Chapter 4
Kathryn
I moped around the apartment for an hour or so, and then I took a shower and decided I would cheer up. Crystal was watching the episodes of The Walking Dead I’d recorded for her, and I sat down with my laptop, checking email and social media and trying not to think about anything that was weighing me down at the moment.
But the harder I tried to put it out of my mind, just for a little while, the worse I felt. I scrolled through posts without even reading them, and I eventually got up to throw together a couple of sandwiches for lunch. I sat next to Crystal on the couch, staring at the zombies I’d already seen attacking Rick and his gang, and wishing I could just erase the knowledge of Samantha and her threats.
By the time the show ended and we’d finished eating, I was restless and irritated, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I turned to Crystal and said, “I have to do something. I can’t sit here and just wait to talk to Zane, especially since I don’t even know when he’ll be able to call or text or come by. I mean, if that woman can hire body guards, maybe she has the ability to tap his phone or bug his place. I know that sounds paranoid, but I can’t help it.”
“You have every right to be paranoid,” Crystal said. “That woman’s pretty scary, and knowing she’s already broken the law, you never know what she’s capable of. I wouldn’t put it past her to go the route of ‘if I can’t have him, no one can’ and try to kill him. And then, she’d be angry he was gone, blame us for making her kill him, and take both of us out, too.”
“You need to apply as a writer for a TV show,” I told her. “That is a soap opera right there. Or at least an episode of Law & Order.”
“Well, why don’t we take a card from their book and do a little investigating of our own?” she said, laughing.
I nodded. “You’re right. I Googled Zane once. I’ll do it again.” And this time, I wouldn’t be at work. My entire Sunday afternoon was free, so I could spend as much time as I needed looking for answers without worrying about interruptions.
“I’ll help,” Crystal said, prying herself off the couch. She jogged down the hall to her room and returned with her laptop.
I started with Zane’s name, but I didn’t find anything new on him. It was all the same stuff I’d already seen, and I flipped over to image results, searching for one of the photos of Zane with Samantha. I clicked on each one, looking at the labels and the little blurbs, trying to see if I could find her full name.
Finally, I came across one that had what I was looking for, and I clicked into the website to read more.
“Samantha Henning!” I called out to Crystal in triumph.
“On it!” she called back, and I could tell she was fully focused on the task at hand. I went back to the website I’d pulled up, and my enthusiasm at having found her name disappeared. I got a bad taste in my mouth as I realized this was a newspaper site, with archived issues online, and the page I’d pulled up were wedding announcements.
Samantha was obviously more than an ex-girlfriend.
“Wife,” I whispered.
“What? I didn’t hear you.” Crystal glanced up from her laptop at me, and considering the look of concern on her face, I must have appeared horrified.
“She’s his wife,” I said, in shock. I barely spoke above a whisper, unable to put enough strength and force behind my voice as I stared at the screen. I looked back at Crystal, who was gaping at me. I pointed to my laptop and began to read, “‘Zane Bradley, entrepreneur, and Samantha Henning, Houston socialite, are to be married this upcoming Saturday, August 12th, at 5pm. The wedding will take place at St. Peter’s Holy Grace Protestant Church, with the reception to be held at the Four Seasons Hotel, from 7pm until midnight.’”
I couldn’t read any further. I was stunned and hurt and angry, and I felt like crying and throwing my laptop across the room. I wanted to watch it shatter to pieces. At least doing that wouldn’t get me thrown in jail like shattering Zane’s face would.
Crystal recovered before I did, but then, she wasn’t crazy about the man who obviously already had a wife. “Is there a year on it?”
I just shrugged. I couldn’t make myself keep looking at the page, even to search for the year and date of the publication. Did it really matter?
“Here, I’ll search the public records for marriage certificates,” Crystal told me. I nodded absently and sat there, helpless and hopeless while I waited for her to tell me the horrible truth. “Okay, they were married ten years ago. It’s entirely possible they’re divorced. Now, that would be an even bigger reason for her jealousy, right?”
“You’re looking at the public records, right? If they’re divorced, you can find the divorce papers that were filed right there, too.” But I had a sinking feeling in my gut. Crystal wasn’t going to find a record of divorce.
Now that I thought about it, all of this made sense. At the same time, I really believed that Zane had feelings for me. I wasn’t ready to discount that just because he was married. It was possible they were at least separated. And I could pretty much guarantee that, if they were still together, Zane wanted to change that. He wasn’t happy.
But it explained his hesitation and awkward reaction when I mentioned going back to his place. And I had to think now that he’d purposely given me the number to the club so that I couldn’t reach him at a bad time, when he was with Samantha. Still, when I’d confronted him, he’d given me the right number. Had he changed his mind right then and there? Had he already decided to give me the right number? Or did he just feel pressured in the moment and give it to me so I wouldn’t get angry?
I rested my elbow on the table and my forehead on my hand. This was so miserable!
But I was wasting time. I realized that, while Crystal kept searching for something she wouldn’t find, I should be looking up Samantha Henning. Her description as a ‘socialite’ told me nothing, but anyone who was a socialite was sure to have plenty of dirt published online. I thought about the Kardashians. They did absolutely nothing except shop and be social, and they had more media coverage than a lot of famous actors or athletes.
It turned out there wasn’t as much as I’d hoped, but I still managed to pull up a few things. Her parents were Ted (Theodore) Henning and Eileen Henning (née Connor), prominent Texan socialites themselves. They had a home in El Paso, and they were loaded. The kind of money I couldn’t even fathom. It all came from oil. Ted had gotten into the business early, apparently following in his father’s footsteps and climbing much higher than his old man could have dreamed.
Eileen came from a proud family who had first settled in Texas and made money early on in politics, thriving since before the Civil War. They’d been plantation owners, complete with slaves, and from what I could tell, her daddy was a minister. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Samantha was an only child.
“I can’t find anything about a divorce, but that doesn’t mean a lot,” Crystal said, breaking the silence. I didn’t react. It was what I’d expected to hear. As always, I was unlucky in my choice of men, and no matter how storybook a love interest seemed, it always turned into Tales from the Darkside.
Crystal continued, “However, there is a police report on Samantha Henning from seventeen years ago. It looks like she totaled a brand new Mercedes Benz when she was fifteen and sent three people to the hospital. She was almost charged as an adult with vehicular assault because she was flying down the road and didn’t even have her license yet.”
It sounded like she was pretty wild, and hearing that story assured me she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. It was the only reason anyone would be so generous in spoiling a child, no matter how much money they had. I knew my parents would have done it for me, if they’d had the means.
“Oh, and she was also cited in an article about a Gabriel Gomez, who was arrested for armed robbery and breaking and entering when she was nineteen. It looks like they were dating or at least doing the nasty.” Crystal was in her element, reading the gossip and passing it on.
I shared what I found, and Crystal shook her head. “I don’t get it. If her family has so much money, why would she be risking going to prison to make money illegally?”
On the surface, it didn’t make sense, but I could think of a few things. “Maybe her parents weren’t exactly happy about her reckless behavior. It doesn’t sound like she has a good track record. Crashing expensive cars, hurting people, dating felons. I don’t know about you, but if my daughter acted like that, I wouldn’t just hand my money over to her. There are consequences to your actions, and Samantha Henning sounds like a bad seed, all the way around.”
Crystal nodded her agreement as she soaked it up, and I could see the gears turning in her head. “Right. And she grew up getting whatever she wanted, so when the money stopped growing on trees, she panicked and took the first opportunity she found to make some money of her own.” She gasped and sat up straighter. “So they couldn’t still be together!”
I’d missed something. I stared at Crystal blankly, realizing that she meant Samantha and Zane. “Okay, you just said something to the effect of, ‘The world is round, and that’s why two plus two is four.’ I missed the deductive reasoning in between.”
She laughed. “I’m sorry. But think about it,” she said eagerly. “Zane’s pretty darn loaded, right? I mean, he owns a nightclub downtown that people line up to get into. There are nights you have to be on a list to get in the door.”
I nodded, following her words but not her logic.
“So if he’s got money,” Crystal said, “and they’re together, she’s not panicked enough to break the law when her parents pull the plug on handouts. She has someone else to lean on and get money.”
Now, that was a conclusion I liked, though I couldn’t put any faith in it. Women could do crazy things. I knew – I was one. I wanted to give Zane the benefit of the doubt, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. “I don’t know what to do now, Crystal. I’m so lost I can’t even find myself.”
Sitting there in silence for a long time, I felt myself giving up. I didn’t want to, but how was I going to make sense of this?
She scooted closer to me. “You really love him, don’t you?”
I sighed. “I’m falling for him pretty hard, Crystal. The problem is, every time I think he’s the one, something else pops up unexpectedly. Another lie, a threat, a lack of communication. If he had been married and gotten divorced, don’t you think he would have mentioned it by now?” Of course, I discounted that instantly. He hadn’t been forthcoming about anything. I’d had to coax every detail of his life that I knew about from him.
I rubbed my forehead. “I want to be in love with Zane. I really do. The problem is, after everything we just found, and the little visit we got from his wife, who is apparently stalking you or me or us, I just feel like I don’t really know him at all. How can I be falling for someone I don’t even know? Am I falling for a lie?”
Her sympathy was written all over her face. “I know it sucks, Kitty-Kat. But maybe we’re overreacting here. And you don’t know it’s a lie. I think you’ve managed to break through the outer shell and dig pretty deep into the man. I’m sure that you have a clearer picture of who he is than you think.”
I threw my hands in the air and asked, “So, what am I supposed to do now? Just go on and pretend nothing’s wrong? Hope he comes clean?”
She leveled a stern look at me. “Now, you said he told you he’d explain everything, right?”
I nodded. “That’s what he said. But my patience is running out. Who knows how long this problem he’s dealing with could drag out? I don’t want to wait that long. If I don’t like the answer, I’ve wasted days or weeks or months that I could have spent looking for someone else.”
“I think you just figured out what you have to do now,” she told me. “Don’t waste your time.”
As usual, Crystal was braver than me. She was the go-getter, and it always seemed to work for her. When I started making demands or asserting myself, things became disastrous. At the same time, I wondered how much more of a disaster things could be.
“You know what?” I said. “You are absolutely right. I deserve to know. This whole situation involves me, and I deserve to know the truth, and I’m going to get it. And I won’t stop until Zane tells me everything.”
I got up and walked to where my purse lay by the door.
“What are you doing?” Crystal asked.
I got out my phone, relieved to see it still had a little battery left, since I hadn’t plugged it in overnight. “I’m demanding the truth, right now.”
I pulled up Zane’s number and opened a text message box, typing, We need to talk.
I hit send and took a deep breath. As nervous as I was, and as much as I feared this was going to turn out badly, I felt a weight had been lifted from my chest. I could breathe easier, just knowing I was taking the reins and taking control of my own life.
“Good for you!” Crystal said.
I started back toward my laptop, but there was a knock at the door. I froze, and Crystal’s eyes widened, expressing the same fear gripping me. Was it Samantha? Had she already decided to come back and do something more than threaten us? If that was the case, I wasn’t going to let Crystal be the one answering the door this time.
Holding my breath, I closed my eyes, unlocked the deadbolt, grabbed the knob, and turned. I yanked the door open and gasped.
“Zane?”