Sex. Murder. Mystery(184)

Mary skittered about the half-empty house and announced that she'd spend some of her free time going through each and every item. She thanked everyone for their concern and help.

Susan Murphy will never forget the sadness she felt for Mary Kay Letourneau, her new baby, her husband, her children, and, because she had devoted her life to it, too, the teaching career that she had squandered.

Years later, that Saturday at Shorewood still brought a sigh from Susan Murphy.

“She was never going to teach again. Her certificate had been revoked. Unless she went somewhere where they didn't care about having one. Or for some strange reason they had never heard of her… that would be pretty incredible. Antarctica, maybe?”

When teachers at the school heard Mary's things were finally gone, they were both relieved and a little angry. They saw her tardiness in retrieving her things as more than just putting something off because it was painful. It was about power.

“She didn't come back until after the baby was born, which personally I felt was a little game with her that the kids would know her stuff was still there and she was in charge,” said one Shorewood teacher.

Mary Kay wouldn't have given a single thought to the Shorewood teachers after she left the school with her belongings. She had a bigger problem. She told friends that she thought that King County Police Detective Maley had it in for her. It was personal, Mary told a friend later.

“They were all saying that it was some kind of a Hitlerian mentality going on. That I had sought out a genius in order to give me a better baby than Steve could. Pat Maley was behind that. What was with her? I couldn't figure it out for the longest time until David [Gehrke] told me to consider that something was going on between us, woman to woman.

“I've encountered this before in my life, I won't say 'jealousy', but something like that. Resentment. Here I was with the love of my life, and I'm living on the water in Normandy Park, and she's this pockmarked detective living in SeaTac somewhere by the airport. And she will never, ever get to Normandy Park and I have. Never.”

And for that, no matter what her motives, Pat Maley would probably be eternally grateful.





Chapter 52

A TURNING POINT for Amber and Angie Fish came a few weeks after Audrey was born. From that rainy night in late February when they first tried to comfort Mary Kay to their baby-sitting excursions to Normandy Park after Audrey was brought home from the hospital, Mary Kay didn't let on about her true feelings for her former student.

But then she started to refer to Vili Fualaau more frequently. She started to tell the girls that she was in love with him and he was in love with her. They had wanted to make a family. And, against all odds, she was going to do everything in her power to prove it to those against the idea.

“I remember her talking about it,” Amber said later. “ 'Yeah, it's like Romeo and Juliet' and I asked her what she meant and she said, 'You know we're forbidden to be together, and I hope it doesn't end up like that.' ”

Amber knew how Romeo and Juliet ended. Was Mary Kay suggesting a suicide pact?

When Mary Kay started speaking of the relationship with her student as a love story, it was such a departure from what the twins understood that they found it hard to process. They had seen the media accounts on television and read some of the legal papers scattered around the house. They knew there was a difference between a love affair and a crime. They also didn't believe Mary Kay was the criminal type. All of it was confusing.

“We really didn't know what to think,” Angie said later.

Although the girls thought of Mary Kay more as a peer than an adult figure, they didn't try to dissuade her from her impossible plans. There was no point in going against her.

“I never thought it would come to the point where she'd go to jail. We just kind of blew it off. We never agreed with her, but the way she was saying, 'I'm never going to jail.' The way she talked about everything, rolling her eyes about everything. It made it seem that it was not that big a deal. It was coming from her… so we didn't think it was a big deal,” Amber said later.

Amber Fish had a good memory and when she learned that Mary Kay had been involved with a boy that she had taught in second and sixth grades, she flashed on an incident that took place four or five years earlier at Carriage Row.

“I can remember one day standing in her kitchen and she was telling us—she came home really late and I don't know if she was with him—but she was telling us the story about this little kid, an incredible artist. He was amazing, smart.”

Amber wondered if this was the same child. Mary Kay had been so animated, so excited that night. Though it was true that Mary Kay was the type of woman who frequently showed enthusiasm for the world around her, this was different. The second-grade boy she was talking about had touched her deeply.