Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 2, April/May 1966

Double Damned by C. G. Cunningham

It seemed the best of all possible worlds... a beautiful mother-in-law and a heavily insured wife.

The sun reflected in shimmering ripples on the fiberglass windbreak beside the pool when Louise dived in. I would have been content to sit there and watch, slung in the comfort of the dacron hammock — enjoying the advantages of marrying the daughter of a rich woman, but Louise called to me.

“Come on lover... your mother-in-law might drown and need your strong arm for rescue.”

I snuggled deeper into the hammock. “Ha. You swim like you had scales.”

“But I don’t. Come feel.” She grinned and her slim body sliced the water as she started toward me. She tryed water as she cupped a handful of it and shoved it my way. The pool had been freshly filled and the water hit my chest in a frigid, splattering ball. She disappeared beneath the surface as I made a lunging dive into the pool.

I broke the surface trying to keep my teeth from chattering. She slid up out of the water beside me laughing. She rammed the blunt prow of her hand in my direction drenching my face with its miniature surf. Then with the grace of an eel she disappeared in a surface dive.

Watching her body move with the freedom of youth it was hard to believe that Louise was my mother-in-law, would be the grandmother of my children. Her figure was pert and firm and damned alluring. It often reminded me that I could have married Louise just as easily as Bet. And then I wouldn’t have had to wait for the money.

Her body brushed my legs under water. I could feel her hands sliding up my legs, using my body like a diver’s life line steering her toward the surface. She rose slowly, her hands gliding along my skin, groping toward the air, seemingly innocent. She surfaced her body tight against mine. She held the position, in full contact with my torso, while she made a show of working air into her lungs. Her back arched, pressing hard against me with each breath. She made it last until she laughed at my reaction and withdrew into the innocence and unassailable position of my wife’s mother. Somehow, the warm contacts — firm and soft — made it hard to believe we planned to kill her.

I let myself drift away, breaking the contact. Louise’s face was bland as she stared into my eyes. I stared back. Then I felt her leg moving over to touch mine. I spashed backward. Assured of her powers, she gave me a slow, sly smile.

“Someday,” I said, “I’m going to...”

“What?”

“Drown you.”

“Such a waste. And me in the full bloom of youth.”

“Ha. You’re a potential grandmother. A hard woman who harried one man already to his grave.”

She gave a low throaty chuckle. “But he died happy, lover.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She breast-stroked close to me and her toes started exploring my leg. It was an old game with her. She had been at it, with increasing boldness, since the day I had married Bet. But she played with her own special rules. Enticing and teasing without ever making it clear whether she was after an adventure or testing the fidelity of her daughter’s husband. There was always the air of combined threat and promise. So even when things proceeded too far, as they were this morning, I never made a counter-move. It made me feel a little silly.

I pulled myself backwards again and studied her face.

She grinned back at me, her face shining with water in the glare of the sun. “Go ahead. Drown me. Collect all that yummy insurance.”

I felt a sudden urge to do it. It would be so easy. Then it would be over with. But the feeling immediately gave way to a heavy emotional shock. Even it wasn’t one sided. It was a mixture, like my relation with Louise. I felt a heated desire, half sexual, to grab her and hold her lithe body, squiring and struggling, beneath the water until it stilled. It was what she deserved in a way; pay her back for the misery she had given me with her teasing. But the thought of it hurt. The pain of loss. Life would not be the same without Louise. And hovering over all of these feelings was fear, made worse by the realization that someday, somehow, I would actually do it.

Louise rolled over on her back and paddled gently toward me. Her smile was speculative. “Hmnnh. think. All that insurance. You and Bet could live here in solitude and comfort... hog heaven.”

Her description was apt. And Bet was the sow. She was everything Louise wasn’t. Louise was petite. Bet was huge. Even when I first met her she was exceptionally large. She had a heavy body, muscular and athletic, with huge firm breasts that could barely be contained in a swim suit. She had been a statuesque beauty in the classical style. Her life of indolence and steady drinking had changed her to a — the exact word was — pig. Her muscular thighs had degenerated to huge hams covered with rippling fat. Her torso looked like a chunk out of a redwood log with two waterfalls of flesh attached to the front. Her face resembled a doughy albino basset hound.

At first, I had been shocked when Bet suggested we get rid of Louise. It seemed strange. It was her own mother. Soon, however, I understood it. Louise was — and probably always had been — one of Bet’s major frustrations, a continuing, living example of what she was not.

I felt Louise’s leg drift over against mine. I rolled over and started a sloshy imitation of the Australian crawl. I had hoped it would change my train of thought, but it didn’t. As I plugged along I realized Bet had been thinking about it a long time. It started with the insurance.

When Bet had suggested the policies, Louise had laughingly declined. Bet stayed with it for several days. She harped on the unfairness of her grandfather’s will. It stated that the money stayed with the blood lines. Of course, Bet would continue to get her small income, but Louise’s income would go to her sister unless we had children at the time of her death. And since Bet and I had had no luck at having children, it would leave us in a bad spot if something happened.

Louise merely recommended we apply ourselves more assiduously in the bedroom. And then she had laughed, quite loud and quite long. She knew it was becoming increasingly hard for me to do. At least with Bet.

I had listened for several days to this running battle and then suggested, as a joke, “But what if something happens to you and Bet both... like getting hit by a truck on the freeway. It would leave me destitute.” I hadn’t even had time to laugh before a studious look had come into Louise’s eyes. To my everlasting surprise she liked the idea. The next morning they went down to start arranging for the policies. Louise even insisted — her idea of going along with the joke — that both sets of policies name me as the beneficiary.

Since then I hadn’t thought about the policies. Not until Bet started harping on me to help her kill Louise. “It’s our only sure way of getting hold of some money right now,” she had said. Churning through the pool, I couldn’t help wondering how long she had planned it. I hated myself for not realizing it when she started talking about the insurance. Maybe then I would have had the strength to stop it. Now I didn’t.

Blowing hard I gave up after seven laps just as Bet came out onto the pool deck. She was wearing a faded blue wrapper and carrying an extremely dark looking drink.

Louise broke off her laps several feet from me. “Where’s your suit?” she called. “Come on in, the water’s — you know how.”

Bet looked at her without a smile and settled herself into the hammock. I watched as the synthetic marvel strained nearly to the breaking point with her bulk.

She raised her heap up and looked at us. “Not for me. I’m saving myself for Mazatlan. Warm water. Sunshine. I’m going to have a real fling.” She gave me a jowly grin.

A real fling. A final one. Another of Bet’s ideas. She wanted to do it on the trip. There were too many complications and I was trying to talk her out of it. Better to do it in the United States, not Mexico. For one thing, I had my own plans for this trip. It was also going to be Bet’s last fling. When we came home I intended to do something about restoring her to her former glory, shape her up, physically and spiritually. Strangely, I also suspected that once Louise was gone Bet would regain some of her self-respect. Also I intended to relax myself. I had about had it. I only had one job, keeping some control over how much booze Bet put away. She needed it. Even though she was an experienced drinker, she didn’t know when to stop. Without external control she became a sloppy, obnoxious, vomiting drunk. Therapy for me and for her: let her. Maybe it would burn some of it out.

We spent the next week getting ready for the trip. When we were finally on the road, it was obvious that Bet had taken something of a head-start. She was a half-bottle gone. However, without any more fuel, she got groggy and slept all the way to Tijuana.

We dumped Bet in the room to sleep it out, Louise changed and we went to dinner. As we were led to our table, her small gloved hand slipped momentarily into mine and she gave me a glowing smile.

We joked and teased our way through the meal. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit it was pleasant. She wore a simple beige suit that didn’t hide all of her figure and a silly little matching hat on top of her dark brown hair. Her green eyes flashed with animation across the table from me. She was a stunning dinner companion.

Over coffee, she grew silent. “You look tired,” she said.

“Long drive.”

“Is that all? You have a hard life.”

I inclined my head toward our sumptious surroundings. “Not too hard.”

“You know what I mean. You deserve better.”

I forced a chuckle. “Maybe I’m getting what I earn.”

“That may be right...”

A group of mariachis moved near the table and I didn’t hear the finish of her sentence and, when they left, she didn’t bother to repeat it.

The next day, Bet got another jump on us and was in bed drunk-sick by noon. Louise and I went to the races where she demonstrated near clairvoyance by picking winners. We had dinner again in the same place, but the conversation remained bantering. A couple of times, though, I caught her watching me with a quietly speculative smile on her lips.

By getting up exceptionally early, we got Bet in the car before she could become incapacitated. We wound our way along the Mexican side of the border and turned south to Guaymas. Bet had dinner with us that night in a sodden and sullen mood. It was quite a contrast.

We left her sleeping off the evening potables the next morning and Louise and I went fishing. Louise was, as usual, superb. She fought a fish fully as big as she was to utter defeat. We returned to the hotel exhausted and sun-burned.

It was hardly the best shape for facing what I had to face — a cold sober Bet. She was waiting for me, grim-faced and predatory.

“How was the fishing?” she asked with a glint in her eye that I didn’t catch.

“Great. Louise hooked onto one big enough to eat her.”

“Did it?”

Then I understood the look in her eyes. I sat down and started taking off my shoes. “No, it didn’t.”

“But it could happen, couldn’t it?”

“I suppose it could.” I lay back on the bed and shut my eyes.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “This is a good place for it to happen.”

“No.”

“Why not? A fishing accident. She gets pulled over the side. Sharks. Or something.”

“Not in Mexico. It would be too messy. That many more people, authorities, checking into it.”

She eased her bulk onto the bed beside me. “What difference does that make. It could just happen. Take a couple of bottles, get the crew drunk, and push her over.”

“Bet, it isn’t that simple. She’s a strong swimmer. I’d have to hit her over the head or something. Then when we brought the body back how would we explain it?”

“She hits it on the side of the boat.”

“And what was I doing? Just watching? Why didn’t I get her out.”

“You didn’t see.”

“Come off it, Bet. It’s too messy. Why make things tough?”

She sat silent for several seconds. I could hear her steady breath and wished for the end to the episode. Finally she said, “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

I sat up and looked at her. She looked kind of pitiful, so gross and so alone.

I sighed. “Yes. Yes, I am. You’ve convinced me. It’s the best thing to do, so don’t start in on me again. But, not in Mexico. In my own way and in my own place.”

“You don’t act like...”

“I don’t have to like it do I?”

“I guess not. But, it’s got to be done,” she added with determination.

I nodded and went into the shower.

We all had dinner together. It was an amazing experience. Bet was in top form, joking and chiding her mother, very urbane and witty. Somehow, it was slightly heartless.

I felt better when I decided to leave Guaymas the next day. I had wanted to fish another day, but the thought of a sobered Bet who might go along and heave Louise overboard was more than I cared to face. Worse yet, a drunk Bet doing the heaving.

We got to Mazatlan late in the evening and I slept in the next morning. Both of the women were gone when I awoke. I found Bet well along in the bar. She said Louise had gone down to the beach. Only she said beesh. It reassured me. The pressure was off, at least for a while.

I had a surprisingly good lunch — my breakfast — in the dining room. It was an old and quaint hotel, one Louise had picked because she spent her honeymoon there. It had been modernized, but still had great charm. It also had the nicest beach on that part of the coast.

I set out for it hoping to find Louise. I did. In spades. She was wearing a bikini made of red material with large white polka-dots. On someone else, someone lacking the grace to wear it, it would have been vulgar. On Louise it was stunning.

We had a gay afternoon on the beach. Building sand castles, swimming. Her version of water games went further than usual.

When the sun lowered in the sky and the beach chilled, she led me by the hand back to the hotel. We found Bet snoring in the room and Louise led me on to hers.

When the door shut behind us she stepped into my arms with a throaty laugh. “Umnh. This feels good. I’m cold,” she said.

Her hand guided mine to the little string tie that held the top of the bikini on. I pulled it and she remained close to my body letting the pressure hold it up. Then she guided my hand to the other tie on the hip. When I pulled it she stepped back. The two wisps of cloth fell to the floor.

She raised up on her toes in front of me. “Not bad for a forty-four year old woman?” The corners of her lips turned into a smile.

I could hardly breathe and my reply came out a loud gulp.

She turned and walked away from me. Halfway to the bathroom she looked over her shoulder. “I thought you would like it,” she said. She made a long, noisy business of locking the bathroom door.

All I could think as I left her room was she deserved it. It would be a pleasure to kill her. The little bitch had it coming... and from me. I hoped I could make it slow.

I went into town and had a couple of drinks. Then I met this Texan. He managed to convince me it was a matter of national honor to show the Mexicans how to drink tequila. It seemed important to salvage someone’s honor that night.

Backscratchers he called them. A straight shot of tequila followed by a squirt from a wedge of lime and a lick of salt from the back of your hand. It also seemed the ideal kind of bottled courage I needed. Each shot added a fresh charge of determination. They burned going down — annealing the cherry-glow of indignation in me.

I had too many before I realized it was the wrong name. Back-breaker would be more like it. Or spirit breaker. My determination faded to nauseous mush. I put down two more quick ones to try and bring it back before the stuff exploded inside me. My back and my guts shattered to a writhing mass of slime-colored goo. I barely managed to get back to the hotel.

The next morning I was trying to negotiate a glass of warm milk into my stomach when Louise found me. She was wearing a bright red beach robe open in the front to show the matching bikini. It was still a powerful sight. Almost enough to make me forget my desire to kill her.

She sat down and smiled at me. “Mad?”

I shook my head. “Too sick.” Not exactly a lie.

“My fault?”

I wouldn’t give her the pleasure.

“No. Bet and I hung on a small one.”

She arched her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “Come on, lets go to the beach.”

I shook my head.

“Come on. I’ve got your suit. You can change in a cabana. I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”

“About yesterday?”

She nodded.

I fought — with success — against her obvious appeal. With a half-formed plan, I let myself be led out. She waved to Bet slumped on a stool in the bar as we went out.

She came out of the water and sat on the beach beside me after I had managed to fumble into my swim suit. She talked quietly for a long time. I guess I was too foggy to figure out exactly what she was saying. At least I was for several days. Then it was too late.

After a while, she got back in the water. She dove in with a flat racing dive through the surf and swam straight out. A long ways, maybe four hundred yards before she turned over on her back. I could barely see her bobbing with the ground swell. I waved and settled down to force my poisoned brain to think.

I never did hear what she called. I just heard her voice and looked out. She had raised her head out of the water and was calling. From the sound of her voice I knew she was in trouble.

I started swimming too soon. I should have waded as far as I could, but it seemed too slow. So I started swimming as fast as I could. By the time I got to her I was sick with fatigue and biting for air.

Her face was warped with pain and she was spitting water. She managed to croak, “Cramp...”

I got my hip under her and hooked an arm over her shoulder. For a while her head rode well out of the water, but I was too tired. I slowed and she kept pulling me under water. My arms ached and burned and my fingers felt so numb I could no longer tell whether I had a grip on her.

Finally, I had to stop. And I had to let go of her to get turned in the water. She went straight under. I grappled for her and pulled her up again and, in turn, submerged myself. Then I managed to hold us both up for a few quick breaths. When I got my other hip under her and reached across her shoulder, I knew it was too late. I knew she was dead. Where her breast touched my arm, its springy roundness had turned to slack flesh. Still I started out with her. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t care. It just seemed important to get her to shore.

We still had another hundred yards to go when we both went under. Thought was impossible. I did the only thing I could. I let her go. Somewhere in my oxygen-starved brain was the idea that I would dive for her as soon as I rested.

I tried it a couple of times before I realized that one more and I wouldn’t be able to make it to shore myself. So I left her and slowly sidestroked until I could feel sand under my feet. I lay with my head on the beach for thirty minutes before I could manage to get to my feet.

Divers with Scuba gear worked two days searching for the body before they gave up. The tides had taken her out.

The event worked a transformation on Bet. She sobered up and had to fight hard to keep from showing her jubilation when people were around. Her pride in me was so boundless I never told her how it happened. I just let her think what she wanted. She showed her happiness by smothering me, almost literally, with affection.

For a while things looked indescribably good. Up to where the insurance refused to pay until Louise was declared officially dead. The process takes seven years.

We managed to make it work partly for us. Louise’s income was put in trust just in case we had a child before the seven years was up. Bet was sweet about it.

“At least we have seven years to try for a child and no Louise around to spoil it,” she said.

Then her morale ran out. She started drinking. I let her, as much as she wanted. It became a standard joke for Bet to go to a party and be sick on the rug.

I got into the habit of taking her home and going back to the party. With my troubles I needed all the fun I could get. That’s what I told everyone, amid gales of laughter and assorted evil snickers.

It made it work out easy. During a party one night I took her home after being sure she had drunk enough to be thoroughly unconscious. I lugged her into the dry pool and carefully picked the place under the board. I smacked her head, once, very hard, on the bottom of the pool and drug her half way to the shallow end. I started the water back into the pool and returned to the party. At the time of death, from drowning after a swimming pool accident, I was at a party thirty miles away in the valley.

When I got home that night, I carefully chlorinated and neutralized the pool. I took a chilly swim to stir it up. Then I sprinkled half a pail of dust over the water. By morning, it looked like the water hadn’t been changed in a month.

The newspapers ate it up. An authentic irony, a double tragedy. Both women in my home dead from drowning. I played along and had the pool filled in. For one thing it wasn’t the same without Louise to swim with.

It had been easy. Ridiculously simple. Louise had been right that afternoon on the beach. It was easy. Louise had known that even if she hadn’t figured out just how to do it. That had been my own invention. And I’m not so bad off. By the time I add Louise’s insurance to Bet’s I’ll have a nice income. It could have been a lot better. But, with Bet’s shape, how could anyone tell she was three months pregnant?