Dark Luck (A Suspense Thriller) (15 page)

He turned off the faucet. Wiping his hands
on his jeans, he looked at the knife. Dammit, he had forgotten to clean his
trusted weapon. He returned to the sink, carefully washed the knife under a
strong stream of water, and then wrapped it in a cloth. He put the knife in his
jacket pocket, glanced at the old woman’s corpse lying in the center of the
kitchen, and stepped to the stove.

Gas stoves, ladies and gentlemen, had a wonderful
feature: if you needed your own little Hiroshima, all you had to do was turn on
the gas without igniting fire, walk to a safe distance, and wait until the damn
thing blew up. The only question was: how do you detonate the gas? Where would
you get the spark that would set off the explosion? He had already thought
about it and found an effective solution. He would use the remarkable Kenmore
microwave oven, in front of which he was standing at the moment. He was going
to place a Glade air freshener spray can into the microwave and set the cooking
start time at one hour from now. Once the oven went to work, it would take the
can less than a minute to burst and create the desired spark. He knew exactly
how to operate this particular microwave model because he had read its manual
and practiced two days earlier.

He pulled the spray can out of his pocket,
put it into the microwave oven, set the timer, and scanned the kitchen windows,
checking if there were any gaps through which gas could escape. He was satisfied
by the results of the examination: no gaps. He quickly turned on all the knobs
on the stove, except for the oven knob since he had no idea how to find and
kill the oven pilot light. He nodded with a pleased expression on his face and
walked out of the kitchen.

Jane would turn into a charred piece of
flesh, and the traces of his prank would be concealed from other people's eyes.
Everyone would think that the old woman had either had a senile moment and
forgotten how to use a gas range, or decided to kill herself after realizing
that life was not worth living without her beloved husband. The latter, by the
way, was a plausible possibility: he had chatted with Jane at George’s funeral
and knew how devastated she had been by her husband’s death. 

“George, my love! I'm coming to you!” Jane
shouted and struck the match. 

He shut the kitchen door behind him and
headed to the front hall.

9.

He parked six hundred feet away from Jane’s
house in order to see with his own eyes that the microwave did the job he’d
assigned to it. Fifty six minutes after the gas had begun to come out of the
burners, a deafening explosion shattered the silence of the night. A second
later, giant, bright orange paws of fire broke out of the kitchen windows,
spraying pieces of glass in every direction.

Chapter 5.

GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS

1.

She said her name was Marilyn Hancock, and judging by
the familiarity this woman was treating him with, he was supposed to have known
for quite a while. Unfortunately, her name was buried under the boulders of
amnesia along with the dozens of others. 

Marilyn Hancock.

For a moment, Frank was tempted to ask if she was
related to John Hancock, the founding father, but elected not to do it for fear
of sounding lame.

“Who are you?” he asked. He couldn’t help noting that
she was quite attractive. Her perfume was exquisite. 

Who was Marilyn Hancock?

Another relative?

The woman took his right hand and squeezed it lightly.
Josephine had squeezed his hand, too, when she had first visited him, by the
way.

It’s the wrong time to waste your mental energy on
Josephine, buddy.

“Frank, you... you don’t remember me?” asked the woman.
Frank nodded. She appeared genuinely surprised. For some reason, she was
convinced that she was too important to be forgotten. Frank couldn’t wait to
find out why.

“Are you my sister?” he asked. The woman shook her
head. There was no astonishment in her beautiful eyes anymore. She looked
content now. 

Could she be another relative of Kelly’s? His wife
turned out to have quite a large family, most of whom, it seemed, couldn’t wait
to visit him in the hospital: Kelly’s brother Albert and cousin Graham had come
to say hello earlier today.
Frank
was somewhat amused that Graham had showed up in his cop uniform: who was he
trying to impress? Honestly, this attention had begun to make him feel like an
exotic animal at the zoo.

By the way, none of these guys was missing a leg,
which, for some reason, had been one of the first things Frank’s mind had
registered when they had entered the room.

Marilyn Hancock... No, the name still did not ring a
bell. 

The woman smiled. She was definitely happy about
something.

“I thought that...” She paused. “I thought that it was
much more worse. I’m so glad you are okay.”

“Yes, I’m okay. Now tell me who you are, Marilyn
Hancock. I’m going to guess that you are my friend, a very close friend.”

The woman nodded, leaned forward, and kissed him on the
cheek. As her lips touched his skin, Frank inhaled deeply through his nose to
relish the sweetness of her perfume.

“You really don’t remember me, Frank? We’ve known each
other for more than a year.”

More than a year. It is a long time. No wonder she’s
surprised you can’t remember her, pal.

“Are you my best friend? My neighbor?”

“Frank, we are more than friends. We’re lovers.”

Marilyn gently touched his right leg, as if making sure
that it had not been amputated after the car crash.

“What do you mean, Marilyn?” Frank cracked a weak
smile. “Did we sleep together?”

“Do you have any trouble moving your legs?” the woman
asked, ignoring his question. 

“My legs are fine.” He got off the bed and marched to
the wall and back.

Hot damn, what an interesting twist! They were lovers.
Unless Marilyn was making it up, which sounded ridiculous: what would her
motive be to pretend to be his lover? A fortune that he didn’t have?

“What happened to your memory, Frank? I want to know
everything.” 

2.

Soon after Marilyn Hancock had left, Frank recovered
from the astonishment caused by the fact that he had a mistress—he had honestly
not expected this from himself—and did a quick review of his situation.
According to his estimates, amnesia had swallowed the last six years of his
life. He still remembered making a senior manager at Shapiro Bender Winkler,
the public accounting firm he had joined about ten years ago. Frank was curious
how close he had gotten to making a partner. And he would also have to relearn
the intricacies of the office politics at the firm, by the way. And refresh his
memory on the latest developments in corporate tax.

However, he didn’t remember marrying Kelly, or meeting
her for the first time. He had no recollection of anyone in her family either.
He could sit next to his father-in-law without realizing it.

His brother Andrew, who lived in the San Francisco Bay
Area, had told him that their father had died five years ago and their mother
had passed away a year later. Frank remembered none of these events; the
relentless black hole of amnesia had devoured them. He had also found out that
Kathy had been born three and half years ago. Frank was wondering how long it
would take him to get used to the idea of being a dad.

Frank had been planning to ask Josephine to bring Kelly
and Kathy to the hospital, but had forgotten to do it when he had last spoken
to her. He simply felt no urgency to meet his wife and daughter, and why would
he? He had to learn to care about them first to be able to miss them.

Or maybe there is another explanation to this apathy
towards your family, buddy? You are cheating on your wife, aren’t you? In some
circles, it’s a big deal.

Yes, that was true; it looked like he was cheating on
Kelly. Frank wanted to ask Marilyn about the details of their romance—how they
had met, how often they had sex and where, what plans they were making for the
future—but encouraged her to leave, fearing that Josephine would suspect foul
play if she caught him chatting with an attractive young woman.

“See you soon, Frank,” Marilyn said before taking off.
He nodded silently, with a smile, in response.

But what about Kelly, pal? You are a shameless bastard,
Frank Fowler. How can you cheat on a mother of your child? How could you have
broken the vows you’ve made to your wife?   

Well, what kind of wife was Kelly if she hadn’t
bothered to visit him in the hospital even once? He could have died in that car
crash, you know. What the hell had she been so busy doing? Getting manicures at
a spa?

End of sample

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