The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband (18 page)

Twenty-three

After our travels today,
the Questions Answered office felt welcoming and peaceful, I thought. Ms. Washburn, no doubt still especially cognizant of our discovery of Oliver Lewis's body in this room, did not appear to be quite as comforted by our return.

“So I guess this means that Terry Lambroux is a woman,” Ms. Washburn said as I took my usual seat behind my desk and she got a bottle of diet soda from the vending machine.

“Not necessarily,” I noted. “New Jersey does have marriage equality now. But it would seem likely that Terry is a female, since that has always been Oliver Lewis's orientation as far as we know.”

We had decided after some discussion not to seek out Cynthia Maholm at the last known address for her husband, Oliver Lewis. Ms. Washburn had suggested—and I had concurred—that the two men in the Ford Escape might very well be following us more discreetly, and might be trying to find Ms. Maholm as well. Leading them to her would not be an equitable way to answer the question.

“I think it's a safe assumption,” Ms. Washburn agreed. “He's been married at least five times we know about, always to a woman.”

I had essentially just said the same thing, but I understood that Ms. Washburn was voicing her agreement. I turned my attention to my computer screen, where deep Internet searches for Terry Lambroux continued to come back without any useful information or image.

“I think we have to at least consider the possibility that Terry Lambroux is an alias,” I said. “It is extremely rare for a person in our society to exist with no record whatsoever of her life in a file somewhere online.”

Ms. Washburn sat down in her traditional spot, to my right and in front of my desk. “So what can be done to determine her real name if there are no records of her anywhere?” She took a sip directly from the bottle of diet soda. I do the same with my spring water, but I clean the mouth of the bottle first with a paper towel. There are some habits Ms. Washburn has—shared by a great many people—that I have to overlook in order to function outside my own room in the attic, Mother tells me.

“There aren't many scenarios that work under these circumstances,” I said, musing out loud. “We have to approach the problem from the perspective of our subject.”

Ms. Washburn smiled, but I could not read any thought into the expression. I chose not to ask about it, but filed it away in my mind. New facial looks are always interesting to me because they might become useful at some later date. Asking a person I trust, like Mother or Ms. Washburn, why they look a certain way can alleviate my need to do so with a stranger.

“Our subject?” Ms. Washburn said.

“Terry Lambroux. Given our inability to locate Ms. Maholm, we should focus our attention on Terry.”

“Why?” my associate asked. “Why not one of the wives or Roger Siplowitz? How do we know Terry is the key?”

“We don't,” I said honestly. “But we have met all the ex-wives except Rachel Vandross, and we will rectify that oversight soon enough. The fact that Terry Lambroux chooses—no, takes great pains—to remain unseen is what piques my suspicion. Please, while I am doing some more research on Terry, use your cellular phone to find an address for Rachel Vandross.”

Ms. Washburn nodded and produced the instrument in question from a canvas tote bag she carries with her. She was tapping on the touch screen of the device before I could divert my attention back to my own work.

The trick with Terry Lambroux was to find a chink in the armor of the elusive figure who had somehow introduced Oliver Lewis to all five of his wives. Searches for Teresa, Theresa, and Terrence Lambroux had proved useless previously. It was possible, then, that Terry was a middle name. Trying each letter as a first initial—“A. Theresa Lambroux”; “B. Theresa Lambroux”, and so on—had proven just as fruitless for all possible spellings and variations on the name.

The problem was that we had no information at all about Terry Lambroux. Although we could assume the person was a woman, we had not confirmed the fact. We had no stated profession for her, no place of birth, no age or description. A search of marriage records for someone named Lambroux had turned up one record, in Alabama in 1958.

It seemed unlikely, but I filed away the information to confirm at home tonight when I would have more time. There was no baseball game scheduled for the New York Yankees, the team whose games I follow.

Since I was now assuming “Terry Lambroux” was an alias, it made sense to think about the name in reverse, that is, to consider how one chooses such a name when creating an identity for oneself. Perhaps the spelling was the variable. There were more people named “Lambreaux” than “Lambroux.” I started to search on those terms.

“I've got something,” Ms. Washburn said. “A Rachel Vandross lives in Metuchen, and her relationship status on Facebook reads, ‘it's complicated'.”

“Excellent work,” I said, standing up to walk around the desk. I stood behind Ms. Washburn and looked over her shoulder at her cellular phone screen. I had to bend to see it even though she was holding it vertically in front of her own eyes. “Do you have a street address?”

“Not yet. I just found her on Facebook, and they don't give you a home address unless the person wants you to know. I'm not a friend of Rachel's, so I don't really have much information about her at all.”

I considered the concept of people establishing friendships based strictly on a social media site somewhat comical, but such networks can be useful in discovering more about a person when trying to answer a question. For reasons I can't fathom, some people are willing to share all sorts of personal information in a fairly public setting for the purpose of exhibiting photographs of their pets.

“But you can see who her friends are on Facebook, can't you?” I asked. I don't belong to Facebook, but have searched the site on occasion when doing research.

“Yes. Let me call up the list.”

She brought up the Facebook page for Rachel Vandross and maneuvered through it to get to the list of friends. “That's funny,” she said.

I had not been able to read the whole page in depth due to my distance from the small screen, but I had seen nothing amusing on it. I waited for the coming explanation, and was not disappointed.

“Rachel Vandross only has four friends on the site,” Ms. Washburn said.

Since I have fewer than four people I can reasonably count as friends, I did not understand her concern. “Why is that funny?” I asked.

Ms. Washburn looked at me briefly to see if I was in earnest, and clearly realized that I was. “It's an expression, Samuel. It doesn't mean you should laugh at something; it means that it's odd or unexpected.”

“What is odd or unexpected about Rachel having four friends?” I said.

“Well, that's a pretty low number, especially on Facebook, where people you don't know at all can be your friends.” Ms. Washburn looked up at me, and I chose not to question the concept of friendships with people one doesn't know, which makes no sense. It was more important for her to explain the odd element involved here. “For example, I have two hundred and thirty-eight friends on Facebook.”

“So four would be a very low number, then,” I said. “I don't really see how that tells us anything we can use.”

“The four friends are all of Oliver Lewis's other ex-wives,” Ms. Washburn said.

That
was
unusual, but once she said it, I realized it was not entirely unexpected. “So the members of WOOL have a Facebook page?” I asked.

“Not exactly. They don't exist as a separate entity on the site. But they probably communicate through it. I'm getting the feeling these ladies know each other better than we might have been told.” Ms. Washburn scrolled through the phone's Internet browser. “Let me see if I can get an address on Rachel.”

After fifteen minutes, which I spent making a few unsuccessful inquiries about Terry Lambreaux, we were in Ms. Washburn's car, driving to Metuchen, which was not far, to meet Rachel Vandross, the second wife of the deceased Oliver Lewis. The drive took only seven minutes. During that time, Ms. Washburn seemed distracted but never to the point that I was concerned for our safety. She wrinkled her nose three times, making me wonder if something nearby smelled distasteful (I have a rather untrained sense of smell), but I did not ask. We were at Rachel's home before a conversation of any significance could begin.

I made a point of vigilance during the drive to be sure the two off-duty policemen were not following us to Rachel's house. They were not.

The house was small, not new, but in good repair. The roof had recently been replaced and there were still a few loose shingles piled on one side of the driveway. The front door was painted brown, the vinyl siding was tan, and the windows were open. It was not the home of an especially wealthy person, but one who had a steady job and could manage her budget well.

Ms. Washburn parked in a space two houses to the east of Rachel's and we walked to the front door. Recalling the reception I had gotten at Jennifer LeBlanc's home, I ran briefly through some tae kwon do training mentally as we approached. And I remembered to stand back an extra three feet from the front door after Ms. Washburn rang the doorbell.

It took twenty-seven seconds for the door to be opened, and the woman who revealed herself behind it was not what I would have expected, having met Oliver Lewis's four other wives.

She was about fifty-two, slim and small, but confident, head held high, back straight. I would likely wager her favorite Beatles song was “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Anything military would fit her nicely.

“Can I help you?” she asked. It was the proper question. She could have had no idea if it were possible for her to be of assistance to us. Usually, people mean “
may
I help you,” which is more a question about beginning a process.

“That is what we are here to find out,” I said. I identified myself and Ms. Washburn and asked if she were Rachel Vandross. She nodded, still looking somewhat skeptical or inquisitive. I said we were inquiring about her ex-husband Oliver Lewis.

“Yes, I heard that Oliver had died,” Rachel said. “I wish I could tell you I'm upset about it, but I'm not.”

Ms. Washburn, knowing my preferences, asked if we could come inside, and even though she stepped aside and gestured us in while apologizing for what she called bad manners, I could tell Rachel Vandross was not happy about having people enter her home.

She ushered us into her living room, which was decorated spartanly—no movie titles or musical selections were displayed in the built-in bookshelves. There were not even many books, but what there were appeared to be about either military history or architecture. A saber hung on one wall and a rifle that appeared to be an authentic specimen from the American Civil War decorated another.

Rachel sat on an armchair near the front door while Ms. Washburn took another facing Rachel's, and I sat on the loveseat where I could see both their faces, but not at the same time.

“Why are you not upset about your ex-husband's death?” I asked when we had all settled into our assigned seats.

Rachel, military bearing intact, barely moved except for an arched eyebrow. “The word
ex-husband
in that question should tell you everything you need to know,” she said. “There are reasons people get divorced.”

“What was your reason?” I said.

Ms. Washburn winced, just barely perceptibly, at the question. I wondered if my tone was too confrontational.

It did not seem to bother Rachel Vandross, however. “He lied to me on a regular basis,” she said. “He married me under false pretenses, and then he lied to me every day after that until I filed the papers.”

I assumed the papers to which she referred were a petition for divorce. Ms. Washburn took out her notepad and began to write in it. “What do you mean when you say Oliver Lewis married you under false pretenses?” I asked. That was something none of the other
ex-wives (except Cynthia Maholm, who had told me she didn't know the man she'd married at all, which turned out to be a falsehood itself) had claimed.

“He told me he loved me and that I was the only woman he'd ever loved,” Rachel answered. “He said he'd never been married before, and that was a lie. Pretty much everything he ever told anyone was a lie.”

I needed to clarify her statement. “But you are not suggesting that Mr. Lewis told you he was someone he was not, or married you while he was still in a marriage with Hazel Montrose, are you?” I asked.

Her eyes took on a confused look. “Who's Hazel Montrose?” she asked.

Ms. Washburn looked up, startled, then wrote on her notepad. She and I exchanged a look and she showed me what she'd written. It read
ANOTHER ONE?

“Are you not a member of the informal group known as WOOL?” I asked Rachel. “Jennifer LeBlanc identified you as a member.”

“Sure, I know Jenny and Amy and Cindy and Slim,” she said. “Who's Hazel Montrose?”

“Who's Slim?” Ms. Washburn said.

Rachel's expression indicated that we must both be mad. “Slim McInerney,” she said, as if it were evident and we should have known all the time. Then she shook her head and laughed lightly. “That's her nickname. Her real name is Sheila.”

That made no sense. Sheila McInerney was the alias Cynthia Maholm had used when she came to Questions Answered and hired me to provide some validation of her marriage to Oliver Lewis. But Rachel had mentioned Cynthia when she listed the WOOL members and had added Sheila McInerney as if they were two separate people.

“So who's Hazel Montrose?” she asked again.

Ms. Washburn and I explained our belief, based on what we had been told, that Hazel Montrose had been Oliver Lewis's first wife, that she was second, and had been followed by Jennifer LeBlanc, Amy Stanhope, and finally Cynthia Maholm, posing as Sheila McInerney.