But I Trusted You: Ann Rule's Crime Files #14

by Ann Rule

  He was a good-natured guy and a good neighbor. Chuck was far handsomer than he had any right to be for a man of his age, and women often came on to him. In the first years of his marriage, he began a physical relationship with a female coworker whom he’d known for seven or eight years. Her name was Michelle Conley,* and she was an attractive teaching intern, a few years older than Teresa. Michelle responded to him in a way his wife hadn’t for a long time.

  They first became intimate when Teresa was pregnant with Morgan. The Leonards had something of an open marriage. Whether they both knew it and discussed it with one another is questionable.

  At least outwardly, neither Chuck nor Teresa appeared to be unhappy with their relationship. Chuck had a real rapport with teenage students, and his counseling helped many of them who were suffering through some of the more difficult times of life. He had saved some of them from suicide.

  Along with Morgan, those kids gave him a reason to be happy. After he had his second daughter, no one could say Chuck hadn’t tried to keep their family together, even if it was probably because he loved Morgan so much. He made no promises to Michelle, but, as Teresa grew colder to him, he felt closer to Michelle, and she definitely wanted to marry him if she could. The more Teresa pulled away from him, the more Chuck sought out Michelle. However, like most men, he wasn’t interested in getting divorced and remarried.

  There was Morgan and she came first.

  In July 1992, Chuck and Michelle were involved in an embarrassing incident, more likely to happen to teenagers than middle-aged educators. A Marysville police officer approached Chuck’s car where it was parked on a quiet street at six in the evening. His police report said he found Michelle, whose clothing was in disarray, sitting on Chuck’s lap, and noted that Chuck was completely naked. They were both removed from the vehicle, handcuffed, and placed in the back of the police unit. Michelle was cited for disorderly conduct, and Chuck for indecent exposure.

  At their trial, they were acquitted of the charges. But naturally, Teresa learned of the incident and it didn’t help their already teetering marriage. They stayed together for a few more years, but it became more of an adversarial relationship, held together only by their shared love for Morgan.

  And then, quite suddenly, the Leonard marriage was over. Teresa had seen brighter prospects on the horizon: she was in touch regularly with Nick Callas. Nick was rich now, and it didn’t matter to Teresa that he was married.

  In early 1995, Teresa took three-and-a-half-year-old Morgan and moved out of Chuck’s house at Lake Goodwin into an apartment on Everett Mall Way, an hour’s drive away.

  Teresa had written to Nick Callas, telling him that she was coming to Hawaii with a friend and she would like to see him. He responded with plane tickets and the promise of a place for them to stay.

  It hadn’t taken long for Teresa to feel quite secure in her affair with Nick Callas, and she fully expected they would marry in the foreseeable future. She invited Joyce Lilly to join her on a vacation to Maui in February 1995, the first of four trips to Hawaii where Joyce accompanied her. Over the next two years, Teresa would visit Callas once a month or more.

  The two women would stay in one of Nick’s more luxurious condominiums, and when they arrived, there were exotic fresh flowers waiting for them in the Napili Shores condo. Nick came by a few hours later, and Joyce watched as he and Teresa hugged and kissed, and then Teresa sat on his lap while the three visited.

  The next morning, Joyce was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by someone sitting on her bed. It was Nick, who apologized profusely. He had meant to wake Teresa up. He moved to the other bed, wakened her gently, and then the two of them walked out to the veranda.

  Joyce realized that Teresa wasn’t exaggerating about her affair with Nick Callas; they certainly seemed to be entranced with one another. By July 1995, Teresa confided that Nick sent her the monthly first-class tickets to Maui, and checks for $1,000 to $1,250 as regularly. During the weeks that Chuck had custody of Morgan, she would sometimes spend several days in Hawaii with Nick.

  When Teresa was in Washington, despite Nick’s involvement in his many business interests, they usually called each other up to ten times a day. Nick called Teresa more than she called him, but they were constantly in contact. Nick would recall later that they talked mostly about his son Jack* and Morgan.

  “Sometimes we talked about movies,” Nick remembered. “We had brief calls that ended when someone came into her little shop, or people walked into my office, but sometimes we talked for a couple of hours.”

  In July 1995, Teresa filed for divorce.

  Teresa’s divorce action against Chuck seemed to be more a threat than a reality. In any event, neither Teresa nor Chuck pursued it avidly. Chuck consulted an attorney, who advised him to keep the divorce unsettled. That would establish a pattern of joint custody and help him gain custody of Morgan.

  After much wrangling, they worked out a grudging custody arrangement, agreeing that Morgan would stay with each of them during alternate weeks. As long as Chuck knew that his little girl was living close by, he would do whatever was necessary to be with her, even stall a divorce that he wanted as much as Teresa—or more.

  Morgan gave Teresa leverage with Chuck, and she felt confident that he would do what she wanted: all she had to do was threaten to take Morgan far away from him. And that is what she planned to do—but not yet.

  Morgan had become a pawn, someone Teresa could use to advance her own goals. She seemed unable to understand that taking Chuck away from Morgan, robbing her of her father, would be a cruel thing to do—and a great loss in her daughter’s life. Teresa’s Hawaiian lover could never care for the child the way Morgan’s real father did. Nick had never even seen Morgan, although Teresa had met his little boy a few times.

  Teresa Gaethe-Leonard had a plan in mind, but the logistics involved were going to be tricky. Until she was absolutely sure that she had a safe and luxuriant landing place, she was not going to divorce Chuck. Her lover, Nick Callas, was still very married. Although she didn’t admit it to her friends, Nick and she had never even discussed his getting divorced.

  Teresa was even a business boost for Nick. She worked as an outside salesperson for Orca Travel and she often connected clients and her lover when they were looking for high-end housing in Hawaii. The referrals she occasionally sent him were a good cover, too. Although Nick had special phone lines set up for them to talk, if Grace ever wondered about the calls, he would say that Teresa was a business contact.

  Nick continued to buy Teresa round-trip tickets to Hawaii, she had an American Express card with his name on it, and he provided lodging in one of his plush condos whenever she could fly to the islands. But he was content with the way things were, and he believed she was, too. Among her many talents, she was a persuasive actress.

  Teresa was the perfect mistress. She never discussed anything depressing with Nick. “Teresa shares only positive things with me,” he said once, “not negative things.”

  In the two years of their passionate affair, he learned virtually nothing about her early years in Louisiana with her family. If Nick asked her anything about them, she became quiet—but offered no information. There were secrets within secrets in her past that Nick didn’t know, and Teresa meant to keep it that way.

  In Nick Callas’s memory, they hadn’t talked about any unhappy aspects of their affair because there weren’t any. Their time together was joyous and relaxing, full of passion. They were able to step out of their own everyday lives and enjoy each other whenever Teresa came to Hawaii. Sometimes, Nick came to the Northwest for a few days and they took trips together to ski lodges and resorts. They never discussed marrying one another, and Nick felt neither of them expected or wanted that to happen. He was unaware of plans for Teresa and Morgan to move to Hawaii, and he certainly had no intention of divorcing his wife.

  “I got married once,” he said later. “I waited until I was forty-one years old to get married, and that was it for m
e. I was only going to be married once.”

  Teresa was a woman who bolstered his confidence, gave him her constant approval, delighted him in bed, and demanded nothing of him. Nick Callas had no hint that Teresa had built a maze of complicated plans for them. He never saw a bad side of her, and she was always smiling and bubbly when they were together. Almost any man who fantasizes about being unfaithful to his wife would probably gravitate toward someone like Teresa.

  No nagging. No strings. No problems.

  Callas had no biological children, but he loved his adopted son Jack—who was born in October 1991, as if he was the child of his own loins.

  Teresa secretly believed that if she gave Nick a child with his own genes, his own Greek heritage, he would be so happy and grateful that he would leave his wife and marry her. Since Teresa had insisted on a hysterectomy after Morgan’s birth, that was going to be tricky. Now, she truly could not conceive, but she had already planned for that.

  Teresa had visited her gynecologist on May 10, 1995. She wanted to know exactly how in vitro fertilization worked. She knew she still produced eggs, and she told her doctor that “an old friend” who lived in Hawaii had agreed to furnish sperm.

  “How often do you see this man?” the female surgeon asked.

  “Every two weeks.” It was, of course, a lie.

  “Have you discussed in vitro with him?”

  “Yes—and he’s very supportive of it.” This, too, was a lie. Nick had no plans to have a baby with Teresa. Teresa believed that Nick and his wife had adopted Jack because of some fertility problem with Grace. But it wasn’t Grace who couldn’t conceive; it was Nick’s problem.

  Although he had never confided in Teresa about it, he believed that he was incapable of fathering a child. He and Grace had tried for years to conceive, traveling to southern California to confer with top fertility specialists. They had first tried seven in vitro procedures, mixing Grace’s eggs with Nick’s sperm in a petri dish, hoping their doctor could implant viable embryos in Grace’s uterus.

  But no pregnancies resulted. It had been expensive, but the emotional pain was the worst part of that. Again and again, Grace failed to become pregnant.

  They hadn’t given up, but they tried another way. Although they worked with medical experts, Nick called it the “turkey baster method.” Over five years, they tried seven times. In two instances his sperm was injected in two different extremely fertile surrogate mothers, who had each become pregnant in their own marriages on the first try. Both of the female subjects were prepared to carry a resultant embryo to term. They were disappointed when neither potential surrogate mother became pregnant.

  Nick Callas, as masculine as he looked, had a very low sperm count. They didn’t know why. His doctors eventually diagnosed him as having too many clusters of veins and arteries in his testicles for sperm to survive long. They offered him surgery to remove them, but gave him no promises of success. He opted not to have the operation.

  Whether Teresa was aware of this is questionable. Had Nick told her he could not father a child? Nick would insist later that they had never discussed having a child together. There was no reason to share his most intimate physical problems with her.

  But Teresa believed what she believed, and she was given to “magical thinking” where everything would turn out as she visualized it. She rapidly erased any truth that interfered with her plans.

  Teresa lied once more to her doctor, saying that she had a close female friend who would offer her a “surrogate womb” to carry her own fertilized egg to term.

  In Teresa’s mind, the baby would be hers and Nick Callas’s child, just as much as if conception had taken place the old-fashioned way. And biologically that would be true.

  Teresa had studied up on all kinds of infertility, and state-of-the-art insemination procedures. The “friend” who had volunteered to carry her baby was probably another exaggeration. If she moved to Hawaii, Teresa planned to find a surrogate mother and pay her to carry a baby after in vitro fertilization with Nick’s sperm. If Teresa’s eggs were no longer usable for some reason, she realized she might have to forgo her genetic participation. Whatever it took, she would see that Nick had a child who was partly his own, and then he would marry her and they would raise that child—and Morgan, and, hopefully, Nick’s son—together.

  Her plan sounded more like an extremely complicated science project than a baby born out of love. And, short of a miracle, it was doomed from the beginning.

  Her doctor warned Teresa of legal pitfalls. She cited cases she had read about where the surrogates refused to give up the babies after they were born. “That can be a sticky situation,” she said, advising her that she should consult with an attorney before she began such a process.

  “And it would help any case that came up against you if you were married to the baby’s biological father,” she added.

  Teresa’s gynecologist knew very little about her current marital status. She gave her the names of some fertility specialists, explaining that she didn’t have the additional training needed to harvest and implant eggs.

  Teresa was jubilant when she left her office, heedless of all the warnings she’d been given. She knew her plans weren’t going to be easy to carry off, but she was sure she could do it. Of course, it was all pie in the sky.

  There was the problem of Chuck. Teresa expected him to dig in his heels and refuse to let her take Morgan to Hawaii to live. There was no question about it, and she at least accepted that.

  Although Chuck had felt a weight lift from his shoulders when Teresa moved out, he missed living full-time with Morgan. Having her with him every other week just wasn’t the same as being her dad every day. When Teresa occasionally mentioned that she intended to live in Hawaii, Chuck worried.

  He would die before he would let Teresa take his little girl so far away. He may even have used that phrase when she brought up the subject.

  Outwardly, Chuck Leonard wasn’t a serious man. He had an active social life, and he was still dating Michelle. Michelle was probably the perfect woman for him. She wasn’t the jealous type, and she believed that he was faithful to her, but she hadn’t asked for that. She lived with Chuck during the weeks that Morgan wasn’t staying there, and she worried about his getting home safe at night. They had a great time together, and she was easygoing and devoted to him.

  Chuck didn’t miss Teresa, but he was deadly serious about Morgan. He loved her with all the devotion in his body. He was fifty-two and not likely to have more children. Morgan meant the whole world to him, and he looked forward to the weeks when his daughter lived with him.

  On the other hand, Teresa often left Morgan with near-strangers as babysitters. She made friends with a man named Bill Pursley* who lived in the same apartment building she did and often asked him to look after Morgan. Chuck’s friends, Sandy and Jan—who had once warned Chuck that he’d made a terrible mistake marrying Teresa—regularly looked after Morgan when Teresa was away or busy.

  And she often was. Teresa loved Morgan, but she needed time for herself, too.

  How was Teresa going to coordinate a medically precarious pregnancy with her lover, a nonacrimonious divorce from her husband, and her lover’s divorce from his wife, and be sure all the pieces dovetailed? It was essential that nobody became angry enough to block her plans. She walked on eggshells, testing all the men in her life and balancing them like a juggler with more and more plates in the air.

  Teresa believed, albeit erroneously, that Chuck’s girlfriend was a recent high school graduate and that he was acting unethically. That would give Teresa another weapon to use against him. Actually, Michelle was a few years older than Teresa.

  Teresa still had her consignment store. Chuck never shorted her on child support and he paid for so many other things that Morgan needed. Nick Callas was always willing to buy her tickets to Hawaii for a liaison with him. She was convinced he loved her or, at the very least, found her too sensuous and desirable to walk away from.r />
  If Teresa wrote down her goals, they would have read like this:

  Gain full legal custody of Morgan.

  Finalize divorce from Chuck.

  Move to Hawaii.

  Have a child with Nick, one way or the other.

  Convince him to leave his wife.

  Marry Nick and live happily ever after.

  Goals four and five could happen in any order as far as Teresa was concerned. Nick Callas was probably the biggest challenge she’d ever faced. He was quite content with his life, even though he was also devoted to Teresa. Sexually, she probably was the most enchanting woman he knew. But Nick was fifty, and he had come to realize that sex wasn’t the most important thing in the world. He got along well enough with his wife. And if he weighed a love affair against how much it would cost him to get a divorce, his bank account would come first. He had spent years building up a fortune and a marriage, and if he divorced his wife, at least half of that would be gone. More than that, he would probably lose custody of Jack. Ironically, like Chuck, Nick didn’t want to do anything that would take his son out of his life. He and Grace had raised the little boy from birth, carrying him straight from the hospital to their home, and he was a wonderful little boy.

  Nick fully expected to maintain both his marriage and his affair with Teresa. And as much as Nick loved Teresa, he knew she wasn’t the average woman. Not at all. “Teresa’s probably ninety percent an angel, and ten percent crazy,” he once said.

  He may have overestimated the angel percentage.

  Thwarted, Teresa had to regroup, although she still believed that when she actually presented Nick with his own baby, he would change his mind.

  And so she stalled, living in her apartment with Morgan, operating her little shop, and waiting to follow through on her divorce from Chuck. All things being equal, and if Chuck didn’t fight too hard for custody of Morgan, a divorce in Washington State took only three months.