Free My Boss is a Serial Killer by Christina Harlin

week and
jeans and sandals might be nice for a Saturday afternoon. While we
spoke, I heard other voices and telephones ringing in the
background. Gus was still at work. He kept it short, but he was
polite and hinted at a plan in motion. He said, “I can’t wait,” and
sounded sincere.
    Gus Haglund in a pair of jeans is a sight to
make one grateful to be a woman. As soon as I saw him I was tempted
to say, “Just be still, and let me look for a minute,” but I guess
that would have been sexist to my big burly date. What I did say
was, “I’m really glad I bullied you into this.”
    As if Gussie could be bullied into
anything.

*****
    He took me to his house to meet his
sister.
    On the following Monday, I wasn’t going to
start my date-story by saying that. It sounds like the beginning of
a worst-date-I-ever-had story, and that’s not the case. Besides, he
wore a steel-blue T-shirt that made his eyes look like the
treasure-laden depths of the ocean. I was so smitten that I would
have agreed to shear sheep with him, had that been his plan.
    We spent the afternoon in Gus’s home where he
very efficiently fixed lunch (steaks, salad, and a strawberry
shortcake). He was waiting for me to be disgruntled about this
arrangement; maybe in the past he had tried this on women who
believed that a first date required more elaborate arrangements.
But I had no room to complain, since I had demanded he ask me out.
And I had no desire to complain, since he was a damn good cook and
since I don’t require elaborateness.
    I’m not sure that Gus was consciously testing
me. Still, I had the distinct feeling that my reactions to this
unusually informal first date were being observed. There was the
ghost of an ex-wife involved in all this, I’d bet anything. Either
it was important for me to be unlike her or important for me to be
just like her, but since I’d never met the woman, I just had to
wing it and act like myself.
    Gus’s house was like his car. Mid-sized, not
showy. He, like me, obviously spent a good deal time at work and
wasn’t a neat-freak. The bathrooms were clean, which was all I
really hoped for in a guy. Showing me around before the cooking
commenced, he knocked on an upstairs room, and a young woman
answered. I thought, momentarily panicked, that this was his wife?
Daughter? Girlfriend? No, thank heavens. It was his sister Lyvia.
She was not a traditionally pretty young woman; she looked a good
deal like Gus, in fact, and thus had that round-faced, puppy-dog
appearance that had suckered me right in. It was a little less sexy
on a feminine face. But she also had that killer grin, the Haglund
family smile, which I thought there should be a warning about:
People with heart conditions should not see the Haglund family
smile. May cause palpitations and/or pregnancy.
    “ I won’t be in your way,” she assured
me. “I have a term paper due, and Gus is letting me use his
computer. So I’ll be in here all day, all night, and probably
through tomorrow and on into Monday morning.”
    “ What are you doing a paper on?” I
asked, noting with sympathy that the desk behind her was piled high
with photocopies and library books.
    “ Migraine treatments,
ironically.”
    We left her to her torment. Gus explained as
he took me back downstairs, “I thought it might make you feel
better, knowing there was someone else in the house.”
    “ Feel better?” It actually took me a
moment to plumb the meaning of his words. “I’m not afraid of you,
Gus. Is this a cop thing?”
    “ No, not a cop thing.” That made him
shy. “No, you just don’t know me well. And about the first thing I
ever said to you was that I’d killed three of my wives.”
    “ Yes. Well, I sort of assumed you were
joking about that.”
    “ It is a joke. It’s that Bluebeard
story, remember?”
    “ The silly new wife finds the basement
full of heads. Yes, that’s a good one.” I was directed to sit at
the island in his kitchen, and he offered me a glass