Novel Fodder
A female FBI agent has a torrid affair with a best-selling female author. The agent’s husband tries to shoot her in a church. He gets caught and sentenced to jail. The FBI agent ends up in the San Francisco police department.
Sound like a novel by Patricia Cornwell? It could be-it’s the story of her seduction of FBI agent Margo Bennett in the early 1990s.
The two first met at the FBI’s Quantico facility where Cornwell was researching her latest Kay Scarpetta novel. “As they sat in chairs next to each other, Patsy (Cornwell) kept swiveling around and touching Margo’s leg with the toe of her shoe…as they talked, Margo felt the blood coursing through her veins, very aware of the close proximity of her body to Patsy’s. It felt dangerous. Wrong. Thrilling,” the book related.
The meetings and steamy make-out sessions continue until they finally make it to bed. “They undressed each other and got into Patsy’s bed, a soft inviting sea of powder blue, where they made love for more than an hour,” and then toasted their intimacy with “a spicy red wine.”
Their sweat had barely dried before Cornwell tried to cement their relationship by spiriting Bennett off for a meeting with an elderly psychic who told her, “You’re worried about people getting hurt. You have some tough times ahead, but don’t worry, you are doing what is right.”
Bennett recalled to the authors that it was a strange way to end an otherwise memorable day, spoiling “the intimacy, calm and peace I’d felt.”
In 1996, Bennett’s husband, Gene, an undercover FBI agent lured his wife to a church and tried to shoot her. After his arrest, he accused Cornwell of stealing his wife.
Ah, memories can be so bittersweet..
