Delivery for Diane Kelly

This is Fiction

If he knew that I knew, he’d probably kill me or have me killed. I knew that. I wasn’t an idiot. Not when it came to matters of life and death anyway. That’s not to say I knew all about Nicky’s work and what he got up to… I didn’t. But, when the police came to see me and they placed me in that difficult position, frankly…
Look, I’m still there and I don’t know what to do, how the hell to handle any of it.
Nicholas drove a truck. I suspected it was a delivery for a major chain of supermarkets. When we were first married, I thought maybe it was a major bakery chain because one of his vehicles had the logo of a rising dough. Like a popular one. God, it was so long ago I don’t remember who it was. It’s not something we discussed. He put food on the table for me and the kids and the bills were paid. The school fees were taken care of and I had a new car every three years (which he always drove to work… But still).

I mean, that’s all that ever really mattered to me. What did I know?
He never allowed me to get a job or contribute in any way to the household expenses. I had one task, make sure there was a meal on the table for him when he got home. I knew he would be heading home by two rings on the home phone. That was my signal to get cooking. Every week he gave me an allowance and that was it. No access to the financials, the bank statements, the bills, the mortgage… Nothing.
I mean, I didn’t complain.

Look at me, I’m a little old lady who grew up under the old ways. My mother was a housewife and hers before her and so on and so on. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary for me, you know?
One day, the phone rings in the middle of the day.
The kids are grown by this stage, I should add. Timothy is off to college, he’s interstate. Stacey is an apprentice hair stylist and Nicky junior works for the auto mechanic over at Century. Nicholas got him the job straight out of high school. Said he knew a guy who knew a guy, it was very lovely. He seems happy.
So, where was I?
Oh yeah, I’m an empty nester. The gardening show starts up on cable and I never miss it but I’m running late on this day, trying to get the washing done and the loose meat cooked before five when I assume that Nicky will be giving me the two rings on the landline. But the phone rings and I ignore it because, the phone never rings. Obviously it’s a wrong number.

But then it rings again. I stop what I’m doing and I walk over and pick it up and I ask who it is. It could have been the Ashcroft’s over on East Street but Betsy usually called on the weekends if she ever tried to line up a game of tennis. It could have been my sister, but our mother had passed five years earlier and she never really had a reason to call these days.
“Mrs. Kelly, this is David Wainwright down at the Sunny Oak Post Office, we have a package addressed to you that has been in our care for over six months now. Would you care to come down and pick it up?”
Yeah, of course I was skeptical because this man, who claims he was from the post office, he tells me nothing over the phone. Won’t tell me who it’s from, won’t open it, won’t tell me how big it is, how little. It could’ve been anything! Now on this particular Tuesday, and I remembered that it was a Tuesday (how could I ever forget), Nicky junior had left his car in the yard and the keys on our rack near the front door. It was the only car I had access to, as Nicholas always took his into the depot to grab a truck for his shift.

Nicky junior, I know, was planning on staying out late after work to have a few drinks with his colleagues. So if I was going to go out and find out what all the hype was about on this package, his car was my only hope. I took it slow as I ran the hatchback into town. I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. I don’t know why I was so afraid. It wasn’t normal for me to venture out without telling Nicholas, but I just wanted to know what was in the package. I figured I could make it back in time to get the meal prepared.
Little did I know.
As I approached the counter and was given the large pizza-sized box, it felt heavy and it was addressed to me, alright. But it was too large and bulky to open right there at the post office, I needed to take it back to the car. So I walk this enormous thing that is as wide as the doorway out of the post office and all the way back to Nicky junior’s car in the parking lot when two men in suits are standing either side of it.

One of them opens up his wallet with a flip down of his wrist to show me the gold badge inside.
“Have I done something wrong?” I ask them.
“We hope not, we just want to ask you a few questions,” they say.
“Questions about what?”
“Your husband.”
Not long after, the penny dropped.

They explained that the package was this elaborate ploy to get me out of the house and in an isolated location. I was saddened to hear that. I was hoping it may have been an inheritance, left over from my mother’s estate. Like a secret that lay quiet all of these years that not even my sister knew about. Something that Mom had left just for me. Something that would be my ticket out. We sat in Nicky Junior’s car after. They sat in the back and I sat in the front, gripping the wheel and looking out at the parking lot trash can with the overflowing box of my package that wasn’t anything.
“Diane, we have no easy way of telling you this,” they said. “Your husband is an assassin for the Protrudo crime family.”

You know that feeling when the muscles in your neck go limp. All of a sudden I couldn’t hold my face up and I felt it sling forward and smack into the steering wheel. It was like when the neighbourhood kids told you the truth about Santa Clause, or the Easter Bunny. You always had your suspicions but it’s not until someone says it out loud that it all becomes clear.
“No, you’re wrong… You’ve got me confused with someone else,” I say. I genuinely believed that too. It was too raw to hear. It was against everything I knew to be true.
“I know this is difficult for you, but it’s true. We have evidence to suggest that he is involved in as many as thirty-three murders over a fifteen-year period and we are on the edge of cracking his involvement in seven other cold cases,” they say to me.
I didn’t realize I was a blubbering mess when I spoke back to them. They needed me to repeat myself over and over. Eventually, they understood.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we need your help, we need you to get his confession on tape so that we can prosecute him and give closure to these families,” they say.
Simple as that.
I just talk to my husband about his work. Something that I never, ever do, and then get him to confess to killing these people and, as a bonus, tell me where the bodies are.

The police were installing a listening device while I was out getting the package, so they told me. All I had to do was fulfill the bargain, Nicholas would be put away and we could be rewarded with a witness protection placement.
That was three days ago and I still haven’t had the conversation.
Last night he was laying down next to me and I couldn’t sleep and I just lay next to him and watched him. I watched his chest move up and down as he took in breath after breath and I wondered… How could you? You know? How could you Nicky? How could you take a life? I thought I knew you… I thought I knew who he was.

I knew it was late, but I went downstairs and fixed a drink and I pulled out all of our old wedding photos and the pictures from our wedding and the look on my face and my fathers’. He was so proud and then there were the albums of the kids and our vacations and the memories we all held and so what if he micromanaged me. So what if he never let me own a cellphone or apply for a bank card or join the parents’ group at the school. So what if he wasn’t around for the kids soccer or baseball or poetry readings or plays. He gave us more than we could ask for. He put clothes on our backs and food on our plates and heat through our vents and TV on our walls. He gave us everything we could ever as for and more and you know what? I didn’t believe it. That’s right, I didn’t believe it for an instant. I knew who my husband was. I wasn’t an idiot. I wouldn’t marry a killer. I knew who he was, I knew what I was getting into. These men were out there to scare me.

You know how I know? Because I wasn’t scared of him.

That’s right. Don’t you think I would be scared of someone who was accused of being a killer?

I found myself not believing what the cops were telling me. The more time that passed the more I thought it was bullshit. Then one day turned into three and here I am. Doing the housework, preparing his meals and watching my gardening shows. I don’t know when I’m supposed to have ‘the talk’. No one has made contact with me. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe it was a practical joke, like that old TV show from the eighties, you know? Smile! This is a prank, I think it was called. Or Smile, you’re on Candid Camera! That was it.

Maybe they weren’t even cops at all.

All was quiet… What was I supposed to be doing?

The phone rang at two PM. It was Mr. Wainwright down at the post office again. Another package has arrived with my name on it. This one is too big to be delivered to the house, he tells me.
I wonder what it could be.

If you’re into stories that twist your mind and leave you thinking long after the last line, grab my debut novel The Selwyn Formula,

or dive into volume one of my short story collection Reality Dispatch.