Why? Ch. 01

Still, knowing the risks, I had to find out more about her love affair before I could consider signing the divorce papers.

Using the resources of my work place, I managed to get several names of some of the wealthiest men in our state. I wasn't sure where he might have lived, but if they were meeting every day, I was certain he couldn't have lived out of state. And, we had several other cities and communities near enough for him to make it to lunch everyday, even driving.

After further research I had narrowed my possibles to a handful of names. A few of the main points is that he had to be in his late thirties or forties, with a wife of child bearing age, which by my estimate would put her between thirty and forty years of age. I knew she might be older or she might even be younger, which was a distinct possibility, but I had to begin somewhere. So that was what I was shooting for. I know everything I'd gathered was a long shot, but it added up.

Now for the hard part.

I had to figure out some way to determine which wife, off the list I'd made, was missing a husband. Then to contact her and explain what I was doing and why. I don't know why I thought I had to contact this other man's wife, or soon to be ex-wife. I had no real rationale for it, other than a feeling that it was the right thing to do.

It might seem easy, but after more research, I discovered that most of the men on my list traveled quit a bit on business, to many countries, and their out of country stays could run from several days to several weeks. So which one of those dutiful husbands hadn't come back? If Melissa's lover had come home, then left immediately, it would be next to impossible to ferret the cuckolding bastard out. In my mind I knew there was no way two adults, supposedly in love with each other, seemingly free of their spouses, out of the country on a lengthy stay, would be able to maintain a platonic relationship. The best of intentions would go awry under those very trying conditions, eventually something was going to happen. A look. A touch. Something innocent would strike the match that lit the fire of the loins. It was just a matter of time. And that, they seemed to have in abundance.

It took several added days to shorten the list to just three possibilities.

In the meantime, I had painted the master bedroom, re-carpeted it and bought new bedroom furniture. I hadn't moved my stuff back in yet, I was still shopping around for a few more things to make the room feel like it was mine again. Strange how that works. When I thought my marriage was still solid, the bedroom was something I never felt much of anything about. It was a place to sleep and sometimes make love. It was a shared room, that I called 'ours', as in mine and Melissa's. After Melissa left, and with so many unbidden thoughts filling my head, the bedroom seemed to cast a sort of gloomy pale over me. I know it was my imagination, yet, it affected me in a very real way. Thus, the extreme makeover.

I had spoken to the kids a few times since their mother left, and she must have told them less than she'd written in her letter to me, for they both asked me all sorts of questions, some embarrassing, that I had no answers for. I guess they thought I knew more than I was saying for neither one of my daughters seemed to believe me. I'm not sure that they didn't blame me for their mom leaving. Not that they said anything so cruel, but I sensed the unspoken accusation every time we spoke.

I was thankful that both of my children were living out of state. One daughter had just married the year before, and although I didn't care for her husband, he seemed to treat her okay. The other girl was in college and would be graduating the following year. If they'd been closer to home, they'd have been in my face unceasingly about their parents split. And, I didn't need that. I was still having a hard enough time keeping it together without the added constant vocal laments of those two.

I had returned to a more stable emotional state while at work and only one person, my boss, Herbert McNair, had mentioned my previous uncharacteristic behavior. Although it was covered up by his gushing concern for my welfare, his real worry was interned under it. Was I still able to bring in the clients and their money? I assured him I was. He left it at that. Still, I caught more than one of my co-workers eying me with sidelong glances. In the years I've been with the firm I'd never been aloof with my coworkers. We'd even done the after work sharing of brews a few times, but I'd never actually become friends with any of them. Meaning, I didn't share my personal life with those I shared my professional life with.

I knew there had to be rumors flying around the office, but whatever they were they never got back to me. Although a few of my coworkers had asked about my welfare since Janice had left, I'd never mentioned my marital problems. A few women around the office seemed to take a keener interest in me, but that might have been my faulty imagination. Not that I was looking, but a few weeks after Janice left, I did start to notice the women a bit more. I've never been much of a social or party animal, so I wasn't wily to the innuendos of women coming on to men. If a woman was looking at me, smiling, her eyes flashing, I usually excused myself as quickly as I could. I never knew if she was just being friendly or wanting more. As long as I had Melissa, I didn't need experience with any other woman.

I also began to exercise a bit more. During my marriage I was somewhat concerned with a small amount of pudginess, not unduly so, but enough to warrant twenty minutes of exercise every morning. Afterwards, I did it to help burn off the anger. I'd read somewhere that exercise was a good way to relieve pent up emotion. I started running, and getting a more complete workout, spending an hour each day doing so. It helped.

I was never much of a cook, and the things I could cook for myself when Melissa was still home weren't the healthiest of foods, so along with more exercising, I decided to learn to cook a bit better. The Internet is a wonderful tool and has so much information just for the asking. And there are a lot of recipes for just about any type of food anyone could imagine. Some were just plain weird, and I wondered how anyone could cook that stuff, much less eat it. I guess to each their own. But, I did find some recipes that were not only healthy but tasty. So my diet improved. As did my cooking skills.

My weekday evenings became routine; I'd cook, cleanup, work on fixing something in the house, do more research on my pet project, bathe, then sleep. Other than the occasional call from family and friends, I had settled into a lifestyle free of unpleasant and unexpected surprises. I guess I needed the stability of normalcy to hold off everything else inside me. Either that, or become a raving spastic lunatic. Something I suspected wasn't very far off.

Weekends, at first, were the greater difficulty to overcome, simply because I had so much time on my hands. Growing up at home, I remember my mother saying "idle hands are the devil's workshop", so with some Do-It-Yourself books, I began to repair the house. Including the master bedroom. I was never much of a handyman and usually had Melissa call someone, but why waste the money when I could do it. Okay, the first few times were dismal failures and I won't go into why I had to end up replacing the kitchen floor, but I soon learned and it was good therapy.

None of this happened overnight, but it did happen, slowly but surely.

I would have been drinking myself to idiocy just to sleep each night, but that's when I worked on my pet project of determining the identity of the mystery man. Believe it or not, instead of adding to my pain, it seemed to relieve it a bit. I know it sounds silly, but there you have it.

By the fourth month I was deeply into my routine, when I realized a surprising revelation...I hated my job. Any sales position, low rung to executive requires more than just the need to succeed, it needs some very basic motivations to keep going at it year after year. Burn out was a common factor for changing careers. My main motivation was gone and I had enough money saved and invested to retire. I wouldn't be able to live at the same level as if I were working, but there wouldn't be any hardships. Like many other people out there, I had dreams and ambitions that were set aside by necessity of paying bills, raising children, and paying for other sundries of life. I thought about writing the next great American novel, but as you've discovered by reading my story thus far, I'm far from having the knack for it. Next, there was creating that great invention, or making some astounding discovery, changing the world for all time, but that wasn't in the cards either. I did have a desire to start a small business, doing a bit of selling of various things. I wasn't sure what things I'd sell, but I knew they'd have to be needful things.

My attorney still harped on me about signing those damn papers, but he wasn't calling as often, becoming resigned to the fact I was not going to do what he so strongly advised until I had gotten this thing out of my system.

What did he care, anyway? If Melissa did come back to rake me over the coals, he would charge me even more. So I continued to ignore him and his advice. Okay, I know he was looking out for my best interest; it's what he was there for and what I had hired him for. Nevertheless, this was something I had to do. At the time, I was so critically focused on finding who Melissa had run off with, I didn't give it much thought as to the real reason I was doing it. I just did it.

My two girls were less forgiving and far less resigned to my actions. Not that they wanted a divorce between their parents, but they realized after four months, things might not be so rosy as they first thought. They still gave me hell, but it was more out of reflex and their own hurt than any actual grievances against me.

During all this time, I'd not heard one word from Melissa, nor had our children. I suppose her attorney was keeping her and her lover appraised of the situation. My attorney tried to discover her whereabouts but Jack Belgium was as hard nosed as they came. He gave nothing away, which in a way worked against him and his clients, as it just stiffened my resolve. My attorney did have one ace up his sleeve, which he would file as soon as I gave the okay, but it was a last ditch desperate measure that might or might not work in discovering the identity of Melissa's lover; alienation of affection. It really depended on the judge, so we were going to use it only if we had to, and that meant, if I failed on my own. Which meant we would be fighting the divorce, which made my attorney both pleased and frustrated. Pleased that he would be making more off me, and frustrated because if I signed the divorce papers I'd own everything acquired in the marriage, and my attorney would have a shining star on his record.

By the end of the sixth month, I was sure I truly despised my job, to the point I was giving deep consideration to doing something else for a living. I'd stayed with the sales job thus far because I was making bucket loads of money and I might need the financial buffer for future legal services and whatever else that required a lot of green thrown at it. With this in mind I began to do a bit of day trading.

I think everyone has heard horror stories about day trading, and all the hope that went into it at the beginning only to come out of it hopeless and destitute. I did it a little differently. I set aside only so much money that I was willing to lose. Yes, lose. Because no one can tell how the markets are going to react from day to day. So I had to prepare for the worst, thus if I lost everything I was playing with, it wouldn't hurt me that much. I'd like to say that I made a killing right away, but the truth is, I lost more than I made, but I figured that was the learning curve, and after a few weeks, I was able to adjust my buying and selling to reap the greatest results. I wasn't going to get rich, but I was able to make a bit of profit which I used to buy more of the market.

I've never been a risk taker, but when Melissa left, many of the reasons I'd been so careful throughout much of my adult life, literally went with her.

I'd gone as far as I could with my search and it was still in limbo, although I had three likely suspects, none of them exactly matched the criteria I'd applied. After thinking about it awhile, I made a change up and attempted to determine where Melissa might have gone to meet with her lover. Since I had very little to go on, other than what Melissa had written --I had to accept her words as truth. My search took a new direction.

Using a map, a phone book, and the Internet, I found every mall, coffee shop and other public place where two people could meet, that was within a thirty minute radius of my house. I was taken aback by what I found. There were literally hundreds of those type of places.

It was about the only time my resolve truly weakened, but then I thought, 'What the hell? What else was there to do?'

I'm no investigator, but it just made sense to simply ask around. Armed with the most recent photo of Melissa and a print out photo of each of the three suspects, downloaded from the Internet, I started from closest to the furthest. Each day at lunch I would leave the office and head out on my search. I didn't have but one to two hours to do this --I printed out directions to each place I was visiting to limit the amount of time spent looking for each location. I managed to do three places a day. I didn't bother trying on weekends as Melissa stayed with me at those times, and I didn't know if the same people who worked on the weekdays were working the weekends at the places I was visiting.

I hit pay dirt at the beginning of the third week.

By the time I got lucky, I was getting good at asking my questions and showing the photos. I'd assumed a bored air about it, buffered by a calm confidence. My attitude and approach were a huge difference between my first day and the day I found someone who admitted to seeing Melissa. In the beginning, I'd been unsure and somewhat nervous. I'd never done this before, although it wasn't unlike doing a cold call in sales, the underlying current of my purpose was surfacing and people were picking up on it. When that happened they clammed up quick.

As it happened, it was on Friday, and I was at a combination cafe and bar, when one of the female server's took a look of Melissa's photo and did a double take. I could tell by her reaction she'd recognized my wife, but at first she wasn't open about it. With some gentle cajoling and after painting her palm green, she was talking away like a auctioneer. She told me what she knew, which was quite a lot, however, she didn't recognize any of the three men in the photos. Then, at the end of her tale she mentioned another man she'd seen my wife with. One sporting a gray beard, wearing eye glasses, salt and pepper hair cut neat and short; there was more to her description, but those were the main things that stuck out. The server's description didn't ring a bell with me, but she did verify she'd seen them together more than once. They'd been together several times, actually.

I was close to feeling elated as I left the cafe.

I finally had a solid piece of information that would help me take it further. The rest of Friday I was in such a chipper mood that at work I received a few positive comments from my coworkers. Even my clients seemed to benefit, and so did I, as I closed one of the more difficult deals that had plagued the company for two months. My boss was happy to say the least, promising me a substantial monthly bonus to express his appreciation.

All in all, life was looking up. I know that might sound inane considering my marital situation and the circumstances surrounding it, but damn if I didn't feel good anyway.

Using the female server's description, I used a decent graphics editing software program to create a sort of "police composite" of the man's face. The final result was of someone I'd never met before, but looked like he belonged in some university teaching the virtues of proper grammar. In a monotone, no doubt.

One again, I hit the web and using my drawing tried to match it to someone that fit my previous criteria. But, there were no apparent matches. After a couple of weeks I'd about giving up. I had taken the drawing to work so I could continue searching during my lunch hour. Then one day, a co-worker, Arturo Mendoza, happened to stop by to fill me in on a new contract he was working on, asking some things about the differential profit and loss formula we used. He was talking away when he spotted the drawing sitting off to the side of some paperwork on my desk.

"Hey! I know that guy!" Arturo exclaimed, switching topics in mid-stride, pointing to the image.

"What? You know this guy?" I asked nonplussed.

"Sure. Well...The drawing isn't exact but its close enough. He's one of those charity contributors we hustle every year for that benefit for kids that our company sponsors."

I was stunned, but quickly becoming excited at my good fortune for the presence of Arturo.

As calmly as I could, I asked something that I thought was more relevant to the conversation that wasn't too blatant with my interest, "Really? Does he contribute a lot?"

"Oh, yeah! He gives a bundle. You'd have to ask... I think, its Linda Jasinski in Human Resources who handles that, if you want to know the exact figures. But, yeah, he's always good to tap for a few dollars."

"Sounds like a nice guy." I replied noncommittally.

"Yeah. Guess he is. Damn, I can't recall his name." Arturo had a look of concentration as he tried to remember.

"Stop, Arturo! I swear you're going to have me doing it, too!" I said, chuckling.

"Do what?"

"Trying to figure out the guy's name!" I laughed.

Arturo laughed along with me, "Say, why do you have that drawing anyway?"

I had been thinking of how to explain that part when the question invariably came up, and I had a simple, fool proof answer.

"I saw it lying on the lobby floor this morning, near the elevators, I thought it was a flyer, and you know how the cleaning crews get around here when people leave trash on the floor, so I picked it up and forgot about it. Until you mentioned it."

Arturo looked at me, nodding his head, "Yeah, the cleaning crews can get huffy about that stuff and I don't know why. After all, isn't that their job? To clean."

I nodded sagely, wondering if Arturo had somehow caught on, despite my nonchalance.

He switched back to his original reason for dropping by, but when we were done and he was about to walk out, he turned back to me and in a low voice, said, "I remember now! His name is Conrad Miller!"

Without another word or giving a sign he knew I was more interested than I'd acted, he left.

Yippee! I had a name! Fucking A!

They say it's the little things in life that are the make up of our overall happiness, or sadness, and this little thing, the man's name, had me feeling like I was blasting off and on my way to the moon.

I thought about getting right on it at work, but Arturo's behavior had me thinking it was best I did any sleuthing in the privacy of my home. Yes, home. I don't know when it happened, but my house had become my home. As empty, as filled with pain, and as suffused with Melissa's memories, as it was, it was my home again.

It didn't take me long that evening to find out about Mr. Conrad Miller. And yes, he did have a younger wife and two young children, but there was nothing mentioned about any long trip out of the states. If anything, the guy was a homebody. I then looked up his wife, Diane Lingrend, not Miller. Obviously she'd kept her maiden name. There wasn't much on her. It would seem she liked keeping to the shadows, which when you're married to a billionaire isn't something that's easy to do. As for Conrad, the web was filled with his notables, accomplishments and his wealth. He'd been one of those lucky dot com billionaires of the 1990's, building websites, nurturing them until someone came along and threw a lot of money at them to sell.