Mayfield Enterprises Pt. 01

Micki made love to me two more times that weekend.

Monday morning, I headed back to Tennessee with an uncomfortable feeling about Micki getting us into this business deal with Nesbit. I don't know if I felt that way because I didn't trust Nesbit or if it was just the money, we were committing to it, probably both. There was one other thing that concerned me. While the sex Micki and I had over the weekend was fantastic, she never once said, "I love You."

In the past, anytime we made love, Micki would tell me she loved me several times. So, was the great sex something she did to fulfill her needs, or did she do it for love?

Chapter 4

April 2012

Three weeks later when I came home for the weekend, I didn't get the welcome I expected. Micki gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked me how my job was going but didn't show any real interest in my answer. So, I asked her about the progress she had made on our business plan. I thought she would be excited to talk about it, but I was wrong.

"It's going about the way we expected it would," is all she said about it.

Micki seemed to be a little standoffish all weekend and when I tried to ask her about it, she got annoyed. "There is nothing wrong. I am just tired and you being away all of the time isn't helping."

Was she telling me that she missed me and didn't like that I had to be away from home so much or was she blaming me for her mood because I was away so much? I didn't know how to take it. I got no loving that weekend.

For the first time since we got married, I was glad to be heading back to Tennessee on Monday.

Micki was cold to me during our phone calls for the first week I was away, but she warmed up a little after that, but she continued to deny that anything was wrong. Her attitude started me worrying about the status of our marriage.

I made calls home at different times when I knew that Micki should be home and she answered every time I called. The fact that Micki was home when I called helped but her attitude on the phone didn't relieve my anxiety. I often got the impression that she is annoyed by my calls, but she never said so.

Thinking that my being away from home so much is the problem, I put more effort into making Micki happy when I was home with little success. The months rolled by with no change in Micki's attitude.

Chapter 5

January 2013

It was the middle of January, and I was getting ready to head home for a long weekend, so I called Micki to let her know what time I was getting on the road. Micki sounded happy to talk to me this time. We chatted for a minute then Micki said, "Just so you know, we had three inches of snow overnight. We didn't get anymore today but it has been overcast all day and the temperature never got above freezing. Be careful, because a lot of the roads around here are icy."

I was surprised that her tone was more loving than it had been recently. Maybe Micki was over whatever was eating at her.

It was getting dark as I approached the house, but I could see there was still snow in the driveway. What caught my eye was a set of tire tracks in the snow leading up to the garage door. The tracks were too wide to be from Micki's Honda and they led to the door on my side of the garage.

After I parked my truck in the garage, I went outside to look at the tracks again. There was only one set of tracks and since there was no other car in the garage the tracks were made by someone backing out of the garage and down the driveway. That meant that the tracks were made by a car that was in the garage before it started snowing, and the width of the tire tracks made me think of Nesbit's Corvette.

Micki greeted me in the kitchen with a kiss and seemed happy to see me, but I wasn't sure if I was happy to see her. I didn't mention the tracks in the snow. I wanted to see if she would tell me who spent the night with her. I asked her if she had been out in the snow, and she said that she had not.

Chapter 6

February 2013

When I left for work on Monday, I was pretty sure that Micki was having an affair and I suspected that it was Nesbit that was fucking my wife, but I had to find out for sure before I said anything to her.

I decided to make a weekend trip home a week earlier than usual and I didn't tell Micki. I took Thursday off, rented a car, and made the 500-mile trip in 7.5 hours arriving home at 6:15 PM. I parked the rental car in a vacant lot about a quarter-mile down the road and walked back to the house. I peeked into the garage and Micki's car was there, but there were no lights on in the house. I entered the house and turned the alarm off, then took a quick look around. I didn't see anything that would confirm or disprove my suspicion, so I turned the alarm back on and went down to the basement to wait for Micki to come home. I wanted to know if Micki was out with Nesbit and to confront them if he came in with her.

I could hear Nesbit's Corvette before it even reached the driveway, so I went up to the kitchen door to listen to their conversation as they came into the house. I was waiting for the right moment to break up their party, but when I heard their conversation, I froze.

"I don't know why you keep beating yourself up. This is not your fault. He chose to do this, and he didn't care how much it would hurt you," Nesbit said.

"I know that but isn't there any other way to handle this?"

"Well, you can go for a divorce and claim that he committed adultery, which would take at least six months and that would mean that we couldn't be together until after the divorce was granted. If he finds out, we have been together he can counter sue and you would lose the upper hand. Then after all that you would only get half of everything, and we need it all to do what we want to do. My plan will get you everything, and after he dragged you up here away from your friends and your old job don't you think you are entitled to everything?"

I didn't drag Micki anywhere. We both agreed that moving to Ashville was the right move for us. I was having difficulty processing what I was hearing. Micki thinks I cheated on her. Where the hell did, she get that idea? And she wants to divorce me to be with Nesbit. I could feel the knot in my stomach tightening. I didn't care about the divorce, which was a foregone conclusion after I found out she was cheating on me. If she thought I was having an affair, why didn't she confront me? She didn't care enough to seek the truth.

"But won't I be the first person they suspect?" Micki said.

Suspect her of what? What the fuck are they planning? These thoughts were spinning around in my head like a pinwheel. I had to force myself to concentrate on what they were saying, which was difficult in my state of mind.

"Who will even know he is gone? Once I become Tom Mayfield, no one will be looking for him, and his body will never be found. Then we sell this house and move out to California. I can make myself look enough like Tom to pass for him when I go for a California driver's license. Then we will be home free."

I thought, "Holy shit, they are planning to kill me, and Nesbit plans to take over my life. Why would he want to become me? What advantage would that give him?"

"Okay, then when do we do it?" Micki asked.

"We'll do it after he files your taxes. We don't want any problems with the IRS, and by that time he should have already received his annual bonus. I'll take care of everything, all you have to do is keep him dumb and happy until we're ready," Nesbit said.

I was stunned. I thought Micki loved me, but I just heard her on the other side of the door plotting my death with that shit Nesbit.

I was still standing on the basement stairs when I heard Micki set the alarm. Now I was stuck because I can't leave the house without turning off the alarm, which would alert them that someone was in the house. I went back down to the basement and sat in an old chair while I tried to make sense out of what I heard.

I never cheated on Micki; how could she believe that I did. Is she really plotting with Nesbit to kill me? If I go to the police, what could I tell them? I don't have any proof that Micki is planning to kill me. Going to the police might cause them to change their plans, but I don't want to just stop them, I want to make sure they get punished for plotting against me. While my main emotion was red hot anger, these thoughts and more were spinning around in my head. I took a deep breath and tried to clear my mind and deal with one thing at a time. Since I was going to be stuck in the basement until the two of them left in the morning, I would need to get some sleep, so I made myself as comfortable as I could in the chair and had a fitful night's sleep.

In the morning after I heard both cars leave, I went upstairs to find something to eat. Since the frying pan was still on the stove and their breakfast dishes were still on the table, I didn't worry about making a mess. I fried a couple of eggs and made toast and reheated the leftover coffee.

While I ate, I started my planning. I was pretty sure that I could keep Micki and her lover from successfully carrying out their plan, but just in case something goes wrong I decided to make sure they couldn't profit from it. From what Nesbit said, I would probably have until April, giving me a couple of months to find a way to end the plot and get Micki and Nesbit locked up

For a moment, I wondered if I could convince Micki that I never cheated on her, would she still want to go through with the plan to kill me? I thought about that for a while but realized that it didn't matter. Even if I had cheated on her, plotting to kill me while she is fucking that piece of crap Nesbit is unforgivable. They both need to pay.

Over the next two weeks, I canceled my life insurance policy, changed my will to leave everything to the Salvation Army, and monitored our bank and investment accounts.

Chapter 7

By the last week of March, I had done everything I could to prepare but I still did not have the smoking gun that would put the two lovers away. There was one more thing I wanted to do and that was to get inside Nesbit's house.

I came back from Memphis on the first Thursday in April, unannounced and at five o'clock that evening I parked my truck in a parking area next to an abandoned ESSO service station on Old Marshall Highway. The quickest route to our house from Ashville was to go north on Old Marshall Highway past the ESSO station, then left on Fletcher Martin Road across the river then left on Chandler Road. Our house is only a quarter-mile in a straight line across the river from where I was parked, and I could see the house from there, but it's a fifteen-minute drive from the ESSO station to the house.

I was watching the traffic on Old Marshall Road waiting for Micki to drive by. Her Honda drove by at 5:16 PM. I was waiting to see if Nesbit's red Corvette would follow Micki home, but the only Corvette I saw on Old Marshall Road was a brand-new cobalt blue Vette that passed me five minutes after Micki. I wondered if Nesbit had bought a new car. Could that cobalt Vette be his? Using my binoculars, I watched the house until I saw that blue Corvette pull into my garage.

I waited a half-hour to make sure they did not leave again, and then I drove to Nesbit's house. His house was in a heavily wooded area providing privacy for the homes in the area. I parked my truck on an adjacent street and walked back to the house. As far as I could tell the house did not have an alarm system. I didn't want to break in if I didn't have to, so I looked around the outside of the house to see if he had a hidden key somewhere. The key was on a ledge above the back door.

The house was a ranch style with three bedrooms, one of which Nesbit had turned into a study. That's where I started my search. There was a laptop computer sitting on the desk, and the power was on, so all I had to do was tap the touch pat and the desktop lit up. I looked around his desk and found a list of all his passwords hidden under the computer, so I had no problem opening his e-mails. I started scanning through the e-mails, but there was nothing in them that would be incriminating to him. There were no e-mails to or from Micki and nothing of a business nature until I found an email dated February third. The note was from a real estate agent in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Dear Mr. Mayfield,

As your agent in this matter, I am happy to inform you that Mr. McRannell has agreed to your offer of $1.5 million dollars for the purchase of the Deadwood Saloon, Hotel and Casino on Main Street in Deadwood. I will send the signed contract to you via FedEx as soon as I have it. We can schedule the closing with Mr. McRannell's lawyers as soon as they receive the due diligence check from you. Mr. McRannell hopes that we can close this deal in early May.

I look forward to meeting you when you come up for the closing.

Sincerely,

Matthew Johnson

What the hell? Nesbit is buying a hotel and casino in Deadwood, South Dakota using my name? Is that what he is doing with the money we gave him to buy the mineral rights from the Owen family? Is that why he needs to take over my identity?

I printed the letter and continued looking through his notes. The rest of his e-mails turned up nothing useable. I found the link to his bank account and was able to check it out. There was no record of the deposit of a $500K check from our bank into Nesbit's account, but there was a check written from Nesbit's account to Mayfield Enterprises LLC. Had Micki and Nesbit created a company in my name, and what's an LLC?

I googled LLC and learned that it stands for Limited Liability Company. An LLC can easily be set up by one or more owners to protect their personal assets against lawsuits filed by creditors of the LLC.

Did Micki and Nesbit create Mayfield Enterprises LLC to buy the mineral rights in North Carolina or is there something else going on here? Did Micki invest our $500K in the LLC? Is the proposed purchase of the Deadwood Saloon, Hotel, and Casino a deal being made by the LLC? This was becoming a case of 'The more you know, the more you know you don't know.'

In Nesbit's bookmarks, I found a link listed only as 'ME.' The link turned out to be the website for Mayfield Enterprises. On the home page of the website, there was a picture of Nesbit and Micki with a caption below the picture identifying them as Thomas and Michele Mayfield, President and Treasurer of Mayfield Enterprises LLC. Nesbit was already taking over my identity.

The website described Mayfield Enterprises as an investment company interested in mergers and acquisitions. That was all there was on the company's homepage, leading me to believe that the website is a work in progress. I did an internet search on Mayfield Enterprises but got no hits, which told me that the website had not been posted to the internet yet.

I couldn't find anything else on the computer to help me figure out what Nesbit and Micki were up to. With the computer being no more help, I started going through the desk drawers. In the top center drawer, I found a loaded nine-millimeter handgun. I left that where it was and went on to the top left drawer, where I found an open FedEx envelope. The document inside the envelope was the purchase contract for the Deadwood Saloon, Casino, and Hotel. According to the contract, Mayfield Enterprises offered $1.5 million for the casino and hotel. The contract was signed by Thomas Mayfield, president of Mayfield Enterprises, but it was not my signature. It didn't look like Micki's handwriting, so I presumed that it was Nesbit that signed my name.

I put the contract back where I found it and moved down to the next drawer, where I found two notebooks, a blue one and a green one. I pulled them out and set them on the desk. I opened the green notebook and started reading. The content of the notebook was maybe fifty pages, but it detailed what Nesbit had been up to for the last couple of years. It was written like an outline for a book he was planning to write, only the main characters in the story were Nesbit, Micki, and me. Nesbit had blocked out each step of a plan and then fill in details like names, places, and times as he progressed through the plan. The plan outline started two years ago, before he met Micki, and continued up to and including his plan for my death.

Nesbit started with a description of a married couple he was hoping to find. They had to be about his age, both have careers with good incomes and no children yet. The couple would be new to the area and not have any close relatives nearby. The wife had to be attractive, assertive, and trusted by her husband. The husband would need to work long hours or travel often. He went into detail on how he went about finding the ideal couple for his scam. He joined LinkedIn and started making contacts with professional women all over the Southeast. That was where he found Micki. Nesbit researched both of us until he was satisfied that we were the couple he wanted.

Nesbit described Micki as smart and sexy and said he was going to enjoy seducing her. He described me as a drone, and he felt he would have no trouble turning Micki against me. He would start by convincing Micki that I was having affairs with women whenever I was working away from home.

Nesbit's seduction of Micki started in 2011. He faked his way into a broker's seminar that Micki was attending and convinced Micki that he was an investment analysis, new to the Ashville area. He found that Micki liked being complimented on the way she dressed and how smart she was. Compliments on how attractive she was didn't work on her because she wasn't someone that needed to be reassured about her desirability. It took Nesbit three months to get Micki to have lunch with him but after that, they ate together at least twice a week.

Nesbit's next move was to send Micki an anonymous note telling her that I was having an affair while I was working in Tennessee. Once Micki got suspicious it was easy for Nesbit to inflame her anger. He managed to convince Micki not to do anything until she had proof that I was cheating on her. The proof came as another anonymous note with pictures attached. The pictures showed a blond woman having dinner with me and another picture of the same woman coming out of my hotel room. The pictures must have been photo-shopped because I never had dinner with that woman, nor had I ever had her in my hotel room. The truth is that I had never met the woman in the pictures.

Once Nesbit had Micki angry enough to want to divorce me, he was able to get her into his bed. The affair started more than a year ago, and over that year Nesbit told Micki that he was in love with her and wanted to marry her after she divorced me, but that she should not let on that she knew I was cheating on her yet. He told her that they needed to start hiding money so I would not get any of it in the divorce.

Nesbit would tell Micki how unfair I was to her, making her move to North Carolina, away from her friends and family, and then cheating on her every time I went out of town. Nesbit got Micki angry to the point that she would say that she wanted to leave me penniless after the divorce. That's when Nesbit would point out that North Carolina was a no-fault state, and I would get half of everything in a divorce.

When he finally got Micki to say that it wasn't fair for me to get anything after how I treated her, it was Nesbit's opening to suggest a way for her to get everything. It took him a couple of months before she began to agree with him and start planning on how they would get away with my murder.

The idea of buying up mineral rights was bogus from the start. It was a way to get all our savings and put it somewhere that I would not be able to get to it. Micki told Nesbit that I didn't have a clue when it came to financial matters and that I trusted her completely. If she told me that buying mineral rights was a great investment, I would believe her. They used that scam to get me to sign the documents to start the LLC and to turn over all our savings to them, and like a trusting idiot, I did.