I Know What You Did, But I Got You

Jenna closed her eyes, inhaling the steam from coffee she had made for herself in the hotel room’s kitchenette. The early morning air of late winter calmed her senses when a light gust of dumpster smell reached her second-floor balcony and brought her back to reality. She lit her cigarette, exhaling in contemplation, calm before the storm of the busy day ahead.

“I’m widowed,” she said aloud to herself, “Holy crap! I’m a widow.”

Geez, try not to sound so happy about it, she chastised herself.

Jenna’s husband died of a heart attack late afternoon the previous day, Valentine’s Day, right after the Daytona 500 race had ended. He went to relieve himself after the race and did an “Elvis Impersonation” right on her upstairs bathroom floor, face down, sweatpants around his ankles, puke and feces splattered everywhere. A hazmat team was required to remove Frank’s body to the morgue in the basement of the only funeral home in their town. The coroner had waited at her house with Trooper Demko for Serv-Pro to arrive while the other State Trooper, Tasha Bryant, had followed Jenna to the hotel.

She snubbed out her smoke and almost lit another but decided that she’d better get started on the long day ahead. It was early yet; dawn was just beginning to stain the horizon pink. Jenna went back into her hotel room. She pulled out her shampoo and body wash, toothbrush and paste. Her hand also found a little bottle wrapped and rolled in a plastic bag. The Bottle.

Jenna needed to get rid of the little jar from the insecticide she had added to her husband’s chili the previous day. She believed she had cleaned up any evidence in her kitchen of the ruse to gain her freedom, by dosing her husband’s chili with Black Leaf, a forty-percent nicotine pesticide that had been taken off the market decades earlier. She had come across it in a garage at an estate sale, dusty and forgotten in a box of miscellaneous junk. She hid it for over a year.

Jenna was disappointed with the low-pressure shower in her hotel room, but it felt good to be clean. Someone from an unknown number had called her cell phone while she was in the shower and had left a message. She figured the message was from either law enforcement or the Serv-Pro team.

She decided to call her daughter first. Geena lived a few hours away in Pittsburgh and would be getting home from her night shift about then. She was an “artist” but supported herself cooking (and dishwashing) at an all-night diner near the bus station. She picked up on the second ring.

“Hi sweety!” Jenna heard herself sounding way too cheerful.

“What’s wrong?” Geena could not help but notice the odd timing of the call. Her mom usually waited until noon to phone her a couple times a month to stay in touch. Evey once in a blue moon, Geena would reach out to her mom as well.

“Frank had a heart attack and died last night.”

“What? Are you okay? I can be home around noon, but I should take a nap first, before driving all that way.” Her concern was genuine.

“I’m fine, sweetie, I’m not at the house, though. Serv-Pro had to come to the house for a hazmat clean up before they could even remove Frank’s body to the morgue at the funeral home.”

“Hazmat? What the hell happened? I thought you said he had had a heart attack?”

“Frank was sitting on the toilet going ‘number two’ when it happened. It ended up being a big stinking mess.”

“Wow!” Geena exclaimed, “so, now what?”

“I think they already called me when I was in the shower. I called you before checking my messages.”

“You left the cops alone at the house?” Geena couldn’t believe what she was hearing, as her mother had always distrusted the local constabulary for reasons Jenna had never quite shared with her daughter.

“Yeah, I did. I tidied up first,” Jenna said with a laugh.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound…”

“Happy he’s dead? I’m happy he’s gone if that means anything. I feel reborn.”

“Well don’t go telling the cops that, or they will think you had something to do with it.”

“I’m not worried. Frank was a fat, heavy smoker that never went to the doctor. Not worried one bit. Anyway, I will call you later and keep you posted. For now, just get some sleep and don’t worry about coming home today. I’m fine. Do you still have Wednesdays and Thursdays off? Come home then. Bring your dog this time.” Frank had hated Geena’s dog Luna, a black lab shepherd mix who despised him as well. She would leave the dog with friends on the rare occasions she came home. Jenna wondered if she would see her daughter more often now that Frank was gone.

“Bring your laundry, too!”

“Geez, Mom! Ya better start acting like a grieving widow for your own good!” Geena laughed, but she understood. Her mother had been trapped in a bad relationship with Frank for too many years, trapped financially. Single since Geena was a baby, Jenna owned the house, bought it when she was in Middle School.

Frank had moved in a couple years after Geena graduated high school and left for art school a few hours away in Pittsburgh. After only one semester, she decided she liked the “Art Scene” more than art school and did not go back to her semi-rural western Pennsylvania home.

“Podunk, Pennsyltucky,” she would tell people, if asked where she came from, though it had been years since anyone had asked. She was a fully assimilated Yinzer.

Thanksgiving Day, ten or so years earlier, Geena had made it home for the holiday when her mom had wanted to introduce her to the “new boyfriend”. She arrived and discovered Frank had already moved into the house. He was fat and slobby, feet propped on the coffee table in the living room watching TV. He couldn’t even be bothered to get up off the couch to meet her when she arrived!

Mom looked so happy, so glowing, she had thought at the time and was happy for her. Then COVID happened and it would be months before going home and seeing her mother again. Even though they had frequently spoken on the phone during those times, Geena never imagined her mom was so unhappy. Not until the day she finally made it home and discovered the life sucked out of her mother.

The COVID pandemic had been hard on Jenna. She managed to avoid getting infected with the virus, even though Frank had contracted it by being careless and not washing his hands, Geena surmised. He had refused to go to the hospital, so Jenna had sequestered and quarantined her husband to the second floor of her home and managed to nurse him back to health without letting herself get infected.

Jenna had assured her daughter everything was “Okay”, that she was just exhausted from being cooped up with Frank all those months. She even laughed at being called back to work at the plastic container factory, happy so she could finally go to work and relax!

A twinge of guilt surfaced as Geena regretted the visits to home had gotten sporadic after that. Two years ago, she had brought her recently adopted dog home for a visit which had ended up being a big mistake, as the dog instantly disliked her mom’s husband. Frank, always the Know-It-All windbag, had decided to give Luna some “training” by poking the dog in the face to make her submissive, and got himself bit. Geena jumped up to intervene before Frank had a chance to chastise the dog for biting him, and knocked him right on his butt, raised fist still in the air. He then stomped up the stairs, keeping himself out of sight for the rest of her visit.

As soon as Frank was out of sight and out of mind, a change came over her mother like the sun emerging from clouds. It was as if the altercation between her husband and the dog had never happened. It was as if Frank had never existed, Geena had thought then. Just a mother and her adult daughter and the grand-dog hanging out. The three of them even went for a walk around the old neighborhood.

“I wonder if she killed him,” Geena said aloud. Luna perked up her ears and walked over to her, cocking her head to one side. “Well, if she did, I hope she gets away with it because that dude was a serious asshole. C’mon, girl, let’s go to bed.”

#

The message left for Jenna’s cell phone was from a tired-sounding employee from Serv-Pro who informed her they had finished the cleanup, it should be okay to go back to her house, but they had left some fans running. They would be back at the house at nine to pick everything up. They had left some papers for her to sign, too.

“Awesome!” Jenna retrieved her toiletries from the bathroom, tossing them into her duffle bag then stuffed her wad of dirty clothes from the previous day into the duffle next. Remembering too late she needed to dispose of the bottle from the pesticide she had poisoned her husband with, it was now buried in the bottom of her bag. She was about to pull everything back out when her phone rang. It was a somebody from the State Police barracks, who explained that the troopers who took her call would be stopping by at the beginning of their shift to return her spare house keys.

“That’s fine. I’m headed home now,” she said, “the hazmat team left me a message this morning they were coming at nine to pick up their fans.”

Jenna grabbed her overnight bag and left the room.

#

Geena awoke with a start after only two hours of sleep. She decided that if she could get her shifts covered, she should probably make the trip home to be with her mom.

“Hey it’s Geena.” The voice on the phone was one of the waiters. “Is the boss around?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, putting her on hold. In less than a minute Jimmy picked up the line. Geena had been cooking nights at his overnight diner a few years. The tall black man with ageless skin and a baritone voice was probably old enough to retire, but never would. He had lived in Pittsburgh his whole life, the last thirty years an owner/operator of the little diner near the bus station. It’s neon sign simply said, “Diner”.

“My mom’s husband died last night,” she began. She never had considered Frank any kind of stepdad. “Would it be possible to get a couple nights off so I can drive home and be with her?”

“Sure thing. How bout you take the week off, and I’ll see ya next Monday.”

“Um, okay, but—”

“No buts about it. You’ve earned it. You’ve been with me over four years now, and you only called off one night the whole time until now. I got your back, hun, go be with your mama.”

“Okay, thanks, Jimmy. I owe you one.”

It was almost noon when Geena finally pulled into her mother’s driveway. Jenna stepped out on her porch waving.

“You came!” her mom exclaimed, “Oh, thank you so much for coming. Hi Luna!” Geena’s dog was bouncing in tight circles like a bronco, what she did instead of jumping on people in excitement. “C’mon, let’s go in the house.” She grabbed her daughter’s big laundry bag, then the trio went into the house.

The house smelled artificially “fresh” like the place had been bathed in Febreeze. Jenna put some coffee on to brew while she relayed the events of the previous night.

“Wow, Mom! So, Frank’s body is at the morgue now?”

“He’s at the funeral home waiting to be cremated. I need to find his life insurance papers so I can get everything started with them. Are you hungry? I made some of my Prize-Winning Chili and I was just going to have some for lunch when I saw you pull in.”

“Yes!” Geena loved her mom’s chili. “Wait, it’s okay to eat, right? Didn’t Frank get sick after eating the chili yesterday?”

“Frank had a heart attack,” she said, “because he was a slobby, heavy-smoking obese man that never went to the doctor. Anyway, I had made him his own separate batch because he doesn’t like his sweet and with corn.”

Jenna pulled her big sauce pot from the fridge, took two bowls out and filled them before popping them into her microwave. This finished out the batch, so she put the pan in the sink and filled it with soapy water.

“The cops are coming here in a few hours to return my spare keys. I should make a crumb cake.” Jenna began rooting around in her pan cupboard.

“Mom! Stop!”

“What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“Mom,” she began gently, “I appreciate that Frank had worn out his welcome here a long time ago, and there was really no way to make him leave other than selling the house and handing him a bunch of money at the divorce. And boy, this solves your dilemma, don’t it?”

“I suppose it does,” she said with a sigh, “yeah, I guess I’d better tone it down to, at the very least, a ‘neutral affect’. If They think you’re guilty of something, there really isn’t a right way to act that’s not suspicious.”

That was true, Geena thought, she had been watching True Crime shows, too.

“Well don’t give them a reason to be suspicious by acting like you won the lottery or something.”

“I’m pretty sure Frank named his daughter beneficiary on his life insurance. It was like that last time I snooped through his stuff. I’m not sure what he’s got since retiring. I should probably get upstairs and start going through his papers. The death certificate and other papers I will be able to pick up at the funeral home.”

“I’ll get my laundry started. By the way, I don’t have to be back until Monday night.”

“I’m so happy you came. I didn’t want to be a bother.” She hugged her daughter for a long moment.

“Geez, Mom! Your husband just died. It’s not a bother.”

Jenna headed up the stairs as Geena began sorting her laundry. She saw her mom’s duffel bag in the corner, a wad of clothes spilling out the top and decided to add her clothes to make a full load. She noticed her mom’s shampoo and other bathroom stuff rolling around the bottom of the bag, and something wrapped up in a plastic shopping bag.

“What the heck?” Geena carefully unrolled the plastic bag around the empty little pesticide bottle. She wrapped it back up and stuck it in her pocket. She threw her mom’s duffel back into the corner, then started the washer.

By the time Jenna came back down the stairs with a small stack of papers in her hand, Geena had fallen asleep on the couch, Law and Order playing on the TV. She awoke to the sound of her mother rummaging around and cursing in the laundry room.

“Looking for this?” Geena interrupted the frantic search, holding up the wrapped bottle for her mom to see.

Jenna opened her mouth to say something, but Geena held her hand up to silence her.

“Don’t say anything about it. Don’t say a fucking thing to me about it. Let me get rid of this for you. Don’t worry, I got you”

Tears welled up and Jenna began to cry, which became a sobbing release of emotion Geena had never seen from her mom. She drew her into a hug, patting her mom’s back, telling her not to worry, things will get better now. Everything will be okay.

They locked eyes hearing the cop knocks on the front door. The troopers from the night before were back to return Jenna’s spare house keys. Geena was satisfied that her mother finally looked a mess enough to pass as a grieving widow.