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A Perfect Plan

Mike Schneider

    “Are you sure you’re ok with it Emma, we are really going to do this?” Justin Page said into the phone to his three-year next door neighbor, now six-month clandestine lover.
    “Yes. I’m tired of sneaking around to be with the person I love. I want it to be out in the open so we can eat dinner at any restaurant in town, have a backyard barbeque for mutual friends, or go with a group to a baseball or football game. And anyplace else we choose.”
    They had planned it for weeks, had every detail covered, and timed right down to the minute. Now it was about to happen.
    “Let’s go over it one more time,” he said.
    “OK. At 9 o’clock I call you on my new phone, tell you I saw a window peeper while reading a magazine in the living room and tried to call Heather to come sit with me because I’m scared half to death, but can’t because the only place I had her number was on the phone I lost.”
    “Go on.”
    “You will then call her, tell her I called you, said I was so nervous my hands were shaking and asked you to ask her to come sit with me. You will tell her I’m on the couch in the dark so the guy can’t see me if he looks in the window, tell her I said to knock twice, then come in.”
    “So far, so good, baby. Now finish it up.”
    “When she steps into the dark house I shoot her with my .38, two rounds, aiming for center mass. You get here at 9:15, find Heather dead, and me distraught over mistaking her in the dark for the window peeper. Then we call the police and when they get here tell them Heather forgot to knock and I thought it was the peeper charging in.”
    “Perfect!”
    “Tell me again why we’re doing the charade with the phone.”
    “Because it’s more convincing to talk about something you’ve actually done than something you’re making up.”
    “Got it.”
     “See you at 9:15 lover.”
    “I’m so excited, Justin! Can hardly wait!”
    Emma had moved out to Deer Plains following her second divorce. She was 31 but bubbly, as if she were 21. Her blonde hair, teasing green eyes set in the face of a Hollywood starlet, and a body to match made her the most desirable woman Justin had ever been with, the kind he had previously only dreamed about. So it wasn’t surprising that the first time she flirted with him, at the annual neighborhood New Year’s Eve Party down the block at the Phipps’s, she hooked him.
    He was five years older than Emma and 10 years with Heather, a non-practicing bisexual. But despite her assurances before they married that she had sworn off women forever, Justin knew she had gone back to enjoying both sides of that fence. Sometimes when she came home from her twice-monthly “board game club,” he’d catch just the slightest whiff of another woman when she passed close to him. Same thing following occasional Saturday afternoon shopping trips to the city.
    Now he would be rid of her and at the same time unburden himself from the normal pains of divorce such as asset splitting, alimony, plus fighting over furniture and other things acquired during the marriage. The only expense would be that of the funeral, a paltry sum that would take less than 10 percent of the insurance money. He and his new wife would be well set.
    She was such a red hot lover, actually participated, enthusiastically, unlike Heather who, while she didn’t object to making love, might as well have been a blow-up doll when they did. And now they would be together, not just on the rare occasions when it worked out right for the two of them but every night, and Heather would be out of their lives forever.
    Shangra-la was truly at hand.
    He arrived promptly at 9:15, his heart fluttering as he excitedly ran up the walk to the door and opened it, but instead of being greeted by Heather lying on the floor in a pool of blood, he was welcomed by two .38 slugs, center mass.
    Heather walked out of the bedroom, Emma embraced her and said, “Who would have thought your husband was the peeper? Now I can finally be with the person I love.”

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