Sex. Murder. Mystery(226)

Steve Letourneau's media appearances were as dangerous as a baby crawling on broken glass. By putting himself out there in front of America—and the world—he was risking having his own behavior made public. It wouldn't be hard for the disclosure of his affairs, and the fact that he had fathered another woman's baby, to give the sympathetic and the fence-sitters a reason to believe in Mary Kay.

Steve, with his deer-in-the-headlights gaze, was a tragic figure and most could rally around him, but the more he said, the more he tried to compete with his wife's relentless media assault, the greater the chance that a reporter would ask: What were you doing when your wife was sleeping with a sixth-grader?

Secret Squirrel Linda Gardner confronted Steve after another of the endless waves of media interest.

“Steve, you might think it is kind of neat having these people wanting to interview you. Someone is going to dig out all of it. And you are going to be made out to look like the bad guy.”

Steve pooh-poohed her worries.

“We need the money,” he said. “We're broke. I've got four kids to raise.”

But it was the children who were precisely the reason Linda advised against the media blitz.

“Your kids are seeing it,” she said.

Even Kelly weighed in with a defense. They were, in fact, doing it for the children. There was no child support from their mother.

“We're not getting any money from Mary Kay,” she told Linda.

Steve's cousin's wife Linda was incredulous. “She's in prison,” she reminded them. “What does she get, ten dollars a month?”

As time passed and Steve's face became a bit more familiar in magazines and on television, Linda calculated what kind of money the effort was bringing to the Alaska coffers. The figures she heard from Steve and other family members put it at $30,000 or more. But the money didn't seem to go far enough.

“I know the money is gone,” she said later. “To pay bills, buy a computer. Go to Nordstrom to go shopping. Eddie Bauer.”

She made another stab at getting Steve to see the light and confronted him.

“Steve, you are a fool. Get off of the TV. What are you doing? People know you're getting paid. Don't talk to those trashy magazines. Don't talk to American Journal. You might as well talk to the Globe.”

He didn't listen. Not when his wife was a superstar and he was known as the man who had been pushed out of his marital bed by a kid who didn't even shave yet.





Chapter 76

WHILE THE FALLEN schoolteacher recounted her love story to Bob Graham, the Irish ghostwriter assigned to help her write the French book, it seemed no one was counseling Mary Kay on what she should and shouldn't say to the man. He kept pushing her during their interviews to give up the most intimate details of her relationship with Vili Fualaau. Mary Kay was reluctant to do so. It wasn't the kind of book she wanted her name on. She wanted the focus to be on her love for Vili, not their sex life.

“You're not trusting me enough,” she recalled the Fixot ghostwriter telling her.

Mary Kay later said she felt awkward about it. She was sitting there in a visiting room with a guard right next to her listening to every intimate detail that the ghostwriter could pull from her.

“Every time he asked a very personal question, she [the prison employee] would stare at me and listen,” Mary Kay told a friend later.

Mary Kay had been promised she'd have a chance to edit the book before publication, so there was at least that safeguard. But it really wasn't enough protection for a client who, whenever she opened her mouth, dug herself in deeper and deeper.

Lawyer Susan Howards had no say over the deal made between Bob Huff and the French publisher. The book deal, friends like Kate Stewart believed, was the pot of gold the lawyers had sought from the beginning. They believed the deal wasn't about getting Mary Kay out of prison or even presenting a more positive image to the world.

“The only thing Bob Huff and David were concerned about was making a million-dollar book deal. The only concern they've had that they've said outwardly to me is the book deal,” Kate said later.

Kate and others had been worried about the deal from the beginning. She didn't know if it was really in the best interest of her friend to do it. She knew it would make money. But would it really help Mary Kay's cause? It was about getting her freedom. Kate begged her friend to get another lawyer to look at the book contract.

“I don't care if it's a fly-by-night attorney, have someone else look at it. You sit on it.”

Mary Kay did not take her advice. She signed the agreement without a second opinion.

“They pressured her,” Kate recalled.

The money the Fualaaus received was problematic for Steve Letourneau's supporters. Though Steve cashed in also, some felt he didn't do so in a way that would make his children love their mother any less. Steve was careful about what he said. So careful, some assumed that he was some kind of a doofus who didn't have anything to say.