The Chocolate Snowman Murders by Joanna Carl

Author:Joanna Carl [Carl, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

That may have been the lowest moment in my whole life. As I sat there at the computer, I couldn’t think of a lower one. I even ran a collection of low moments through my brain, trying to think of which was the worst. Only one came close.

When I left my first husband—Rich Godfrey—I didn’t take my clothes, jewelry, or car. I even left behind the sheets and towels and dishes and pots and pans. And my checkbook and credit cards. I took nothing but a few clothes left from the time before I married Rich, and I talked my mom into letting me stay with her.

I left Rich because I had realized that he believed I’d married him for his money. I left everything behind because, naively, I thought that if I showed him I could live without the things he’d given me, he would understand that I married him because I loved him. I thought—like an idiot—that when Rich understood that I loved him for himself, not his money, our marriage would be magically healed. He would no longer regard me as something he owned, but as a life partner.

Ha.

What I came to understand—on my own; I didn’t have the money or the time for a therapist—was that Rich didn’t separate the objects he owned from himself. When I rejected his possessions, when I declined to be one of those possessions, I rejected him. My gesture left our marriage irretrievably broken.

The truth of the situation became clear to me a week after I’d moved out. The only job I could find on a moment’s notice was waiting tables in a Mexican restaurant, and some of Rich’s friends saw me there. One night shortly before closing, I got a phone call from the wife of one of them.

“Lee! It’s Marilyn. Is it true that you left Rich for . . .” She named a name prominent in Dallas. I’ll call him John Cowboy. As in Dallas Cowboy.

I was as stunned as if I’d been run over by the Cowboy line. I couldn’t even answer. She finally spoke again. “Lee? Are you there?”

“I’ve never even met John Cowboy,” I said. “Where did you hear that?”

“Well . . . Oh, you know . . .”

“I’m not dating anybody. Does Rich think I am?”

“He heard you were talking to John Cowboy at the restaurant.”

“What does John Cowboy look like?”

“You don’t even know what he looks like?”

“No. I never pay much attention to football. If I talked to John Cowboy, it was because he was a customer. And I’ve got to hang up now. One of my tables wants a check.”

“Okay, Lee. But listen . . .” Marilyn lowered her voice. “Watch your step.”

I didn’t figure out her comment until a strange car parked down the street from my mother’s place that night. Rich had hired private detectives. I was under surveillance.

He apparently thought that I wouldn’t have left one wealthy man until I had another on the string. My dramatic gesture

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