“Ms. Raven, your father didn’t simply have two separate sets of credit cards and two different driver’s licenses and two different sets of family photos. I’m telling you he had two separate families, as well. And the ranch isn’t run by a professional manager, by the way. It’s run by your father’s wife. His legal wife.”
“His legal wife?” Kate’s voice cracked. “What do you mean?”
Frank grimaced. “Look at the marriage certificate, miss. Your father married Eleanor Horn fifteen years before he married your mother.”
Kate looked again at the marriage certificate and her cheeks lost color. “There must have been a divorce.”
“I doubt it, miss. My precinct captain heard from the sheriff of Stark County just a few minutes before I came to see your mother. It turns out the sheriff knows Ron Raven personally. He’s an old friend of the family, in fact, and he was as shocked to learn about you and your mother as you are to learn about the wife and children in Wyoming. The sheriff personally confirmed that your father has been married to a woman called Eleanor Horn for thirty-six years. The sheriff was at their wedding, which took place at the local community church in Thatch in front of at least a hundred witnesses and there’s never been a divorce. As far as everyone in Wyoming is concerned, Ron Raven lived at the Flying W with his wife Eleanor, and the only reason he traveled to Chicago was on business for Raven Enterprises.”
“If you’re right, that would mean my mother is just my dad’s…mistress.”
Frank was surprised by the old-fashioned word. But in the rarefied world where Kate and her mother lived, perhaps it wasn’t such an outdated concept. “I’m afraid that’s what seems to be the case,” he acknowledged. “Although I’d advise you to check with a lawyer to find out what your legal rights might be. If your mother genuinely believed she was married, she might have a legal claim to some portion of Mr. Raven’s estate. Not that I’m qualified to be making statements like that.”
Kate stared at him in silence. Clearly, until that moment she hadn’t considered the possibility that there might be financial consequences from her father’s bigamy. Then she laughed, although there wasn’t a trace of amusement in the sound. “Well, I guess that makes the perfect icing on the cake, doesn’t it? You’re saying my mother is going to find herself penniless, along with all her other problems.”
“Hopefully Mr. Raven made provisions, miss.”
Kate gave another short laugh. “Right. Why wouldn’t he, when he’s behaved impeccably in every other detail of his relationship with us?” She bit off another angry comment and walked to the window, staring out over the vast expanse of water, although Frank had a suspicion she wasn’t registering much about the magnificent view.
She finally swung around to look at him again. “How am I going to tell my mother? My God, how in the world am I going to tell her?” She asked the question as much of herself as of Frank.
“How are you going to tell me what?” Avery paused at the entrance to the living room, her hand resting on the back of a silk-covered chair. “Is it more bad news? Have they found Frank’s body?”
“No, nothing like that,” Kate said, hurrying over to her mother.
You had to give the girl credit, Frank reflected. She might flinch, but she didn’t shirk. She took Avery’s hands into a protective clasp and he could see the rise and fall of her chest as she drew in a deep breath to steady her voice.
“Mom, there’s absolutely no way to make this sound less awful than it is, so I’ll give you the straight-up, no-frills version. Detective Chomsky claims that in the course of their investigation into Dad’s disappearance, the police have discovered that he’s a bigamist.”
“A…bigamist?” Avery said the word as if she didn’t quite understand its meaning.
“Yes. They claim Dad has another wife and two children who live in Wyoming.”
“Another wife?” Avery pressed her hand against her chest. “Another wife and two children?”
“Yes. But that’s not all. Apparently Dad married this other woman thirty-six years ago and never divorced her. That means…that means she’s his legal wife. Here’s a copy of their marriage certificate. It seems you and Dad were never really married.”
Avery’s hands tightened their grip on the silk chair back. She glanced down at the fax Kate held out to her but didn’t touch it. “I can’t take it in. Are you telling me that Ron already had a wife when he married me? That my parents invited two hundred guests to witness a fake wedding ceremony?”
“I’m afraid it seems that way.”
The blood drained from Avery’s face, leaving her so pale Frank was sure she would faint. But she was tougher than she looked. He could see the effort she exerted not to pass out.
“Of course the police have made a dreadful mistake,” Avery said, echoing her daughter’s earlier statement. “They’ve confused his name with another Ron Raven, or something like that.” Her eyes made a silent plea for Kate to agree.
“Maybe they have. I hope so. We’ll get our lawyers to check it out, but Detective Chomsky seems quite certain of his facts. He says Dad was definitely married to…to the woman in Thatch thirty-six years ago. It’s a small town…well, you know that already…and the sheriff out there is a personal friend of the family. He was at Dad’s wedding to this woman. The sheriff knows the children, too, and he seems certain that there was never any question of a divorce.”
“Thirty-six years?” Avery’s lips were bloodless. “Ron was married to another woman for thirty-six years?”
“It seems that way.”
“How could he?” Avery asked, her voice low but shaking with anger. “How could Ron do this to us? And where was this woman when Ron took us to visit the ranch?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even begin to guess at his motives. Most of all, I can’t wrap my mind around the sheer stupidity of it. This isn’t the Victorian era. Why in the world didn’t he get a divorce before he married you?”
“I have no idea.” Avery was still alarmingly white, but her voice was stronger. “However, it’s fortunate for all of us that he appears to be dead, because otherwise I’d kill him.”
Three
May 4, 2006, Thatch, Stark County, Wyoming
Megan heard the sound of a car braking to a halt alongside the porch and the pounding inside her head instantly grew worse. She peeked through a crack in the living-room blinds, her stomach knotting at the prospect of seeing yet another reporter parked on the driveway.
The car was a red Ford Freestyle, not one of the roaming TV-satellite vans that had been tormenting her for the past day and a half. Unfortunately, the absence of a broadcast antenna wasn’t necessarily good news. She’d discovered that print journalists could be every bit as aggressive as their on-air counterparts.
Tucking her gingham shirt into her jeans, Megan prepared herself to walk outside and repeat for the umpteenth time that she had no comment. The trick, she’d found, was to head off the journalists before they could bang on the door and disturb her mother.
