street from Vic’s mansion.
Pretending to stop and answer my cell phone, I managed to use it to take a few pictures of the front of the house. I’d have to come up with a way to check out the grounds later. Maybe Dak would come over to watch Romi for me so I could do a little recon under the cover of darkness.
The driveway was clear, but the garage door was shut. There might be a Mrs. Vic at home, for all I knew. Glancing up and down the street, I tried to find a neighbor I might know. None of the houses or addresses looked familiar. What now?
There is a fine art to assassination. It isn’t like the movies where the hit man busts in, guns a-blazing. That just doesn’t work in real life. I try to learn as much as possible before I even begin. I know, booooring. What do you expect? This is reality, not some movie.
Back at home, an Internet search yielded some good stuff. Through his company’s Web site, I discovered that Vic was in the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. That made me smile. I enjoyed hitting Rotarians almost as much as I enjoyed waxing Junior Leaguers. Something about those stupid clubs makes me itch.
On Google, I found out that Vic has no Mrs. Vic and no little Vics. That’s good. Oooh! He doesn’t give to charity either! Score! I love that! If he gave to the Humane Society or something, that would bother me. Unless he left it in his will. You know, I always thought it would be a good idea for these foundations to set up a contract with us. That way, shortly after naming a charity in their wills, we could pop them. Everybody wins!
Okay, so I had a little information. I still needed to know more personal stuff. I went to my next professional source—the Kennedy Elementary Student Directory. The school district would probably disapprove of the directory’s use for this purpose, but Vic lived in the neighborhood, and maybe one of Romi’s friends lived nearby. I could pump the parents for info and no one would be the wiser.
I scanned the directory, looking at addresses first. I figured I could come up with just about any excuse to visit a fellow Kennedy parent, even if they had no connection to Romi.
Voila! I found one. And right next door, nonetheless. Yay! Looking at the header, I saw that it was even someone in Romi’s class. Bonus!
Damn. The victory was short-lived. Guess who the neighbor was? That’s right. Vivian Marcy. For once in my life, that woman had something I needed. I hoped the gods were whooping it up in Valhalla over that one.
Get over it, Gin. You have a job to do. Hey! Maybe you can find a way to make it look like Vivian killed him! My day just got a little brighter. Now I needed a pretext. Vivian would get suspicious if I just showed up on her doorstep. What I needed was a very good excuse.
“Mommy!” Romi cried as she plowed into me after school.
I chatted with my daughter about her day as we walked back to the car. At home we went through our ritual, snack and backpack review. I pulled out a large envelope.
“What’s this?” I asked Romi.
“Oh. We’re s’posed to sell stuff. It’s for the playground,” Romi sputtered through a mouthful of cookies.
Great. School started two weeks ago and already we had to sell junk. I flipped through the booklet: candy, candles, calendars—all the “c” words were there. Was it just my imagination, or did kids have to sell a lot of crap (hey, another “c” word!) these days? The only thing I remembered selling in school was Girl Scout cookies. And I think in high school, the Future Farmers of America had sold oranges or something. Last year, Romi’s preschool had peddled junk in the fall and spring. I didn’t want to mess with it, so I just walked into the office and handed them a check for $100. It seemed a lot easier than ...
That was it! I grabbed the phone and dialed Vivian’s number.
“Hello?” Vivian sounded bored. Must be rough to break up a day of polishing your Tiffany jewelry by answering the
Pretending to stop and answer my cell phone, I managed to use it to take a few pictures of the front of the house. I’d have to come up with a way to check out the grounds later. Maybe Dak would come over to watch Romi for me so I could do a little recon under the cover of darkness.
The driveway was clear, but the garage door was shut. There might be a Mrs. Vic at home, for all I knew. Glancing up and down the street, I tried to find a neighbor I might know. None of the houses or addresses looked familiar. What now?
There is a fine art to assassination. It isn’t like the movies where the hit man busts in, guns a-blazing. That just doesn’t work in real life. I try to learn as much as possible before I even begin. I know, booooring. What do you expect? This is reality, not some movie.
Back at home, an Internet search yielded some good stuff. Through his company’s Web site, I discovered that Vic was in the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. That made me smile. I enjoyed hitting Rotarians almost as much as I enjoyed waxing Junior Leaguers. Something about those stupid clubs makes me itch.
On Google, I found out that Vic has no Mrs. Vic and no little Vics. That’s good. Oooh! He doesn’t give to charity either! Score! I love that! If he gave to the Humane Society or something, that would bother me. Unless he left it in his will. You know, I always thought it would be a good idea for these foundations to set up a contract with us. That way, shortly after naming a charity in their wills, we could pop them. Everybody wins!
Okay, so I had a little information. I still needed to know more personal stuff. I went to my next professional source—the Kennedy Elementary Student Directory. The school district would probably disapprove of the directory’s use for this purpose, but Vic lived in the neighborhood, and maybe one of Romi’s friends lived nearby. I could pump the parents for info and no one would be the wiser.
I scanned the directory, looking at addresses first. I figured I could come up with just about any excuse to visit a fellow Kennedy parent, even if they had no connection to Romi.
Voila! I found one. And right next door, nonetheless. Yay! Looking at the header, I saw that it was even someone in Romi’s class. Bonus!
Damn. The victory was short-lived. Guess who the neighbor was? That’s right. Vivian Marcy. For once in my life, that woman had something I needed. I hoped the gods were whooping it up in Valhalla over that one.
Get over it, Gin. You have a job to do. Hey! Maybe you can find a way to make it look like Vivian killed him! My day just got a little brighter. Now I needed a pretext. Vivian would get suspicious if I just showed up on her doorstep. What I needed was a very good excuse.
“Mommy!” Romi cried as she plowed into me after school.
I chatted with my daughter about her day as we walked back to the car. At home we went through our ritual, snack and backpack review. I pulled out a large envelope.
“What’s this?” I asked Romi.
“Oh. We’re s’posed to sell stuff. It’s for the playground,” Romi sputtered through a mouthful of cookies.
Great. School started two weeks ago and already we had to sell junk. I flipped through the booklet: candy, candles, calendars—all the “c” words were there. Was it just my imagination, or did kids have to sell a lot of crap (hey, another “c” word!) these days? The only thing I remembered selling in school was Girl Scout cookies. And I think in high school, the Future Farmers of America had sold oranges or something. Last year, Romi’s preschool had peddled junk in the fall and spring. I didn’t want to mess with it, so I just walked into the office and handed them a check for $100. It seemed a lot easier than ...
That was it! I grabbed the phone and dialed Vivian’s number.
“Hello?” Vivian sounded bored. Must be rough to break up a day of polishing your Tiffany jewelry by answering the
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