shuddered. She started to cry. Hard.

"Suck it up honey, there's one more. You aren't on birth control. The pills and the IUD never agreed with you. We are very careful about what we do and when, and always use condoms when you are most fertile. What if Boden decided he preferred bareback? Your last period ended when? Two weeks ago? Wouldn't you be ovulating this weekend? What if breeding you with his child was what he wanted? You agreed to that."

Lettie suddenly started to retch. The handcuff keys were upstairs, so I whisked the kitchen trash can over to her. She leaned over it and sputtered a bit, but nothing came out. She was empty from before.

From my wife's expression, I could tell that she finally understood with perfect clarity. She wept bitterly and said, "I'm such a fool, Andy. I didn't want that. It never occurred to me that's what he was doing or what he could do. I was so certain I'd win, I was already planning what I would pack. I shouldn't have bet. When I lost, I should have told you. I should have known to welsh. What was I thinking?"

She started blubbering.

I sighed wearily. It was hard to believe, but my wife is actually an incredibly smart woman. She was an CPA who graduated cum laude from Georgia. Mr. Cope told me he nicknamed Lettie "the magician" for the genius she had for making profits disappear from his ledgers.

However, she was the youngest and only daughter in a family of seven. Her father had been the pastor at a small church, and her large and shockingly muscular brothers were fiercely protective. They scared away anyone that didn't hold Lettie in as much esteem as they did. Very few had possessed the courage to run that gauntlet.

Consequently, Lettie had lived a sheltered small-town life before becoming engaged to me. Getting fooled this way was simple naïveté. She was clueless about how awful humans could be to each other. Combine that with an almost terminal lack of imagination about sex, and you will understand why a smart woman ended up in that situation. This was also her first exposure to truly high stakes gambling. We both know that she is a thrill seeker. I had kept her out of harm's way since we started dating, but I wasn't around this time, and she got carried away.

Her entire face was covered with snot now. With her wrists handcuffed to the chair, she couldn't clean her own face.

I gently wiped her face with a damp tea towel. It thought this would soothe her, but the effect was the opposite. Her blubbering got worse.

I slapped the table and said, "Lettie. I need you to listen to me right now. Focus, please."

Lettie pulled herself back under control.

I continued. "This is instant divorce shit right here. No lie. No exaggeration. 'Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to divorce' shit. Do you understand that? Do you know how close I am to pulling the eject lever right now? Especially after I caught you and you tried to sneak out anyway."

Lettie nodded. Her mouth was tightly clenched to keep herself from crying.

I said, "I love you from the bottom of my heart and I don't want to divorce you, but you've got to explain this shit to me."

When she didn't respond, I peppered her with questions, "Are you bored with me? Have I disappointed you? Are you unsatisfied with me? Am I not good enough for you? How could you do this to us?"

Anguish spilled into my voice unbidden as I asked these questions. I cursed myself because it I was raised to never indulge in self-pity. As hard as I tried, I couldn't keep it bottled in. I was certain my questions would make her cry again. Instead, they settled her. She responded fiercely, "No honey! No! This isn't you at all. You're the best man I've ever met. I'm totally satisfied, Andy. I want to be married to you. You are the man for me. Only you."

I examined her face intently. She wasn't lying to me. She was telling me the truth. This is what made the situation so hard for me to understand.

"This is devastating," I said, "I certainly hope you are telling the truth. You are going to have to do a lot of work to fix this. Before, we got engaged, I told you my position on infidelity. I am one and done. The first time you do anything with another person, we are through. You understand that, right?"

Lettie said, "I feel the same way. If you ever..."

My anger flashed and I interrupted her. "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Nope! Don't you dare say it! Have I ever given you cause to doubt my fidelity?"

My wife shook her head.

"This incident was a major failure on your behalf," I continued, "I have never failed like this. There is no moral equivalency between us. I've never took a misstep, but you...? If I'd have come home a half hour later, you'd be well on your way to being Teague's whore by now. There would be no stopping the divorce if that had happened. I have never put you in the position I am in now!"

I paused to settle myself down again. I noticed that my internal thoughts were circular and that I was starting to pump up my rage. I got a grip and forced myself to move forward

"Did anyone witness the bet being made?" I asked, "Was anyone else in on a conversation about it at any time."

Lettie shook her head.

"Then the only one who really knows you're welshing is him. Everyone else will think he's lying or exaggerating. Even if they knew the truth, it wouldn't matter. No one would expect you to put yourself through what he proposed. If welshing makes you feel guilty, you're just going to have to live with the guilt. It is better to be a happily married welsher, living with the shame of that, than it is to be a unhappy divorced Teague-whore living with ten times the shame."

She held back a sob while nodding yes. She was in full agreement.

I asked, "How are you in contact with Teague? How did you set up this weekend?"

She said, "We talked at the office. He wanted to text me on my cell phone, but I didn't want that, so I blocked him. Yesterday in the office, he gave me a burner phone, but I've never used it. Honest."

"Where is it?"

"It's in my purse."

I retrieved her purse from the utility room floor. There was a cheap pay-as-you-go phone in it.

I asked, "Is this it?"

She nodded. I went through the phone. There was one outgoing text which said, "Test". There were several incoming texts from the last hour. Teague wanted to know what was taking so long.

l asked her, "Is there anything you need to tell me that we haven't covered? If I find out later there is something else you are holding back, we're done. You know that right?"

She shook her head, "That's all. You know it all."

I said, "Ok then. Please. Pretty please, can I take those handcuffs off you now? Are you in any danger of trying to slip out on me again? No last-second impulsive change of mind?"

With surprising fierceness, she said, "I'm not going anywhere Andy. You're my man. I will do what you say. I'm not going anywhere."

I went upstairs and retrieved the handcuff key. With a silent prayer, I let her go. She made an attempt to suffocate me with kissing. I really didn't want to kiss her right now. Between the anger, the snot residue, and the vomit smell, I was utterly turned off. Even so, she was persuasive. After a breathless minute, I pushed her away and sent her up to shower and brush her teeth.

I told her, "No contact with Teague for any reason. We need to regroup."

She agreed. As she walked past me, I touched her arm to stop her.

"Lettie, I love that lingerie set on you. Do me a favor and take a selfie in the bathroom mirror with that lingerie set. Do it for me?"

She smiled and nodded.

***

While she showered and cleaned up, I drove down to Lonnie's Barbecue which is a half mile from the house. I got a couple of take-out plates: fried chicken and pulled pork with several sides. This was our comfort meal. It was early for dinner yet, but I thought the food would help. While I was waiting, my phone buzzed. Lettie had texted me her selfie. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, cleaned her face up, and reapplied her eye makeup the way that I loved. She knew exactly how to push my buttons. The photo took my breath away.

To think how close we were to disaster that night filled me with a barely contained rage. I wanted my pound of flesh from Teague for this. I considered how to get it without getting myself thrown in prison. That's when it occurred to me that if I got Lettie's brothers involved, I probably wouldn't have to do anything.

As we were eating, I said to Lettie, "I know you're sensitive about the way your brothers tease you. I'm going to do what I can to keep this little incident just between us. Neither my family nor yours need to know."

Her expression told me that she was absurdly grateful.

I continued, "But... you and I both know that we need to do something about Boden Teague. What he did was seriously predatory. If we don't do something, he'll go after someone else. Someone without our resources. Someone who can't fight back. We need to be responsible. We need to be the adults in the room."

She nodded and said, "I want him to face justice for what he did."

I asked her, "What does justice mean to you? I'm not sure he broke any laws with what he did to you, Lettie. Doing what he did to get you to sleep with him was contemptible, but it wasn't illegal."

She didn't say anything for a while.

I said, "We do have something we can work with. He's holed up in a hotel room with drugs. That is illegal and might be enough to get him arrested. To do something along those lines, we'll have to bring either WC or Little Joe into the picture."

She groaned in dismay.

I said, "Now, Little Joe won't be afraid to bend the rules. WC will do it all by the book. I'd rather use WC because he's a lot more likely to keep his trap shut. Plus, he's been after me to borrow Pa's vintage ski boat to take Newt and Rascal tubing. I can try to buy his silence with that. What Little Joe has going for him is guaranteed results. He'll make sure Boden is stopped, whatever it takes. I'll let you make the decision."

She summoned her courage and said, "Go with WC. I don't trust Little Joe to keep his mouth shut either."

I called up WC.

He answered on the first ring. "Andy? How are you and my beautiful sister doing?"

I said, "Not so great WC. Are you on duty tonight? You aren't? Good. I'm going to need a big favor from you. I'll owe you big time for this one."

Twenty minutes later, a sheriff's department SUV pulled into our driveway.

WC is Lettie's oldest brother and the scariest of the four. As the lead deputy sheriff for the county, WC has a pretty big responsibility. In our state, sheriffs are politicians and don't need to have a law enforcement background. The lead deputy is the person who was the top law enforcement professional-- the one who knows how to do the job and run the department while the Sheriff does political stuff and works with the commissioner and the public. WC is the lead deputy for our county and manages the job superbly. Unlike his predecessor, he has earned the respect of the minority communities. The old timers around town were predicting that after the current sheriff retires, WC will be the county sheriff for the next twenty years.

I filled in WC about what was going on with Lettie and Boden Teague. To spare Lettie the humiliation, I did all the talking. At first, WC was highly amused at his sister's gullibility.

"You went double or nothing on Georgia against Clemson this year? Cripes A'Mighty! That was bag-of-hammers stupid," exclaimed WC.

As I went on to describe the setup and the drugs, however, his jovial mood went sour. He became angrier and angrier. When WC gets angry, he doesn't lose control like I do. His lips go tight and his eyes glow. That's what makes him so damn scary.

I said, "That asshole is over at the Garden Inn in room 223. He's supposed to have the drugs with him there. Is there some sort of pretense you can use to search his room? Maybe you could use a canine to sniff him out?"

WC said he had a few ideas and went out to his SUV to make some phone calls in private.

He came back in smiling. He said, "Good news! An anonymous tipper just dialed 911 from a house phone at the Garden Inn. The tipper said they'd overheard the guy in room 223 at the Garden Inn buying drugs from a dealer. If the door is open when my guys get there, then we have all the cover they need to do a search legally."

He asked Lettie, "Can you pretend you're going over there and ask him to leave the door open for you?"

Boden Teague had been calling the burner phone every few minutes for the last hour and was leaving voice mails. He was impatient to know when she'd be arriving.

I handed her the burner phone and said, "Text him, Lettie. Tell him you're in the parking lot, but you're nervous about being seen standing in the hall waiting for the door to open. Ask him to leave it open so you can dart right in."

She typed out a text and sent it.

Teague didn't answer the question. He texted back, "Where have you been?"

Her phone immediately rang. I told her not to answer. She would probably give us away if she talked to him.

I said, "Text him back. Tell him that I showed up unexpectedly and that it took a while for you to ditch me."

Teague responded, "If you want that door open, you need to make it worth my while."

Lettie asked, "What should I do?"

I had a sudden inspiration. On my cell phone, I took the selfie Lettie took of her lingerie set in the bathroom mirror. I carefully cropped it so that he could see from the top of her bra to the top of her stockings. I sent it to the burner phone using Bluetooth. I had Lettie text it to him.

The closeup of her lingerie was revealing, but it wasn't personally identifying. The picture was enough to make a man lose his mind.

Boden's response was immediate. He texted back, "Best weekend ever!"

A second later, Teague texted an image of a wide-open hotel room door, taken from the inside.

WC made a phone call to get the ball rolling and then sat down in the living room with me. I sent Lettie upstairs for a few minutes on a pretext. When she left, I asked WC to take it easy on Lettie.

"I know I already owe you big time for this but Lettie's really sensitive about being cozened. She's a bright woman, but she's naive and sheltered and was fished in. I know you've been dying to borrow the boat I inherited from my Pa. If you keep this between the three of us, I'll let you use it a weekend a month for the rest of the year. You choose which weekends. I'll even keep it gassed up for you."

WC laughed and said, "Andy, you don't owe me squat. You acted to protect my sister. I expected that of you or I never would have let you date her. Even so, I'm grateful. What you are asking me to do is literally my job. Busting him is the least I can do. As far as keeping it myself, I love Little Joe, but you know how his tongue wags at both ends. If he ever found out what happened to Lettie, the whole county would know by noon the next day. He'd never let her live it down, and that's a fact. Credit me for having some judgement and discretion."

I agreed and apologized for any negative implications.

He smiled and declared, "That being said, I do want to borrow your boat. Your father's vintage ski boat One time is plenty. Sometime in June would be nice, after school is out and I can take the kids on a weekday. The gas is on me."

We shook on it.

***

Lettie came down and visited with her brother while we waited. Lettie was dying to have kids. We decided to put it off until we had access to the trust. My sister had waited and my brother hadn't. Both recommended that we wait. Lettie got her motherhood fix by doting on our many nieces and nephews. She gave WC the third degree on what was going on with his kids. Newt and Rascal were her favorite niece and nephew.

WC eventually received a phone call. In a couple of places, he laughed but without saying much. After a couple of minutes of listening, WC said, "Outstanding. Good work Darnell. Thank Carlos for me too."

WC reported to us, "Boden Teague was arrested a few minutes ago at the Garden Inn on charges of drug possession with intent to distribute. They ended up with two joints, one of which was partly smoked. That is simple possession and the prosecutor probably won't proffer charges on that. We got lucky on the cocaine. He had a non-trivial quantity, empty baggies, and a scale. That's prima facie intent to distribute. He's going to get prison time for that for sure.

"He also had meth pills. We didn't find any Molly. My guess is that he was going to give you meth and then tell you that was Molly. Lettie, you don't want to have anything do with with meth. Not only is it highly addictive, it removes sexual inhibition."

I struggled to keep my temper in check. Lettie ran her hand up and down my back soothingly.

WC continued. "The probable cause with the anonymous tip was a little thin, but Boden did himself in. He was smoking dope in the room when the deputies walked by. The door was open so the deputies smelled the smoke and stepped inside. Teague tried to push them out. In the scuffle, he dropped a baggie containing cocaine in the hall right in front of four witnesses, including the hotel manager, and the on-call maintenance guy. He became belligerent and resisted after that. The deputies had to subdue him with a taser."

He said, "The arresting officer was Darnell Billups. He's the one that used the taser. Do you know Darnell?"

He was a regular customer in my shop, so I nodded. Lettie shook her head.