Twisted Triangle (10 page)

On April 15, Patsy extended a welcome invitation to Margo over the phone.

“Would you like to spend some time together?” she asked. “I’ll come and pick you up and bring you back.”

Clearly, Patsy meant intimate time.

“Yes, I would,” Margo said, scared but forging ahead nonetheless.

Margo was expected to be at Quantico all day, but nobody kept close tabs on her. So they made arrangements for Patsy to come by two mornings later, then bring Margo back around three in the afternoon so that she could check her messages and be available to students.

Over the next two days, Margo let herself remember the satisfaction and completeness of being with a woman. It was a feeling she’d thought she’d left behind more than fifteen years earlier.

To have that memory reawakened after all that time, coupled with the physical attraction and passion she felt for Patsy, was a heady experience. She was not thinking rationally at this point. She was enjoying being in the moment too much for that.

She’d felt passion and lust for Gene in the beginning, too. She’d even grown to love him, but it was different. Being with a woman was more of an emotional experience for her, an inter-mingling of spirit and soul, something she’d never felt with Gene or any other man. She didn’t think Gene had ever fully let go of control over his emotions, and neither had she, so they had sex. When she’d been with Donna, they both had let go. To her, that was making love, and she expected it to be the same with Patsy.

When the morning of their rendezvous arrived, Margo was ready.

“I’ve got some things to do,” she told John Hess as she left the offi around ten that morning. He had no idea what was going on and frankly wouldn’t have cared anyway.

Patsy was waiting for her at the parking circle, dressed in a white pantsuit. She handed Margo a toasted bagel, doused with olive oil and wrapped in foil, for the hourlong drive to her house.

“I’m glad you could get the day away,” she said. “Me, too,” Margo said.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” “Yes,” Margo said defi . “I’m sure.”

From that point on, Margo felt no guilt or confusion, only nervous excitement about consummating her feelings for Patsy.

During the drive, they talked about Patsy’s writing, how she drew her ideas from conversations with police, news events, and her own imagination. She said she’d sit down to write, blocking out the world, not knowing the end of her own plots until she got there, which made for rapid, unexpected endings.

Despite the difference in their incomes, Margo didn’t feel any socioeconomic divide or awkwardness between them. Patsy may have chosen a Mercedes or an Escada tie to make a statement,

but Margo was wearing her three-carat diamond ring, her diamond earrings, and her Rolex watch. Patsy was a successful author, but Margo saw herself as a success in her own right: she was an instructor at the FBI academy. The degree of emotional risk between them felt equal as well.

“It wasn’t her chasing me, or vice versa,” Margo said later. “It was a mutual attraction.”

Patsy drove through her secluded, affl neighborhood, with its expansive homes and well-groomed lawns, and up the driveway to her large ranch-style house. They entered through the garage, then Patsy led her into the kitchen, through the living room, and into the bedroom, which had a queen-size bed directly in front of the door.

Patsy went over to the vanity and started taking off her rings and jewelry. She seemed a little nervous and unsure of how to proceed, so Margo took the lead.

Margo came up from behind and put her arms around Patsy. Patsy looked up at their refl in the mirror, where their faces and blond heads were side by side. Now they could both see their expressions of longing.

“It was a perfect picture,” Margo recalled. “It just felt right. She turned around in my arms, and I held her. And then we kissed.”

When they’d first kissed in the dorm, Margo had felt an urgency of passion. But this time, it was soft and gentle, and it built from there. They lingered on every touch, not wanting to miss a beat. This time they had all afternoon, and Margo wanted to draw out every moment of it.

Margo found Patsy’s vulnerability, openness, and desire seductive.

“It was a very special and magical, unique moment,” Margo said later, “not something I’d ever felt before, nor did I have any idea that I would feel this again.”

They undressed each other and got into Patsy’s bed, a soft, inviting sea of powder blue, where they made love for more than

an hour. Margo wasn’t looking at her watch, but time didn’t seem to be moving. She was suspended in the sensation of it all.

As they lay together afterward, quiet, letting the sweat dry,

Margo felt calm, complete, and satisfi

“That was wonderful,” Patsy said. “I’ve never felt that before.” “Thank you,” Margo said. “Loving you is easy.”

By this, Margo wasn’t saying she was in love with Patsy; she was merely thanking her for sharing a unique lovemaking experience.

“I’ll be right back,” Patsy said.

She returned a few minutes later with a bottle of spicy red wine from her cellar in one hand and two short glass tumblers in the other, the way real Italians drink wine. She mentioned that the wine cellar had come fully stocked by the home’s previous owners.

Margo had never celebrated making love before, but that’s exactly what they were doing. “I didn’t hold back with Patsy,” she said later. “My heart, my soul, my guts were right out there, experiencing her.”

They lay there, caressing each other as they sipped their wine, and Patsy told Margo about her first affair with a married woman. Patsy said she’d fallen in love with the woman, but she wouldn’t leave her husband. Patsy also said that she and this woman had messed around, but they’d never made love.

Margo took this to mean that Margo was Patsy’s fi female lover, although later she wasn’t quite so sure.

“Patsy was the only other person I had been with since I’d met my husband,” she later said. “I’d never strayed, never even thought about it. So it was touching to me that she was that trusting of me, just as she should have been that I was that open with her.”

About forty-fi minutes later, they looked at the clock and decided they should get dressed and go.

“I have a surprise for you,” Patsy said, turning the car toward an older part of Richmond, where she pulled up to a small house

with peeling paint. There they were greeted by a woman in her early sixties, whose living room was dusty and cluttered.

Patsy went to another room while the woman sat Margo next to a small wooden desk, where she’d cleared a space in the middle of her things, and started shuffl a stack of cards that were white on both sides.

“When I touch the cards, I see things,” she said in a kind voice with a southern Virginia accent. “I pull from the cards what I’m supposed to see. They weren’t blank when I got them, but they turned that way.”

The woman pulled cards from the deck one at a time, moving them around, putting some aside, and reshuffl When she was satisfi she laid three down on the desk.

“I see that you are going through a defi time,” she said. “You are making decisions and are under a lot of stress. You’re worried about people getting hurt. You have some tough times ahead, but don’t worry, you are doing what is right.”

Patsy came in for her own reading, and about twenty minutes later, they headed back to Quantico.

“She told me you’re going to have a diffi three years ahead of you, but after that you’ll be okay,” Patsy told Margo, though she didn’t mention anything about her own reading.

Margo was surprised to hear that Patsy saw this psychic regularly. She also saw the reading as a strange way to end an otherwise memorable day.

“It spoiled the intimacy, calm, and peace I’d felt,” Margo said later.

Back in Margo’s offi Patsy signed her books again. “I’m back. And it’s better every time. Love, Patsy,” she wrote in
Postmortem
.

In
Body of Evidence
, she scribbled, “Hello again. It is a gorgeous

spring day and I’ve had a terrifi time with my friend. Love, Patsy.”

That same April, Margo and Gene were in the van with the girls, about to pull out of their driveway, when she realized that she’d forgotten to put on her jewelry.

Gene went inside to get it for her, but when he came back, he had only her watch and rings.

“Where are my earrings?” Margo asked.

“I brought everything that was up there,” Gene said, referring to the crystal dish on her nightstand.

Margo went inside to look for herself, but Gene was right. The diamond earrings were nowhere to be found.

“I can’t fi them,” Margo said as she got back in the van. “C’mon, let’s go,” Gene said. “We’ll look again when we get

home.”

After the Mexican ring incident, this seemed all too familiar to Margo. When the earrings didn’t turn up, Gene fi a claim with the insurance company.

Although they had been appraised at $9,000, the company is-sued a check to the Bennetts for $11,000, the earrings’ current value.

Shortly after receiving the check, Gene went on a visit to Atlanta. He’d used the insurance money to pay off one of their lines of credit, and had left virtually nothing in the household bank account.

Margo was frustrated.

“I don’t have any money, and I have to go to the grocery store,” she told Gene when he called from Atlanta.

“Write a check off the line of credit,” he said.

When Gene returned from his trip, he gave her a pair of “replacement” earrings, which came in a similar gold setting and looked remarkably like the ones that had disappeared. Margo knew they didn’t have the money for new earrings, so she figured Gene had done it again. This time, she could no longer deny what was staring her right in the face: her husband was a crook.

“For so long, I had my head in the sand, but I couldn’t hide this,” she said later.

On April 23, Margo went to an early release party for Patsy’s latest book,
All That Remains
. She and twenty other agents had

dinner with Patsy in the back room of a bureau hangout called the Globe & Laurel, which, with its plaid carpets, was reminiscent of a small hunting lodge.

The owner, Major Richard Spooner, was a former Marine with a near obsession and deep respect for the military and law enforcement. He had blanketed the walls and ceilings of his restaurant with memorabilia, patches and shoulder epaulettes from around the world, and glass boxes displaying commemorative and actual guns. Nobody brought their spouses that night, and Gene, who had been showing signs of jealousy at the attention his wife was paying the famous author, hadn’t wanted Margo to go. He’d always had a way of isolating her, which had previously discouraged her from

making close friendships outside their nuclear family.

That night, Patsy signed Margo’s copy of
Postmortem
once more: “Next time we’ll do the Yellow Brick Road (try to make me sweat). Love, Patsy.”

Patsy and Margo posed for another photo in their matching Nicole Miller silk shirts and ties. Patsy’s outfi was an aquamarine version and Margo’s was in red, Patsy’s most recent gift to her.

As soon as Margo got a copy of the photo, she put it in a frame on her desk.

Patsy called Margo at home as soon as she’d learned she’d won a Prix du Roman d’Adventure for
Postmortem
, and invited Margo to fl to France with her to accept the literary award.

Margo wanted to go, but she declined. “I don’t even have a passport,” she said.

Gene came into the bedroom as they were talking, and wouldn’t leave.

“He just came into the room, didn’t he?” Patsy asked. “Yes, why?”