Chapter 1 Discovery

There is something to be said for living in a tropical paradise. First, there's the sunshine. Second, the year-around warmth. Third, the scantily dressed women.

Yes indeed, it can help restore the emotional balance of a wounded man. But that day it was simply hot. I had only just arrived on this island two weeks earlier and I wasn't quite prepared for continuous heat. To me, hot usually means beer, and around here, beer means Grolsch ... or Heineken ... or in a pinch, Amstel.

Those are the deep thoughts that passed by me as I lounged on the balcony of my little room in Cole Bay, Sint Maarten, just a tiny speck of land in the eastern Caribbean that almost totally relies on tourism. It's a shared island, part Dutch and part French. The French have the biggest territory, St. Martin, but more people live here in Sint Maarten, the Dutch territory.

From my balcony you can see St. Kitts, St. Bartholemey, Antigua, and a couple of other islands with the naked eye. My little abode sits on a strip of land with the Caribbean on one side, Simpson's Bay Lagoon on the other, and the airport too damn close.

This was my chosen residence. Just me, myself, and I ... Dexter McLeod. Age: forty-seven, height: six-foot-one, weight: one-ninety, eyes: blue, hair: blonde-grey, skin: gradually turning brown, status: separated. I was enjoying my exile, along with the seventy five thousand fellow island residents and god knows how many cruise ship tourists.

Not so many days ago I was the head of the CADD department at Pinecone Engineering, a medium size firm. Twenty three years earlier, when computer aided design was in its infancy, I was one of their first hires to effect the conversion. Fresh out of technical college, they needed someone to begin the move from old-style drafting to computer design and modeling.

I had pretty much created the department myself, so that made me Pinecone's Computer Aided Design and Drafting guru.

It was a good job and I was well paid. I was home every night except when I had to travel to a jobsite, but that wasn't very often. I had twenty-six designers reporting to me and I got along well with all of them. The tech schools were turning out a lot more young people with the necessary skills so we could be picky about whom we hired. However, in the end, experience was a big benefit and that's what I had in spades.

With my wife, Sandra, and our two children, Jonathan, 22, and Meredith, 20, we lived in a nice suburban two storey house only a few blocks from the commuter train station. We lived in Maple Ridge, east of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia. I would get up at five am and catch the five-forty-five train to the city, giving me almost an hour to enjoy a large latte and the morning paper. I'd leave the office at four and be home by five-fifteen. Other than the early rise, it was quite a satisfactory routine.

Sandra's a good looking woman. I know a hundred guys who would love to have her, but she chose me. She was five-six, a hundred thirty pounds, with a nice body that she'd kept through two kids. Dark brown wavy hair, cut at the base of the neck, brown eyes, a button nose, and perfect teeth to show off a great smile. All things considered, I felt I was a pretty lucky guy to have found her.

Sandra hadn't worked during the children's early years but got bored with being alone at home when they were in their teens. She looked around for a part-time job, but with her limited skills, it wasn't easy to find one. Then luck, or fate, took over.

Our financial advisor, Randall Teller, was visiting our home one evening and in general conversation mentioned that he needed someone to help him with organization at his office. Simple work really; filing, taking messages, organizing meetings.

It wasn't a full time job and it didn't pay much but he was looking for someone just like Sandra. You can guess the rest. She jumped at the chance and started the next week. I didn't mind. She would start at one in the afternoon and come home at five. That gave her the entire morning for any housework or meal preparation.

Occasionally she would help Randall with organizing a seminar for clients and prospects. They were usually held either at ten in the morning or seven in the evening at one of the local hotels. They were only held once every three months so I didn't notice much change in our routine. I certainly had no complaints.

Things gradually changed as the kids finished high school and started their post-secondary educations. Jonathan, now called Jon, had decided on an engineering degree. At first he thought he would take Environmental Engineering but ultimately decided on Mining and Mineral Processing. I think both Sandra and I were completely baffled by his choice. Talk about a reversal of thinking!

Meredith, Merry to most of us, had chosen interior design and had been attending two years of community arts school. She had an eye for colour and design and both Sandra and I thought she had made a good choice.

Jon would now be in his final year and Merry would be finished her training and out looking for a job at the end of her current semester. We had corresponded briefly by e-mail but it was pretty unsatisfactory since most of the e-mails were either dumping on me or begging me to come back. That wasn't going to happen.

So how did I get from there to here? Simple. I discovered my wife was having an affair with good old Randall and planned to divorce me. She would get at least half of everything I had worked for over the past twenty-three years and I thought that was completely unfair. So, I took action.

I had very little leverage over my assets. Obstacle number one: I had originally bought our home in joint ownership with Sandra. To sell it or even re-mortgage it would require her signature as well as mine. Obstacle number two: I had set up separate RRSP's (Registered Retirement Savings Plans) for Sandra and myself. Mine was worth close to $400k while Sandra's was a little over $200k. In a divorce she would get at least $100k of mine. Since she was having the affair with Randall, cashing in my RRSP or even moving it to another firm would immediately send up a red flag and alert them that I was onto their plans.

I could easily empty the chequing and savings accounts and cash in a number of old whole life insurance policies I owned in my name. The two term policies had little if any cash value, so I would simply change the beneficiary on them to the children. I would also change my will.

I thought about trying to trick Sandra on the mortgage. It was up for renewal in the next few months and I wondered if I could set it up so that she would sign the papers without really noticing that I was the sole title on the document. It was a small mortgage, one hundred thousand on a house recently valued at six hundred thousand.

I discarded that idea. The house itself was titled in both our names. In addition, I was pretty sure that her lover would want to see anything that might involve their plan to take advantage of me and he would spot that strategy right away. Again, that might also tell them that I was on to them and force them to change their plans.

I also learned they were willing to wait for my twenty-fifth anniversary at Pinecone. In seventeen months I would be receiving a nice contribution that I would add to my RRSP and they didn't want to miss out on that. It was a very tidy package of stock that would be worth a great deal when I decided to retire. Unfortunately, through my ignorance, Randall was made well aware of this future windfall during our discussions about our financial affairs. They were willing to wait to make was sure they would get the stock included in the property settlement as a going away gift.

I was convinced Randall was the mastermind behind this scheme. Sandra wasn't stupid but she wasn't that wise to the ways of finance. She apparently had dreams of wealth and leisure and Randall would make them all come true.

Randall had sired five children, currently all between the ages twelve and twenty. He was fifty-something years old and normally would have to work hard for some years before he could retire and take it easy. His wife, Laura, was an unattractive woman in her early forties who spent most of her time looking after the five children. They had decided to home-school them and that was her role on top of looking after the household. A full time job, for sure. I wondered what she would think of this plot. The courts would not be kind to Randall leaving her and running off with another woman.