Tyler Stone is about to be divorced and he’s going to lose it all. So he decides to murder his wife rather than divorce her. There is no such thing as a perfect murder. Every murderer makes mistakes. It only takes one to get caught.
Tyler Stone is about to be divorced and he’s going to lose it all. So he decides to murder his wife rather than divorce her. There is no such thing as a perfect murder. Every murderer makes mistakes. It only takes one to get caught.
In Tyler’s case the mistakes begin to multiply from the moment he commits to the deed and soon he is overwhelmed by forces beyond his control forcing him into one mistake after another.Tyler though is saved by the fact that police make mistakes too. But just as he is about to get away with murder the mistakes culminate in tragedy.
Every murderer make s at least One Mistake It only takes One Mistake to get caught and everybody makes at least one. Tyler Stone had made several, but the biggest one was having committed the crime in the first place.
Excerpt
His soon to be ex-wife, Wendy, arrived right on time at eight o’clock, as requested. He was surprised since she was usually twenty minutes late for everything, even their wedding she managed to show up late. He had used the idea of talking over their pending divorce as the ruse to get her to stop by. He had even gone so far as to promise to remain civil as long as she did.
When she arrived he was peeking out from behind the front window curtains. He had been too excited and nervous to sit and watch TV or read while he waited, kind of like it was their first date again. As he watched her exit the car, his excitement though turned to horror, because her sister had gotten out of the passenger side of the car.
Together the two of them stomped, side by side, up to the front door and rang the doorbell. He stood frozen at the window, anger boiling up inside him. Shit! She couldn’t even do this right, he thought as she rang the bell again.
“Come on in,” he yelled through clenched teeth as he crossed the room to the sofa and stood behind it. “Remember, non-threatening”, he told himself. He clamped his hands on the back frame of the couch. They were already white when the door opened and the two women entered.
“I’m surprised it was open. You changed the locks and hired a security service as soon as I left.” Wendy remarked as she crossed the room and sat down in her favorite chair near the fireplace and April, her sister, hovered behind her.
“Hello, nice to see you too,” he stated as he tried to remain as non-threatening as possible. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be sarcastic.
“I’m not here too be nice to you, Tyler, especially since I’ve been locked out of my own home now for what, four weeks?” she groused.
“It seemed prudent with no one being home most of the time and besides you moved out, so this isn’t your home any longer.”
“I’ll move back in as soon as you move out, like any self-respecting man would have done.” Wendy was trying to press his buttons, but he didn’t take the bait, this was too important.
“I owned the house before we were married, remember?”
“Robert, the attorney at work, he says that doesn’t matter,” April stated, as Wendy sat glaring at him.
The thought occurred to him this display of attitude by Wendy, was completely miss directed. She had been the one to have an affair. She was the one who broke her vows, not him. If anyone was entitled to an attitude it was him, yet here she was, giving him attitude.
“Oh! Hi, nice to see you too,” Tyler replied to April’s remark. In response she gave him a twisted sneer and then looked at her nails when Wendy looked at her.
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Wendy snarled.
“I only said hello,” Tyler stated through gritted teeth.
“You were about to complain I brought her. I know how you think,” Wendy snapped. It was clear she was spoiling for a fight.
“It’s a little hard to have a heart to heart with you, with your sister giving me the evil eye.”
“Well, I don’t trust you.” Wendy snapped. “If you decided to, you could beat the crap out of me and I couldn’t defend myself because you’re so big.”
“Have I ever hit you or even threatened you?” Tyler asked, knowing he never had.
“You could kick him in the balls, that would stop him,” April stated with a wicked smile on her face.
That pissed him off so he snapped back at her, “I thought that was what you called foreplay.” April flipped him the bird and stared at him. After a minute, he realized this wasn’t going to get him what he wanted, so he changed tactics.
“This isn’t helping the situation. It’s not easy for me because I still love you and I want you to be happy. So I thought we could sit down and you could tell me what you wanted to do about this situation. If you want a divorce, then I guess I haven’t any choice but to give you what you want,” Tyler said.
April quickly interjected saying, “Robert says he doesn’t have anything to say about it, if you want a divorce, he can’t stop you.”
“Robert’s right,” Tyler agreed with her, leaving her no place to go in the conversation. Wendy held up her hand, yet again, cutting off her sister before she could make any further comments. She then looked at Tyler with a face that was as cold as stone.
“I want a divorce,” Wendy stated. “I want to get this over with as quickly as possible, but if you insist, I’ll drag it out for as long as it takes to get what is rightfully mine.”
“Okay,” Tyler replied as if he was agreeing, to repainting the living room. It was all he could do to keep from becoming emotional. But he knew if he did, it would defeat his plans. “Do we want to hire attorneys or do it ourselves?” He asked. “We can split the bank accounts, fifty-fifty. You keep your pension. I’ll keep mine. You have your car and I have my car. I don’t think you want my car, do you?” He asked with only the smallest hint of sarcasms.
“No, it’s a piece of junk,” Wendy snapped.
“So that only leaves the house, which I owned before we were married.”
“Robert says…” April started to say but Wendy cut her off by waving her hand.
“So what?” Wendy groused. “I should get nothing, just because you owned it before we got married?”
“You’re the one choosing to get a divorce and I bought the house a long time before we got married. It’s a part of me.”
“Part of you? I was the one who painted it. I planted all of the landscaping,” Wendy countered.
“Doesn’t Danny have his own house?” Tyler inquired.
“I’m not marrying him.”
“Well, not right away,” April stated and Wendy gave her a dirty look which caused her to turn away saying, “I’m just saying.”
“It’s none of my business,” Tyler stated. “Plus, I really don’t care to know.”
“You got that right.” April snapped. “It ain’t any of your business.”
“Shut up, April! Why don’t you go get us some iced tea?” Wendy suggested then turned to Tyler. “You do have iced tea, don’t you? You always have iced tea in the refrigerator.” She stated as she looked at his glass of iced tea on the coffee table as he nodded. The iced tea in the refrigerator was already laced with the poison, unlike his tea on the coffee table which was from the last unlaced batch.
When April went into the kitchen his heart leapt, this still might work. April would be a complication but hardly any trouble. He hated her as much as he hated the bitch of a soon to be ex-wife. It was at that moment that he had a random thought and wondered just how many men she had affairs with, in her quest for more money.
“What’s with all the plastic cups?” April hollered from the kitchen as she looked at the stacks of cups on the counter.
“I got tired of washing glasses,” he informed her. He planned on burying the plastic cups in which he had served the tea, leaving nothing to collect finger prints from or traces of the poison.
“Men are the laziest creatures on the planet,” April asserted. “He’s even bought a disposable pitcher to make tea in. What do you eat? All he has in the refrigerator besides the tea is a yogurt, a couple of bagels and a tub of cream cheese. No ketchup, no mayo, nothing,” April offered as she walked back into the living room, then after taking a sip of the iced tea stated, “Wow, great tea. It’s so sweet.”
“Glad you like it,” he retorted snidely, hiding his excitement at the pending demise of these two bitches.
“I thought you’d get me one,” Wendy stated as April took another small sip.
“Sorry, I got side tracked. You can share mine.” April answered as she handed the cup to Wendy.
“How can you live like that?” April then asked Tyler, referring to his lack of food or drink, as Wendy took a long deep drink. She then handed the cup back to April, who took another small sip. Tyler ignored April’s inquiry as he fought back the urge to grin like a Cheshire cat.
“So, what do you suggest we do about the house?” He asked avoiding eye contact, because he didn’t want Wendy to see his glee at what now was her assured demise.
“I think I deserve something, if you’re so set on keeping the house. I mean, I should get something for having been you’re sex toy.” Wendy stated, as if that was something bad as she took back the cup of tea from April and took another drink.
“I thought you were my wife,” he stated and began counting the minutes until the drug was supposed to take effect.
“Wife? You treated me like I was an afterthought. You never were home unless it was to sleep or to have sex,” Wendy alleged.
“Yeah, I know I was the one who blew it. You don’t need to rub it in.” Tyler stated sincerely.
April took the tea back from her sister, stepped over to the dining room table where she pulled out a chair but didn’t sit down. She apparently preferred hover over her sister. Tyler wondered if she was high on something.
“Maybe you could remortgage and give me my fair share.” Wendy offered.
“If I do that, then I get stuck with the bill for the next thirty years. How is that fair to me?” He questioned. “Besides the value of the house isn’t what it used to be. Since the housing market crashed the value is less than what is owed on it. No one is going to lend me money on equity that doesn’t exist.”
“It’s the only way you’ll get to keep the house, stupid,” April stated. Then she abruptly bent over and grabbed her stomach. “Oow, God this hurts,” she yelled as she leaned over the chair for support.
“What’s with April?” Tyler asked as if he was concerned.
“You okay, Sis? What’s wrong?” Wendy stood up and stepped quickly over to April, who was doubled over and leaning heavily on the dining chair.
“Oh God, this really hurts.” April cried out a second time. While Wendy was trying to help her sister, she was overcome by the poison herself. She abruptly howled in pain, clutched her stomach and dropped to the floor on her knees. Severe stomach cramps were a side effect of the poison, as well as blurred vision, headache, nausea and hallucinations.
April joined her sister a moment later on the floor and both women laid there, writhing in pain. He stepped around the couch and stood staring down at the two women. Yes, this was working nicely, he told himself. Neither woman bothered to looked up so he didn’t have to look away to avoid their pitiful looks of fear and pain, mixed with a healthy dose of incomprehension. Over the next few minutes, the women turned a deathly pale white and stopped wiggling around, though they weren’t quite dead yet.
“I’m going to call for help,” Tyler stated loudly as he picked up their unfinished cup of iced tea taking it with him as he left the room. He then stopped in the kitchen collecting the disposable plastic pitcher of tea from the refrigerator and took it outside where he tossed both the cup and the pitcher into the hole as planned. He then he went into the garage and pulled out a large roll of Visqueen plastic sheeting from under his work bench. He cut off a large piece in which to wrap April, laying it on the garage floor next to the piece that he had laid out earlier for Wendy. He wondered if he could fit both of them in the makeshift coffin as he headed back to the house.
Unknown to him while he had been out in the garage, he’d had another visitor. Danny, Wendy’s new boyfriend, had shown up. Like April, he too thought he would provide moral support for Wendy. Though in reality, he was jealous of Wendy going to see her estranged husband. So he had decided to show up and stake his claim to her, in no uncertain terms.
He knocked on the door several times and when no one answered the door, he tried the door knob and discovered it was open. Unknown to Tyler, April had only ingested a small amount of poison, due to her habit of taking small sips rather than large mouthfuls when drinking and so she was hallucinating instead of dying.
After Tyler had left the room, she had gotten to her feet and stumbled into the kitchen to look for the phone but she couldn’t find it. Tyler had disconnected it in favor of his cell phone, which was upstairs in the master bedroom by his computer. Unable to find the phone, she settled for a large carving knife which she took out of one of the kitchen the drawers.
In the process of searching for the phone, she had stumbled into the table, knocking one of the chairs sideways and nearly falling down. She’d caught herself on the table and jerked herself back to a standing position, which yanked the table a few inches from the wall. The slip and near fall had jarred her and she’d whipped her head around, dislodging an earring. It popped right out of her ear and dropped to the floor, rolling under the edge of the table. She failed to notice it, in her disoriented condition and she stumbled back to her sister’s side.
She then knelt down next to Wendy, just as they had been when Tyler left. She intended to stab Tyler when he came back, from wherever it was he’d gone. Time seemed to drag on for April as the seconds seemed like minutes. Tyler had only been out of the house for five minutes and yet she’d swear he’d been gone over an hour. Her sense of time was screwed up due to the poison flowing through her veins. It also affected her vision and her coordination as well, but she wasn’t going to give in. She was going to get this guy and make him pay for what he was doing to her and her sister.
Danny upon stepping into the house immediately saw Wendy and April lying on the floor and he became frantic. He raced over to them and knelt down next to Wendy, pulling her up into his arms.
“Wendy, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Talk to me, baby,” but Wendy was unresponsive. Danny fighting back the urge to panic clutched her to his chest while he fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone, intent on calling 911.
April hadn’t really heard what Danny said nor did she realize it was Danny through the blurred vision and growing disorientation. She thought it was Tyler, holding Wendy. So, believing she was striking out at Tyler, April lunged at the blurred vision of Danny.
Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, Danny looked up just in time to see a flash of silver before April plunged the large kitchen knife into his chest. He had dropped Wendy in an effort to block whatever it was that had flashed past, but it was too late. Danny’s eyes burst wide open at the sudden pain and he gasped for air as the knife sliced its way through part of his lung and then pierced his heart. He was dead before he and April tumbled over on top of Wendy’s now lifeless body.
Remembering her sister was dying, April fought back the urge to simply lay there. She forced herself to stand so she could go and get help. Despite her blurry vision and mental disorientation, she managed to stumble to the front door which, Danny had left it wide open in his haste to aid Wendy. April grabbed the door for balance as she stumbled through the opening pulling it nearly closed behind her as she stumbled across the porch.
When she reached the steps, they proved to be too much for her to manage. She never realized the steps were even there and she plunged head long off the top step, landing hard on the sidewalk, scraping her legs and arms badly. She left several small bloody smudges on the sidewalk as she scrambled to her feet. She stood staring into space not comprehending what she was doing or how she had gotten there. After a few moments turned her head, saw Wendy’s car, and remembered that she needed to get help. Although exactly what kind of help and why she needed it, she no longer had a clue.
Slipping into the driver’s seat, she was overcome, blinded by her blurred vision and mental confusion, she laid her head on the steering wheel hoping it would pass. She quickly drifted into semi-consciousness and would have drifted into unconsciousness, if her head hadn’t slipped of the steering wheel. When it did, she banged her head against the driver’s door window, startling herself awake.
Briefly she had a flash of comprehension, remembering where and what she was doing causing her adrenalin to kick in once more. She fumbled with the ignition switch until she remembered she needed keys to start the car. Lucky for her, Wendy was not security conscious. She always left her keys in the console between the seats so she wouldn’t lose them. With the keys in hand, it took April three tries to get the right key and finally start the car.
Tyler was just reentering the house when April was fumbling with the keys. If he had just looked up, he’d have seen her in the car but he was so focused on the task at hand he failed to so. When April started the car, the sound of the house’s side door opening and closing masked the sound of the car starting enough, that Tyler failed to notice that as well. That was two mistakes and the night was still young.
Stepping inside the house he didn’t fail to notice that things had changed in the kitchen. He’d made sure prior to Wendy’s visit that the kitchen was neat and orderly. All the chairs were neatly pushed up under the table. All the cabinet doors and drawers had been closed. Every dish was in the dishwasher or a cabinet. In fact, when he had gone outside, the room was still neat, but not now.
There was a chair that was shoved over almost sideways, the table was pulled several inches out from the wall on an angle and the drawer, where he kept his big carving knives, was open about two inches.
“So, how’s everybody doing?” He called out in an effort to determine if the women were still alive. “I called 911 and they are on their way.” Tyler began to feel sick in the pit of his stomach as he wondered why they were still alive. Hearing no response, he stepped forward a half dozen steps, which took him just inside the dining room, where he froze.
Professional Reviews
needs editor--4 stars
ONE MISTAKE had an interesting plot that drew me in right away. However, the author seriously needed a proofreader/editor. This novel had so many simple grammatical and spelling errors that kept me from really enjoying it. The characters and the plot were well developed, but due to the numerous errors, this novel only gets four stars.
