My Husband’s Girlfriend Sits in My Salon Chair Every Thursday — She Has No Idea Whose Wife Is Holding the Scissors

PART 4 — The Trap Closes

He didn't get far. They never do.

The DA moved fast — Patrice made sure of that. By Monday, Dale was arrested at his office: forgery, fraud, attempted theft. The appointment book, Ashley's testimony, and Patrice's recording made it open and shut.

And Ashley? Ashley talked. Oh, how she talked.

Once she understood that Dale had planned to leave *her* holding nothing — the condo was in the company's name, the Lexus was a lease, the ring was bought on a business credit card he intended to default on — the girl who'd told me everything on Thursdays told the DA everything on Monday.

"He said the boat account was ours," she told investigators, crying. "Four hundred thousand. He said after the divorce we'd—" She stopped. "There is no 'ours,' is there?"

"No, honey," Patrice told her gently. "There never was."

The boat account was frozen. The equipment loans stayed exactly where they belonged — with the business, with Dale. The back taxes too. Every signature he'd forged unraveled under a handwriting expert in about twenty minutes.

And me? I sat in Patrice's office and learned what I actually had.

Twenty-six years of marriage. A business I'd helped build — I'd done the books for the first decade, before he "didn't need" me anymore. A house with equity. Retirement accounts he'd told me were "struggling."

"Carol," Patrice said, sliding the numbers across her desk, "you're not the broke wife cleaning a dentist's office. You're a woman who's owed half of a very successful company."

I thought about the mammogram I'd skipped over a copay. About Saturdays scrubbing a dentist's office while my husband hid four hundred thousand dollars.

"Half," I repeated.

"At minimum. Given the fraud —" Patrice smiled that not-kind smile — "we're going for more."