Patricia
After the children went upstairs to do their homework, or whatever it was children did these days, I searched through the refrigerator for what I could make for dinner. I found a package of browning hamburger meat and after breaking it open for a sniff—I didn’t want to kill the children with E. coli after all—I made patties to be fried later.
I noticed a hunk of beef marinating in what looked like a wine and cream sauce that I assumed was going to be the meal for the parents. My immediate impulse was to add something that would make it a truly memorial meal, a last meal. Every household has deadly poisons somewhere, and it wouldn’t take me long to find something that would do the job. I could then walk up the stairs, pick up my suitcase, and depart. Mindy Black would simply disappear. But I dismissed the thought. I didn’t want to use poison. Too impersonal. When Brenda died, she should know why she was dying. Also, poisoning the meat would mean that Roland would die too. Then there was the question of the kids. Too much of a chance that Kevin or Christina might take a taste.
Anyway, leaving immediately after poisoning them would make “Mindy Black” a suspect. With DNA and fingerprints, the police, if they were competent, not a given but a possibility, could figure out that Mindy was a stolen identity and track me down. Not that I cared if I went to prison or died. Except for my animals back on the farm, I had nothing to live for.
Well, not nothing. There were the others I needed to kill.
I returned to contemplating dinner for Kevin and Christina. Hamburgers with a side dish. The refrigerator was light on vegetables, heavy on meat, but I did find a packaged salad and some potatoes. I knew how to make home fries, and Ashley had loved them when she was young. That would have to do. Then I washed my hands and headed upstairs.
My story, should anyone ask, would be that I was tidying up and checking on Kevin and Christina. But what I really wanted was a chance to go through the bedrooms without the presence of Mr. Phillips—yes, I was still calling him that. I was playing a role, remember?
First stop, master bedroom.
I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I was gathering information to form a good plan.
Planning is key to any successful enterprise.
I had spent weeks gathering information before coming up with the plan to kill Tom Martin.
The master bedroom bed wasn’t made. I did the honors, noting that it looked like only one side had been slept in. Interesting.
The jewelry box on the dresser didn’t interest me, except if it contained something besides jewelry, which I doubted. I didn’t touch it. I’m not a thief.
I checked the closet. Only women’s clothes. No men’s. I looked around the closet, inside the dressers, but there was nothing that looked useful. I’d give it a closer exam when I cleaned the next day. But Mrs. Phillips was probably too smart to keep anything compromising, either legally or romantically, in her bedroom closet.
She had a gun safe on the floor of the closet. I didn’t know what was in it, but the fact that it existed was of very great interest. The safe had a combination and a key. I found the key pretty quickly, it was in the underwear drawer, but I needed the combination as well.
People usually wrote down things like combinations. But nothing was evident in the room. The combination could be on her phone or in her computer. Or in a desk. She did have an office downstairs, even if she didn’t primarily work at home.
Shooting her with her own gun might be a little too similar to how I’d killed Tom Martin, but the idea did have appeal.
The “guest” bedroom had male clothes—suits, ties, shirts, shoes. Another unmade bed, which I also straightened up. So, the two of them did sleep separately.
This also had potential. Did one of them snore? Steal covers? Or… if the Phillipses weren’t sleeping together, did that mean that Mr. Phillips knew about his wife’s affair with Dr. Martin? Was theirs an unhappy marriage?
I hoped so. Not just for karma either.
Because maybe I didn’t need police to think this was a suicide, not if there was someone else to take the blame. It could mean that instead of being considered a suicide, Brenda’s death would be determined to be a murder by a husband pissed off by his wife’s infidelity.
Not very nice of me, was it?
Roland hadn’t done anything except be boring, a pushover for his wife, and a not particularly engaged father. Then there’s the treating the hired help as if she’s, well, the hired help. Okay, he didn’t abuse me and wasn’t rude, at least not so far. Still, he hadn’t been involved in the decision to let Ashley die. None of what he had done was bad enough for him to deserve going to prison—oh, wait, not prison. I was in Texas where they just love to kill people.
But that wasn’t likely, was it? He was rich. And white. He’d get a good lawyer. And Texas liked to execute Black people and Hispanic people. Not rich white Republicans. He’d probably get off—or at least avoid being executed.
I’d keep framing him as a possibility. It put a spring in my step.
I checked my watch. Another half hour and I’d go down to start dinner. I decided to check on Kevin and Christina. Part of the show. To be honest, I didn’t mind. I always related well to children.