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Emily.”
    “I know my mom, with her own mouth, had talked about knowing what would happen to her.”
    Gail’s exact words to Emily—spoken just a few months before her murder—stung Emily’s thoughts as she listened to her father protect his former lover: “This will not end until one of us is dead,” Gail had said, speaking about the tension and hostility between her and her husband’s mistress.
     
     
    Back at the OCSD in Pontiac, the main hub of the investigation, Sergeant Alan Whitefield called Donna Trapani, the woman George said he had worked for, and the kids said—George later admitting reluctantly—he had also had a tumultuous affair with at one time. It was near one o’clock on the morning after Gail’s murder. Now was as good a time as any to get an idea, if possible, from “the other woman” regarding where she stood in the relationship with George, and, maybe most important, where she was at nine o’clock the night before. Logistically speaking, it was probably impossible—if Donna was in Florida—for her to fly into Pontiac, kill Gail, and fly back home (especially without leaving a paper trail). Still, Whitefield needed to find out what Donna was doing at the time of Gail’s murder, and if she was, in fact, in Florida. Anyone can feign where they’re calling from and roll over calls to another line. Just because George had said Donna was calling from Florida, it didn’t mean it was so. Donna Trapani could have been at a nearby hotel, for all the OCSD knew.
    Donna lived in the Panhandle of Florida, outside Panama City. During his second interview George had claimed to be talking to Donna between the hour of nine and nine-thirty that night—that’s why he had been so adamant about Donna having had nothing to do with killing Gail.
    But then maybe the guy just didn’t want to believe it.
    Whitefield needed to verify George’s “alibi.” Maybe they were covering for each other? After all, George had had the opportunity to kill his wife. And the wife in the way of an affair was one of the oldest motives for murder. Phone records would take some time, so the next best thing was an interview.
    “Mrs. Trapani, this is Sergeant Alan Whitefield with the Oakland County Sheriff ’s Department in Michigan.”
    “Yes . . . yes,” Donna said in her scratchy I-just-woke-up voice. She sounded groggy and tired. It was late, about 1:00 A.M. , Panama City, Florida, time. Donna claimed to have been awoken by the ringing telephone. “What is it—who is this?”
    “Do you know George Fulton?” Whitefield asked right out of the box.
    “Yes . . . yes. He works for me.”
    “When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Fulton, ma’am?”
    Donna thought about it a moment. “Earlier tonight. He paged me and I returned the call.” Then she added— without being asked, Whitefield wrote in his report of the phone call—“I spoke to him maybe four to six times last night all together.”
    “What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Fulton?”
    “We work together in the health care business. I own the company. It’s about to go bankrupt. George is helping me with the books.”
    Whitefield asked when they had last spoken.
    Donna didn’t hesitate: “Between eight and eight-thirty.” (That meant nine to nine-thirty in Michigan because of the time difference.) “He paged me about seven forty-five and I called him back as soon as I could.”
    As they spoke, it was clear to Whitefield that there still may have been more to the relationship than employee and employer. When he broached the subject, Donna said flat out: “Yes, I had an affair with George. Hell, we even lived together for three months!”
    “What happened?”
    “He left me and got his own apartment [in Florida]. He wanted to save his marriage, so he then moved back to Michigan in April [1999]. We have remained close friends.”
    But there was more—plenty. Whitefield asked Donna to explain.
    “Well, he asked me to come to