Mulch by Ann Ripley Page B

if she had been a magnet, and had been held ever since. Translucent sort of beauty. That charm that only European women possess. Small, lithe, very sexual. And with the ability to love him like his current wife or his ex-wives had never done.
    Her name was Kristina.
    They met next for lunch at Le Steak in Georgetown. Then he had taken her to his place on Q Street. They had tea in the tiny garden. The acrid smell of the boxwoods hung in the damp air and somehow turned them on. They did their mating dance while sitting on French wire garden chairs. She was witty without once talking about Washington politics. They had a proper conversation but smiled conspiratorial smiles, knowing what they would do next and relishing it. Finally they looked at each other and decided the preliminaries were over. They took the tea tray into the kitchen—she carried it, and he put his hand on her silk ass—then rushed to the bedroom and fell at each other.
    Two hours later the sheets were sweaty with their lovemaking, and they were fully acquainted. Comfortable with each other. After that, they met weekly and spent long hours in that bedroom, sometimes going out later to eat, sometimes just eating in.
    That had been spring. Now it was fall. A seven-month affair: a little shorter than his average. The bitter, unexpectedcold of early November had hardened the ground just as fast as it had hardened his heart.
    Kristina had cried too much when he told her they had to break it up. He could tell there would be trouble. At first he had been moved. Did this one really love him? For a fleeting second he considered another divorce, then a marriage to this continental, warmhearted woman. But a second terrible picture flashed across his mind: another bitter, rejected wife to get rid of. An open scandal the press would devour. His nomination down the tubes. No thanks. No woman was worth that.
    It was then he realized how unhandy it was to have acquired a lover who lived in the same neighborhood. What if, in one of her hysterical moods, Kristina let something slip? She had seemed like the perfect woman. But even she must have woman’s mischief in her; what if she decided to squeal to his wife?
    He knew that Paschen, an arrogant, hypocritical bastard who probably ran around on his own wife, would leave Peter no room for error.
    Now he stood in Kristina’s living room. He had been here only once before, on that first night they met. Dangerous to be here but necessary. Just two blocks from his own house—perilously close. But it couldn’t be done at his place in Georgetown; the noise of a saw would carry through the walls of the row house.
    He had it all planned. He had even practiced in his workshop. He had to do it right.
    She was to leave tomorrow for one of her foreign buying trips. Gone for two months. Once he had resolved to do this, he had acquired a detailed knowledge of both her business andher personal habits. It had been pathetically easy; Kristina construed it only as an intensification of his love for her. It had been just as easy to acquire samples of her handwriting. He’d write to the few people in the States who would miss her, regarding her plan to live abroad. At the proper time, his Hong Kong connection would send the letters.
    A more sophisticated letter would go to her company, severing her relationship with them—a move that she had been contemplating anyway, and that the company knew about. Mail would be forwarded to his Hong Kong source, and then back to him in the States.
    No one would miss her for quite a while.
    And then the messy part. He thought nostalgically of the ease with which he had disposed of bodies in the jungles of Vietnam. A quick shot or knife thrust, and kick the body into the underbrush, where the animals and insects would take care of it within hours.
    Here, he would have to use her laundry room. A bloody mess but no way around it. Store—in her freezer—the parts that could be identified. Deep-six them later