Old Country

His name was Paul Robertson and he gave me an hour of his time over coffee at a nearby Starbuck's; the one on this side of the street, as opposed to the one across the street and six doors down.

He told me that it would cost me a couple of thousand dollars to satisfy my curiosity, but Paul assured me that he could get me most of the information that I sought within a few weeks. He did not guarantee that I would get all that I wanted; no one could do that. But he was affiliated with a network of investigators that either swapped favors or sub-contracted work out all over the country. He described it as 'Private Investigation in the Age of Facebook, ' as the efforts were all coordinated through their very own version of social media. Imagine LinkedIn for PIs.

Welcome to the modern cyber age of cooperative private investigation!

True to his word, Paul called me at work just three weeks later and asked me to arrange to meet him.

-

"Well, she is definitely involved with at least two different men in Birmingham," Paul Robertson told me after we had sat down with our coffee and gotten past the opening conversational greetings.

"Two?" I asked, shocked that this news. Hell; that just immediately raised some new questions in my mind.

"Yeah," said Paul, "in one case, it would appear that she takes long lunches at a local hotel with her boss once or twice a week during the periods while she is working out of her Birmingham office. And, about once every two-to-three months, they take a long weekend together at a hotel in Mobile, using an otherwise legitimate business trip as a cover story."

I said nothing while I tried to absorb this information. This was just SO unlike Luanne. It took me a minute, though, to remember her manager as the guy I had met during his visit to Cincinnati.

"Vernon Talbot," I said.

"Yeah, that's the guy," Paul said, looking at me with his brows furrowed. "You know him?"

"Met him once; did not come across to me then as a scum bag; but I guess initial impressions can fool you," I answered. I could not help but think at that particular moment that this business with her boss was just so cliché.

"It would appear that the last time they went out of town together, they spent three days together in Mobile! No pictures of actual sex, but they shared a hotel room, even though they traveled separately. My contact down there said that Talbot was the first one to the room, and had ice and drinks sent up before she got there. She came later and they kissed and held each other tight at the door before going inside, and he got pictures of them in the clinch. They weren't somewhere they had never been before, if you know what I mean. They were real comfortable-like."

But then Paul dropped the other shoe. "What has me confused is the farmer," he said.

"Farmer?" I asked.

"Yeah; it would appear that, for the past eight months or so, she has maintained her apartment in Birmingham and paid the rent and all. But she has actually been staying at the house of a guy who owns a small farm just outside of town." When I did not say anything, he went on. "I have it all here..."

Paul's report was a bit confusing to me at first glance. There was lots of routine boilerplate about her daily activities, but the interesting part, the part that made my irritation resurface, concerned the fact that she was actually staying in a farmhouse outside of Birmingham just east of Shoal Creek Golf Club and its surrounding suburbs along Bear Creek Road-NOT in town at her Birmingham apartment as she had told me.

Luanne was evidently living there on the farm with the owner, a man named Travis Hinton, who actively farmed the land, while boarding six horses, two of which he owned. Hinton evidently had investments that he had inherited that provided for his financial needs, but he still loved the farm life and produced a not-too-small income from the farm from soybeans and some peanuts. But he had to purchase his feed for his stock from elsewhere. The boarding fees that he was charging for the horses were pretty steep, and that helped him as well.

"I'm still checking out sources to find out how your wife and Travis met up and how long they have been together overall," Paul said as he drained the last of his coffee. "There is also a live-in housekeeper; a fifty-plus-year-old Mexican-American lady, named Velma Ortega. I don't know if she's 'wet, ' but I can put a request in with a fellow who works for ICE to find out.

"If you want, and if you can afford it, I can continue to find out more about this Hinton guy. But I think you have enough to chew on with her and the situation with her boss, based on your facial expression a few minutes ago," Paul said.

He was right about my facial expression. I had not been able to disguise the utter contempt and disgust that I had felt at finding out about Luanne's screwing around on me with not one BUT TWO different men.

The most egregious case, to me, was her boss, Vernon Talbot. He would be the BamaBoy06, I guessed. Of course, BamaBoy06 might be this Hinton guy that she was shacking up with when she was not out screwing Talbot.

Who was this woman that I had married?

This was just so unlike anything I had ever imagined about her.

"No," I said. "I don't need to spend any more on this. I guess I know enough now to reinforce my decision to eighty-six her ass."

"Well, I hope that everything turns out well for you personally in the long run," Paul told me with an encouraging smile. "I know that this type of misery hurts in the short term, and it takes different lengths of time for it to go away, depending on the person it is happening to and just how bad the situation is to begin with. Here are two copies of the files for your own reference. We did not get any shots or footage of them 'in the act, ' so to speak. But there are some candids in the file showing her together with either Talbot or Hinton at different times."

I looked at the pictures and they did not tell me anything on the face of things about any ongoing relationships that Luanne might have had with either man. The only exception was that she was holding hands with Hinton as they walked across a downtown street in what I presumed was Birmingham.

As I looked at the picture of the man in the picture with Luanne, that guy, Hinton; his face, his build; I suddenly had a flashback to a time of dusk, limited visibility, fatigue at the end of a work day, sudden movement ... and pain. The irritation that I had had from learning about Luanne's shacking up with this farmer continued to grow as I looked at that picture.

"I think this guy, Hinton, might be the guy who lit into me a few weeks back," I said, "But I still have no clue what would make a guy who seems to be in a stable lifestyle take up with a married woman; and, of all the cockamamie things, fly all the way to Ohio and beat up her husband. It just makes no sense to me."

"Do you want me to try to get enough information to bring charges?" Paul asked.

'I would love to do that, ' I thought; but I did not say it. I had a different idea. I was already mulling over plans to get my own payback at this guy; not only for shacking up with my wife, but also for his assault on me. I mean ... it is one thing to hurl an insult at a guy by fucking his wife; but, to travel hundreds of miles to beat on her husband is another thing altogether. AND the BIGGEST insult to me was the beating my testicles had taken and the fact that I had almost lost one and, along with it, the ability to have a family at some point in my life.

I would never want to harm Luanne physically, even after what she had done to me. But this guy was not going to get off with beating me up, if he was the one, that is, without some sort of payback.

I was not about to reveal my thinking to Paul. I needed plausible deniability, after all, once this thing over.

"No; I don't want to bring charges," I said out loud to him. "I just want this all to be over."

I thanked Paul for the report and told him that I had enough now for what I had to do. I asked him just to send me a final detailed invoice. We shook hands, I paid for the coffees that we got to take with us, and we parted.

I had decided to confront this situation in more of a head-on manner. I know it was not too smart, but I was still pissed at all that had happened to me lately!

-

Somehow, I managed to keep my anger at bay and pretend that all was well for the rest of the week. Luanne could tell something was bugging me, but she and I were able to carry on in what I considered now to be only a semblance of a happy marriage.

When it came to physical intimacy, there had been a marked difference in the outcomes of our bedtime escapades. Over this past period of Luanne's presence here in Cincinnati, when we had had sex, I had deliberately been a bit cruder and rougher. After all, if she was going to act like a whore, why should I not treat her as one?

The surprise was on me, though!

Luanne responded to my rough treatment as if it were custom-made for what she needed in bed. For the first time in our five years together, four in marriage, Luanne demonstrated her satisfaction with the attentions I was paying to her body during sex so much that she actually cried out when her orgasm hit her. Hell, a couple of times, she even screamed out her indication of the pleasure she was experiencing.

Needless to say, I was both disappointed and pleased at the same time; disappointed that she was not taking my treatment of her as a sort of sexual punishment; pleased that I was able to stimulate a higher level of sexual response in my partner than I ever had before in our relationship.

"Oh, Lover," Luanne said to me on the Saturday night before her next departure, "if only you knew just how good that is for me." Then she tickled me a couple of times, giggled, and said, "Where have you been hiding this beast for the past four years?"

I just held her close, smiled to myself, and thought, 'Oh, Luanne, if only you knew what I have in store for you in the next few weeks.' Then, I grimaced, out of her line of sight, since her cheek was in the crook of my neck. 'And just where have you been hiding the slut for the past year or so?' I thought as we both began to drift off to sleep.

-

When I got back from the airport after dropping Luanne off on Sunday, I began to implement the plans that I had made weeks ago.

Luanne was pretty good about keeping her Google Calendar up to date, and she and I had coordinated online to link hers with mine. Thus, I knew that the weekend at the midpoint of this period of her work out of the Birmingham office involved a three-day weekend with business meetings in Mobile once again, Friday evening to Monday afternoon. Naturally, I assumed that Vernon Talbot would be going along to participate in the business meetings; both the work-related business and the 'monkey business' with Luanne. I could not avoid the jitters entirely, all caused by the anticipation of what I had planned for later in the week.

Monday through Wednesday, I went to work as usual. I left early Thursday, so that I could have the afternoon off. I was on a sort of emotional high, now that I was actually in the 'go' mode for my plans.

I retrieved the bag that I had packed the night before. Then I headed back out to the airport to catch an early Thursday afternoon flight to Atlanta.

I had packed a ball cap that I had bought at a truck stop out on I-71 before coming home one afternoon the previous week. I would wear it in the terminals in order to deflect any recognition if, for some reason, any of Luanne's or my acquaintances or any of my co-workers out at the airport might have been wandering through the terminal. I had other uses for later in the week for that ball cap.

The flight to Atlanta was uneventful and the car rental place in Atlanta really surprised me when I got there. I had asked for a mid-size sedan; they had provided me with a dark blue Mustang convertible. I just smiled and chose not to argue.

Cruising west toward Birmingham on I-20 in the Mustang with the top down was a blast! But I also found another unplanned use for that ball cap; to keep my hair from blowing all out of whack.

When I got near the eastern outskirts of Birmingham, I got off the interstate and pulled into a Hampton Inn in the suburb of Leeds, Alabama. Surprisingly, I was able to sleep very well that night. I was up and moving on Friday morning at about five o'clock; too early for the hotel's complimentary breakfast, but I grabbed a quick breakfast at an early-opening Hardee's nearby and bought two sausage biscuits to take with me for later, if I needed them.

I had Googled the location of Travis Hinton's farmhouse and I drove out toward Bear Creek Road, just southeast of Birmingham. I was planning to be in a position I had found using Google Earth from which to observe his place ahead of morning traffic. However, I did not count on the fact that not everyone who lived in the suburban areas around Birmingham worked in Birmingham. Quite a few must have been commuting all the way to Atlanta, based on the flow of traffic heading in that direction.

As this area is on the lower end of the Appalachian Mountain range, I found the terrain to be quite hilly. Thus, I was able to find a good location in the parking area of a fairly new corner convenience store at one of the crossing roads that led to the still-growing subdivisions that were steadily encroaching on the farmland. The lot had sufficient altitude to overlook Travis Hinton's house; his place was set back from the road a few hundred yards across and down the road slightly from the intersection.

Hinton's fields looked well-tended, as if he were a very conscientious farmer, even if it was mostly for his own enjoyment, since I knew from the PI's report that Hinton was already pretty well off financially. The stable in the back of his place looked very modern and well-kept, as did the fenced off pasture and the exercise corral behind the stable.

As you would expect from someone accustomed to farm life, somebody in the house had probably been up since well before first light. The lights were on in the house and in the stable. I could see the glow in the windows clearly, as the sky was only just now beginning to show early morning light in the sky above me.

I had bought some coffee and a hunting magazine, even though I don't hunt, from Mr. Patel - that was what his nametag said - the Indian-American guy behind the counter of the convenience store. I told him a story about meeting a friend in his parking lot and asked if it was okay with him if I sat in my car in his lot and read the magazine and drank my coffee. He said it was fine with him as long as I did not block his gas pumps. I thanked him and thought to myself that I now had an established reason for being there, in case another of the Shelby County (Alabama) Sheriff's Deputies came by for coffee and pastry and wondered what a rental car with Georgia plates was doing parked here all morning.

Right about the time the sun peeked over the horizon, I saw vehicle traffic associated with Hinton's farm come about in two ways. First, I saw an older minivan drive up to the place. What looked to be a middle age Hispanic woman, from what I could tell through my sports binoculars that I had brought along, got out and went into the house without knocking. 'That must be the housekeeper, ' I thought.

Ten minutes later, I tensed a bit as I saw Luanne exit a door at the back of Hinton's house and go to the car that she had bought for use here in Alabama, looking as if she were every bit the working wife of a gentleman farmer, leaving her home of a morning to go to work in the city. A few minutes later, she pulled out of Hinton's gravel driveway and turned toward the crossroads. I had my hat on, and was in my Mustang rental, so I was pretty sure that she would not recognize me. But I scrunched down anyway until she had turned out on the main road and driven away.

I turned my gaze back toward the farmhouse out of which my wife had emerged a few minutes earlier. The rage built in me at the thought of my wife spending her nights warming the bed of this ... farmer, this ... interloper, this ... cuckolding son of a bitch. I did not have time to dwell on my anger, though; my bladder was screaming and I had to go inside to prove that you do not really buy coffee; just like beer, you rent it.

When I returned to my car to resume my vigil, I noted that a man was already headed out back of the house toward a cold barn that doubled as an equipment shelter. With his hat on, I could not identify him for sure, but I assumed he was Travis Hinton. He was looking over a fairly new - from what I could see - Mahindra tractor. After a few minutes, I saw him go back up to the house, only to emerge onto a back porch and sit there enjoying the vista of his farm in the morning light with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. After about fifteen minutes of this, he turned and went back inside, and I saw no more movement from the place for about an hour, when the sun was well up.

When he emerged next, Hinton spent some time in the stable. He followed this up with a couple of hours on his tractor, plowing a section of his land until about noon, when he quit and put the tractor away in the cold barn.

I saw the housekeeper depart about an hour after Hinton had gone inside following his work in the field. When I saw her pull out onto the main road and turn toward the Interstate, I smiled grimly to myself. From this point in time, early in Friday afternoon, with the housekeeper away for the weekend, and with Luanne and her boss not due back from their three-day working fuck fest in Mobile until Monday afternoon, Hinton was alone in his house.

Now I had to decide if I really wanted to do this.

-

When Travis Hinton came to the door to answer the bell, he could see a man of about 5'11" height standing out on the porch as he looked through the curtained window in the upper half of the front door. The guy was wearing a ball cap and was looking out across the front yard, turned away away from the door.

When Travis opened the door, he only got as far as, "Yeah; can I help..." before the man began to turn and continued to turn with his gloved right hand extended and balled into a fist.

I rounded on Travis and caught him across the temple with a gloved fist filled with a roll of quarters to give it more weight and power. Even with the glove on for protection, it still hurt like a son of a bitch when the knuckles of my right hand connected across his left temple. He staggered and went almost to his knees, and was about to shake it off and rise up to meet me, but my kick to his groin caused him to collapse and grab his aching balls. At that point, a swift kick to his head put him away for a while.

I looked around to make sure that no one was within view and moved inside, ensuring that his feet were clear of the doorway and closing and locking the door behind me as I entered. I pulled the roll of duct tape out of the fanny pack I had on and went to work. I did not need to hurry, but I felt rushed, as I did not want this guy, who was obviously in good physical condition, regaining consciousness and opening up a king-size can of whoop-ass on me.

I began to peel the end from the roll of duct tape and rolled Hinton over and wrapped the tape about eight times around his wrists. I then wrapped it around the stretch between his wrists in order to separate and tighten the binding. Then I quickly wrapped his ankles together in order to limit his ability to kick me or regain his mobility if he were somehow able to gain his feet once he regained his senses.

Then I waited.

It was very quiet as I sat there motionless waiting for Hinton to regain his senses. I neither heard nor saw anything during that time to give me pause or alarm.