My Best Friend aka The One Who Helps Me Bury The Bodies pt 2

Rebecca needs money to pay the power bill by the next morning or it will be cut off. Did I mention the girl has no idea how to manage money? So her husband, remember we are calling him Bill for this blog, has a gun that he dearly loves. I hated the gun because I honestly always lived with the fear that someday she would take all she could from his hateful ass self and use it against him. She decides to pawn the gun, but the guy at the pawn shop knows her and she doesn't want him telling Bill. So she has me pawn the gun for her. Now, I have never pawned anything in my life so this was a whole new experience for me. He asks questions, I assume he asked the correct ones, I answer, again assuming I give the right answer. I show him my permit to carry a concealed weapon (I worked with 2 of the best Private Eyes in the business at the time which is why I even had the permit, did I mention I am a damn good shot? I was trained well, one of my PI's was a former sniper and he trained me). So he takes the gun, says we can pick it back up tomorrow morning. Bill checks this gun everynight like he is going to make love to it so her challenge was to keep him away from the gun cabinet by pretending she couldn't find the key and distracting him all evening. We get up bright and early the next morning and go to retrieve the gun, different guy in the shop. He refuses to let me have the gun because I have an English accent(because the English are such a violent group of people and responsible for all stolen guns in the US apparently, at least in his eyes) and demands proof of my ID. Driver's license, gun permit, SS card, PI license none of those satisfy him, he wants my birth certificate. Naturally I can't find it and have to call my Mom to send me one. Only problem is she can't get a copy and get it sent to me that fast, it will take at least a week. Yet Jose standing beside me is able to pick up an assault rifle that his brother-in-law pawned six months ago, no citizenship papers, barely spoke English and had no pawn ticket. I threw a proper English fit to no avail. I still had to wait on the birth certificate. Now she has to figure out how to hide it from Bill for an entire week. Bill got a lot of special treatment that week. It was just a miracle I guess that the key was found the very day my papers came in the mail.

Bill had a son from a previous marriage that was the devil incarnate and determined to break up their marriage so he Dad would go back to his Mom. He decides he wants to move in with his Dad. He was old enough to know better at 16 but he launched a hate campaign that was unbelievable, told his Dad lies about Rebecca being mean to him (when in all truth she went out of her way to make him welcome and feel at home). We thought being the Mama's baby he was that he wouldn't last long and would head back to his Mama's house. Not so, we finally figured out he was firmly entrenched and we also figured out he was enjoying the chaos he was causing in the house between Rebecca and Bill and the children they had together. We decided it was time for Dude to leave. But she didn't want to tell Bill his own child wasn't welcome there. So we decided to turn the tables on ole' Dude, make him want to flee back to his Mama's house leaving nothing behind but his dust. So every night at dinner she would make Kool-Aid and pour it into the glasses herself. She would put each child's glass down by their plate and then at the last minute in a panicky voice quickly grab Dude's glass and say "No wait, that is the wrong one, this one is yours" and swap it for one of the other kids glasses. She would do the same with his food. About a week of this and he thinks she is trying to poison him and won't eat or drink anything she has touched. He was a very heavy sleeper so every morning about 5 am I would head across the street to her house and with the kid in bed, sound asleep we would totally rearrange his room. When he would get up for school and notice the bed was on the opposite wall, the dresser moved and ask about it we would get up and go to his room to look and then tell him it looked just like it did the night before when he went to bed. We did this every day for 2 weeks, now he thinks she is trying to poison him and the house is haunted. Next we would wait until he went to bed at night and alter his clothes, make his pant legs and shirt sleeves shorter, move the buttons over so the shirt was tighter to button up. Now the kid thinks he is not only being poisoned and the house is haunted but he is growing abnormally too. We had him out of their in about a month, he hi tailed it back to Mama's house so fast he was a blur.

Two of our boys were the same age, a month apart and had become fast friends. You never saw one without the other, well except for the night we had to seperate them for the trip to the emergency room when they played the BB gun dance. They were about 12 yrs old at the time and had found a clearing in the woods they thought would be a great hang out for them. A most secret place where no parents could go because they didn't know where it was. We sat back and watched them collect old items the neighbors were throwing away and disappear into the woods with it. One day while they were at school we decided to take a trek through the woods to find the hangout. It didn't take us long. They really did an impressive job. Had a whole little living room sat up, complete with an area rug, sofa, chair, coffee table, two end tables and some knicknacks. You really didn't think we were going to leave them alone did you? No way. Every day while they were at school we hit the hide out and rearranged all their stuff, take something away or add something new. Now this is a secret place so they can't tell us what is happening. One night they wanted to camp out at their hideout, that was fine with us, we knew where it was and it was very close to the house if you used the route we did (they never discovered the route we used so it took them twice as long to get there and they thought they were much farther away then they actually were). So we wait until about midnight, dress all in black and do nothing but randomly walk the perimeter of their hideout. They kept seeing the "shadows" but couldn't tell what it was. Then I started growling, I swear you have never seen two boys run so fast in your life. The next day we told them it was us doing everything it all along. We just wanted to have some fun with them not take away their hang out spot.

So Rebecca has an uppity sister, who is also a criminal, similar to my own sister, which is whey we claim each other and not them. But her sister thought she was the creme de la creme of society and loved putting on airs. I really hate people that put on airs. She invited us to an afternoon tea with some more high society ladies. We were overjoyed at the prospect of high tea and the chance to mingle with high society. NOT But we went, just not quite as ourselves. We went thrift store shopping and picked out the ugliest outfits we could find that didn't fit us. Then showed up to the tea "fashionably late" so everyone would see us. Of course we made terrible asses out of ourselves with our bad manners, slurping tea, dropping crumbs. It was like the Beverly Hillbillies went to vist Paris Hilton. We had so much fun but for some unknown reason we were never invited back.

Then one early morning I got the call I had been dreading. Over the past two years they were together Bill had started becoming not only his usual verbal abusive self but he became physically abusive. I know my friend well and knew she would not put up with it long. He was one of those that after it was over he acted like it had never happened. For about three months he had been unusually mild, when I ask about it she told me she had been spiking his coffee every morning with Valium and he stayed in a pleasant mood all day and night. I'm all for that if it worked, if you knew Bill you would have been all for it too. He didn't have time for coffee that day so he didn't get his "dose", he came in and started on her and the kids. It escalated throughout the night, no one slept. As soon as the kids left for school, after he had tried to choke her, had given her a black eye and bit her several times she politely offered to fix him coffee. Of course in his mind it had never happened and he was once again ruler of his kingdom. Then I get the call and she says "I think you might need to come up here, I think I killed Bill this time, I can't rouse him at all", I can't even imagine the panic I was in when I drove to her house. I just knew she had finally shot him with his own beloved gun and I was terrified. I ask where he was and she told me he was in bed. So I ran back to the bedroom expecting a mess and trying to figure out who to call first and what they would do to her. But there he laid, all in once piece. I barely can get a pulse but at least I had one, I sent her to my car for my medic bag after she tells me she only spiked his coffee, she just gave him a "few extra" this time. He is breathing on his own, but his heart rate and blood pressure are low. She didn't give him enough to kill him but he did end up having one of the best naps of his life with me sitting right beside his bed for 8 straight hours, afraid to leave in case he did crash. While I watched him she went to see an attorney and filed for a divorce and restraining orders and then brought charges on him for the abuse. As soon as he groggily woke up he was carted off to jail, found guilty and spend some time there, out of all our hair finally. Of course he made a full recovery and thank God I no longer have to worry about what she is going to do to him. I ask her why she did it, she said she didn't do it to kill him just to shut him up and make him sleep long enough for her to go see the lawyer and file charges. She got that accomplished all right but I damn near had a heart attack over the whole thing.

I have strict instructions upon her death, if she is in the hospital I am not to go. As soon as they call me I am to go straight to her house and empty out the lock box, I am the only other one with the key. Then I can go to the hospital or the funeral home. During the funeral I am to stand at the head of her casket and everyone that walks by and says "Doesn't she look good" I am to reply "Not, really she looks pretty dead to me." For those that give the old standard "My they really did a good job making her look like herself, didn't they?", I am to respond "As long as you don't turn her over and look at the back, they never prepare the back." I am to ask for private time with the body (easy since her family owns the funeral home)at which time I am to put all contents from the lock box in the bottom of the casket with her, I know what every single item in there is, it's nothing illegal, just stuff she doesn't want her children to know. She is so serious about this that it makes me laugh hysterical every time she brings it up.

God I love that woman!