Twisted Triangle (11 page)

“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 fi 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 fi 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 fi 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 offi 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 go-ing 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 offi 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 fi 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 fl 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. “When 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 fi 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.

“I’ll go, but it won’t make any difference,” she said. “It’s too late.”

Gene found a counselor, Julie Hoxie, and they saw her one evening after work. She asked them both what they hoped to get out of therapy.

“I’m not happy, and I want to understand her needs better,” Gene said.

He sounded genuine, but Margo sensed that his statement was more for the therapist’s benefi than hers, although he did seem to want to try to prevent Margo from leaving him.

“I’m here because I want to be able to dismantle this relationship in a way that causes the least pain to us and our children,” she said.

At the end of the session, Julie recommended that Margo and Gene see separate therapists and said one of them could stay with her. Gene decided to find a male therapist, while Margo continued to see Julie. Over the next eight months, Julie helped her understand that the failure of the marriage wasn’t hers alone and that it was okay for her to try to stand on her own two feet.

About a month into the sessions, Gene suggested they go to a matinee at the mall, leaving the kids with their nanny. Afterward, they went to the food court to talk.

“I know you’re very confused and need some time to get your thoughts straight,” he said. “If what you need is space, we can get you an apartment.”

Margo just looked at him, so he kept talking.

“You can move into this apartment and the kids can come visit with you, but there’s no way you’re taking the kids with you.”

“That’s not what I want,” she said. “What I want is to share custody of the kids.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen.”