by John Bloom
Pat had to be talked into Marriage Encounter. He was growing dissatisfied with their marriage, too, but not to the point of thinking anything was really wrong. He knew Candy didn’t like it when he wouldn’t say anything about her writing or her outside activities, but it was because he simply didn’t know what to say. He didn’t understand writers; he was a scientist. He couldn’t say anything intelligent anyway. She thought he didn’t have feelings. It was just that he didn’t express them very well. Sometimes he didn’t express them at all. But he didn’t think anything was wrong. And even if something was wrong, he didn’t think Marriage Encounter was the answer to anything.
Candy dragged Pat to the weekend anyway. She simply had to find out what all the fuss was about. The first couple of sessions, they went to their motel room complaining and making jokes about it, fearing that their worst expectations were confirmed. But after a while, with nothing else to do and the questions becoming more and more interesting, they started truly trying to do the work, write the love letters, have the dialogue; and the process started to have the same magical effect on them it had had on the Gores. Pat, especially, was moved to say things he had never voiced before. And when they got to the final, climactic, three-hour session on why they wanted to go on living, they both collapsed into each other’s arms, crying, and then quickly made love before the group leader came and summoned them back to the main hall.
“Oh Pat,” Candy told him, “we were so close to divorce at one time. I’m so glad we stuck it out.”
She never explained what she meant, and Pat never asked.
Before they returned home, they were asked to write down their Marriage Encounter goals for the year. Candy had only one: “To be happy.”
Once the euphoria of the weekend had subsided, the Montgomerys were less enthusiastic Flames than the Gores were. For one thing, they got tired of writing the letters after doing only seven or eight of them; it seemed so much easier simply to speak frankly. For another, they had absolutely no interest in going to the biweekly Flame meetings, to socialize with other “encountered” couples.
“All this is well intentioned,” said Pat. “We don’t need it.”
This time Candy agreed.
What she hadn’t counted on, however, was the neighborly interest of the Wylie/Plano area Flame leader, Betty Gore. By this time the Gores and Garlingtons had left Lucas Church, but Betty still kept up with Marriage Encounter couples and knew the Montgomerys had been encountered. One day in mid-January, Betty called Candy out of the blue and invited the Montgomerys to spend a Saturday evening with the Gores, discussing their wonderful weekends. Candy, overcome with a vague dread, told Betty she would have to check with Pat first. That night Betty mentioned to Allan that she had invited the Montgomerys over, and Allan panicked.
Allan called Candy from work the next morning.
“I understand Betty invited you over for Saturday night.”
“Yeah, what in the world are we going to do?”
“Is it a problem for you?”
“I don’t know, Allan. I’m afraid it will be. I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you in that context. It might be too painful.”
“Would it help if we met for lunch first? Just to see whether we can deal with it?”
“It might.”
“Let’s have lunch tomorrow and discuss it.”
They met at the Italian Inn in Richardson, the first time they had seen each other privately since the affair, and Candy was scared to death.
“Just seeing you like this affects me,” she said. “I’m afraid of wanting you again.”
“I’m sorry, Candy. I feel guilty about messing up your life.”
“I’m beginning to get over it.”
“What about your weekend? Did that help?”
“It was good for both of us,” she said. “Pat and I talked more on that weekend than anytime I can remember.”
Allan asked about Lucas Church. Candy told him the choir suffered by his absence. They caught up on news of the children. As they got up to leave, Allan said, “Well, what do you think? What are you going to tell Betty?”
“I don’t think I can come. It hurts too much.”
“Well, I know I can handle it if you decide you want to come.”
“I don’t think so.”
A couple of hours later Betty called Allan at work to tell him that Candy had accepted the invitation. Surprised, he called Candy at home.
“What happened?”
“On the way home I decided that maybe this is a good way to end the hurt. I shouldn’t hate Betty; we should be friends. Maybe it will be over after this.”
“Good.”
Then Candy called Sherry to tell her about the lunch. “It’s good that I went,” she said. “I think I’ve finally gotten Allan out of my system. I found out I really didn’t have anything to say to him—and do you know what? His eyes are too close together. By the time it was over I had no desire to go to bed with him ever again.”
The evening itself was more boring than awkward. Betty served wine. The men compared jobs and half-heartedly discussed computer programs and the mileage they were getting with their respective cars. They all agreed that Marriage Encounter was a great thing. The kids played with the baby and tried to get her to walk. Everyone was very polite. The Montgomerys left early because they wanted to get the kids to bed.
The next week Candy got an unsigned greeting card in the mail. It read “Good To Have You As A Friend.”
She called Allan. “Is this from you?”
“Yes.”
“I just wanted to know.”
She was over it. Allan could tell by the tone in her voice. He was greatly relieved.
The spring of 1980 was a busy time. Allan was caught up in his work, sometimes spending fifty-five hours a week at the office, and Betty became more active in Marriage Encounter. The Gores even managed a Marriage Encounter weekend themselves. They were starting to feel more comfortable at Wylie Methodist Church, although it was nothing like the excitement of the Jackie Ponder days at Lucas. Allan and Betty both joined the choir there. Occasionally they would go back to Lucas for special occasions like the Easter services. Betty looked healthier than ever and visited her doctor infrequently. They continued to do their “ten and ten” every day, filling two fat spiral notebooks with love letters and then starting on two more, although occasionally they had to use the most trivial topics because they couldn’t think of anything they hadn’t already written about.
Candy plunged into her “rediscover me” program. Besides her English classes and her painting and her work in the bond election, Candy found a new political cause in the person of Roger Harper, a young candidate for the office of county commissioner who had promised to do something about the outmoded roads around Fairview and Lucas. “The Covergirls” was properly registered as a Texas corporation, the business cards were printed, and Candy and Sherry began to line up clients for the fall, when Ian would start first grade and Candy would have days to herself. In the meantime, she stayed active in the church, serving as the lay delegate to Methodist conferences and meetings. In April she and Barbara Green went together to a spiritual “retreat” at Lake Sharon, where they spent the weekend with other women, participating in lectures and seminars on the Bible viewed from different angles.
While Candy was gone on the retreat, the responsibility for taking care of the kids fell to Pat. It was the kind of job he liked up to a point, but he wasn’t the best cook in the world and so the kids weren’t always crazy about it. On the Friday night that Candy and Barbara left, Pat played with the kids a while, fed them, put them to bed, and then watched a little television. Starting to feel lonely, he decided to do something he hadn’t done in a long time: reread the love letters from the summer he met Candy. He never got tired of them, even though they were kind of goofy and sentimental and immature. So Pat went upstairs to look in the yellow chest where Candy had always kept them wrapped up in a plastic bag. But they weren
’t there. Perplexed, Pat started a search of the entire house, looking in likely places, getting a little angry that Candy had moved them. Then he remembered that sometimes Candy kept things in her dresser, so he went back upstairs and looked in the dresser drawers. He didn’t find the love letters, but underneath some undergarments he found a letter addressed to Candy with no return address on it.
It was obvious what it was as soon as Pat opened the envelope. It was a love letter, but not from him. Pat’s hand began to shake. He sat down on the bed and read it all the way through, even to the closing “Love, Allan.” He read it again, in a state of shock. It was dated October 1979, and it was a farewell letter. It mentioned “sexual experiences” and how much Allan had enjoyed them. It used the word “affair.” Allan told Candy that he felt he had been using her, and that now he wanted to devote himself to Betty because of Marriage Encounter. The letter mentioned the Como Motel; the name seemed vaguely familiar to Pat. Allan told her how great the meals were there. Allan wrote fondly of their lunches together, their conversations, and how they would exchange greeting cards that said “Love Is …” on the front. Pat flinched and started to cry when he read that line again. The “Love Is …” cards were something he and Candy had exchanged for ten years. That was private. It was theirs. The letter mentioned something about Candy being “cold” the last time Allan saw her. Apparently whatever had happened was finished. Still, Pat grew despondent and then furious and then felt very lonely again. Candy wouldn’t be back until Sunday. There was nothing to do.
That night Pat only slept about an hour. Half-remembered scenes came rushing back, like the time when Pat had seen Candy sneak up behind Allan and tickle him in church, like how Candy had made such a big deal out of Betty’s having a baby last summer, with a sit-down Chinese dinner and everything. The Gores had left Lucas Church. Had it been to get away from Candy? At first, Pat kept thinking of the word “divorce.” He didn’t see any way around it, and yet the word scared him. But then he remembered the Marriage Encounter weekend; he remembered what Candy had said, about their coming so close to divorce. Maybe that had been her way of telling him that she made a mistake. But how could Allan have done this? For a while Pat decided that first thing Saturday he would call Allan and tell him he never wanted to see him or Betty again, and he certainly didn’t want their children playing together. Better yet, he would call Betty and tell her about the letter; knowing Betty’s capacity for holding a grudge, that would be the best revenge of all. But by morning Pat had decided not to make the call after all. Allan had ended the affair. He and Betty did have their marriage back together. And Betty was such an unstable personality that she might not be able to handle that at all. It would be unfair to punish Betty; she had nothing to do with it.
But was this something he could forgive? The worst part of it was that she had done it with Allan. Pat liked Allan. It was starting to drive him crazy that Candy wasn’t home to talk about these things. So late Saturday morning, Pat called Sherry Cleckler at her beauty shop.
“Sherry, I found a love letter from Allan to Candy, and I need to know something. I know she would tell you. Is it over? Is it completely and totally over?”
Sherry was a little panicked by the call. She told Pat to hang up so she could call from another phone.
“Pat, it is over,” she said when she called back, “and it won’t happen again. It was just a brief thing, more friendship than anything else, and it was just a stage that Candy went through. But she really loves you, Pat. Candy is a good mother and a good wife and a good friend to you, and she made a mistake, but it was only for a brief period and it didn’t mean anything.”
“Okay. But it is over?”
“It’s been over a long time.”
“I want to talk to Candy about this in my own way, so I don’t want you to tell her that I’ve talked to you. Please promise me that I can talk to her first.”
Sherry promised.
That afternoon Pat drove to a floral shop in McKinney and picked out half a dozen long-stemmed roses. Then he returned home and spent the rest of the day in his study, composing a letter to Candy. It was hard work, because Pat wasn’t a writer and every word was a laborious effort. The result was a page and a half, mostly faltering attempts to describe his feelings for her, and telling her that, whatever happened between her and Allan, he now realized that it was his fault. He had neglected her. He had caused her to seek affection and understanding elsewhere. He wrapped it up with, “I want our marriage to be good. These roses are how I feel about you.”
Candy arrived back home from the retreat on Sunday afternoon, and outwardly everything was normal. Pat was civil but not solicitous. The kids were glad to see her. She started cooking dinner. After a few minutes the phone rang, and she picked it up.
“Don’t change your expression,” said the voice on the other end.
“What?”
“Pat found Allan’s letter,” Sherry said.
“What?”
“He found Allan’s letter and called me at work to find out if the affair is really over. He told me not to tell you he knows.”
Candy hung up but didn’t say a word. After dinner she cleared away the dishes and went into the living room and made small talk, dreading what was about to happen, and then a thought lifted her spirits. Maybe Pat wouldn’t say anything. Maybe Sherry had explained it to him, he knew it was over, and they wouldn’t have to discuss it.
But Pat was waiting until bedtime. They went into the bedroom and changed into their night clothes, and then Pat reached under the bed and extracted the half-dozen long-stemmed roses. He handed them to her, and tears began to form in the corners of her eyes.
“I thought I could tell you how I felt better in a letter,” said Pat, “and so I wrote it all down. I’m going downstairs while you read this letter. You come on down whenever you feel like it.”
Candy sank onto the bed and read the letter through several times. Pat was telling her it was his fault. It was obvious that his pain was deep and real. She didn’t know what to say or do. She wanted to pull the covers over her head and go to sleep and be a thousand miles away. She simply sat there and continued to cry.
After a few minutes, Pat wondered why she didn’t come down to discuss the letter. So he went back upstairs and sat next to her on the bed. But she wouldn’t say anything. She wouldn’t even look at him. When he tried to touch her, she drew back and said “Don’t” and continued to sob. It was a long time before Candy would let him put his arms around her, and then only for a short time, and a long time after that before she could talk at all.
“I’m so ashamed, Pat. I don’t ever want to hurt you or the kids.”
“I know. Don’t worry.”
A week later Candy and Pat started making plans for a long-delayed vacation. They would go to South Padre Island, just the two of them, and lie on the beach and treat it like a second honeymoon. Pat was determined to shower her with affection. He brought home a greeting card one night. It had roses on the front, and inside it said, “It’s time to get the sand out of our marriage.” It was almost ten years exactly since they had run through the desert dunes outside El Paso and first declared their love. Now Pat wanted the South Padre trip to be a new start.
The Gores were planning a vacation, too. They wanted to return to Europe that summer, and try to recreate the magic of the week they had spent together in Switzerland. They would leave in mid-June, shortly after Betty’s school term ended.
As the summer of 1980 approached, Candy and Pat and Allan and Betty all agreed that their marriages had never been happier. Life was starting to make sense again.
15 Interrogation
“I did have an affair,” Allan Gore told Royce Abbott.
“Oh?”
“With Candy Montgomery.”
Chief Abbott was startled, especially since he was hearing such news at 6 A.M., but he kept his voice calm and even.
“Well, I’m glad you told us that, Allan, but to set
your mind at ease, Candy’s already told us.”
Candy had done no such thing, but the last thing Abbott wanted was for Allan to alert her. So Abbott pretended that the affair was of no particular importance to the investigation, but suggested that Allan come down to the station anyway and set the record straight. As soon as he got off the phone, Abbott contacted Joe Murphy, the burly DPS intelligence agent who lived in Wylie. Murphy’s specialty was interrogation, and suddenly Abbott felt he was going to need him.
As soon as Abbott called, something had clicked in Murphy’s mind. This was the right track. This was a motive, the first one they’d come up with. Love, lust, secret admiration—whatever it was, it was an excellent reason for murder. Husband out of town. His secret lover visiting the wife’s house just before she’s killed. Small bloody footprints at the scene. Most important of all: they had both concealed the affair from the police. That didn’t mean he considered them the actual murderers, but perhaps they had made it possible. Perhaps it was a hired killing. But why an ax? Why the overkill? Why do it in the middle of the day? There was a lot Joe Murphy wanted to know.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” said Allan Gore when he got to the Wylie police station just after seven that morning. “I got to thinking about some of the questions you asked me last night, and I felt I had to tell you the whole story.”