by Bill Alive
Outside the locked doors, Theodore was pacing the pavement. His habitual scowl of concentration had morphed into a nervous excitement. He was moving with a weird energy I’d never seen with him, his gut jiggling beneath his polo. His jerkiness reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place it.
I watched him through the windshield as Mark pulled into the lot and parked at a distance. Then I realized who Theodore was reminding me of. Kelsey.
Not my favorite person.
“Pete? What’s up?” Mark said, also watching Theodore. “You feel scared.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Meeting at midnight at the church where we found a corpse? And doesn’t Theodore seem off? You think he’s high or something?”
“Doubt it,” Mark said. “If he were, his shields might finally be down.”
“What if he’s dangerous?”
He shrugged. “Good thing we’re single.”
“I hate when you say that.”
Theodore didn’t see us walking toward him till we’d nearly reached the pavement. When he did see us, he came running, with a wide smile.
I realized that although the temperature had dropped, and the night was getting seriously chilly, Theodore wasn’t wearing a jacket. His pasty skin was splotching blue.
“Aren’t you cold?” I said. I’d only been out a minute, and I was already wishing I’d brought a sweatshirt.
Theodore ignored me. Actually, it was beyond ignoring, it was like I wasn’t there. He focused on Mark with an intensity that creeped me out.
“Mark!” he said. “Thank you so much for coming!” He reached out a hand, and when they shook, he closed his other hand around Mark’s in a full-on double-decker handshake. “Mark, I owe you an apology.”
I could almost feel Mark’s spidey sense tingling on high alert.
“Thanks,” he said. “You sure you’re not chilly?”
I noted that Mark, who of course was wearing a sweatshirt, was still shivering with an empathic chill. Hehehe.
Theodore waved this concern aside. “It’s good penance,” he said. “Mark, I keep thinking about how rude I was to you at the funeral. Inexcusable.”
“No worries,” Mark said, disentangling his hand with firm politeness. His shivering eased. “People get stressed.”
Theodore beamed, and clapped Mark on the shoulder. Mark shivered again. “I knew it!” Theodore crowed. “You have a good heart, Mark. You’re a person of good will.”
Mark grit his teeth, but he smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “So do you think you’ll need any revisions to that website quote? Or are your people happy with it as-is?”
Theodore chuckled. “Oh no, we already hired someone else for the website issues. That’s not what I wanted you for.”
Mark tried to not to wilt.
“I have a much better offer,” Theodore said.
I perked up, but Theodore slipped out a holy card.
I only caught a glimpse, but the artwork looked old, like an original Little Golden Book. It looked like some monk who was sitting on top of a column. The borders were edged with lace.
Where had I seen that lace before? Oh yeah, Theodore’s kid. This guy was quite the card collector.
In total silence, Theodore pressed the card into Mark’s hand, with absurd gravitas.
Mark firmly handed it back. “Thanks,” he said, “I’m actually already Catholic.”
“But how serious are you about your Faith?” Theodore said. He stared at Mark with probing eyes, and you could hear that capital ‘F’. “If you were to die in the next hour, Mark, are you certain you’d find yourself at the summit of Heaven?”
There was an awkward pause.
Personally, I got distracted by the word ‘summit’. If it turns out there is a heaven, I’ve never thought of it as a mountain, much less an exclusive ski resort. I imagined Jesus welcoming well-to-do WASPish baby boomers into his chalet, handing them mugs of hot cocoa, with his long hair frizzing over an expensive and embarrassing sweater. Would they mind that he was actually Jewish? Would there be any black people?
Mark grimaced. “Sounds like you’re getting along with Roger,” he said.
Theodore lit up. “Roger has changed everything. For the first time in my life, I understand my purpose. And Mark, I want to share it with you.”
Mark hesitated.
Meanwhile, I finally figured out why Theodore was acting like I didn’t exist. Roger. If Theodore had gone all-in on Team Roger, I imagined that after that bit with Yvette, I must be persona non parmesan. Or is it persona non grated? Whatever. Who comes up with these sayings?
“Why me?” Mark said.
“You’re a person of good will,” Theodore said, again. “At Olivia’s funeral, you tried to free me of my sin. Only God can forgive, but still, it was a kindness. It’s only justice to return the favor, and do what I can to save you from hell.”
I flinched. If he really believed in hell, he seemed super offhand and casual about it.
I could tell that now Mark had someone he wanted to shove in a cow pie. But Mark has this other superpower besides the empathy, where he could stay calm, diplomatic, and even technically truthful to a terrorist holding him hostage.
“I’m glad you feel forgiven,” he said.
Theodore waved this aside. “Pre-conversion days.”
“Weren’t you already Catholic?” I said, seriously confused.
But I was apparently still invisible. “Time is short, Mark,” Theodore said. “You should come to our next meeting.”
“I appreciate the invitation,” Mark said.
Theodore grinned, way too excited. “You’ll come?”
“I’ll definitely consider it,” Mark said. “I have to say, though … wasn’t Olivia also in your group?”
Theodore’s excitement crackled into Full Alert. He eyed Mark with cold suspicion.
“Maybe it’s just the church here reminding me,” Mark said casually. “Isn’t this the same church?”
Cautiously, Theodore nodded.
Mark squinted at him, clearly trying to get a vibe. Quietly he said, “You’d think coming back here would give some closure.”
Theodore stared, hard and defiant.
Then, all at once, he sat down right on the cold pavement. His flabby legs sprawled out, and he bent and covered his face in his hands. Through his thick fingers, he said, “We never meant to fall in love.”
I almost shouted in surprise. Seriously, I had to bite my lip. Olivia? The hot girl in that photo? In love with this pasty weirdo? This pasty married weirdo?
Mark looked startled himself, but he smoothed his face and squatted beside the man.
His presence seemed to be enough, because Theodore kept talking, fast and confessional. The floodgates had opened.
“We met at work. Two lonely people sharing lunch…”
I refrained from interjecting that one of those lonely people had a wife and kid at home.
“…at first she just wanted to talk about that loser Brett, how he’d left her high and dry … but then we realized we had a strong … connection … It was carnal attraction, I see that now … but Olivia knew from the start. She kept blaming herself, saying she’d destroy my beautiful family…”
He wasn’t exactly sobbing, but he was breathing in gulps and talking in rushes. I felt gross and out-of-place and maybe even bad for him, like the time my friend’s mom started crying in front of us about her divorce.
“So many lunches, weeping into her coleslaw, gripping my hand and saying we had to stop. But I was vain, and proud, exulting that I could hold the attention of such an attractive young woman.”
What was it about Roger that gave everyone such a vocabulary boost? ‘Exult’? Kelsey was the same way, they all talked like a nineteenth century church song.
Theodore rubbed his eyes with balled fists. “Olivia was the strong one. She quit the job, she left, she cut off contact. I kept trying to reach her, promising we could share our so-called ‘love’ in secret. But
she held firm … until the end…”
He trailed off, hunched and shivering.
Looking back on all this, I wish I hadn’t said anything.
But come on.
“I’m sorry you guys were so close,” I said. “But are you really saying that Olivia killed herself because she was in love with you? And you’re married?”
Now he finally looked at me. And I wished he hadn’t.
Rage. Not just like, “I want to hurt you,” although yes, that, but also, like part of him knew he was deluded. And the part that knew needed major rage to stuff that down, to keep him focused on the only story that could smother his self-loathing and make his life not a horror show.
“I trust you won’t say anything to my wife,” he said, in a voice of ice. “She is still my vocation, unless God directs me otherwise.”
Mark cut in. “Of course we won’t,” he said. “You can trust us.”
But Theodore creaked up to his feet. He swayed, and Mark offered a hand to steady him, but he pulled away.
“I trust God,” Theodore said darkly. “God alone.”
And he marched away, past the old church, into its old graveyard.
Mark watched him go without a word. Then he slowly walked to Thunder.
Before he launched the car, we watched Theodore through the windshield. He was pacing between the tombstones, slapping his arms to stay warm, and shaking his head and talking to himself. The distant mountains loomed dark and silent, and he looked like a madman in a desert of graves.
Mark muttered, “And he was always, day and night, in the monuments and the mountains, crying and cutting himself with stones.”
“What’s that?” I said. “Is it from something?”
He fired up Thunder. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
“I hate when you say that too.”
Mark smirked.
At the smirk, relief washed me like a wave, like a purge of all the crazy that kept dipping us in slime.
“You really believe that story?” I said. “That Olivia was in love with him?”
“I believe he believes it,” Mark said.
Something in his voice made me tingle with dread. “What does that mean?”
“It means we have to find out,” Mark said.
I didn’t like the sound of that.
Chapter 25
I could have saved myself the freak-out.
Mark just wanted to talk to Samantha. Olivia’s mom. With all the craziness of finding Ed dead, we’d forgotten that the Linux Kid had found Samantha for us, complete with a phone number.
If Olivia really had been involved with Theodore, her mom would probably have heard about it.
Besides, we hadn’t even talked to her yet. Including the awkward question of why she’d skipped town.
At first, Samantha didn’t take our calls. It took a few days of Mark leaving messages before she finally agreed to see us. Honestly, I was surprised she agreed at all, and when I asked Mark how he’d convinced her, he wouldn’t say. Which made me nervous.
Even worse, seeing Samantha meant driving into Woodbridge.
I think I told you in Murder Feels Awful how our town, Back Mosby, is this rural retreat out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. That means that heading into “Northern Virginia” means taking I-66 East for an hour or so, passing verdant valleys and HAZMAT tractor trailers, until you hit traffic and the Sprawl. I grew up in Manassas, which is Sprawl Central, but at least Manassas officially has an “Old Town.” If Woodbridge has an “Old Town”, I’ve never found it. Woodbridge is mainly this gigantic traffic jam of copycat new malls and shambling old townhouses, like all the dregs of the Sprawl have drained down into a marsh.
We fought through weekday evening traffic to a townhouse complex that looked especially rundown. Every parking space was jammed tight with too many cars parked too close together, and the overflow spilled out along the curb of the surrounding street. These were people who worked hard and shared rent. Northern Virginia is one of the richest areas on the entire planet, and all those nannies and janitors have to live somewhere.
Thinking of work reminded me of how I’d had to duck out early from Vivian’s to make this appointment, losing even more hours than usual. And Mark had gotten increasingly vague about his web clientele, or lack thereof.
Not good. We weren’t going to last long as detectives if we both went broke. If we ran out of money, what would we actually do?
Oh well, I thought, no point in worrying about that now, as we walked the broken sidewalk toward Samantha’s townhouse. I was nervous enough as it was.
The acres of hot pavement had kept the evening warm, and people were out on their tiny porches, talking a little but mainly staring at us. This did not help with the nervous thing. Their faces were lined and tired and grim. They avoided my gaze, but they’d usually exchange a nod with Mark. What is it about that guy?
“I wish you’d tell me what you told Samantha to get her to talk to us,” I said. “Can’t you tell how nervous I am? Isn’t this distracting?”
“If I told you, you’d be more distracting.”
Mark knocked at her door, and flakes of gray paint fluttered down like dandruff. I wondered if we might meet the sister, since it was her house, but the door opened to Samantha herself.
At the funeral, I’d only seen her from a distance. Close up, she was more intense, both her raw lanky attractiveness and also the lines and angles of age. Her large eyes were rimmed red from days of crying, and she faced us with a glare that was openly hostile.
We made it through initial greetings that were officially cordial, and she waved us into a crappy living room with mismatched thrift store couches and a huge wall-mounted TV. The room smelled of mildew and cheap beer.
Samantha perched alone on a frayed love seat. She sipped a glass of wine and stared us down.
Beside me on a couch, Mark stared back, obviously reading her.
Not being an empath, the silence made me feel even more super awkward.
At last, Mark said, “Thanks so much for seeing us.”
Samantha’s voice was cold. “You said on the phone that my daughter may have had a secret relationship. Could you say more about that, please?”
So that’s what Mark had told her. And Mark had to be vibing right now how she felt about that, whether she was desperately hoping that her daughter really had fallen out of love with Brett…
My mind raced. I realized I was trying to vibe Samantha myself. Then I realized that this was exactly why Mark hadn’t told me, so he’d get a clean read on her first.
“I was hoping you could tell us,” Mark said.
“I don’t even know who you are,” Samantha said. “You’re a couple of strangers who happened to … find her…” Her voice caught, but she deepened her frown.
“That’s true,” Mark said. “But we’re also private investigators. And we were hired by a young woman who thought Olivia might have been a victim.”
“God, I wish she had been murdered,” Samantha snapped.
“You’re sure she wasn’t?” Mark said.
Samantha’s lips pressed into a hard line, like she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“We know she’d had a falling out with Brett,” Mark said gently.
Her eyes flickered, but she still didn’t speak.
“But it also seems she’d had some new relationships. Like Roger—”
“Roger was a good influence!” she snapped. “I wish she’d known him sooner.”
“Really?” I blurted.
She glowered at me. “I know Roger can be a bit old-fashioned and opinionated, although I will say that a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense. But Roger really cares about those people. And she was a girl who desperately needed a dad.”
“Sounds like you divorced early,” Mark said.
Samantha grimaced. “Not so early that she didn’t remember.”
“And blame the parent who actually raised her?” Mark said.
Sh
e folded her arms tight, like a self-hug, and turned away from us, toward the smudged living room window and its view of the packed parking lot.
“I can see why you needed some time away,” Mark said.
She shrugged, then uncoiled a little. “Not really. My sister and I are getting on each other’s nerves.” She slumped. “All I’m going to accomplish is losing another crap job.”
“So Olivia never mentioned seeing someone else?” Mark said.
“Like dating seeing? When she had Brett? Who told you that?”
“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
“Oh,” Samantha snapped. “Got it. I’m only her grieving mother.”
I blurted, “It was just some random guy from work—”
“What kind of mother am I, right?” she said. “Didn’t even hear about the new boyfriend.”
Mark said, “It sounded like it may have been secret—”
“Nope, I’m a shitty mom. Guilty as charged,” she said. “I was always too busy, right? Working extra jobs to cover the dance lessons, doing ritual humiliation for the Medicaid people so they’d deign to grant my daughter some crumbs of therapy and meds—”
“Meds?” I said.
“Yes, meds,” she barked. “What the hell kind of detectives are you? Olivia had chronic, clinical depression. Debilitating anxiety. ‘Suicidal thoughts’, they said.” Her lean fingers crooked the air quotes, and her face spasmed. She forced it into a frown, but her voice still cracked. “You think?”
I felt sick. All this time, we’d been looking for a murderer … had Olivia really done it after all?
“But why do it now?” I said. “Brett was going to get back with her. And she’d gotten that scholarship—”
“Of course it was now!” Samantha said. Her throat was ragged with the tears she refused to release. “Of course she would do it right when she was finally getting everything she thought she wanted. Now she wouldn’t have any excuse…”
She sounded so bitter. She covered her face, as if she’d heard it herself.
Mark said quietly, “Was she not taking her meds?”
“Oh, she’d take them! If you made her. But they barely took the edge off. And it was all so damn secret. I don’t even know if she ever told Brett. She was always terrified that if anyone knew, it would ruin her life.”
