Practice to Deceive

they were in high school. Russ went solo to a club where teenagers were allowed and one of his sister’s friends introduced him to Brenna.
    When Holly and their mother, Gail, realized that the couple was getting serious, they were appalled. They seemed to have nothing in common, both had short fuses, and they always seemed to be fighting.
    “It was a horrible, horrible relationship,” Holly remembers. “Brenna didn’t get along with her mother, and she was completely on her own by the time she was twenty-one; she had an apartment, a job, a car.”
    Russ wasn’t sure where he was going, but he did believe in education. Brenna scoffed at higher education, and was adamant that she didn’t want her children to go to college.
    “They might have gone on to better lives separately, ” Holly said later. “But they just didn’t belong together.”
    When Brenna became pregnant in 1994, she and Russ talked to Gail about it.
    “What are you going to do?” she asked.
    “Have the baby,” Brenna said.
    “Good. That’s good,” Gail said, “but don’t get married. You don’t need to get married to have a child. Give yourselves some time.”
    His mother’s advice got through to Russ Douglas enough that they waited about finalizing their union. Gail hoped that they would see what everyone who knew them felt about their chances for a happy marriage.
    “They waited awhile,” Gail said sadly, “but they eventually got married during the late summer of 1995. Their baby, Jack, was one at the time.”
    Brenna regretted all the arguments she had had with her mother, and tried to effect reconciliation. They talked many times a day on the phone, and that made Russ jealous.
    Brenna thought that Gail was controlling Russ.
    And vice versa.
    Gail raised briards, and she offered one of the puppies to Russ and Brenna. Russ was trying to make everyone happy in the vain hope that his wife and his family could get along—and he accepted the active pup, whose breed grows to between seventy-five and a hundred pounds. They are wonderful dogs, but they need daily exercise, exacting training because they can be stubborn, and their luxurious coats have to be brushed at least every other day. Gail used her dogs to herd sheep, an activity that these French sheepdogs were born to perform. Briards love children and they protect their owners’ home and family.
    Of course, it was not a good choice for a couple already dealing with a baby, and Brenna railed at Russ that their dog was way too much for her to handle and clean up after.
    Seeing that the match wasn’t a good one, Gail offered to take the puppy back and keep it until they were ready.
    “I knew they would never be ready, but it seemed like a good way to get the poor pup out of there,” Gail said, “and hopefully, to stop some of their fights. Finally, Russ agreed to let me take the puppy. And, of course, they never asked for it back.”
    Brenna’s favorite pastime was shopping.
    “I would have to call her a shopaholic,” Gail O’Neal said. “She could easily spend a thousand dollars on one trip to Costco. I helped her unload after a visit to the grocery store once, and was surprised to see that she had two large freezers and a refrigerator and I could hardly find room in any of them to store her new purchases! And she still fed her kids junk food all the time.”
    It was more than just the expected bickering between a wife and her mother-in-law. Both Russ and Brenna called Gail O’Neal for advice, and she did her best to remain neutral. She knew her son was immature and sometimes hard to deal with, but so was Brenna—only in a different way.
    When Russel Douglas complained about something—even something as childish as not being able to find his favorite soda pop—his mother told him, “You’re an adult. You want a Mountain Dew, and your store doesn’t have it. You are grown up—just go find a store that carries it, and get your Mountain Dew yourself.”
    * * *
    W HILE MIKE BIRCHFIELD SEARCHED for a financial reason behind the homicide, Mark Plumberg prepared to find out as much about Douglas as he possibly could. The picture on his driver’s license showed a bland-looking man with an almost shy smile. He certainly didn’t appear to be a sex-obsessed fiend, but then few sex offenders do. He apparently had a good job and was a devoted father to his two small children, supporting them financially and visiting them whenever Brenna allowed him to see them.
    On the