Practice to Deceive

dresser.
    Whatever else she might be engaged in, Peggy adored her two daughters and they felt the same about her. “She has always loved her girls,” Vickie recalled. “And so does Kelvin. The girls are pretty, smart, and well behaved, for the most part. But when Brenda lived with her and she did something that Peggy had forbidden, they tattled on her.”
    Both Rhonda Vogl, Peggy’s half sister, and Vickie Boyer recalled that Brenda was “afraid” of Peggy. Peggy was probably more domineering with Brenda than she was with anyone. It got to the point where Brenda had to wait to make her morning coffee until Peggy said she could. She lasted about six months before she fled Nevada and returned to Whidbey Island.
    Peggy Sue Thomas was a complicated mix of both good and bad traits. Once she got on her feet financially, she could be very generous to someone who might be down on his or her luck.
    Vickie Boyer was sorry, though, to hear Peggy brag about how kind and giving she was. She seemed incapable of doing good deeds without taking credit for it.
    At one point, Peggy read about a girl who couldn’t afford a dress for her high school prom, and she arranged for her to have a four-hundred-dollar formal and a limo to arrive in. It was a very kind gesture.
    “It sort of spoiled the picture of her being so benevolent to people,” Vickie said wryly. “If she had just given someone something and kept it to herself, it would have been better. But she had to toot her own horn all the time. She told a lot of people about the poor girl who needed a dress and how she had stepped forward.”
    When Vickie Boyer was setting up a new house, Peggy Sue gave her a lot of her own used furniture. Again, it was a helpful gift and Vickie was grateful.
    “But,” Vickie said, “when anyone complimented me on how nice my house looked, Peggy just had to say, ‘I gave her that,’ or, ‘That used to be mine.’ She didn’t want anyone else to give me things; she had to be the gracious giver, and she had to take credit for it.
    “It was part of her need to be controlling, I guess. She had to be Lady Bountiful and she had to brag about it.”
    It was a minor irritant to Vickie; she continued to consider Peggy her best friend, and tried to ignore small disappointments in her attitude.
    Sometimes, however, Vickie wondered if she was in another situation where she was being controlled by a strong personality.
    Vickie and Peggy Sue had talked for a long time about quitting smoking. But the time was never right for Peggy. Finally, Vickie stopped smoking on her own. Peggy didn’t notice until she suggested that they go outside for a cigarette.
    “I don’t smoke anymore,” Vickie said. “I quit.”
    And she had done it herself, without Peggy’s permission, without telling her.
    “Peggy was so mad at me,” Vickie recalled. “That was a control issue. She accused me of betraying her by quitting cigarettes without her. I guess I was getting stronger and I wasn’t so submissive any longer.”
    After Vickie married Scott, Peggy seemed to resent their happy ending. She was single at the time with no real prospects in view.
    The three of them often went to restaurants or clubs together. And Peggy pouted.
    “I know you’re just going to talk to Scott and ignore me,” she told Vickie. “And you’ll be dancing with him and I’ll sit here all alone.”
    Vickie tried to include Peggy in her life. For all her “fiery red” beauty, Peggy Sue was technically alone. Jim was gone and had been for a long time.
    By 2007, Peggy Sue Thomas was making a good living driving limousines in Las Vegas. She was close to her father and mother and her half sister Sue Mahoney—but didn’t spend much time with her half siblings from Jimmie Stackhouse’s first marriage.
    Her best friend, Vickie, married Scott Mickelsen on July 28 that year and moved to Roswell, New Mexico, with him.
    Peggy Sue would be forty-two in September, still extremely attractive, and she kept her eye out for a man who might meet her criteria. Although Vickie was in the midst of packing up and moving, the two women were still close.
    One night, Peggy picked up a man with a scruffy beard who wore a cowboy hat, an expensive suit, and shiny boots. She found him quite handsome, although she had been in Las Vegas long enough not to fall for a man just because he was good-looking.
    They chatted as they drove past the millions of Las Vegas lights, and she thought he was fascinating. He