Dos Equis (16 page)

was dyed darker brown and straightened, giving her a more serious and surprisingly sophisticated look. Light makeup was

used to great effect. It covered up sun freckles that usually dotted her nose and cheeks, and highlighted her grey eyes and

Angelina Jolie lips. She covered up her heavy breasted, full figure with conservative business suits worn over turtlenecks.

Having compiled a list of former work and personal acquaintances, I visited Edmonton three times for face-to-face

interviews. In these candid talks, one disquieting commonality soon emerged. Although only a few of the people I talked to

knew one another, their experiences with Frances were startlingly similar. At some point, each had had some kind of

relationship with her. Now these relationships were incontrovertibly, irreparably, and, from their perspective, thankfully, over.

The routine was always the same. Upon initial meeting, Frances would be super friendly, chatty, and typically quite amusing.

First impressions were overwhelmingly positive, leading to mutually proposed future meetings. Frances would be exceedingly

attentive and solicitous to her new friend. She would be the first to offer a helping hand if you were moving; she’d hop right on over with a needed hammer or cup of sugar. Unknown to the unwitting other party to the budding friendship, Frances would

also be mentally keeping track. She knew by heart, each and every favour, big or small, she’d bestowed, and the manner in

which the other person had responded. If there was no appreciation of an appropriate intensity, or symbiotic reciprocation,

within a reasonable amount of time, a subtle shift would begin. The friend, to Frances’s mind, was now beholden to her.

At this point, Frances would move into the passive aggressive stage. She would expect certain things from the friend to make up for the unspoken but obvious—to her—deficiency. If the friend did not deliver, or failed to meet Frances’s expectations in some way—which was
always
the case eventually— Frances also kept track of these much more serious infractions. It only took a few violations of the friendship before Frances was firmly on the dangerous road of paranoia, spiralling ever

downward. Every action, every outside relationship, every word spoken or left unspoken, every deed done or undone, became

suspect. Frances would claim she only wanted the best from the friendship, but inside she fully expected the worst.

Frances would begin to look for that one thing, that one piece of irrefutable proof that her dear, good friend—to whom she

herself had given all she could—had crossed her. She’d wait to be hurt, failed, disappointed, betrayed. All were inevitable.

At first the friendship would take a hit. The disoriented friend would be apologetic, contrite. Frances would bounce back

and take the high road, being friendlier than ever.

And then the precarious circle of friendship would start all over again.

And again.

And again.

Each time, the period between point A, and the unavoidable point B, grew shorter and shorter. Until, finally, unable to take it any more, the friend would remove themselves from Frances’s life for good. Such an act was not for cowards. Frances would

respond with protests of betrayal and, to anyone who would listen, tales of deception, treachery, and falseness of a friend who was really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Fortunately, usually by the time Frances’s anger was about to fall into violence, she’d have found a new friend and moved on in her super friendly, chatty, and typically quite amusing way.

Frances Huber did not have any long-term friends. As a young woman, Frances applied to the University of Alberta. She’d

wanted to be a doctor. Unable to get into the Faculty of Medicine, she set her sights on nursing. After failing her first year, Frances moved on to other options in the field of health and welfare services. She earned certificates as a masseuse, a reflexol-ogist, dabbled in acupuncture, and finally ended up hiring herself out as a caregiver/companion to the elderly.

Although I could find no particular training or education to back up Frances’s career in social services, I expect she made

good use of a cleverly worded resumé, embellishing her various other short-lived attempts at a caregiving career. If I didn’t already know what I did about Frances Huber, I might have forgiven or even admired this steadfast determination to find some way to help others. But, ultimately, hers was not selfless motivation.

A developing idiom nowadays is that society is “greying.” People are living longer than ever before. For Frances Huber,

this was a good thing. With booming numbers of aging people, Frances was seldom out of work. Still, she rarely remained with one employer for longer than a year or two. I was unsuccessful at finding anyone who actually used Frances as a caregiver. But I did speak with two people, children of now-deceased clients.

The stories followed much the same narrative as all of Frances’s relationships. At first, things generally went well: she got on with the oldsters and they liked her. They were simply happy to have someone to look after all their needs. It was an

expensive alternative to government-funded institutional care, but worth it.
They
were not the problem, however. In due course, a son, daughter, neighbour, or well-meaning friend would enter the picture. At first, they too would think the world of Frances.

But sooner or later the familiar love/hate rhythm would play itself out. In the end, Frances would be let go to seek new

employment. I can’t imagine Frances came away from these experiences with many glowing references. If something hadn’t

happened to change things, I expect the job market would have, sooner or later, begun to dry up for her. But something did

happen. And everything changed.

When Frances was forty-five, her mother turned eighty. Although generally healthy, Mrs. Huber’s eyesight was failing and she couldn’t look after herself anymore. It made sense for Helen Huber to move in with her only daughter, Frances. It would have been an equitable arrangement, with Helen paying Frances the same wage she’d have received taking care of anyone else.

From what I could discover about Frances’s financial situation around that time, I think she even managed a tidy raise. So

whatever her personal thoughts on the matter, she made out like gangbusters. She probably thought her mother wouldn’t know

the difference. Besides, the money would be hers in the end anyway, so why not get some of it now?

The mother-daughter relationship was a little bumpy, but by all accounts, things seemed to go very well at first. As the

months and years progressed, however, Helen Huber grew more infirm, requiring more and more of Frances’s time.

Unfortunately, this did not mesh well with what was happening in Frances’s emotional life. With middle age came the

deterioration in Frances’s awareness of the line between good and very, very, very evil. Frequently housebound with her

increasingly demanding mother, Frances discovered a new obsession. The Internet. But, according to Frances’s ex-friends, she didn’t go for the obvious. No online casinos or porn sites for her. Instead, she developed two very specific passions. One

surprised me. The other did not.

The not surprising passion, was her love of various social media outlets—MySpace, Travbuddy, Facebook, Blogster, Fubar,

Twitter; she tried them all—indulging in anonymous flirting, particularly with much younger men. Her more surprising pursuit was fine art purchased from online retailers such as eBay and Etsy. When her friendships were “on,” she loved nothing better than to invite the chosen intimate over to show off her newest acquisitions. She relished telling extravagant stories about where each canvas came from, the style, and the medium. She’d rave about the artist as if she’d purchased the masterpiece directly from a private New York City gallery or she herself were the lucky painter’s patron. Her friends, although not art experts, were usually underwhelmed by Frances’s enthusiasms.

Falling deeper and deeper into her cyber world, Frances was not pleased with her mother’s increasing demands on her time.

She’d complain to whoever would listen that Helen was becoming progressively more quarrelsome and irritable. It didn’t take

a psychologist to deduce that this was likely due to her daughter’s increasing neglect. The pair argued frequently. But Frances always backed down at the end. After all, she didn’t want to kill the golden goose...or did she?

I corroborated reports from people in Frances’s life at the time with various public health records I was able to catch a sneak peek at, thanks to a little help from JP’s prowess on the computer and ability to get into places he probably shouldn’t be. Helen Huber was indeed growing weaker. On the rare occasions she was seen in public, she was unsteady on her feet, and hard of

hearing. She wore thick glasses and depended on an oxygen tank. One friend said that everything seemed to change after

Frances’s mother was hospitalized with a series of small strokes. Miraculously, the octogenarian survived, and even thrived

under the care she received in hospital. But eventually, she had to go back home.

Although Helen had overcome the strokes, her reliance on Frances for day to day care was even greater than before. Frances

grew morose and miserable and endlessly cranky. I guessed that this was the moment. This was the crack in the façade of

Frances Huber. Her persona as caring daughter was slowly but surely slithering off to reveal the sociopath that hid beneath, like a snake shedding its scaly skin.

I allowed the dark side of my mind to travel where Frances led me.

It would be so easy. A wrong step on an icy sidewalk. Failure to look before crossing a street. Taking a tumble down a set

of stairs. Mistakenly taking too much of the wrong medication. Allowing the oxygen tank to go empty. Lighting a match next to it. There were so many possibilities for getting rid of an ailing, elderly woman without causing undue suspicion. I shivered just thinking about it.

The official police report stated that at 7:47 a.m. on a Thursday morning in January, 9-1-1 received a frantic call from a

woman identifying herself as Frances Huber. The woman could be heard wailing, and talking unintelligibly for several

seconds. Then, quite clearly, she stated that she’d found her mother in the family car, which had been parked in an unheated garage behind the house. She feared her mother was not breathing. The police found eighty-three-year-old Helen Huber,

dressed only in a light nightgown, having succumbed to hypothermia. The temperature, as forecast, had fallen to a low of minus thirty-eight during the night.

Frances made a formal statement to the police. She told them about her mother’s growing problems with dementia and how

the old woman would often wander off with no memory of why or where she was going. In a neat turn of self-censure, Frances

blamed herself. Earlier that evening, her mother had asked her several times if they could go to Tim Hortons for a bowl of hot soup—one of Helen’s favourite treats. Frances was worried about taking her mother out on such a blisteringly cold night. She convinced her to stay home with a cup of cocoa instead. Frances claimed that she put her mother to bed at eight-thirty p.m., as was her norm, then settled in for a
CSI
marathon before heading off to bed herself at eleven. She did not check in on her mother, for which she claimed she’d never forgive herself. It was not until the next morning, when she went to rouse her mother for her usual seven-thirty a.m. breakfast, that she noticed she was gone. Frantic and confused, it took her almost fifteen minutes to think to look for her mother in the garage.

My version of the story was a little different. Once Frances made the decision to knock off her mom, and how to do it, she

waited patiently for the perfect night. She wanted a forecast that guaranteed her accommodatingly freezing cold temperatures.

She invited her mother to go out for a drive to Tim Hortons for a nice bowl of hot soup. She benevolently escorted her mother into the unheated garage at the rear of their yard. On the way, Helen likely complained about the cold. She would have wanted a scarf and gloves and a proper coat to cover her flimsy nightgown. Frances insisted they continue on as they were, telling her the car would heat up quickly enough. There was no need to take all the time to go back to the house to put on layers of winter duds for what was only a ten-minute outing.

Once settled in the car, Frances probably gave her mother some fake excuse—like that she’d forgotten her wallet in the

house—allowing her to leave her mother alone. She’d have claimed to be right back. Instead, she locked the garage from the

outside. So even if she tried, her mother would have no possible way out. Frances headed back inside, where the rest of her

evening and next morning progressed exactly as she told the police it did.

It took Frances Huber four months from the date her mother returned home from the hospital to work up the courage to kill

her. The police, however, without the benefit of the extra information I’d now collected, did not see it that way.

What happened after Frances successfully got away with murdering her mother, I could only guess at vaguely. She collected

her inheritance. Unlike Lynette Kraus, she was likely unimpressed by the amount. It was not nearly enough to finance a life of any great luxury. Around this time, Frances began expanding her online social network to include the suicide websites that JP

later dug up with the help of Mary Quail and Onya Knees. Perhaps Frances did have a heart. Perhaps she did feel remorse.

Perhaps her actions had driven her to despair, depression, and guilt. Perhaps she toyed with the idea of killing herself. Or maybe she was simply trying to find another pool of weak and needy victims to exploit. Whatever the reason, she parlayed her visibility in The End Society chatroom to create a brand new career for herself. Although we had nothing but circumstantial