3 The Housewife Assassin's Killer Christmas Tips

by Josie Brown

  I sigh. “In that case, I say we should wait until tomorrow, when Daddy and I can share in the fun.” I hold up a finger to ward off her next objection. “And besides, we need Daddy here because he’s the only one tall enough to put the angel on top of the tree.”

  Trisha nods at the validity of this argument. Case closed.

  “Aunt Phyllis just said it was okay for Trevor to hang out with me,” Mary murmurs.

  “Oh, really?” I glare at Aunt Phyllis, who smiles supremely back at me. “What the hey? He’s a cute boy. Besides, he’ll keep her busy while I watch my television shows. Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives is on tonight!”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I don’t want Mary to be kept ‘busy,’ Aunt Phyllis. I want her in your sight at all time.”

  “Since when did you get to be such a stick in the mud? Just because she’s more popular than you were at her age—”

  I slam the pepper shaker on the table. “Who says I wasn’t popular?”

  “I guess all those kids who made fun of your braces. Or was it your zits?” Aunt Phyllis takes another gulp of her wine. “I don’t remember anymore. Boy, kids can be cruel at that age!”

  Mary stares over at me, as if seeing me for the very first time.

  Suddenly, I feel twelve again. I run my tongue over my lips. No, the braces aren’t there any more, thank goodness.

  When I was her age, I would have loved to have been even half as cool as Mary.

  We can’t change the past.

  That’s okay. It makes us who we are today.

  And right now, I’m a mother with three kids who think they can pull one over on my dotty old aunt. Nope, not gonna happen. Time to pull rank. “Okay, listen up, everyone. No company allowed while your father and I are out of the house. It’s a school night, remember? Homework first, then baths, then you can watch some television before bedtime. Trisha, you’re in bed by eight-thirty. Mary and Jeff can stay up an hour later, but no more.” It dawns on me that for the first time since we sat down to dinner, I’m the only one yelling. I lower my voice as I add, “And thank you for obeying my rules.”

  All eyes shift to Jack, the softie.

  He holds up his hands. “What she said. Your mom is always the boss.”

  Ah, those words are like music to my ears.

  They’ve earned him a few more brownie points.

  He can cash them in when we have a real date.

  I pat his hand. “The curtain goes up soon. We better skedaddle.”

  It’s show time.

  “So, how old were you when you had your first kiss?”

  Jack’s question almost has me swerving off the road.

  The decision to take his car was probably a smart one because we may need a quick getaway, and my mommy-mobile doesn’t have the same zero-to-sixty pick-up as Jack’s Lamborghini. The decision for me to drive also makes sense, since he may have to be running like hell carrying a shoulder-launched missile, and won’t have time to fumble for his keys.

  His decision to play Twenty-one Questions may be one he regrets, should we crash.

  To ensure we don’t, I hold tight to the steering wheel and keep my eyes straight ahead. Not because he’s shocked me, but because I’d hate for him to see that my face has turned candy apple red.

  “Let’s just say I was old enough.”

  “Come on, answer the question honestly.”

  “Will you do the same?”

  “Absolutely. Cross my heart.”

  I sigh. “Okay. I was fifteen. And yes, the boy broke my heart.”

  He laughs.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was worried you hadn’t been kissed until college.”

  “You take too much stock in what Aunt Phyllis says. She’s under the impression I was as pure as driven snow until Carl and I . . . well, until I was married.”

  “So Carl wasn’t your first . . . either?” He’s trying so hard to act nonchalant.

  “To be perfectly honest, not only wasn’t he my first, he wasn’t my even ‘best’.”

  Jack’s sly smile presumes soooo much. But in a flash, his smile is gone.

  “At this juncture in our relationship, I think I need to tell you . . . Oh never mind.”

  I guess this is where I hear some soul-searching blather about Valentina. I brace myself for the worst. “Don’t be such a tease. Just come out and say it.”

  “I don’t know if you want to hear this.”

  “Well, guess what? You won’t know if you don’t tell me, so spit it out.”

  “I love you.”

  I take a deep breath. “Ditto.”

  He laughs. “Well, that’s romantic.”

  “Let’s save the romance until after we save the world, shall we?”

  “I’m glad one of us has our priorities in order.” He stares out the window. It’s already dark, so there is not much to look at except the headlights on the other side of the median whizzing by. “Then I guess this is also a bad time to ask you to marry me.”

  I screech off onto the shoulder of the road, and turn off the engine. As much as I like having a thousand horsepower engine at my fingertips, I’d be disappointed if a knee-jerk reaction came between me and my happily ever after.

  “You now have my complete attention,” I murmur sweetly.

  “I’m asking if you’ll marry me.” He picks up my hand. When his fingers wrap around mine, I wonder why I’d ever let go.

  Then the answer hits me—to get to our final destination in one piece.

  “Why now, Jack? And why here?”

  “Why not?” He turns to face me, but his features are hidden in shadows, only revealing themselves in the fleeting headlights of passing cars. “There will always be some crisis to overcome. Some . . . bullshit. . . somewhere in the world.”

  Some bad guys to kill. Some long-buried secret to rear its ugly head.

  Some deserting spouse to confront.

  Which reminds me: “We’re both still married.”

  He shrugs. “So let’s go to Vegas and set things straight.”

  He makes me laugh. “I like the Bellagio.” I look down into my lap. “I guess you’re over Valentina in a big way.”

  He doesn’t nod. He just looks straight ahead.

  His silence speaks volumes.

  If only he’d lied and said, “Yes, of course I am! What do you take me for, a fool?”

  But no, I’m the fool. For presuming he’s over her, just because she’s over him.

  “When she saw me, she told me Carl wasn’t in love with her. That he was still in love with me.” I can’t help myself. I have to say it to him, to see if it makes a difference to him.

  His mouth tightens. “Do you believe her?”

  “What, about Carl? Ha! You said it best. The only one Carl truly loves is himself, and the power he’s able to grab from who knows where.”

  “Then why won’t he leave you alone?”

  “Because he can’t have me. Because I love you instead.”

  There. I’ve said it.

  I restart the engine and it roars back to life. “We’ve got a date with a stolen missile. Let’s do this,” I say as Jack’s Lamborghini leaps back onto the road.

  We drive the remaining few miles in silence.

  Is enough for him to truly love me back? Or now, having been told Valentina never really had Carl’s affections, will he try to win her back?

  I know I’ll have to wait for his answer—

  “We’re here,” he murmurs.

  So we are, I think coming out of my fog.

  Saved by the bomb.

  I pull into the far side of the parking lot, out of view from the reception area, where the security guard is parked in front of an old big screen TV that must have been confiscated from an abandoned storage unit.

  “Break a leg,” I say as he climbs out of the car.

  He shuts the car door before he hears me whisper, “And yes, I’ll marry you.”

  Maybe it’s for
the best. Let’s face it. My answer doesn’t count if he’s already changed his mind.

  In life, just about everything is timing.

  If I hadn’t been at a certain shooting range on a certain Spring break during college, I would have never met Carl.

  If I hadn’t been in the bedroom to answer his cell while he was in the shower one day, I would not have set into motion the chain of events that would have made him realize he needed to disappear from the life we’d created together.

  If Acme hadn’t been looking for a few honeypots right about the time they yanked Carl’s pension from me, I would’ve taken a job as an assistant at a bank or made time to be a class mom, instead of collecting a rogue’s gallery of scalps on my belt.

  And if Jack hadn’t brought Carl home with him after one mission went awry, Valentina would never have fallen in love with Carl, and left Jack for him.

  None of this I regret. Because if none of it had happened, I would have never have met Jack.

  What I do regret, however, as Safe & Sound’s Storage Unit Number 121 blows off the back wing of the building, is that Jack never heard me say “Yes” when he asked me to marry him.

  I run past the security guard, who stumbles out of the building in a total state of shock and denial. Deadly blasts are way above his pay scale of fourteen dollars an hour.

  “Where is the man who just went in there?” I shout at him “Did he make it out?”

  He shakes his head and cups his ear, to indicate he hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.

  I pull him far away from the debris field, which is scattered far and wide. Clothing floats through the air like cloth clouds, while bed frames pinwheel through the parking lot. Family photos float down from the night sky in a storm of confetti.

  People hold on to too much crap.

  If something is important in your life, you’ll make room for it.

  I hear ambulances in the distance, heading this way. I don’t have much time if I’m going to find Jack. What if he’s injured and can’t get out by himself?

  I run into the building and down the main hall, but I can’t see which way to turn because the smoke pouring out is too thick, and worse, smells like melted plastic. I can’t breathe. My lungs are on fire.

  I’m crazy to think Jack has survived the explosion.

  As I pass out, the only thing I can think of is how I wish I’d been with Jack at the very end.

  The emergency med tech, a bruiser of a guy, refuses to let me sit up.

  “Keep on that oxygen mask, miss. You’re not out of the woods yet.”

  My lungs still hurt, so I guess he’s right.

  The hint that he sucks at Charades is the look on his face when I mime my need for paper and pen. Finally, I yank a ballpoint out of his pocket and scribble on my hand. Someone is inside the building!

  He shakes his head. “Nah. The security guy got out of there, safe and sound. He says the place is empty.”

  No, someone else I add on the inside of my wrist.

  “Lady, if that’s the case . . . Well, let’s just say, it would be a miracle for someone to survive that inferno. It’s almost as if a bomb went off or something.”

  Duh, ya think?

  I propel myself up, but he pushes me back down. “I’ll be taking you to Torrance so that the Emergency Room can check you out. We’ll leave just as soon as the police clear the crowd.”

  Like hell he will. I shake my head vigorously.

  He sighs. “I hate to have to do this to you, but we’ve got to follow protocol.” He holds me down while he straps my arms with the gurney’s wrist restraints. I’m too weak to fight him, or else I would have given him a head butt or a straight kick to the gut.

  He shakes his head at my cursing. “Listen, lady, if you keep it up, I’ll have to sedate you.”

  I get it. Play possum.

  Five minutes later, as he crawls down the road, I fold up my knees in order to grasp my stiletto out of my boot with my right hand. If I hold it at an angle, I can cut through the restraint without slicing a vein. With my freed hand, I loosen the other restraint.

  I’m sure he’ll be half a mile away before he realizes I’ve slipped out the back door.

  It’ll be quite sometime before he figures out I jacked his cell phone from his pocket while he was busy strapping me down.

  I’m shocked Ryan can understand me through my blubbering about the explosion and Jack and the fact that I don’t know where the hell I am, except that I’m walking down US 1 just north of Rosencrans Avenue near Manhattan Beach and he needs to send someone to pick me up, like now!

  “Abu is already on his way. Just keep this cell phone on, so that we can pick up the GPS signal.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I’m in the passenger seat of Abu’s new cupcake truck. The very last thing I want to do is talk about Jack, so instead I rattle off my mother’s old recipe for red velvet cupcakes—

  When suddenly I remember that red velvet was Jack’s favorite, and how I could always tell when he and Jeff had snuck a cupcake before dinner because of the telltale red stains on their teeth when they smiled.

  That does it. The tears won’t stop.

  They just won’t stop.

  I have to get a grip on myself or the kids and Aunt Phyllis will realize that something very bad has happened.

  That Jack is dead.

  I should have said yes, when he asked me to marry him. It might’ve changed everything.

  Chapter 15

  Build a Snowman

  Everyone needs a snowman in their front yard! Think of this holiday icon as the greeter at Wal-Mart: a welcoming sentry, arms open, and just a little scary, what with that crazy leer on its face.

  Building one is simple, and fun to do! Pack a snowball tightly in your fist, and roll it into a very large boulder, placing it near your walkway, within close proximity to your front stoop. This is its legs. Do the same with a second one, just slightly smaller, and place it on top of the first one. This is its abdomen. A third boulder, about a third the size of the second one, will serve as the snowman’s head. Decorate it with a top hat (really, any hat or cap will do), buttons or stones for eyes and its mouth, a carrot for its nose, and perhaps a pipe. Trimmed branches make for sturdy arms.

  However, I wouldn’t hang a machete or the machine gun on its arm. Yes, it makes for an arresting tableau, but it may give your guests the wrong message.

  Just sayin’.

  Jack’s funeral is a simple affair.

  The lack of any identifiable remains in the blast dictates a closed coffin, so that’s a no-brainer. The clique of mourners is tiny. As expected, Abu, Emma, and of course Ryan are here. But where’s Arnie? Furiously working on taking down Carl, I hope, which would be the best tribute of all to Jack. Besides, it would have been too risky for the whole Los Angeles branch office to be in attendance.

  Sometimes I wish I worked in a normal profession, like, say, accounting.

  The children fidget at my side. They don’t understand why I pulled them out of school for the funeral of a complete stranger, someone named “Jack Craig.”

  And they certainly don’t understand why their father, “Carl,” isn’t here, too.

  But yes, he’s here.

  I’ve no doubt that Carl is lurking close by, rejoicing in his kill of the man he despises more than anyone.

  Every time the minister says Jack’s name, my heart leaps into my throat. His eulogy is surprisingly heartfelt, considering he knows next to nothing about the man he is speaking of. I did my best to fill in the blanks. To relay anecdotes that demonstrated his sense of humor, his sharp wit, and the joy he felt around the children he came to love as his own.

  But now, listening to the minister, I realize there was so much about Jack I never learned.

  And now I never will.

  I can’t stop the tears from clouding my sunglasses.

  When the minister tells a story of Jack’s propensity for running caution lights, Mary gives me a sidelong glance. I pray
she doesn’t put two and two together.

  She’ll have plenty of time to do that when he doesn’t come home this time, from one of his far flung “business trips.”

  None of us will be the same after this.

  Finally, it’s time to drop the coffin into the ground. The men step forward to sprinkle clots of mud. Emma drops a carnation onto the coffin, and I follow suit, with the dozen long-stemmed roses I’ve brought.

  Impulsively, Mary grabs one from the bunch I hold before tossing it into the grave, then takes my hand reassuringly.

  When I turn to leave, I see her. Valentina sits in a limousine, watching from the curb.

  I hate the fact that she’s smiling.

  I hate her for giving me the lead about the storage unit.

  That’s when it dawns on me that the whole thing was a set-up.

  Why, that little whore!

  She must realize I’ve seen her. Knowing she’s overplayed her hand, she says something to the driver, and the limo has pulled away from the curb.

  When she passes by me, I notice she is sitting beside a man.

  Carl.

  That son of a bitch.

  Trisha pulls at my sleeve. “Mommy, can we go now?”

  I take her hand and head for the car.

  “Hey, will Dad be home in time for my game?” Jeff asks.

  Still very much in tune to my raw feelings, Mary mutters, “Shut up, Jeff,”

  “No, you shut up,” he retorts.

  I stop for no other reason than to cry.

  “See? Dumbass! I told you.” Mary grabs his arm and drags him to the car.

  My tears scare Trisha. At first she pats my arm, but then she realizes whatever is happening to Mommy isn’t going away any time soon, so she runs after her siblings, yelling her sister’s name.

  Now, I am truly alone.

  Chapter 16

  Best. Eggnog. Ever.

  The perfect libation for the chilly nights? Eggnog, of course!

  And this recipe will have your guests begging for more. (Or, begging for something. Perhaps a gentler way to go into the night. Say, with a slug from a .38 revolver.)

  The ingredients: four cups of milk, a cup and a half of sugar, a dozen large egg yolks, a cup of heavy cream, a cup of whisky and grated nutmeg. In a saucepan over a medium heat, whisk the sugar into the milk, until it’s dissolved. (If you’re trying to dissolve anything else like, say, arsenic, now is the time…but I digress.) Now, whisk in the eggs in a bowl.