Weekend Freewrite -2/15/2020 - Single Prompt Option: Filthy Rich
Today's freewrites are a continuation of my response to the #wewrite by @owasco ...
The Big Loft Bulletin, and really, all of Lofton County's papers were glad to have a story big enough to snatch the news narrative back from the Lofton County Free Voice for the weekend, and the tragic death of Mr. Hugh Howard, one of Lofton County's few open billionaires, was sufficient pretense.
Mr. Howard had made his money in the dot-com boom and gotten out before things went bad, and then returned home to Lofton County.
But the big cities, and money, had brought out a side of him that had best been left buried … he had met a great number of folks who were into both veganism and conspiracy theories. He was already paranoid because of the money he had and how he had gotten it … the word was that he was truly “filthy rich,” and had developed his wealth more through dirty dealing than through ingenuity.
The combination of affairs had led to a striking change in his behavior – he had divorced his wife of 15 years, saying she was trying to kill him with her choice of diet. He also went through several cooks, and had fired them all and sought to ruin their reputation.
Then, some country girl had fallen in love with him … poor dear. She was known to make simple country food, and that was the attraction for him … he turned on the charm and lured her in and married her … and then abused and manipulated her into little more than his slave cook for another 10 years.
What irony – the man who had left his wife because he accused her of trying to kill him with her choice of diet had died of his second wife's cooking through overindulgence.
“Served him right!” was the opinion of many.
Nonetheless, the man Lofton County had on call for weekend suspicious deaths was too conscientious not to investigate.
“But if she was going to poison him, she could have done it as soon as he switched to this crazy diet he was on!” Lieutenant O'Reilly said to Captain Ironwood Hamilton of Tinyville, VA's tiny police force.
“True enough,” said the captain, “but any time $5 billion is involved, the matter deserves a second look.”
Photo by Tania Melnyczuk on Unsplash