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

by Talia Maxwell

  The second paparazzo stayed at the wooden bench next to them, listening, before snapping a series of quick pictures and saying, “You might get a sexiest man award again. Care to comment?”

  “You mean sexiest glow-up among teenage true crime kids?” Derek complained jovially to the man as the intruder continued to snap photos. “It was a narrow category.”

  Everything old was new again.

  A fellow nurse had called to warn him that photographers were hiding out in the Kaiser employee parking lot, waiting to snap a photo of him headed to work. Maeve, thankfully, was off their radar until now.

  Her anonymity ended with the storming of Millie toward the camera—metal prong poised in their direction.

  The detectives wanted Timothy to be the fatherly hero ending the community’s fear instead of the scared father who killed a college kid by accident. They did everything they could to point the evidence to that story instead of the truth. They made it work, intentionally or unintentionally, who would ever know? It worked. It worked well enough to sell novels, movies and appearances all over the United States. It worked until Timothy was dead and Derek found a way out of the oppressive hold pinned to him for so many years.

  Maeve tried to remember her crush on the teenage Derek. He was self-assured and calm, he was polite and genuine, sometimes he cried, sometimes he made a joke. Even across court stenography and retellings on the news, she imagined his personality. It was something she loved about her crush on him, there was so much evidence of his personhood online and in print that she could plop him into everyday fantasies and see him functioning easily as a part of her life. He wasn’t a brooding mystery like other girl’s crushes—he was a goofball with faults and a broken life.

  In that role, they seemed perfect for each other.

  Those were her favorite daydreams; the ones that walked the line between reality and fiction. Derek was who he was and that’s why she loved him so much when she was a kid. While everyone around her tried to pretend to be someone else, Derek Shelton never pretended. He made authenticity a brand.

  Only, he wasn’t authentic. He was pretending the whole time.

  For Maeve, underneath the passion, the crush, the appreciation, the nostalgia, there ran an undercurrent of doubt. If he’d lied about that part of his life for so long, what else had he lied about?

  There were, he had to know, big fan theories about his own culpability in the murders. He had to know she’d read them all. The ones that said his parents covered for his own copycat murder. Or, the brother killed the sister, the parents discovered it, killed the babysitter and the boyfriend to cover up their son’s guilt. Those ramblings might have been disputed by evidence but once the idea was planted it was hard for it to not fleet across people’s minds. Theory became truth because of laziness and a fire for the unexplainable. Maeve was as guilty as they came for deriving some form of entertainment by consuming the cases of real people’s tragedies, but she was starting to understand the toll that took on the humans on the other side of the stories.

  The Woodstock Killer haunted Derek.

  And Derek haunted her.

  It was an endless stream in her mind of wild sex, partnership, aging, family, and all the things that satisfied her soul with Derek cast in the central role. It was normal, she was normal. But she was also pushing forward with every piece of her being despite the fact that she’d caution her own self about rushing headlong into bed, and then a relationship with a high profile person if the roles were reversed.

  Millie finished her s’mores and they carried a conversation into the evening until the food carts closed, and the bars attracted DJs and a younger set of weekenders. Her sister excused herself to go home, kissing Maeve on the cheek while she called a cab. When the car arrived, Maeve walked her to the door.

  “Okay, so,” Maeve said in a sisterly tone. “You have to be honest. You like him, right?”

  “He’s a supermodel. If you two ever run out of money, I suggest a nurse uniform line designed by him, sold by him. Million-dollar idea.”

  “I’m asking honestly.”

  “You already know what I honestly think,” Millie said with an air kiss while she opened the door to the cab and climbed into the backseat. “If you like him, I will try to see what you like in him and—”

  “You can’t see what I like in him?” Maeve lowered her gaze.

  “Beyond the hotness and the nostalgia? Sure. He’s great. He comes with his own line of photographers for any occasion. Look. Just be careful, big sister. And also…you have to tell him you might be leaving. This guy is building a house with his own two hands in the middle of God’s country. He’s not following you all lovesick to Maryland.”

  Maeve nodded and saluted the instructions. She’d expected a worse reproach and when she hurried back to Derek, he’d paid the bill and summoned them a car back to her place.

  “I’m not staying the night,” he assured her.

  “We’ll see,” she teased, but a part of her hoped he wouldn’t, either. She liked having her space back after they were intimate so she could live with kissing him goodbye tonight. Just maybe not forever.

  Maeve rested her head on his shoulder during the first ten minutes down and through Portland. A few minutes after that, the driver dropped them off in front of her apartment.

  She unlocked the door and stepped inside—and, shit.

  Immediately her eyes went to the posters still hanging up around the room, the remnants of the club’s work earlier in the day, and in her haste to hurry out the door to dinner post-confession of grad school plans, she’d left it all up for him to see.

  Quickly, Maeve moved to cover and tear down the most offensive images.

  She liked him. She didn’t want to look needy or obsessive or too optimistic. But she was falling in love. Every happy couple in the world started with a first week—a happy, contented, infatuated week.

  This was her week.

  Maeve slid a pile of folders of witness interviews with students after the murders across the table and made a space to sit down. She climbed up on to her table and sat, her feet on the chair, and leaned in to rest her head on his chest. Derek hugged her and they nestled there, deep in thought and into each other, but when she lifted her head up, she saw him staring straight ahead his face frozen in anger and fear.

  She followed his gaze.

  Taped directly behind her was a picture of his sister’s murder scene. Four different pictures, each covered in sticky notes from the club’s gallery walk of evidence. Even while covered in pink and blue and yellow squares, the gruesome violence of the little girl’s death was evident.

  Maeve gasped and slipped down off the table, rushing to the picture and tearing it down.

  “Shit. I’m sorry,” she said.

  Derek’s jaw worked, clenching and unclenching as he bit back the words on the edge of his tongue. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said, tight and withdrawn. And his weak bubble shattered. Maeve watched as his eyes stormed and his anger radiated toward her, palpable and deserved. She flushed with shame and embarrassment and total fear.

  “I thought I had…” she trailed off. Did he want excuses? Why had they come back here instead of his sterile hotel? She thought she’d pulled down all the pictures, all the things related to him and his family specifically. And she’d missed the biggest thing of all, the thing he’d avoided his entire life—the reality of what that monster had done to his sibling.

  And Maeve was responsible. She was the one who brought it right to him.

  She couldn’t grovel enough nor could she predict where he’d land as she watched him turn from her and then to her, his fists clenched and his face in torment. Maeve crumpled the pictures further and tears brimmed in her eyes, she blinked and the tears dropped, and when he looked back at her and noticed her crying, he looked full of contempt.

  “I’m so sorry,” Maeve said. She wiped her eyes and blinked back any further emotion. “I’m sorry. We were working so ha
rd…”

  “Yeah,” he said and nodded. “I know that. I do know that. It’s not that. I asked you to do this…”

  He walked toward the door and then back to the table and then back to the door, pacing. Maeve didn’t know if she should go to him or stay away. She threw the crumpled paper underneath her dining room table and walked around the table to intercept Derek as he paced toward her.

  As he approached, Maeve held out her arms, and he awkwardly plowed toward her, resting his body against hers, his arms at his sides, his shoulders heavy against her head. She wrapped him in a hug and said, “I’m mortified.”

  “I’ve never…I never…” he straightened up and Maeve was forced to drop her hands. “It wasn’t intentional.” He stopped and shrugged and rubbed his eyes, clearly not satisfied, but without any other recourse. He lifted his arms up again and then dropped them to his side and he laughed, with an embarrassed shrug; he was mad, but he was trying not to be. Maeve stepped forward and he stepped back.

  She dropped her arms and felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Instantly she felt queasy, aware of what was happening next. There was nothing she could do; she felt as though she were on a cliff, reaching for life, a hand, a branch, knowing that no one could save her from the fall.

  “I can’t undo it. But I’m so sorry, Derek.”

  “Yeah,” he said again. Maeve shook her head and more tears fell and he turned and began to walk to the door. “I’ll call tomorrow, okay. I don’t think…” he scanned the apartment again, his eyes settling on each piece of evidence they’d pinned up, each question they’d asked—and what looked like amazing sleuthing to her, looked like crazy obsessiveness and danger to him.

  She was the danger.

  When she started to see her apartment through his eyes, she realized she should’ve taken it all down, every scrap, every post-it. It was so risky to assume he’d see her good intentions and not just the enormity of her obsession. She scanned the walls, the corner darkened without the lamp on, and she rested against the table, appalled.

  “How can I prove to you that I’m more than this,” she said and waved her hand around the room. “This is what I do…”

  Derek coughed into his hand and continued to pace, his energy bursting, perhaps due to his desire to run away from her entirely, but he stayed and he tried, and Maeve wished so badly she could say the right combination of things to make him stay. When he looked at her, she knew he wouldn’t.

  “Fuck,” she said. “If it’s you or this…” she waved to the case files and the maps and she sighed. “Of course, I choose you…”

  “I think this is all really overwhelming for me and I need…” Derek trailed off.

  “Give me five minutes and I’ll pack it all up.”

  “I…Maeve,” he paused, regrouped, and when he said her name, a frozen shot of pain seared through her. She heard it in his tone, in his eyes. “I don’t want you to not… I don’t want to stop what you’re doing here…selfishly.” He closed his eyes and when he opened them, he looked straight at Maeve and shook his head once. “I want you to solve this crime. And I think you will. But I can’t…” he pointed to the maps and the empty space on the wall where the picture of his sister used to be and he paused. She followed his gaze to the bareness of the wall, absent of gore and sticky notes, and she caught a small sob in her chest.

  “I don’t want you to make that choice,” Maeve said. “I’ll learn to keep it separate.”

  “It’s not separate,” he answered quickly. “It’s just not. As long as you’re working on this…”

  “Don’t tell me that you’ll date me once I solve this crime or that you can’t be with me because…you said this was okay…this was your idea,” she spat, sharper than she intended, panicked while crossing her arms.

  “No.” He ran his hands through his thick hair and rubbed his chin. Finally, he shoved his hands in his pockets and took a step backward. “I’m choosing, for me, the opportunity to not accidentally run into my past in your apartment.”

  Maeve didn’t know what that meant.

  “Let me ditch the case.”

  “But I don’t want you to stop working on this case, because I believe in you and I believe in the social club,” Derek said.

  His waffling was maddening and Maeve couldn’t help but feel as though he’d strung her along from the start. All the scenarios she was warned about flitted through her mind as possibilities and she tried to push them aside, tried to tell herself that he did care for her.

  He did.

  “Jesus Christ,” Maeve said and she clenched her fists. “If you don’t want it all, then you have to make a choice. Or…or…you’re a coward.” Her lips trembled as the words left her mouth and she could tell before the third word hit his ear that he was wounded by her vitriol. But she didn’t want a man who stood before her and didn’t know if he wanted her. She wanted to be desired without reservation.

  She wanted him to choose her—and choose her and choose her. That’s what every woman wanted. And besides, the women would continue their investigation with or without Maeve’s involvement or the use of her apartment. It was ridiculous of him not to pause and realize he could have both.

  All he had to do was pick her and he had both.

  Except, for Derek, that was the problem: Maeve represented both, always.

  She felt her chest, worried about how much her heart and lungs ached. She felt simultaneously stupid and vindicated, did he like her too much for her brain? She dipped her head and waited until he responded, and when he did, she could tell she’d ruined everything.

  “You’re right,” Derek answered. “I’m a coward. No, no, no. Don’t look all pained and full of regret like you didn’t mean it. I am. I never told the truth about my dad until he was dead. I let my mom die believing a lie. I’ve been dishonorable to my own sister’s death. Because I was afraid of him.” He stood his ground, firm, gaining strength. “And this is new for me, Maeve. I’m not used to the Derek who’s living in a world where the person who did that,” he pointed to the crumpled picture on the floor, “is still out there and alive and knows where I work. Because, whether you want to believe it or not, you believe the lie. You end up believing the lie. Was Peter the Woodstock Killer? Yes. Did Peter use a gun? Yes. And when the facts match your story, even better. And every bit of that is fucking cowardly.” He took a step toward her. “You’re right,” he repeated. “And, so, what now?”

  Maeve couldn’t tell if it was a rhetorical question. She waited and sucked on her bottom lip, waiting, shaking.

  “I don’t know,” she answered after a long pause. “I don’t want you to go.”

  He took a step forward and kissed her.

  Maeve tried to turn it into a passionate kiss, but as she lifted her hands to his face, he ended the kiss abruptly and took a step back.

  “I like you, too, Maevey,” he winced, the strong veneer slipping for a second. “I just can’t do this, not right now.”

  Maeve nodded and swallowed. It seemed disingenuous. The night would turn into a day, which would turn into a week and a month, she knew how it would go. But she also knew she couldn’t stop it from happening. If he wasn’t the one he was going to walk right out of her life and that was that.

  “Can I call tomorrow?” Maeve asked, her voice breaking, but she could tell by his quick glance at the ground that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to say yes. She wanted to let him off the hook. She pecked him on the cheek and turned to walk back into her bedroom. “I’ll give you a few days. I’m sorry, I really am.” She turned around when she neared her doorway and blew him a kiss, even though she couldn’t wipe away the sad expression off her face.

  “I’ll text. I’ll call,” he mumbled, and before she could entreat him to stay or convince him to give her another small chance, he was out of the door. Just like that. There was no momentous goodbye or sobbing and blithering, just a wave and a kiss and he was gone. A connection over the phone, a few fun dates, and some mighty f
ine sex. Now, she was back at nothing.

  Maeve dropped her head and slumped over to her couch.

  She’d call her sister and request potential break-up food to replace the vegan muffins on her counter. If she told her sister to bring “break-up food” that would be a specific grocery list developed over many break-ups between them both through the years. A specialty grocer in NW Portland sold wine ice cream, a must, then they had bananas and chocolate syrup, cheese curds, and breadsticks with alfredo sauce.

  Before she could pull her phone out, she picked up Roger’s tug-of-war toy and whistled for him to appear. Had he run to her when she and Derek got home? The door was closed, Hugo’s new locks working nicely, but there was no dog.

  “Here boy! Roger!”

  But she didn’t hear the jingle of his collar and immediately Maeve stood.

  “Roger. Rooo-ger,” she called again. From her bedroom, she heard a slight jingle. Then another. As if the beast was rousing from slumber. She relaxed. “Roger! Come on,” she called again and whistled.

  Her eyes wandered over the whole of her apartment again, her arms dotted with goose bumps, her eyes hyper-focused, body on-guard.

  The lamp was off.

  Her lamp was off.

  The fucking lamp was off.

  Maeve took a side step toward her bedroom door.

  And there she saw a flash of black crawling across her bedroom floor, her mind registered quickly that it wasn’t Roger, it wasn’t a dog at all, and without a look behind her she tore off out of her apartment and down the hall. She bypassed the elevator, waiting for it would waste time, and sprinted down the emergency stairs, listening intently for the slam of a metal door above her that would indicate she’d been followed.

  But there was nothing.

  Maeve flew out of the emergency door on the first floor and landed against the tile of the lobby with heavy slaps followed by her out-of-breath wheezing, and she skipped herself straight to Hugo.

  Pounding with the soft part of her fists, Maeve peered up into the peephole and whispered as loud as she dared, “Hugo. Hugo! Please help. There was someone in my apartment.”