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On Writing
Making Waves
Making Waves is a
short story by Roger Paulding
(First
published on the E-zine, Poet's Canvas)
"Get
out there. Bid on the darned boat," Fred X. Keefer hammered
his desk top. "Pay any amount. Be sure no one outbids
you!"
Sam
Dooley, loyal bean counter, saluted his boss and scurried out of
the office, his "Yessir," hanging in the air like a
piece of dry jerky.
Fred
X. needed that yacht. Mildred's body was on it. The boat was his
wife's tomb. The way he'd master-minded this scheme, a closet
was the only coffin she'd ever enjoy.
Three
weeks earlier, he and Mildred had gone out to the three-mile
marker for a little fishing. Milly mostly lounged on the deck
and sunned in a bikini that cut into her plump thighs.
"Bring me another gin and T," she ordered as Fred X.
tossed the anchor into the placid water, the sea calm and lonely
as an old widow.
"Right
away, hon."
"You're
really sure you've given up that bimbo Berry?"
Mildred's words slurred on her tongue. "How old was
she--twenty?"
Fred
X. gave her drink an extra flourish with the swizzle stick and
handed it over.
"She's
history, Milly-sweety." He pulled an airline ticket
from his shirt pocket. "Look here, first class, Houston to
Paris, just for you. You'll go ahead, and as soon as my deal
with AQT is completed, I'll join you for our second
honeymoon."
Mildred
giggled. "Freddie-boy, you really know how to treat a girl
nice."
After
taking the drink from him, she sipped once, then made a face.
"Gee, darling, it's too sour." She got up, tripped
down the stairs to the cabin bar while he dug a shrimp out of
his cooler and baited his fishing line.
Out
of sight, Mildred poured the drink in the basin, then filled the
glass with fresh ice, tonic, and a smidgen of gin.
A few
minutes later, she returned and sat on the arm of his deck
chair. She patted his abs and praised him for keeping
himself in shape. She was a little jealous of his ability to do
so. No matter how much she swam, and he insisted she accompany
in the pool every morning, doing those long boring laps, she
couldn't get rid of the nasty cellulite on her legs. Went with
being forty, her friends assured her. Nothing could be done
about it.
A few
swallows later, Fred looked at her drink and said, "Need me
to freshen it up a little?"
"I
know what you're up to, Freddie-boy." Mildred intentionally
mangled her words. "You just want to dret me grunk so you
can have your way with me."
"And
why not? I don't know a prettier girl anywhere."
Paris
with Mildred, he asked himself. With that tired stuff of hers?
What a laugh.
He
carried her drink downstairs. After mixing it, he slipped a
non-detectable mickey into the tonic. He methodically swished
it, waited for the drops to blend, then started back up the
stairs to the upper deck, singing about his funny valentine.
"Let
me just fix myself up a little," Mildred slurred. She
hefted her bulk from the chair and staggered toward the head,
her drink splashing as she went. "Feel a dittle lizzy."
Minutes
after she passed out, he stashed her in the cabin closet.
He sang about it being such a beautiful day while he washed her
glass, then went further below, chopped a hole in the hull and
abandoned ship.
Only
little fishes to keep Mildred company now, Fred thought as he
swam to shore, grateful that those long boring laps in his home
pool had finally paid off.
In a
day or two, he'd report the craft in stolen. Tell his insurance
company that drug dealers must have absconded with it. Didn't
have to worry about propagating that story. The merchant marine
always seemed to jump to that conclusion.
Fred's
plans didn't involve sharing his fortune or the European trip
with Mildred. The woman he flew to Paris was young, sexy
Berry. Once in Paris, Berry sent postcards to Mildred's friends.
No message. Just scrawled on the bottom: "Having a good
time."
Until
Berry came along, Mildred had acted as if their marriage was
made in heaven. Sometimes he thought she believed it. Well, it
had been for about three months.
Anyone
who asked about her would now be told she was abroad and
probably add how lucky the old gal was to have Fred X. No one
would suspect a thing. No one would have any idea Milly
was dead.
The
insurance company had a ninety-eight percent recovery rate on
sunken craft, but he knew that. A week later, they discovered
his boat, then they sent a diver down to check out the damaged
hull, and proudly posted the craft for sale. Normal thing to do.
Someone would buy the craft at a ridiculously low price and pay
a salvage company to bring it up and restore it. That was Fred
X.'s opportunity to buy it back and keep it out of the hands of
the police, just in case.
He
told his friends he might float the old wreck. He had no such
intentions. He would just never get around to it. Let it rest in
the murky deeps! Maybe he'd drop a bevy of breeding barracuda
into the bay. Make sure not a tidbit of Mildred's wrinkled
cadaver surfaced!
Fred
X. looked again at the postcard he'd received in the morning
mail. Paris postmark. "Dear Fred, wish you were here.
Mildred." Perfect forgery. Except Berry scratched through
his wife's name and signed Berry. Dumb thing for her to do, but
her brain wasn't the reason he kept her around.
Berry
had flown to Paris, traveling under Mildred's name, wearing a
salt and pepper wig and dressed in matronly clothes.
Once Fred joined her, he would stage Mildred's death. Somewhere
that wouldn't require providing a body. Like if she skied off
the Matterhorn. He could point to a mile-deep chasm and say
between tears, "She's down there! What a brave sport she
was! Determined to ski despite her arthritis!"
And
if Berry got too sassy, he might see to it there really was a
body down in the snow and ice, so far below not even a
helicopter could recover it.
***
At
Cannes, Fred enjoyed the beach while the lovely Berry used her
soft, sensitive hands to apply his sun lotion. And didn't he
love to watch her lovely thighs as she walked toward him? Not a
sign of cellulite, not a jiggle of fat.
He
and Berry toured Paris, Rome and London. Berry swamped Mildred's
friends with picture postcards of Notre Dame, the Acropolis, the
Vatican, while she whined about how much fun a little gambling
would be and how boring all those old museums were and why
couldn't they go to Monaco and gamble?
"Mildred
enjoyed the arts," he told her pointedly. "Be sure
your cards reflect that."
And
so Berry wrote cards that bragged about what a grand old time
poor dead Mildred was having with her wonderful husband.
And tacked on, "Miss you so much, Milly."
Cards
went to Mildred's best friend, wife of the police chief. More to
Mildred's second best friend. Her husband was mayor. And some to
Mildred's comatose mother in a rest home. Berry's frugal
nature nearly trashed those. "Such a waste of good
postage," she complained.
At
least, he thought, he didn't have a gold-digger on his hands,
although the pre-nup he made her sign would have pinched The
Donald's pennies. He would marry Berry, of course, but not right
away.
* *
*
Fred
X. decided to make sure his bean counter handled the purchase of
his salvaged yacht appropriately. He headed for the auction,
arriving barely in time to hear the final going, going, gone!
Dooley
stepped forward to write a check for the auctioneer. He
looked mighty happy, Fred thought. He'd never seen old Dooley
look so thrilled. Fred grabbed him by the arm and shouted,
"What are you so bananas about?"
"My
yacht," Dooley crowed. "I never guessed I could get a
yacht so cheap!"
"It's
not your yacht, fool. I sent you out to here to buy it for me.
It's mine."
Dooley
licked his smiling lips. "Not any more. I bid on it, and
I'm paying for it." And then Dooley mumbled something under
his breath that sounded like, "Where you're going, you
won't have any use for it."
"Dooley,
you're fired unless you turn that yacht over to me," Fred
screamed, just before noticing he was surrounded by uniformed
policemen.
One
officer stepped forward. "Fred Xavier Keefer?"
"Yeah?"
The
officer grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.
"You're under arrest for attempted murder."
A
familiar voice chimed in. "You were just too clever
for your own good, Freddie-boy!"
He
wheeled around to face Mildred.
"You
can blame it on Berry," Mildred said. "When the police
chief's wife got a postcard signed, Love, Berry, with the Berry
scratched through and Milly written over it, we knew we had
you."
Fred
blanched. "You're supposed to be dead!"
Mildred
popped a piece of gum into her mouth. "How stupid do you
think I am? You faker, I saw right through your sudden change of
heart."
"But
the drink I gave you?"
"Dumped
your doped-up drink in the bathroom sink and pretended to pass
out while you hid me in the closet."
The
officer fastened the handcuffs around Fred's wrists.
"Interpol arrested your girl friend in Paris yesterday. She
confessed to the entire scheme."
Fred
turned to Mildred. "How did you get to shore?"
"Swam,
just like you did. I want to thank you for egging me on with
those boring laps in the pool every morning.
* *
* * *
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