Practice to Deceive

understood what they meant. They were suggesting that they would murder Gard so she wouldn’t have to go through all the hassles of divorce.
    “No!” Brenda responded. “No—he’s my son’s father. I wouldn’t think of doing something like that—”
    Brenda had revealed this conversation to Mark Plumberg in October 2006, and it was part of the thick case file on Russ Douglas’s murder, although few people were aware of the bizarre offer to kill Brenda’s estranged husband.
    Brenda would have other things to add when she testified at the upcoming trial.
    But September 2011 was a desperate time for Brenda Gard. She dreaded testifying. She and her sisters had done their best to keep the family together, although that became impossible when Doris, their stepmother, played favorites with her own biological children.
    There had been some good times with Peggy Sue, especially when she was little. Enough good times that Lana, Brenda, and Rhonda had tried to stay close to her. And she had let Brenda live with her in Las Vegas. Of course, Brenda was scared to death of Peggy and some of the scenarios she came up with. When she left Peggy’s house in Nevada, she packed her bags secretly and snuck out in the middle of the night.
    Once she was out of Peggy’s house and not so frightened of her plots and bossy ways, Brenda was able to look back and feel grateful that Peggy had given her a place to stay.
    In the early fall of 2011, Brenda was living alone in her daughter’s empty house in Marysville, Washington. And that was supposed to be only a temporary situation because her daughter, Heather, needed to put it on the market.
    Brenda had had a half dozen careers. She was a trained dental hygienist, a bartender, a cocktail waitress, and she had a real estate license.
    After her divorce from Flint Gard, she lived off and on with Bill Lindquist, and he knew all too well about the nightmares that caused her to cry out in terror. She had never been free of them since the morning their mother was murdered.
    In that bleak autumn of 2011, even Brenda’s best friend said it was very difficult to be close to her. “There’s just too much negativity,” she explained.
    And then Bill Lindquist left. As much as he cared for Brenda, he told her, “I can’t watch you kill yourself any longer.”
    Brenda needed to have her medications—antidepressants—evaluated. The ones she was taking were causing her to tremble, and at the same time, energized her to the point that her sleep was interrupted, and she was up all hours bleaching her kitchen counters and the toilet, dusting where there was no dust.
    Brenda’s tenuous hold on her life began to slip as the world seemed to crash in on her. Rhonda would have rushed over from Idaho to help her cope, and her daughter, who loved her devotedly, would have, too, but they didn’t realize that Brenda had finally hit bottom.
    Prospective suicides often hurt so much emotionally that they cannot think about what their loss will do to those who love them. Somewhere in her troubled mind, Brenda knew that it would be Heather who found her, but she couldn’t worry about that.
    She was in too much pain.
    On September 18, 2011, Brenda went to the garage and looped a rope over a beam, and then around her neck. Hanging doesn’t require a long drop.
    Brenda Stackhouse Gard simply stepped off the rear bumper of her Mustang that was parked in the silent garage.
    When Heather found her mother there, she called her Aunt Rhonda and Rhonda Vogl rushed to Marysville as soon as she could get there.
    It was one more tragedy for the family that had endured so many over the past five decades.
    Brenda had grown a thick outer shell during that time, but those who loved her knew that despite her sometimes raucous sense of humor and her feistiness, she had never lost her vulnerable and tender center. As the elements of her life that gave her a modicum of safety slipped away, Brenda found herself sadly alone. Her two marriages were over, her children were grown up enough not to need her any longer, and her financial picture was bleak. She was mortified that Peggy Sue had brought shame to her family, and feared they would all be painted with the same brush.
    Even so, her suicide was a terrible shock.
    “How could someone as vivacious and full of life as Brenda hang herself in her daughter’s garage, knowing Heather would find her?” Rhonda asked.
    “She just stepped off the back fender of her Mustang and