Forgotten Obsessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 1)

by Talia Maxwell

  Millie squealed with delight and Maeve could picture her baby sister already, head tilted back, teeth gleaming.

  “I’m going,” Millie said with mirthful authority. “There was an ad at that little coffee shop on Rosa Parks. The Love is Murder Social Club. Sundays at five. Women with an interest in true crime and cold cases. A meet-up with drinks. Bring your favorite story. Let’s do it, Maeve. A few Moscow Mules and you can find other willing partners who won’t write you off immediately when you discuss blood splatter patterns. I’ll be your wing-woman because I know you won’t go alone—”

  Maeve cringed. That was an accurate assessment of her entire existence. The Love is Murder Social Club sounded like something made for her. It also sounded entirely like Portland. The logo on their website was of a buxom pin-up with a magnifying glass attached to her leg in a garter.

  According to the website About section, the club was formed by a local stay-at-home mom named Gloria, an avid reader and former paralegal. “Come and join us. Dish, drink, discuss. Only requirement? No squeamishness.”

  The woman blogged about famous murders and her meticulously researched speculations, and Maeve’s heart quickened with excitement. This was the stuff she lived for. God, her sister was gold.

  “Tomorrow?” Maeve asked and she thought about her day—she was shiftless and without a plan, but she didn’t want to seem too eager. Of course, her sister’s interest in the group was peripheral to her own interest—Millie thought it could be a fun story, a laugh, a cute picture for her social media. A social club for murder and mai-tais, how charming and bourgeoisie.

  But Maeve wanted to know if any of them had theories about the murders of working women in Long Island or if any of them knew anything about the Sodder fire, of which she was particularly obsessed. Her internal list was endless of the things she’d always wanted to ask people like her.

  “We have to go,” Millie urged. “Don’t do that thing where you pretend you don’t want to go and so I make other plans and then you decide at the last minute you can do it and I can’t and you get mad at me.”

  Maeve shut her laptop and scratched Roger under the chin.

  “Yeah, okay,” she agreed. “Let’s go to this thing. Meet me here and we’ll walk?”

  “Girl,” Millie chastised. “Yes. And we will get some drinks first.”

  Chapter Three

  Derek woke to the sound of pounding. Thick, heavy knocks rocked his trailer door, and soon any trace of slumber was gone from his system as he slid to answer the call. There was only one person on earth who’d knock on his trailer like that early in the morning, so he wasn’t surprised to swing the door open, eyes squinting and full of sleep to find his father outside, arms raised in mid-knock.

  “You need something?” Derek asked, his voice groggy. He sniffed and took a step down into the stairwell of the trailer, his hand still on the doorknob.

  Timothy Shelton lifted a piece of paper into the air and shook it slightly at his son. “You want to make me breakfast since I came all this way?” he asked and kept the announcement at arm’s length until Derek agreed.

  With a short snort, Derek smiled, sighed, and stepped aside to let his father into his temporary home. With the shades drawn, the place felt both harsh and worn, like an old boot. He tugged on the blinds above his kitchenette and the morning sun poured in through the glass, illuminating the dust particles floating in the air.

  “I have eggs,” Derek said. “And coffee.”

  “I’ll take eggs and coffee, then.”

  Derek cracked open the small refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs. He lit the gas stove with a single click of a button and cracked the eggs directly into the pan already waiting on the burner. He had one pan and one pot, and that served him just fine.

  The sizzling was slow to start, but soon it filled the trailer—the smells of cooking and the Sheltons not talking.

  “What’s the paper, Dad?” Derek asked, fishing like he knew his father wanted.

  “When you gonna build on this lot? Don’t you have a time limit?” Timothy pushed past the question and settled back into the small seat opposite the kitchen. He seemed to assess his son with uneasiness, but Derek was used to it. He knew the drill.

  His father, perennially disappointed in his life decisions, found creative ways to insult his choices because he was a sad human being.

  He’d hated Derek’s now ex-fiancée, hated the idea of buying land in Boring, Oregon, hated that his son was a nurse, not a doctor, and hated the trailer. He especially hated having to piss in a porta-potty when he visited. But Derek was only bemused at his dad’s ranting because he was beyond listening to him for advice. He was beyond needing approval.

  Insecurity bred contempt and Derek wasn’t insecure. He was humble and quiet, but he wasn’t self-doubting.

  “I’ve already said,” Derek answered. He ran the spatula through the eggs and flipped them around, the mixture bubbling, yellow and white and slightly smoky. “I want to build it myself. Section by section. I’ve hired laborers, but I want to build it. With my own two hands. That’s a thing people used to do, you know?”

  “And then you’ll live in it. The house you made. Oh yeah, yeah.” Timothy waved his hand. “I get it. You’ve told me the spiel. But, kid.” Derek hated when his dad called him kid. “It’s like those school projects we did with you. We let you do them, but then they were shit. And all the kids who let a professional adult do the project? Those looked nice. The kids didn’t learn a damn thing, but the whole project was lovely.”

  “Do you think that analogy is proving your point somehow?” Derek asked. “Maybe you’re what’s wrong with kids today.” He said it like he was joking, but he wasn’t entirely sure he was.

  His dad didn’t answer for a bit and then he said, “We’d like it if you came for dinner—”

  “I’m not going over there, Dad.” He poured them both a coffee and leaned over to hand the mug to his dad, who nodded a thank you. “I’m not. Don’t ask.”

  “She’s a nice woman, Derek,” Timothy said, but his tone was didactic, as though Derek could be shamed into thinking his fourth stepmom since his mom died was anything more than a fame-seeking, gold-digger that was after his dad’s money and his remaining seconds of fame. And even though his father had been smarter about the pre-nups since first go-around, Derek couldn’t see the new wife lasting very long with Timothy Shelton—at least not the Timothy that Derek knew.

  He’d warned his dad against her. Against a fourth in the timeframe and after everything that had happened

  More than anything, he’d hoped she wasn’t a murder obsessed groupie. That was wife number two. Those were the worst—the women who hovered on message boards and scanned old crime scene data so they felt like they knew him. After Derek’s mom died, Timothy was an eligible bachelor with a number one best-selling book, a broken heart that needed mending, and thousands of needy women ready to be the one to fix it.

  “I’m sure she’s nice, Dad. But we talked about this. Two weeks and then you’re married on the beach in Kauai without telling anyone? I feel ridiculous for telling you this, but you’re an adult and I’m an adult, and your choices are shit, and I don’t have to deal with it anymore.” His dad only blinked. “So, that means I’m not interested in dinner. Look, I can’t face wife number four and I’m busy, and—”

  The word busy snapped Timothy back into the conversation. “What are you busy with right this second? Tonight? Cleaning your trailer? Son,” Timothy started with stern admonition as though he had something powerful to say, but instead of finishing his sentence he took a sip of coffee and shook his head. Son. Kid. The two most important monikers in relation to who he was to his father, even now.

  Derek served up the eggs, clicked the gas off, and took a seat at the two-person table opposite his dad. He handed them each a fork. They ate and chewed, he wordlessly passed the salt, and he asked again, “So, I know you didn’t come here to eat eggs with me in silence. What
were you showing me?”

  Timothy lifted his head as though he’d just remembered and he stuck his finger into the air. “Yes, yes. I’ve been invited to speak at a group. Little book club thing or something. The woman was nice enough, offered payment, and, well, they were hoping you’d come, too. Figured you could use the cash for your house…”

  “You didn’t think I could use the cash for the house.”

  “Come on. Yes, I did.”

  “Do you really not remember our last conversation?”

  Timothy snorted. “Are you really doing this? You can’t quit your own life.”

  “I can quit talking about it. Forget it. Man, you are on a roll this morning. Even this is more piling on than usual.”

  “It’s a cute little ladies club and it’s quiet and discrete. Here’s the paper.” He shoved the ad across the table and Derek looked at it side-eye. The Love is Murder Social Club—a gathering of women interested in true crime. He could tell by the cutesy flyer and the hipster bar locale that the club represented everything he hated. Derek could picture the women now: suburban moms who secretly subscribed to crime scene threads on Reddit and thought that their extra time, now that their kids were in school, was a perfect opportunity to solve that crime they always wondered about. They drank too much and pretended to be in happy marriages and wore novelty t-shirts. He wasn’t having it.

  “You already told them I’d be there, huh?” Derek rolled his eyes. “That’s why you’re here. Right. No. You’ll have to deal with that yourself. You knew what my answer would be. You knew.”

  “Someone told me that the club is mostly younger women…single.”

  Derek doubted that. He put up his hand and leaned back, amused now by the attempt.

  “Stop. I’d rather die alone than date a true crime junkie. All those women are sad and lazy, and without real hobbies or jobs. They aren’t experts, they don’t have access to files…most of them are narcissists and are looking for a way to insert themselves into someone’s story, too. These are women who spend all day trolling the web for conspiracy theories, spewing shit they are making up in fantasyland. This is why they are single.” He raised an eyebrow. Checkmate. “When are you going to give this up?”

  “I don’t know why I bothered asking. I’ll make up an excuse for you.”

  “I haven’t said yes once in the past ten years. No need to make an excuse, tell them I’ve stepped out of any public appearances. Just tell them the truth.”

  He waited for his dad to pick up on the significance of the time. Ten years. One entire decade since he’d walked away from the family show and kept his damn mouth shut about his story and his past, and stopped the touring and the routine events. He stopped the book signings and he stopped answering the fan mail. Fan mail. It was gross and it disturbed him at his core.

  He’d been eighteen and he’d recited the narrative so often he knew he couldn’t go on. And he walked away.

  Derek wanted to pursue nursing and he wasn’t obligated to sell himself anymore. No more talk shows, no more reporters, no more biographers, and no more book club engagements with voyeuristic assholes who wanted to know all the intimate details of the worst night of his life.

  A night that changed his life forever and a night that shifted the entire trajectory of his path through the world; Derek felt bonded with the story, and he wanted to untangle himself from the hold it had on him.

  He’d moved away for a time to the East Coast where no one knew or cared about who he was, and it was a blissful freedom he’d come to desire. Opportunity brought him back to Oregon. Not his dad and definitely not going with his estranged father to talk to people about his little sister’s murder, his own vicious attack, and how his father rescued him. Again, and again, and again.

  “The eggs were good,” Timothy said and stood up to drop the plate in the sink. “This is local, you know, and—”

  “Why do you even want me there? Print off my old statements and read them. Isn’t that why the internet exists?”

  Timothy sighed. His left hand scratched his head and he made some sound in that back of his throat that sounded like grumbling confusion.

  “I just thought since it was local,” his dad added and Derek didn’t blink and pointed the fork in his direction, waiting for him to change the subject.

  “Talk about anything else,” Derek said. “No Woodstock murders. No thinly veiled reasons for coming out here. You can just talk to me—”

  “Okay.”

  But Timothy Shelton didn’t have anything else. He had a lazy invite and had hoped it would be the necessary carrot to woo his son to make an appearance with him. Like old-times. Like they used to do. Everything Timothy pined for what locked in those moments when they were the surviving Sheltons—the Woodstock killer’s last victims and his victor. Derek finished his coffee and went to the door, and he stepped down first to the stairwell and then to the wooden steps out into his property; he walked out into the early morning sun.

  His dad followed.

  “I’m going to take a piss,” Derek announced and he entered the porta-potty and relieved himself into the echoey plastic basin. Until he had sewage installed, the outdoor toilet was his only option. He’d have peed outside into his own future lawn if his father hadn’t followed him out.

  He walked back outside to the morning sun and took a few steps into his property, his eyes scanning the open field. It was five acres of land. It wasn’t farmed or tilled or even recently mowed, but it spread out across his view and there, in the middle, Mount Hood. Maybe it was stupid to dump his trust earnings into the plot and the future home, but Derek didn’t care.

  This was his dream.

  “Well, that mountain sure is a thing, isn’t it?” Timothy said, patting his pocket for a cigarette. “Gorgeous view.”

  It was the closest thing Derek would get to a compliment.

  “I feel lighter out here. Like I can breathe. Think.” Derek looked back at his dad.

  “If you change your mind, the meeting is tonight.”

  “I work tonight,” Derek said. It was a quick excuse, but luckily an honest one. That night he’d show up at Kaiser Sunnyside, not a far ride from his plot of land, and work as an Emergency Room nurse. His dad told everyone his son was an ER Doctor, dropping the nurse for the title with a better pedigree, but Derek was proud of what he did. He could intubate and draw a vein for an IV better than anyone; he’d been punched and kicked and thrown-up on, but he never broke his stride or his smile.

  He also couldn’t help but enjoy too much the looks he got from people who made it obvious he wasn’t what they were expecting. Sometimes young women seemed embarrassed to talk to him and share their symptoms, wondering if he was the real deal. But ER nurses dealt most often in pain and panic, and it never took him long to tend to the person with such empathy and efficiency that they forgot he looked more like an REI model than an ER nurse.

  Derek recognized that he was traditionally handsome, but lacked the usual arrogance that accompanied beautiful men, and he knew it was because he grew up in the spotlight—his life examined fully on everyone’s television—his teenage acne up for national ridicule. His prom picture made the news. A life on display.

  The Internet wanted to pin him down, and often ran clickbait articles encouraging curious scrollers to NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE NOW. And it was true, he’d shed the bad skin and the baby fat, but Derek had no time for that true crime fascination media star bullshit.

  He became a nurse because he wanted to help people and he wanted to hide. And there is no better place to hide than in a place where people are focused on scary, intense, and sad situations. Derek Shelton, single survivor of the Woodstock Killer, didn’t even want his father mentioning his name at that book club, which he would. He didn’t want him to apologize that Derek couldn’t be there, which he also would.

  He wanted the profiteering to stop and the questions to stop—he wanted the entire celebrity of his family to disappear. He wanted
people to stop buying his father’s book. He wanted these things because the truth was like a sore under a scab that refused to heal, and he was tired of feeling that pain.

  More than anything, Derek wanted to build his house with his own two hands and find someone to share it with. Someone, he hoped, who’d never heard of him and didn’t own a computer. A nice Amish woman. Or a ninety-year-old. He could, at least, dream.

  When he admitted he was a romantic guy to the other ER nurses, he was met with mixed responses. The older women liked to encourage him, the older men teased, and the younger women assumed he was disingenuous. It didn’t matter to him because Derek couldn’t change his personality. He was the kid who crushed on girls at four-years-old and brought them flowers. He wrote an original song for a girl named Liz in the third grade and she rejected him with such a spectacular display he still laughed and cried about it from time to time. He was in love with Victoria in the eighth grade, around the time of the murders. And Derek unabashedly used his minor celebrity and still-healing scars to get her to agree to go to the End of the Year junior high dance with him.

  While his hands were on her waist and she looked up longingly at him, she asked if his dad was chaperoning.

  He asked why. And she said, “Because he’s a hero and because he’s soooo handsome.” Her swooning, he realized then, wasn’t for him at all but for the celebrity of Timothy.

  He wished he’d bottled up his rage and understanding in that moment and pushed through the evening, but he couldn’t. He started to tear-up, the embarrassment of discovering he was wanted only as a proxy to his dad—the real star of the show.

  He thought he’d found love with Julie, but he’d slipped a ring on her finger too soon, without seeing how different they were and how different they’d always be. Julie knew first, in her heart, that she couldn’t walk down the aisle to greet him and marry him and be his devoted wife. But it didn’t take long for Derek to see it, too. It killed him because he believed she was the one.