Divorce Can Be Murder Mass market paperbound - 1999

Excerpt

Audrey drove that old Buick like a bat out of hell. I had trouble keeping up with her, especially on the highway headed for Morrison. My Subaru is six years old and a luxury car to me--automatic transmission, power windows, air-conditioning, four-wheel drive--but as a result of all those extras dragging on the engine, it also has next to no power. Luckily there wasn't a lot of traffic headed for the foothills at six-thirty on a Monday evening, or I'd have lost them. Then I'd have been sunk.

The introductory meeting of the Hunter Divorce Adjustment Seminars is always held in the basement of a Wheat Ridge church. But from then on a different group member volunteers to host a meeting in his or her home each week. There's at least one member in every group who's willing to do it who lives in a place that's a real challenge to find. Tonight's was one of those.

Not only was the house on an isolated piece of property at the base of the mountains, but from the owner's directions there was a tricky-to-spot gravel road that was the only way to get to it. Miss that gravel road, and it was three miles before you could turn around and try again.

But Linda happened to know the owner of the house, Bruce Mann, the head of the tax department of one of Denver's biggest downtown banks. Years ago he'd gone to high school with Linda and her husband, Steve, and the Kraners had been to dinner at Bruce's house a couple of times since they'd reconnected with him at their high school reunion a year ago.

Linda had explained this to me on the way home from the first meeting. She'd been surprised to see Bruce there. Several months had passed since they'd last seen each other, so neither of them had known the other was getting divorced. But beyond being surprised to encounter each other in the same support group, neither seemed bothered by the other's presence in the group. In fact, they seemed to be commiserating with each other, both of them being dumpees.

Dumpees and dumpers. That was the topic of one of the early seminars.

Part group therapy, part enlightenment and education about the normal stages people go through when a marriage ends--that's what the Hunter group is all about.

The course of the meetings runs the same. The first two sessions discuss the emotional process of divorce, using a sort of twelve-step program. There's talk about accepting that the marriage is over and disentangling from it, what's normal to feel and how to ride the roller coaster of it all to emerge with your life and sanity intact and a better understanding of why the marriage has failed.

The third session puts everyone to work figuring out who were the dumpers and who were the dumpees. Healing is quicker for the dumpers, but having a few in every group is surprisingly helpful in seeing the other side of things and rehumanizing the ogres who've become most people's exes by then.

We were on our way to the fourth session, the parent-child structure of most marriages that failed. Or so contended the Hunter Divorce Adjustment Seminars.

My maiden voyage with the Hunter groups had been so long after the end of my own marriage that I'd gone in with a different perspective from the rest of the group. Most people were right in the middle of the process: separated, filing papers, getting the final decree, dealing with the open wound. I'd been trying to get a festered wound to heal.

I was still hurting two and a half years after the fact, and it concerned me. It seemed way too much time for that to be hanging around. A friend of the family had recommended the Hunter seminars, and that's how I'd hit on them.

Audrey must have realized I was struggling to keep up, because she slowed down, and I actually managed to close the distance between us to two car lengths.

We took an exit off the highway that put us onto a two-lane blacktop. Audrey slowed down a little more, so I was able to enjoy the scenery. By October the summer heat is usually over--thank God because I hate the heat--and turtleneck temperatures have set in. But the sun still shines nearly every day, the air is clear and sharp, and the leaves on the trees turn electric yellow.

I was born and raised in Colorado. I've never lived anywhere else. Ditto for both my parents and all four of my grandparents, although my folks travel so much since my dad's retirement that living here is really only a part-time thing for them now.

Still, we're a close family. Maybe that comes from the Italian blood on my mother's side. My father is Heinz variety--English, French, Irish, and German--and there's a difference between the way the Italian side pulls together and the way the other side does. For some reason the other side of the family seems to drift apart, not keeping in touch for months or years in spite of the fact that they all live in or around Denver too.

But even while my parents travel, I talk to them and my aunt and uncle (who travel with them) at least once a week on the phone, once a day when they're all in town.

I'm closer still to my only living grandparent, my grandmother. The Italian one. In fact, she and I are about to get a lot closer.

Up ahead Audrey was braking to a snail's pace, obviously searching for the turnoff to Bruce Mann's house. He wasn't kidding that it was hard to spot. It was barely a separation between the evergreen trees that covered the hillside. I could see Linda pointing to it or I would have missed it for sure. Bruce had promised to leave a flag of some sort at the turnoff to make it easier to spot, but apparently he'd forgotten.

Once we were on the gravel road it was a straight shot through dense forest, and Audrey hit the gas again, spewing a few rocks my way. But she and Linda appeared to be so deep in conversation that I knew she hadn't realized what she was doing. I just kept my distance again.

Bruce Mann's house was about three miles off the road, set in a man-made clearing with its rear butting right against the hillside. Or so it appeared as I pulled up into the wide drive alongside the Buick. There were two cars already parked there: Bruce's Porsche and a tiny, battered Ford from which Janine Cummings was alighting.

Janine is over the crest of fifty but doesn't look it. Her blond hair is cut short and sporty, her face is barely lined, and what wrinkles there are are meticulously hidden under light makeup. There isn't an extra ounce of fat on her body, and she had on casual slacks and a blouse just snug enough to prove it.

She's a receptionist in a veterinarian's office, a fanatical environmentalist, and I had the impression she joined the group not so much to get herself through her divorce as to look for husband number two from among the freshly available. From the looks of her car she needed the second income. But then, didn't we all?

I have to say one thing for her, though: She's cheery for a woman ending a twenty-year marriage. I hope that cheeriness isn't burying what she's come to work through, but her good spirits did offer some relief to the usual tone of things.

I glanced from her to the Buick. Linda and Audrey were still deep in discussion and made no move to get out of the car. I was the only one of us to head for Janine, who was waiting for us but staring at the house.

"Nice place," I said when I reached her.

"Wow, I'll say," she answered like a kid who'd just walked through the gates of Disneyland for the first time.

The large two-story chalet came complete with three rough stone chimneys, a deck that looked as if it wrapped all the way around the place on the lower level, and a yawning veranda from the second floor. The white wicker furniture on the veranda made it look like a picture postcard invitation to curl up with a cup of cappuccino after the last run down a ski slope.

Very impressive.

"It'd be worth the drive to live in a place like this," Janine said more to herself than to me. I had the impression she was talking about the drive to and from the vet's office in Broomfield, not Bruce's drive to and from downtown.

"How was your week?" I asked.

It took her a minute to peel her eyes away from the house and look at me. "Oh, it was okay. Nothing great, nothing awful. Not as bad as Bruce's."

The Hunter program asked each group member to do homework in the form of three phone calls between meetings, either because you're down in the dumps and need to reach out for help to raise your own spirits or to let three other people know you're thinking about them and wondering how they're doing.

As a volunteer, I wasn't required to do phone call homework. I made it a point, however, to check up on anyone who seemed particularly bummed out or upset and to touch base with whoever might be headed for a hurdle that week: a court appearance, a hassle with a lawyer or an ex, the first time a person was going to be without the kids, the first time he or she was going to have the kids, a move--things like that. But I didn't call just to say hi. Bruce Mann had seemed okay at the last meeting and had nothing coming up, so I hadn't checked on him.

"What happened to make Bruce's week bad?" I asked now.

"I guess his wife disappeared. He went to her place to pick up the kids for the weekend, and she was gone--lock, stock, and barrel. No forwarding address, no word to him, nothing."

"And the kids? Did she take them too?"

"She did. He was going to contact their school today to see if they had any idea what his wife was doing or where they went, but he was afraid it wouldn't matter. Apparently none of the kids' friends even knew they were going or anything."

"That's terrible."

"He was really crazed over it. I offered to fix him dinner last night, but he said he couldn't eat, he couldn't sleep. He didn't know what he was going to do if his ex or the kids didn't call or write to let him know where they are."

"Does he think that's a possibility?"

"I guess so. I guess his wife threatened to take the kids and go somewhere he'd never find them if he pulled something on her, but he said he's been absolutely straight with her, so she wouldn't do it."

"If he pulled something on her?" I asked. "Like what?"

"I wasn't sure what that meant either. He was bawling like a baby when he said it, and he kept on talking, wildlike, and I never had a chance to ask. I just listened mostly. I didn't know what to say."

"It's good he called you for some support, though."

"Oh, he didn't call me. I called Clifford Silver just for one of the check-ins, and he told me. Bruce had called him. So then I called Bruce right away. I called a couple of times Saturday and yesterday too."

"Well, however it happened, it's good he had someone to talk to." I glanced at the Buick and found Audrey patting Linda's shoulder again as Linda cried. They didn't look close to coming out yet, so I nodded toward the house. "We might as well go ahead in. Linda's just had some bad news too. Audrey's talking to her about it now. They'll come in when they're ready. We can see how Bruce is."

The walk from the driveway to the house was a hike up fifteen cobbled steps amid landscaping that so artfully used the same columbines, wildflowers, and grass that grew naturally around the beds of the fir trees that it looked as if nature itself had designed it. Clearly, even though the house had been built in the middle of a forest, attention had been paid to not disturbing any more of it than was necessary.

I could see that Janine approved.

More steps took us up above garden-level basement windows to the wide wraparound deck of the first floor. The hollow sound of our steps seemed like announcement enough that we were there. I rang the doorbell anyway, just for good measure, while Janine took deep breaths of the pine-scented air.

I tried a few myself as we waited.

And waited.

No one came to the door.

Janine rang again. I cocked my head just enough to peek into the diamond-paned bay window without seeming to be actually peeping. There were no lights on; that was odd since dark was falling pretty rapidly by then. There were also no signs of life or of anyone coming to the door.

"Did Bruce remember he was hosting the group tonight?" I asked.

"I know he did. He mentioned it. That was another reason he didn't want to come to dinner at my place. He said he was going to clean to get ready for us. Do you suppose he got tied up looking for his wife and kids today?"

"I think he would have called somebody if he needed to cancel. Besides, his car is here." I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the Porsche.

Janine rang the bell again and then knocked.

I did some more overt peeking, but still nothing inside budged.

"Maybe he's in the shower or on the phone or in the back of the house and can't hear the doorbell," I said. "You stay here in case he comes, and I'll go around to the other side of the house and see if he's there."

Janine agreed with yet another push of the bell. I headed around the deck.

The house was even bigger than I'd thought. I have a friend who's always talking about opening a bed-and-breakfast, and she came to mind as I realized just how big it was. It made me think of a quaint hostelry. It would have made a good one.

Along the way I glanced into the windows I passed--without pressing my nose to the glass the way I would have liked--but I didn't spot anything. I also craned my neck backward over the deck's carved railing to see if there was a light on in any of the windows upstairs, but they were all dark and blank too.

I was betting Bruce had come home from work, fallen asleep somewhere inside, and stress and exhaustion had taken over to stretch a short nap into a deep sleep. We probably just needed to stay with the doorbell until it managed to wake him up.

I headed for the sliding door that opened onto the deck, thinking I'd do a little pounding on it for added effect. My steps echoed through the quickly falling night, and I was about two of them away when I saw Bruce through the glass of the door.

He was home all right. And the nap he was taking had definitely stretched into a deep sleep. The deepest sleep.

He was dead.

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