“Sure, you do. You’ve read enough mysteries. You start by showing us the murder victim and the potential killers. Let’s get you all set up after you’re dressed. I’ll be quiet as a mouse so you can work.”
Quiet didn’t help. Louise sat for half an hour and stared at the doodled-on first page in the notebook her granddaughter had bought her. Then she grabbed her phone and checked Facebook to see what was going on there. Then she called her friend Carol and checked on her. Gilda said nothing, but she raised a judging eyebrow after Louise ended the call.
“I have writer’s block,” Louise informed her.
“Okay, let’s talk about your woman. The wife who gets poisoned, right?”
“Right.”
“Maybe she should be... older. Desperate for love.”
“All older women aren’t desperate for love,” Louise protested.
“Heaven knows I’m not,” Gilda said. “But this is fiction. This woman can’t stand being alone. Her first husband died suddenly. He was the love of her life and she was lonely. That’s how she got into this mess in the first place. She married a man who was a smooth talker, but he doesn’t really love her. He only married her for her money, but she can’t see it.”
“Love is blind,” said Louise and began writing. “I’ll start with showing him bringing her breakfast in bed, looking like the world’s most considerate husband. And he’s surprising her with a cruise. To Hawaii.”
Like the one she should have been taking. But there was no sense crying over spilled piña coladas. She kept scribbling. Yes, the juices were flowing now and she was on a roll.
When Bree came over later with hamburgers from In-N-Out, Louise had two pages to read to her.
“I wish our mother wasn’t taking this cruise. I have a bad feeling about it,” Emily Dickinson said to her brother.
“Emily Dickinson. Isn’t she a famous poet?” Bree interrupted.
“It’s a nice name,” Louise insisted, and read on.
“It’s their five-year anniversary. Just what she needs after being sick,” said the brother.
Louise interrupted her reading to explain, “Marion’s husband has already been slowly poisoning her so we’re setting things up for later.”
Bree nodded. “I like that.”
“Poor Mother,” Emily said. “She’s had one thing after another wrong with her ever since she and Gerard married. He’s been awfully patient.”
“While he sets her up to die,” Gilda put in, and smiled as she worked her crochet hook.
Louise’s narrative continued, explaining how lonely poor Marion, the future victim, had been before Gerard came into her life. She’d been unwell off and on ever since they married, and worried at one point that he was cheating on her. But this grand gesture proved he was still as in love with her as ever.
“This is good stuff, Gram,” said Bree when Louise had finished.
“Gilda’s been helping me,” said Louise. “She suggested the poisoning idea.” And most of the best lines. Hmm. Maybe Gilda should be writing this book.
“You two should become a team, like Christina Lauren,” Bree said.
“Oh, no. I’m no writer,” said Gilda.
But after Bree left, Louise said, “Bree might be right. You’re the one who came up with all the good ideas for my book.”
“But you’re the one who wrote them down.”
“More like taking dictation,” said Louise.
“All I did was help free up your creative juices,” Gilda said, refusing to take credit for anything. “But let me tell you, I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in my life. I could probably write a dozen books if I had a mind. It’s shocking what people are capable of.”
That was all it took to launch her into another story of the shady life of a doctor she’d once worked with. “And everyone thought he was a saint,” she finished. “I tell you, you never know.”
“So true,” said Louise. The man next door was proof of that.
