I was standing at the window looking down at the street four stories below when Shawna, my secretary, office manager, computer guru and all around everything opened my office door and told me there was a Mrs. Valerie Benson who wished to speak with me. I told her to send Mrs. Benson in and moved behind my desk.

Shawna ushered Mrs. Benson in and I offered her my hand, introduced myself and asked her to have a seat. I sat down at my desk and asked:

“What can I do for you Mrs. Benson?”

“I’m hoping you can find my husband for me.”

“May I ask who referred you to me?”

“No one. I was leaving my attorney’s office and I saw the sign on your door that said Davis Investigations and I assumed you were a private investigator.”

As she said that I mentally patted myself on the back again for being smart enough to set up my business close to a law office. I got a lot of business from people leaving the attorney’s office.

“Why do you need someone to find your husband?”

“I need to find him so I can divorce him.”

“You don’t need to find him for that. I’m sure your attorney told you that you can divorce him for abandonment after a year’s absence.”

“I can’t wait a year. I need to get rid of him before September 19th.”

“Why is the date critical?”

“I come into some money on September 20th and if I’m not rid of him by then he will end up getting half in the divorce and I don’t want that cheating son of a bitch to get a dime of it. I’m told a divorce will take six months so that just gives me eight months to find him and get rid of him.”

“You could save yourself some money by just going to the police and file a missing person’s report and let them find him.”

“My attorney told me it would be a waste of time. Since I’d kicked him out and told him I wanted nothing to do with him the police wouldn’t even take a report let alone look for him.”

“Perhaps you should fill me in on the situation.”

“I caught the asshole cheating on me and I kicked his ass out of the house, changed the locks and bought myself a gun. I told him if he tried to get into the house I’d shoot him in the balls. The house was mine before we married so he had no legal rights to it and to get in. He could have gotten a court order to get into to get his things, but he didn’t. He just left and I haven’t seen nor heard from him in over six months. The attorney told me that if we can find him quickly and have him served and he doesn’t fight the divorce it can all be over before I come in to the money. That gives me eight months to find him, serve him, and hope he doesn’t fight it. I don’t see why he would given that he has completely dropped out of sight and hasn’t tried to contact me at all.”

I asked her for a list of relatives, friends and acquaintances, where he worked and anything else she could tell me that night give me a starting point. She told me he had no living relatives, but she gave me what she could and then said:

“I don’t know the name of the floozy he was cheating on me with, but I did get her license plate number.”

She gave it to me and I asked her how she had found out her husband was cheating.

“I left work one day and I stopped at the CVC pharmacy on the way home. There is a motel across the street and I saw my husband’s truck in the parking lot. After filling my prescription I parked where I could watch his truck. About an hour later he came out of room 111 with a blond. They kissed, got in their cars and left. When she pulled out of the lot she went right by me and I got a look at her plate number and I wrote it down. I knew when I confronted him that evening he would deny it and say I was imagining things so I was going to throw her description, the room number and her plate number in his face when he denied it.”

I told her what my rates were and she gave me a retainer. After she left I gave Shawna all the information Mrs. Benson had given me and told her to work her magic on the computer to get me everything she could find on Thomas Benson.

I called on Thomas’s employer and found out he didn’t work there anymore.

“Don’t know what happened, but one day he was a no call, no show and we haven’t seen or heard from him since. Frankly, he wasn’t very well liked and no one is sorry that he is gone.”

Next I called on the list of names Mrs. Benson gave me and got pretty much what I’d gotten from his employer. He had dropped out of sight and no one cared enough to wonder why. Had to make me wonder how a man so disliked could hook up with someone to have an affair with.

I called a good friend of mine who was pretty high in rank at the police department. Actually he was my partner when I was on the force. I asked him if they had anything on Benson. He called me back and said they had nothing on a Thomas Benson other that a couple of traffic tickets.

Shawna had managed to find out he had used his credit cards to buy gas at three gas stations to the south of us, but other than that there had been no sign of the man.

After six days of killing time I let Mrs. Benson know that it appeared that her husband had headed south and the only thing south of where he had last used his credit card was Mexico and I wouldn’t even try to find him in Mexico. I told her it would be damned near impossible given that no credit card purchases had been made in Mexico to give me a starting point. It might be possible, but the expense would be horrendous. I also pointed out that, at least to me, he didn’t want to be found. She thanked me for my efforts, paid the rest of my bill and then left my office.

After six days of killing time? Oh yeah. I knew exactly where Thomas Benson was and I knew it even before Mrs. Benson walked into my office. I also knew that Mrs. Benson would never see or hear from Thomas Benson ever again.

How did I know these things? The blond that Mrs. Benson saw coming out of room 111 of the Red Roof Inn with her husband was my wife Lorna and I was also watching the motel when the couple came out of that room. Mr. Benson currently resided under the foundation of the house on 723 Wildflower Lane. Ten thousand to the friend of a friend of a friend of mine saw to that part of the problem. The same friend of a friend of a friend saw to it that the credit card trail would lead to Mexico in case the law ever got involved in Mr. Benson’s disappearance.

As to the Lorna part of the problem? Nothing. As far as she knew I had no idea she was cheating on me with Benson and I needed it to stay that way. In the unlikely event of the law getting involved in Benson’s disappearance and they found out from someone of Lorna’s affair with Benson I needed to appear to be shocked at the information. I say in the unlikely event because Benson had been gone six months and no one seemed to care. Even Mrs. Benson hadn’t cared until she needed to get divorced.

There was another reason why I didn’t confront my wife over her dalliance with Benson. My wife came from money. Serious money! When she turned thirty she would come into a trust fund of a little over two and a half million dollars and she was seven months away. The best part? She didn’t ask for a prenuptial agreement when we married. I didn’t even find out about the trust fund until two years after we were married. When I found out my reaction was “So what? I’ve got Lorna and that’s all that matters. For richer or poorer” is what I’d said in the marriage ceremony and I’d meant it. Even if we were poor I’d still have Lorna with me and that was all that mattered

At least until I found out she was cheating on me.

Once I found out she was cheating on me we were done as far being a married couple was concerned and yes I could be selective when it came to my wedding vows. I’d go for “Richer or poorer” and I’d be all in with “Sickness and health” and when it came to “For better or worse” I’d go along with most anything except for adultery. Adultery changed from “Death do you part” to “Divorce do you part.”

Once divorce entered into things Lorna’s trust fund became more important to me. I figured I could put up with the cheating bitch for the chunk of her trust fund I’d get in the divorce. However to get that chunk I’d have to hang in there with her until she came into the money and possibly a little after to make sure.

It wouldn’t be all that hard of a thing to do. She was a good cook, kept a clean house and was pretty damned good in bed. All I had to do was pretend to be a loving husband for seven or eight more months and I was pretty sure I could manage that. Of course I would have to see that she didn’t become involved with anyone else during that period who she might decide to leave me for. I had no idea if Benson was just a fling or it was something more serious, but once I found out about him I made the decision that he had to go.

It did seem that maybe I had rushed to judgement on poor Mr. Benson because Lorna showed absolutely no sign of missing her lover. She was still doing her best to reduce me to ruin in the bedroom three and four times a week, but she was doing that even when she was with Benson.

After Benson I decided I needed to become proactive where Lorna was concerned. I had no idea if Benson was the first or just the latest and I’d found out about him by accident. I was on the job and actually watching room 113 at the Red Roof and waiting to take pictures of my client’s wife and her lover when Lorna and Benson came out of room 111.

Since then I have paid very close attention to my wife’s comings and goings. I could pretty much account for Lorna’s evenings and weekends so her playing had to be during the day and it wasn’t lost on me that I’d caught Lorna and Benson while she was on her lunch hour. Checking I’d found out that while Lorna and Benson didn’t work for the same company they did work in the same building. The building had a lounge right next door and Lorna did stop there one night a week after work for drinks with her coworkers. I surmised that is where she and Benson first hooked up.

I subscribed to the axiom that “Once a cheater always a cheater” and I fully expected Lorna to cheat again and since finding out about Benson I really didn’t care if she did. Once I found out about Benson our marriage was toast. All I really cared about was that it didn’t become more than a fling. I didn’t want Lorna leaving me for someone else before coming into her trust. In fact I wanted her to cheat so I would have grounds to sue her for divorce, but not until after she came into her money.

We lived in a state where no fault divorce held sway and I didn’t have to have evidence of her cheating for the courts, but I wanted it for when I confronted Lorna, told her I was divorcing her and then showed her why.

Because of my occupation I wasn’t nailed down to an office so I could easily position myself where I could watch Lorna’s building a half hour before her lunch hour. The building had a cafeteria in the basement so if Lorna didn’t leave the building within twenty minutes from the start of her lunch hour I figured that I could safely assume she was eating in.

Even if I was on a case I could almost always break away from it for the time necessary to watch Lorna’s building. It was three months after finding her with Benson that she left the building at eleven fifty-five, got in her car and drove to the Red Roof Inn. She pulled into the lot and parked next to a late model Escalade. A man got out, they kissed and then went into room 109. They were the room for forty-five minutes and then they came out, got in their cars and left. I got pictures of them going in and coming out and then I followed the Escalade and – surprise surprise – it went back to the parking lot at the same building Lorna worked in.

I took he plate number and using one of my contacts at the police department I found out the car was registered to a William Dodman who lived at 4880 Apple Tree Place. I drove over to the address and found it to be a fairly large house on a good sized lot. From another contact, this one at the city/county building got me the information that the owners of record were a William and Mellissa Dodman.

Over dinner that night I hit Lorna with a question and I thought I saw a touch of worry cross her face when I asked:

“Give me a woman’s perspective on something. Why does a woman cheat on her husband? Why doesn’t she just divorce him and then move on with the other guy?”

“What brings this up?”

“A case I’m working on. A client suspected his wife was cheating on him and he hired me to find out for sure. Turns out he was right.”

“I don’t know; it could be for any number of reasons. Maybe she was getting even with him for something he did or she thought he did. Maybe she didn’t love him anymore. Could be he couldn’t get the job done in the bedroom and while she still loved him she needed the sexual relief a lover could give her. What did the client do when he found out?”

“I don’t know, but if it were me I’d kick her ass to the curb in a heartbeat.”

The next morning I turned Shawna loose on Mellissa Dodman and she found out Mellissa was a real estate broker with the Gary Agency. I had Shawna pull up the agencies listings and then I called Mellissa at the number Shawna got for me. I told Mrs. Dodman that I was interested in the property located at 941 Nucla and she agreed to meet me there.

The photos that Shawna had pulled up did not do Mellissa justice. The woman was a stone fox. Unless the woman was like an ice cube in the bedroom I could not understand her husband stepping out on her.

We introduced ourselves and then went inside the house and after a walk thru Mellissa said “You aren’t really here to look at the house. I’m going to guess what you really want is to discuss what is going on between your wife and my husband.”

She laughed at the expression that came over my face.

“How could you know that?”

“The private detective I had on Billy recognized you as you were following your wife and he let me know. I guess the next question is why you needed to arrange our meeting?”

“Since you know who I am I may as well lay it all out for you. I wanted to see if I could get a feel for what kind of person you were. In short, would you be the kind of woman your husband would walk away from and go after my wife. I’m trying to determine if Lorna is just having a fling or is it something more serious.”

“He won’t be walking away from me; crawling is more likely. Billy is fully aware of my stance on fidelity. One and done is the phrase I hear used most often. Sounds like you are thinking of keeping the slut.”

“No; she’s history, but I need at least five more months before I cut her loose. I need some time to take care of some things before I hit her with divorce papers. Any way you could see your way clear to let hubby slide for five months?”

“There might be. Depends on you.”