Conspiracy Theory

Probably more people than want to admit it believe in conspiracy theories. I'm talking about the unexplained effects of chain reactions that stem from unexplained phenomena. Not necessarily the deep conspiracy of Roswell, New Mexico, but the kind of things that occur unexpected. The sort of situations that are twisted so tight into a maze of questions to which there are no apparent or plausible answers, and no one who could provide them is inclined to do so.

So the story goes in the murder of Bryce Meyers. It is now several weeks later from the date he was shot to death, and Alexis Martin is really no closer to knowing the full story of how and why he was killed as she was from the beginning. She had spent everyday of the first two weeks after that alarming phone call from Abigail alternating between being in a scary "day mare" and an all too real reality.

Alexis had been questioned twice more at the hands of the local police. The second time she received a visit from Mercer Holding and Artie Callahan the first detectives to question her; and the next time she had the privilege it was with two different ones. Although she found the whole thing to be a big, royal pain in the rear end, she couldn't help but be impressed with the new duo. Two women detectives who were both in their mid-fifties and were so sharp and at the top of their game that they made the other two look like rookies. Detectives Rosalyn Baker and Charlene Harris were deceptively friendly, and cunningly solicitous. They knew how to lead a person into saying things unawares, simply by lulling one into a false sense of security.

But now, she had been assured by the first two detectives that there would be no more questions and her cooperation had been greatly appreciated, but in essence they were done with her. Alexis was thrilled to hear this, but she had a lot of questions of her own that she could not get answers to. She never heard from Abigail again after the one time she visited her in jail. This happened just before Abigail suddenly disappeared from town.

Nothing else about the case appeared in the news, and the last thing she was able to hear was quite disturbing. In the beginning she had felt a heart-wrenching sympathy for Bryce's mother. She could not imagine how heartbroken Melinda Meyers must be. But about three weeks after his death, Alexis was attending a meeting of her local business women's chapter, and was the recipient of some startling news. Pretty darn sure that she was not meant to overhear this, Alexis could not believe her ears.

According to the overheard conversation, Bryce's parents Kyle and Melinda Meyers were persons of interest in an ongoing federal investigation. All of their personal assets were being scrutinized and although they had not been frozen yet, it seems to be just a matter of time before they would be, and federal warrants issued for their arrests. And the clincher was this: Bryce was a personal friend of the  Special Prosecutor who was in line to work the case. The SP had been gleaning information from Bryce for months to be used against his parents.

And...Abigail Vanderberry had led him on to the point when he fell in love with her and they became engaged and planned their wedding. The wedding was never meant to take place, and all of the money that had been spent for the elaborate affair had been front money. Abigail was an undercover agent and her job had been to bring him in after the farce had been played out enough to reveal what she needed to know about his parents. Somewhere along the way, Abigail fell in love for real with Bryce, but then hours before the wedding was to have taken place (or so it was supposed to) she shot Bryce to death. The original plan was to have been for her to leave him a note with an explanation of why she walked out on him, and to dump him at the altar. Real love was not to have been a factor.

Kyle and Melinda had been planning to empty their bank accounts and open new off shore ones before their son had been killed. They had bought a new house, arranged to sell the one they currently lived in, and had wrapped up all of their domestic affairs in readiness to make a move to Tahiti. They had planned to be gone before the nuptials, based on a tip they had gotten that Abigail was in fact, not the person she pretended to be.

Nothing about this whole situation made sense to Alexis. However, she was grateful to be out of the mix. Now perhaps she could put all of it behind her, and get on with her life. It would be a most welcome change to get up in the morning and not feel as if she was living in a state of suspended animation. She may never get all of the answers to her questions, but she would draw a great deal of comfort from the money she had earned as the wedding planner. Thankfully, the check had cleared and now the plush cushion the cash made in her account was sufficient to make her willing to abandon the whole matter, and leave the conspiracy theories to the buffs who savor them.

Which is what she did as she hummed a jaunty tune all the way to the bank.

A Relative Position

It had been a wonderfully enjoyable and romantic trip. The past year had been very good to Helena and Stanford Clayton Sr. They both had so much to be grateful for; as a couple and as individuals. Their marriage had gone through a severe trial as a result of a variety of contributing factors that conspired them to ultimate ruination. But, by the mercy of God, and divine intervention the marriage had survived and not only merely survived...it was thriving and they had never been so happy. It was almost like they rediscovered each other and recognized that they were two people independent of each other; yet still a couple.

In other words, after many years of ignoring the critical signs of marital breakdown, and refusing to address the problem areas of their marriage, Helena and Stanford were tremendously blessed to salvage the remains of a tortured and disintegrating union. After the domestic disturbance they experienced, no one expected them to be able to carry on. The almost total meltdown of them as a married couple had literally been a saving grace.

All of their children and grandchildren were prospering nicely with the exception of Myranda. Myranda Clayton Rice was the middle child, and quite frankly she was the one least expected to be the problem child. If Helena and Stanford would have had to name a child out of the three offspring, it would have been Stanford Jr., (the oldest) that would have been expected to ...well...have issues. Myranda and her husband Palmer had lost quite a bit of money a few years back in a pyramid scheme. Probably one of Palmer's biggest faults was his love of money. He was always looking for ways to turn an easy buck, and not all of these avenues had been exactly above board. His real vice was when he dragged his wife into it and convinced her to invest some of her own private funds into whatever cockamamie thing he was up to at the moment. And at that particular moment, he was into the so-called fast easy money making pyramid scheme.

Myranda knew it was the wrong thing to do when she married Palmer Rice, but she was hell bent on defying her parents. At the end of a brief courtship (she and Palmer dated for six weeks before getting married) they ran off to tie the knot to the dismay and the disappointment of both sets of parents. Palmer bore the brunt of the burden of the illegal scam, and subsequently the worst of the punishment that had been doled out to the four scammers. Philip Dover and Connor Woods were partners in crime with Palmer and had both received the same sentence. Jacob Hearn (who was married to Myranda's sister Regina) and also a pyramid partner had gotten off with the lightest of the sentences. He had to serve three years in a minimum security facility that was more of a "state run country club" than a correctional facility, but whereas he may have gotten off lightly as far as the law was concerned, his ultimate cost came at the dissolution of his marriage. Regina Hearn sued him for divorce the day he went off to "prison" and promptly put him out of her life.

With the financial aid of her parents, she was able to make a fresh start for herself and her twin sons; Eric and Eli. Not only did she set out to recoup her losses (which she did) but she actually made more money through hard work and dedication than she had thought she would. While Regina pulled her life out of the toilet and handled her business like a woman, Myranda on the other hand, used the situation to dig herself further into a hole. Her two children Julia and Kirk were already disadvantaged by the fate of their father, and she only made it worse by just about abandoning them in pursuit of her own worldly pleasures, being selfish and feeling endowed at the same time. When Palmer went off to prison, Julia was only a year old, and Kirk was just turning three. Helena had kept them at her home for nearly a year, providing a full time nanny and giving them both the love and support her wayward daughter could not seem to find the time or the inclination to give.

Now, it is a few years later, and although Myranda has come a long ways from where she was at one time, there was still quite a bit of road remaining to travel. The most important thing to come from her rehabilitation was that she had reconciled to be a better mother to Julia and Kirk. She was making remarkable progress in that area, but her weakness for men was still her personal demon and a wound that didn't want to heal.

Stanford had rescued his beautiful, smart, sexy wife from being a mother of three adult children and grandmother to four lovely and wonderful kids. He took this wife and grandmother away for a long, relaxing vacation; but here's the thing...he left going on this vacation with his wife. He spent the vacation with his woman. His desire was to leave the wife behind and release the woman within to be free to be all that she could, would and should be during the two weeks they spent on the French Riviera. It was a great life and it was filled with doing incredible things.

They were blessed and would never, ever forget it.

Down the Up Staircase

Within the space of a few minutes; five at the very most...all of the plans, the hard work, the anticipation, the pride in her first major accomplishment vanished. Like the ashes from a slow burning cigarette her dreams went up in smoke. Or like wisps of a fine vapor may be a more accurate description. But any way you sliced it, her world and her state of mind had turned upside down sideways...like it had stopped turning on its circular axis, and stopped on a tilted angle.

Her phone had rang as she started up the staircase, and she answered it with the same upbeat and happy tone of voice that mimicked the way she was already feeling inside. When she got the news, she sat down on the step, and she didn't remember actually ending the call. She only knew that for so long a time she had sat there on the same step where she had sank after receiving the call. Her mind was a blank for a while, and she sat staring at nothing; her eyes focused but not seeing.

The phone call had been from Abigail Vanderberry her bride-to-be. Abigail had informed her in a matter of fact way that there would be no wedding taking place for her. She had called it off in a brief conversation just prior to making the call to Alexis with her now ex-groom Bryce Meyers. The fact that Abigail was so calm and controlled was in itself chilling. She had shown no sadness, no remorse and no ; well...emotion at all. She had simply made the statement that the wedding was off. She did however, answer one question that Alexis had managed to ask her before she became completely stunned, and that question was 'What happened?' to which Abigail had spoken in an almost disembodied voice "because he's dead, and I killed him".

When Alexis heard these words, she came within a hair of passing out completely. Instead, she simply sat there in a semi-catatonic state. Minutes passed and finally, Alexis came back to her senses. Her breathing was shallow, and there was an intense pain behind her eyes that was not only hurting like hell, but was causing her vision to blur.   At last, she tried to stand by bracing her hands on either side of her. She did stand up, but when she started to move she discovered that her limbs were numb from sitting for so long. Holding onto the banister for support, she steadied herself, and took several deep breaths to restore her normal breathing rhythm.

But she couldn't decide whether to go the rest of the way upstairs, or to go back down the staircase.
She stood there hesitating and her cell phone rang again. She looked down at the phone still in her hand as if she held a foreign object in her hand. While she stood hesitating, the ringing stopped before she could even look at the caller ID display. It immediately rang again, but this time she did press the talk button and in doing so, it was like spurning herself into motion. She went back down the staircase as she spoke into her phone. It was one of her best friends on the other end...Claudette Richardson.

Claudette was calling to check on her and to make sure her anxiousness hadn't taken over her and to get all of the last-minute details about the Vanderberry-Meyers shindig. Immediately, Claudette could tell something was terribly off key here. She had to call Alexis' name at least three times before she was sure Alexis was actually there. She held on and listened in silence as she received the update she was calling to receive although it was definitely NOT the content she had expected.

After Alexis had relayed all of the information that Abigail had shared with her, she suddenly remembered something, and spoke it out loud...Oh my God! What should I do? I've just been the recipient of a murder confession; should I call the police? Claude...what should I do?

Stay tuned.

Broken Promises...Broken Vows

The four of us have been as close as sisters for most of our adult lives. We have shared heartbreaks, heartaches, and cried together so many times I would never be able to count. We have shared our family troubles, our individual joys, our collective laughter and overall good times with each other. In other words, we have been down in the valleys and up on the mountain tops holding hands, praying or celebrating and not one single time has any of us had to be alone whether in sorrow or in joy. That is why three of us from our sisterhood are feeling side-swiped, confused and hurt...so very hurt over what we have just discovered about our dear friend Helena Clayton.

We knew about the extramarital affair she had been involved in for a while now. She never did try to hide it from us. She told us about how this man she had met had expressed interest in her and she was going to take him up on his offer to have lunch. After a few causal lunches with him, she admitted to us that he had told her that he wanted to become more intimate and that he was falling in love with her. I guess it could have been sheer excitement, the thrill of an adventure or just a death wish on her part that made her agree to cheat on her husband. She was falling hard for this man named Griffin McCoy.

It certainly was not because she was a neglected wife; real or imagined because anyone who personally knew Stanford Clayton knew of his unwavering devotion and his deep love for his beautiful wife. And he loved her just because she was who she was to him and not because she was an exceptionally beautiful and sexy woman. Now that I take stock of this situation, for the very first time in the history of our friendship, I am beginning to realize that Helena had a whole other side to her personality, and I'd wager that neither Claudette or Bonnie had a clue existed.

Stanford had snapped when he came face to face with the bitter truth about where his wife was spending her afternoons, and recently a couple of entire weekends. He had been duped not only by the woman he was married to...supposedly for life but also by a man he had called friend. True, Helena was really unaware that her husband and her lover knew each other.

 He never let on that he knew Stanford beyond speaking with him when he was at the Audi dealership (of which he was part owner) shopping for Helena's new car that he bought as a surprise birthday gift last year, when in fact he had played golf with this man and had attended several professional basketball games later that year at his invitation. When Stanford and Griffin found out they both had the same favorite NBA team, they became fast friends as a love of sports will do for most men.

Helena suffered several lacerations and bruises, a concussion and a broken arm and collarbone; souvenirs from the violent outburst and subsequent fight between her and Stanford. He has been arrested and is now out on bail pending a court appearance. Their children and grandchildren are devastated, embarrassed and hurt, as well as bewildered. They cannot imagine why their beloved Mother would cheapen herself and stoop to an affair while being married to the most wonderful man on the planet.

And worse they are still trying to wrap their head around the fact that their Father...a man who was always like a solid rock for the family, had never laid a hand on any of them growing up, and rarely raised his voice at anyone could become this angry monster who in a fit of rage nearly killed his wife.

When he realized what he had done, Stanford called 911 and reported the whole thing himself. He didn't resist arrest when the officers took him away. Fortunately for him, his attorney was already at the jailhouse and saw them bring him in, and it was not on a weekend so Stanford was able to arrange bail expeditiously. His attorney and long-time friend called Claudette because he knew that out of the four of us, Claudette and Helena are the closest.

We have been to see our sister in the hospital and have done our best to be cheerful and supportive of her at this time. We still love her no matter what. That's the depth of our friendship for each other, and when she is released she is going to stay with Claudette for a few days until all of this sorry mess can be addressed.
Til death do us part. How many couples repeat these words to each other in sincerity and in what we know at the time to be an unfailing love?

These words are meant to refer to natural causes in the life cycle, or circumstances that are acts of God. How many couples are faced with the realization that sometimes it can come from their own hand or the hand of the one they love? Love is a many resplendent thing but when it takes a wrong turn on an off ramp of lies and deceit it can be a very, very dangerous...thing.