Willy looked ill at ease at the far end of the
dark wooden bar at the Silver Dollar and kept looking at his watch. Minutes
ticked by as slow as molasses. His nerves made him jumpy. Four minutes to nine,
the twenty-seven-year-old put down the rest of his lukewarm beer in one gulp
and took off into the night.
Heavy fog hung inches
from the ground on the moonless night making it difficult to see more than a
few feet ahead. “Shit!” he cried, barely missing a large raccoon crossing the
road. He opened the window and shivered.
I should have never left her alone, he thought, biting hard on his
lip. I should have been more of a man and
insisted on waiting outside in case things turned ugly.
He imagined Peter screaming at
her or worse yet, reacted violently at being exposed. His foot pressed harder
on the gas pedal.
“Damn it!” He pounded
his fist on the steering wheel. He would confront Peter. After all, Victoire
agreed to marry him as soon as the divorce came through. She even hinted about
starting a family.
He almost missed the turn off to the Prentice house. He hit
the brakes, put the car in reverse and made a sharp left turn towards the
jagged coast. When their parked
cars became visible, Willy swerved to one side and immediately switched off the
lights. He put on his parka and stepped into the dark.
The entire coast was
socked in. Aside from the occasional distant foghorn, an eerie silence
enveloped the night. Willy heard no voices, no screams. His eyes adjusted to
the surrounding darkness, and he listened for a while longer before making his
way around to the back.
Shadows leapt up when
the winds blew and startled him. Willy nearly lost his footing on a bush and
fell against the side of the house with a thud. “Shit!” He hunkered down for a
few minutes before continuing. Sweat trickled down his back.
Suddenly, the thought of facing Prentice unnerved
him. Not only was Peter one of the top men in the industry he was still
Victoire’s husband. He was wealthy, very well connected and powerful, very
powerful. Willy groaned but carried onward, grinding his teeth.
# # # #
A lonely hurricane lamp
shone on the deck table like a warning beacon. Peter watched as Victoire
suddenly got up and walked outside towards the light with the unearthly gait of
a sleepwalker.
But Victoire was
anything but asleep. Time was running out. She knew Willy would turn up soon
and didn’t want him to stumble into any unfinished business. She had to get
Peter onto the deck while he was in shock and still malleable.
“Victoire?” Peter’s voice
grew closer. She hurried to the edge then turned around. She looked like a
ghost against the moonless background. Waves slapped hard against the rocks
below. Cypresses creaked and swayed like hunched giants heightening the
surrealism.
“Peter we’re ruined,”
she cried. “There’s nothing left.” She turned away from him and gripped onto
the railing.
“Victoire, no, don’t
say that,” he countered, taking her by the arm. She was shaking.
“If I’d been a better wife, if I’d paid more
attention, you would have been happier,” she replied with sorrow. “I caused
this, I must have-Oh God help us!”
Her young face looked
so stricken, her tone so bittersweet, so wrenchingly convincing. Peter
instantly made his decision. He was
ruined, and there was no possible way out for him.
“Victoire, I caused
this. Do you understand?” He grabbed her forcefully by the shoulders. Her eyes
widened. “I’m to blame, no one else.”
She placed her cold
palms against chest. “Oh, Peter I want to get through this awful nightmare, but
how?” she pleaded. “Help me!”
The wild pounding of
his heart became deafening, He gave her a quick last kiss, grabbed the railing
and threw one leg over it. Victoire took a step back. Peter put the other leg
over and said, “I didn’t kill the man, tell them. Do it for me!” The narrow
edge was slippery. Peter looked down at the raging surf below frozen with
terror. The cliff side glistened under the spotlights. He let go of one hand
and was about to let go of the other when Willy came running towards them from
the side of the house and screamed her name.
She spun around,
startled. “Willy?!”
“Waites?” Peter cried out at the same
time.
The face of the cliff
appeared smoky under the glare of the lights.
Victoire spun back
around to face Peter and caught the penny drop in his red-rimmed eyes. Before
Willy ruined her perfect plan, she hurled herself towards Peter screaming
hysterically at the top of her lungs. Peter not only jumped out of skin, he
accidentally let go of the railing and dropped from sight.
His wife watched in morbid fascination as Peter’s
body ricocheted off the side of the cliff and became impaled on a sharp boulder
below.
Then she covered her
eyes and shrieked, “Peter, no!!!”
Willy looked over the edge and saw waves wash
over Prentice’s broken body. The tip of the sharp rock protruded from his
bloody abdomen.
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