As an afterthought, I added.
“We will be in Great Falls all day. Order whatever you need to secure the building. Text me the details, and Owen and I will pick it up.”
“Is your place secured?” He asked. At least someone was thinking clearly.
That was something I hadn’t even considered. We never locked the house, even on weekends when we went away to Great Falls. It just wasn’t something we ever thought about. I didn’t even carry a key with me. When I didn’t answer him, he told me not to worry; he’d send someone to the house to secure it.
“I’ll have him change the locks. I’ll text you where the key is hidden. It’s prudent to make sure everything is secure during this time.”
“Thanks, JJ.” I didn’t know what else I could say.
“We are here for you.”
JJ knew. Did everyone know?
“We found a huge stash of porn when we were cleaning out the storage room. We burned everything. I’ll have a new door up in a few days.”
I shook my head. How did I get so lucky to have such good people around me? I asked him to unplug and secure Steve’s computer. I wasn’t sure if Steve had remote access. I didn’t want him logging on and destroying files. I told him to call Marcus and ask what type of computer he wanted. We would pick it up also. I knew I didn’t need to ask him to keep his findings to himself. That went without saying. He knew what I was going through. I also suspected that Joshua knew what was going on and forewarned his son to be prudent.
Steve arrived at 7:00 and, as JJ promised, never set foot inside the building. When four burly men stand blocking the front door, you tend to do what you are told. He asked where Cyndi was, leading me to believe he didn’t know about the web series, her whereabouts, or her newest infatuation.
I took the high road and told him he no longer needed to concern himself with Cyndi. He stepped away from the building, took his cell phone out, and pressed a button. He stood for a long moment and tried again. When he finally realized his phone had been cut off, he flung it across the parking lot.
He took his final pay and left quietly. We knew he wouldn’t be back.
One problem down.
After stops at the dump and the sheriff’s office, we were on the road to Great Falls by 8:00. Owen drove while I thumbed through the journals. The mystery of some of the money revealed itself within the first pages of Cyndi’s written confessional.
Cyndi was two years older than me. Although we were in the same graduating class, circumstances held her back. It had something to do with the month she was born and having missed a year of school when she was eight. It was another one of those things she felt I didn’t need to know. No one ever really knew about the age difference. She’d lied about her age for so long that it became second nature.
We were juniors in high school when Cyndi turned eighteen. Those two years were like the Grand Canyon on a maturity level. Cyndi was ready to face the world dead on and frustrated she was still a virgin. I was old-fashioned and wanted to wait until we were married to have sex. If I was willing to wait two years, Cyndi could too. It was another thing Cyndi disagreed with me on.
According to her journal, during the summer between our junior and senior years, Cyndi and her friend Trina decided to go to Bozeman over the long weekend of July 4 to visit Trina’s relatives, or so they said. Cyndi was eighteen and was itching to spread her wings. Trina knew someone who knew someone who wrangled them an invitation to a weekend party at a famous rock star’s ranch.
Condensing the twenty-five-page written account of the weekend, Cyndi met a very wealthy A-list actor who, when he found out she was a virgin, offered her a boatload of money to spend the weekend with him – and lose said virginity. She took the money without even blinking an eye, lost her virginity to him with a crowd of people watching, and became a plaything for his wife, who showed up a day later. Like her mother, she got knocked up on her first time out of the gate. The pregnancy was taken care of a month later with a weekend trip to Great Falls and Planned Parenthood.
I’m sure if I wasted my time and read about every man she fucked, I would find it was somewhere in the high hundreds, if not more. She even got her hands on Joshua at one time, and, as we recently discovered, she and her best friend Trina had an ongoing love affair with numerous other women thrown into the mix. She and Trina had been lovers since she turned eighteen, even before she lost her virginity. She wrote that Trina was the best birthday present she ever received.
From everything Cyndi wrote, Trina was the only person she loved. Trina only slept with other people when she was with Cyndi. Trina knew Cyndi couldn’t be monogamous and respected her for being honest. Normally, when Cyndi went to Great Falls to visit Trina, the two of them ‘threw tricks’ with businessmen they met, thus accounting for more of the money.
The actor who took her virginity came back for seconds, thirds, and fourths throughout the years and even brought some of his friends, which added more money to her stack. Ironically, she didn’t detail her time in Las Vegas.
“I’m surprised she never got a sexually transmitted disease…or worse,” I commented after reading some of her entries. Not only were we both tested before the web series, but according to Cyndi’s detailed notes on her trips to her gynecologist twice a year, she also got tested. Thankfully, she used protection whenever she picked up strangers.
There was no more pain or hurt. I was nauseous when Owen and I arrived in Great Falls. The sweet, loving wife I thought I knew was a deceitful, monstrous whore. I was on a one-track mission to get her out of my life forever. We made the bank stops first. I opened two new bank accounts and a safety deposit box at my bank and closed the Oak Springs account at the other bank.
The envelope Sid gave me the afternoon before had the attorney’s business card he used stapled to the document. I never needed an attorney besides the entertainment attorney Cyndi and I used. Because Sid found the Great Falls attorney good enough, so did I. We were lucky he was able to see us immediately.
Martin Sedgwick sat and listened to everything that had transpired over the past two months. I didn’t hold anything back, not even my relationship with Owen. He forewarned us that clients tended to overinflate their reasons for divorce. To Martin’s surprise, we didn’t need to overinflate anything as we spread the documents verifying everything we told him across his desk.
He had three questions for me when he finished reviewing everything. If she did commit bigamy, did I want to prosecute, same with the forgery of my signature on the checks and will, and did I feel threatened by her enough to warrant a TRO? I told him I would reserve my answer on the bigamy charge but that I wanted a TRO to prevent her from getting anywhere near me or Owen. I also asked for TROs on Trina and Steve, who were conspirators. I told him I wouldn’t prosecute her on the forgery charges if she agreed to the divorce and gave up all her rights to the farm. If she refused to do anything I asked, then she could lose it all and spend time in jail. I did, however, tell him I wanted Trina to be charged to the fullest extent of the law. I wanted Trina to be arrested for whatever charges he could come up with.