Gloria’s long and shapely fingers grasped the stem of her wine glass gently as she held her Chardonnay up to the light. As if into a crystal ball, she looked deep into the golden glow, seeking the safest method to end his insidious and vindictive plotting against her and still retain both his money and hers. She’d settle once and for all exactly who was in charge here.
Gilbert immediately discarded the idea of employing someone. Impossible to see himself negotiating under a dirty bridge in the middle of the night with a bearded, shifty-eyed lout wearing a T-shirt emblazoned HIRED KILLERS DO IT MANY WAYS. Further, those people didn’t accept credit cards or send bills. They demanded cash. No way to come up with an acceptable sum under the terms of his father’s trust fund, which gave him unlimited credit but only five hundred a week in pocket money, something difficult to explain to greedy people forever expecting large tips.
His narrow-minded trust administrator wouldn’t look too kindly on a request for ten thousand or so to pay someone to kill Gloria. Not that he’d ask. The thought of parting with large sums made his blood run cold. And run even colder at the prospect of creating a unique 401K plan providing early retirement to the hiree, one hundred percent of the contributions coming from him through perpetual blackmail.
This would have to be a do-it-yourself project for which step-by-step instructions were not available, even from Time-Life Books.
He immediately discarded all of the usual close-contact methods like shooting, knifing, or strangulation. Invariably messy, and all would require an iron-clad alibi, almost impossible to arrange. They also projected somewhat of a macho image that would lead the police straight to the husband. What he needed was something androgynous, as it were — slow poisoning or an accident, perhaps.
Dispatching Gloria safely would require research and analysis, even pie and bar charts generated on his PC to depict graphically the percentages of success of other spouses.
It didn’t occur to him that only the techniques of the unsuccessful appeared in print. Those who had managed to regain the single state while avoiding the defendant’s table wisely kept their mouths shut as to how they’d arranged the coup.
Gloria also had discarded the idea of using a third party. Not only was her ready-cash situation identical to Gilbert’s, but well-bred ladies never negotiated on deserted piers in the middle of the night with bearded, shifty-eyed louts wearing T-shirts emblazoned HIRED KILLERS LEAVE YOU BREATHLESS. Good heavens, a man like that might well demand more than money from a classy, good-looking broad.
She would have to do it herself. She was creative enough. Her interior decorating was the envy of her friends.
Reviewing her options, it was clear a gun or a knife was out. Unquestioningly effective, but indicating a definite lack of breeding. And if she’d had the strength to strangle Gilbert — he had an eighty-pound weight advantage — she’d have done so long ago.
No, she needed something that would require no alibi, that would leave her widowhood the focal point of sympathy.
Her problem required research and analysis. She regretted she couldn’t operate Gilbert’s PC. Perhaps one of those lovely, colorful pie charts could narrow her choices down quickly.
Not one to dilly-dally, she spent the next morning in the public library, leafing through fact-crime books and studying microfilms of newspapers hoping to pick up a tip or two and finding none. There was nothing to be learned from the caliber of cases like the husband who had pushed his wife down an escalator in a mall in full view of fifty witnesses, then claimed she had tripped on her miniskirt. Her research did, however, reinforce her opinion that an accident was the way to go. Only the type of accident was open to question.
Bleary-eyed, on her way out, she wandered by a stack holding volumes analyzing the country’s wars. A few had generated more books than casualties, which bespoke of the diligence of military scholars. One, in which an admiral among her antecedents had been given an entire chapter, caught her eye.
Amused, she flipped the book open. There the old boy was: walrus moustache, hair parted in the center, high-collared, brass-buttoned white uniform, stern look and all.
Immediately below the chapter heading was an italic quote of the admiral’s military philosophy: No enemy is without a weakness. Find that weakness and exploit it.
Her spine prickled. She imagined a shaky, bony, ghostly finger raised in admonition, albeit with a kindly smile.
The form Gilbert’s accident would take was suddenly clear.
The police were always suspicious of a convenient spousal disaster but not if it was one that had been long in the making. Predicted, in fact, by many people saying, “Anyone who swims as badly as you do, Gilbert, should be sewn into a life vest, even in his bath.” Gilbert laughed. He could swim well enough to avoid disaster.
She, on the other hand, could well have been born with webbed hands and the tail of a fish, and spent her life on a rock enticing sailors to their doom.
His weakness. All she had to do was exploit it.
Her hand shook as she replaced the book, leaving it projecting from the row. She fled homeward, convinced that fortune had smiled on her. Along with the admiral.
Gilbert pursued his aims in life far more leisurely, so he didn’t get to the library until afternoon. His eyes watering after a search through fact-crime books and newspaper microfilms of famous trials, he could only marvel at the lack of finesse on the part of some people; like the woman who insisted her husband had committed suicide by striking himself fifty times on the head with a baseball bat.
Leaving, he strolled by a stack containing volumes analyzing the country’s wars. Projecting from a pristine row as if hastily replaced, a thick volume caught his eye. He recognized it as one in which a general among his antecedents had been given an entire chapter.
Amused, he flipped the book open. There the old boy was: walrus moustache, hair parted in the center, high-collared, brass-buttoned blue uniform, stem look and all, and with his quote below the chapter heading.
He seemed to hear a thin, quavering, old man’s voice speaking from the grave.
Always hurl your strength against your opponent’s most vulnerable point.
Voices in his head suddenly muttered, “If you keep driving like that, Gloria—” “Keep it up and you’ll kill yourself one day, dear,” “A hundred miles an hour? Oh, my.”
Gloria always laughed. A superb tennis player and excellent swimmer, she’d extended her gifted athleticism to include defying speed limits, road conditions, the weather, and overloaded semis.
No one would question an accident so long in the making.
Gloria’s most vulnerable point.
He could swear the general nodded in approval.
Smiling as he drove homeward, he pondered the question of where. City streets were out. Not even Lead-Foot Gloria could generate enough speed in traffic to acquire more than a few dents in the car and herself.
The accident had to occur on the open road, where she was wont to tool along at her usual reckless pace, oblivious to the laws of man and a body in motion, but in any crash, a seat belt, automatic braking system, and an airbag could negate his best effort. The thought irritated him so much, for a moment he considered demanding his trust administrators divest the fund of all shares in those inconsiderate automobile manufacturers.
He needed an accident for which no safety feature had yet been devised.
And then his smile broadened.
There was one road where the accident rate was variable but the survival rate always zero, since no car as yet came equipped with an ejection seat and parachute.
The cliffside road to the cove — where their seaside cottage and sailing boat, really Gloria’s, were tucked away.