Please don’t hang up,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. When she identified herself as Sally Oaks, my Texas Facebook friend, I’d just about had it with manners. Besides, it wasn’t like she lived in my viewing area and could threaten to switch channels.
“I’m worried Clay’s isolating Jolene from her friends,” she said.
I decided to tell Sally the truth and end all this back-and-forth. “I realize you mean well. But you’re obviously not as close to Jolene as you think. If she wanted to talk to you, she’d get in touch.”
I explained that Clay’s wife decided against moving to Minnesota and stayed behind in Corpus Christi, in hopes of one day becoming Mrs. Texas.
“That’s not true,” she insisted. “Did she tell you that? Or did he?”
“None of us here at the station have ever met her. She never came to Minnesota.”
Sally told me how she watched the two drive north together in a moving van. “I haven’t heard from her since. Besides, she’d given up that beauty-queen nonsense years ago.”
“So she didn’t leave him?” If Clay made up the whole story of a marriage in shambles, it was a Texas whopper.
“Believe me, I suggested she leave him more than once, but each time she insisted she loved him and he loved her.”
Then Sally described frequent bruises that her friend had always attributed to household accidents. And a black eye she refused to discuss. I knew from covering domestic violence stories that women often love their abusers until the very end. But Sally wasn’t hinting at anything that dark. She felt certain Clay was keeping Jolene cooped up at home, under orders not to answer the phone or the door.
“He never wanted her to work. He wanted her totally dependent on him. I think she sits in that house alone until he comes home and snaps his fingers for attention.”
She told me she reached Clay at the station once. “I told him I was trying to reach Jolene. He told me she had new friends, then hung up.”
I didn’t know how to gauge Sally’s information. She could have been a kook. Lots of online folks are. So are lots of people who call TV stations.
“Do you have a photo of Jolene Burrel?” I asked. “One that looks like her?”
“I can find one,” Sally said.
“Email it to me. I want to be able to recognize her if we meet.”
“Good idea.”
I didn’t ask if she knew where Jolene went to the dentist. That’s the kind of remark that can mean only one thing.
So where was Clay’s wife?
Reporters like to envision the most newsworthy ending to any story. But Clay could have been telling the truth. If Jolene ever had beauty-queen aspirations, she’d have sported a tiara or two down the line. To check his story, I Googled variations of “‘Jolene Burrel,’ ‘Texas,’ ‘beauty.’”
Nothing. But I realized a loophole. Jolene’s maiden name.
Xiong had a public-records account that allowed him to search driving, criminal, property, and other public records nationwide, but no way was I going to ask him to find Clay Burrel’s marriage certificate for me. So I logged on to an Internet records company, typed in his name, Texas town, and approximate age. Then I paid $29.95, knowing I’d never be able to expense the cost.
Seconds later, I learned he’d married Jolene Bailey two years earlier. She was eighteen; he was twenty-three.
I repeated the Google, this time with her maiden name. She’d appeared in four beauty pageants. The highlight was a win as Miss Teen of Nueces County. The others were runner-up awards. I found a small head-to-toe photo of a pretty girl with a wide smile. She wore a sparkly crown over a big Texas hairdo and a beauty-queen banner over a big bust.
She definitely would have made a beautiful bride. I wondered how the couple met. Once, they must have been happy; but now, regardless of where Jolene Burrel was, the marriage was doomed.
Maybe she did leave him. Maybe out of spite, fear, or anger. She might be starting a new life … far from reminders of her old one.
Or maybe he was cutting her off from the world. A prisoner in a controlling relationship.
Or maybe she was dead.
What if he created his own ratings exclusive with the act of murder?
That might explain why the killer went to the trouble of decapitating his victim. Besides stalling identification, a headless homicide certainly becomes a more newsworthy crime to break your first day on the job. And oh, what chutzpah, to keep track of the criminal investigation by covering it. And that would certainly explain all his insider information. He may have been his own best source.
Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.
I had a whole lot more sleuthing to do before I’d have the nerve to ask Benny to approach the police. Right then, they’d simply have laughed at the thought of two murderers working in the same newsroom.
I decided the best start would be if I could get a second source to confirm marital abuse between the Burrels. I pulled up the State of Texas marriage certificate again and looked at the witness names. Male. Female. Best man. Maid of honor.
The last maid of honor I interviewed knew plenty of secrets about a wedding gone wrong and a missing groom. For this case, I again needed someone close to the bride. And who more likely to be her best friend than the witness to her marriage vows? I found a phone number for Cindy Bellrichard.
She hadn’t heard from Jolene Burrel for more than a year. Didn’t know about Clay’s Minnesota TV job. Didn’t feel in a good position to speculate about their marriage.
I sensed Cindy was about to hang up, so quickly, I started talking to her about my own wedding. In Vegas. Spur of the moment. No friends or family. I explained I was now a widow and how I wished I had someone close to me to relive my wedding day now and then.
“I’ve never met Jolene. But another friend of hers is worried, and I’m not sure how much stock to give her concern and how deep to stick my nose in someone else’s business.”
I waited, wishing I’d been able to make the pitch in person. Not too many folks slam a door in my face, but I’ve been hung up on plenty of times. The eye contact certainly makes a difference, but it’s the whole package that lands the interview. A sincere smile. A firm handshake. It’s harder to communicate trust with just voice inflection.
“I’ll keep your name out of it,” I promised. “She’ll never know we talked.”
Either Cindy would hang up. Or she wouldn’t.
She didn’t.
“He made me uneasy,” she said. “Jolene could never go anywhere unless he came along. After they got hitched, the whole job of being friends fell on me. I decided to stop calling her, just to see if she missed me. Guess she didn’t.”
Cindy’s voice could have sounded smug; instead it sounded hurt.
“When did you two start being friends?” I wanted to loosen her up but also wanted to learn enough about Jolene that if we ever met, I could loosen her up. And if Jolene was the headless homicide victim, the one thing missing from the story was a sense of who she was.
“We grew up on the same block,” Cindy said, explaining that Jolene often slept over at her house because her parents were always fighting.
“Fighting yelling?” I asked. “Or fighting hitting?”
“Fighting all kinds,” she answered.
Then she told me that Jolene’s dad killed her mom and went to prison. So Jolene moved in with them when she was sixteen.
“I hear she won some beauty titles,” I said.
“Not all that many, and the ones she got weren’t all that big a deal. At least I didn’t think so. She used to say the biggest prize she ever won was Clay.”
“What did she mean?”
The way she told it, as a reporter for the local TV station, Clay was asked to judge a beauty pageant. I’ve judged many contests during my career, but they’ve all been for journalism awards. Things are different down in Texas.
“Jolene didn’t get the crown,” Cindy said, “but Clay asked her out after the competition. Told her he voted for her and she should have won.”
“How’d she react?”
“Thrilled to pieces. Married him a few months later.”
“Didn’t see her much after that.” Cindy’s voice sounded sniffly, but over the phone it was hard to tell. “Jolene never had time to get together, just her and me. When I’d go over to their house, Clay was always saying mean things to her, like ‘You ain’t got the brains of a turnip.’”
That sounded like something Clay would say. I had a few other questions, but Cindy had to get to work, or she’d be fired.
“If you see her, tell Jolene I miss her.”
An email with an attachment popped up on my computer screen from Sally Oaks. One click later, I found myself staring at a photo of an attractive blonde.
I wondered what her face would look like decomposed.