The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband

by E. J. Copperman

  “What are your names?” I asked the shorter man.

  “I have no reason to tell you that,” he responded. “And you haven’t really answered any questions I’ve asked you yet. This was supposed to be an exchange. So start exchanging.”

  “Very well. Ms. Washburn, at my request, drove me to the supposed headquarters of OLimited. We entered the office, found it empty and neglected, and left to pursue other avenues in our business. That is all I can tell you.”

  “We knew all that already,” the taller man said.

  “I have no more information than that,” I told him. “My apologies if you expected a fuller explanation.”

  The two men exchanged an unsatisfied look and the shorter one placed his hands flat on the table, bracing himself to stand. “We’re not doing each other any good,” he said.

  “On the contrary. You have told me quite a bit. You are two off-duty police officers who have been hired by one of Oliver Lewis’s ex-wives to find out more about his business dealings, perhaps with an eye toward a more favorable settlement in the divorce. I don’t know your names, but that hardly seems to matter, since your interest in Ms. Washburn is based strictly on her license plate number, so I have nothing to fear from you. I do regret that I have no further information to pass along to you, but unfortunately, that is the case. Thank you, gentlemen. You may certainly return to your surveillance of the OLimited offices with no fear that Ms. Washburn or I will be back.”

  “How did you know … ” the taller man said. The shorter one, pursing his lips, had not moved from the spot where he had begun to stand.

  “Police officers would have access to motor vehicle information like license plate numbers,” I said. “And when I mentioned calling the police, you seemed to find that amusing. You believed you would have an advantage in such an encounter because you are a member of the brotherhood, no? You clearly are off-duty, or you would not be driving in a private vehicle—and I know enough about the workings of government to recognize municipal, county, or state markings and numbers—and wearing your personal clothing. It makes sense that anyone who wanted to keep track of Mr. Lewis’s offices would have some dealings with one or more of his ex-wives. There was no business partner listed on his incorporation forms, so his ex-wives would be the only ones to benefit from any of his business dealings. And your lack of interest in Ms. Washburn is evident in the fact that you did not notice when she walked by you three minutes ago and left this coffee shop.”

  Both of the men turned and looked toward the door, which was predictable but pointless, since Ms. Washburn had clearly gone back to her car and was probably now sitting in it waiting for me to return.

  The shorter man appeared to be grinding his teeth; this was probably an indication that he did not care to be told about his shortcomings in front of his colleague, or probably under any other circumstances. “You can count on seeing us again, Sherlock,” he said.

  Before I could point out that the fictional Mr. Holmes would no doubt have deduced a great deal more from the two men’s appearance and mannerisms than I had, both of them were gone from the booth and walking toward the door.

  I put two crisp dollars in the tip jar on the counter as I followed them out. The young woman behind the counter, who no doubt knew we had not ordered any refreshments, looked up at me with a surprised expression.

  “For the use of the booth,” I said.

  She nodded her thanks, still seeming a little dazed, and I exited the coffee shop.

  Ms. Washburn was indeed seated behind the wheel of her car, whose engine was running. The two men were nowhere to be seen, and neither was their Sport Utility Vehicle. I opened the door of Ms. Washburn’s Spectra and sat in the passenger seat.

  “Detective Esteban was surprised to hear from me,” she reported before I could tell her about the encounter with the two officers. “She said she thought we had answered the question we’d been asked and would be done with the situation.”

  “Obviously it would be an embarrassment and a breach of protocol for Detective Dickinson to tell her he had engaged us,” I said, nodding. “It makes sense he would not mention it. Was she still willing to tell you about Oliver Lewis’s criminal record?”

  Ms. Washburn, knowing it would unnerve me if she were to start driving while we were having this conversation (since it would unquestionably distract her from the road), left the car in park. It would be best if we kept this conference brief in order to relieve the Kia’s overtaxed cooling system.

  “Yes,” Ms. Washburn answered. “But I don’t know why. She just seemed helpful. She said there had been an investigation by the county prosecutor’s office into Lewis’s dealings, but there hadn’t been enough evidence found to merit a grand jury indictment. But there were civil cases pending filed by Jennifer LeBlanc and Terry Lambroux.”

  That was a surprise. “Really!” I said. “What were the specifics of those suits?”

  “We’ll know better when we get the documents the detective is sending you in an email,” she said. “But the Lambroux one was interesting, the detective told me.”

  “Interesting in what way?”

  “It was a lawsuit filed claiming breach of promise,” Ms. Washburn answered, a sly grin crossing her face. She had been waiting to tell me this particular fact. “Apparently Oliver Lewis had been engaged to Terry Lambroux and broke it off before the wedding.”

  Twenty-three

  After our travels today, the Questions Answered office felt welcoming and peaceful, I thought. Ms. Washburn, no doubt still especially cognizant of our discovery of Oliver Lewis’s body in this room, did not appear to be quite as comforted by our return.

  “So I guess this means that Terry Lambroux is a woman,” Ms. Washburn said as I took my usual seat behind my desk and she got a bottle of diet soda from the vending machine.

  “Not necessarily,” I noted. “New Jersey does have marriage equality now. But it would seem likely that Terry is a female, since that has always been Oliver Lewis’s orientation as far as we know.”

  We had decided after some discussion not to seek out Cynthia Maholm at the last known address for her husband, Oliver Lewis. Ms. Washburn had suggested—and I had concurred—that the two men in the Ford Escape might very well be following us more discreetly, and might be trying to find Ms. Maholm as well. Leading them to her would not be an equitable way to answer the question.

  “I think it’s a safe assumption,” Ms. Washburn agreed. “He’s been married at least five times we know about, always to a woman.”

  I had essentially just said the same thing, but I understood that Ms. Washburn was voicing her agreement. I turned my attention to my computer screen, where deep Internet searches for Terry Lambroux continued to come back without any useful information or image.

  “I think we have to at least consider the possibility that Terry Lambroux is an alias,” I said. “It is extremely rare for a person in our society to exist with no record whatsoever of her life in a file somewhere online.”

  Ms. Washburn sat down in her traditional spot, to my right and in front of my desk. “So what can be done to determine her real name if there are no records of her anywhere?” She took a sip directly from the bottle of diet soda. I do the same with my spring water, but I clean the mouth of the bottle first with a paper towel. There are some habits Ms. Washburn has—shared by a great many people—that I have to overlook in order to function outside my own room in the attic, Mother tells me.

  “There aren’t many scenarios that work under these circumstances,” I said, musing out loud. “We have to approach the problem from the perspective of our subject.”

  Ms. Washburn smiled, but I could not read any thought into the expression. I chose not to ask about it, but filed it away in my mind. New facial looks are always interesting to me because they might become useful at some later date. Asking a person I trust, like Mother or Ms. Washburn
, why they look a certain way can alleviate my need to do so with a stranger.

  “Our subject?” Ms. Washburn said.

  “Terry Lambroux. Given our inability to locate Ms. Maholm, we should focus our attention on Terry.”

  “Why?” my associate asked. “Why not one of the wives or Roger Siplowitz? How do we know Terry is the key?”

  “We don’t,” I said honestly. “But we have met all the ex-wives except Rachel Vandross, and we will rectify that oversight soon enough. The fact that Terry Lambroux chooses—no, takes great pains—to remain unseen is what piques my suspicion. Please, while I am doing some more research on Terry, use your cellular phone to find an address for Rachel Vandross.”

  Ms. Washburn nodded and produced the instrument in question from a canvas tote bag she carries with her. She was tapping on the touch screen of the device before I could divert my attention back to my own work.

  The trick with Terry Lambroux was to find a chink in the armor of the elusive figure who had somehow introduced Oliver Lewis to all five of his wives. Searches for Teresa, Theresa, and Terrence Lambroux had proved useless previously. It was possible, then, that Terry was a middle name. Trying each letter as a first initial—“A. Theresa Lambroux”; “B. Theresa Lambroux”, and so on—had proven just as fruitless for all possible spellings and variations on the name.

  The problem was that we had no information at all about Terry Lambroux. Although we could assume the person was a woman, we had not confirmed the fact. We had no stated profession for her, no place of birth, no age or description. A search of marriage records for someone named Lambroux had turned up one record, in Alabama in 1958.

  It seemed unlikely, but I filed away the information to confirm at home tonight when I would have more time. There was no baseball game scheduled for the New York Yankees, the team whose games I follow.

  Since I was now assuming “Terry Lambroux” was an alias, it made sense to think about the name in reverse, that is, to consider how one chooses such a name when creating an identity for oneself. Perhaps the spelling was the variable. There were more people named “Lambreaux” than “Lambroux.” I started to search on those terms.

  “I’ve got something,” Ms. Washburn said. “A Rachel Vandross lives in Metuchen, and her relationship status on Facebook reads, ‘it’s complicated’.”

  “Excellent work,” I said, standing up to walk around the desk. I stood behind Ms. Washburn and looked over her shoulder at her cellular phone screen. I had to bend to see it even though she was holding it vertically in front of her own eyes. “Do you have a street address?”

  “Not yet. I just found her on Facebook, and they don’t give you a home address unless the person wants you to know. I’m not a friend of Rachel’s, so I don’t really have much information about her at all.”

  I considered the concept of people establishing friendships based strictly on a social media site somewhat comical, but such networks can be useful in discovering more about a person when trying to answer a question. For reasons I can’t fathom, some people are willing to share all sorts of personal information in a fairly public setting for the purpose of exhibiting photographs of their pets.

  “But you can see who her friends are on Facebook, can’t you?” I asked. I don’t belong to Facebook, but have searched the site on occasion when doing research.

  “Yes. Let me call up the list.”

  She brought up the Facebook page for Rachel Vandross and maneuvered through it to get to the list of friends. “That’s funny,” she said.

  I had not been able to read the whole page in depth due to my distance from the small screen, but I had seen nothing amusing on it. I waited for the coming explanation, and was not disappointed.

  “Rachel Vandross only has four friends on the site,” Ms. Washburn said.

  Since I have fewer than four people I can reasonably count as friends, I did not understand her concern. “Why is that funny?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn looked at me briefly to see if I was in earnest, and clearly realized that I was. “It’s an expression, Samuel. It doesn’t mean you should laugh at something; it means that it’s odd or unexpected.”

  “What is odd or unexpected about Rachel having four friends?” I said.

  “Well, that’s a pretty low number, especially on Facebook, where people you don’t know at all can be your friends.” Ms. Washburn looked up at me, and I chose not to question the concept of friendships with people one doesn’t know, which makes no sense. It was more important for her to explain the odd element involved here. “For example, I have two hundred and thirty-eight friends on Facebook.”

  “So four would be a very low number, then,” I said. “I don’t really see how that tells us anything we can use.”

  “The four friends are all of Oliver Lewis’s other ex-wives,” Ms. Washburn said.

  That was unusual, but once she said it, I realized it was not entirely unexpected. “So the members of WOOL have a Facebook page?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. They don’t exist as a separate entity on the site. But they probably communicate through it. I’m getting the feeling these ladies know each other better than we might have been told.” Ms. Washburn scrolled through the phone’s Internet browser. “Let me see if I can get an address on Rachel.”

  After fifteen minutes, which I spent making a few unsuccessful inquiries about Terry Lambreaux, we were in Ms. Washburn’s car, driving to Metuchen, which was not far, to meet Rachel Vandross, the second wife of the deceased Oliver Lewis. The drive took only seven minutes. During that time, Ms. Washburn seemed distracted but never to the point that I was concerned for our safety. She wrinkled her nose three times, making me wonder if something nearby smelled distasteful (I have a rather untrained sense of smell), but I did not ask. We were at Rachel’s home before a conversation of any significance could begin.

  I made a point of vigilance during the drive to be sure the two off-duty policemen were not following us to Rachel’s house. They were not.

  The house was small, not new, but in good repair. The roof had recently been replaced and there were still a few loose shingles piled on one side of the driveway. The front door was painted brown, the vinyl siding was tan, and the windows were open. It was not the home of an especially wealthy person, but one who had a steady job and could manage her budget well.

  Ms. Washburn parked in a space two houses to the east of Rachel’s and we walked to the front door. Recalling the reception I had gotten at Jennifer LeBlanc’s home, I ran briefly through some tae kwon do training mentally as we approached. And I remembered to stand back an extra three feet from the front door after Ms. Washburn rang the doorbell.

  It took twenty-seven seconds for the door to be opened, and the woman who revealed herself behind it was not what I would have expected, having met Oliver Lewis’s four other wives.

  She was about fifty-two, slim and small, but confident, head held high, back straight. I would likely wager her favorite Beatles song was “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Anything military would fit her nicely.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. It was the proper question. She could have had no idea if it were possible for her to be of assistance to us. Usually, people mean “may I help you,” which is more a question about beginning a process.

  “That is what we are here to find out,” I said. I identified myself and Ms. Washburn and asked if she were Rachel Vandross. She nodded, still looking somewhat skeptical or inquisitive. I said we were inquiring about her ex-husband Oliver Lewis.

  “Yes, I heard that Oliver had died,” Rachel said. “I wish I could tell you I’m upset about it, but I’m not.”

  Ms. Washburn, knowing my preferences, asked if we could come inside, and even though she stepped aside and gestured us in while apologizing for what she called bad manners, I could tell Rachel Vandross was not happy about having people enter her home
.

  She ushered us into her living room, which was decorated spartanly—no movie titles or musical selections were displayed in the built-in bookshelves. There were not even many books, but what there were appeared to be about either military history or architecture. A saber hung on one wall and a rifle that appeared to be an authentic specimen from the American Civil War decorated another.

  Rachel sat on an armchair near the front door while Ms. Washburn took another facing Rachel’s, and I sat on the loveseat where I could see both their faces, but not at the same time.

  “Why are you not upset about your ex-husband’s death?” I asked when we had all settled into our assigned seats.

  Rachel, military bearing intact, barely moved except for an arched eyebrow. “The word ex-husband in that question should tell you everything you need to know,” she said. “There are reasons people get divorced.”

  “What was your reason?” I said.

  Ms. Washburn winced, just barely perceptibly, at the question. I wondered if my tone was too confrontational.

  It did not seem to bother Rachel Vandross, however. “He lied to me on a regular basis,” she said. “He married me under false pretenses, and then he lied to me every day after that until I filed the papers.”

  I assumed the papers to which she referred were a petition for divorce. Ms. Washburn took out her notepad and began to write in it. “What do you mean when you say Oliver Lewis married you under false pretenses?” I asked. That was something none of the other

  ex-wives (except Cynthia Maholm, who had told me she didn’t know the man she’d married at all, which turned out to be a falsehood itself) had claimed.

  “He told me he loved me and that I was the only woman he’d ever loved,” Rachel answered. “He said he’d never been married before, and that was a lie. Pretty much everything he ever told anyone was a lie.”