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How Mrs. Hitt Stopped Scrimping and Found Happiness With a Hit Man

by Lani Steele

About the Author: Lani Steele has a divided spirit: part in her native California, part in Kaua’i where she would live if she could, and part in perpetual motion around the world. She has lived in several countries including Chad, is published in poetry, mystery fiction, and non-fiction, and recently retired from 53 years as an educator. She lives in Los Osos with her husband Gary. Their four children are far-flung and require many visits.

Excerpt

I’ve pretty much despised Woody Allen since he took up with a woman to whom he was at least tangentially related.  But, he was right about one thing.  Murder is, well, murderously easy to arrange …

Being a writer, I’d hoped to get more than a customized killing—a story, too, something freshly ingenious and twisted.  If that sounds harsh, remember I had to think about supporting myself and the children, hopefully with my writing.  It seemed at first that no diabolical game plan would unfold.   But patience and perseverance paid off.  It took a few phone calls and an exchange of cash.  Then, an accident on a mountain road.  The death I’d both feared and fantasized was a reality.  My children’s future was secure, if fatherless.

When I became a widow, I cried.  I did.  When the call came saying the job was done, when the deputies came to the door with the news, I sobbed.  The children and I cried and cried the day we spread Fix’s ashes over a sullen gray wake behind the Harbor Queen paddlewheeler on Morro Bay.  It was hard to know, really, what part was Fix and what part his Nissan truck.  I know I saw a bit of gray upholstery turning slowly in the sluggish water, before a tossed daisy covered it.  There just wasn’t much left of Fix or the truck, so I guess High Mountain Mortuary and Cremation scooped up whatever they could from the highway, cremated it, and put it in the box marked Hitt, Fix.

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