Asking For Trouble (2 page)

Leaning against the sink, munching on a bowl of cereal, Richard asked as casually as he could, “When’s your mom and dad’s eviction date?”

“Don’t say ‘eviction.’”

Hell, what was he supposed to call it? Their “involuntary departure due to irreconcilable payment terms”? Eviction wasn’t a pretty word, but that was the name of the game. He tried again.

“Okay, sorry. When do they have to move out?”

“By the twentieth, I think. Can I tell them the wonderful news?”

“Hold off for now. I need to get the mortgage broker to double-check my figures.”

“Okay.” Michelle smiled. She was so happy. “Maybe tonight?”

“Maybe.” He smiled back.

I’ve got until the twentieth
, Richard thought on the commute to work.
I’ve got two weeks to kill them.

He soon realized that deciding to kill Ted and Eleanor was one thing. Doing it was another. He had to decide how, when, and where, but nothing he considered sounded workable. He wandered through his working day as a passenger, cruising past his responsibilities. At lunch, he made the obligatory phone call to the mortgage broker and realtor and set them in motion. He went home that evening with his cover story, but no concrete plan. He found inspiration was waiting for him in the living room.

“Richard,” Ted said, getting up to shake his hand, “you don’t know how much we appreciate what you’re doing.”

“Very generous,” Eleanor echoed.

“I couldn’t wait, honey. I had to tell them. Please don’t be angry.”

“I’m not angry,” Richard said through clenched teeth, his blood boiling. “There’s nothing to be angry about.”

“Richard, you’re my son now. What you’ve done for us elevates you way above in-law status,” Ted boomed.

God forbid me ever being of your blood, you useless SOB.
Richard shook Ted’s proffered hand, smiling as broadly as his anger and irritation allowed. “Thanks, Ted. That means so much coming from you.”

“We can go house hunting together,” Eleanor suggested. “Make it a real family affair.”

Over my dead body
, Richard thought. “Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.”

“We should celebrate,” Ted announced. “Go out to dinner. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds great, Dad,” Michelle said.

“Great,” Richard agreed.

They went for a steak dinner. Ted suggested Outback. Richard said Sizzler, because it was nearer—and cheaper. He knew he would be picking up the tab—and he did. Their last meal together might be on him, but it didn’t have to be an expensive one.

He was glad to get home after seeing off his in-laws. The meal together had been good, though. It made his decision so much easier. Seated face-to-face with them, he had felt no compunction about offing them, but they had been a distraction. He couldn’t think seriously about having them killed when they were jabbering away in front of him. Their inane chatter prevented him from concentrating. Michelle slipped her arms around his waist.

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“You know.” Her face filled with sadness. “I’m sorry we argued last night.”

He pulled her to him and hugged her tight. “It’s all right. We’ve got a solution now. Last night is forgotten.”

“C’mon, soldier. We’ve got some unfinished business in the bedroom. Let’s go.”

***

For Michelle’s benefit, Richard pretended to go to work. He went through the usual morning routine of his shower, shave, and light breakfast. The moment he hit the road, he called the office requesting a floating holiday. He had to think, and he couldn’t do that with Michelle around or with the interruptions at work. He stopped in at the first Denny’s he came across. Much to the hostess’s annoyance, he insisted on a booth rather than eating at the counter. He ordered and gazed out the window at the freeway traffic whipping by below.

He needed a killer, a hit man, but where was he going to find one? He didn’t have a clue. Even if he did find one, how the hell would he know if he’d found a good one? It wasn’t like he could pick up a copy of this month’s issue of
Best Buy—The Hired Killer Edition
. Plus, an assassin was a loose end. It was a stupid idea. He wasn’t a mobster, for God’s sake.

He examined his hands, turning them over and inspecting the calluses on his palms. He was good with his hands. He always had been. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t turn his talents to for professional results. Why not treat Ted and Eleanor’s death like any other DIY project? He could kill them himself.

He warmed to the idea instantly. What would be a suitable death for Ted and Eleanor? He had to come up with something that would befit their lifestyle.
Lifestyle—what a joke.
“Style” was one thing absent from their lives. His waitress brought his breakfast.

He worked away at his plate of cheese and grease. Ted and Eleanor’s neighborhood wasn’t the best. It was way better than it had been the year before they had moved in, but drug dealers
and gangbangers were still a common sight. A home invasion wasn’t out of character for the area. He considered the scenario for a moment then dismissed it just as quickly. Home invasions were noisy and messy and required planning and probably more than one person. It wouldn’t work.

“Simple solutions are usually the best remedy.”

“Huh?”

The waitress smiled and refilled his coffee cup. “You seem to be trying to solve a weighty problem. People always complicate things. Most of time, the simplest solutions are the best ones.”

Richard smiled. “You know what? I think you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” she said and moved on to the next table.

He finished up his meal and paid the check, leaving an overgenerous tip. His coffeepot philosopher had been right. Simple was best. A plan pieced itself together as he got back into his car.

Richard parked on Hillcrest Drive. The road was deserted; not many people used the service road to the water plant. He stared down the hill at the run-down development and particularly at Ted and Eleanor’s rental home backing onto the hillside.

From his lofty vantage point, there seemed to be no activity. Eleanor would be at work, but Ted would be there, puttering around, trying to make one of his damn fool schemes succeed. Even in Richard’s short marriage to their daughter, there’d been too many. There was the property speculation deal in which Ted bought cheap properties with no money down and gave them a quick makeover for a quick profit. The upshot had been a string of expensive home inspections that proved cheap houses are cheap for a reason. Ted had moved on to want ads, selling junk that no one wanted. Their garage was still chock-full of trash. Buying cars from auctions to sell had been next. The city had confiscated six heaps after multiple complaints from the neighbors. His current fad was telemarketing. Richard had no idea how that one worked; neither did Ted, he was sure.

What stuck in Richard’s craw was Ted’s ridiculous belief that he was as successful as Bill Gates. Other people’s successes were his successes. He put himself on their level, never once acknowledging that he lived in near poverty, and he still had the audacity to consider himself better than Richard.

Just sitting there, Richard’s blood pressure skyrocketed. Ted made him sick. He felt sorry for Eleanor for having to be married to
that
, especially since he was going to kill her, too. But she was just as guilty—she condoned every one of Ted’s harebrained schemes. She never once said, “Ted, you’re a grown man. Act like it.” If she had, he might have considered sparing her.

He’d gone there to study their movements, to understand their habits in the hope of seeing a chink in their defenses. But he knew them already, and he despised them. There was nothing to learn.

A speeding truck from the water plant roused Richard from his angry thoughts. The dashboard clock said it was after three. He’d been parked there for five hours. Enough waiting. It was time to do what had to be done. He gunned the engine and drove down the road.

***

A week had passed since Richard had spent the day watching Ted and Eleanor’s home, but tonight was the night he was going to do it. It was all planned, and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time. The house-buying pretense wasn’t going to last much longer. The mortgage broker had a bank ready and waiting and house viewings with the Realtor were a nightly affair. He’d turned down two excellent investment properties already. If he didn’t act now, he’d end up in the financial hole he was trying to avoid.

Tonight was a night off from house hunting, and that was his alibi. Richard loved soccer, a passion Michelle didn’t share. There was a night game in San Jose, and he would be going alone. The drive to San Jose would take him past Ted and Eleanor’s. He would kill them, go on to the game, and return home to the shocking news. He would miss the first half, but that wouldn’t matter. The game was being broadcast on the radio. He took his ticket from his breast pocket and popped his “get out of jail free” card in the glove box. He turned up the radio, listened to the game, and peeled off the freeway off-ramp to Ted and Eleanor’s.

Richard concealed his Honda in the park’s overflow parking lot and joined the trail. It was dusk and essentially the park was closed, but it was unsupervised. Ted and Eleanor walked the trail every night to reflect on another great day in paradise. Richard knew this was their main form of entertainment because it was free, but their supposed love of nature camouflaged that. Richard hid himself in a grove of trees a quarter mile from the parking lot. He slipped into coveralls, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and pocketed a knife he’d bought at an army-navy surplus store.

Waiting was hell. He kept swallowing, working his tongue over the roof of his mouth, and wiping his gloved hands on his coveralls. Paranoia seeped in. Maybe he’d screwed up and given himself away. With every passing second, he expected his in-laws to round the bend and the police to swoop in. He knew it was stupid. He was letting idiotic guilt take over, but he couldn’t stop it.

But all of the fear, paranoia, and guilt evaporated instantaneously when Richard heard Ted and Eleanor approaching. Ted’s inane banter cut through the night air, and Richard’s hand tightened around the knife. He couldn’t make out what was being said. It was all noise. But it didn’t matter. He would pounce the moment they were even with his position.

They were laughing when Richard leaped out of the trees. Jubilant at their good fortune at his expense, no doubt. Well, he’d get the last laugh.

They gasped when he growled at them to stop and they spotted the knife glinting in the moonlight. He relished their fear. How he wished their faces hadn’t been lost in the dark!

“You’ve been taking advantage of me for too long.” Richard didn’t wait for a plea for clemency. He plunged the knife into Ted’s bloated belly. Blood spilled over Richard’s gloved hand, and he pressed the blade deeper.

Ted crumpled, sliding off the blade. Eleanor screamed. In reflex, Richard lashed out with the knife, catching Eleanor’s throat. She went down without another sound.

Richard rummaged through Ted’s pockets for his wallet. Their deaths couldn’t look random. It was more believable if it looked like a violent robbery carried out by a desperate junkie. Senseless tragedies like this happened every day. He jerked out Ted’s wallet from the back pocket of his pants and slipped Eleanor’s chunky diamond off her finger, along with another ring on her right hand. Ted groaned but Eleanor lay still.

Richard raced back to his Honda with the wallet and Eleanor’s rings. He dumped them with the knife into a Ziploc he’d brought with him and stuffed his coveralls and rubber gloves into a trash bag. Peeling out of the parking lot, he headed for San Jose.

At a gas station outside San Jose, Richard filled up and dumped the trash bag in a nearby Dumpster. Five miles from the gas station, he tossed the knife out the window and down a freeway embankment. Parking outside Spartan Stadium, he still had the wallet to lose. The rings and the wallet’s contents he would keep for now and dispose of down a storm drain on the way home. He opened up Ted’s wallet and tugged out his cash, credit cards, and driver’s license.

On the drive to the game, he’d been on a high, delirious to be rid of his burden, but his world came to a crashing halt when he looked at the driver’s license he’d pulled from the wallet. The driver’s license picture was not his father-in-law. Just to reinforce the calamity, the credit cards didn’t have Ted’s name on them, but instead, the name “Thomas Fairfax.” The rings he held in his palm weren’t Eleanor’s. He’d killed the wrong people.

“Oh, God,” he murmured.

Richard stumbled into the stadium on uncertain legs. Rushing blood gurgled in his ears, and he couldn’t breathe. He dropped Fairfax’s empty wallet into a nearby trash can. He handed his ticket to the stadium worker and waved off a free program. He climbed the steep steps to his seat, numb.

Goals flew into the back of the net one after another. The San Jose Earthquakes were having a landmark game, but Richard couldn’t raise a smile. The murders of two strangers weighed heavily on him, but that wasn’t the only thing worrying him. Ted and Eleanor were still alive. That meant he had it all to do again.

The fifth goal went in and the crowd leaped to their feet. A man noticed Richard was the only one who wasn’t cheering. “LA can’t win them all, buddy.”

The game ended and Richard trudged back to his Honda. He’d left the car on a residential street, and trash and recycle cans for the following morning’s pickup blocked it in. He dumped all the Fairfaxes’ remaining belongings in a can.

Driving home, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t use the same MO to kill Ted and Eleanor now. It had been so perfect, but his bungled murders would lead to better security at the park. He couldn’t afford to be hasty, but time was against him. Ted and Eleanor would be evicted in less than a week.

How could he have been so wrong? It had sounded like them. It had
looked
like them. How did he kill the wrong people?

Richard’s question went unanswered because an eighteen-wheeler changed the subject. The semi’s blowout rendered the rig helpless, and though the driver frenetically tried to regain control, the trailer section plowed directly into the passenger side of Richard’s Honda. The eighteen-wheeler smeared Richard’s car across the freeway, driving it into the median.