her mention Garret’s name, and they had the long-standing joke about setting “Cari” up with the unsuspecting guy. It was actually Liz’s joke, and Dave laughed along with her to be a good sport, but it wasn’t all that funny. He didn’t know much about Garret. He was just some guy Liz knew, and Dave wouldn’t wish his stalker problems on his worst enemy, let alone an innocent bystander.
If Dave had known Liz had another boyfriend, he would have been elated. He was very tired of feeling responsible for her and longed for the day he could be free of his obligation to try to fix all of the problems his mistake had caused her. Liz never missed an opportunity to remind him that if he hadn’t been as horny as a tomcat on the prowl, her life wouldn’t be in shambles.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BY LATE AUGUST 2013, Liz seemed to have sprouted permanent roots in Garret’s basement, and she was not budging. She was very comfortable, and her focus was on producing hundreds of emails and texts each week, most designed to taunt Dave. The more off-balance he became, the easier he was to control, and Liz was constantly scheming to come up with new ways to keep him off-kilter. She had accomplished quite a bit that month, and capturing his attention was at the top of her list.
When she had summoned fire to solve her problems, most likely it was not with the sole purpose of winning back her lover. She was so far behind on her bills that she was being evicted, and the fire might have been an act of spite. If I can’t live in this house, no one can! Whether it was her intention or not, when she freed herself from the burden of the house, she had gotten revenge on the “jerks” who’d evicted her. It would not be cheap for the Omaha Housing Authority to pay for the repairs necessary to make the home suitable for the next renter.
It’s also possible that the house held secrets—ghastly, unthinkable secrets that, if discovered, could threaten Liz’s very existence. As long as she had stayed at that house, she could monitor who came and went. She had invited police in when she reported the vandalism, allegedly caused by her stalker, but it had been on her terms. The cops hadn’t been nosing around, searching for evidence of murder. They had come in to take Liz’s reports, and she had always directed the conversations. In her mind, the police had been as easy to fool as Garret and Dave.
If the house contained evidence that she feared she could not scrub away, she would have been reluctant to give up her control over the environment. As Liz surely must have learned from the many crime shows she watched, blood can seep into cracks in a floor, splatter across a ceiling, or drip down a wall, carrying with it DNA that can settle into crevices, waiting to be discovered weeks, months, or even years after a murder. If her victim had died in the house, Liz might have feared what future residents could uncover. If the house had held evidence of a homicide, Liz had quite possibly incinerated some of those clues right into the belly of oblivion.
Liz could also congratulate herself for finding a place to live rent free with a built-in-babysitter. She no longer had to worry about paying bills. Garret would take care of everything! Not only that, she had what she believed was an excellent excuse for her unemployment. Her business had been destroyed in the fire. She claimed she had to give up cleaning because all of her supplies had been destroyed. Considering that housework relies mostly on elbow grease and that the cost of a broom, a mop, and a can of scouring powder is not prohibitive, some wondered what prevented her from working. Others wondered exactly when it was that she had last worked—if she had ever worked at all. Many times, when she had told Garret she had to clean houses all night, she had really been on an overnight date with Dave.
Dave! Liz had guilted him right back into her arms when she complained to him that his stalker had burned her out of her home. She reminded him more than once, “Your stalker could have killed me and my kids!” Each time she had taken drastic measures to turn Dave’s attention to her, it had worked exactly as she had