Maura froze for the barest fraction of a second as her brain attempted to process this unexpected scenario. Then the gears engaged and she turned in a panic to double-back; to flee the house via the garage, to exit the way she had just entered. She screamed as she ran straight into the solid—and very much alive—Jim Stapleton.
Her shopping bags fell to the floor, followed immediately by the iced coffee, splashing everywhere and destroying a brand-new, four hundred dollar Donna Karan dress. Maura didn’t notice or care. Her entire universe consisted of the impassive face of her dead husband as he held her in a vice grip, staring down at her with hard grey eyes.
Jim couldn’t have planned it any better. Maura walked through the door, preoccupied only with herself, as usual. He had known she would make it all the way into the kitchen before the sight of her bound and gagged boyfriend would register. In fact, he had half expected her to waltz right on by and into the living room without noticing him at all.
He stationed himself behind the basement entrance when he heard the big garage door rumbling down on its tracks, having purposely placed Vince in as obvious a location as possible. Then, with Maura frozen in shock at the sight of her immobilized lover—she looked literally like a deer caught in the headlights; until now, Jim had not realized how accurate that expression could be—he simply stepped behind her and waited for her to bolt. Which she had done, right on cue. Now he held her tightly by her forearms while her panicked eyes regarded him as if she was seeing a ghost, which, Jim supposed, in a way she was.
Finally he spoke, when it became clear Maura was unable to form an intelligible sentence. “Hi, honey, I’m home. Did you miss me?”
“You’re…you’re dead,” she gasped.
“Well, yes and no. There’s ‘dead’ and there’s ‘not exactly.’ Care for an explanation?”
Maura Stapleton nodded in mute terror. Her eyes were enormous. She had not taken them off her husband since nearly running him over in her aborted escape attempt.
Jim took his wife by the elbow and guided her gently to another kitchen chair, which he placed directly opposite Vince’s. Easing her into the seat, Jim fastened a long plastic zip-tie around her right ankle, which he secured to the leg of the heavy wooden chair. He did nothing to her hands; he wanted them free.
“So. Isn’t this cozy,” Jim said with a smile. He reached behind Vince’s head and pulled the twine securing the gag free, and as soon as he did, the words began tumbling out of the frantic man’s mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry,” spittle rolling down his chin as he faced his lover, now seated just three feet away, staring at him with murder in her eyes.
“You fucking pussy. You told me you did it; you said he was dead,” she whispered, the words measured and soft but clear as gunshots in the sudden tense stillness of the kitchen.
“He was, and then he wasn’t. I mean, I thought he was but he really wasn’t,” the distraught man babbled, clearly more afraid of the petite blonde woman lashed to a chair in front of him than he was of her husband, newly resurrected and holding a gun on them both.
Maura Stapleton’s eyes bored holes into her lover’s, and then she shook her pretty head scornfully and turned to look at Jim. “I didn’t have any idea he was going to attack you last summer,” she purred. “I don’t blame you for being angry, but holding me against my will doesn’t make any sense. I had nothing to do with what happened.”
Vince Gower made a sound of incredulous disbelief, his jaw hanging half open. He began protesting but the words died in his mouth when Jim trained the Smith and Wesson on him. It was the very same weapon Vince had used to force him to his knees over an earthen grave less than one year ago.
“Little did I realize,” Jim said conversationally, his gun aimed at Vince but his words aimed at his wife, “when you said you needed a gun for self-defense, that it would get so much use. It certainly has been well worth the money I paid.”
Now Maura began to speak, eyes flashing, but she stopped just as quickly as Vince had when Jim swung the weapon her way. “I’m going to keep the floor for a while,” he said. “Is that okay with everyone?”
No one answered and Jim nodded pleasantly. “I thought so. Here’s the thing,” he continued, smiling down at his wife while his eyes glittered, grey and flinty and cold. The contrast was chilling. “I had a long chat with Sexy Rexy here before you arrived—“
“His name is Vince,” his wife interrupted, her mouth turned down in a pout. “You know that.”
“Of course it is. Sorry. Anyway, Sexy Rexy told me a story much different than yours while we were chatting, awaiting your arrival. He says killing me was all your idea, that you wanted the house and the cars and the business, and that you told him the only way to get it, thanks to that pesky pre-nup, was to kill me and make sure I was never found. You would have to wait awhile, of course, before everything was legally transferred into your name, but even during that time you would still have control over everything. Is that about the size of it? Have I left anything out?”
Maura began protesting loudly, leaning forward in her chair and pointing an accusing finger at Vince, who cowered away from her, before Jim silenced her again, this time by shoving the barrel of the gun under her chin, hard. “I believe him,” he whispered fiercely. “He had no reason to want me dead and he’s not bright enough to come up with that scheme on his own. He had been banging you for years, I was aware of it from the very beginning, and nothing much was going to change for him whether I was alive or dead. You, on the other hand,” he pushed the gun barrel harder against her throat until she began to gag, “had everything to gain and you’re smart as a whip and cold as ice to boot.”
“You would never shoot me,” she said as he eased the pressure of the pistol off her throat. “You love me too much.” Her face was ashen but her voice was strong and steady and filled with conviction.
Jim smiled. “You know, you’re right about that,” he said, pocketing the gun and sitting in his own chair, spinning it around and straddling it with his chin resting on his arms, interlocked over the top of the chair-back. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about this whole messy situation and I came to the same conclusion months ago.”
“What the hell happened out in those woods, anyway?” Maura asked Vince, again staring hard at him.
“I hit him with everything I had,” he answered quietly, his voice shaking, “but when I returned from my car with the shovel to fill in the hole, he was gone. I didn’t realize he was still alive after I hit him. Somehow he crawled away in the ten minutes it took me to go to my car and back. I don’t know how he managed it, but he didn’t die.”
“Obviously. And you didn’t think to tell me this?” Maura’s eyes blazed and her face flushed in anger, her play for Jim forgotten. “You didn’t think the fact that my husband was still alive and not laying at the bottom of a shallow grave was important enough to clue me in on? It slipped your mind, maybe?”
Vince seemed to shrink back into the chair. His fear of the tiny woman was palpable. “I figured there was no way he could make it out of the woods alive. We were miles from anywhere, so if he crawled a few hundred yards and then died, what difference would it make? I knew you’d be furious if you found out, and he was going to die either way, so, really, why say anything?”
“Yes, what difference would it make?” Jim said dryly. “When I saw you swing the bat I had the presence of mind to snap my head to the side at the moment of impact, so, although you still split my head open, I never lost consciousness. As soon you went back for your shovel I crawled out of the hole. I still don’t quite know how.