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"Oh, Ernest!"

On Finding Silver Linings

By Patricia CoulterPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
1

Oh, Ernest!

Written by Patricia Coulter

“So, Mrs. Jordan, what information can you tell us about your husband’s business transactions? Any information you can give us will help us find out who killed him.” Detective MacFarlane leaned towards Amy. She took a big breath.

“I know, they say the wife always knows but in this case, all I knew was that something was wrong with Chris. Especially in the last few months...”

“What can you tell me about that.”

She wasn’t sure how much to reveal. “Well, one day, I came home from work early, we had a power outage in our office and so we were sent home early. I thought I would surprise Chris and we could take Emma to the park or walk over to our favourite coffee shop.” She could have added how they needed to be together, just the three of them and that she and Chris hadn’t had a quiet moment together in a long time. She wanted to surprise him, not give him a chance to make an excuse. Recently Chris had become a tightly wound spring ready to leap up out of one of Emma’s wind-up toys.

Amy could hear Emma crying as she got out of the car. At nine months old, teething might be giving her trouble. She listened for Christ’s voice but didn’t hear it. When she went into the living room, Emma was sitting the middle of her playpen, red-faced with tears rolling down her cheeks. She had obviously been crying for a while.

“There, there, pumpkin, you are ok” Lifting her warm little body up out of the playpen, she wiped Emma’s tears away. After a few shuddering breaths, she calmed down. Amy looked around for Chris but the house was strangely quiet. She carried Emma into their master bedroom where she placed Emma onto the bed while she changed out of her work clothes and into her t-shirt and yoga pants. 
 “Where can your Daddy be?” She said. After giving Emma a light lunch, she sat in the rocking chair, rocking her until she was asleep. Amy kept rocking and waiting. The house was very quiet. Where was Chris? Why was Emma left alone in the playpen? For so long? What was going on?

Eventually, Chris raced into the house with a story about how a person had fallen off a ladder and he was helping out and it took a while for the help to come. He just reacted. He knew Emma was safe in the playpen, he was only going to be a minute. Amy just stared at him.

“You really expect me to believe that?”

“I swear, babe, I was just helping out.”

When Chris’s office had downsized and he said he had chosen the option of working from home, it seemed a perfect solution. He could work from home and keep care of Emma. A double win.

“Leaving Emma alone,” she explained, to Detective Macfarlane ” that just wasn’t like him, at all. He had always been a very involved parent. Emma is...was his joy!”

“Did that happen often? Leaving her alone?”

This was the tricky part.

“Well, he assured me he never did.” Call me gullible, she thought to herself.

“What else?”

“My diamond earrings and ring went missing. I had worn them at a wedding the weekend before and when I went to get ready for my company’s Christmas party, both the ring and the earrings were gone. When I asked Chris about it, he said Mrs. Jenkins, our cleaning lady, must have taken it.”

That was another huge red flag waving in the air. Chris was so quick to suggest Mrs. Jenkins. Also, Amy hadn’t told Chris that Mrs. Jenkins had had to cancel that week because of her ill daughter. No one else had been in the house.

Both Detective McFarlane and Amy looked at the little black book on his desk. He touched the black rectangle gently with the edge of his pen, opening up the pages.

“We’re going through the computers and his phone. We recognize some of the names. There are many layers to all this. So what we can figure from this book of his, is he had a serious gambling problem. At the start of the book, the numbers are small but his last few entries,...well, it looks like he needed a big win.”

They both looked at the book, laying on the detective’s desk. It was a small Moleskine, black, simple with rounded corners. It was how Amy had met Chris. They had both been standing in line at a bookstore. Amy noticed the small black book in Chris’s hand.

“ Are you an Ernest Hemingway?” She’d asked, smiling.

“Sorry, “ the tall man beside her said. “You must have me mistaken with someone else.”

She laughed, “I meant you were like an Ernest Hemingway,” he still look puzzled,” who wrote his stories and ideas into Moleskine books. You really ought to try these bigger versions” she said. “I use mine for journaling. Sometimes drawing. I need a bigger version” and she held up the larger moleskin book she was buying.

Chris had laughed. “I don’t have such big ideas. I just need a small book I can keep with me all the time.”

Amy had agreed. “I know you can put everything on your cell phone but you can’t beat writing something down.”

Chris agreed. “And no one can trace it, either.”

By the time they reached the checkout, Amy had told him about other famous Moleskine users- Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Oscar Wilde, and Chris told her they needed to have coffee together.

Six months later, they walked out of city hall in a shower of confetti her parents and her sister threw upon them. Her parents had been surprisingly cool towards Chris.

”He puts on a big show. I hope he’s not all flash and dash!” Her father had said. Why couldn’t they enjoy his wide smile and outgoing personality?

“I love you, Ernest,” She had said to Chris.

“I love you, Hemingway” he would reply.

“We checked his last place of employment...” Detective Macfarlane continued. Amy was just going to say he was working from home. “And he was let go about three months ago. Too many irregularities in the accounts he was handling. The securities firm is doing their own investigation.”

Amy was stunned. To say he was working from home, Oh it was work all right, just not the legitimate kind. All the phone calls at odd hours, the conversations in the office behind closed doors, the sudden disappearances.

“Now, can you tell us what happened to his car? He has a one year old Lexus leased in his name but it seems to have disappeared. Unloaded it somewhere?”

Again, Amy felt sick, She wanted to sink down through the bottom of the chair. How could she have been so naive! He had said the car was at the mechanics for repairs. She had wondered why a brand new car needed such extensive repairs.

“Let’s talk about what was going on when you got home the day of the murder. Go over every detail you can think of. I know you have already given a statement but sometimes we remember things, even little things later, and that can help us out.”

“I got home at my usual time,” she began. She concentrated on breathing slowly and rhythmically like the instructor guided them in Yoga class. Big breath in, hold, big breath out. Chris was lying on the living room floor with a huge red, blood shape rapidly spreading on his chest. She remembers running to him.

Was she screaming? The police wouldn’t care if she was screaming or not.

“I ran over to him.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Nothing I could understand”, she said, “and then..he was gone.“ This was partially true. She had raced over to him, and he had gurgled out a word.

It sounded like goat. “Goat?” Amy had said, A slight negative shake of his head, then he tilted his head toward his coat laying on the sofa. 
 Oh, Coat, she said. She could hear the sirens getting closer and could see the flashing red and blue lights lighting up the walls. She grabbed Chris’s coat and turned back to cover him up with it. By his closed eyes and the faint trickle of blood out of his mouth, she knew he was dead. In the flurry of the police storming in, the strapping of Chris onto the gurney, etc. she was thankful for the warmth of the coat she had quickly slipped on. After giving her statement at the precinct, she had been driven to her parents home where they were waiting with Emma.

In the days following the murder, Amy was thankful for the coat. It was a black wool traditional pea coat. What she liked best was the smooth silky lining. She loved the looseness of it around her, the feel of Chris wrapping his arms around her. The Chris she loved, not this new version of the Chris she was just discovering.

Detective McFarlane said, “Forensics is still working on ... at your house. You are all right staying with your parents for a few more weeks?”

“Oh yes,“she said, She wanted to add they were only to glad to say “I told you so” but fortunately, they kept quiet. Their energies went to entertaining Emma.

“Is there anything else you want to add?” Detective said. They both looked at the black book, the typed statements, and then at each other. “All of this takes time. Please let me know if you think of anything else.”

Amy felt like a sleepwalker, as she left the precinct. How could she have been so blind? Colour me stupid, she thought ruefully. The sun was shining with the promise of brighter days ahead. She stopped in at a coffee shop. Cupping the warm cup in her hands, she wished she had one of her notebooks with her. There were so many things to think of. So many things to do. So many things to pay for. She hated the thought of having to move in with her parents. If only she had a bit of a financial cushion until she and Emma got back to something resembling normal.

Finishing her coffee, she slipped the coat back on. She noticed a tear in the lining underneath the armhole. Why did Chris tell her ‘coat” Was he just in shock and losing body heat?

Later that day, she sat in the living room looking out at the remnants of winter that covered the front lawn. She got out the sewing kit to repair the lining. One simple job. A start. One foot in front of the other and all that. She spread out the lining on her lap to get a better look at it. She saw a bit of green paper in between the lining and the outer layer. She turned the coat towards the sunlight. Looking in closer, she could see it was a hundred dollar bill. She reached in between the lining and the outer wool layer and started pulling it out. There was more and more bills. Amy began making piles on the coffee table. Finally, she sat back in the chair. $20,000.00 in bills. Looking out the wide living room window, she could see her parents pushing the stroller down the street as they made their way back from their walk. For the first time in a long time, she felt a smile spreading across her face.

“Oh Ernest, I love you!”

innocence
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About the Creator

Patricia Coulter

Is there anything better than a good read? A well crafted prose or poem touches our hearts, expands our minds, and teaches us something about the world and ourselves. I feel honoured to have this opportunity to share my work!

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