Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

account she shared with Bill. They had begun it with $10,000; she had eventually contributed $208,000 with checks she had written from her inheritance account. Bill never put so much as a dime into the account, and for fifteen years he didn’t take anything out without Sue’s okay.
    Bill had always figured their income tax and did the filing.
    It only made sense now for Sue to evaluate their assets as they would soon be negotiating the division of the property and funds they had accumulated in twenty-two years of marriage. She assumed that they were headed for nasty battles and that Bill would attempt to wear her down until she was “broke mentally or broke financially—or both.”
    Money meant everything to Bill Jensen, but it wasn’t what was foremost in Sue’s mind.
    Sue made lists of what mattered most to her. Any woman caught in a litigious divorce would probably recognize and empathize with her final document:
My children
My sister
My health
My sense of peace
My future
My friends and the happiness friendships bring
My happiness
A sense of self-integrity
My sense of purpose, lifetime accomplishments
Financial security
    All things being equal, it was a modest list.
    In Washington State, if parties agree, it takes only three months for a divorce to become final. Sue had no illusions that Bill was hurting emotionally because he still loved her. It was just that he—like a number of husbands (and wives)—had always wanted to be the one to walk away, and he’d been ill prepared when Sue filed for divorce.
    Janet Brooks worked with Sue in an attempt to determine which assets belonging to her and Bill were intact and which were somewhat diminished. They needed to find out what was community property and what was separate. It was standard procedure in any divorce. On some occasions, it is necessary to discover if there has been any “dissipation of assets”—that is, has either party disposed of money, stocks, vehicles, jewelry, or other valuable belongings that were shared by both the husband and the wife?
    Novels, movies, and television dramas often depict one spouse or the other charging up to the limits of credit cards, sneaking money out of bank accounts, or cleverly hiding assets. Depending on the slant of scripts, spending an about-to-be-ex’s assets can seem either hilarious or outrageous.
    On her divorce attorney’s advice, Sue attempted to freeze the accounts and investments she shared with Bill. But when she inquired about their joint bank account, she had a shock. The money was all gone. She had put almost a quarter of a million dollars from her parents’ legacy to her into their joint account, and it was missing.
    First, she cried. “I fell apart,” Sue admitted. “But I had my sister and four good girlfriends who were there for me. My sister took me by the shoulders and there was no nonsense about her. She told me, ‘This is exactly what Bill wants. He expects you to cave in. You have two kids. You’ve got to pull yourself together.’ And I did.”
    And then, with Janet Brooks’s help, she began to close out joint credit cards and freeze any other accounts that had been opened in both her name and Bill’s.
    Sue didn’t know where Bill lived; he had disappeared, along with their Sequoia SUV. She had even become her own private detective, determined to find the missing Sequoia. In her old Mustang or Jenny’s Impala she drove through parking lots looking for it. And then she deduced that wherever Bill was, he had probably flown there; he’d complained often enough that driving bothered his back and his knee. One day she went to the parking garage of the Sea-Tac Airport and drove up the winding ramps that led to each of the many levels there, looking especially in the handicapped spaces. And there it was. Bill had probably assumed it was safely hidden among the hundreds of vehicles left by travelers.
    Sue used the key she had, backed the Sequoia out, and left the Impala that Chuck Jensen had given to Jenny—with no key. They could come back to get that later. She had to pay $300 in parking charges to leave the airport garage, but she had her SUV back.
    She knew Bill would be very angry that she had found it. It was an expensive vehicle; they’d paid $48,000 for it the year before. To forestall Bill’s taking it again, Sue hid the SUV in a friend’s garage.
    In the first court hearing after Bill was served with divorce papers in July, the judge had awarded the Sequoia to Sue. She