Deadly Housewives (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  I took the gun from my panty drawer and tucked it into my big purse. My brother had given me the Glock when Jack and I moved to the big city. Jack didn’t know I had it. He’d never have let me keep it. My gun in his face would show him I was serious, and teach him a good lesson. He would see how smart I was and never try anything again. I found a roll of duct tape to use on ML. I loved it. A dope like me teaching two professors a lesson.

  ML’s reply came back to historybutt within the hour: Okay. I’ll be home to night. See you! She was already excited, the tart. I checked the other screen name at noon and still nothing. I needed to know whether my plan had worked, so I could beat Jack to her place, surprise ML, and get her out of the way. Finally, at three o’clock Jack’s reply was there. It was also brief: Why so mysterious? See you there.

  I had defrosted homemade minestrone soup and bread from the restaurant for dinner. I wasn’t in the mood to cook. Jack came home acting normal, as he was so skilled at doing, and we ate and he talked some facts about the Seminoles’ turbans and jewelry. I couldn’t really pay much attention. I thought I heard the name Mary Lou, and almost questioned him, but then I realized it was my imagination playing tricks. My mind kept racing over my plan and my feet were in a nervous jitter under the table.

  Jack ate two full bowls of soup and I thought he’d never get done. When he finished, I said I had to help out at the restaurant for the evening. Actually, since I hadn’t been there for two days, there was plenty I should have been doing. I slugged down some Wild Turkey in a corner of the kitchen and then put Purrz in his carrier. Jack knew Purrzie always sat on my lap while I did book work.

  It was six forty-five when I left. I’d be a little late to ML’s, but she wouldn’t expect Jack exactly at seven. He seemed relieved to see me go, so I knew he was planning to keep his date at eight o’clock.

  It was dark when I arrived. I walked to the porch, set the cat carrier down, pulled out the gun, and rang the bell. Footsteps started up immediately and ML opened the door. She gasped. Her face was priceless.

  I had the gun pointed at her skimpy chest. “Keep quiet and move backward into the house.”

  She was good at taking orders. I kept the door open with my foot as I picked up Purrz and stepped inside. I set him on the couch and closed the door behind me.

  “We’re going to play a little trick on Jack,” I said.

  She started to disagree, but I poked at her small tit with the Glock and directed her to sit on a chair. She didn’t put up a fuss, not that I gave her much chance. I pulled a piece of tape off the roll and slapped it over her mouth. She knew it was her own damn fault for starting up with Jack. I made her tape her own legs and one wrist to a wooden chair so I could continue to hold the gun. I put the gun down, wrapped the last wrist and tightened up the rest, then scooted her into the bedroom and moved Purrzie into the kitchen.

  It wasn’t long before I heard a car pull up. I got into position behind the door, expecting that Jack had a key, but he rang the bell—as formal as ever. I opened the door. He started sputtering something when he saw my face behind the Glock, but I barked my order, “Not a sound. Get in here or die,” and he moved fast. I kept the gun on him and told him to march into the bedroom. He acted like he didn’t know where to move, but I mentioned that the gun was loaded, and he backed up till he nearly fell over ML’s chair. He looked at her all taped.

  “Why are you doing this, Georgia?” he said in a controlled scream.

  “You know damned well why!” I yelled back.

  “No, I don’t. What kind of stupidity is this? Put that gun down. You don’t know how to use it.”

  He couldn’t resist bringing up my “stupidity” and that set my head on fire. Any regard for him or my own good burned up with those hateful words. At this point I would have expected him to be begging my forgiveness so I would put the gun down. I couldn’t believe he would continue to insult me and play out the lie this far. I was going to get a confession, one way or another.

  I pointed the gun toward his chest. “Sit.”

  He sat on the bed and I tossed him the roll of tape I’d been wearing on my wrist. ML’s bed was perfect for the job, kind of old-fashioned like I expected a poetry reader to have. “Lay down and tape your ankles to the bedposts,” I said. I glanced back at ML, wondering if the word should have been lie, knowing she would catch that kind of error, but she just looked terrified. Jack gave me a look like he was humoring me, but he started unreeling the tape. It was a double bed, so his legs reached okay, but he was slow at taping and the result didn’t look too secure. I wouldn’t dare let go of the gun to help, so I pointed it at ML’s head.

  “Hurry up, and tape it right, or your girlfriend’s gonna git it.” I was starting to enjoy my role.

  “Girlfriend? What?” He looked at ML, blank for a second. “She’s gay!”

  ML started to squeal behind the tape, like she wanted to tear him to pieces for calling her a lesbian.

  I had to laugh. “Good try. Keep it up, asshole. What are you doing here, then?”

  “I told you I was stopping by.”

  I could see him searching his head for another lie. His mouth moved, but despite his intelligence, nothing came out of it. Finally, he took a breath. “Look, we can clear this up. Put the gun down so we can talk. This is ridiculous.”

  “Oh, Mr. Information can’t come up with a lie fast enough!” I pointed the gun back at him. “Tape your wrist to the top post.”

  He followed orders clumsily, and the time he took enraged me more. He was muttering that he didn’t deserve any of this and that I was insane, but I ignored him as usual.

  “This is nothing compared to what they do on the Internet,” I told him. I had him tear off a long piece of tape so I could hold the gun and finish the last wrist. Finally, I set the gun down, slapped a piece of tape over his mouth, double-taped the wrists, and then went back over the ankles.

  Now that he was taped up solid, I realized I had wanted him facedown, but there was no way I was about to start over. Faceup might even work better to get a confession. However, it was impossible to get his shirt off like that.

  I went into the kitchen to look for scissors and also found a bottle of Cuervo Gold. Two quick shots and I felt adequate to the job. Jack went white as the bedspread when he saw scissors in my hand. The shirt was an ugly striped golf shirt, so I enjoyed cutting straight up the front, watching his chin quiver. I pushed both halves back over his arms to expose his chest. I opened his zipper and slid his pants partially down his thighs and took my time snipping off the Fruit of the Looms. Mostly I wanted to freak him out, not hurt him too much. He wouldn’t have the nerve to press charges once his lies were exposed. I looked at ML to see how she liked the look of lover boy’s balls right now, but she had her eyes closed tight. She might have thought I was about to cut those balls right off.

  I heard yowling from the kitchen and went to get Purrzie. I felt terrible that I’d left him in that carrier so long. I took a second to pour myself another shot. When I stepped back into the bedroom with Purrzie, Jack’s eyes popped. He knew what I had planned—we were going to do a little cat-hauling. “See, I remember everything you tell me,” I said. “This form of torture comes from so-and-so’s slave narrative.”

  I slugged from the bottle of tequila that I found I’d carried with me and lifted Purrzie from the carrier. Jack was squirming, a frown on his face, and I knew he was itching to name the slave I couldn’t remember. No doubt he thought I was drunk, too, and I’d taped him wrong side up in my usual dumb-ass way. “We’ll be working on your chest, so you can watch,” I told him, to set the record straight.

  As mad as I was, I couldn’t imagine grabbing Purrzie by his tail, so I held him under his armpits. “Now we’ll see if you have something to confess.” I pulled Purrz down Jack’s chest noticing the evenly spaced stripes that immediately began to bleed. Jack moaned. Purrz was squirming and sure enough trying to get a grip with all four paws, just like the history book sa
id. I held him a little lower to extend the rows of scratches and realized he’d gotten a foothold into one of Jack’s balls. It was an accident. The son of a bitch moaned real loud. Purrzie was yowling even louder in my face, but even as I pulled the claws from Jack’s right ball one by one, not a single word of confession came from those lips. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth in frustration. “I’m listening—whenever you want to start!” I yelled.

  Purrzie dug his left front paw into Jack’s dick before I could lift him to threaten again, and it took some time to detach each hooked claw without further injury. I didn’t want to ruin Jack for life. I had just pulled out the last claw when Purrz broke loose, scrambled up Jack’s chest, and leapted to the floor. I watched him dash into the kitchen to hide.

  Jack was still quiet, the damn fool. I looked back. “Shit!” The tape was covering Jack’s mouth and he couldn’t say a word.

  He looked to be passed out, so I ripped off the tape and gave him a few slaps. His mouth fell open and some mine-strone fell out.

  I gave him a few more slaps. “Wake up, Jack,” I said. “Now it’s time for your fucking confession.” I decided to play it like I’d planned it this way, rather than have him think I’d been too stupid to take off the tape.

  In a minute, I realized he wasn’t going to wake up. I didn’t figure he’d lost that much blood, but he must have choked on those words I wanted to hear. That minestrone had backed up and clogged his windpipe and nose. My cooking had killed him. I felt a black mood come over me.

  ML was conscious. I ripped off her tape and stuck the gun in her face to think, but I knew I had to kill her to get away with this.

  She started to cry. “Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. I confess everything. Please don’t kill me!”

  Her confession was meaningless by now. I was in big trouble, and my gun hand fell down by my side. The deed was done. The victory was shallow.

  I left her taped there sobbing and coaxed Purrzie out from under the kitchen table. Cat-hauling was better in the telling than in the doing. The facts hadn’t given a clear picture. I realized I would miss Jack when the shock wore off, even his stories. I put Purrzie in his carrier and drove home.

  The food is lousy in prison and the restroom facilities are primitive, but I’ve had plenty of time to catch up on my reading. I even found some of ML’s women poets in the prison library. Come to find out, they’re all lesbians. Thinking back to the look ML gave me, I’m sure she was sizing me up in a different way from what I thought. It’s possible I imagined all the evidence.

  However, one thing is sure. ML came out on top. She wrote to me that she adopted Purrzie from the animal shelter—at least he has a good home. Despite my mistakes, I feel like the smartest person here at the prison. Being smart just isn’t the daily thrill I expected.

  The Next Nice Day

  S. J. Rozan

  Doris opened an eye, looked at the clock, and sighed. Nine-thirty. Bright sun filled the bedroom, the first nice day of spring. Doris was disappointed. She’d hoped not to wake at least until ten, maybe even ten-thirty. She tried going back to sleep, but it was no good. She threw back the blankets and began to dress. Oh, well, she told herself. I can read the paper…that’ll take an hour…and I’ll hem the blue dress…She looked bleakly at the sun lying on the lawn.

  She made herself breakfast, noticing they were almost out of eggs. Good; she’d go to the supermarket, get something complicated to make for dinner. George would like that. “Honey,” he’d say, “you shouldn’t have worked so hard. You shouldn’t have to spend your day cooking.”

  And she’d say, “I like to cook. Besides, what else have I got to do all day?”

  George would grin and kiss her, flattered that she considered pleasing him more important than anything else she had to do.

  But Doris didn’t mean she had nothing more important to do. She meant she had nothing else to do at all. Period. Nothing.

  Before she married George six months ago, Doris had worked in kitchenware at Wal-Mart, hating every minute. She’d been there eight years, three months, two weeks, and four days, and when she quit, the girls threw her a party and told her they’d miss her. She’d said she’d miss them, too, but she knew she wouldn’t and she hadn’t, not at all.

  But somehow she’d thought marriage would be different from…well, from this, anyway. George, who’d first asked her out after she’d sold him a waffle iron, had lots of money and he loved her. And she loved him. But…but she had nothing to do. At least in the Wal-Mart days it had been a challenge, getting up in the morning and forcing herself back to kitchenware, going without lunch so she could afford to go to the movies, bringing home each measly paycheck like some great trophy marking a hard-won victory.

  Now she got up in the morning and the challenge was in filling her days. Sometimes she watched soaps, but that disgusted her, sitting in front of the TV in the middle of the day getting fat on Almond Joys. (Not that George minded the added pounds. “More of you to love,” he declared.) She’d have liked to go visiting, but the three other houses on the isolated (the realtor had said “secluded”) curve of River Road all belonged to young families with children in school and two working parents. Those women had something to do all day, Doris thought resentfully. They not only had jobs, they had careers. Maybe when she and George had kids it would be different, but George wanted to wait on that. “Just you and me for a few years, babe,” he’d say, nuzzling her neck. It was sweet of him, but what it meant was this: Doris alone in a big empty house, where she ate too many candy bars and took too many naps.

  She was drinking her morning coffee when the doorbell rang.

  The man at the door grinned as soon as she opened it. His uniform shirt had Appliance Sales and Service embroidered above the pocket.

  “Oh,” Doris said, annoyed at this chunky man for…she wasn’t sure what, maybe grinning at her. “You’re here to fix the washer?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Come in.” Doris led him through the hall and silently pointed out the door to the basement. During the half hour he was down there, she washed the dishes—by hand, it took longer—and read the morning paper. The repairman came upstairs just as she finished the comics.

  “I think it’s fixed,” he said, wiping his hands on a cloth from his pocket, “but if it gives you trouble, call me and I’ll put in a new part.”

  “I thought that’s why you were here.”

  “Nah. For now I just kinda adjusted the old one. I ain’t sure it needs it and the company’ll charge you a hundred fifty bucks for that part. That’s how come I get repeat business around here. Hate for the customer to get screwed, know what I mean?”

  He leered at her in a conspiratorial way. Yes, and I hate for my washer not to work, Doris thought. Still, she supposed he was trying to do her a favor.

  “You got a place I could wash up?” he asked.

  “The powder room’s right there.” He was the sort of man who should shave twice a day, and he hadn’t shaved this morning, Doris observed; but he’d been nice about the washer, and he was a living, breathing human being. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked impulsively.

  He looked at her and grinned again. “Sure,” he said. “Coffee. Sure.”

  She took cups from the cabinet and poured a quart of milk into a heavy pitcher. He came out from the powder room and smiled as she put the pot from the Mr. Coffee on the table. He waited until she’d set it down and then grabbed her by the waist and kissed her hard on the mouth.

  Doris broke away so violently she had to steady herself on the countertop to keep from falling. “What the hell was that?” she screamed. “What do you think you’re doing? Get out of here! Get out!”

  “Knock it off, lady,” he answered. “You invited me to stay.”

  “What?” Doris couldn’t believe it. “I asked you to have some coffee, not to wipe your filthy lips all over me—” She was so angry she couldn’t go on.

  “Oh, come off it,” he sa
id. “If you wanted a cup of coffee you’d go next door. A dame like you don’t ask a guy like me to stay for coffee except to, ah, help fill up her morning in a fun sorta way, know what I mean?”

  “I know just what you mean,” Doris answered, picking up the milk pitcher, “and if you come one step closer, I’ll break this over your head.”

  “Screw you,” he said. He stopped smiling and began to move toward her.

  If he touches me I’ll swing it at him, Doris thought, but when he reached her she almost didn’t. She stood there frozen, watching him finger the buttons on her blouse, but then something snapped and she swung the pitcher fast and hard into his head. The kitchen exploded in fireworks of milk and blood and glass. Then the man was on the floor, and the table was covered with splotches of red and white and pink, and Doris had to run to the powder room and be sick.

  Ten minutes later, after great quantities of cold water, Doris felt in control again. The repairman hadn’t moved, so she felt his pulse. It was still.

  I’ve killed him, she thought listlessly. I’d better call someone…The police…

  She was dialing the number when a thought stopped her, sending a chill up her spine. What was she going to tell the police? That he’d tried to rape her? A fat, boring house wife attacked in her own kitchen in the middle of the day by a well-liked local repairman? And besides, he hadn’t tried to rape her, really. He didn’t have a weapon and he had all his clothes on and she had asked him to stay for coffee and Doris had read about cases like this, where the woman went to jail because the jury wouldn’t believe it was really self-defense.

  I’ll call George, she thought. He’ll tell me what to do.

  But George, law-abiding George, would tell her to call the police. Or worse—what if George didn’t believe her? What if George thought—what the repairman had thought?

  No. No police, no George. I, thought Doris, I am going to have to deal with this. I am going to have to make it look as though this never happened. She sat motionless for a long time, stunned by the enormity of it. Then she roused herself suddenly. She looked at the clock. It was just noon. Oh, God, I wonder if I have time to…to what? Doris thought. Bury the body—maybe in the yard—clean up the kitchen, take a bath—his van, get rid of his van, abandon it somewhere… And a thought struck her. It struck her with such force that she drew a breath, held it, let it out slowly.