by Robyn Carr
And their time there was a little like a honeymoon, relaxed and satisfying.
Despite the romance of getting away alone together, they were both anxious to get back. After the stress of the past year, having an ordinary life filled with ordinary joys felt like such a gift. Beau’s home was fast becoming hers. The days following the mediation had been a little rocky for Michael and Drew, but then things settled into a routine and Lauren and Beau got together with the boys a few times. That’s when she realized the kids needed this legal wrangling to be over as much as Beau and Lauren did.
She made a point to reach out to Lacey more often to make sure she was settled with the idea that her parents were not going to reconcile, but there was no such reassurance from her daughter.
“Have you seen your father?” she asked Lacey.
“Not that I want to, but I’ve seen him. He’s making it really hard. I think he might be going a little crazy.”
Lauren’s jaw clenched. “Why do you say that?”
“The way he talks,” she said. “The things he says. Since Christmas... Since Thanksgiving, really, he hasn’t looked healthy. He’s lost weight, he has bags under his eyes, sometimes he chews Tums like they’re breath mints. I can’t even ask him if he feels okay because he says, ‘No. I’m sixty and my wife of twenty-five years left me for a younger man.’”
“Listen, seeing him is up to you, honey. He’s always had some serious anger issues and I think staying with him for so long masked those problems from you girls. Beau is three years younger than I am, not exactly a younger man. Beware, Lacey. If he’s making you uncomfortable, you can just be too busy. You’re over twenty-one. If you don’t want to talk to me, talk to Cassie.”
Lacey laughed. “And she really is too busy. Unlike me, Cassie has a life!”
“Aunt Beth will certainly make time for you,” Lauren said. “Don’t try to go through this alone, honey.”
Lauren missed Cassie like crazy, but the great news was that Cassie had never been happier. She was overworked, sleep-deprived, deep in debt and completely happy. Jeremy was a good partner; law school, while horrifyingly difficult, was a challenge she was up to and she was doing just fine. She had new friends.
And Lauren had old friends. She met her coworkers from Merriweather and they caught up on all the latest news, including the news that Stu Lonigan had left the company.
Lauren was frustrated by the length of time it was taking for her divorce to become final. It seemed Brad’s attorney had one delay tactic after another. And Brad was gathering fines for contempt, for not paying support, for failing to appear. Beau said, “It doesn’t matter. The law will catch up with him eventually but in the meantime, we’re fine. We’re together and we have plenty to eat.”
Her life was so good in spite of divorce, in spite of unsettled finances. When she went to Sylvie’s house to work she was filled with gratitude. Ruth Ann was executing her move to a warmer, less expensive part of the country, though still available by phone. What files and records she kept for Sylvie were paperless and Sylvie’s office was right down the hall. There were weeks that Sylvie and Andy were traveling and Lauren was alone there, holding down the fort. The job made her feel empowered. It was a great pleasure to support worthy causes even if the money was not hers.
While Erica Slade could not seem to hasten Lauren’s divorce, she was able to settle with Merriweather. Lauren was given a generous settlement to avoid court, a settlement she immediately deposited in a trust and offered to share with Cassie. She was feeling downright lucky.
* * *
Beau was just thinking of quitting for the day when he received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Detective Craig Moore. It was the call he’d been waiting for, even though he had no hope of recouping his loss on the truck.
“Mr. Magellan, we have been interviewing a suspect and would like you to come in to talk with us. We’d like to know if there’s any connection between the two of you.”
“What’s his name?” Beau asked reflexively. But his thoughts ran wild. Did the police think he orchestrated the bombing of his own truck? Impossible. First of all, he lost money on the damage—the truck was totaled for the blue book value and he’d bought it for far more. Drive it off the lot and it depreciates by thousands.
“If you wouldn’t mind, sir. There’s quite a lot to explain about the incident and I think maybe you can help.”
“All right,” he said, confused but eager to be helpful. “Give me a half hour. I was just leaving work.”
“Take your time,” Detective Moore said. “I’ll be here.”
Beau took the time to text Lauren and tell her he’d just gotten a call from the police and they wanted him to stop by the station because they had a suspect, so he’d be running a little late.
No worries, she texted back. I’ll stop for groceries and start dinner.
Just like every other time he so much as thought about Lauren, his heart was full. He said a little prayer of thanks and hoped all the drama of their lives could come to an end. Living with her, depending on her, being her other half made him so happy. Every day his feelings for her grew. Lying beside her at night, waking up with her in the morning were miracles he never thought he could have in his life. And from the way she responded to him, she felt the same way. Sometimes they just held each other close, held on for dear life. She was everything to him.
He walked into the police department and thought, maybe this will be the end of it. He asked for Detective Moore and the man came to escort him inside to his desk.
“Thank you for coming,” the detective said. “I’d like you to look at some pictures to start with. Have a seat right here.”
“Sure,” Beau said. The detective spread out a collection of eight mug shots and asked Beau if he recognized anyone. Beau shook his head. “No. Should I?”
“I’d like you to look at a brief video,” Detective Moore said. He opened up his laptop, keyed in a command and turned the screen toward Beau. “Anything familiar about this?”
“Yeah,” Beau said, watching a man approach his truck, carefully place something in the bed and run away. “That’s my truck. Is that the guy? The guy who put a bomb in my truck?”
“We identified some materials and a partial print from a piece of shrapnel. To be honest, the print was terrible and we might not have made a match, but the guy is known for this kind of mischief—”
“Mischief? That was a seventy-thousand-dollar truck!”
“Oh, it’s worse than that,” Detective Moore said. “Recognize the background on that video?”
Beau squinted. He shook his head.
“You were at a wedding. You parked about a block away, across from a convenience store. They had security cameras in front and back and sides of the store as well as inside. They used to have a lot of robberies.”
Beau ran a hand through his hair. “Did you catch him?”
“Yes, sir, we brought him in. We showed him this little movie. He admitted he made the bomb. Not very well, as it turns out. But pipe bombs are very unstable. He expected it to go off when you started driving. A little bouncing in the bed of the truck should have done the trick.”
“Why, in God’s name would he put a bomb in my truck? And why did it explode in the middle of the night? When the truck wasn’t moving? Was it hooked up to some kind of timer or something?”
The detective shook his head. “Like I said, pipe bombs are real unstable. They’ve been known to blow up in a mailbox hours after being put there. I’m guessing, since he won’t admit to this part, but I think the bomb was very peaceful in the grooves in the truck bed and you didn’t have any fast starts or sudden stops, didn’t hit any big bumps... It could have spontaneously exploded—that has been known to happen. But we also found pawprints around the truck. Probably a large, domestic cat.”
“What did he admit?” Beau a
sked.
“He’s a repeat offender. He was paid to make the bomb and put it in your truck and the location was disclosed to him. Plain and simple, it was a hit, Mr. Magellan. You and your girlfriend were targets. Our suspect fell apart like a cheap watch, gave us everything to keep his sentence down. He’ll testify.”
“My God, was it Lauren’s husband?” Beau asked.
“No, Mr. Magellan. It was your wife.”
He was stunned for a second. “Pamela?”
“You seem really shocked.”
“Yeah, I’m shocked. How would she even know someone who would do something like that? I mean, she’s a loose cannon... She’s kind of self-centered and angry, but...”
“Self-centered, angry people are sometimes very resourceful. Has she created trouble before?”
“Not trouble like trying to kill people!” he said. “She blames people for her problems, manipulates, she can be very selfish...”
“She’s going to be prosecuted,” Detective Moore said. “Are you in an ongoing relationship with her?”
He shook his head. “Our divorce will be final very soon—everything is done but the filing. When that bomb was put in my truck, that was my best friend’s wedding, way before we signed the final papers. I was with the woman I’ve been seeing for a few months. The woman had nothing to do with the divorce. Pamela left me well over a year ago. Once I said we’ll call it quits, she wanted to patch things up.” He shook his head in frustration. “I thought she was a little crazy...”
“Maybe more than a little,” the detective said.
“Are you absolutely sure she wanted to kill me?” Beau asked.
“I’m sure. She hasn’t confessed to that but the bomb maker said he agreed to do it for seven thousand dollars. He...um...recorded the meeting and took a picture of the money with his iPhone. He’s a real up-market assassin.”
“God,” Beau said. “This is going to crush her sons.”
“Do they have a good relationship with you?” Detective Moore asked.
“Yes. I try to be there for them. They’re eighteen and twenty-one. Grown up but... But not, you know?”
“I know,” the detective said. “Maybe you should get some professional help with this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just sat through a day-long settlement mediation with her, agreed to give her a lot of money and she never even twitched. God, if I’d just tried to kill someone, I’d have been a little nervous during a property settlement conference, during a divorce. Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Magellan,” he said. “I never ordered a hit on anyone.”
“Who does something like that?” Beau asked, still in shock.
“You’d be surprised. The big difference here is she almost made it happen. Most of our suspects try to make their deal with a cop and they go down before it gets too scary. This was a little close. You were very lucky.”
A door opened with a squeak, closed with a click. Beau looked to the back of the office. Two plainclothed officers were escorting Pamela out of the office. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back. She wore her amazingly sexy business attire—jacket with a tight waist, slit in the skirt, four-inch heels, lots of cleavage, pretty blond hair, long scary nails. He stared at her and tried to remember the small, pretty, vulnerable girl in the torn jeans and the oversize man’s shirt, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, a couple of little boys on her lap, begging for ice cream...
She met his eyes, frowned and turned away.
“When did she get so cold?” he asked.
“I don’t know, buddy. But she’ll make bail. You might want to be real cautious.”
Beau said he would, but the question about Pam’s coldness, he was asking himself.
“I have to go home,” Beau said. “I have to tell Lauren, who I love. I have to tell my boys, who I love as if they were my blood sons. This sucks so bad. How could she?”
“What could you have done different?” the cop asked.
He did a memory check in a matter of seconds. The little boys. Their poor abandoned mom, all the times she left and he was all they had. He remembered her temper, her selfishness. He would have taken the boys as a single dad but she never would have let that happen.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
During what is usually one of the most beautiful months of the year in the Bay Area, there was darkness at Lauren’s and Beau’s door. Just when Lauren thought it couldn’t get any worse, Beau came home from his meeting with the police wearing an expression of anger that she’d never seen before.
“Good Lord, what is it?” she asked.
“The bomb in the truck? It was Pamela.”
Lauren was stunned. “She made a bomb?”
“She didn’t make it,” he said. “She hired someone to do it.”
“To destroy your truck?” Lauren asked, shaking her head.
He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. “To kill us,” he said in a whisper. “It’s a miracle it didn’t explode while we were both in the truck. I still don’t know how she knew it would be just us. What if the boys were there? Was she willing to kill them, too? God,” he said, a catch in his throat.
“My God,” she said. “Who would do that?”
He didn’t answer. He just held on to her. After a long while, he said, “She’s been arrested. She’ll be prosecuted. But I was warned she’ll probably make bail.” He ran his fingers through her hair, tucking it back behind her ear. “Maybe my house isn’t the safest place for you to be. Maybe you should go to Beth’s. Or Sylvie’s.”
She kept her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. “Now? I don’t think so. We’ve come so far and we don’t know how far we have yet to go. What do the boys say about this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what they know. I have to call them. If they knew this was going to happen and said nothing to warn us, then I don’t know anything about them.”
* * *
Of course Drew and Michael didn’t know what their mother had done and it went down hard. Michael nearly collapsed in an emotional outburst, crying like a five-year-old. Drew was more stoic. He was angry. “I’m through,” he said.
“Listen, we’re going to get some counseling,” Beau said.
“Do you still have to give her a million dollars?” Drew asked.
“I’m pretty sure I do,” he said. “I’ll check with the lawyer, but I don’t think one thing has anything to do with the other.”
“I don’t think you should,” Drew said.
While Drew let his anger spill out, Michael buried his face in his arm and sobbed, probably as much from shame and humiliation as disappointment and fear.
“I don’t know how it got to this,” Beau said. “When I met your mother, she was just a sad, poor girl. I have a lot of experience with being poor. Poor doesn’t mean bad or stupid or criminal. It just means worn-out jeans and lean meals. I grew up poor and my parents were good, God-fearing, law-abiding, hardworking people. We laughed a lot, we all pitched in. Your mom was always so angry, I could never figure out how she could stand to live with that anger. And I think she had a pretty good life. Maybe not when she was a kid, but she got a pretty good education even if she didn’t finish her degree. She had a good job, a decent home, plenty of everything. And she’s beautiful. I can’t explain why all that was never enough.”
“I think it was me,” Michael said through his running nose and teary eyes. “I told her about Tim, about him getting married. I told her I was going to the wedding, that you were the best man. I told her where it was.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Beau said. “If not there, she’d have found another place. It wasn’t because of anything you said.”
“You’re the only person who ever stuck with us,” Michael said.
“We’re going t
o get help with this,” Beau said.
Lauren sat across the room at the breakfast bar, just listening.
“Lauren, I’m sorry,” Michael said.
“Oh darling, it wasn’t you. It was us. It was Beau and me. We married people who are selfish and controlling. We had to move on from that, of course. And divorcing them was not going to be tidy. I don’t think either of us imagined it would be this dangerous but at the end of the day, we’re not very surprised. I ended up in an emergency room. Beau was so lucky to only lose a truck. Divorce can be a terrible ordeal. We’re the ones who are sorry. You shouldn’t have to go through this.”
Early the next morning, Beau spent about a half hour on the phone with Tim. His best friend asked him if he could afford some good counseling. “I’ll manage even if I have to sell body parts,” Beau said.
“Ask at a domestic violence shelter,” Tim suggested. “Or maybe the DV unit at the police department.”
“This is the kind of thing you see on the news,” Beau said. “Not the kind of thing ordinary people have to deal with!”
“It’s a crazy, cracked world, my friend. It never hurts to also pray. I’m kind of partial to prayer.”
“Buddy, I never prayed so much in my life,” Beau said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pamela spent very little time in jail. She hired an excellent attorney, was out on bail in less than forty-eight hours, but her passport was taken away and she was immediately served with an order of protection to stay away from her ex-husband and sons. She called them all repeatedly, making excuses and denying the charges and so went back to jail for twenty-four hours, which seemed to quiet her down. At least temporarily.