Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (24 page)

As it turned out, however, she was
not the only one in my life who was moving. I had gotten Catherine
well resettled into Strong's house and prepared to have a meal at
home on the evening of Monday, November 19, when the phone rang and
she answered. Cindy, on the other end, asked for me. Catherine
handed me the receiver then perched nearby, hanging on every word
she could hear.

"I called to tell you I have moved
out of the house," Cindy said.

"That doesn't make much sense," I
replied. "We're still making house payments so somebody should be
living there. Now I'm paying rent here, and you're paying rent
wherever you are. Where are you anyway? What's the
address?"

"I can't give it to
you."

"What's going on?"

"I just can't give you this
address. Al doesn't want you to have it."

Uncle Al again, I thought. I looked
at Catherine and popped my eyeballs out to make her laugh. She
didn't. I figured that Al now had persuaded Cindy to join him in a
new love nest somewhere that wouldn't have the smell of me in the
walls. And I was willing to bet they had used a moving company to
handle my furniture. But I got a little upset about Cindy's
reaction to my request for the address. So I offered a
compromise.

"Well," I said, "why don't you tell
me the new address for my children? Al can't object to that, can
he? I think the lawyers would order you to do it."

Cindy chuckled at that and, for a
moment, sounded conciliatory. She said, "It's a little house in
West University Place…"

Then, suddenly, I heard a pop, and
the telephone line went dead. I stared at the receiver in my hand,
looked at Catherine with a shrug of my shoulders, and hung it
up.

"I heard a strange sound and now
the phone is dead," I told her.

"I can't sit still about this any
longer," she said. "Cindy has moved out of your house and won't
tell you where she lives? It is time now for you to hire a real
lawyer and go after that bitch."

Although I wanted to tell her to mind her own
business, I found myself warming to her rant. Cindy had angered me
with everything from her unexpected relocation to her obstinate
attitude on the new address. I agreed that Catherine had a point
and decided to listen. But, of course, she instantly pushed her
wise counsel beyond the limits of reason.

"And, I think it is time to unleash
the clients," she said, sounding like a gang leader with a mob at
her disposal. "Cindy needs a good beating. Nothing drastic but just
something to get her attention."

Before I could respond, the phone rang again
and I answered.

"Gary," Cindy began, her voice
shaking for some as yet unknown reason. "Do not try to find us. I
will try to straighten this out as soon as possible. But if you
come over here somehow, there could be trouble. Something is going
wrong. And you already have enough trouble with your new
girlfriend."

"Oops," I told her, "I think you
just stepped in a bucket of shit with that remark. I can tell you,
she's the last person on earth you want in your face right
now."

"Be patient, that's all I can say."
And she hung up.

"Bucket of shit?" Catherine
asked.

"Yeah, she told me I have enough
trouble with you without biting off some more at her
house."

I could feel the steam pouring out
of Catherine's ears.

"Now I am going to call the
clients—"

"No, you aren't doing anything.
It's not your fight. Stay out of it."

She sat quietly for a moment,
gathering her thoughts, then made a fist and pointed a finger at
me.

"You know what I think now? I think
you are going to give me a share of your house when it sells. I
think I deserve it for all the bullshit I have had to
suffer."

I couldn't help myself and started
to laugh.

"You think this is funny?" she
asked. "I'm serious. You owe me."

Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, I
thought, tuning her out. I had reached a point where I could not
really tell how serious her threats might be. Are you for real? I
wanted to ask. But I didn't want to spend any time on that debate,
as dangerous as it might be to underestimate her potential for
havoc. Instead, I focused on Cindy and my daughters. Something
suddenly seemed twisted on that side of my life, and I felt
concerned. I figured I would hear more soon enough, but I could not
help but be anxious.

"Please give me a break," I finally
told Catherine in an effort to shut her up. "I'm getting confused
here, and I need to think about all this before I make any moves.
You can lay off for a couple of days, can't you?"

She scowled but nodded and let it
drop.

THIRTY-THREE

November 21, 1979

It took Cindy just two days to elaborate on
her mysterious phone call, and, when she did, it brought the stew
of my relationship with Catherine into its first hard, dangerous
boil. Shortly after noon on the day before Thanksgiving, Cindy
popped her head through the press room door and motioned for me to
take a walk. Strong saw me leave our shared office but said
nothing. The courthouse was deadly slow that day before the
holiday, with many of the courts in recess. Cindy asked to go
someplace private, so I took her to a vacant courtroom where we
talked in the dark. She was quaking like a little dog that had just
been caught messing the floor. She was terrified, and this was the
first time I ever had seen her this way.

"I want off this treadmill," she
said, trembling as we sat along one of the attorney tables in the
dim light. "Al is crazy."

"What are you saying? Now you don't
want the divorce?"

"I can't take any more of this. You
don't know how crazy he is. He wants to control everything I
do."

"You want us back
together?"

She nodded, looked at me, and said,
"He shot the telephone."

I didn't quite grasp her remark and
tried to envision that in my head. I squinted with my eyes, then
stared in an expression of disbelief.

"He did that, Gary! He shot the
telephone while I was talking to you. That's why it went dead.
That's why I didn't want you coming anywhere near the house. There
is a hole in the phone. You can see it if you want to."

Although I genuinely felt sorry for her,
realizing that her dream love affair had turned into a nightmare, I
started to laugh at the image in my mind of a doctor pulling a
pistol from his white coat and drilling a telephone while Cindy had
the receiver up to her ear. I had never even seen Uncle Al so I had
to improvise for his face. But Cindy I could conjure. I imagined
her eyes popping out and her feet jumping off the floor when the
gun discharged.

"Sorry," I said when she scowled at
my involuntary reaction. "I don't know what to say. Where were the
girls?"

"They were in bed, but they must
have heard the gunshot. I can't stand this any more. He has me so
frightened."

Jeez, I thought. Have we exchanged our
marriage for a season pass to theatre of the absurd?

I started to grow angry at the thought of my
girls exposed to danger. If Uncle Al could shoot a plastic
telephone because I was on the other end of the line, I wondered
what he must feel every time he saw Little E or Shannon, knowing my
blood and genetic material coursed through their veins.

"We have to fix this," I said. "You
can't allow him near the girls."

"I know it, I know," she started to
cry. "He's gone. I told him to leave. But I'm so confused. I don't
know what to do. Have we gone too far? Is there any going
back?"

I took her hands and said, "Of
course. Is that what you really want?"

In the weeks since we had split up,
I had thought a lot about what I really wanted. I had decided I
could live without Cindy, and I could live as a visiting parent. I
could live with the divorce. But I also decided that the girls
would be better served with a reconciliation, even if our marital
relationship could never be the same. Our home had not been wracked
by fighting or become any hellish place to live, as happens in many
cases where couples drift apart making existence unbearable for the
children. In fact, we were still having fun as a couple when she
had shocked me with her decision to separate. Just as unexpected
had been this day's attempt to make up. But I realized I could not
hesitate, believing I would figure a way to fix that, too, if we
reconciled. What I did not understand, however, was the secret hold
of Uncle Al on Cindy—ammunition he carried in his prescription pad.
It would be nearly a year before I unraveled the true extent of
those powers. On this day before Thanksgiving, however, I was ready
to do whatever she wanted if it would ensure the safety of our
kids. I thought maybe she had decided she preferred a dedicated
partner to a romantic lunatic. Her dilemma sounded familiar, and I
knew we had one more dangling problem to discuss.

"You know," I said, "I'm in a bit
of situation, too."

"Mehaffey?"

I nodded and said, "This won't be
easy. She's already shown some warning signs, and I've about had my
fill of her."

"I'm really depressed."

She looked it, too. I realized
Cindy was on the edge. I could understand if she felt guilty about
the way our marriage had disintegrated and the impact of her
decisions on our girls. I wondered if she might be suicidal. So I
offered to call my former therapist and see if he could talk with
her that night. He had invited us both to come see him, so I didn't
see a conflict. And I felt he would already have the background on
our situation to allow for a quick consultation. She agreed, I
called from the courtroom, and he told me to have her swing by that
evening about six.

"Can you pick up the girls from day
care and take them to the house?" she asked. "I'll come back after
the session."

"Sure. But you'll have to give me
the address."

Cindy grinned. Then she took out a pen and
wrote the address on a piece of scrap paper there. I folded it up
and put it in my shirt pocket as she got up and left.

"Thank you," she whispered as she
opened the double doors and walked into the courthouse
hallway.

THIRTY-FOUR

November 21, 1979

Catherine and Strong caught me as I left the
courtroom after giving Cindy enough time to flee unseen. They had
been walking down the hallway checking all the rooms.

"What's up?" joked Strong. "We
heard you had a meeting with Cindy somewhere and wanted to make
sure you were safe."

Catherine scowled and said nothing.

"Yeah," I said. "She has some
problems. Any news breaking around here?"

Catherine eyed me coolly as Strong nodded in
the negative.

"Quiet as a tomb," he said,
emphasizing tomb with a sickening grin.

"Let's get a beer," I said. "I need
to talk."

Catherine maintained her silence
while we took an elevator down to the courthouse lobby, walked
outside, and strolled to the Hoagie Shop in the next block. It was
a quiet little sandwich joint that also sold cans and bottles of
beer. We often visited the place in the afternoons for the
reporter's version of a coffee break. On this occasion, we each
grabbed one of those huge cans of Australian Foster's Lager, popped
the tabs, and sat down.

"Cindy's doctor boyfriend shot her
telephone," I began.

Strong started laughing, but Catherine leaned
into the table anxious to hear more.

"I'm not kidding, or, at least, I
don't think she was kidding," I said. "She's all fucked
up."

"Good," said Catherine. "She needs
to be fucked up."

"Well," I said, "I have to think
about the kids. She has a doctor's appointment at six and needs me
to get them from day care, so I guess I'll be busy with them
tonight."

"The hell you will," Catherine
snarled. Her tone wiped the smile from Strong's face, and he jerked
back in his chair. I took a long sip from the beer while she
continued her harangue. "I had plans for us tonight, and they
didn't include you leaving to spend time with your ex-wife and
kids. You'll have to tell her to get a babysitter."

"No," I said. "I need to get them.
Besides I haven't seen them in a while."

Now she took a long sip of beer and measured
her next reply.

"I don't need this bullshit," she
said. I had expected some problems with Catherine but had
underestimated the toxicity of her venom. I'd just assumed she'd
agree that the kids should always come first. And I didn't know of
any plans we had that would interfere, besides the regular routine
of having some drinks somewhere and going home. But it instantly
became obvious to me, Strong, and several others in the Hoagie Shop
that Catherine had lost control. She raised her voice and began to
stutter a list of her complaints: "Calls in the night. Visits to
the courthouse. Cindy has problems. And, I just don't need this
bullshit in MY life."