The incumbent has just barely survived an audit over spending county funds to redecorate his office to the tune of eighty grand, and paying auto expenses for what turns out to be his wife’s personal car. He claims it was miscommunication with staff and filling out the wrong forms, he reimbursed the county, and then it dies out in the onslaught of more pressing news both locally and nationally.
Still, he’s likely going to be turfed out in the primary, but it’ll be a bloody fight in the process.
However…if Benchley weighs in and supports Owen in the primary, it would sweep in enough GOP votes from people disgusted with the incumbent so as to give Owen a huge boost. Since we have a closed primary state, it also means we’ll have a tactical advantage if several GOP candidates run for the incumbent’s seat in the primary, splitting local party support across several candidates.
If I can get Benchley to support Owen, or even get him to sway the local party to pull their support from the incumbent and put it behind Owen as a protest—exactly the kind of statement that Benchley enjoys making—that would be the first stepping stone to getting Susa elected Governor.
Even Benchley would have to admit that.
I use events like tonight’s cocktail party to network and bounce ideas off people. Also, to introduce Owen around. He tends to do well at these kinds of events, especially if I’m there. It allows people to meet him in a more relaxed, one-on-one kind of setting. I need him to learn how to have an “on” mode in public. He’s getting there, but this is why I have to slowly build his tolerance. Thanks to his bitch of a mother, I not only have to teach him how to be “on,” I’m having to deprogram the negative feedback he heard most of his life following some sort of event like this. He was used to blending in and remaining hidden in plain sight. Susa and I have to teach him how to draw the good kind of attention onto himself.
There’s a few bigwigs from local politics in attendance tonight, including Kelly Fortuno, an elderly man who was a two-term Hillsborough county commissioner, a two-term Tampa city commissioner, a two-term Tampa mayor, and who now sits on the county’s planning and zoning committee.
Years ago, he also worked as a deputy county administrator under one Benchley Evans. So of course he feels it appropriate tonight to regale me with hysterical stories of my wife’s childhood. Considering the guy is in his late seventies, I go with it, laughing where appropriate.
“Yeah, sometimes I even went camping with them.” He shakes his head. “Wasn’t there that one weekend, though.”
It was currently myself, Owen, and Kelly in our tight little group. “What weekend?” I ask, my antennae twitching with the hint of something juicy, even perhaps at Susa’s expense.
“When that guy shot himself.” He scowls, his brow furrowing as he tries to remember the details. “Oh, what was his name. Morgan something-or-other. Head of public works, at the time. City of Tampa, not county.”
He glances around and leans in closer, dropping his voice. “Guess he got a girl pregnant.” He leans out, nodding knowingly. “Young girl.” He keeps nodding. “Teenager. And he was a married man. Well, married until his wife took their kid and divorced the sonofabitch.”
Anger flares through me and I quickly school it, keeping my voice calm, I hope. “I hadn’t heard any of that.” I wonder if there’s something from Susa’s past that she hasn’t revealed to us. As far as I know, she’s never been molested or assaulted.
Except by me, and that was consensual.
“Oh, Susa might not even remember it. Probably not. She wasn’t even ten when it happened, I don’t think. Confessed in his suicide note about what he’d done. Guess he forced himself on the girl. I’m talking young teenager. She had the baby, if I remember correctly. He would have gone to jail for it, that’s for sure, if he hadn’t saved the state the cost of a trial.”
I want to know more but am frustrated by one of the senior partners walking up to talk to Kelly. Owen arches an eyebrow at me as I pull out my phone and quickly type a note to myself with details about what Kelly told us. I’ll have to research it later.
Yes, I have a good memory, but I’m not an idiot.
If for no other reason I want to talk to Susa and ask, for my own peace of mind, if she’d ever been victimized by the creep.
In fact, I’ve almost forgotten about it by the time the three of us finally get out of there two hours later. Owen is driving tonight, and I turn in the passenger seat to glance back at Susa.
“Guy we talked to tonight, Kelly Fortuno. Said he used to go camping with you and your dad sometimes.”
Her brow wrinkles. “I think so. Why?”
“He started to tell us an interesting story, but we got interrupted. About a guy who killed himself one time while you all were camping. Do you remember that?”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, my god. I haven’t thought about that in years.”
“So it did happen?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“What was the guy’s name? The guy who killed himself.”
“Wheedon. Martin Wheedon, I think.”
“Morgan?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Morgan Wheedon. Why?”
I’ve already pulled my phone out and am adding info to my original note. “He said the guy got a teenaged girl pregnant.”
“What?”
I look back at her. “Yeah.”
She stares out the window for a long moment, an uncomfortable tightness filling my gut. This started out more as a marriage of convenience for me, but don’t get me wrong—I would kill or die for either of them. I meant my vows to her, and to Owen. Owen might be first in my heart, but I quickly came to love Susa, too. The thought that something like that might have happened to her at such a vulnerable age makes me sick and angry.
“Pet?”
“I’m…thinking, Sir.” But she doesn’t look away from the window.
I give her the time she needs and a few minutes later, she turns back to me. “I’m wondering if that was Rebecca.”
“Rebecca Soliz Martin?” I ask.
“Yes, Sir.” She apparently doesn’t realize she’s dropped into full-on pet mode, and I’m not about to tell her, either. “She stopped going camping with us a few months before he killed himself.”
“Did he ever molest you?”
“No, Sir. Fortunately, that’s one experience I never had. I think people were too afraid of Daddy. I mean, I had boys get handsy in school every so often, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Why?”
Relief fills me. On my phone, I’m already running a web search for the guy’s name, and it takes me no time to hit pay-dirt. “I was just curious. You know me, I hear something, I want to research it. So who did you talk to tonight? Anything juicy to report?”
I let her go on about her discussions while I’m staring at a very interesting color photo that was run with one of the newspaper stories about the man’s suicide. Rebecca wasn’t named, but the investigation into man’s death was quickly closed as an obvious suicide because of the note and the “young victim’s” age and situation.
Morgan Wheedon was recently divorced, had light blue eyes, pale skin and freckles, and hair so red he could be one of the Weasleys from Harry Potter.
* * * *
Because I can’t leave this alone, I do more digging over the next couple of weeks, until an interesting puzzle starts to untwine itself before me. I have to make sure I don’t disturb any hornets’ nests in the process, but when I go to visit Doris Norman at her nursing home, I take flowers, pastries, and some other gifts I hope the woman enjoys. I haven’t seen her in several months and feel a little guilty that I haven’t been visiting her with Susa.
But only a little.
I wouldn’t be a bastard extraordinaire if I let something like a little guilt slow me down, much less stop me.
She’s eighty-two and David Norman’s widow, in addition to having worked as Benchley’s receptionist during his tenure as county administrator and county commissioner. From that time period, sh
e probably knows where quite a few bodies are buried.
I used to think that was just a metaphorical expression, but now I’m not so sure.
Mentally, the woman is still sharp, even if her frail body fails her. She has severe osteoporosis and has broken her hip twice in falls, along with a heart condition, and she can’t live independently anymore.
We have a lovely visit. I wait until the end, when I know she’s exhausted, to bring it up, after I pull my cell phone out and glance at the time before propping it up on its end on my thigh.
“Ran into Kelly Fortuno the other night at a cocktail party, and he said to tell you hello.”
“Oh, isn’t that lovely? I always did like him.”
“You know, he mentioned something about a camping trip years ago. Someone killed himself, but for the life of me now, I can’t remember the guy’s name.”
“Oh, you mean Morgan Wheedon. Phhpt. Good riddance. They did everyone a favor by putting one in his skull.”
“‘They’?”
She looks around as if to make sure we’re alone—which, of course we are, since she has one of those little private apartment suites—before she drops her voice. “Benchley, David, and Chris took care of that worthless, perverted sonofabitch.” She nods at me before sitting back in her recliner.
Benchley is the only one left alive from that list of names, that much I know. David and Chris were older than Benchley. Both men died mostly natural deaths, if you count, respectively, lung cancer from smoking and liver cancer from drinking as “natural.”
“‘Took care’ of him?”
She nods. “Helped him along, so to speak. He raped that girl and she got pregnant. When she told her daddy who did it, he immediately told Benchley.”
“Her father is Edward, right?” I interrupt, but wanting it out there.
She nods again. “Right. Edward, Benchley, Chris, and David were all good friends. Benchley told Edward not to call the cops, and to let them handle it.” She smiles. “And they did.”
“Did they, now?”
“Yep. They got him drunk, forced him to write the note, and shot him with his own gun. Benchley pulled the trigger while Chris and David held him. Made it look like a suicide. Poor Rebecca, she had to go live at her aunt’s house in Orlando for a long time when she had that baby. Missed almost a whole year of school. They told everyone she went overseas to study. When she married John Martin, he adopted her son. The boy must have been six or seven by then.”
“How come I never heard about any of this before?” I don’t try to bullshit her too much. She’s still sharp for her age, and I’ve pushed the envelope already. She’s tired and she likes me and she likes talking to me. She also loves Susa.
I doubt had I come right out and asked her about all of this at the beginning of our visit that she would have admitted it.
#yesImabastard
“He was a rapist,” she says with venom so fierce her words could almost dissolve flesh. “No one missed him. His ex-wife and daughter were better off without him. Wasn’t the first bastard he sired with a teenager, either, but the other girls before Rebecca were older and, somehow, he skated through. Sonofabitch probably would have gone after Susa next, if they hadn’t stopped him. The city wanted the story to go away, didn’t want people to know they had someone like that on staff, so they had their city attorney talk to the sheriff and medical examiner up where it happened to get the death certificate signed and the case closed in just a couple of days.” She mimes wiping her hands. “Nice and tidy.”
“How did Benchley know they’d get away with it?”
“Because of Susa. She used to share a tent with Rebecca on their camping trips. Benchley bought a new, bigger tent so he could put Susa in there with him. Had a divider in it, like two rooms. Susa told the deputies Benchley was in the tent with her when she heard the gunshot, and Chris and David, of course, vouched for each other, because they were sharing a tent. The new tent was David’s idea. Susa liked to sleep in her own tent, so Benchley needed a way to make sure she could vouch for him. Benchley pretended he didn’t know anything about Rebecca being pregnant, or what Morgan did, when Benchley invited him to go camping with them that weekend. Told Morgan he’d heard about a job opening up at the county, and wanted to talk about it with him that weekend.”
“So Benchley lured him there?”
She shrugs. “Call it what you will. I say it saved taxpayers the cost of a trial. Between the suicide note, Rebecca’s statement to police corroborating the facts about the rape, and Susa saying her dad was in the tent with her, police wrote it off as a suicide. Case closed. No reason to suspect otherwise.”
“When did you find out the truth?”
“Oh, I suspected for years. David finally confessed it to me after he got sick the last time and we knew he wasn’t going to make it.” She sadly smiled. “Bless his heart, he asked me if it made him a horrible person, and I told him no, he was my hero. Always had been.”
I reach for the box of tissues on her coffee table and hand it to her so she can dab her tears.
“I miss him so much,” she softly says.
“I’m sorry, Doris. Of course you do. I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” She sighs. “He really was my hero.” She shakes her head. “Told me Benchley asked the bastard if he’d touched Susa, and the guy swore he hadn’t.”
“Did Benchley believe him?”
“Yeah. They all did. But he confessed to the other girls he’d been with, some of them not much older than Susa.” Her expression hardened. “David told me he was convinced Susa would have been in his sights if they hadn’t taken the guy out. Definitely would have been other victims. Man was sick. Guess his wife was only seventeen when he married her, and that was because she got pregnant. He was twenty-nine at the time, and her father told Morgan he would marry her, or he’d file charges against him.”
I decide to turn the mood around. “I’m shocked Benchley didn’t hire a hit man for me.”
She smiles. “He’s not fond of you, but he sees how much Susa loves you. I think that’s why you’re still alive. Still, might not want to go camping with him.”
I chuckle. “Had enough of roughing it in the Army, thanks…”
By the time I leave a short while later, I have her laughing and smiling again.
And as I sit in my car and watch the video playback on my phone of Doris telling the story of how Benchley, Chris, and David murdered Morgan, I smile.
This is my fulcrum on which to balance a lever plenty long enough to allow me to play Archimedes to Benchley’s immoveable stone that forms his loyalty to the GOP.
Chapter Thirteen
Then
Two days after my lovely little chat with Doris, I’m driving to Brandon that afternoon when Susa and Owen assume I’m still in depositions for a case.
I didn’t lie to them. I simply blocked out extra time on my calendar and didn’t tell them I wasn’t at the deposition.
I would be lying, however, if I said part of me isn’t relishing this confrontation with Benchley. We both have similar goals—get Susa elected governor. But I need to get Owen elected first, because I refuse to allow Susa to run on the GOP ticket, either.
Benchley will, of course, argue that she should simply register GOP, problem solved, and she can ride on his coattails.
Except…no. Because that would sink her into the morass of dark money pouring in over the transom with little way to control it or even vet it properly.
I don’t want that.
Not for her, and definitely not for Owen. Despite being Benchley Evans’ daughter, Susa has scruples and integrity she must have inherited from her mother. While Owen’s secret dream was to be governor, Susa’s secret dream is to make a name for herself.
The best way to do that is run her as an Independent instead of GOP.
Also, it’s a way for me to give a fuck you to Benchley, success outside his precious party.
Right now, I need to let Benchley know I have this info. It’s a tricky balance, though. Could go either way. If I over-play my hand, he might decide to retaliate in ways that can’t even be traced to him. Benchley is as much of a bastard as I am. More, even, because he has money, power, and a history in county and state government.
I want to tweak him just enough to force him to reluctantly do my bidding, and yet allow him to still lie to himself that it’s his idea.
I meet with Benchley at their Brandon house while Michelle is out. In fact, I set up the appointment yesterday so he could send her out, allowing us to talk in private. Probably for the best. Michelle only tolerates me because she knows her daughter’s happy. I hold no illusions that she “likes” me.
She wants to wring my neck with her own hands for how I married Susa.
I’m sure Benchley is wondering what this meeting is about, and maybe he even privately hopes I’m coming to offer him some sort of buyout deal in exchange for divorcing Susa.
Okay, the way I worded my request to meet with him—keeping it secret from Susa, implicating it’s to do with Susa, and wasn’t a meeting I really wanted to have but knew I had to—might have led him to think that.
#yesImabastard
“What’s this about?” Benchley asks once we’ve settled in his home office.
I waste no time metaphorically smashing his hopeful expectations that I want money in exchange for a divorce or annulment. “Tell me about Morgan Wheedon.”
He’s good, but not better than I am. I catch the twitch in his left eye. “Who?”
I melodramatically sigh and save us at least ten minutes of his bullshit and bluster by pulling out my phone and playing the video for him. When it ends, I return the phone to my shirt pocket, where it sticks up, just a little.
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