“You heard,” he said. He couldn’t imagine she’d have any other reason for calling if not to talk about the death of his dad. She’d loved him, too. He knew that.
“Of course, I heard. Along with the entire world. I’m sorry, Dee.” Dee. Her nickname for him. It cut him straight to the heart. His jaw tightened and he wanted to get off the phone immediately. “You need anything?”
“I’m fine.”
“I can bring over some dinners—”
He was glad she couldn’t see his face: perturbed by the idea of mending grief with casserole. She never could understand what he needed.
“No. I’m good.”
He knew his closed-off answers would hurt her, but he couldn’t help it. She wasn’t part of his world anymore and he wasn’t about to let her back in.
Julie paused on the other end of the phone. “I’ve missed you,” she said. But Derek closed his eyes and tried to ignore the declaration. Of course she missed him; missing him was the easy part—choosing to live with him forever was the hard part. He didn’t feel anything for Julie anymore. The pain of abandonment no longer burned and occupied his brain.
“I’d love to do something. To help. Help with the memorial—”
“I don’t need your help, Julie,” Derek said. Maybe, if he was honest, he needed it, but he certainly didn’t want it.
She took his rejection in stride but was silent for a long time before he heard her breathe into the phone in short punctuated bursts. He recognized that tactic, too. The Julie he’d almost married couldn’t stand not to be involved and it was physically agitating to her that he didn’t want her. She was angling for her next move.
“I was in your life for a long time, Dee. Your dad was going to walk me down the aisle…he means something to me, too,” she said. He could hear the twinge of desperation.
He bent his head. Selfish, Julie. Just like always. It wasn’t about his need, but rather around her want to help, to seem and appear copacetic, to give the illusion that she was forgiven and loved.
“Send some flowers or make a donation, Jules,” he said, and his diminutive name for her rolled off his tongue without effort. He cringed at the intimacy of it and hoped she wouldn’t seize upon that slip and think it meant she could wiggle her way into his life. Julie always looked for small signs in other people and she was driven and manipulative, which was great when it worked in his favor and horrific when it didn’t.
“Okay. Okay. Sure.”
A long pause. She sucked in a breath and he knew she was about to drop information she’d been holding on to. He hated knowing her so well.
“I drove by the Italian place a few nights ago,” Julie said and Derek braced for the inevitable reveal. He should’ve known. “You dating again?”
“If there had been a divorce,” Derek answered slowly, with a measured tone, “I would’ve taken full custody of the Italian restaurant. Some places belong to me, Julie. You don’t live out here, so what…you following me?”
“I didn’t come inside. I was going to, but—” he could hear the implication in her pause.
“Why were you even in the area?”
“To meet a friend.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know him. It’s been like ten months, Derek.”
He wanted to laugh. Him. Right, right. Yes, it had absolutely been ten months—both a blink of an eye and the longest stretch of eternity—and, for the most part, he was feeling good about his breakup with Julie, recovered even, and he knew if he mentioned Maeve, Julie would find every possible way to insert herself into the memorial and the media and connect the three of them in an endless showcase of drama.
If he felt bad for bringing Maeve into the circus, he would feel worse if Julie got her hands on the new girl.
“Well, Julie. I’m sorry I ruined your date to the place I introduced you to. But it’s my Italian place and it’s always been my Italian place, and I don’t want to see you there. Maybe stay out of the area.”
Julie didn’t even know she was at the center of drama.
“Oh God, Derek. You sound like a child.”
“Take care, Julie. Thanks for calling.”
“Wait.”
He paused and breathed into the receiver. She didn’t say anything and he lost patience.
“I gotta go, Jules. Something came up. Don’t call again. Seriously.”
He hit end before she could reply.
She was going to take someone new to his Italian place?
It was his place! He thought of how he must have looked that night to an outsider. And then he thought of what he must have looked like to Julie. It would have been a long time since she’d have seen him that animated or engaged. By the time he and Julie ended things, the battle lines had been drawn long before and dinners disappeared into long bouts of silence, and evenings were spent in an escalating cold war of indifference.
Derek set up his laptop on the small kitchen table in the trailer and booted up his email. He scrolled through the new emails, many of them from reporters and journalists. The novelist who wrote about their ordeal first wanted to update her novel with a new edition. Would he talk?
He slammed the computer closed and tilted his head back.
Derek’s phone beeped and he almost didn’t check it, but a quick glance showed that he had a text from Maeve. He opened it and scanned through her monologue.
She wrote: Going to a thing tonight with the social club back at Alibi for your dad. Wanted you to know. No surprises. I know it might be weird that people want to remember a man they hardly knew, but he was a true crime celebrity. The community mourns him and the awful way he was taken.
There was nothing to reply. So, she was going to hang out with the club and that was none of his business. His dad was iconic and he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t, there was a reason his murder sent a small shockwave through the nation.
The next text from Maeve made him pause.
Don’t stay alone tonight. Come with me?
He laughed out loud and shook his head. That girl was taunting him. Go and meet the women from the Love is Murder Social Club? He admitted that he lucked out with Maeve not drooling over every bit of information about his past, but it would be impossible to evade scrutiny if he accepted the offer. These were the women who worshipped Timothy Shelton as some sort of vigilante anti-hero. It sounded like complete torture. If there were things he hated most in the world is was having to small-talk people he had no intention of ever seeing again, and listening to ill-informed internet detectives talk about his life as if he wasn’t there.
Those were guaranteed to happen if he heeded Maeve’s call.
But.
Maeve wasn’t like that.
He wondered if he was being too harsh.
He slipped off his shoes and paced over to the fridge, assessing the night’s possible dinner contents. Eggs. He could always eat eggs. Eggs, toast, and some whisky to drown the sorrows and nightmares of the new murder in his life.
“Jesus, Dad,” he said to no one, his hands on the counter. “You never had any idea how much you put on me.” And even though he didn’t believe in ghosts, he wondered if his father might hear him anyway. He lifted his head to the ceiling of the trailer and added, “It’s almost like you lived to ruin me.” He grimaced; the words, his own, didn’t seem entirely honest—he knew they were harsh and only slightly undeserved, but he was angry that he couldn’t earn his quiet life. At work, he was a tireless machine, procuring warm blankets for the elderly and showing every ounce of patience to those who were worried for the loved ones when their worry sounds like yelling and rudeness.
His mind pulled toward Maeve.
His phone beeped a third time.
I know it sounds like your worst nightmare.
A fourth text added: I’ll find some way to make it up to you.
Another and another.
Free drinks?
Make-out with you afterward to help you forget?
And he stared at her words—beckoning, sincere, eager, and, he realized, a little naïve—and she was cute, but he was going to eat eggs and drink and text things to her that he would later regret.
Derek put his shoes back on and swapped his shirt.
He paced the length of his trailer three times and opened his fridge four times.
He picked up the phone and fired back: What time?
The response was instantaneous: Get here now. I’ll have a drink ready.
She might live close to the bar, but she’d forgotten he lived in the country. Derek locked the trailer and got into his car. Before he drove away, he put his head on the steering wheel and paused, his hand on his keys. This was a now or never moment—if he went to the bar he was breaking a decade-old commitment to leaving his past behind. Over a girl.
And no matter how he sliced it and analyzed the details of the past few days, she was still just a girl.
A girl who made him forget what time it was. A girl who hung on every word he said and asked him questions as if she really was interested in proper IV techniques and car accident stories over dinner. A girl who shared his interests and his love for a good game and a good laugh, and a girl who tasted like bliss and summer.
A girl that he was in a hurry to see.
Even though she was at the last place on earth he’d ever wanted to go.
Chapter Fourteen
Maeve asked for a whisky, she’d been paying attention during the questioning part of their date, and knew he went for Bulleit bourbon neat as his dream drink. At first he said he didn’t have a dream drink, but eventually, when pressed, he said above average whisky and nothing else. She’d filed it away for a future use and there it was—future use.
She talked with the girls from the club, all who had gathered as a response to Gloria’s email, and she kept an eye out for Derek to appear. When she spotted him prowling at the front of the bar, Maeve excused herself, grabbed the whisky and made her way to him, offering the tumbler class in supplication, a nervous expression playing on her face.
“You showed up,” she said and handed him the drink. He took an immediate sip, then downed the entire shot without apology and handed her the empty tumbler glass. Maybe she should’ve gone with the well whisky, instead.
“I showed up,” he said and motioned to the back where he must have know the cohort was waiting.
“Look,” Maeve started, aware of what she was asking of him. “I know—”
“I agreed, didn’t I?” Derek stated, not unkindly, and he stared toward the back of the bar. “You can’t second guess these choices,” he said in a slow, steady voice. “I’m here. I want to be here.”
Maeve heard the subtext: Don’t make me change my mind.
She sipped on her own drink and nodded an understanding. He didn’t want to be there, but he was doing it for her. With that knowledge, the evening took a different shape. Maeve understood the magnitude of his appearance and she tried to keep him close to her, out of harm’s way from the more aggressive Social Club fans. The evening assembled in a predictable fashion.
“Derek Shelton,” someone cooed as Maeve walked him over to the section where they’d gathered. The members of the Social Club turned their heads and eyed the boy with suspicion.
Maeve knew she wasn’t the only one to harbor dreams of the Woodstock survivor and she watched as the news of his arrival spread around the group. Whispers passed through their circles and women tugged sleeves and turned in to deliver the news, and soon everyone knew Derek Shelton was hanging on the new girl’s arm; Derek Shelton was kissing her cheek, buying her a drink and sidling up to the group with distant expectations.
Each of them had dreamed of Derek at some point, and now they watched him with a stranger who had a certain sense of discord; as if they understood, That woman could have been me. It was as though a Prince chose a commoner to marry and every girl wondered how she could’ve been the one.
Derek represented the famous and the grieved. The women swarmed.
“Leave him alone,” Gloria instructed to no one in particular, but her advice was dismissed.
“Thank you for coming,” a few of the women crooned.
Maeve suppressed a childish eye roll. She’d done nothing extra to deserve his affection, but she felt protective nonetheless.
“We were such supporters of your father. He was always so generous with his time.”
“To lose a wife and his kid.”
“And yet he was so open with his story,” a member said.
“Was he?” Derek asked and he finished the drink Maeve handed him. Without even a moment passing, his hand was full with an identical order. People had been paying attention—Derek would lack for nothing. “I tend to think that my dad’s story was a convenient story of the time,” he said and raised his refilled cup into the air.
Maeve watched his eyes wander around the room. He was uncomfortable and standoffish and she couldn’t blame him. He downed the second Bulleit and smiled, whisky glistening softly at the corners of his mouth.
“Easy there,” Maeve warned, but Derek grabbed on to her waist, much to the delight of the club members who huddled around the couple, grasping on to any story that either of them wanted to tell of Timothy and his life on earth. Maeve knew that she’d invited Derek out of a sense of obligation and pity, but she wondered if perhaps she’d made a mistake. The group bought him drinks and he took them, absorbed in the celebrity of the moment, but with a detached anger instead of the fun optimism she’d seen before.
He looked intent on escaping.
“We’re all experts, you know,” a girl named Rose said to him, leaning across the bar. She had ample cleavage and a locket dangling around her neck. Her bright green eyes flashed with mirth. “We all know a lot about murders. And we knew your story inside and out—your father helped a lot through the years.”
“Did he?” Derek asked and Maeve put her hand around his waist in return; she could feel the aggravation in the stiffness of his back, the slope of his chin. He was trembling; she could feel the tremors behind her embrace. She hoped her presence calmed him from exploding on her friends—a possibility, she realized too late.
“It’s been years of research, but honestly…your father’s death answers more questions than it creates—”
“True. But, Jesus…” Derek groaned in exasperation. He turned to Maeve, who tried to look apologetic, but he sucked in a breath and kissed her on the cheek, letting his exhale hit her as he pulled away.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered close to his ear and he shrugged it away, turning to her.
“They think they’re doing good,” he said, with more humanity than she expected. “I’m not annoyed.”
But he was lying.
Maeve looked at Holly and remembered the strong woman she’d spoken to the first night she found the club. Holly continued down her one-note path and even pulled out a tidy annotated notebook. More than anything, Maeve was impressed. She’d been so quiet and sincere the first night, eager to be a friend, but Maeve realized now everyone had a different motivation for attending. And Holly’s had something with her color-coordinated murder notebook.
Holly reached into her bag and pulled out a white packet of information and slid it across the bar top toward the couple with a nod. The packet was adorned with an industrial strength staple, and within the stack were names and photographs and maps and blog posts, printed and dated. She reached over and flipped through the pages for him; this was virtually everything ever written on the Internet about the man she was spending time with, the murder attempt he’d survived, and his father.
It was her own research file.
The room felt bloated and hot, Maeve turned.
“So, Derek Shelton,” Holly said before Maeve could stop her, “what do you remember about the night of April 7?”
Chapter Fifteen
What did he remember about the night he almost died?
Initially, his brain could latch on to fragme
nts of memory—a laugh, a whisper, a flash of sunlight against the big open windows in their front room. His parents were away, not unusual, and they had a sitter—he was aging out of needing someone to watch him, but his sister needed someone other than him to keep her calm and safe for the evening—her ghost flitted through his memory in small bursts, filling up his brain with images of her in life and in death: the night his sister and his babysitter and the Woodstock Killer died, they seared their lives and deaths together inextricably, stealing normal memories and fun fondness. When he thought of his sister and Ginny, he thought of them dead first and foremost. Because they had been for fifteen years.
Ginny, the babysitter played a cursory role in their life at the time of the murder, but the way in which she died meant she was linked to one of the most important days of his life. The universe was strange like that. If the night had been normal, he might not have even remembered her name. If his father hadn’t killed Ginny’s boyfriend, Peter.
Peter, the Woodstock Killer.
At least that was what everyone believed.
The cops, the lawyers, his parents, and the pages of websites dedicated to the case; they all knew that Peter was singularly guilty. Derek couldn’t say for certain, but even at that age he was aware that Peter didn’t seem like a serial killer. But seeming like something and being that thing were two different beasts. He’d always been nice when Ginny sneaked him in while his parents were away, and nice had to count for something. At least to junior high Derek, it did.
To the rest of the world, Peter Newell was a cold-blooded murderer who strangled babysitters, strangled his own girlfriend, shot a little girl, and tried to murder a second child. But, in the end, he was outsmarted and outmaneuvered. He was also responsible for seven other deaths over the course of a nine-month period.
And if Timothy Shelton hadn’t killed him by stabbing him with garden shears, maybe he would’ve gone on to kill dozens more babysitters and children. But he was stopped and so Timothy was a hero, not a murderer.
Forgotten Obsessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 1) Page 10
