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Three days after Hans promised his undying love, Mary Eileen decided that she had had enough. The pipes were broken in the cellar again. The water pressure was so low it was tough to get even a simple cup of coffee brewed.
The maintenance guys tracked mud all over the Coffee Shoppe. She and Christina had spent three hours after closing mopping it all up.
“We clean up their shit, and still I have to pay them for the pleasure of the experience,” Mary Eileen said as she and Christina sweated.
That was another thing. The air conditioning wasn't working well. So that meant more repairmen and more repair bills.
God this life sucks, Mary Eileen thought they next day as she pushed a loose strand of her thick, auburn hair way from her face.
It had been a rough morning. She decided it was time to go home for lunch. Just as Mary Eileen stepped out of the door and into the alley, the sky burst open.
Spring had laid out its welcome mat early in St. Isidore a couple of days ago. It had been unseasonably warm, very pleasant actually. The snow and ice left over from a brutal winter had melted creating little rivers to wash the streets clean.
But then it rained. It poured. And it was more than rain. Winter wasn’t ready to release St. Isidore from its ugly grasp. Some snow, sleet and ice came down with the rain.
Mary Eileen was more what soaking wet.
She was soaking miserable.
Mary Eileen walked down the alley behind the Coffee Shoppe, and then up the stairs to the apartment that she was unwillingly sharing with David a day longer, with a splash. At least two inches of water were in her boots. Her feet were soaked.
And then Mary Eileen saw David where he always was; at the kitchen table doing something — maybe working or maybe playing games — on the computer.
She didn’t snap. She didn’t act on impulse. She simply boiled over.
Mary Eileen pulled the Beretta out of her purse and fired three shots into the back of his head.
David’s skull exploded onto the computer. A warm backwash of brains, blood, and bits of skull landed on Mary Eileen. That was a shock. It woke her up to the reality of what she had just done.
The mess was something she had not counted on. Now she was afraid. Her fear would only get worse.
Suddenly she realized it was 3 p.m. Children were outside playing. People were walking to and from the shops on the street; one of those quaint, old-style European streets built before automobiles. Although many of the buildings were constructed with thick brick walls, there could still be very few secrets, especially the secrets of three shots fired into the back of a man’s head.
And here was Mary Eileen with David’s dead body on her dining room table.
What should she do now? No matter how much housework a person might be accustomed to it can’t compare to cleaning up the mess left by a dead body, especially a corpse with its brains splattered across a dining room table.
Mary Eileen washed David’s blood, flesh, brains, and tiny bits of skull off her hands and her forearms. There were splashes of blood and whatever else flew backward on her face and neck as well.
Mary Eileen decided washing up after a homicide is something that is never described accurately enough on TV crime shows.
Just as she got herself clean, Mary Eileen’s smartphone rang.
Good God, she thought, is it a neighbor who heard the gunshots?
If so, how would she explain the noise? And what if someone knocked at the door to make sure she and David are okay. Certainly, she was not going to be able to move his corpse, and whoever was standing in the door of the apartment would be able to look over her head and see David’s body.
It was a corpse, by the way, that was already starting to smell.
The phone rang again.
Fuck. Maybe it was Cheryl next door. Did she hear the gunshots?
Mary Eileen ran over to the TV, desperately searching for a cowboy or police show that could be used to explain the sounds of gunfire.
She found one turned up the volume and only then picked up her smartphone, held her breath, and answered.
It was Sue Ann, one of the college kids Mary Eileen hired to get through spring break and the tourist season.
Guess what? A busload of tourists had just unloaded in front of the Coffee Shoppe.
“Can you come back, please? It’s a bunch of old people on their way down to the Tulip Time thing in Holland. Some of them are even asking for something called, ‘Sanka.’ Everybody wants decaf,” Sue Ann said.
Thank God, Mary Eileen thought.
She had never been so relieved to be needed at the Coffee Shoppe. This was one time she would not complain about someone on the staff asking for assistance.
The sound of the bus and its air brakes, along with those old people all yelling at each other to be heard probably covered the sounds of the gunshots.
So that was all good.
But Mary Eileen looked back at David’s body on the table. That was bad.
What was she going to do about him? Getting David to move out of the apartment was tough enough before Mary Eileen squeezed the trigger. Now her dilemma had increased exponentially. What was she to do?
The decision would have to wait.
She turned to look at him one last time and left David where he lay, on her dining room table.