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

by Talia Maxwell

  My son, Derek Shelton, is the only person to whom this box is addressed.

  Derek. The night your sister died, she was killed by the gun you now possess. It belonged to a cop. That cop was Beverly Kane. The series of events at our house that night was not how you were told or how you were led to remember.

  But understanding the order of events and the desperation I felt to keep our family intact is part of something I have to let go. Your mother never knew—that is important for me to tell you. She died believing Peter was the Woodstock Killer and Peter killed her daughter. She died believing I was protecting my family from harm. She loved me and she adored you and…

  Derek stopped and he handed the letter to Maeve. He motioned for her to read and she picked up where he left off.

  …would have been devastated to learn how we’d hurt you. I believe that deep down you remember some of the events that happened that night; or you’ve repressed them completely and they may resurface as I tell you. Your mom and I were celebrating our anniversary. You called me, worried. You’d heard Ginny scream and you were aware of the stories, but you were too frightened to…

  “Let me know if you want me to stop,” Maeve said. “If it gets too much.”

  “It’s already too much,” Derek said. He was staring at the plastic bag and not blinking. “Keep reading.”

  She swallowed and continued.

  …check it out. In the meantime, Ginny managed to get a call out to Peter. He also arrived to the house when I did—I went up and he went down. I found Ginny first and I leaned down to see if she was alive and she wasn’t. She was clearly gone. And I could hear Peter wrestling in the basement and shout and call. I rushed downstairs and found Peter attacking a figure in black. Black hood, black mask, black pants, black shoes. Peter exposed that the attacker had a weapon and I reached for it, knocking it loose, and we all scrambled for the gun. I was eventually victorious and I raised and aimed above their bodies, into the wall of the basement, but I didn’t see her there.

  She took a breath. The next words visible, but not yet formed on her lips, and she cringed.

  I ran to Layla, but I felt a sharp pain in my back and it was a slice, a scratch—you saw it once, and asked, and I told you I got it on a white water rafting trip, taking a branch to the back. But it was the shears. And I still had the gun, but my hands were quaking and I spun and grabbed the shears and knocked the person to the ground. They left the gun and scrambled away, but I noticed two things, two things: The hood fell off for a fraction of the moment and the hair was blond, curly. And then the shoes. Not an inch of which was covered in Peter’s blood. Pure black and spotless as they disappeared into the night.

  But I knew.

  My fingerprints on the gun. My fingerprints on the shears.

  By now perhaps you’re trying to piece it all together.

  The gun belonged to Kane, former police officer, then detective and now retiree of the force. There’s a lawyer I trust—A man named Brian George is waiting for you to take the gun to him. It will be traced back to her. It was her personal firearm. Take these financials as well. It will show that part of my wealth was not the books. The books were more of a cover…I never sold enough for million dollar homes and cars and trips. But I had the backing of a legacy. And she had everything to protect. When you trace it, trace it all the way back. And yes, you’ll learn that I was scared. I was scared of going to jail for a crime I didn’t commit. She said it would be easy to spin—she could paint the whole thing all different. Like, Ginny was a cover-up, an attempt to make the murders looks like the work of the neighborhood serial killer and not the pissed off father who came home to a scared kid being beat up by a babysitter’s boyfriend. The story she wanted to tell would’ve sold better than my fumbling confession: this woman is one of the first to arrive at the scene, a medal-award-winning daughter of a long line of officers, but I know those shoes and that hair and that build and that stiff shoulder and slightly out-of-breath introduction, which was explained as “female nerves.”

  She is the Woodstock Killer. She kills still.

  It’s time to stop. Ruin her and tell our story.

  Maeve bristled. “We met Beverly Kane,” she said slowly, and she pointed to the name. Derek didn’t move or respond to the revelation. “The woman came up and introduced herself to you.”

  “Yeah,” he said coldly. “I remember. Find the gun. Find the killer. That sociopathic bitch.”

  “She came to your dad’s funeral…”

  “…she had access to Julie in that time frame.” He looked up and shook his head. “Look, I don’t understand who brought the gun here. Why did he kill himself with the gun and then have someone bring it here instead of… I have two thoughts: One, don’t kill yourself. Two, kill yourself a different way? Save the middle man?”

  “I think he wanted her to be afraid,” Maeve said. “He was bribing her. That gun ties her straight back to that night. So, she’d come looking for the gun. This is a woman who prides herself on not getting caught. She still used Peter’s death to change her MO and keep murdering.”

  “Okay, okay,” Derek said slowly. “So, we go to Brian George and we hand this over to him and we’re done.”

  “Yeah,” Maeve nodded. She pocketed Timothy’s note and pointed for Derek to pick up the gun. He did so carefully and wrapped it in the plastic as tightly as he could before calling for the woman to come pack up the box and put it away. He noted the changes in contents and retrieved his key and they left the bank in a hurry.

  On the road, Derek seemed calmer.

  “I can’t imagine—” Maeve started, wondering how she was supposed to broach the avalanche of information.

  “I always knew,” Derek said. “I’d been attacked. By a figure all in black, and I realized that the person who attacked me must have thought I was a babysitter, too. Or traced my call, I don’t know. I felt responsible for the chaos, because I’d called…”

  “You don’t remember the gun?”

  Derek shook his head. “I remember being attacked. I remember Peter talking to me. I remember waking up in a hospital.”

  The truck rattled against the road and Maeve held on to the side door to keep herself from bouncing too much. The steering wheel locked and the tires spun, and Derek yanked the wheel to stop the incoming crash. Quickly, he pulled to the side and maneuvered into a small pull-off, flipping on the hazards.

  “Lost a belt or something,” he said, and he opened the door to check it out, but no sooner than he’d put his hand on the handle, a whizzing blast through the small space, the glass shattered, and Derek cried out in pain.

  There was a another zipping sound and a metal ping. And another. Someone was firing at them. And he’d been shot.

  Derek cried out to Maeve, while she slid down in the seat and tugged at him to sneak out with her the passenger side. He held his arm, the blood running between his fingers.

  “Tell me what to do,” Maeve whispered as the glass pellets shattered around them.

  She meant for him to give her medical instructions so she could save his life, but instead, Derek turned to her, shoved the gun, still wrapped in the towel and the grocery bag, into her chest and then he grabbed his arm and swung upward and out of the driver’s side door in the direction of the shooter. His body dashed away from hers and into danger.

  Without looking back, he yelled, “RUN!”

  Maeve ran. She ran with the evidence gun pressed to her body and she didn’t stop. She slid down the embankment on the side of the highway and she found herself running through a muddy wasteland and toward a row of lights. Then she skidded to a halt and took a deep breath. Her phone was back in the truck. And she couldn’t leave Derek back there to die.

  She dumped the towel on to the ground and using a plastic bag, picked up the gun. She’d read a shit ton about firearms in all of her crime novels, but with the exception of the Christian Summer Camp her mother forced her to attend at age fourteen which involved a skeet-shooting clas
s, she’d never held a gun before.

  All she knew was that she needed to protect the prints. Beverly’s and Timothy’s needed to be on there after all these years. But she also knew that without the gun, she was defenseless.

  Off in the distance, she heard a powerful kapow of another shot. To the neighbors it might have sounded like the backfire of an engine, a firework. Maeve knew she had to hurry.

  “You’re dumb,” she chastised herself. “And you’re dumb.” But she rushed off back toward the gunfire anyway.

  She grabbed her phone out of the truck’s cabin and fired off a text. Then she remained hidden and waited. Along the road, Derek and Beverly were nowhere to be seen. Maeve followed the direction he’d been running in when he left her and she followed the path across the street and into a wooded area beyond. She scampered up railroad ties and listened intently for the sound of movement. It was beginning to get dark; the sun wasn’t set yet, but the sky held a blue-ish amber glow, an anticipation of evening.

  Maeve rushed through the underbrush, scanning the trees and the horizon, looking for a sign of life. Soon, she spotted a trail of blood. And she pivoted and followed the blood, like a dog, nose to the ground, searching, eagerly.

  Soon, she stumbled upon an abandoned car, deep within the woods. And there, pushed up against the hood, was Beverly. Derek with his bad arm had pinned her down, his body on hers—her strength no match for his.

  Maeve raised the gun, “Don’t struggle!” she yelled. Derek and Beverly both turned to see Maeve’s face, white with fear, the gun in her hand. “They’re coming. They’re coming and they have all the evidence to end your torture,” she said, ramping up as each word left her, feeling empowered by the metal in her hand and the surge of adrenaline coursing through her body.

  “Don’t shoot that thing,” Derek yelled at her. “I’ve got her. Back up.”

  “They’re coming and they’ll be here any second!”

  “Who’s coming? Beverly rasped. “The police?” she seemed to smirk.

  Between the woman’s gasps, Maeve leveled her gaze. “No, bitch. The Love is Murder Social Club is coming and your reign of murder ends tonight.”

  To punctuate the announcement, from behind them, Maeve could hear sirens and shouting—a flood of voices took to the streets and the noises settled close-by, working their way to them. The end was close and she felt weak with recognition—soon, they’d be saved.

  Derek, still holding Beverly, adjusted his angle to see Maeve better, and even through his sweat and bloodstained smile, Maeve still got weak-kneed at the thought of him. She held the gun steady and while she waited for her friends to arrive she said, “I’m normally not,” she waved the gun a bit and Derek flinched and ducked, neither of them knew if it was loaded, “really this exciting,” she said.

  With a smirk and a limp shrug, he replied, “Maeve Montgomery. I really don’t believe you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  7 months LATER

  “You know,” she said over the hum of the radio playing a Father John Misty song, “I think the most exciting thing about the house completion is that I don’t have to stop sneaking out of his hotel room. Those lobby employees, man,” Maeve rolled her eyes.

  “They think you’re a working girl?” Millie laughed as she turned her car on to highway 212 toward Boring, passing by the fields, Mt. Hood bobbing in front of them. “I bet they do.”

  “Oh, shit,” Maeve said with a laugh. “I hadn’t even thought of that. I bet they do. And it’s the cost, but I think some of it was covered by insurance.”

  “He hasn’t even let you see the stages?”

  Maeve shook her head. “Nope. He wanted it to be a surprise. And that’s fine,” she waved her hand and looked out the window. “He’s entitled.”

  “Aren’t you curious?” Millie asked.

  “Yeah. If he was like ten minutes closer, I might have been tempted to drive by and try to see for myself when I knew he was working, but I couldn’t do it. The betrayal of it might have killed him.”

  “Oh, yeah, instead of crazed female retirees who turn out to be maniacal serial killers and actually try to kill the both of you.”

  “I’m feeling like that might have been a one-time thing,” Maeve said with a laugh.

  “You feeling good?” Millie asked, side-eyeing as she drove.

  “About my choice to stay?” Maeve asked. “Hell yas. Starting salary at twice at what I was making serving tables and they’ll pay for my grad school here. Bonus.”

  “It worked out.”

  “It worked out,” Maeve said with a quick flash of her teeth and a little jig. Yeah, it worked out. She’d been recruited to start a small-time crew of private investigators. Word of what the Love is Murder Social Club did for the Shelton case spread through the media and stayed a few news cycles.

  Soon, she’d be learning the ropes as a PI and earning her degree to pursue more scientific pursuits. She didn’t care about the timing—she’d decided to go to Maryland, reluctantly, when the offer appeared. She wanted to think it was a gift from the universe after all the shit it put her through.

  The song ended and another began. The sisters sat in silence while she followed Maeve’s directions and drove out into the country, past country stores and pig farms and large fields of flowers and saplings for trees.

  Eventually, they found their way to Derek. The property as Maeve remembered was gone and instead a house sat against the landscape. It was beautiful. He’d built, for her and him, a farmhouse with a wrap-around porch and a second-story veranda that looked out upon a side yard that was no longer a muddy pit, but a newly seeded grass yard with a fire pit. And there, out further, a smaller house. And upon closer inspection there were balloons and people milling about.

  “I think the housewarming is gathering over there,” Maeve said and pointed to the outbuilding. Millie parked the car and followed behind her sister until the mass of guests noticed her appearance and summoned Derek. He emerged from the house and stepped toward her, his face alit with anticipation. The group took a collective breath and Maeve looked up and read the sign above the door.

  “The Love is Murder Social Club,” Maeve repeated. “What is this?”

  “It’s your new office,” Derek announced, and like the Red Sea the partygoers parted and Maeve took his hand and followed him inside. It was the size of a medium sized living room, with a bar, already stocked, built into the back. And as Maeve looked around, she noticed the most remarkable details. The bookshelf was full of true crime novels and all of her criminology textbooks. Newspaper and magazine covers about famous murders graced the walls, framed and gleaming. The death of John Lennon. Ted Bundy’s capture.

  “Office,” she repeated, trying to understand.

  “The Social Club has relocated,” said Gloria from somewhere in the crowd.

  It was then Maeve noticed the people poured back into the small space. Her friends, her family—her eyes thought she noticed her mom—before she heard Derek’s voice, followed by a holler and someone saying, “Pipe down, Debbie!”

  She wasn’t sure she knew a Debbie.

  Derek took a knee.

  Someone put on music. Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper on in the background.

  Maeve’s cheeks went hot and she went to the ground and reached out to him. Oh God, oh no. Both of them were on their knees, she stared into his eyes with sheer disbelief and he, through the laughter and the tears, and her insistence on never standing again, he started his speech over again—eye-level and entangled—Maeve only one-second away from messy crying in front of everyone.

  “When you walked into my life,” he said to the sound of their fans around them, “I didn’t want to love you. I wanted to get off the phone and get over the obligation of thanking the person who saved my dad’s life. Who knew that saving his life would be the catalyst for all of this? Because when I called and when we talked, it was you.” His blue eyes sparkled. “It wasn’t some girl I needed to avoi
d, it was the girl I needed in my life. You are the most intelligent, courageous, honest and giving, funny person I’ve ever met. And if I ever let you walk out of my life, I’d regret it. I know I love you more than I know anything.”

  A wave of romantic aahs and oohs flooded the space. Derek waited and then he reached into his pocket.

  He unearthed a ring.

  It was perfect.

  Not a diamond. A cognac sapphire placed in an antique setting. Maeve’s mouth opened and closed like a fish and she let him take her hand. And it hit her—in a wave of relief and love and pride and happiness—that he was all she would ever need to be happy.

  “Dear Maeve Montgomery. I know everything about you. I know that you eat crackers on the couch and leave a trail of crumbs everywhere you go. I know that your mind never lets go until it finds the right answer. I know that your favorite murder case and unsolved murder is the Sodder Fire.” He paused and smiled at Gloria in the crowd, and then he looked back. “And I built you this place, so you’ll never have to be far away to do the things you love. Marry me, Maevey.”

  Maeve felt the ring heavy on her finger and she squealed.

  And then bent down and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

  Her husband was fucking gorgeous. His dark hair, his blue eyes, his three-day scruff and the bright way he looked at her when she arrived places; surprise, love and pride every time. She jumped up, turned to the crowd and flashed the ring. Millie rushed forward to snap a picture and jump up and down, and Maeve realized that she’d clearly been in on it.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” they heard from the crowd. “Did that girl answer?” It was Debbie again and Maeve turned back to Derek, still on his knees and waiting. She sunk back down and took his face in her hands and pushed her lips and body against the man she’d loved for as long as she could remember.

  “God, yes. Yes!” she said and the crowd erupted. The cowbell on the song disappeared behind the excitement and cries for booze. Maeve’s heart raced and she spun to get a good look at the man she loved. She wanted to memorize the moment and his face and everything she felt.