Never thought I'd do anything but work on cars and stalk Tillie, but for the last few months, I had a new job: detective. I hadn't been kidding when I said I was going after Mary-Lou for mouthing off to Tillie the way she did. Mary-Lou could call me out in public, if she wanted, but Tillie was off limits. When she crossed that line, that sealed her fate with me. I wanted to get her out of town. I had no idea at the time that it would happen, just not in the way I expected.
After I'd talked with Jack Tyson to have him fire Mary-Lou, it'd started me thinking. And what I figured was something I'd never thought about before simply because I didn't think about her at all, but Mary-Lou drove a really nice car. A really nice car, come to think about it. Considering she probably didn't make much more than minimum wage at Jack's place --
I called Jack at work. His voice sounded rough, which wasn't surprising considering what he'd been going through. Rumor had it Jack's wife, Carla, had dragged Jack back to Loaners after he'd gone home to tell her about Mary-Lou, and then Carla had proceeded to confront Mary-Lou by calling her some colorful and descriptive names. After a few rounds of bitch-slapping, Carla had then taken Mary-Lou by what was left of her extension-less hair and had dragged her out the door and thrown her down on the sidewalk, screaming, "You and your overused, rotting crotch are fired!"
"What, Quest?" his voice was tired, and I'm sure as the catalyst for blowing up his life, I was the last person he wanted to talk to.
"How much were you paying Mary-Lou?"
"Fifteen hundred a month," his voice was barely above a whisper.
"That's it? That's not even four hundred a week."
"What are you talking about? She agreed to that amount because I gave her the job, too."
"What are you talking about?" I was thoroughly confused. "I was asking how much you paid her as your receptionist. What else..."
Then the light bulb went off.
"You were paying her to keep quiet."
"Quest," he almost whined.
"You didn't tell Carla about the payments."
"Barely hanging on by a thread here, Quest. Carla's talking about leaving me. If she found out I'd been paying Mary-Lou for three years, she'd run me over with the car a couple times and then she'd leave me while my body turned to dust in the street."
"Give me Mary-Lou's address."
"Why?"
"I want to see where she lives."
"Just a second." I could hear him typing on his computer. "OK, here it is." Then he rattled off her address, and I hung up.
On the drive over to Mary-Lou's, I kept wondering about where she lived, which turned out to be a really nice duplex in the next town over.
Nice car, nice home.
As I drove away, I called Nancy. Every female customer always commented that she dressed nice considering she worked for an autobody shop, so if she didn't know the answer, she'd know someone who would.
"It's me," I told her when she answered. "Does Mary-Lou dress nice? Like, are her clothes expensive?"
"Quest Sullivan! Why in heaven are you asking such a thing?" she was practically shouting, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.
"I need to know."
She huffed and puffed into the phone. "Yes, she wears a lot of designer clothes."
"Hmmm. What else about her is expensive?"
"For heaven's sake, Quest! She's a cheap, trashy bitch, and you should not be asking questions about her like this! Please tell me you aren't thinking about...about pursuing anything with that slimy doorknob!"
"Just tell me."
"Well, she has -- or had hair extensions. Those are expensive to maintain. She wears expensive shoes, or at least really good knock offs. She has some really nice jewelry, she clearly gets her teeth brightened, and I know she has a standing appointment at the same place I get my nails done because I make sure to avoid the place like the plague when she's there. Oh! And she has some really nice purses."
A theme was starting to emerge. Really nice. Really nice car. Really nice house. Really nice jewelry. Really nice purses. Clothes. Shoes. Jewelry. Hair shit. Nails, teeth.
I called Jack back. "Just one question," I said when he started to groan. "How much were you paying her for a salary?"
"Thirty thousand a year. Now can we be done?"
For now, I thought when I hung up. Something wasn't adding up, not with her salary and Jack's blackmail payment. Forty-eight thousand a year wasn't enough to fund all of the really nice things Mary-Lou had.
If what I suspected was true, I needed a way to track Mary-Lou's car, so I got onto Amazon, ordered a highly-rated car GPS tracker, and waited two days for it to arrive. Then I drove by Mary-Lou's place until I found her bright-red convertible parked outside her condo. I drove off to swap my mom's nondescript sedan for my easily-recognized truck, and waited until it was dark and late enough that I probably wouldn't run into anyone in the parking lot. I drove by a few times to make sure no one was out wandering, then I parked and attached the tracker in a hard-to-reach place that most people wouldn't think to check. I tested it on my phone and when I saw it was working, I took off for my parents'.
For the next three months, I tracked her movements. And like clockwork, she showed up at eight local businesses at the end of each month. In month four, knowing her movements and what time she normally showed up, I hired a private investigator to follow her and take pictures. Since she still didn't have a new job and I hadn't heard any rumors of her looking for one, this made me think I was on the right track. How do you fund her lifestyle without income?
The answer: you don't, unless you have a separate income stream.
One thing about Mary-Lou was, until me, she'd never been linked to a married man. She'd run her mouth about her single conquests, bragging about her numbers, but she'd never run her mouth about a married man or said anything to a married man's wife. It was just assumed she slept with a lot of single men and that was it. For her to go after Tillie -- that was off her normal routine.
A week later, I met with the private investigator in his offices about two hours away. I didn't want anyone to get wind of this until I figured out if there was any truth to my theory.
He sat down and showed me picture after picture of Mary-Lou meeting with eight local business owners, accepting white envelopes from each -- he had great pictures of the faces and handoffs and acceptance of the envelopes. You could tell they were trying to be careful, but he'd positioned himself to get good pictures with his telephoto lens.
I was shocked. I knew each of these men, some closer to my age, some closer to my dad's, some in between. All of them married and all of them had successful businesses, just like Jack. Just like me. None of them are men you'd expect to cheat; all of them in seemingly happy marriages from the outside looking in.
A month later, I had him do it again. Same thing. Same exact thing.
So after she'd made her last collection, I'd called each of the men and asked them to meet me at an empty barn about twenty miles outside of town.
To a person, they all asked what it was about. And I told each one: payments to Mary-Lou Dawn.
They all agreed to meet me.
So, we were gathered in the barn and I told them what I knew, what I'd been doing the last few months, the pictures I had. I just needed them to tell me about the payments and we could get the police investigating her for blackmail.
"Come on, Quest, just because she blew up your marriage is no reason to blow up ours."
"I want her stopped. How much you into her for every month, Dale?"
"Twenty-five hundred." Dale looked pained to admit it.
"Damn, that's a bargain," Gene said. "I pay her three thousand a month."
The men all chimed in and with what Jack had been paying her, Mary-Lou was being paid nineteen thousand a month.
"Blackmail is a federal crime with jail time," I told them. "I realize it may be easier to pay her, but she's got to be stopped. She's taking nineteen thousand from your families, your businesses, not to mention holding it over your head."
"You'd have been paying her out, too, if you hadn't been caught," Marlon accused me.
"You're wrong," I said staring him down. "I would have told Tillie if she hadn't walked in on me. I can't keep secrets from her. I would have confessed to her as soon as I got home, even knowing it would ruin us."
It was true. Her mother actually had to buy Tillie's birthday, anniversary and Christmas presents for me. I'd give her a list of the stores and the twenty items I'd had them set aside for Til, then I'd hand my mother-in-law a wad of cash and tell her to pick out whichever ten items from the list she wanted. She'd go buy them for me but couldn't tell me which of the ten out of the twenty items she'd decided on.
That way, when Tillie tried to ask me what I got her, I could honestly say, "I have no idea." She soon figured out that meant I'd had her mother do the purchasing for me, but her mother had no problem telling Tillie to keep her nose out of it.
I'd gone to this system after the first Christmas we had together. Tillie had asked me what I'd bought her, blinked those pretty eyes of hers at me, trailed her fingers down my cheek...and I'd caved like a cardboard house in a rainstorm. She had no surprises that Christmas morning.
Lesson learned. I couldn't keep anything from Tillie.
"Quest, come on, man. Jack's marriage is iffy, yours exploded. You can't want us to wreck our marriages, too, just so you can get rid of Mary-Lou Dawn."
"Earl," I said, "you already wrecked your marriages. Your wives just don't have that information yet."
I spent four hours arguing with them, four hours trying to convince them that Mary-Lou needed to be stopped, four hours trying to convince them that telling their wives might not be hopeless. Four hours telling them that by coming clean, they could start to repair their honor and their marriages, with some luck, but continuing to hide things from their wives wasn't healthy. They were living lies.
"We all did something dishonorable," I said. "We betrayed our wives. Paying off Mary-Lou is just another way she fucked you and is continuing to fuck you. You want to have marriages based on deceit? Not sure what you're paying to protect, then, but it's not good. It's not real. It's just a lie. Your wives deserve the chance to decide for themselves."
In the end, scared as hell, they all agreed. We met with the police, and fortunately, each man had kept a secret record of the payoff dates and the amounts. Nine counts of blackmail.
Finally, six months from the start of it all, they had a case against Mary-Lou. Since the Sheriff was my great-aunt's husband's nephew, and because this was a small town reeling from the marriages that were exploding, he agreed to let all parties be coincidentally milling around Mary-Lou's street right outside her duplex when she was arrested.
I had risked my balls and approached Stasia the day before it happened -- she didn't work too far from my new autobody shop -- and I handed her a slip of paper with an address and time and told her if she wanted Tillie to see Mary-Lou go away, they should show up at this address the next day. Her face was confused, but she took the paper from me.
Everyone was there the next day. I knew the wives of her blackmailing victims wanted blood. I knew the men wanted to make sure she went away for her crimes. I stayed back a bit, watching for Tillie, and she was there with Chelle and Stasia. They all looked a little confused until the police cruisers pulled up. Four officers went to Mary-Lou's door and when she opened it, she had some guests she never expected.
They read Mary-Lou her rights, then cuffed her hands behind her back and walked her to the police cruiser as she cried and protested her innocence.
Just before the officer helped her into the backseat of his cruiser, Chelle popped up, and told Mary-Lou to smile as she took her picture.
"Think of it as practice for your mug shot," Chelle sneered at her.
"Hey, Mary-Lou," Stasia said loudly, "Do you look good in orange? Not a lot of people can pull it off, and with your coloring, I don't think it's going to be a good look on you."
Then, my Tillie had the last word, surprisingly. "Yeah, I have to agree. Orange is going to wash you right out. Enjoy your time away. I know I will."
That was surprisingly tame considering how long Mary-Lou had been tormenting Tillie.
Then the three of them turned their backs on Mary-Lou and posed for a selfie with her in the background getting pushed into the police cruiser.
"Smile!"