Small Plates (8 page)

The whole thing would be much easier if he were less of a gentleman, he thought bitterly. He wanted to kill his wife, but he didn't want her to know he had. Let her go to her grave firm in the belief that she'd had a good marriage. It would be unspeakably boorish to behave otherwise. If he hadn't cared about protecting her, he could simply have smothered her with a pillow and arranged the whole thing to look like an allergy attack. She'd certainly had some severe ones and was allergic to everything from dust to bee stings.

Day after day he turned the problem over and over in his mind. He couldn't arrange a car accident. Mabel had never learned to drive, and besides, he hadn't the faintest notion of how to cut brake cables or whatever it was they were always doing in books. It got to the point where he couldn't sleep at night. His ankle bothered him. It had been a nasty break and the pain matched the pain in his aching brain.

After the fourth night in a row with scant rest, Mr. Carter called the doctor and that afternoon the drugstore delivered some chloral hydrate. He opened the bottle and sniffed. It smelled like cherry syrup. Not unpleasant at all. Then he read the lengthy printout—from a computer, of course—that listed the recommended dosage and all the side effects. He supposed the drug companies covered themselves this way. Terrify the consumer with a smorgasbord of alarming symptoms; cover themselves, so no one could sue. He read through the “Do not combine with alcohol” and “Do not operate heavy machinery” warnings, getting to the “May cause skin rash, mental confusion, ataxia”—he'd have to look that up—“headache, nausea, dizziness, drowsiness”—well, wasn't that the whole point?—“stupor, depression, irritability, poor judgment, neglect of personal appearance”—they were really covering themselves here, and then a catchall—“central nervous system depression.” He went to the bookshelves and took down
Webster's. Ataxia
—loss of the ability to control muscle movement.

He put the book in its place and went back to his armchair, wending his way through the jungle of Mabel's plants that filled the room. He picked up the bottle and held it to the light, watching the way the sun made a bright red blotch on the morning paper. Chloral hydrate. Just what the doctor ordered.

Mr. Carter hadn't mentioned his sleeplessness to his wife, nor his subsequent call to the doctor. Now he congratulated himself on his discretion. It was almost as if his unconscious mind was taking over and charting the right course. His conscious mind had simply not wanted to talk to Mabel. She wasn't a drinker, but she liked to indulge herself every now and then with a liqueur after dinner. He found the peppermint schnapps, melon liqueurs, and cherry brandies she favored nauseatingly sweet. If he kept her company, which he seldom did, he sipped a small snifter of cognac. Mabel made herself concoctions poured over crushed ice, drinking them from their everyday tumblers. “It's the same drink in a jelly glass or your precious crystal,” she pointed out. They hadn't received many wedding gifts when they'd married and the crystal had been from his parents. Mabel had managed to break most of it over the years and he washed it himself now. Maybe if it had been from her parents, she'd have felt differently. They'd given the newlyweds a check—a rather small one.

He bided his time. Each night he measured out his dose—and didn't take it. When he had accumulated what would surely be enough, he put his plan into action.

“You've worked hard all day, my dear,” he said after dinner—Mabel's famous “Vegetable Stew,” a mélange of whatever was ripe dumped into the pressure cooker. “Why don't I make you a drink? I'm going to have one myself.”

Mabel said that would be nice. She was still in her gardening clothes, although her hands were clean, scrubbed raw, the nails chipped. Gloves were a bother and got in her way.

He went to the kitchen, thinking paradoxically that a truly thoughtful wife would offer to fetch the libations herself rather than be waited on by her handicapped husband. She had been typically unsympathetic about the injury and had expressed her opinion several times too often that he needed to walk more or his muscles would be even limper. He reached for the glass she liked and using the ice maker on the refrigerator door, filled it. He took the chloral hydrate from behind the flour canister, where he'd placed it earlier in the day, and poured it, filling half the tumbler. The dose the doctor had prescribed was two teaspoons before bedtime. Mr. Carter was both taller and heavier than his wife; most people were. With the addition of the cherry brandy, the drink should send her swiftly to sleep and then with any luck into a deadly coma. He planned to put her to bed, inhaler on the floor by her side, apparently knocked out of reach.

Unlike the pillow method, she'd never know what hit her. The perfect crime. He'd be certain to mention the brandy to whomever responded to the 911 call he'd make in the morning after failing to rouse her and noting with horror the absence of all vital signs. No one would suspect the chloral, but if it was found, he'd been taking his medicine as ordered each night and there was his name on the half-empty bottle to prove it. But he doubted it would come to that. If Mabel and he had been younger, perhaps there would be some suspicions, but at their age people did die, especially people with severe allergy-induced asthma.

He topped off her drink with the sweet brandy and poured himself a more generous than usual amount of Rémy Martin. He had heard that it was the cognac connoisseurs drank. It was expensive enough, certainly. Carrying the two glasses, he made his way back into the living room, emphasizing the awkwardness of his cast as he approached Mabel's chair. She was reading
The Encyclopedia of Plant Lore,
a gift from him several Christmases ago. She snapped it shut and took her drink. “Yum.” She smiled appreciatively, and by the time he reached his own chair and turned around to face her, she'd quaffed more than half of it. He started to chide her. Really, it was most unbecoming to watch a woman swill alcohol that way, but stopped himself. The quicker the better. The quicker the deader.

“Cheers,” he said and lifted his glass. She set hers down and picked up the book again. Was it his imagination or did she seem unusually flushed? He held his breath and put his cognac down. Tonight of all nights he needed a clear head. Tonight! His blood raced. It would be tonight. Probably the first person he'd call after the emergency number would be Mrs. Parsons, who lived next door. They had been neighbors for thirty years, and when Mr. Parsons had been alive, the two couples occasionally played bridge. They were pleasant enough but fully occupied in bringing up their four children. Mrs. Parsons had put on considerable weight since the death of her husband, and an endless stream of children and grandchildren were in and out of the house. She was a good cook, judging from the Christmas cookies and Fourth of July blueberry pie she bestowed upon them each year. He could count on her for any number of meals and other forms of sustenance.

He let his mind drift to the next few days. Tomorrow would be the worst—or the best, depending on one's viewpoint. There would be the police rescue squad, then when it became apparent that it was, alas, too late, he'd have to deal with the medical examiner, or perhaps it would be their own doctor? He'd be finding out soon. Then arrangements with the funeral home, and he had no doubt that the Reverend Dobbins would arrive with words of comfort immediately. Mr. Carter thought “For the Beauty of the Earth” would be an appropriate hymn for Mabel's service. He'd leave the rest to Reverend Dobbins.

Interment was no problem. They had a plot, purchased years ago. He'd have his own name carved on the headstone too with his birth date and the rest blank. Although, if he remarried, that might hurt his next wife's feelings. Just Mabel's then, with an appropriate epitaph. Best not to burn one's bridges.

Word would get around. The phone, which seldom rang, would ring off the hook. He'd ask one of the women in the church to help him plan a suitable collation for after the service. Lilies, not gladioli.

“I think I'll go to bed. Kinda tired.” Mabel's speech was definitely slurred. She stood up and knocked into the Benjamin's fig tree next to her chair as she stepped toward the stairs.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

“Fine. Need to sleep, that's all.”

Mr. Carter lingered for a moment, enjoying the emptiness of the room and the prospect of the continued void in his future, then went to bed himself. He set the alarm for three o'clock—enough time for the lethal cocktail to have worked and time to set the stage. When it sounded, he walked soundlessly down the carpeted hall and opened the door to his wife's room. For a moment he felt a twinge of regret as he gazed at the still figure in the bed, but it passed quickly and he found he had a sudden desire to laugh with glee. But that would be unseemly. He composed his face into a proper widower's expression and approached Mabel's corpse. The inhaler was on her bedside table within arm's reach. He reached to move it, and fling the bedclothes about a bit, then froze.

“What do you think you're doing?” Mabel sat up in bed, her face an angry mask. “I thought I made it clear, we're past that sort of thing.”

Fright turned to stunned surprise, and he gulped for words, unable to utter the ones racing through his head. How could she possibly have drunk the mixture and be alive? And awake!

“Thought I heard you call, my dear,” he mumbled. “Must have been dreaming.” He hastened out of the room, pulling the door firmly shut. Yes, he had been dreaming and awakened to a nightmare.

Mr. Carter was a persistent man. He had been successful at his job not because of hard or soft sell, but persistent sell. He possessed the ability to wait. Rebuffed by prospective clients, he'd call two years later and like as not sign them as new customers, dissatisfied with the coverage they'd purchased instead. Most of the population regarded insurance companies as potential adversaries, and it wasn't difficult to get them to switch loyalties with a few well-chosen aspersions. Therefore, when he awoke the next morning, he was calm. True, he had expected to be widowed by the end of the summer, but these things took time. He'd taken to reading the obituaries and news reports of fatal accidents for ideas. Most involved automobiles, but one day he happened upon a column describing, with some humor, what a death trap one's home was.

He read eagerly, eliminating household poisons, ladders, and carbon monoxide as unsuitable for his purpose. The section his eyes lingered lovingly over involved electrical appliances and water. He should have thought of it before. It wasn't as kind as the other approaches, but Mabel was making things difficult. However, there was always the chance that it would be so quick, she wouldn't realize what was happening. Several years ago they had indulged themselves with a whirlpool tub, or rather Mabel had. Mr. Carter never used it, finding the jets of water disconcerting and the noise it made annoying. All he had to do was plug in a radio and drop it into the tub. She wouldn't hear him come into the bathroom, and by the time she noticed, it would be too late. When the rescue squad came, he'd lament his wife's foolhardy habit of listening to music while she bathed and regret that he hadn't thought to give her one safe for such use. According to the newspaper, countless Americans died just this way each year.

He folded the newspaper, put it in the recycle bin, and went out to the kitchen, where Mabel was putting lunch on the table. The garden was at its height and lately they seemed to have become vegetarians. He promised himself a thick steak after a suitable period of absence of appetite was observed.

A cold cream soup and salad awaited. Recently some of Mabel's efforts had not gone down so well and he was relieved to see plain fare. She was slicing some zucchini bread, warm from the oven.

“Looks delicious. Fruits of your labor. You've been hard at it, I can see. You should treat yourself to a long soak in the whirlpool, my dear.”

Mabel said she thought that was a good idea and sat down.

Mr. Carter was spooning the last drops of the soup, leek, he thought, when he felt himself breaking out in a cold sweat. He looked at his wife in alarm. His heart suddenly seemed to have stopped beating, and he was terribly dizzy. He tried to get up and a wave of nausea passed over him. The vomit rose in his throat, but he managed to gasp, “What was it?”

“Oleander. Mimics a heart attack. Sorry it had to be this way, but nothing else was working.”

His gaze was clouding over, yet he still managed a smile. A big smile. A wasp had landed unnoticed on Mabel's arm, bare in her sleeveless shirt. Another joined it, drawn by the smell of the bread on the table. He closed his eyes, faintly hearing her startled cries.

Early on he'd replaced the epinephrine in her syringes with saline.

Luck had been with him after all.

T
hree women were having a late lunch high above New York City's Madison Avenue at Fred's, the upscale eatery at Barneys. Two of the women had come in together first and bore enough of a resemblance to make the guess they were sisters a sure thing. Height, weight, carriage, and facial expressions were the same. The main difference was in their coloring—a blue-eyed honey blonde and a brunette with startling emerald eyes. They were laughing as they took their places.

The third woman didn't keep them waiting long. The maître d' escorted her to the table minutes after the others were seated. She was blond as well, but the hue was almost platinum and her hair fell in soft waves just to her chin. The three had hugged and kissed—European-style, on either side of the face—but not air kisses. These particular ladies about to lunch were obviously good friends.

When the food arrived, a casual observer may have been surprised at their menu choices. No salads minus everything but the greens and perhaps a cucumber slice or a single string bean, no dressing at all, not even on the side, and horrors of horrors—bread! No thank you! Against expectations, all three had ordered Fred's justly famous Dietzler Farms burger—rare and of course on a bun—with Belgian
frites
, and somehow one sensed they had plans for dessert as well. Two were drinking Chardonnay—so often the choice of a certain kind of woman that blood types in the Big Apple needed AOCs, Appellations of Origin—and the third was enjoying a glass of Vino Nobile from Montepulciano. Calories, carbs galore—yet no sign of them on the women themselves. They had shed their winter coats, and all three were wearing fitted, chic little black dresses, prompting an observer to conclude that often life wasn't fair. All metabolisms were
not
created equal.