The Coin Collection

So back to what would I do if the assholes gave up and didn't roll over on Annie? I had no proof of Annie's involvement and that meant the only way I could get her out of my life would be to divorce her. That would mean an asset split of fifty/fifty and I would probably end up having to pay alimony. To a woman who had set me up to die? No fucking way! I'd kill her before I would let that happen and I'd make damned sure that she knew why I was doing it.

Naturally since my worst case scenario was the one that let Annie walk it was the one that I got.

++++++++++++++++++++

Three hours after the SWAT team arrived the two assholes came out of the house with their arms up and their hands clasped behind their heads. As they were being put in the back of police cars the blond guy looked my way and I waved at him. The SWAT team commander came up to me and said:

"Your wife is okay. Just a little shook up, but some TLC should take care of her."

He turned to leave and I said, "There is one more thing." He turned back to me and I said, "They weren't in this alone. Someone had to tell them about the coin collection. I know damned well that they didn't walk around town asking people for information on who had coin collections. And the blond one said something that was quite telling. He told me not to bother holding anything back as they had a list of what was in the collection. I'll sit down and make a list of everyone that I know who knows what I have in my box at the bank. I'll bet that those yahoos you just cuffed will give their informant up if you play it right."

He looked at me for a second and then said, "Get your list to Captain Meyer as soon as you can" and then he left.

I went into the house to face a distraught and very pissed off Annie. Instead of throwing herself into my arms she scowled at me and snarled:

"You bastard! They told you they would kill me if you called the police and you called them anyway."

"It was a chance I had to take."

"A chance you had to take? That was my fucking life you took a chance with, not yours."

"It was the only chance I had of saving your life. The moment those assholes had what they were after we were both dead. If they were going to let us go they would have worn masks, hoods or some kind of disguise. They didn't and so we saw their faces and could describe them and they knew it. Calling the cops was the only way I had of saving you. The only other thing I could think of doing was to get the stuff and hide it and then come in and tell them to let you go and then I'd tell them where the stuff was and then I realized I couldn't do that. All they would have had to do was grab a knife and start carving on you and I would have given in."

I almost barfed when I said, "You are just too precious to me for me to even think of letting them hurt you."

"Oh my God Rob; you're right. I never even thought of that."

The girl had missed her calling. She was wasted as a secretary; she should have been on the Broadway stage or in the movies. She burst into tears and ran from the room which was just as well since I'm not sure that I could have held in what I was holding in if she had stayed in the room with me.

I grabbed the Yellow Pages and went out into the garage. A phone call and a credit card number and things were taken care of. When I had dinner ready I called her and got:

"I'm too nervous Rob; I couldn't hold anything down. I need to soak in the tub and see if I can relax" which was slut code for "I need to clean those two out of me and off of me before you maybe see something that might give you a clue."

When I walked into the bathroom while she was still in the tub and said, "Time for bed sweetheart" I got "I need to be alone for a bit Rob; I'm going to sleep in the spare bedroom tonight." That was slut code for "It has only been a couple of hours since those two fucked me and I might still be too loose' which was just as well since I didn't want the whore touching me anyway.

I laid awake a long time thinking about my wife and my marriage. I had honestly thought my wife loved me. God knows she certainly acted as if she did. I did know that I had loved her enough to put what she had convinced me was a one time mistake with Alan behind me. Perhaps if I had loved her a little less my eyes would have been open enough for me to see things that might have told me that all wasn't right.

Tuesday morning I made sure that I was up and out of the house before Annie woke up and came downstairs. I was going to need the day to get myself psyched up enough to pretend to be a loving husband until I could come up with a way to get rid of her. I was going to have to be as good at acting as if I adored her as she was at acting as if she loved me. After hearing what I'd heard at the cracked open door I wanted to kill the bitch and yes, love could die just that fast, especially when the one you love is fucking some one else and plotting your death. I wanted the bitch to die an agonizing death and I wanted to be looking her right in the eye when it happened, but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in jail so I needed to find some other way to get rid of her.

It was during my afternoon coffee break that the idea came to me. I would need Annie's help to make it work and all I could do was cross my fingers and hope that she would cooperate. Part of the plan was already in motion, but when I put it in motion I didn't have a plan just a need to know.

++++++++++++++++++++++

After work I swung by police headquarters and asked for Captain Meyer. He knew who I was and why I was there so he must have talked to the SWAT team commander. He asked me if I had the list he'd been told about and I handed it to him as I said:

"I've gone over the list a dozen times and I can't bring myself to believe that any one of them is involved. Christ, it would be easier to believe that it was my wife rather than anyone else on that list. But the sad fact remains that it had to be somebody."

"Well sir, we will check it out. We may just turn up a link between someone on the list and one of the two men. Oh, by the way, we need for you to give us a formal written statement and your wife needs to come down and give us one also."

"I'll tell her as soon as I get home. As long as I'm here can I give mine now?"

He turned me over to a detective; I gave my statement, waited while it was typed up and then I signed it and headed for home.

Normally I get home from work before Annie, but because of my visit to police headquarters she beat me home.

"Where have you been?"

"Talking to the police. I had to give them a written statement on what happened yesterday and they told me that they need you to come down so they can get one from you. After I signed my statement I spent some time going over my list with Detective Arnold."

"List? What list?"

"I gave them a list of people who knew about the deposit box and what was in it. Those two had to have gotten their information from someone. The cops are going to look for that third person."

I might have imagined it, but I thought I saw a faint trace of worry flash across her face and I wondered again at the conversations that must have taken place between Annie and the two men while they were in the house surrounded by the police and negotiating with them on the phone. What promises were made? And to whom by whom?

Annie told me dinner was ready and over dinner she told me about her day at work and how she had been a minor celebrity. It seems that one of the SWAT team cops was a cousin of one of the girls that Annie worked with and the cousin had called her with the story.

"It's a wonder that anything got done at all since it seemed like everyone was crowded around my desk most of the day wanting to hear the story. Brad even took me to lunch."

Brad was her boss and I had never liked the arrogant son of a bitch. Annie prattled on and on and I didn't say much; just sat there and dreaded having to climb into the bed with the whore at bedtime, but unless she pulled the "I need to be alone" bit again climbing in bed with her was something I was going to have to do. I needed her to keep thinking that things were fine between us.

It is amazing how quickly a blow job can chase away dread. We were no sooner into bed when her hand went for my cock and before I could say that I didn't really feel like making love that night her mouth had replaced her hand and about then my thinking changed one hundred and eighty degrees to "I better take all of this I can get because when she is gone I have no idea how long it will take to replace her." When she took her mouth off me and mounted me cowgirl style she bounced around and did most of the work and when I came she surprised me by going down on me again. She nursed on me for a while and then she stopped long enough to say:

"I don't know why, but after yesterday I'm so glad to be alive that it is making me horny as hell."

She got me up hard again and I rolled her over and rode her hard to two orgasms before having my own and as I pulled out of her I thought:

"Not bad for some one who isn't worth a shit in the bedroom."

The surprises weren't over. She woke me with a blow job in the morning -- the first in years -- and then she pulled me on top of her and that morning I was an hour late for work. As I worked I wondered what was going on with Annie. I would have called our sex life good. We made love at least three times a week, but rarely more than one time except for weekends. When we made love on weekends we would usually go twice, but the previous night Annie was damned near insatiable. For us to go twice and then follow it up in the morning with another was unheard of for us.

Annie's telling me that after "her ordeal" she was so glad to be alive that it was making her horny was just so much bullshit. She was never in danger and she knew it so what WAS making her so horny? Was it the fact that she was fucking a man she had expected to be dead? Was she turned on by the knowledge that the two men who had just fucked her were just waiting with itchy trigger fingers to kill me when I walked back into the house? I doubted that I would ever know.

That night and Thursday morning were a repeat of Tuesday night and Wednesday morning only that time I wasn't late for work. Thursday night was Annie's standing night to play cards with several of her sorority friends from college, but after what took place on Monday I doubted very much that Annie ever saw a deck of cards on Thursday night. I didn't doubt that she was playing, but I'd bet my life that it wasn't cards.

I was not in the habit of waiting up for her so I was surprised that when she got home she woke me with a blow job and then mounted me. I couldn't tell if she had 'played' or not, but then why would I have been able to? Based on what I'd heard at the door I didn't know if on any given day I had ever been the first in her cunt. She wasn't sloppy wet so if she had been fucked before coming home a rubber must have been used or she carried stuff with her to douche.

There was no wake up sex on Friday morning and at one o'clock on Friday afternoon I got the call that I had been waiting for and I left work early and went to meet with the private detective I'd called from my garage on Monday. He told me just what I had hoped to hear. I left work early and by four o'clock I had emptied out the checking and savings account and had removed everything from our shared safe deposit box and moved them to the box that held my coin collection. I cancelled every credit card that we had that would allow cash advances, but left the ones that wouldn't give cash in place incase Annie stopped for gas ore to buy something from the store.

Annie was home when I got there and she was fixing dinner. Twenty minutes after I got home the phone rang, Annie answered and then told me that the call was for me. I took the phone, said hello and then listened for a bit before saying:

"That's great. I'll be right down."

I hung up and Annie asked, "Who was that?"

"Detective Arnold. One of the guys who tried to hold us up has agreed to turn state's evidence in exchange for the prosecutor not going for the death penalty. He is going to give up the person who told them about my deposit box and what was in it. I want to be there to hear just which of my friends was willing to see me killed just to get a share of what was in the box. You want to come with me?"

"No thanks. I'm trying to put that day out of my life."

"Don't wait dinner on me. I have no idea how long I will be gone."

I left the house and drove down the street, turned the corner and then turned onto the street directly behind us. I parked, made my way to where I could watch our house from behind Mrs. Frank's bushes. The call had been from my private detective and it had been prearranged to set up Annie. It was a gamble. I hoped what I'd told her would shake her up too much for her to stop and consider that the police wouldn't call me and tell me what I'd told her. They wouldn't tell me anything until they had confessions on paper and signed and then and only then would I have been told what had gone down. I was betting that Annie would be packing as soon as she saw me going down the street and that she would be out of the house and gone before I even had time to get to the police station,

Twenty-five minutes after I had taken position behind Mrs. Frank's bushes the garage door opened and Annie backed down the drive and headed for town. If she hurried she still had time to get to the bank before the lobby closed, but even if something happened to keep her from getting there while it was still open there was the drive-thru window that was open an hour later than the lobby. But regardless of when she got to the bank she was going to be very pissed. I just wished I could see her face when she found out that she couldn't get a dime for running money. She would hit a couple of ATMs and find her cards wouldn't work. All she would have was whatever she had in her purse, whatever she had packed, a Visa, a Discover card and a couple of gasoline credit cards and they would only be good for as long as it took me to go back into the house and get on the phone and cancel them. She would also have her car, but she would have to get rid of it because she knew that once she was ratted out I would give the police a description of her car and her plate numbers.

I got my car and went on home. The bedroom was a mess. Annie had just pulled out the drawers and dumped then on the floor and on the bed as she looked for what she wanted to take with her. Her side of the walk in closet was almost empty and none of her toiletries were in the bathroom. I never did find a goodbye note.

+++++++++++++++++

Epilog

The two men claimed that it was all a joke that Annie had asked them to help her pull off. The police and the prosecutor knew it was bullshit, but without Annie there to testify they were able to pull it off partially. They had threatened me with guns and they hadn't said "Whoa up there, it is all a joke" when the police came on the scene so there were fourteen charges brought against them that the DA refused to plea down on. One of the charges was "Felony Menacing" and that charge alone was worth three to five. The jury found them guilty of eight of the ten charges and they are now doing fifteen years in the state prison.

I took the PI report to an attorney and knowing that I had attorney/client privilege I told him the whole story and asked him what my best options were as far as a divorce was concerned and he told me that the best thing was to do nothing for the time being. He told me to wait a year and hope not to hear from her or find out where she was and then I could claim desertion and abandonment and all it would cost me were attorney's fees and court costs.

I have no idea of how many men Annie stabbed me in the back with and so most of them got away with it. Four did not. Two of them were guests of the state for the next fifteen years and two more had their lives ruined by me.

The PI report showed that Annie took long lunches with her boss at the Days Inn on Fremont Street. Brad's wife got a very grim look on her face when I shared the PI's report with her and in the divorce she got the gold mine and he got the shaft. I had already reported my wife as missing at the time of the two men's trial. By then the police and I had both decided that Annie was probably the one who gave the two men the deposit box information and that she had run because she was sure the two men would roll over on her for reduced sentences (they never did). Finally, saying that I had held it back because I loved her and wanted to give her another chance, I took the PI report to the police and pointed out that Brad had been the last person that Annie was known to be with. I leaked the story to the papers that the last time she had been seen alive was when she and Brad had walked into room 114 at the Days Inn at twelve noon on the day she disappeared. By the time the news media got done with the story Brad was branded in everyone's eyes as a killer who had managed to get away with it.

According to the PI report Thursday evening Annie drove to the Motel 6 on Addison and waited in the parking lot until a late model Chevy Suburban drove up and parked next to her. She got out of her car and walked over and embraced the man when he got out of his and they walked hand in hand to room 137. Apparently the room had already been prearranged as they walked right in. They came out four hours later and the PI followed the man home. George Martin was the pastor of the First Baptist Church and he was married and had three children. At least he was all of those things until I shared the PI's report with Mrs. Martin and then I leaked the information to the news media while they were still in the middle of the feeding frenzy on Brad Brown and Annie's disappearance and Martin was ruined.

Naturally I was a 'person of interest' in the disappearance of Annie and I'm sure the police looked long and hard at me (and still may be for all I know), but my story was that I had suspected Annie of cheating and had put the private detective on her. I confronted her with the report and when I got home from work the next day she was gone and I never saw her again.

I never heard from Annie again and following my attorney's advice I waited a year and then filed for divorce on grounds of desertion. The divorce is final today.