Shocking True Story

by Gregg Olsen

  "So I've heard," I stammered, before I launched into my pitch. "Two different guys plot murder for the love of a girl. She promises that she'll marry each one in Las Vegas. One guy shoots the other boyfriend, the boyfriend tells the police he was not only a victim but he was also an accomplice to the murder plot of the girl's ex-husband."

  "Strong female characters?" Monica sounded very interested.

  "Tougher than Charlize Theron in an ugly suit," I said. "The girl's mother is now in prison for plotting to kill her daughter's ex-husband. The daughter is in prison for attempted murder of her boyfriend and the conspiracy to kill her ex-husband."

  "Good. Good. CAA is looking for something for Misty," Monica said.

  I knew she was referring to Misty Wexler, the surgically augmented actress from Texas Hold 'Em, whose mega-producer father had helped turn her into a surprisingly formidable force in the crime-of-the-week television movie genre. She had played every side of the coin. She was a murderous cheerleader in All for Sandi, Stand Up and Die! She starred most recently as the victim of a stalker in She's Being Watched for Lifetime. She was arguably the worst actress in Hollywood. I couldn't stand her.

  "She'd be perfect," I said. "She'd make a great Janet Lee Kerr."

  "The mother? Who for the mother?"

  "Megan Mullally," I suggested. "I read in Entertainment Weekly she's looking for a part where she can play bad."

  "Never believe EW."

  "Right."

  "You know what I like best about your story?" Monica didn't let a beat pass for an answer. "It has the quality to it like the Texas cheerleading murdering mom that HBO produced before it got hung up on overhyped prestige pictures. It is ridiculous like the cheerleader movie. Imagine, a fellow gets shot, testifies against his girlfriend, sends her to prison, sends her mother to prison, and then becomes engaged to the girl, and to top it all off, he recants."

  Her quick-draw words wore me out. The woman never came up for air.

  "Is it what they're looking for?" I asked, mentally catching her breath for her.

  "Tailor-made. Kevin. I'm talking mini here."

  Mini to me always meant many, as in more bucks.

  "No kidding. A miniseries?"

  "Sure. The fact that no one was killed could be a major plus. It falls right into the networks' new philosophy for television movies. They want bloodless murder or something approximating that. They want the unbelievable, the sublimely ridiculous. No more mothers killing babies! No more children killing their parents. No more families killing each other. It's a new approach and I like it. Keep me posted and if you get something, promise me the first look, all right?"

  I promised. We planned to talk later after a few weeks or so of additional research.

  In my mind, Monica's words rang like a symphony of musical cash registers. Sweet, melodic, rich.

  "I'm talking mini here."

  Chapter Seven

  Monday, July 21

  VALERIE WAS PAYING THE BILLS when I returned home from a meeting with Connie Carter and the Community Relations staff at the Riverstone prison. I asked for more time with Connie, and the Powers That Be didn't feel I should have any. I also wanted another interview request sent to Connie's daughter, Janet. It was clear that these prison people regarded me as small potatoes. I was an annoyance to them. I sunk even lower as I realized I had no bragging value like Maury.

  Or even Steve Wilkos.

  "You're not a real journalist," said the Community Relations director, a man with a nose the shape and size of a Chinese potsticker. "Those books you write aren't journalism," he said, turning up his potsticker nose, "they're entertainment."

  "If that," remarked a snotty woman who wore glasses on a chain as a pretense to being an intellectual. She was the type who claimed to watch only PBS and read literary fiction. But I knew she either read my genre or, even lower on the bookshelf, romance.

  I realized that most anyone I ever interviewed in prison was a liar, but I still found great value in meeting the incarcerated. I begged the woman. "Three more interviews with Connie and the same number with Janet if she comes around. I'll ask for no more."

  She said they would think it over.

  If I were Anderson Cooper, they would have kissed my toned butt.

  “Get the interviews locked up?” Val asked.

  “Like a cell on the Green Mile,” I said.

  I didn't want to bother Val with the small stuff. I'd get the interviews, because I had to.

  ♦

  VALERIE HAD NUMBERED EACH PAYMENT ENVELOPE with the date it should be mailed in order to arrive at the last possible minute—and still on time. My wife was efficient with juggling what little we had and I loved her for it. She was thirty-five and as lovely as the day I met her working on ads for the university newspaper in Bellingham, north of Seattle. She was a graphic designer/artist's representative, and I had committed the cardinal sin of journalism school of leaving editorial for advertising to make some money. The other students shot me how-could-you! gapes, but I had plans that didn't include working at the Podunk Weekly. I wanted to get to know that brown-eyed girl, too.

  And today, she wore her hair pulled up in a clip, revealing streaks of kitten gray from her temples. Yes, she wanted those highlights, and she deserved it.

  "How'd it go?" she asked, barely looking up from her checkbook and bank-freebie calculator.

  "Fine. Connie says she's innocent. Janet got cold feet."

  "What else is new?"

  "I don't know, Val, I guess I liked her."

  "You always like them."

  "Not always," I said defensively.

  "Yeah, you do. You even thought that serial killer from Lincoln City was nice."

  "I meant, personable in the way that serial killers often are."

  "Uh-huh," Val answered, moving to the kitchen and pulling pans out of the cupboard. "Serial killers are always nice until they get what they want."

  "These women aren't serial killers. They're just dumb."

  Valerie turned on the tap to fill a pot. I guessed we were having spaghetti.

  "Want to get Hayley and Taylor?" she asked. "They're up at Gina's. She took the girls across the Narrows Bridge for a picnic today."

  Gina and her husband Carlton lived up the hill from us in a house they had literally built from the ground up. Board by board, bit by bit. Gina had even dug out the foundation with a garden shovel and a wheelbarrow. They were enterprising and sweet. Their family had been friendly with ours from the first day we moved to our ancient and impossibly creaky, company-town house in Port Gamble. The immediate bond, of course, had been our children. They had a daughter named Cecile and we had two new best friends for her. The Narrows Bridge picnic had taken place before school was out for summer break. No one expected me to go. I would never walk across that thousand-foot-high bridge whose predecessor was nicked named Galloping Gertie before she fell to the seafloor with a car and hapless dog going down for the ride. Nevertheless, the bridge connected the peninsula, where we lived, to the mainland.

  "Okay. But, you know, you would have liked Connie. Sure, she's a little on the rough side, but she is so pathetic that you've got to feel some sympathy for her."

  Valerie stopped what she was doing. Her eyes narrowed. "Like Wanda-Lou?" she asked.

  I didn't respond. Wanda-Lou. The very name sent chills down my spine. She was one of those people Val insisted I "collect" by the very nature of my work—the type of people you would never meet unless you're tracking the lives of killers and cops. Wanda-Lou. Good, God, she was something else. As I drove up the hill to pick up my girls, I recalled what Val always termed The Wanda-Lou Incident.

  Wanda-Lou Webster was the forty-year-old cousin of a woman who killed her husband by throwing a running hair dryer into the bathtub when he was soaking and reading the newspaper. For years, Marianne Mason had been plotting the murder of her sleaze-bucket husband, a former-biker-turned-sand-candle-maker named Dick Mason.

  I could still hear W
anda-Lou: "At least the bastard's first name fit his personality."

  Dick had been cheating on Marianne since the day they married at the Little Chapel of Flowers, a wedding and latte shop outside Spokane. If that wasn't bad enough, he had a thing for young girls. And though it was never proven in court, he might have had a thing for Marianne's eight-year-old daughter.

  Wanda-Lou provided enough details to lead me to believe that the Die, Jerk, Die story might make the basis for a mega-selling true crime book. It came with a hitch. She, of course, wanted to be the focus of the story.

  "I'll be like the detective that pursues justice," she said over a coffee and French toast breakfast at our first meeting at a suburban Denny's Restaurant.

  I couldn't help but like Wanda-Lou Webster and because of my affinity for her I came to feel a measure of sympathy for her imprisoned cousin Marianne. Her husband Dick was an animal. An undeniable creep; a veritable garbage pit of depravity. I detested him. I wanted so much to believe Wanda-Lou's version of what happened. But Marianne had left a trail, as most killers do. An Ace Hardware receipt dated the day of the murder was the new widow's greatest undoing. All she purchased was a twelve-foot extension cord. The cord was attached to the hair dryer, making it long enough to toss into the tub from the hallway. She cooked him like a lobster and called 911 when he was done.

  Over the course of a four-week period, I saw Wanda-Lou about ten or eleven times at either her home or at the Denny's. We had enough contact that I began to feel that I really knew her and trusted her.

  That was a mistake.

  Wanda-Lou said she was headed out my way and had some letters Dick had written that she wanted to drop off. It was perfect "insight into the mind of an abuser" type stuff. I told her that I wouldn't be home, so she could just mail them to the Port Gamble P.O. box.

  "I don't trust the damn post office," she said, insistently. "Could I just FedEx it to you?"

  I gave her my street address.

  Bigger mistake.

  When we arrived home from a day of errands, a car was in our driveway. I recognized it immediately because of the by-then familiar bumper sticker: Bitch On Board. It was Wanda-Lou's car.

  Valerie gave me a wary look as we all went inside.

  Our iHome was playing some kind of country tune that at first I thought was the radio. Later I found out it was a CD that Wanda-Lou had brought from home.

  That was not all she brought.

  Laying on the sofa next to a pair of soft-sided luggage was Wanda-Lou. Her eyes were puffy. A snowdrift of crumpled facial tissue had dropped from her hands. She was crying. And the white couch we never should have purchased in the first place was staining anew.

  "I'm sorry for letting myself in, but the window was open a bit and I hoped you wouldn't mind."

  "What is it?" I asked while Valerie and the girls made a beeline for the kitchen.

  "My old man threw me out. He said I care more about Marianne and your book than I do about him."

  I sat next to her. "Oh, Wanda-Lou, I'm sorry. He just doesn't understand that you're trying to help your cousin."

  "I have no place to go. No place. Marianne's in jail and my old man dumped me. Dumped me! I've never been dumped in all my life. Never."

  I doubted she was being completely truthful with that particular disclosure, but I didn't say so.

  Wanda-Lou Webster stayed for fourteen days. Valerie often exaggerated the duration of the extended visit by stretching the time to "almost a month!" Val threatened to dump me if I didn't get rid of Wanda-Lou. She told me she didn't mind the books I wrote, but she didn't like the idea of our family having to live with the people I wrote about.

  Wanda-Lou wasn't so bad. She helped around the house. We cleaned out the garage. She fancied herself an expert on talk shows so we did some mock run-throughs. She was the host and I was the guest. She even insisted I work on my signature. A real writer, she persisted, had a wonderful signature reserved for book signings. She said mine was not explosive enough, too legible. I needed more drama in my John Hancock.

  "If you ever want someone to value a signed copy of one of your books," she told me straight-faced, “then you'll have to sign 'em like you mean it.”

  The only way to get out of the Wanda-Lou-as-permanent-guest scenario was to lie.

  "I got some bad news today," I told her one afternoon. "My publisher wouldn't go for Die, Jerk, Die. Another publishing company has a book coming out about a woman who sets her house on fire with a curling iron to cover up the murder of her boyfriend.

  "They said Curled Up to Die is too similar to our project. They don't think we can compete with another true crime book related to hair care."

  Wanda-Lou's face registered shock, then disappointment.

  "It's not all bad news," I continued. "My friend Fred Ross is looking for a new story to fulfill his contract at Toe Tag Books. " I scribbled down his address and telephone number.

  I told Fred that Wanda-Lou was the best source he could ever have and that I hated to give up her story, but I was overbooked and it would be wrong for me to hang on to such a powerful tale.

  "It is the story that has to be told. I wouldn't give this story to anyone but you."

  Wanda-Lou packed up her things and drove away. As her taillights disappeared into the night, I took her file and tossed it in the box I called DEAD DEAD BOOKS. Freedom never felt so good. I wasn't giving up a great story, I was saving my marriage. Besides, I never liked Fred Ross in the first place.

  With Wanda-Lou finally gone, I tried to make it all up to Valerie. I promised her that when my television movie was made, we'd slipcover the sofa.

  "Martha Stewart says slipcovers are back in," I said.

  More than a year later, our sofa was still in need of a dozen throw pillows or that slipcover.

  Thursday, July 25

  THE DAY AFTER MY INTERVIEW WITH CONNIE CARTER at Riverstone, I drove my classic Chevy LUV a hundred miles south to Timberlake, the scene of the crime. The town, cruelly spliced in half by the Ocean River, was a logging center whose salad days had long since wilted. The Columbia Mall had drained what little commercial viability that had survived from the dwindling downtown shopping district. The frequently empty acreage of the mall parking lot was a testament to the developer's great ambition or absolute foolishness. The mall was the hub of the town. "The mall," as its marketing VP always said, "had it all. " The Red Lobster in its southwest corner had been voted “best special occasion restaurant” by the readers of the local paper. Second place was Pizza Hut, which secured the lot to the east.

  There were not enough votes for a third-place winner. There simply was not a third restaurant which could stretch the very concept of special occasion.

  That was Timberlake.

  And while there was a kind of sad desperation to the place, there was a sweetness to it, too. Some of the tiny homes that had been built by the mills were painted in lemony yellow and periwinkle blue. Grandma houses in grandma colors. Faded flamingos bobbed from borders of pie-plate sized dahlia blooms. The town's park was named for Sacagawea, the Indian guide who led Lewis and Clark across the Great Plains to the Oregon Territory. A bronze statue of the guide was frequently festooned with chains of dandelions and daisies.

  I ran around most of the morning talking with the cops, looking at court files, just generally getting a feel for the place. In a way, it was odd. I had lived all my life in the Northwest and I couldn't begin to even guess about how many times I had driven the portion of the interstate between Seattle and Portland. How many times had I seen the exit to Timberlake and just kept going? Hundreds of times. And I never had a reason to stop. Not until Love You to Death.

  My final stop before pulling into my driveway was our P.O. box at the Port Gamble Post Office. Bills. Newsweek. Country Living. Property taxes.

  And a second gray envelope.

  I opened it on the little counter set aside for patrons to read and toss junk mail.

  How I wish it were junk mail.<
br />
  But it wasn't. It was more magazine clipping letters. I recognized the “S” on the fourth word as the Safeway logo.

  YOUR TURN TO SUFFER IS COMING.

  I'm not even sure of the drive home. My mind was so far gone. I came inside as fast as I could, made a beeline for the bathroom, shut the door, and threw up. Oddly, I was proud of myself that I made it to the toilet and not all over the interior of the LUV truck.

  "Honey, are you all right?”

  It was Val from the other side of the door.

  "Yeah, just had some bad fish," I said, the first thing that came to my mind.

  "I have some Tums in the kitchen."

  "Be out in a minute."

  I splashed water on my face. I wasn't having a good day at all. I'd received a second letter and it scared me more than a too-small print run of my next book, or any of the things that I thought were important.

  Chapter Eight

  Friday, July 26

  JETT CARTER SENT ME TO SEE Melba Warinski, the woman who had been a witness of the events the night of Deke Cameron's shooting. Mrs. Warinski was described as a “real nice lady” who lived in one of the fancier subdivisions of Timberlake. Fancy, I knew, is relative. To Jett, the concept of "fancy" probably meant anything other than the dented aluminum shell of a singlewide mobile home.

  I looked for the address: 1422 Strawberry Lane. The housing development had a row of hot pink and electric purple flags stuck in the earth like Peter Max lollipops alerting mill workers or store clerks and others that they had arrived at their homes in Riverview Land. The garish proclamation made me grimace.

  It was one of those housing developments in which its moniker recalled what the location had once been. Eagle's Nest Estates. Royal Woods. Or Windsor Meadows. In such neighborhoods there were never any eagles, meadows or woods. At least not since the developer took a dozer and cut in building sites. Riverview Land was that kind of place—no river and no view.