Twisted Triangle

by Caitlin Rother

  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 satisfied.

  “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 first 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-five 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 shuffling 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 reshuffling. When she was satisfied, she laid three down on the desk.

  “I see that you are going through a defining 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 difficult 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 office, 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 terrific 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 find 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 filed a claim with the insurance company.

  Although they had been appraised at $9,000, the company issued 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 outfit 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 fly 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?”

  “Because your voice changed.”

  The
real reason Margo said she couldn’t go to France was Gene.

  “I knew he wouldn’t approve of me going,” she recalled.

  In early May, Patsy had a signing at a bookstore in Richmond. She invited several dozen friends and acquaintances to dinner afterward at Ruth’s Chris Steak House next door.

  Among Patsy’s guests were some local political figures, including an aide to Governor Douglas Wilder. This time, Gene, who was still working the public corruption case, accompanied Margo and embarrassed her and Patsy by telling dirty jokes to the politicos at his table all night.

  About a week later, Patsy started backing away from Margo, saying Gene made her uncomfortable.

  “He scares me,” Patsy said. “I don’t trust him.”

  “I understand. Whatever you want to do is okay,” Margo replied.

  Patsy also told Margo that a friend had spent the weekend at her house right after she’d slept with Margo. The friend woke up in the middle of the night in Patsy’s bed and couldn’t get back to sleep after dreaming that it was soaked in blood.

  “Whatever is going on,” Patsy quoted her friend as saying, “be very, very careful.”

  Two weeks later, Patsy audited Margo and John’s class, and afterward, the two women agreed that they needed to talk. They decided to meet at the gym and take a run over to the reservoir, which was about a mile away.

  Patsy teased Margo that she was in better shape than Margo as they jogged along the tree-lined shore. They found a bench and sat facing each other so that their knees were touching.

  Margo told Patsy that she’d come to realize she needed to deal more directly with ending her marriage; getting involved with someone else wasn’t the way to do it. Patsy said she understood.

  “He’s dangerous,” Patsy said. “He’s got all these antennae out there, gathering all kinds of information. You may not know that he’s picking up on things, but he is.”

  “I know that,” Margo said, her mouth suddenly going dry. Patsy’s words only underscored what Margo had been feeling in her gut all along. “I realize I may be signing my own death warrant by asking him for a divorce.”

  “You may be right,” Patsy said.

  “But I can’t live with this any longer.”

  Although they both had their own reasons, Margo figured they’d come to the same conclusion: it was time to stop the sexual part of their relationship.

  Margo reached over and touched Patsy’s hand, wishing things could be different. “I think we should just be friends,” she said gently.

  Patsy looked down at her lap and then up at Margo. “You’re right,” she said, sighing. “I think we can do this.”

  Margo sensed that Patsy had been scared that Margo was going to say she wanted to keep the affair going, so she seemed relieved when Margo let it go without a fight.

  “I think she was worried that I was going to push back and that it would become ugly,” she recalled.

  Margo was sad to let Patsy go; Patsy had brought her joy during their time together. But more than that, Patsy had made her feel more alive than she had in years.

  Still, Margo said, “I felt good. It kind of ended out that chapter. We were very sincere and respectful and honest about what we wanted out of life. She didn’t always want to be looking over her shoulder. I had things I wanted to do. She thought I was a great person; I thought she was a great person.”

  Margo had told Gene in advance that Patsy was coming to town that week, and had asked him to suggest a restaurant because he knew the area around Quantico better than she did. Gene suggested an Italian place in Fredericksburg that he’d been frequenting as part of his Doubletalk undercover work, the same place where he and Margo had gone for their anniversary a few months earlier. It was a quiet spot with white napkins and candles on every table.

  All told, the night with Patsy lasted about two hours, including the half hour of drive time to and from Quantico.

  Later, Gene claimed to have followed them and seen them kissing and fondling each other at the restaurant and in the parking lot, so Margo figured he’d been outside, watching them. But, she said, he fabricated the level of contact he saw between her and Patsy that night. Since their discussion by the reservoir, there had been no more touching or romance between them.

  Over dinner, the two women talked about Patsy’s next book project and the upcoming challenges Margo faced with Gene.

  “I’d pretty much come to the realization that I couldn’t stay in my marriage any longer, but I didn’t really know how to get out of it, and I felt that I needed to see an attorney,” Margo recalled later.

  Patsy said she would help her find a good one.

  A week later, she called with a name: Betty Thompson, who was reputed to be among the top ten divorce attorneys in the greater metropolitan DC area.

  In early June, Margo went to see Betty, whose high-rise office in Arlington had heavy glass doors and felt like money.

  “Most men put up a good front and threaten and really act like a bully, but bullies are really timid. When push comes to shove, they really fold,” said Betty, who had been a divorce attorney for more than half of the forty-two years that she’d been a member of the bar.

  “You don’t know Gene,” Margo replied. “Gene Bennett is going to look at you like a snack before lunch.”

  “Oh, no, I’ve dealt with guys like this before.”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Margo said. “It’s not going to be easy.”

  Betty advised her to copy all the records of their marital assets, including money market accounts and land purchases.

  “Once you decide to leave, you won’t have a chance,” she said.

  So when Gene was away on a trip to Atlanta in mid-June, Margo made copies of their financial files, which he kept in his home office, and put them in her desk at Quantico.

  After Gene came back from Atlanta, they had an argument that marked the beginning of the end.

  Margo had always hung up his pants, regardless of where he’d dropped them, but this time, she’d tossed them on his side of the bed. He called her at Quantico first thing the next morning to complain.

  “What’s your problem—can’t you hang up my pants?” he snapped.

  “Work is not the place to talk about this,” she retorted. “We’ll talk later.”

  When she got home that night, Gene ignored her until they went to bed. The bedroom was his battleground, the place where he seemed to feel that he could get Margo under control.

  “What’s your problem?” he repeated, sitting up in bed.

  “I just can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I want a divorce.”

  Gene was wearing his poker face. “Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?”

  “No, Gene, I don’t love you anymore,” she said softly. “I don’t love you in the way I need to love you to stay married to you.”

  Margo smelled fear on him that night, an acrid, sweaty odor that she’d never smelled on him before. For the first time, he didn’t seem to know what to say. He just sat there, speechless.

  “Maybe he, in his own way, loved me,” she later said. “Maybe I was upsetting his apple cart. There were a lot of things, really, with the land deal and what was going on in his undercover operation. Maybe he thought I could hurt him. Maybe he thought it was risky to let me go.”

  The next day, Gene sent Margo a large bouquet of red roses to the front desk at Quantico, with a card that said, “I love you.”

  “Ooh, you got flowers,” the clerk said when Margo came to pick them up.

  “Yes, it’s amazing what happens when you say you want a divorce,” she said, then promptly tossed them into a nearby garbage bin.

  In early July, Patsy called Margo to say she was having a book launch party at her house at the end of the month and asked if Margo would come and stay the night. Margo said yes.

  When Gene asked if he could come too, she said no.

  “Don’t you realize that Patsy’s just using you?” he said. “Whe
n you can’t offer her anything more, she won’t give you the time of day.”

  There were about thirty people at the party, including Ed Sulzbach, John Hess, and Dianna Beals, Margo’s agent friend and a firearms instructor at Quantico.

  Patsy handed out T-shirts to the partygoers under a big white tent in her backyard, and at the end of the evening, she sent her out-of-town guests to a hotel by limo. After they’d all left, Patsy signed another copy of All That Remains for Margo.

  “To my good friend Margo,” she wrote. “There is not enough space here to thank you for all that you do, or to say how much I enjoy you! Love, Patsy.”

  By the time she and Margo got to bed, it was close to midnight, and Patsy was worn out.

  They started making love, but Patsy kept drifting off.

  “I’m sorry; I’m exhausted,” Patsy said.

  “That’s okay.”

  Margo had already realized that it wasn’t working between them, so she just went to sleep.

  The next morning over coffee and bagels, they agreed it wasn’t a good idea to try that again. They would keep their relationship strictly platonic.

  Looking back later, Margo thought she might have developed deeper feelings for Patsy if they’d spent more time together.

  “But it was over almost as soon as it started,” she said.

  If it had continued, Margo said, “Gene would have killed us both, in bed, which probably would have been condoned in Virginia.”

  Coupled with the diamond earrings caper, her affair with Patsy was the final push she needed to decide to leave Gene.

  “It kind of awakened inside me a part of me that didn’t go away,” she said later. “That need to connect at that level with another woman. It made me realize that I was just fooling myself.”

  Chapter Six

  The Divorce Battle Begins

  The night in June 1992 that Margo told Gene she wanted a divorce, he suggested going to marriage counseling.