Dishonor Thy Wife

by Belinda Austin

  An officer led me back to my cell.

  I lay on the cot with an arm thrown over my face. I had seen too many movies and my previous daydream had a sequel.

  Once again, Ronni is at my house sitting on the sofa.

  “I’m not being a polite host,” I say.

  “I’m not your guest!”

  “Can I, uh, get you something? A soft drink? Glass of wine? Supper? Anything to make you more comfortable,” I insist.

  “You’ve done enough!” she snaps.

  Her dress rides up on her thigh and I ogle her bare skin.

  She slaps her skirt over her leg and hisses at me.

  I walk even further away from her, plop down on a chair, and clench my hands together.

  “You took advantage of me, Jayden. It was bad enough you had sex with me under false pretenses but the real tragedy is that you made me care about you.”

  “You care for me?” I sound like one of Pussy’s squeaky toys.

  “You romanced me with flowers and lies just to get me in the sack. Then you made me cry when you switched back with Brad and he went running back to Barbie. You broke my heart, Jayden.”

  “Ronni I…”

  “Brad found another way to hurt me through you. Damn you for being just like your brother. No! You are worse than Brad, because you pretended to care about me. Oh, your little act was really good!”

  “But I’m not anything like Brad. I am the man who loves you, Ronni!”

  She cuffs her ears with her hands and screams, “Lies! The two of you must have had a good laugh at my expense!”

  I jumped off the cot at the sound of two pairs of heavy shoes.

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, doctor,” Frisco said.

  “Talk about ghosts,” Lead-Belly added, “the flight attendant you claimed could verify seeing you and your so-called twin brother on the flight to New York met with an accident. Good thing you are locked up, else we would suspect you of foul play.”

  “Suspecting me wouldn’t make sense. The woman is my witness. Why would I harm her?”

  “Because you’re a woman hater?”

  “In any case,” he added, “the woman is in a coma in a Philadelphia hospital.”

  Chapter 61

  BRAD

  My eyes are glazed from drugs and bloodshot from booze, making it hard to focus on the television screen and watch my favorite teams, Rangers versus the Astros. With shaky fingers, I reach into the popcorn bag and open my eighth beer of the afternoon.

  “Shit!” Beer foams down the beer can and onto my pants.

  I have always been a neat freak but now simply brush the beer onto the floor. Mustard from a bologna sandwich stains my crumpled shirt and you know what? I do not give a crap!

  “Uh, Brad, can I talk to you in the dining room?” Ronni wrinkles her nose at my alluring scent from not having had a shower all weekend.

  “Not now, I’m busy,” and I will not smell any better in the dining room. Really? You want me sitting at the table where food is served. My stench is why I eat TV dinners. I can smell Vanessa’s perfume on me and showering does not remove the stink of a rotting corpse.

  Ronni sits on the edge of a chair, hugging her knees. “Fine, we’ll talk in here then. When I told you I wanted a divorce, I was serious.”

  I throw popcorn at her. “You never told me you wanted to divorce me.”

  “Yes, I did, remember?”

  Ah, Jayden strikes again. He never mentioned a divorce conversation with my wife while impersonating me! “And did I agree to this divorce?” I ask in a sullen voice. Damn Jayden probably agreed to give Ronni everything I own to get back at me for killing Vanessa. Damn I am mixed up again. Jayden did not find out about the murder until her body tripped him up all the way to jail. Ha!

  “I’ve made an appointment with a lawyer. I think it’s time we end this travesty of a marriage that’s not doing either of us any good.”

  I throw the entire frickin’ bag of popcorn at her and smack her with kernels, leaving her nostrils shiny with butter. “You naively think you can divorce me that easily!”

  She thrusts her jaw out. “We live separate lives anyway. We may as well make it legal.”

  I stand to my imposing height and jab a finger at her. “No way am I ever letting you divorce me, Ronni. I am not going to let you have this house or half of what is mine just because Texas is a community property state!”

  “Look, Brad,” and she holds out her palms to me. “My hands are empty and will remain empty. I do not want anything from you. Just let me have Traci. You can keep everything else, the house, cars, in fact the whole caboodle. Just let me have my freedom, peacefully. I don’t want to fight.”

  “I suppose you’ll sue for half my income for child support?”

  “No, I don’t even want that. No child support. Promise.”

  Ronni is willing to walk away with what she brought to our marriage, namely Traci and the clothes on her back. First Barbie wants to screw my brother because she thinks he is a sensitive man. Now, my wife wants to leave me after living with Jayden. She cannot live with me any more after living with my kinder, gentler brother.

  How could I have been so stupid! Of course! She knows about the bloody knife. A wife cannot testify against her husband but Ronni will after she divorces me.

  “I’ll see you dead before giving you a divorce,” I snarl.

  Ronni hugs her upper arms, shivering. Good. She appears scared. Run for your life, whore! Brad is coming!

  “You ruined the game I was watching.” I snap off the television and limp up the stairs to my bedroom.

  I lock the bathroom door, sit on the toilet, and inhale some powdery cocaine. Normally coke makes me really feel like Superman but since Vanessa, nothing helps my pounding head, aching stomach, and nerves that are about to jump out of skin. Instead, melancholy engulfs me, as if mourning my brother, yet I will not feel safe until Canada executes Jayden.

  I massage the bridge of my nose that seems to be collapsing. My nose is bleeding again and there I go crying like a baby. I am the rotting corpse! The police are coming after me. Boo-hoo-hoo! Even my own mother thinks I am guilty and will not return my phone calls. Of course, I never said a thing to the old lady.

  Jayden must have told Mother. Why else won’t she speak to me? Poor motherless Brad.

  Unfortunately, the effects of snorting cocaine last about 30 minutes. The anxiety in my chest worsens and I can hardly breathe. I am dying, decomposing from the inside out!

  I grab the bottle of prescription pills I wrote for panic attacks and the bottle flips in the air, scattering pills all over the bathroom.

  Where is the bottle of tranquilizers? Come to Papa, little pills, calm my nerves!

  Oh crap! It takes 30 minutes for the tranquilizers to relax my nerves while waiting for the panic-attack pills to work. With the trace of cocaine still in my system, the tranquilizer works faster, making me finally feel as if I am floating.

  I stagger from the bathroom in my undershorts. Oh, damn I wet my pants!

  I walk naked to the bed that fades in and out. I am mostly out of it but still conscious enough to flick on the television to an international station for any news of Canadian murders.

  It is freezing in here, and I wrap myself with the bedspread like a cocoon. “Traci, turn on the heat for your father,” I mumble. “Where are you, frickin’ kid when I need you?”

  I begin to drift off to a groggy sleep, soothed by the voice of a Canadian newscaster. The room is warming up. I need to rest. If only I could get some shuteye. I have not slept since...

  Suddenly, a frigid hand strokes my cheek.

  I sit up gasping for air.

  The room is ice cold as if a ghost just left.

  The bedspread is like a snake squeezing the life from me, and I roll around the bed kicking at the covers.

  Someone is singing in a high woman’s voice.

  I jump from the mattress and dive beneath the bed.

  I l
ay there shivering, yet comforted by the dark confined space.

  When I was a child, I would complain at night, “Mother, Mother, there are monsters hiding beneath my bed! Please help me!”

  Now, hiding under my bed, for the first time in two days, I fall into a light sleep, one of those half-awake, half-asleep experiences where you can hear yourself snore.

  My loud snoring noises sound like growls. But…I have never snored in my life.

  Really, I have turned into the monster hiding under my bed.

  Chapter 62

  JAYDEN

  “They’re not your prints,” Frisco said.

  “Why aren’t your prints on your marriage certificate?” Lead-Belly asked.

  “Because it was not me who married Vanessa.”

  “Maybe you wore gloves when you signed the marriage certificate,” she said in a hopeful voice.

  “Whose prints are on the marriage certificate then?” he asked.

  “The fingerprints belong to my brother.”

  “There are three other sets of prints,” she said.

  “Probably Brad’s, the minister who married them and Vanessa’s prints are on the certificate.”

  Frisco and Lead-Belly looked at each other as if to say, maybe the doctor has a point.

  “Just because you didn’t marry Vanessa, doesn’t mean you didn’t kill her,” she said.

  “Your DNA is still all over the murder scene.”

  “I told you before that Brad and I have the same DNA. Brad’s DNA is all over the murder scene. Did you check the wedding video?”

  “Your prints aren’t on the DVD either,” Frisco admitted. “The marriage certificate prints match the DVD, including the case, and there are another set of prints.”

  “They’re Brad’s prints, and the other set must be the guy who shot the marriage video in Vegas.”

  “That still doesn’t prove that you didn’t kill her,” he insisted.

  “I was out of the country when she was murdered.”

  “So you say,” Frisco scoffed.

  “You have no proof,” Lead-Belly said.

  “There is proof that I should have thought of before! Check with the airlines and get hold of the boarding passes for the destinations and dates I write down for you. The fingerprints on the tickets of Brad O’Boyle and Jayden Tremblay will show I was not in Victoria when Vanessa was murdered. The man whose prints are on the marriage certificate and the DVD, and the airline tickets to Las Vegas was. His fingerprints will be on the boarding passes and prove he was in Canada when Vanessa was murdered. That man is my twin, Brad O’Boyle, who was pretending to be me. Check my laptop for email back and forth between Brad and me regarding travel. Here is the username and password.”

  Frisco and Lead-Belly looked at each other like, okay, might take some time.

  They got up from their chairs to leave.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Your face is pale, doctor. Looks like you’re not doing too good in jail but then most men of your class never do,” he said.

  “Ronni O’Boyle.” I dragged the name from the depths of my soul. “You’ve got to warn her.”

  “If your story checks out, then we’ll see about getting in touch with Mrs. O’Boyle. No use scaring her for nothing,” she said. “We can’t go telling a woman her husband is a murderer unless we have proof.”

  “If what you claim is true and there are reasonable grounds to suspect this Brad O’Boyle, then we’ll contact the American authorities to handle things at their end and see if they’ll cooperate in extraditing him. To tell the truth, we can’t go sticking our noses outside of Victoria without going through the proper channels,” Lead-Belly said sheepishly.

  They led me back to my jail cell.

  I sat on my lumpy mattress, holding my head in my hands and never feeling so helpless in my life.

  My father could sneak me a gun. Ouch! My father would be an accessory in a jail escape. Alternatively, my lawyer could…nah forget about it. My attorney was angry with me for cooperating with the authorities when he was not around, but I had to talk in order to help Ronni.

  Besides, the detectives would not let me speak to my father so I could ask him to call Ronni and warn her. My lawyer refused to call her, claiming he could not interfere in a police case and smear Brad O’Boyle’s reputation. Brad could sue him. “Be patient,” my attorney had said. “We’ll get you out of here. You’ve bought the best legal defense money can buy.”

  I clung to the jail bars, imagining standing behind Ronni, breathing into her hair. She was tingly from my hot breath pushing against her scalp.

  My daydream transported me back to my house for the second sequel.

  The palms of her hands lay flat against the door, her head sandwiched between my hot forearms warming her cheeks. My muscles pulse against the sides of her face.

  “I’m not going to let you walk out on me that easily, Ronni.”

  I rub my face against her hair, sliding my hands down her arms and to her hips, holding her tightly against me. “I can’t stand the thought of being without you. My life is an empty shell when you are not in my world. I am only complete when I am with you. These past weeks without you have been like a knife in my back.”

  I spin her around, placing my hands flat against the door and trapping her. “I need you, Ronni. I desire you. I want to make you happy, both you and Traci. Your happiness is all I have cared about since meeting you. I long to be with you, to make love to you, and be loved by you.”

  I bring my lips down to her mouth and kiss her as light as a feather.

  “You’re so gentle,” she moans.

  I unzip her dress and shaking with desire, offer her my hand. “Come to my bed.”

  She flings her face back from me and slams her skull against the back of the door.

  There is a loud crack and Ronni slumps to the floor.

  I stare down at her lifeless eyes.

  Oh, no! No!

  Her head is cracked in two!

  I shook my head and my jail cell came into view.

  I staggered to the jail bed and wept.

  Chapter 63

  BRAD

  I sleep a couple of hours under my bed and then stew the rest of the night thinking about Jayden and Vanessa. Jayden and Barbie. Jayden and Ronni. I wish with all my heart that I never met my twin brother. If Canada has the death penalty, I am wearing a mask to attend his execution. I am, after all, a master of disguises.

  I plan to carry the bag with the murder weapon between home and office once I go back to work. A killer should destroy evidence, but the knife is a souvenir.

  Lack of sleep always puts me in a foul mood. I rifle through my clothes for a shirt to wear to work. I should just call in sick to my stomach.

  What the fu…? Where did this shirt come from? I whistle through my teeth as my heart skips a beat. Even after imagining watching Jayden hang, I can still get sentimental over my brother.

  The initials JT stitched on his white shirt are soft, delicate, and silky against my cheek.

  Your brother carelessly left another shirt behind where the housekeeper or Ronni could find it.

  Ronni is like a nosy detective. Ronni found the travel bag. Ronni found the murder weapon.

  Your wife knows something, which is why she wants a divorce.

  Nah! The idea is preposterous and I yell at my inner voice to “Shut up!”

  Sniff the shirt to see if your wife was all over your brother!

  What the…Ronni’s perfume!

  I ball the shirt up, balling and balling and kicking the shirt. I then toss Jayden’s threads into the trashcan, making a perfect basket.

  Okay, calm down. Dumb Ronni probably never noticed the initials on the shirt.

  She would have said something, surely. Look how she believed my excuse about the bloody kitchen knife in the travel bag. I roll around the carpet, laughing. I cut up some meat for supper, Ronni. A cow named Vanessa. Moo!

  Another panic attack is comin
g on and I am practically kissing my knees because the ache in my stomach is excruciating. Where is the travel bag? The bag was here a few minutes ago. Earlier, I threw the bag in the closet and then went downstairs to get the newspaper.

  Ronni must have crept up here for the bag. She knows about the knife. She saw the blood. She plans to go to the police, which is why she so smugly asks for a divorce. She is not giving up anything to be free of me. She is putting me away for life or pulling a switch on the electric chair. She will be a rich widow.

  Ah, there is the travel bag in the corner sort of hiding.

  Zip!

  Good. The knife is still there. Good.

  I zip the bag up. I had not noticed before…why didn’t I…how could I be so frickin’ stupid! Jayden’s nametag and address are under a plastic holder on the side of the bag!

  Ronni saw his name on the bag, which is why she wants a divorce. She read in the Victoria newspaper that Jayden Tremblay was arrested for stabbing his wife to death. Maybe she even saw the news on Canadian television on cable. She saw his picture and thinks I killed Jayden’s wife. She believes I am Jayden and have been living a double life.

  Well, a dead wife cannot divorce her husband and then testify against him.

  I stuff the travel bag into the closet and pile even more stuff around it.

  I sit in the dark closet, banging my head against the wall and humming, how to get rid of Ronni, how to get rid of Ronni, how to…

  She will not be easy to kill like Vanessa. Ronni is legally Brad O’Boyle’s wife. True, she has no family who will miss her, but that nosy friend Riley hates my guts. She would come sniffing around if Ronni disappeared.

  Ah-ha! The waste container has the shirt with Jayden’s initials. Let Jayden kill Ronni just as Jayden murdered Vanessa.

  I try on the white shirt with the JT initials stitched across the pocket and the shirt still fits my perfect body. Jayden’s shirt is not garbage after all.

  I shake out anxiety pills from the bottle, toss back my head, and swallow a couple.

  Killing Ronni is Jayden’s fault for being such an idiot as to leave his shirt behind where Ronni can find it.

  Jayden stares back at me from the full-length mirror. All it takes to become Jayden again is to wear my brother’s shirt. I even smile like my brother with kind eyes from a sensitive face. All the women love Jayden. Vanessa. Ronni. Barbie. My women love Jayden more than they love me.