A Clean Kill

One

Everyone has a favorite place and a favorite time of day. For Madeleine Wilson, mornings in her private spa in the garden at the back of her town house were her salvation. Every day that she had to endure the pressure of living in New York with her famous husband, Wayne, and two hyperactive little boys, she spent the hours between eight and eleven in her private gym to get away from them.

At thirty-four, in the prime of her life, Maddy had never experienced violence in any form or wished real harm on anyone. All she wanted was the kind of peace and contentment that she felt working out in her spa. Never in a million years would she have believed that a bloody fight to the death would occur there, and that she would not emerge the victor.

Madeleine, known to everyone as Maddy, suspected that Wayne had built the gym for her as a salve to his guilty conscience for ignoring her exactly the same way he'd ignored his previous wife. The gym had a glass-roofed exercise and massage room, a hot tub, and a fabulous shower with a bunch of pulsing jets that could also be used as a steam room. She went there every morning, and often she slipped away there in the afternoon, too. The spa was her haven, the only really private place she had to indulge herself and soothe away the nagging irritations of a glamorous existence that had come with a very high emotional price tag.

On June 4 her morning started in the usual way, with a spike of rage. In his typical hurry, Wayne had inched out of their bed long before she'd begun to stir. Every morning she tried to be in sync with his demanding schedule, but every morning she woke with a jolt to realize he was already gone. Today, as usual, she reached for his spot to see if the sheets were still warm and she was disappointed that they were cool.

She felt logy, not quite herself, and was annoyed anew that her husband, a restaurateur of some renown, had the ability to slip in and out of the bed they shared without her being aware of it. He never woke her when he came home from work very late. But even on those rare occasions when they went to bed at the same time, he was never there when she awoke in the morning. This was a chronic hurt. So was the fact that he could eat and drink all night and still be up before Maddy, hungry for more, while she worked hard to avoid food and needed her full eight hours of sleep.

In the early days of their marriage, Maddy had considered his stealth in the bedroom a blessing. She'd thought it was nice of him not to bother her with the demands of his job—all that coming and going for the early staff meetings and the endless round of late-night parties. She hadn't wanted to give credence to the myriad bitter complaints of his first wife, Jenny. First wives were by definition evil hags. Jenny still harassed him, and often her, as well. It wasn't a pleasant situation. She used to think Jenny was just crazy, but now she was more sympathetic to her former rival. Wayne's bedroom stealth was just sneaking around, a trick he must have mastered with her, or even before, to confuse all his victims. Well, maybe that assessment was a little dramatic. She was hardly his victim.

Maddy had been twenty-seven when she'd met the handsome forty-two-year-old. They'd both been part of a daredevil trip in which a group of wealthy friends flew in small planes to a remote area way in Canada to ski fresh deep powder on a virgin slope. Like numerous women before her, Maddy had been attracted to him right away. She had appreciated his appetites, and she'd ended up pursuing him as much as he pursued her. At the time, he was backing out of a failed marriage, the father of two nice children, and she believed every word he said about Jenny's failures as a wife.

Maddy had been certain that she was a woman of the world, game for anything. She'd been a champion skier, after all. All legs and pretty enough to be a model. With her huge blue eyes and blond hair, she'd been photographed many times for ski magazines and had plenty of boyfriends in the sports crowd. Her past popularity and athletic prowess were painful to remember now because Wayne did not turn out to be interested in sports at all. He was just a very handsome foodie. Seven years ago she didn't even know what a foodie was. Now she was buried in the type—that special breed of human being who devoted his (or her) entire life to the art of the meal.

Never mind what meal, where or at what time of day it had been eaten, how, or what year. A foodie could spend hours discussing the merits and demerits of a meal consumed a decade ago in a country that had since been annihilated. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, even tea—it didn't matter. Al kinds of meals were worthy of lengthy savoring and even longer debate. It wouldn't affect Wayne's conversation one bit if the restaurant, or indeed the whole city, he might be praising had been totally destroyed by a war in which poison gas was used to exterminate half its citizens. Its demise wouldn't be the point. It wouldn't be mentioned. Events and the passage of time had no relevance whatsoever to the memory of an excellent meal.

When the two handsome people had met in a tiny plane in a very cold place where Maddy certainly felt very much at home, she had no way of knowing that history, even Wayne's own personal history, was significant to him only in the context of some dish or some ingredient of some dish. He remembered Jenny through the itinerary of their meals.

A gastronome had an encyclopedic mind in one area only, and that didn't even hint at the depth of knowledge about food possessed by a true foodie. Wayne was a true foodie. Other interests, like skiing or skydiving, this wife or that one, would come and go in his life, but food would always dominate. Maddy had learned that to her deep chagrin. For him every country had a terrain jnd a cuisine built on the ingredients cultivated there. Every cuisine had its history and its traditions, its utensils and vessels for presentation. He could write books. He did write books, or rather someone wrote them for him and let him take the credit.

And then, almost worse than foodies, Wayne's friends were winies, too. Or maybe winos was a more fitting description. When wine was added to the menu of foodie conversation, they talked all day and all night, as well. They knew which wine went best with each and every course, which slopes and caves in every country were best for the grapes, which years were the best vintages, and when every vintage should be drunk, as well as the perfect temperature to serve it. Not to mention the shape of glass required to give every wine the very best nose.

Maddy Angus Wilson was raised in Jackson, Wyoming, where she grew up on Cherry Coke, beef, antelope, venison, french fries, and not a lot else. They certainly didn't have mache lettuces, baby vegetables the size of an infant's pinkie, and free-range chickens in her family's kitchen. Maddy preferred a different kind of physical life. Her friends were skiers, skaters, sailors, golfers. They were not much in attendance at places where foie gras was served with kumquat coulis. Unfortunately, however, there were a great many women who shared Wayne's passions. Maddy had become an angry woman, but who could blame her, she asked herself. This wasn't what she'd signed on for.

At seven thirty she dragged herself out of bed and studied herself critically in the mirror. She was still beautiful, but for some reason not as sharp this morning as she should be. She washed her face, brushed her hair, dressed in sneakers and almost see-through pink leotards that showed off her magnificent figure. Then she hurried into the kitchen, where Wayne was already having breakfast with the boys. They were having a feast without her. Her exclusion from that special ritual hurt, too.

The presentation had included fresh homemade sausage patties.; whipped cream; a huge bowl of blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries; apricot preserves; three kinds of honey; thin, rolled pancakes filled with fresh raspberry jam that had been made only yesterday. Maddy had seen four jars of it cooling in the kitchen last night before she went to bed. Not much was left of the meal now, and Maddy's eyes widened with further distress to see that Remy, their supposed nanny, was sitting at her table with her one big and two little men, enjoying her share of the feast as if she, not Maddy, were the lady of the house.

"Remy made pancakes, Mommy. They're sooo yum." Bert was five and a half. Towheaded and smiley all over, he was a happy boy who looked just like her. At the moment, the bottom half of his face was smeared with bright red raspberry jam, and so were two of her favorite French blue toile napkins with the idyllic rustic scenes from the eighteenth century on them. Maddy's mouth tightened.

"Hi, Mommy," little Angus chirped from his special high chair. He was three and a half but still had a throne of his own, and he, too, was covered in red, likewise his napkin.

"Hi, sweetie," she cooed, then gave both boys careful kisses on the tops of their heads. She did not kiss Wayne, but he was busy with a sausage and didn't seem to notice.

"Hey, they're not just plain old pancakes, boys.

They're crepes. Didn't Remy do a great job?" Wayne said.

"Yea Remy," Angus said.

And that did it. Maddy wanted that woman out of her house. Out of her life. Today. She was gone, fired. Maddy didn't care that they had the special bond of growing up in Jackson, and both had escaped to the city for a better life. She didn't want Remy stealing her life. She picked up a jam-smeared napkin. "You ruined the napkins—" she snapped at the young woman.

Wayne jumped in before she could go any further. "Oh, don't be an old silly. Who cares about napkins when the meal is terrific? Come on, honey, try one of these patties. Oh, wait. I forgot, you don't eat before noon." He finished off the very last bite and dabbed at his lips.

Shit.

Maddy's blood boiled at the insult. He put her down and insulted her every chance he got, always looking like an angel with his bland expression.

An old silly?

Now she was a freak who didn't eat? Now she was old? Maddy flushed angrily, trying to hold her rage in check. "The boys are going to be late," she said coldly.

Remy checked her watch and jumped up. "Do you want me to get out the car, or wash the boys' faces?" She directed her question at Wayne, as if he was the one in charge of the troops.

Wayne knew what he wanted and tilted his head in the direction of the garage. "You go get the car. I'll take care of the boys."

But he disappeared instead. Maddy was the one to hoist her little Angus angel down from his chair and to take both boys to the downstairs bathroom, where she removed the kid-sized chef's aprons that had been protecting their clothes and got them washed up for play school. She gathered up their backpacks, walked them through the hall to the front door and out to the curb where she was more than a little surprised to see that Wayne was in the passenger seat of the Mercedes. He rolled the window down when she indicated she wanted to talk to him.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm taking them to their first day. Then Remy's driving me to work," he said.

"I thought you weren't going in until noon." Maddy frowned. He was wearing a polo shirt, no jacket. He never went to work that way, never took them to their first day of anything. She glanced at Remy, busy strapping the boys into the back seat. She didn't have to wonder what was up. She knew this was Remy's doing.

Then she saw Leah, the redheaded girl who hung around all the time, tagging along with Remy wherever she went. Leah often walked to play school with them. She clearly expected to do so today. Remy chose that moment to ignore her friend, and Leah had a spacey, left-out expression on her face. She stood there like a spurned lover, or a beaten dog that didn't know enough to get out of the way. In fact, she looked as hurt as Maddy felt herself. Comparing herself with the rejected friend, however, was too painful a thought for Maddy to linger over.

"Well? What's going on?" she demanded of her husband.

"I need to take care of something," Wayne told her, scratching his nose, which was always a clear sign of a lie.

"Well, I have to take care of something today, too," she replied. She leaned in and spoke softly in his ear so that he could not mistake her meaning or her intent. "I'm calling the agency for another girl. I've had it with Remy and all her little pals. Say good-bye, Wayne. She won't be with us tonight."

"We'll see," he replied genially. "We'll just see about that."