The Villa(29)

Powerful. In control. Possessive.

“I did,” she says to Johnnie now, making herself smile even as her fingers itch to make her pen move again. “It was really sweet, Johnnie, thank you.”

“Sweet,” he repeats. It’s the wrong thing to say, clearly, but she can’t make herself take it back.

It’s a fucking initial carved into glass, she thinks, irritation making her uncharitable. Pierce blew up his entire life and mine so we could be together, did you really think that one letter would impress me?

But still, she keeps smiling and he eventually nods, sort of shuffles off, and finally, Mari is alone again.

Well, she amends as she starts to write. Not really alone.

She has Victoria now, after all.

[INTRO MUSIC FADES OUT]

BEX: Hiiii, my lovelies! Okay, so as you may have noticed, our music selection was a little different today. That was your first hint. A hint about what we’re gonna talk about on this fine evening. Or morning or afternoon, I guess, I don’t know when you’re listening to us blather on.

KALI: I mean, the title of this episode pretty much tells them what we’re talking about, so …

BEX: I know! But I was trying to be mysterious, god.

KALI: Sorry!

BEX: Always fucking up my attempt at setting a mood, Thompson, I swear.

KALI: I’m just pointing out that the very nature of podcasting doesn’t really allow for surprises when it comes to the subject of said podcast.

BEX: [pause] Okay, that’s fair. Anyway! What you just heard was a snippet from a song called “Sister Mine,” by one Lara Larchmont, and it’s from the album Aestas.

KALI: If you have never heard or seen the album Aestas, please go to your mom or grandmother’s house right now, because it’s there. Promise.

BEX: If you ever came home from fifth grade and found your mom listening to music and crying in her den, it was probably Aestas.

KALI: [laughs] Who did not come home from fifth grade to find their mom crying in the den, I ask you?

BEX: [laughs] Well, now that we’ve made things sufficiently dark, let’s continue with the official breakdown, shall we? [clears throat] Here we go, the formal bit. “In the nearly fifty years since the so-called ‘Villa Rosato Horror’”—

KALI: Jesus Christ, did people really call it that?

BEX: They did! Everyone was, like, extremely extra in the seventies, I guess. Anyway! “In the nearly fifty years since the so-called ‘Villa Rosato Horror,’ there have been other, more shocking crimes involving famous people, enough so that the events of July 29, 1974, are almost forgotten. There were no splashy prestige TV miniseries about it or true-crime classics written detailing what happened outside of Orvieto that summer.

MAYBE it’s because the murder itself was so grubby and unglamorous, or maybe it’s because the people involved all went on to much bigger things. Mari Godwick wrote Lilith Rising, one of the most famous horror novels of all time”—

KALI: Scary as shit.

BEX: And Lara Larchmont’s Aestas is a folk-rock classic on par with Tapestry.

KALI: Sad as shit, as established.

BEX: [laughs] And of course Noel Gordon, despite being dead for decades, is still one of the most recognizable rock stars in the world.

KALI: Hot as shit.

BEX: Facts.

KALI: No printers, just fax.

BEX: [laughs, clears throat again] “But the Villa Rosato Horror, or, as some insist it should be called, the Villa Rosato Tragedy, is worth revisiting. The major players all agreed they could barely remember that night, and the accused murderer swore he was innocent. There were lurid tales of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll mixed in with darker rumors of the occult.”

KALI: Oh yeah, people in the seventies and eighties fucking loved to think the devil was involved.

BEX: Loved! It! Could not get enough of that devil guy.

KALI: And Mari wrote a devil book.

BEX: Oh my god, you are stepping on me again, we’re gonna get to that!

KALI: I prematurely deviled, and I’m sorry.

BEX: You should be! Okay, let me finish with my big line and thesis of today’s episode: “With all that tension, all that drama in one house, is it really so far-fetched to think that maybe the Italian courts didn’t get this one right?”

KALI: Ooooh.

BEX: I know! I’m making big claims right up front!

KALI: I am intrigued by your thesis, and wish to know more.

BEX: And so you shall. So, as always, let’s start with the victim and the ten-second backstory. Victim! One Pierce Sheldon, age twenty-three, musician, apparently really talented, but something of a douche.

KALI: What level of Summer’s Eve are we on here?

BEX: Extra strength, for sure. In 1971, he’s married, he’s already got a kid, and then he meets Mari Godwick because he … I don’t fucking know, he just meets her, and, like, he is sprung. Just immediately sprung, totally crazy about her, and she feels the same way about him because she is sixteen fucking years old.

KALI: Ew.

BEX: I mean, I, too, would have run off with a married man when I was sixteen provided that married man was, like, on a fucking CW show or something. Tenth-grade me, absolutely risking it all for Jensen Ackles, so I get it for Mari, but still, Pierce, ya gross.

KALI: I kind of like this actually. It’ll be less sad when he dies at least? Won’t bum out our listeners too much?