Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam by Elizabeth Parker, Mark Ebner Read Free Book Online Page A

resolved, even if he had to hire a lawyer to figure it out. Mike called Erik later, but received no response and he never saw him again.
    This, in essence, is a confidence scheme known as the Spanish Prisoner. In its original form, a Spanish nobleman is imprisoned in a castle, unable to access his sizable fortune. Funds are needed to raise a private army and rescind the ways of unrighteousness. The speaker, his private emissary, asks for a contribution to this cause, upon the resolution of which his listener will be rewarded handsomely. There are invariably further complications, and further funds are required. Often, the nobleman’s daughter, a dark-skinned beauty, encourages the mark with her private favors as a rarefied form of collateral. The con ends when the mark’s money or his patience is exhausted.
    Mike wanted to believe Dalia. She was his wife, and for the longest time, he thought that earned her the benefit of the doubt. Virtually everyone he knew, from the friends he no longer saw to the lawyer who was paid to advise him, told him she was bad news, a human tornado that had picked his backyard to touch down in. Whatever this was, whatever she was doing, eventually there would be no place to go with it. All it would take on his part was the patience of Job. It was like waiting for a fever to break.
    But then, incredibly, back at home an even bigger bombshell was waiting for him.
    Dalia told him she was pregnant.
    She had waited to tell him until she was sure, but she was a month along. Any thoughts he had entertained about selling the house and paying off his restitution would have to wait—as would any dark desires he might have harbored about leaving her. Now every moment was spent in preparation for their burgeoning family. She read baby books constantly, and tried to get him to sit and read them with her. She constantly debated possible baby names. She had regular doctor’s appointments, some of which he was scheduled to attend with her, except her doctor always seemed to reschedule at the last minute. She started taking special vitamins. Two weekends in a row, they made plans to visit Home Depot and buy supplies to paint a special mural she had designed for the baby’s room. Once he came into the living room to find her crying and cutting up her old clothes with a pair of scissors, lamenting how fat she was becoming. It was all they talked about anymore.
    They also started seeing a marriage counselor—one actually named Dr. Happy—to work through their trust issues relating to the disappearance of the money, and to put that all behind them. He tried to tell her that before she ever came along, his life was a flat line, a calm and casual existence. There was no high drama, no unexpected police interrogations, no sudden and emphatic reversals of fortune. He also had been through rehab enough times that he knew how therapy worked. They couldn’t “move past” the money issue because he needed that money back. Mike even went as far as to seek counsel from Dalia’s mother—about the missing money, the weird coincidences, the pregnancy—but all her mother wanted to talk about was getting Dalia a nanny after the baby came.
    At the beginning of May, Dalia tells Mike she received a phone call from Detective Hurley at the Boynton Beach Police Department, who claimed that her husband was in some kind of danger. Although the number he was calling from was that of the police station, when Mike called it back he was told there was not a Detective Hurley with the force. Then on May 27, on a morning when Dalia went to the gym with Mike (which she rarely did), they returned to the car to find a note on the windshield. It was addressed to Mike, unsigned, and it read:
Bring $40,000 9:30 AM Back To This Space and Put it under the car Behind you.
    Do not Tell Anyone, Especially Your Wife. I Will Tell You all That Has Happen [sic] To You. Is happening to you and what will Happen on Friday.
    Tell No One-Come Alone.