Not Much Of a Cook

Charlie was on his hands and knees trying to scrub his wife's blood off the Italian ceramic tile floors that really made the entryway pop. He loved those tiles; he was Italian himself and deeply appreciated Italian artistry.

The entryway was palatial, as was the house. Very impressive. Charlie did very well for himself and wanted everyone to know it. 

He sat back on his heels to catch his breath and said aloud "For Christ sake, they made it look so easy on the Sopranos." Apparently, like everything else in life no matter how insignificant, there was a right way and a wrong way to go about it. But he decided to cut himself some slack, rationalizing that it was the first murder he had ever committed.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had not locked the front door. Big mistake, his drinking buddies were liable to drop in uninvited, as they often did. This was always a source of disagreement between Charlie and his wife Sandra. "Can't we enjoy some privacy?" she would exasperatedly ask in the kitchen out of earshot. "I want to watch Pretty Woman" (for the 38th time, Charlie thought). "I want some time alone with you" (God forbid, Charlie thought).

He always promised that his friends would be gone after a couple of drinks, but a couple of drinks always turned into a couple of bottles. Sandra spent a lot of time upstairs alone.

Charlie stood up, walked carefully around the crime scene and slid the dead bolt into place.

It wasn't that Charlie hated his wife. She was all right, definitely not high maintenance. Reasonably attractive, especially considering the fact that Charlie had a beer gut, love handles and a general appearance of decay about him. No, he didn't hate her. He was just bored with marriage. Bored with oversight, answering questions, defending bad decisions, justifying his friends.

So when Sandra walked in after a lunch date with Midge at Alberto's Ristorante, Charlie was there to greet her with a shovel to the head. Then he strangled her. Without malice, only boredom. 

He dragged her body to the fire place, which was massive. Beautiful stone work and, of course, a gorgeous hearth graced with Italian ceramic tiles.

Then he went about cleaning up the entryway, which took about an hour and a half. Charlie was pretty tired when he finished up, and definitely needed a drink and some steak.

He grabbed a bottle of McCallan 18, filled a tumbler with ice, filled a plate with raw steak tips, grabbed a long-handled barbecue fork and walked to the fireplace. He placed everything on the table next to his oversized recliner, and doused Sandra's body with lighter fluid. Lots of lighter fluid.

Charlie settled into the recliner, poured a healthy splash of McCallan's, speared a fat steak tip on the fork and held it over the fire.

He laughed. Sandra was never much of a cook but she would make one hell of a rotisserie.