Wendi called home on April 1 to complain about the funeral for her grandmother. Jessie Mae was still alive, but her life expectancy was now being measured in hours. “I don’t want to get out for the funeral,” Wendi said, “because I’m not going to go in jail clothes and handcuffs . . .”
“You don’t have to,” her mother said.
“Yes, you do. Maybe I could change clothes, but I’d be handcuffed the whole time and I’m probably not going to be allowed to talk to y’all.”
“That’s stupid. Who told you that? . . . They are not going to do that to you at a funeral. They’re not.”
“Oh, they probably will . . . I guess I can talk to the attorney, if he ever comes up here, and find out what’s going on, but there’s going to . . . have to be a guard there. We’re going to have to pay them a hundred dollars just to get me out of there. They’re going to be there baby-sitting my every little hand [sic], which is the most ridiculous thing. I know for sure I’m going to be handcuffed, and I’m not going to go to a funeral in front of my entire family.
“I didn’t get to go to Mike’s funeral. Funerals are—All they’re cracked up to be is to make everybody that’s alive feel better, but dead people, they don’t care if they even have a funeral . . . It would have made me feel a whole lot better if I could have gone to Mike’s funeral and it would make me feel a lot better if I could go to Nanny’s funeral, but I’m not going to go when I’m sitting there being told that I can’t talk to y’all, that I can’t hold my kids, that I can’t do anything.
“You know, I’m not going to go in a freaking police car to a church or a grave or anything else and be like that in front of everybody. You know, everybody already knows that I’m in trouble. I don’t want anybody to see me like that, especially like at a funeral. You know, I love Nanny and I want to see her alive. I don’t want to see her, you know, in . . .”
“Well, that’s your choice . . . You can go see her now or you can go to the funeral. They left it open for you to make that decision.”
“What do you mean? I can go see her now?”
“Well, I don’t know. As soon as I get the letter to the attorney, then they’re going to take it and see if they can’t do something.”
“Well, I’d rather see her now than at the funeral if I . . . could.”
“Well, then Monday we’ll see what they can get done. I don’t know. They may not let you go to either one, but I’m going to try.”
“. . . I just can’t believe I can’t get out of here . . . I know y’all obviously understand better than I do, but I think it’s silly that everybody is just, you know, clowning around just because it’s, you know, a process. Well, fuck the process. I’m the one in here, not them. So . . .”
“Well, Wendi, I know that and I am so sorry . . . If there were anything I could do, I would do it,” Judy said.
Wendi acknowledged what her mother said, then voiced an eerie opinion about Jessie Mae’s medical care that echoed her own actions in January: “Personally, I think that if she’s not doing good, it would be kinder just to drug her up and not even let her wake up.”
When Judy turned the phone over to Lloyd, Wendi repeated all her complaints. Lloyd was growing weary of listening. “You keep going off the handle and you’re mad at us and everything else, and we’re trying our best to do everything we know how.”
“Daddy, I’m not mad at y’all. I promise I’m not mad at y’all. It’s just I’m not in control of myself. I’m not. I mean, one minute I’m fine. The next minute I’m crazy . . .”
Lloyd interrupted. “Well, we’re not in control of our world anymore. It’s just in a big spin right now, and that’s what I mean. We’re trying to work with that we’ve got and that’s the best we can do.”
“I know,” Wendi muttered.
“You know, we’re going to have to all stick together and work this out.”
“I know. I know, Daddy.”
“You know, we tell you . . . you’ve just got to do the best you can, because obviously they’re not going to listen to you or me or Mom or anybody else. So you just have to work with what you’ve got. You’ve got to accept that you’re there and do the best you can, because we can’t get you out right now . . . and obviously they won’t do a thing we say or they won’t even answer questions . . . You have to just accept it . . . What can you do?”
“Nothing. I’m doing the best I can, Daddy. I am.”
“Okay,” Lloyd said. “Getting all blowed up at—I know you’re frustrated and I would be, too. Any probably normal person would be, but, like I say, what can you do? Not a darn thing except for work with what you’ve got . . . We’re hearing all these different rumors going around.”
“. . . Is it anything to do with me and Mike?” Wendi asked.
Lloyd grew exasperated with his daughter again. “Well, I wouldn’t be telling you there’s rumors about somebody in Hawaii on a vacation. I mean, obviously it’s about what’s going on.” Lloyd turned the conversation to the veterinary business. “Terrell said that he’s going to take somebody by the clinic from Midland and look at it.”
“That wants to buy it?”
“Yeah. He said he knows we don’t want to give it up yet, but just . . . down the road . . . if it doesn’t pan out . . . whoever this is had already looked at it and knows what he’s talking about. I said, ‘Well, that’s fine . . . show it to people if you want and . . . if worst comes to worst and it doesn’t pan out, then . . . at least people have seen it,’ ” Lloyd explained.
“I don’t know what I would do if I lost the clinic. I think I would probably move to another country and just start a whole new life or something with the kids, because I don’t think I could face y’all or face San Angelo ever again if it came to that.”
“Well, it’s not us that caused all this, and it’s not San Angelo . . . It’s you that put yourself in this position, but it just so happens that there’s a bunch of jerks doing the investigation and everything. So . . .”
“Well, I know,” Wendi said. “But if I can’t be a veterinarian, I mean, there’s—You know, that’s why I moved to San Angelo, to be a vet and be close to y’all, and if I can’t do that, I don’t know.”
“Well, obviously one of the reasons you did, because you had the kids and you couldn’t take care of them by yourself. So that was the main reason,” her father snapped back.
“I can take care of the kids just fine. I mean, I was doing—Me and Mike were doing just fine, and I was even doing fine after he was gone. I can do that now.”
“Well, it didn’t seem like you was doing fine with the kids, because you were having such a hard time with them.”
“Well, I can do it,” Wendi rebutted. “Everything will be just fine if I can just keep the clinic . . . And I should be able to because, I mean, from my understanding, Brad said they could even lower the charge from tampering with evidence to abuse of a corpse, which is a Class C misdemeanor, and that wouldn’t even be a felony.”
“Well, you know, we just have to take everything a day at a time, because I still feel like they’re going to try to press more charges. They might not, but . . . I feel they’re going to . . . Take everything a day at a time and hope for the best.”
Two days later, on Sunday, April 3—one day before the lawyers were going to try to get Wendi out of jail for a visit with her grandmother—Jessie Mae Eggemeyer lost her battle with cancer. She died without seeing her only granddaughter—without one final squeeze of her hand. The pain Wendi had caused by her murderous actions on January 15 continued to grow unabated.