The Girlfriends S5/E1: Shark Bait

Novel.

Hey Girlfriends, Anna here, I just wanted to give you a quick heads up about what you're here in this season of The Girlfriends. The series touches on themes of coercive control, and they'll obviously be a little bit of swearing here and there too. But the women at the heart of this series are so funny and powerful and vivacious, and there's a great payoff at the end. For the full story, listen all the way through. If any of the themes feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health

There was something about him. He was very charming, very attentive, very very smart, and very engaging.

He's explaining that he's on Maui for a little while to look at investment properties. He comes over regularly from San Francisco, hence the dating.

He's in finance and he's a scuba diver and he loves to travel. He sounds like the perfect match for me.

Wendy hasn't got the total hots for Derek. Looks wise, he kind of blends into the washer faces that appear on dating apps. Short brown hair, slightly balding. Through absolutely no fault of Derek's. He is an entirely average, middle aged white guy. But the conversation is flowing.

He was talking about going scuba diving and he saw a weal shark.

A whale shark sighting is rare on Maui. Derek is a lucky man. Taking his cue from Wendy's absorbed expression, he continues his story. There he is just off the coast, flapping his flippers on yet another unremarkable dive, when suddenly this gentle speckled, flat headed sea giant glides past him. It was amazing, amazing. As the tiki torches flicker around them, Wendy is gripped.

I would die to see a wheel show.

That is, until Derek ruins it. He tells Wendy that he was scuba diving that day with a particular whale conservation group, a local not.

For profit Pacific Will Foundation. He didn't know this, but my daughter's best friend parents owned Pacific Will Foundation. And I said, I'm sure you didn't go on Pacific Will Foundation because they only do well watching and snarkling.

They don't have scuba diving boats.

It's such a small detail.

And had he said, oh, you know what, I must be confused. It must have just had Pacific in the name. I would not have thought a second thing about it.

But he would not let it go.

No, it was Pacific Whale Foundation. He was adamant. So then he said he kept swimming down to try to spend more time with the whale shark and didn't do a safety stop.

A safety stop to release all the nitrogen his body had stored up while diving. Derek, our experienced diver, forgot.

He ended up getting the bins and he had to go to a decompression chamber. The only decompression chamber in Hawaii at the time was on o Wahu. They don't have one on Maui, or they didn't at the time. I have not known a single person that ever got the bins or that ever had to go to a decompression chamber. I didn't call him out on that, but I thought, this is kind of weird, and I've been scuba diving all over the world. Not to say it couldn't happen, but it really sounded a bit fantastical.

Ever, get that feeling in your gut, like you're being lied to. Wendy has that feeling right now.

I'm one of those people. I just can't let it go.

Whale sharks, the bens, there's such inconsequential things.

Why would you lie about that?

It'll be five years, many more first dates, a federal investigation spanning states and decades, and a determined group of pissed off girlfriends raising hell before Wendy gets a satisfying answer to that question.

My name is Wendy and I dated a carn artist named Derek and it completely changed my life.

I'm Annisonfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart podcasts. You're listening to the girlfriends Trust Me Babe, Episode one, Shark Bait. When Wendy was young, her mum Sherry, would share stories with her, tales from her youth about her own dating experiences. Is a Friday night in nineteen sixty four on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Sherry and her two housemates are at home in their first floor apartment. The smell of citrus blossom from the surrounding groves floats

That was a thing, even back in the sixties, to keep each other safe just in case.

That's Laurie. She heard this story growing up too.

We couldn't stand each other because, you know, sisters.

Laurie is Wendy's older sister.

Our dad told us one of these days, you girls are gonna be best friends, and we would jag and it bros. He was right, He was so right. Wendy always called me her safety net, and I love that. I loved being her safety net.

Wendy got married young to her college sweetheart, and they did the whole nights, had a kid, got the white picket fence, and it was a great marriage, but it ran its course. By thirty five, Wendy is newly single and making a home for herself on Maui with her daughter. Everything feels new, especially dating.

I'd never even been to a bar to have a guy buy me a drink. I didn't know about online dating. I didn't know about match dot com.

Will you regale me with one of your dating stories?

Oh?

I have so many Broke Bone Bobbie and Jilbird Ryan and the cuticle Picker, and I've just have so.

Many right, like, it's insane.

As Wendy dives into the dating game headfirst, she tells her big sister Laurie all about it over long phone calls Wendy and Hawaii. Laurie in Texas.

He did not look like his photos at all. He was trying to take pictures of the sunset, and he kept using his flash. I get a letter from the county jail asking me to come visit him. I never told anyone that I was remotely interested in seeing a dick pic. Hordes of them, so many of them.

That's when I started realizing she needs a little backup.

So in steps big sister Laurie.

She allowed me to have her location on Google.

At first, it doesn't all run as smoothly as their mother's trash run reconnaissance strategy.

I had to call her one time and say, your w is out in a lake.

Wendy's Google map icon is surrounded by water.

I'm sorry, I forget to tell you it's a houseboat.

The more Wendy dates, the more the sisters fall into a kind of rhythm.

Every guy that she went out with, I'm going to see what I can find out about him.

I told him, I said, I'm okay to come to your but I'm having my sister look you up. And he goes, oh, try it. She's not going to find anything.

Challenge accepted. Here's the picture of his house.

He's got these two kids, and it looks like he flies back and forth for these two cities.

My god, my god. Eight years and hundreds of first days later, Wendy has perfected her own strategies and is even planning to turn her bizarre dating stories into a book. It's the end of summer twenty thirteen and it's been just two days since her first date with Derek the whale shark guy. And while she's still none the wiser as to why he'd lie about scuba diving, she's also kind of into him. He's successful, adventurous, and attentive, perhaps

I said you couldn't even name ten facts about me, and he then sent me an email one hundred.

Reasons why I love you.

Hearts of it were I love that you have to have a coffee first thing in the morning. I don't drink coffee. He literally didn't even read it. He just googled a hundred reasons to love someone and then just send it to me.

Derek is a little carried away with his feelings, sure, but Wendy thinks maybe he's just kind of clumsy with it. We've all been a little cringey when we've had a crush.

I was excited to meet someone that was very interested in me and was very open to me.

That was very refreshing.

Something just didn't feel completely right, but I wanted to like him.

And so Wendy picks up the phone and makes a call to her sister in Texas.

Can you check out Derek?

Wendy and Laurie have been in the game for a while.

Now I had so many details. His name, how old he.

Was, She said, Oh, he has a daughter, same age's my daughter? How long he said he'd been divorced. The college that he went to, what year he graduated. She did get the name of the company he was working for.

I don't even know that much information about some of my close friends.

While Laura gets to work online sleuthing, Wendy and Derek keep seeing each other, and one of those dates is in an upscale neighborhood where Derek is viewing a luxury condo.

He had told me he's on Maui because he's looking for investments.

It's been less than two weeks since they met.

He said, do you want to go with me to look at some of these properties? So I'm like, yes, absolutely.

They're walking through a place Derek is considering investing in. It's a three bed property with all the amenities, ocean views, built in lighting fixtures for hanging your own art collection. It's classy. Wendy's realta friend is showing them around.

Oh wow, he seems like such a great, successful, nice guy.

But before long, Derek fumbles into weird o behavior again.

He started acting like, oh, this could be our home, ah home, And I'm like, I thought this was a real estate investment thing. He started saying, you know, I really see this as our house. He's like, let's put both our names on it. I'm like what he goes, I want to make sure you and your daughter are taking care of him, Like, well, then put me in your will.

I'm never signing anything with you.

This is the moment at which Wendy's interest in Derek as a possible boyfriend really takes a turn. Whatever his charms, he is coming on too strong. It's not just the real estate business. He's sending shared calendar invites for upcoming family visits.

Now they call it love bombing, but I didn't know the term back then.

Wendy's big sister Laurie is starting to question Derek too. In a small, narrow room off her bedroom, Laurie is at a cluttered desk. She's sitting on one of those ergonomic backlass chairs where you rest your weight on your knees. She's looking at the website for Derek Already's real estate investment come the one who sent Wendy scrolling to the bottom of the page. She notices the site was only created that year. Could be something, could be nothing.

I started noticing things that were static. They weren't clickable.

It's full of testimonials, generic stock images, but the links are dead. Are these real people? For that matter? Is a business reel? Luri finds the company's address on the website.

I went to Google Earth and I went down to street level, and in that building you could see the directory of what companies were in that building.

Derek's supposed company wasn't there. Other than the stuff Derek's provided to Wendy himself. Lauri can't find any detail whatsoever on the guy.

This puzzle with missing a lot of pieces. I just was not finding the normal things that I could find. Why am I stuck? Why can't I find more on this guy?

As she sits alone at her desk, a new thought occurs to Laurie. Maybe the lack of information, the very existence of so many strange gaps, is the enormous, frantically waving red flag she's been looking for. Laurie decides it's time to call in a little backup of her own. She looks up a name and number that she hasn't thought about for years. Gives him a call.

I recognize that voice immediately.

Laurie's old college power Pat is now a private investigator, Private investigation Pat.

He said, of course I will do this. Of course I will do this for you.

PI Pat gets to work right away, pulling off his own research tools while the two old friends sit on the phone, and in almost no time at all, the computer spits back some results.

He said, just from looking at this report, Tell your sister to run. Tell her to run.

Laurie's just got off the phone with PI Pat, who has told her, in no uncertain terms, to get her sister the hell out of her weird dance with Derek Allread. With Pat's reports sitting in her inbox, Laurie reaches for the phone again in her panic to tell Wendy the news. She nearly falls off her chair.

It was really disappointed that there wasn't more information about this. There wasn't anything really big, and I kind of my shoulders dropped.

You see the report pipat sent over didn't really answer Wendy's questions, just gave her more. Firstly, Derek had been lying to Wendy about the spelling of his name. Derek Allread was Derek Alldred. That's how Pipat had found him. Secondly, Derek Aldred had a long list of previous addresses, oddly long and across states. As well as that, a larger than average number of evictions. And that's pretty much it.

I thought, for sure, we're going to find out there's something going on here.

For Wendy. It doesn't seem like much for Pi Pat and Laurie. Reading between the lines, it says a law there were no felonies, but PI Pat can explain that.

He said, I can't see certain reports because states don't share the information. But it was enough to know he's not a good guy.

But Wendy's moved beyond wanting to date Derek. She has other ambitions.

She has this thing. She considers herself a karma warrior, okay, meaning in her mind, this is a guy that needs to be put in his place. The toxic masculinity. Guys go for it. Wendy say what she needs to say, do what you need to do. This guy was totally different, tractive, friendly, helpful, all these things. Those are the ones that you know scare me. And I think she thought, eh, I'm just gonna play with them. All a bit just because she could.

Wendy, with a ponchon for poking the bear and the final chapter of a book about online dating to write, sets out to find the truth. Wendy meets up with Derek, armed with evidence from Pipat and Deputy PI Laurie, but it doesn't really go according to plan because Derek cops to none of it. The long list of previous addresses.

Oh, I'm in real estate investment. Those are properties I've owned and printed the eviction notices I've had the evict other people.

Derek even calls Maui Memorial Hospital while Wendy is on speakerphone beside him, to prove he really was in hospital around the time of his story about getting the bend.

He did not own up to anything that was remotely off. He had an answer for everything.

Without cold, hard proof. All she has is gut instinct, and in the face of Derek's confidence, self assuredness, it's not the satisfying confrontation she had hoped for. Wendy just has more questions.

Why is he coming after me? I kept thinking maybe there's something to do with buying a house, but I don't have a lot of extra cash sitting around. It's not like I was super wealthy or anything.

It's only been a couple of weeks. But Wendy is clear on one thing. Derek is not investing in the Maui property market.

That whole deal fell through because he didn't have money. My friend was the realtor. She's like, there's no money in that account. I'm a super cureious person. So I kept agreeing to meet with him now and then I would go with them to look at condos, and he would talk about how much money he had. One time he said, I know you don't believe me, and he had pulled up an investment account like one point two million.

And yet all the while he's lavishing her with attention and more.

One two, three dozen roses, Sherry's berries, Tiffany jewelry, prescription sunglasses, a giant Teddy Bear.

To give you a sense of scale. I'm four for eleven and I'd call this bad daddy.

If he would have been just any other person, I would have stopped. But because I had already started writing a book about online dating.

I kept going with it.

She doesn't just want Derek to admit that he's a liar. She wants him to explain why he's lying.

Who in the right mind would spend so much time and effort trying to cont someone It just didn't make any sense to me.

Wendy is starting to doubt whether anything Derek says is true. Does he really have a dog named Max? Is he even from San Francisco? And if so, where does he actually live? In response to Wendy's questions, Derek sends Wendy a video tour pading around the inside of a home. We start off in a living room and there's some red walls. He walks through a doorway into a kitchen, lots of pictures, a nicely made up bed. There's a dogbed in the living room, and the name on the

There was always some tragic thing that was happening. When time he told me his dog died, he would have drama in his life. He just wouldn't let it go.

He still kept trying.

Wow, he just would not quit. Right, Did he like it? You know? The rejection?

I don't know, Wendy. I've been nothing but transparent with you, and I love you, and it really is so hurtful that you're saying these things about me. Once I knew he was a pathological liar, I really just wanted to catch him in a way that he couldn't get out of it.

It isn't until mid October that Wendy gets her next opportunity to try and figure out what Derek's really up to, and this time it's on his home turf. Wendy has to travel to San Francisco for a biopsy following a breast cancer scare. When Derek hears about it, in classic Derek's style, he makes a big fuss, offering to buy Wendy's plane ticket and then sending details for a flight that doesn't exist. Didn't he think you'd find out about the flight?

You would think so. I have no idea why he would do some things and not others.

She gets there anyway under her own steam. Results come back negative within a couple of days, and Wendy's feeling good. Then Derek pops up again. He invites her to dinner. Wendy can't resist the opportunity to do a bit slew thing on Derek's patch. They go for the dinner, and not only does he rock up in a BMW, he actually pays for everything. He even takes Wendy to a Brian Adams concert, merch drinks, all paid for by this strange man.

I'm sitting there going well, he looks like what he told me he was. I was trying to figure out, like where did he come into money.

Wendy looks at the man beside her and asks herself, for maybe the hundredth time, what kind of con is this. It's a Tuesday evening in the very middle of October. Wendy's back on Maui and the prosecco is flowing. A medley of dance pop albums play in the background. Brittany the Donna, Lady Gaga. There are potluck snacks on Wendy's living room table. It's been a month and a half since Wendy's first date with Derek, and it's girls' night.

All my girlfriends were getting the reports about what was going on, and they were all invested.

There's nothing quite as intoxicating as being the headline act at girls' Night. In the last few weeks have given Wendy a lot of material to work with as she regales them with her latest tales. The girls speculate about Derek's motives.

What is this guy's deal? What is he after?

Until finally, one of Wendy's girlfriends says the thing we've.

All been thinking, Wendy. He does sound like he is a psychopath. And what if he physically hurts you? What if he hits you? What if he kidnapped you. Up until she said that, it had never crossed my mind.

It's the same worry Wendy's sister had quietly all those weeks earlier.

It really made me open my eyes.

It's been two months of exchanges with Derek, and despite all the evidence, all the difficult questions, Wendy is no closer to learning the truth about who this man actually is. But now she realized, really realizes.

This is clearly an unhinged person and maybe I'm not safe. I'm just never going to figure this out. I need to get him out of my life before he does do something really crazy to me.

It's only been a couple of days since Wendy's girls told her gently to leave Derek well alone. When he reaches out again wanting to meet up, Wendy does decide to go. Maybe this is her chance to end it in person.

He asked me to come meet him because he wanted to get his mother a birthday gift.

Wendy meets Derek at the jewelry store in a busy shopping center, and at first she browses solo well. Derek does his own thing.

And then he's like, oh, hey, I think I found the gift for my mom.

Derek shows her a pair of diamond stud earrings four thousand dollars, and.

He goes, would you try him on? They're just diamond studs. Everybody knows what they look like on ears. But I put them on, and then he goes, well, let's look out in the light. And he was trying to pull me outside of the store.

Wendy looks over at the salesperson for help, but they just not. I imagine with the patients of all underpaid retail workers who are unwillingly roped into romantic gestures outside the jewelry store under the bright lights of the shopping mall. Derek makes his reveal.

I've already paid for them. They're for you, not my mother. To do it to show you that I'm committed to this relationship.

She comes in here to end it, and now he's throwing earrings at.

Her, and I'm thinking, where is this coming from. I gave him back those earrings. I said, I do think that you are a con artist, and even though I can't put it all together, I don't ever want you to contact me again.

A few weeks later, Wendy gets a text.

Hi Wendy, I'm on island. My dad doesn't want me to contact you.

Blah blah blah.

It's from an unknown number, and the text claims to be not Derek, but Derek's daughter.

I started laughing.

I knew right away it wasn't her, because it's texting like adults think teenager's text.

No word is written out.

Wendy even shows them to her own daughter.

Do you think this is actually from a teenager? Oh gosh, no, we don't really text like that.

The unknown number sends a follow up.

Oh, my dad would be upset if he knew I was reaching out to you. But he's in the hospital.

Wendy resolutely broke up with Derek, but this is too good of an opportunity to pass up.

I call the hospital. He is registered as a patient. I'm like, what.

Wendy's own daughter wants answers now too.

She goes, You've got to go down there. You can catch him, because you know his daughter's not there. I drive to the hospital, I go in the room and I see him and I'm thinking.

Where's your daughter.

Oh, my friend on island took her. They went to Starbucks, and I'm like, oh, Starbucks closes in like twenty minutes. It's MAUI. Everything closes by nine pm, if not earlier.

Derek has taken off to get a scam. Wendy sits in his room waiting. Twenty minutes go by.

Starbucks has closed. Where's your daughter?

He just kept saying, oh, well, they must be doing this or that or whatever, and she just didn't come. And so I'm like, okay, you know what, whatever, I got to go home.

Wendy doesn't go home because it's time for a good old fashioned steak out.

I went and I parked my car across the street.

Wendy sits in her car in the dark, eyes trained on the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital main entrance, and waits.

He got discharged and I saw him come out of the hospital in plane clothes and then just started walking down the street. He didn't have a vehicle, he didn't have anything. There was nobody to pick him up.

Wendy was right Darro's door. Her is nowhere to be seen, but as she watches him retreat into the distance, she's no closer to finding out the truth.

It really was a bummer because nothing made sense. It killed me to not have answers, and to just say that I'm never going to have correspondence with him again.

Back in San Francisco, Derek takes a little longer to drop it. He keeps sending emails which Wendy doesn't reply to. He even tries one last sympathy play, telling her that he in fact has cancer, that she's the love of his life, that he loves her forever, attaching copies of his ultrasounds as proof.

I did a Google image search. The ultrasound picture that he sent me was one of the first ones that came up.

Oh wow, So he didn't even try hard.

He wasn't trying hard, he wasn't putting in the effort like he used to. I just felt like that was his attempt to lure me back in, and I didn't take the bait.

Instead, she resolves not to respond to Derek ever again. To close the chapter without answers, she sits down at her computer and changes her Wi Fi password to the immortal.

Words Derek sucks my one ass.

Wendy is done. Months later, Wendy is walking down Maui's busiest street when her phone rings.

Hi, Wendy, you don't know me, but my name's Cindy and we both dated Derek.

And I was like and just like that, Wendy's back in.

Baby, I'm going to figure out what's going on.

Coming up on the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

Something's off about this whole thing.

Something's fishy.

She was relentless. He is not going to get away with.

This, but it sounds so familiar.

She kept saying, can you text her and see if you can get a picture of him? And she did. I can tell you neither one of us had any idea what he really was.

A terrible, middle aged, nearly bolding boyfriend pops up in Minnesota.

Bad news.

We don't like them.

He kind of gave me creepy vibes.

And runs into a group of no nonsense, pokey loving n uses.

We still talk about it. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

The Girlfriend's Trust Me, Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is hosted by me Annasinfield is produced by Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Valeria Rocker. Our editor is Joe Wheeler. Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage and Charlotte Wolfe, fact checking by Dania Suleman, sound design,