Poisoned Dreams

by A. W. Gray

  Since business lunches among male Park Citizens are every bit as gossipy as the women’s noonday meals, Big Daddy had already heard that Richard was running around. His discussion with Nancy was the first he had heard about Richard’s spending sprees, however, and the idea that his son-in-law was blowing exorbitant amounts on another woman while his little girl was left to pay the bills infuriated him. He quickly told Nancy exactly what to do. The following week while Richard was off skiing in Taos with Denise, Nancy closed the bank accounts and canceled the credit cards. The shutting off of the funds successfully curtailed Richard’s activities for a while, but not for long.

  His access to money gone, Richard went in remorse to Nancy and said he’d do anything she wanted him to if she would only forgive him. But instead of relenting as he obviously expected, she set up a meeting between him and his incensed father-in-law. Big Daddy was every bit as firm with Richard as he’d earlier been with Bill Jr.; if Richard wanted help, he had to agree to take the cure. Under threat of becoming penniless, Richard had to go along, and in mid-November became the second member of the Dillard clan in less than a year to take the trek to Sierra Tucson. There he enrolled not only in the sexual addiction program, but also in treatment for alcohol dependency. Uncertain whether Richard’s problem was sex or booze, Big Daddy wanted to cover all bases.

  Richard’s stay in the refreshing mountain air at Sierra Tucson lasted exactly two weeks, after which he went over the hill and sought the even more comforting climate of Denise Woods’ arms. He met her in Aspen, and the two of them went skiing. On this occasion he had plenty of funds to make the trip a memorable one; the money he took on the Aspen trip was Big Daddy’s advance for the Sierra Tucson treatment. When Big Daddy discovered, months later, where his money had gone, he was less than thrilled.

  In spite of the unscheduled detour from treatment at Sierra Tucson, and in spite of his knowledge that Richard was having an affair, Big Daddy found his son-in-law yet another job. It was never clear to trial spectators (or, apparently, the jury) what point the defense was trying to get across, but Richard’s lawyer spent a great deal of time cross-examining Big Daddy about the various positions he’d gotten for Richard and the various letters of recommendation he’d written. Whatever his reasons for getting Richard jobs in the past, Big Daddy’s motive after the Sierra Tucson fiasco is abundantly clear. Richard’s debt was astronomical and mounting by leaps and bounds. Further, Big Daddy was Richard’s principal creditor, and one of his checks to his father-in-law had already bounced. So if Big Daddy didn’t find work for Richard, it was likely that Big Daddy would never see his money. Whatever his earlier reasons for helping out, Big Daddy now had a bonus incentive to spur him on.

  The breakfast-meeting partner on this occasion was a tenacious forty-five-ish Dallas businessman named Stan Wetsel, who himself had deep roots in the city’s twentieth-century history. His father, J. C. Wetsel, was one of SMU’s first bona fide all-American football players, and Stan himself attended the university on a baseball scholarship. Stan Wetsel had earlier prospered in the landscaping and nursery business, but like many Dallas contractors, the eighties had been a nasty experience for him. Unlike many other casualties, though, Wetsel was a fighter. Down but far from out, he had recently formed a company called Architectural Site Services in an effort to regain his balance and get moving again. The new company was doing very well for a fledgling venture, and an out-of-work landscape architect with a Harvard degree was right up Wetsel’s alley. Big Daddy set up an appointment for Richard, and Wetsel added Richard to his staff the very next week.

  New employment for Richard should have been a bright spot for him and Nancy; not only did steady work give him less opportunity to stray from the straight and narrow, there was now an income in the family in addition to what she brought home. But there was a drawback to the employment with Architectural Site Services that is crystal clear to twenty-twenty hindsight. There had been little if any economic recovery in Dallas—and would be no upturn, in fact, for three more years; therefore it was necessary for ASS to look for work just as Hughes Industries had done. The only attractive contracts in all of Texas at the time were being performed in Houston, so trips to the Bayou City were once again to be part of Richard’s routine. And just as his travels to Houston with Hughes Industries had begun his affair with Denise, Richard’s trips to the bayou while in ASS’s employment were to bring even more woe to those close to him.

  Richard’s new job did help the Lyons financially, but also gave him more opportunity to be away from home in the evenings and, therefore, more opportunity to tryst with Denise Woods. During the final month of 1989 and the first month of 1990, he did so often, in spite of the fact that he’d assured Nancy that his affair with Denise had ended. For her part, Denise kept her secret rendezvous with Richard a closely guarded secret, and for a very good reason. She had her own quite active social life, and didn’t want news of her trysts with a married man to leak out and muddy other waters for her.

  In December 1989, the Rolling Stones came to Dallas to blow the roof off of Texas Stadium, and Denise’s date for the rock concert provided her with a couple of extra tickets, which she slipped to Richard. Even though Nancy wouldn’t have given two cents to watch Mick Jagger cavort and gyrate, Richard insisted that his wife accompany him to the blowout. When the performance was over, the two walked hand in hand through the parking lot toward their car with the domed Texas Stadium roof looming ominously overhead. Suddenly they were face to face with a young man who had his arm around the shoulders of a saucy, flip-haired blonde.0

  Richard stiffened noticeably. The two women, wife and lover, were face to face for just an instant, then Denise and her date excused themselves and detoured around the Lyons to continue on their way.0

  Nancy watched the other couple’s retreating backsides, then turned coldly to Richard. “That’s her, isn’t it?”

  Under the circumstances, Richard’s parting with Nancy was likely inevitable, but the straw that finally brought the camel to its knobby knees fell in late January when he told her he was going on a business trip to New Mexico. Nancy was suspicious because New Mexico wasn’t in Richard’s normal travel itinerary, so called the hotel where he was supposed to be staying to find that he wasn’t registered.

  Incensed, she called MasterCard (Richard had regained use of his credit cards by this time) and traced him through airline tickets and hotel charges to Crested Butte, where he and Denise were skiing once more. Richard’s handsome Lebanese features twisted in dismay when, while he was in bed beside his lover, Nancy called him in his supposedly secret hideaway. Nancy had had enough, she said, and ordered her husband to move out immediately. This time Richard had no choice. On a late-January morning of 1990 he loaded what belongings he could into his Alfa Romeo, kissed his tearful little girls goodbye at the curb, and drove away.

  The story could have ended that way, with Richard leaving home to be permanently with his lover, Nancy filing for divorce, and the Lyons living uncongenially apart for the rest of their days. But as Richard drove away on that January morning, the final nightmare for Nancy Lyon lay just around the corner.

  18

  Ellen Rose doesn’t resemble anyone’s idea of a seller of poisons. She is a slender and studious young woman who views the world through harlequin glasses, and who takes her employment with General Laboratory Supply very seriously. General Lab Supply is a chemical wholesaler located in the northeast Houston suburb of Pasadena, and doesn’t rely on poison as its main source of income. The poisons the company does happen to sell are normally incidental to its other sources of income.

  “It doesn’t take a permit to sell it, and it doesn’t take a permit to buy,” Ellen says. “There’s no law governing poison, and anyone who walks in here can buy the stuff, cash, charge, or otherwise.” Since the government seems to regulate everything else under the sun, why don’t they keep an eye on the poison business? “I don’t k
now,” Ellen says. “I just work here.”

  At first she had no memory of the swarthy, handsome young man who entered General Lab Supply’s offices on January 24, 1990, and had to research her records to locate the name of Richard Lyon on an invoice of that date for one hundred grams of lithium hydroxide, an innocuous general-purpose substance sold often in the company’s normal course of business. Ellen’s own meticulous notation on the invoice mentioned that Richard had paid by personal check in the amount of $21.90, but she had no independent memory of the transaction. After all, she waits on hundreds of customers. How could anyone expect her to remember just one of the many?

  Ellen Rose also frowningly failed to recall Richard’s visit to General Laboratory Supply only two weeks later, on February 8, an occasion on which he purchased one pound of triple-distilled mercury and paid with greenback dollars. She did, however, have a copy of that invoice as well, and caused some raised eyebrows among Dallas homicide detectives when she pointed out that Richard gave his address at that time as 2323 Bryan Street in Dallas, which, strangely enough, is Big Daddy’s office location. Richard did provide a local Houston telephone number on the invoice, which was the number of his job site.

  There were numerous other times during the year that Richard stopped by or phoned in orders to General Laboratory Supply, none of which Ellen Rose could remember offhand, but for all of which she could locate the company records in the computer. By August, for example—the eighth, to be exact—Richard had his own General Lab Supply catalog, and on that date furnished not only the names of the products he wanted, but the products’ catalog order numbers as well. The August 8 invoice caused the homicide detectives to scratch their noses thoughtfully, because in addition to barium carbonate, cyanogen bromide, and lead nitrate, Richard also purchased five grams of sodium nitroferrocyanide. Aha, the detectives thought, poison. That Richard had thoughtfully left a trail by paying with his own personal check apparently didn’t seem strange to the police, who were further disappointed to learn that the suspected substance on the invoice was merely another in a long list of red herrings that appeared during the investigation. Sodium nitroferrocyanide, it turned out, is merely a nontoxic substance used in the treatment of heart patients. Ellen Rose likely could have pointed out to the detectives that, Hey, fellas, the barium carbonate, that’s the poison in the order, but the detectives were looking for arsenic and the significance of the barium carbonate wouldn’t come out until much later.

  During none of the other visits from Richard did he buy any arsenic according to company records. After a lengthy interview with Ellen Rose, in fact, the detectives decided that the General Laboratory Supply lead—which Nancy’s family had supplied from records of Richard Lyon’s checking account—was a complete blind alley. Nonetheless, they did present Ellen with an array of pictures—some of the snapshots were of plainclothes detectives, others were mug shots of prisoners, and one was of Richard Lyon—for her perusal. After a careful examination of the photo lineup, Ellen ruefully shook her head. She was sorry, but she couldn’t identify anyone. The detectives sighed in disappointment, thanked her for her time, and left. The police interview with Ellen took place in mid-February of 1991, some six weeks after Nancy’s death.

  Ten months later at trial, after the investigation had unearthed further information to indicate that Richard in fact had ordered arsenic from General Laboratory Supply, Ellen Rose sat primly on the witness stand and pointed in the direction of the defense table. She specifically identified Richard as the man who’d been in her office on numerous occasions, and as the man who’d placed the various orders she’d pulled from company records. Her powers of recall at that time were astonishing, and likely were a tribute to the Dallas Police Department’s intensive memory-enhancement campaign.

  Mary Ann and Bruce Will didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to their new upstairs neighbor for quite some time. The Springbrook Lane condo neighborhood in Richardson was quite transient to begin with, many of the residents being move-in, move-out Texas Instrument employees and subject to transfer at any time. Besides, a nice-looking thirtyish single man moving in with a minimum of possessions was certainly nothing to write home about; the big-city divorce rate pumps fresh bachelor material into the system constantly. The eye-catching young blonde who visited the new tenant on an almost daily basis didn’t particularly stir the Wills’ interest, either; behind nearly every broken marriage there is a willing new partner ready to step in and comfort the lonely. So, as long as he didn’t throw loud all-night parties or play his stereo at a volume that vibrated his floor and their ceiling, the new neighbor was A-OK as far as the Wills were concerned. Hello, how you doing, and that was that.

  Mary Ann Will is much more outgoing than her husband; when Bruce comes in from work he’s generally in for the evening. Except for weekends, the man upstairs was usually gone, but Mary Ann did manage to have a few conversations with both him and his girlfriend. She was impressed with the man’s intelligence, particularly when she learned that he was a Harvard graduate, and also liked his politeness and impeccable manners. She wasn’t that impressed with the girlfriend, however, and thought that the blonde talked too much. Otherwise, though, she was nice enough. Mary Ann also found out that the man had been recently separated (I told you so, she later told her husband) and that he traveled quite often since he worked for a contracting firm that had business in Houston.

  Mary Ann also noticed that the man brought a lot of experimental paraphernalia and chemicals home, and that he had set up an easel in his apartment and was a remarkable painter. The man seemed to have few acquaintances other than the girlfriend; at least no one else stopped by on a regular basis, and when the girlfriend was over, the two went upstairs and kept mostly to themselves. The few times that Mary Ann visited, she felt that the man had a lot on his mind. Later, in fact, she would recall that her new neighbor had seemed quite preoccupied.

  One incident a few months after Richard moved into the Springbrook Lane condo gives some insight into Nancy’s frame of mind while the Lyons were separated. On the sun-washed Easter Sunday of 1990, around two o’clock in the afternoon, there was a loud knock on Bruce and Mary Ann Will’s door. Mary Ann answered to find a pretty but slightly wild-eyed brunette on the porch. The visitor was dressed for church and wore a bonnet. Her car sat out at the curb with its motor running, and in the car were two little girls in bright lacy Easter dresses.

  “Do you know where Richard is?” the brunette asked—or, more precisely, demanded, as Mary Ann Will was later to recall.

  Mary Ann was confused, and said so. Though she’d seen him and his girlfriend come and go, she didn’t know her upstairs neighbor’s name. At first she thought that the woman was referring to Mary Ann’s own husband, and told her visitor that her husband’s name was Bruce.

  “The guy up there,” Nancy said, pointing upstairs, “is my husband. He’s run away and left me with these kids, and doesn’t even have the decency to visit his own children on Easter. Well, if he doesn’t want to visit us, I’ve brought the children over to see him.”

  Mary Ann was polite, though she was a bit nervous at the confrontation, and told Nancy that she hadn’t seen Richard in over a week. Nancy spoke in a high, tense voice, and to Mary Ann seemed totally irrational. In fact, she was later to tell police that she couldn’t imagine why Nancy would burden a total stranger with her marital problems, and also that she couldn’t remember seeing a more distraught person in her life.

  Richard’s conduct during the period in which he occupied the condo was anything but consistent. Not only was it a harrowing experience for Nancy, it was an emotional roller coaster for Denise Woods as well. Denise confesses to being hopelessly in love with Richard by the time he vacated the Shenandoah Avenue duplex, and that not only was theirs a wild and intense sexual relationship, she more or less looked on Richard as her mentor in her contracting business. And face it, Richard Lyon knew a lot about construction.
It was on his advice that Denise took on several of her contracts during the year.

  She had feelings of guilt over her affair with a married man from the beginning, but once Richard moved out, Denise felt the relationship somewhat cleansed. No longer did she feel any need to keep her love for Richard a secret, and she began to speak openly to friends about it. Denise also wrote and mailed a long letter to Nancy, outlining her feelings for Richard, and also telling Nancy a little white lie. Denise said in the letter that she had never dated Richard until after the separation. Nancy never replied.

  Richard’s reaction to having two attractive women in love with him at the same time was, inarguably, somewhat less than mature; he seemed to delight in playing one against the other. Though it had been Nancy who ordered him to move in the first place, he hadn’t been living in the condo for a week before she was begging him to come home. Richard declined, but took distinct advantage of her invitation. Just as he’d often lied to Nancy about his whereabouts in order to carry on with Denise, he now fibbed to Denise, concocting fictitious business trips when in reality he was at the Shenandoah Avenue duplex, spending the night in Nancy’s bed. In fact, Richard boasted to some that he had sex with his wife more times during their separation than in the entire preceding year while they lived together. When Denise learned during the murder investigation that Richard had been sleeping with his wife during the separation, the news was a shock to her.

  Richard also took vicious pleasure in telling Nancy all about his and Denise’s bedroom activities. According to what Nancy told her sister, Richard went into great detail describing the things Denise had done that he found erotically pleasing, and then asked that Nancy do the same. Harried out of her wits, and willing to do anything that she felt might bring her marriage back together, Nancy often complied. When she did, Richard threw it all back in her face in the form of degrading insults at every opportunity.