Chapter 68
“There can be no doubt.”
Meredith Shamus nervously entered the office of Tony Hatcher, the private investigator she hired to follow her husband. He was sitting at his desk, enjoying a cup of coffee. Hatcher followed Earl for nearly a month, which was when Meredith had first heard him whispering to a woman on the telephone. When she hired Hatcher, she told him she wasn’t sure if Earl was seeing another woman or not. She told him about the telephone calls and what she’d heard. Hatcher told her that when a spouse suspects cheating, the spouse is usually right. Rarely were their suspicions unfounded.
Hatcher saw how uneasy she was and offered her a seat and a cup of coffee. In his experience, no matter how confident the spouse was of cheating, there was nothing like confirming their suspicions. He saw so many lives shattered by infidelity that he could often tell who could handle it and who couldn’t. He knew which marriages would survive and which ones wouldn’t. Eleven years of experience taught him that rich women like Meredith Shamus would be hurt but the marriage would go on.
He often wondered why they even bothered to find out. He decided to follow the rich wives to see if they had anything to hide, and most did. Affluent people often endured marriages of convenience, Hatcher discovered. Most of the women, he deduced, needed to feel justified when they fooled around. It was the only thing that made sense to him. Meredith Shamus didn’t strike him as one who would fool around. She seemed wholesome, and he respected her for it.
Meredith took a sip of coffee and said, “Well, Mr. Hatcher, what do you have for me?”
“Your suspicions were true,” he told her reluctantly.
Meredith sighed and looked almost relieved. “Do you have a name, pictures, tape recordings and things like that?”
“No recordings, but I do have a name and pictures. Are you sure you want to see them?”
Meredith took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I suppose I shouldn’t care, but I do. Yes. Let’s see the pictures.”
“Are you absolutely sure, Mrs. Shamus?”
“Yes, I’m quite sure. Don’t worry, Mr. Hatcher. I won’t fling myself out of your office window.”
Hatcher looked at her for another second or two. He opened a desk drawer, took out a yellow packet of pictures and surveillance notes, and handed it to her.
“I have the negatives in a safe place, just in case something should happen to the pictures,” he assured her.
Without a word, she cautiously opened the packet. Hatcher watched her closely, waiting to see how she would reacted to the photos. After seeing Johnnie for the first time, Meredith’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces. She lowered her head and began to sob softly.
As though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, she said, “Earl’s seeing a Negro?”
Hatcher wondered if he should tell everything he knew. Sometimes he hated his profession. It seemed like he was always the bearer of bad news. He felt like the grim reaper most of the time, holding a sickle, waiting for the most inappropriate time to lop someone’s head off. But this was what he did. This was what he was good at. Besides, that’s what she paid for, Hatcher thought.
“There’s more, Mrs. Shamus,” he said delicately.
“I want to know everything, Mr. Hatcher.” She continued weeping. “Please, don’t try to spare my feelings.”
Hatcher took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Not only is she a Negro, but she’s only sixteen years old.”
“What!” Meredith was astounded.
Hatcher walked around his desk and sat beside Meredith. She wanted to know everything, and he would tell her. He picked up the pictures and shuffled them until he came to the pictures of Johnnie getting out of Marguerite’s car at the Savoy Hotel.
“This is where they met as recently as last week,” Hatcher began. “When your husband went to Chicago, it gave me time to check her out. It turns out that he paid for her and her mother to stay at the Savoy for about a week.”
“Her mother?” Meredith recoiled. “You mean he’s seeing mother and daughter? Together?”
“I’m not sure what was going on between the three of them,” he admitted. “I do know that your husband bought this young girl, Johnnie Wise is her name, a fifteen thousand dollar home in Ashland Estates.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that, Mr. Hatcher?”
“There can be no doubt, Mrs. Shamus. None at all.”
“And you say the mother and daughter both live there?”
“No, just the daughter.”
“So, the mother approves of this?”
“That’s the strange thing, Mrs. Shamus,” Hatcher went on. “The mother and the daughter argued at the pool while they were staying at the Savoy. A few days later, the mother ends up dead. Beaten to death by an unknown assailant.”
“And you think Earl did it?”
“Hard to say, but that’s how it looks. The woman wasn’t raped or robbed, just beaten to death. The question is, who wanted her dead?”
“Thank you, Mr. Hatcher. You’ll keep this confidential, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Hatcher promised. “But what are you going to do with that information?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Be careful, Mrs. Shamus,” Hatcher warned. “If he did kill the mother, he’s more dangerous now. He has nothing to lose. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, still not fully grasping the gravity of what Hatcher was trying to convey. “Well, I’ll be going. I’ll look at the rest of this later. Thanks for a fine job. Ill be sure to give you good references.”
“Thank you. Let me see you to the door.”
Tony Hatcher looked out of his twelfth floor office window. He watched as Meredith Shamus got into her Cadillac. “Poor broad,” he muttered.