The Five Wives Book Club

by Victor Kreuiter

About the Author: Victor Kreuiter's stories appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications. His story, “Miller and Bell,” originally published in the August, 2022, issue of Mystery, was selected to appear in The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of 2023.

Excerpt

It was only after her husband’s funeral that Marcie Beck’s drinking problem was revealed, and Marcie did the revealing. Family and friends rallied around her, she started attending AA meetings, she had some lengthy conversations with Pastor Hammond at Escher’s non-denominational, and then she was gone for thirty days, visiting a “distant relative.” Thirty-one days later she returned to Escher, quietly resumed her life and actually blossomed. She was fifty-three years old, attractive, and financially well-off. (Beck Farm was very large, very productive, and very profitable.) After her husband’s funeral, after the visit with that “relative,” Marcie Beck seemed more outgoing, more cheerful and, interestingly enough, a bit more down-to-earth. A long-time member of the Five Wives Book Club, it would still take several years after her husband’s death before Marcie would be able to say to herself … I think I’m in the clear.

Marcie had been the first from the club to implement the plan.

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