The Perfect-Perfect Plan

by Melanie Jones Brownrigg

  “Are you sure she only had a single safety deposit box?”

  “I double checked. Her name is listed only once.”

  Leaning forward, I inventory the contents of the box Chelsea has brought to me. If memory serves me correctly, Hannah had five in her purse the day I met with her, one of which she gave to me. That would have left four. There were two in the metal container I found at her house. However, Hannah warned me that the ones in her purse were only a sampling and that there were far too many copies for me to ever locate. The question is: has Chelsea brought all of them to me? Logically speaking, it seems the only place Hannah would have hidden copies would be at the bank and in her own residence. I can’t conceive of any other place where Hannah would have hidden such incriminating evidence. This theory, once again, assumes she wouldn’t risk Dr. Jag or her parents stumbling upon a copy, especially when considering withholding this information could land her in hot water too. She wouldn’t put them in the position of keeping her secret or betraying her by going to the authorities.

  I’m confident that I have found all copies from Hannah’s apartment and Chelsea has produced a sizeable stack of CD’s as well as a several flash drives. Provided Chelsea has thoroughly searched Hannah’s desk and her safety deposit box, it feels like I have made a full recovery.

  “Very good. You did good.” A sense of relief has me beaming a smile at her.

  “When can I get my money?”

  “Did you watch the video?” I ask, searching her face for deception. I already know she didn’t. There’s no way she would be this calm if she’d seen me breaking into the bank, and especially if she were privy to me killing that old fart.

  “No way,” she says with a shake of her head. “Whatever is on there isn’t worth risking another million.”

  “Good. Thank you.” Without any doubt, she’s not lying. “Give me your account number and I’ll send the money over.”

  Her hands become a blur as she rapidly rummages through her purse, bringing out her checkbook. She rips out one of her deposit slips and hands it over to me. “Here you go. How long will it take?” she asks, seemingly impatient.

  “Soon. It’ll be soon. But until the money hits your account, you need to keep quiet about it. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, of course. Absolutely,” she says with a bright smile and a hint of almost peeing her pants in eagerness.

  Chelsea can’t wait to throw the money in Hannah’s face. She’s already said she was going to quit and tell Hannah to shove the job. Hannah is smart as a whip. She’ll know instantly where the money came from. Sadly, for Chelsea, I can’t let her mouth go into overload.

  Right about now, you’re probably remembering that I wasn’t going to kill anyone anymore. But it’s kind of like a poisonous snake promising not to bite you and then you’re shocked when it does. While I’d like to think of myself as being rehabilitated, it appears I need a little more therapy before fully reaching that level. In my defense, I did tell you at the start of this book that I was a dirty, filthy rotten scoundrel with a foul mouth and that you were not likely to grow affection toward me, not even one little bit. I suppose I’m living up to that reputation. Even so, I have become a wonderful father. I am happy with Angela. I haven’t robbed any other banks. It genuinely feels like I am on the road to recovery. And believe it or not, I wish I didn’t have to kill Chelsea and it’ll make me feel bad for doing it. I do have a little bit of a conscience.

  Later that afternoon, I park eight blocks away from Chelsea’s home, again in the old Corolla. Taking on the persona of a neighbor walking over to another neighbor’s home, I carry with me a bottle of wine, head over to her house and rap on her door.

  Chelsea’s face takes on a surprised look once she opens the door. “Douglas, what on earth are you doing here?”

  Chelsea lives alone, never having had a true boyfriend. And her petty jealousies have destroyed the only true girlfriend she ever had. Her parents purchased her this little two-bedroom brick home in the south part of town.

  “I wanted to give you the good news in person. I thought we might have a celebratory drink together.” I wave a showy hand over the bottle of wine. “You do drink wine, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been known to have a glass or two.”

  “Can I come inside then?” I ask after having made sure I’m not bringing in something Chelsea never partakes in.

  “Yes, please,” she says, swinging the door wide for me to enter. She leads me to a small living room. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  I take a seat in a chair, eliminating the possibility of her getting too close to me on the couch. “I wanted to let you know that the funds have been transferred.”

  Let me make it perfectly clear. No funds have been transferred. I’m not stupid enough to electronically trail myself directly to Chelsea. It’s bad enough for us to have dined together at that bistro on a few occasions.

  “Already? Oh, I’m so excited. Thank you so much,” she gushes, practically salivating.

  “Are you really going to quit your job?” Of course, she is. I’m merely setting the scene.

  She pulls a face. “With two million, why on earth would I keep working for that bitch?”

  My head nods. “I thought as much. I had an idea on the way over here.”

  “What?” she wants to know.

  “I think you should write out your resignation right now. And I think you should tell Hannah exactly what you think of her. You’ll feel better if you get everything off your chest. I might even have some suggestions of my own, considering what she did to me.”

  “Yes, let’s do it,” she eagerly agrees. She is too easy. If you looked up gullible, you’d find a picture of Chelsea there.

  “Is there a table?” I ask, noting the coffee table would be awkward as a writing desk.

  “Yes, the kitchen. Come on back.”

  I follow her through the living room, down a small hallway and then into a tiny kitchen where a small table is pushed against a window. While she searches for a pad of paper, I ask to use the restroom. While I’m in the john, I go through Chelsea’s medicine chest. I have brought my own lethal cocktail, but if she has prescriptions under her own name, it would be better. I notice she has an almost full bottle of Ambien, along with a full bottle of Xanax amongst her choices. That will do the trick. From my jacket pocket, I bring out a pill crusher and grind the shit out of those pills. After they are nothing more than a fine powder, I slip the grinder into a plastic bag and then place it back in my pocket. Then I head for the kitchen.

  “Found a pad and a pen,” Chelsea announces upon my return.

  “Wonderful. You get started writing and I’ll pour us each a glass of wine.”

  “The glasses are to the left of the sink,” she instructs, taking a seat with her back to me.

  I pop the cork. “This is an expensive wine. It’s a rare flavor appreciated by the upper crust. I hope you’ll find it suits your new pocketbook.” I imagine it will be bitter, probably intolerable to swallow. But if she believes it’s for the wealthy, my guess is she will drink it whether she likes it or not.

  “I’m sure it will be lovely.”

  Even though she has her back to me, I crowd in front of the glasses and dump in the powdery concoction in hers. It’s a lot. Then I pour in the wine. It looks a little cloudy and certainly needs to be stirred. There’s a spoon in the sink so I use it to get the job done while being careful not to clank it against the sides. Next, I fill my glass and then take both to the table.

  After taking a seat on the far end, I lift my glass in the air. “Shall we toast to our good fortunes?”

  “To new beginnings,” she says. We clink glasses and each have a sip. She frowns at the taste. Dammit.

  “To putting the past behind us,” I say, making another toast to which we drink to.

  “It’s delicious, isn’t it?” I take a big swallow and she feels compelled to emulate me.

  “It’s different,” she admits
. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

  “It’s an acquired taste, like caviar. By the second glass, I’ll be willing to bet you’ll find you’re beginning to like it.” By then, I will have refilled her glass enough that the medications will be diluted, and she’ll only be drinking the wine.

  The wine isn’t expensive in the least. It’s a cheap brand I picked up at a nearby convenience store. I’ll have to leave the bottle and couldn’t risk bringing one of my finer wines which would have looked odd in Chelsea’s moderate home.

  After she has struggled with drinking half a glass, I top her off to add a more drinkable wine. The alcohol, combined with the medications, will factor into her death.

  “Are you enjoying the taste more now?” I ask in an attempt at getting her to down a few more swallows.

  She takes another sip. “Yes, actually I think I’m learning to like the finer things in life.”

  “To the finer things,” I say, toasting again. She needs to consume the whole glass to fully ingest the medication and all the better if she gets drunk in the process.

  She takes in a big gulp this time.

  “So how are you coming on the notice letter?” I arch my neck in the direction of the notepad.

  She giggles. “This is what I have so far.”

  She holds the pad up and it reads:

  Hannah, I hate you. I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t hate you. You were always the beautiful one with the perfect figure. The popular one. Cheerleader. Class Favorite. Homecoming Queen. Senior Teller. Branch Manager. Bank President. And now the future wife of a handsome doctor. Everything has always been a piece of cake for you. You’ve never had to struggle like I have. And I hate you for it. I hate you.

  I’ll be completely honest with you. I seduced the hell out of Bill. So there. Take that. I don’t feel bad one bit at all. You didn’t deserve him. You didn’t deserve Marcus. And you don’t deserve Phillip. You don’t even deserve your cat. What you deserve is to rot in hell. You’re not my friend. A friend would have promoted their friend to senior teller. And given a second opportunity, a friend would have made their friend the branch manager. But I see you for who you really are. You’re someone who’s afraid to let me shine. You’ve done nothing but stand in my light for all these years. I hate you for taking away my right to shine. I hate you.

  Another glass later and Chelsea is beginning to feel the effects of the drugs and alcohol. She’s dropped her pen three times and is slurring her words. “Have some more wine,” I push, filling her glass yet again.

  She takes in one long gulp.

  “I knew you’d grow to the love the taste. It’s good, isn’t it?”

  “It’s therrr besssttt winnne everrrr.” She drops the pen again. “Sheeeiittt.”

  I pick it up for her. She takes it and writes a few more “I hate yous.” In time, she fills two more pages with “I hate you.” Her scribbling is almost impossible to read, and the words are drawn out to fill the pages. The final page only has one “I hate you” but it takes up the entire sheet.

  She has managed the whole bottle of wine, save and except for the one small glass I poured for myself.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say a big weight has been lifted off your shoulders just from writing this note.” I gaze at her drooping face. “It looks like it has exhausted you though.”

  “I caaannn bareleeee keeeep my eyes opennnn,” she slowly admits.

  “I’ll leave you to get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a big day for you when you go into work and tell Hannah to rot in hell.”

  “I caaaannn hardleeee waaaaiitt,” she mumbles.

  “Walk me out,” I say, hoping to get her on her feet and avoid having to haul her lard ass into her bedroom. Chelsea is a rather large girl. She probably weighs more than me and I’d like to avoid carrying her if possible.

  When she begins to stand, she falls flat on the floor and begins drooling all over herself.

  “Oops, I guess that wine was a little more powerful than we thought. Let me help you to bed.”

  “Okaaaaay. It’s thaaat waaaayy.” She tries to lift an index finger and point toward the only hallway that doesn’t lead back to the living room, which would’ve been anyone’s guess.

  Thankfully, I’m able to get her up and once she leans all over me, together we manage the few awkward steps toward her bedroom.

  I stretch her out on her bed, leaving her fully clothed, except for removing her shoes. In my mind, if you were committing suicide, you wouldn’t have undressed.

  “Can I get you anything? A blanket or something?” I ask, making a pretense at making her comfortable. She fails to respond, and it appears she has completely passed out. To make sure, I push one her eyelids open to examine her pupils. Her eyes are glazed over with a faraway look.

  “Can you hear me, Chelsea?” When she doesn’t answer, I pull on my plastic gloves and take the pill bottles and wipe off any fingerprints. Then I use her hands to perform the motion of opening each of the bottles, even going so far as to empty a tiny bit of the remaining residue onto her hands as a showing that she handled the pills herself. Finally, I place the containers on the kitchen table, leaving one upright and the other tipped on its side.

  Next, I rinse the hell out of her stemware since she should have ingested the pills by mouth, meaning the powder residue shouldn’t be showing up in her glass. I take the goblet into the bedroom and smear her lips all around the glass and her fingerprints too. I am elated when her tongue pushes the glass away and she gets a good sampling of DNA on the rim. Returning to the kitchen, I pour the remaining portion of my wine into her glass and place it on the table, exactly where she continuously sat hers.

  My attention turns next to the wine bottle. After thoroughly cleaning my prints, I replace them with hers and sit it on the table near where her pad is laying.

  After carefully rinsing my wineglass and placing it back in the cabinet, I scour the house fully with a few Clorox wipes, making sure to remove everything I touched, all the way from the front doorknob to the cabinet knob, to the kitchen table and the faucets on the kitchen sink. I do a full wipe down of the edges of the medicine cabinet and even her shoes. As far as the note goes, I leave it at the kitchen table right where she left it along with the pen. After stepping back to scrutinize the scene to make sure it looks natural, like she was alone, I realize my chair needs to be pushed in. When I do so, it hits me that I didn’t push in Hannah’s desk chair. I dismiss it, thinking she’ll assume Dr. Jag left it out. Guys do that sort of thing. At least it wasn’t a half-eaten banana.

  When I am positively certain my presence has been fully eliminated, I check on Chelsea. I find her breathing is labored and she is unable to respond. After waiting another hour and hoping she’ll die, I find her in the same condition. My greatest fear would be leaving her and then she wakes up at some point, vomiting and then calling the police on me. Unwilling to take the risk, I remove the pillow from under her head and snuff out her last breaths. At this point, she’s far too out of it to put up a struggle, making her one of my easier kills.

  After placing the pillow back under her head, I check her pulse five times because I know her blood pressure will have dropped tremendously between the narcotics combined with the wine. When I am positively certain that she is good and dead, I do one more final check of the premises to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.

  Pausing at the front door, I wonder if a suicide would leave their door open for their body to be more easily discovered, or if they would lock it so they couldn’t be saved. I opt for locking.

  My gloved hands remain in my jacket pockets until I am back inside my car. Then I find a trash bag and dispose of my gloves, the pill crusher and the Clorox wipes. Somewhere between the south of town and The Bliss Hotel, I pull behind a convenience store and toss the contents. And then I go and spend one more night in that crappy hotel.

  That night, when I fall asleep, it feels like an ominous black cloud has fin
ally moved on. Without those videos hanging over my head, I can finally relax. Hannah can go on with her life with Dr. Jag. And I can go on with my life with Angela and my babies. All has turned out well.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Hannah

  Since Phillip’s proposal, I haven’t spent any time at my apartment. So, during my lunchbreak, I run by to pick up a few more articles of clothing, and to make sure things in the fridge aren’t growing vicious molds. After tossing several unidentifiable food containers that are no longer edible into the trash, I remove the garbage bag from the bin and set it by the utility door to haul downstairs when I leave.

  Next, I head toward my closet to retrieve a few of my heavier jackets now that the evenings are getting cooler. On the way, I pass by the door to my home office and freeze. Even though the sun is beaming in through the window, I flip on the light and stare at my chair. It is rolled away from my desk.

  “No, you did not, Douglas Vanover!” I growl to myself.

  There is nothing in my desk that he wants, or on my computer. But I know what he was looking for. My legs fly to the bedroom where I drop down to my knees and begin lugging out multiple storage containers. The gray metal lockbox is still there. Snatching it out, my heart goes into a wild fury when I see that it has been pried open.

  “No! You, dirty rotten scoundrel,” I scream at him even though he cannot possibly hear me.

  With the empty box held in my lap, I sit there and stare into space, waiting for my angry rage to dissipate. There are still copies at the bank, I assure myself. There is no way he could have entered after closing hours this time. With the bank’s new security system, if the doors are opened after hours, it sends an immediate alert to my phone which allows me to view the cameras no matter where I am. I’ve tested it several times and so has Melinda. It’s unquestionably reliable. I just need to calm myself down.