THE PERFECT CRIME

Chapter 4

ELEANOR RUSSEL ALWAYS wore elegant dresses. Ever since she started therapy with me, I hadn’t seen her in jeans before. I had intuited during our sessions that her choice of clothes was influenced by her wealthy husband.

She’d told me that she used to be a model—she even showed me some magazines that featured her. She was once a cover girl, she’d said, and it was through modeling that she met her current husband, Mr. Russell. She’d married him because of his money. She was explicit about it. She wasn’t fond of lying. If you asked me, I’d say she was too honest, which was good, because I could decipher her problem and provide solutions with her honest replies. At first, he was loving, kind, and sweet. He got her all the nice things, and she was happy.

But now she hated him with every fiber of her being. He’d turned into a compulsive freak. She loathed the way he was controlling her. She thought all that money could make her happy. She was naive then, but now she’d grown and knew better. She was tired of her marriage and wanted out. Her only way out was to kill him because he wouldn’t grant her the divorce. And that was why she’d started therapy with me—to rid herself of her murderous thoughts.

She stood behind my window, looking yearning into the busy streets. I wondered what she was staring at. Today, she was wearing a black dress with intricate lace embellishments and a pair of black stilettos. Her blonde hair wasn’t tied up and it flowed down her slender shoulders. The only pieces of jewelry that adorned her body were a Rolex watch and the vintage green wedding ring I had seen her wearing all the time.

“You know what I’m thinking about?” She said and swiftly turned away from my window.

“No,” I replied, although I had the slightest idea of what she was thinking about, which was poisoning her husband or suffocating him in his sleep.

She ambled toward me with grace and poise as though she was on a catwalk, her hair swaying wildly. “I want to run away from him.”

That was new. She’d never mentioned escaping from her marriage, and I was curious to know what shifted her mind from murder to escape. She’d always talked about the gruesome ways she would kill him and stage everything perfectly so the cops wouldn’t suspect it was her. I had told her it required a lot of planning and if she tripped, she was as good as going to prison for life for premeditated murder.

“Tell me more.”

I stood from the chair behind the desk and walked to the section of the office I used for sessions. She followed behind me, the usual click-clack of her stilettos echoing. We sat opposite each other on the leather sofa with cushion upholstery and she placed her Gucci purse—the latest on the seat, crossing her slender long legs.

“I was thinking about what you said the other time—I could wind up in jail if I kill him, so I thought of escaping.”

There was this lilt in her voice I hadn’t heard before. She mostly came to my office very down, her face pale, and her lips quivering all the time. She was always anxious, but not today. She looked different. She sounded different. Why wasn’t I happy that she was recovering?

“I’m glad you gave it a thought, but—” I swallowed up my words. My next clause would shatter her plans, but she’d have to hear it one way or the other. From what she’d said so far, Mr. Russell wasn’t only rich. He was powerful as well. He had a lot of connections. And based on everything I knew, I doubted she’d run away without him finding her.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I hated the sound of my voice. I should be happy my client was recovering from her murderous thoughts. I didn’t know why I wasn’t.