“Thank you, Detective. I was hoping to leave this house. I just– I don’t like being here, not right now. Can I please go?”
“Ah yeah, that should be fine,” I said, looking at Tommy. “My partner can take you to another location.” She nodded at him and he followed her out.
I made a mental note of everything I saw and headed out, and down the steps. Tommy was putting the wife in a car as I headed to mine and drove back to the station.
I had a feeling that this case was going to be a hard one. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. I had to find out what it was before the Captain rode my ass. I was already on his last nerve.
My intuition hadn’t failed me yet, I just hoped this wouldn't be the case that broke me.
Stan was heading to his car as I started my engine and my mind went back to our conversation. He believed the woman was a black widow. I didn’t get that vibe off her, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t check it out. There was something about her…something that I couldn’t put my finger on, but I’d figure it out. I always did.
I headed to the station and ran up the stairs from the carpark underneath. Acknowledging the men on my floor, and from my unit, I headed to my desk and looked through the stack of papers in my tray. I found the folder Stan had dropped off with his notes full of conspiracies and scribbled notes. It screamed crazy if you weren’t a seasoned detective like myself.
I knew what it was like to be obsessed with something that you knew wasn’t right but no one listened. It’s why I was on the Captain's last nerve, and probably would be for a while yet, unless he fired my ass and then where would I be? This is all I’d ever done, I wouldn’t even know what to do if I weren’t a damn cop.
I’d merely skimmed the folder before, but if Stan was so adamant, maybe I should look at it again. It couldn’t hurt.
“Garrick,” I heard my captain call me from his office.
Shit.
I put the folder down and headed into his office, the tension coming off him in waves. He’d had to cover my ass for my former partner’s dickhead move of becoming obsessed with his case to the point he was stalking a fucking senator. He was now incarcerated for pissing the wrong people off. Now, O’Leary was trying to keep me employed, because we both knew I was the best he had.
“You were at the new crime scene this morning.”
I nodded. “Yeah, husband died, looks like poison.”
“Wife?”
“Unsure,” I said. “Tommy’s keeping an eye on her.”
“Good,” he replied. “Just came from a meeting with the brass. Money’s tight, I can’t sign off on overtime for a while. Keep the case going, but know the limits. Head down on this one, Garrick.”
I nodded. “Sure thing, boss.”
“Wrap it up quick,” he said as I headed out. “We don’t need any more issues with the high society pricks who run this town.”
I sighed. “Got it.”
I grunted as I got back to my desk. My last partner, Henry, had been hellbent on bringing down Senator Campbell for his fraudulent practices and work with “escorts”, and had pushed the boundaries of police work and vigilantism. It almost brought down the unit, and sent him to prison for four years.
He was in protective custody but he was still a cop in prison, and that ain’t a place you wanted to be.
Pulling open the folder, I looked down at the picture of the wife, her beauty was striking. Eyes that almost looked right through you, and a sharp cut to her jaw that screamed wealth and probably a good cosmetic surgeon. She was fucking gorgeous, almost annoyingly so. It was the first thing I had noticed when I’d seen her earlier. She was probably in her forties but didn’t look a day older than early thirties, well groomed, and used to having money. I knew the type. I flicked through Stan’s notes until I came to a page that caught my eye for the simple fact that it was written out rather than scribbled junk like the rest of it.
Maurelle Picquet was born in Lyon, France to an unwed mother known only as Marcelle. Father is unknown. Not much is known of her childhood, but what I could find is she wed an American millionaire in 1995 and came to the US. Several hospital visits in the year of 1996, leading to a miscarriage and several more hospital visits but no charges laid against her husband. It looks as if this was the start of her break and the last time she was the victim.
Her name when she married Randall Pope in 1995 was Maurelle Picquet, she then changed her name to Maurelle Pope. Randall appears to have passed from an accident from falling down the stairs in 2000.
Maurelle changed her name to Maude Pope, possibly to escape from Randall’s family who wanted to come after the money she stole from his estate upon learning she didn’t inherit anything from his death. She married Carmine Doherty in 2001 and moved to Chicago. Not much is known about the marriage until his death by drowning in 2004.
She changed her name to Marcella Pickett. I think it’s here that she becomes the black widow officially, realising what she can achieve, and that she can get away with it. She married tech giant Basil White in New York in 2008, four years after Carmine passed, not sure what she was doing in this time. There’s no record of her. Basil passed away from suspected poisoning, but no charges were laid, in 2011.
We don’t see her again in the records until she marries Stewart Purnell, the head of a pharmacology business, in 2014 as Maureen Pickett. He dies by apparent suicide. She was out of town when it happened, clearly seen on CCTV in another state, so I feel like this may be caused by her, but not directly.
Cosmetic Surgeon Robert Thomas was next to fall victim to her when he married her in 2019. Her name here is Moira Picquet, reverting back to her maiden name. It’s not clear why she does this, but possibly because she’s getting older. Robert was found hanging in his garage in 2022. Again, Moira was seen in the Hamptons this weekend, and no connection was found to her.
Maurelle has changed her name to Maura Picquette around this time and married billionaire Oliver Benoit-Clayton in Texas. They are still married, and are still seen together everywhere.
