It was a perfect crime,

with the perfect weapon, a massive icicle, which wouldn't exist if he'd taken care of the roof properly. "A carpenter's house is always in ruins," they say. That kitchen remodel was never gonna happen and it had taken subterfuge and bribery just to get him to patch his own leaky roof.

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He left in the morning for another repair job at the widow Vicky's and unexpectedly came home at noon, smelling of her disgusting Estee Lauder perfume. None of the neighbors were around at noon; everyone else worked; and it was unpremeditated, more or less. The smell of that nasty perfume got to her. He'd parked inside the garage. That massive icicle fell at her feet like a sign from heaven, missing her head by a mere half inch, so she walked into the garage with it to show him, but he not only reeked of Vicky's perfume, he had his shirt buttoned wrong. The bastard. She gored him with that icicle right there in the garage, then pushed him into the bed of the truck and waited.

By five o'clock it was dark out this time of year. She drove him to the wrong side of the tracks, that part of town where people always needed home repairs but didn't have money to pay for them. She parked his truck in the alley behind some derelict house and walked home in the dark, dressed in his spare coat, hat and gloves. She was almost as tall as him and a good ten pounds heavier.

"My husband hasn't come home," he reported to the police at 10 p.m. "He's always home for dinner at six. He don't always call to say he's running late on a job if he can't find a phone, but he does come home at night."

In the morning he was found with multiple stab wounds and no witnesses, no murder weapon.

The widow Vicky said she had seen him that day but he'd gone home for lunch and never come back. Yes, she was sure of it. He'd rather eat his wife's leftover cabbage borscht than the tuna casserole Vicky was serving.

The coroner had examined the contents of his stomach, a routine part of any autopsy, and sure enough the cabbage borscht was there, and not the least bit digested, but freshly consumed. This, after she said her husband never came home for lunch that day. Why had she said that? Why? Because he didn't' usually come for lunch. that's why.

"No, I ain't seen since he left this morning," she'd told the police when she reported him missing.

The perfect crime.

If only she'd kept her big mouth shut.

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Day 490: 5 Minute Freewrite: Friday - Prompt: cabbage borscht

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