"She told me many times that she never had enough money left out of her own paycheck," Barb said.
Ronda hadn't resented that at first, but within six or seven months of her wedding, she sensed a change in Ron, and suspected he might be seeing another woman. Then she found out it was his ex-wife! She had put everything she owned, including her Washington State Patrol retirement and her furniture, into the Twin Peaks Drive rambler, and she feared losing it all.
Although Ronda preferred living on the coast of Washington to inland Spokane, she was considering transferring to Macy's in Spokane when her provisional period ended. Barb crossed her fingers, hoping that would happen. If they lived close to each other again, Barb could always be sure that Ronda had backup--even though she wasn't wealthy herself. And it would give her such a sense of serenity to have both her children living near her again.
Ronda Reynolds was looking toward the future, rather than agonizing over the past. She was, after all, only thirty-three, pretty, smart, and capable, a woman who had come to see flaws in her school principal husband, small and large imperfections she hadn't recognized earlier. All newlyweds experience that, but Ron Reynolds's sins as a husband were egregious.
"Ronda was the kind of woman," Barb said, "who would pick herself up, dust herself off, and start all over again.
"She was anxious to come home, talk everything over with the people who loved her, probably lick her wounds, and then go on with her life. And we were so anxious to give her hugs and let her know we would support her decision to leave."
BUT RONDA HADN'T BEEN on either plane Barb met, and someone in the coroner's office over in Lewis County was telling her that her daughter was dead--that she was a suicide. Barb held the phone in her hand, and it was as heavy as stone. When she could speak again, she asked, "Is it being investigated?"
"Yes, ma'am, it is."
"By who?"
"The Lewis County Sheriff's Office. I have the name and number for the detective if you would like it."
"Yes, I would, please."
"I also have a number here for David Bell. He has asked me to please have you call him. He's waiting for you to call him."
Barb wrote down the numbers the almost disembodied voice dictated and hung up the phone. She already knew Dave Bell's number but she wrote it down anyway.
"I was on automatic pilot," Barb remembers. "Not even sure if I was alive. But I had to be. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer. How could those few words--just a breath in time--shatter and forever change my life?
"Tears were rolling down my face. It seemed as if I was screaming, but I couldn't make a sound. The silence was deafening. The pain in my heart was like a thousand knives ripping and tearing, and my whole body was shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to die--but I knew I couldn't."
Shock had given way to grief, and then--like so many mothers who suffer the ultimate loss--Barb Thompson tried to bargain with God.
"Dear God, take me--not my child. Give me back my daughter and take me," she demanded. "I'll gladly give you my life--but not hers! Not my baby!
"Not Ronda . . ."
Barb had been through some incredibly tough times in her life, but she could not have imagined this. She had talked with Ronda in depth about her feelings for Ron, and realized that her daughter had suspected him of infidelity with his ex-wife for months. But Ronda had long since dealt with that. She knew her marriage was irretrievably broken. Last night, she had been more worried about what would happen to her beloved Rottweilers, which she had to leave behind at her house while she spent several days in Spokane. She loved those dogs like they were the babies she had never been able to carry to term. Would Ron or his sons feed them? Would they be warm enough in their outdoor pen? She feared more that her stepsons might hurt her dogs.
And Ronda wasn't alone. Her dearest, most trusted friend of more than a decade was helping her. Dave Bell and Ronda had been lovers years before and talked about getting married. Although they loved each other back in those days, there were so many obstacles that blocked their wedding plan. Dave's divorce wasn't final, and he was going through a custody battle over his boys.
If he married Ronda too soon, his ex-wife might be granted total custody. He hadn't been able to face that.
So, a few years later, Ronda married Mark Liburdi, and she did love Mark when they married. Still, she and Dave Bell had never given up their platonic friendship. Months--even years--might go by without any contact between them, but both knew they would always be there for each other. Dave Bell had been helping her as much as he could as she prepared to leave Ron. Dave was single and Ronda soon would be.
"It wasn't as though she was going to leave one marriage and run to another man's arms," her mother recalled. "She wanted to get through her divorce and fight for those tangible things that were rightfully hers. Ron had told her she could take nothing with her when she left--except for her clothes and her dogs. And that wasn't fair; she had invested almost everything she had in the house she lived in with Ron. She even took some precious family things to that house--not heirlooms exactly, but sentimental items."
Barb Thompson felt it was quite possible that Ronda Reynolds and Dave Bell would marry one day--but not soon, and not in a hurry. Dave wanted to introduce her to his boys slowly--the right way. "I just hoped that his sons would be nicer to her than Ron's; the only one of the Reynolds boys who seemed to like her was Josh, the youngest. He was thrilled to have a 'mom' who made his school lunches and saw that he had clean clothes for school. He was still just a little boy."
Barb realized suddenly that Dave Bell must have gone to the house on Twin Peaks Drive early on this morning to pick Ronda up and drive her the seventy miles to the SeaTac Airport.
Oh my God, Barb thought. Poor Dave. What he must have walked in on when he got there . . .
Barb had to tell her mother that her cherished granddaughter would not be coming for a Christmas visit after all. Ronda was never coming home again. And then Freeman had to hear that his big sister had been shot to death. Barb herself had turned to ice. She had precious little time to cry. A single phone call galvanized her into action. Instantly, she became a woman with a mission. She was determined to find out what had really happened to Ronda, and to exact justice from anyone who might have hurt her.
She had no idea how long it was going to take. If it took the rest of her life, she didn't care.
Without Ronda, she no longer recognized her own life, but she realized there was no going back. Barb was the very epitome of a strong woman. At fifty-two, she had made her way through so many hard times and emerged--if not always victorious--in one piece, with the family she loved safe, too.
She was also a smart woman; Barb was determined not to let her emotions reveal her suspicions too early. Even though she knew it would eat at her like bitter poison, she would smile and pretend not to judge prematurely. She knew in her heart that her beautiful, kind--and, yes, stubborn--daughter hadn't committed suicide. But there were a number of people Barb suspected of doing harm to Ronda.
Somehow, she would prove who had done this. She had to.
BY THE TIME RONDA'S FAMILY learned of her sudden death, it was mid-afternoon, already growing dark. The temperature sank below freezing, and the roads were covered with black ice, the most dangerous condition of all because drivers often see the roads as wet when they are actually solid ice. If they misjudge and step on their brakes, they can easily spin out of control on the frozen roads.
Everything in Barb urged her to fly or drive over the mountains to the coast at once, but she forced herself to think rationally. She couldn't change anything now. It was far too late. She needed to pack, and to make arrangements for Ronda's burial. Or at least to begin to think about them. With that, anguish filled her heart; Ronda shouldn't be waiting to be buried or cremated; she should be sitting by the Christmas tree and talking to her Gramma Virginia.
What was going to happen to Ronda's dogs? One was Daisy's sister--Jewel--and the other t
wo were rescues. Two of them were Rottweilers. A much older, injured Rottweiler had shown up at the Reynoldses' front door one night--never to leave. Ronda insisted on keeping her, and jokingly named her Old Daisy and nursed her back to health. Old Daisy seemed to know that it was Ronda who had saved her, and she adored her mistress.
And then there was feisty little Tuffy, the Jack Russell terrier.
Ron didn't like Ronda's Rottweilers, or any dogs for that matter. He had always insisted she keep them outside in their pen, even in the winter. When the temperature dropped below freezing at night and Ronda brought them inside, he complained that their shifting and snuffling woke him up as he was a "very light" sleeper. What if Ron forgot to feed them? If Barb drove her pickup truck over to Toledo, she could bring them back with her. But then, handling two big dogs and a hyperactive small one would be difficult as Barb tried to find out what had happened to her daughter. She didn't know where she'd be staying or if there were any motels that would allow the dogs to come in the room.
She worried about them; some of Ronda's stepsons were cruel to animals. One had shot a cat, and regularly threw rocks at the Rottweilers. Ronda was worried sick anytime she had to leave them for very long with Ron and his boys, particularly after her eight-year-old Rottweiler, Duchess, died while she was alone with Jonathan. Ron always said it was heatstroke, but Ronda hadn't believed it. She knew in her heart that her dog had been beaten to death. Barb kept Duchess's ashes in her trophy case.
Barb herself had been concerned for Ronda's own safety; the boys had never accepted her. The oldest son living with Ron and Ronda--Jonathan--was almost eighteen and Ronda told her mother that he delighted in sneaking into the master bathroom when she was taking a shower. Several times she had caught him peeping through the shower curtains at her. Ronda came to feel that she had no privacy in her own home.
The third time she saw Jonathan's face grinning through a crack in the shower curtain, Ronda took action. She had taught personal safety to rookies in the Patrol and many times she had had to overcome recalcitrant suspects when there was no backup available. Enough was enough. Ronda leapt out of the shower stall, pinned the teenager's wrists behind his back, and took him down, grinding his face into the bathroom floor.
And then she told Ron. She was even angrier when he pooh-poohed her concerns about his eighteen-year-old son.
"Jonathan hated Ronda after that," Barb told Dave Bell. "She humiliated him and she hurt him physically--but he had it coming. She told me he even threatened to kill her after that."
Ronda had reported Jonathan to the Lewis County Sheriff's Office, and deputies took her complaint that her life had been threatened. Jonathan was sent to live with his mother, Katie, for four months and court-ordered to take anger management classes.
But he never really forgave Ronda.
BARB KNEW MOST of the people who were--or had been--in the center of Ronda's life: Ron Reynolds, Dave Bell, Mark Liburdi, Cheryl Gilbert, who had come to the Twin Peaks Drive house to drive Ronda to Portland, myriad friends, and some of the people she worked with at Walmart and Macy's. Some Barb liked and others made her uneasy. She needed to know more about them.
Most of all, Barb Thompson needed sleep--if she could manage it without nightmares. She'd barely slept on Tuesday night; she'd been too excited about Ronda's arrival. They had talked late into the night, making plans. The last time Barb talked to Ronda was just before eleven. She thought Dave Bell had spoken to her at 11:45 and again at 12:30 A.M.
And then there had been the strange phone call waking Barb when she finally did get to sleep.
As crazy as it might sound to some people, Barb wondered if it had been Ronda, saying a last goodbye from somewhere in a misty place between earth and heaven where she could no longer talk. Maybe Ronda had died then at twenty minutes to 2 A.M. and not at five or six, as the deputies said Ron told them.
Barb did need sleep. In the morning, her head might be clearer. Whether that was good or bad was moot.
Every morning for the rest of her life, she knew she would always wake up thinking about Ronda.
ON THURSDAY MORNING, Barb Thompson rose in the frigid hours before dawn, prepared to fly to Seattle. It was an hour's flight, over the snow-tipped peaks of the Cascade Mountains, and even at that hour, the early planes were crowded. For the rest of the world, Christmas Eve was a week away, and families had begun to travel so they could be together for the holidays. Barb had forgotten about Christmas.
Dave Bell, Ronda's long-ago fiance, had promised to meet Barb at SeaTac Airport in Seattle at a quarter after eight that Thursday morning and drive her the two hours to the Lewis County Sheriff's Office in Chehalis.
Barb trusted Dave, and she desperately needed a shoulder to lean on. Beyond Ron Reynolds and herself, Dave had probably been the last person to talk with Ronda. During their first phone call after Ronda's death, Barb had found Dave as shocked as she was. Maybe they could talk out some of their worries and preliminary conclusions as they drove south on I-5 toward where Ronda had lived. . . . and died.
BARB THOMPSON STOOD ALONE on the curb outside the luggage area on the lower level of the SeaTac Airport. It had just begun to get light, and the wind cut through her like icy knives. The airport was decorated with evergreen trees, red, green, gold, and silver ornaments and displays, and she found herself wondering why. It didn't seem like Christmas. It had taken everything she had to get on the plane in Spokane and the sick feeling in her stomach hadn't lessened at all. She didn't care how she looked. When she couldn't bring herself to curl or fix her hair, she'd slapped on an old gray baseball cap that read "Classic Rope" on the bill. Some company must have given it to her when she bought horse training equipment. Her eyes were red and swollen and she tried to hide them with sunglasses.
"Still," she recalled, "I was afraid everyone who looked at me could see right through them--and me. They could surely tell that I was just an empty shell, a dead woman walking, going through the motions."
She knew that if anyone said a word to her, she would break down and start crying hysterically again. Did anyone scurrying around her know how close she was to losing it? And how she berated herself for thinking she had the right to break down?
Barb glanced around anxiously for Dave's green Dodge truck. He was always punctual. She dreaded facing him because she knew in her heart that he was in pain, too. She repeated a silent mantra, "I can do this, I must do this," for what seemed like a million times. But her watch said she'd been waiting for only three minutes. Finally, she spotted his familiar truck.
Dave grabbed her bags and loaded them in his truck and then gave her a quick hug. They had to move away from the curb and make room for other cars that were picking up arriving passengers.
They drove in silence for minutes as Dave turned left on 188th, the street bordering the south end of the huge airport, headed east, and then south, entering the on-ramp to I-5. They both knew they had to talk about what had happened, but neither was ready yet. Oddly, Barb had always thought of Dave as more of a son-in-law than either of Ronda's husbands. He was a compassionate man, and an honest cop. If she could talk to anyone, it would be Dave, but her questions stuck in her throat.
The drive south along the freeway was familiar to them both, and it would become much more so to Barb in the years ahead. They cleared the edges of Tacoma, passed the Fort Lewis army base and McChord Field, then Olympia, and headed toward Centralia and Lewis County, trying very hard to ignore the ubiquitous Christmas decorations.
Dave Bell began to tell Barb about the hours he'd spent with Ronda two days before--the last day of her life. Neither he nor Ronda had had any inkling then of what was to come. Or, if Ronda did, she didn't say it out loud.
Dave said he had helped Ronda pack many of her possessions and carry them to her Suzuki Tracker. David recalled that Ronda had said she might stay with a woman friend when she returned from her trip to Spokane. He thought it was Cheryl Gilbert.
"She was never again going t
o live in the house she shared with Ron," Dave told Barb Thompson. "She promised to give me a wake-up call on Wednesday so I could drive down and take her to the airport."
But there had been no call from Ronda. Dave said he'd driven to her house anyway. He had called her on the way down and been surprised when Ron Reynolds answered.
"I asked to speak to Ronda," Dave Bell told her mother. "But Ron came on the line."
Bell took a deep breath before he related that Ron had been "almost nonchalant" when he broke the news that Ronda had committed suicide. Stunned, Dave had continued on to Toledo to see what could possibly have happened.
Never once had Bell believed that Ronda had killed herself.
When he arrived at the house on Twin Peaks Drive, he identified himself as Ronda's friend and as a longtime police officer. A Lewis County deputy met him and questioned him after telling him only the most basic assumptions--that Ronda had shot herself in the right side of the head, using her left hand to fire the gun, and that she'd been found in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, covered with an electric blanket that was plugged in and turned on.
"Evidently, Ron told them that he was sleeping less than fifteen feet away--but he didn't hear the gunshot," Dave said.
Barb Thompson listened. Every word brought up more suspicions.
"We were packing her things Tuesday night in the bedroom," Dave said, "and Ronda took a revolver down from a closet shelf and she handed it to me. She said she wanted me to take care of it."
But Dave Bell asked who it belonged to, and Ronda answered, "Ron. It was his father's gun."
Bell said he couldn't take possession of a gun that belonged to someone else. He'd carefully unloaded the weapon, put it back in its holster, and placed it in a drawer under the waterbed in the master bedroom.