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Ted was surprised by his wife’s detailed attention to his life insurance policy, but not nearly as shocked as by the hammer to the brain that greeted him at his front door.

Emily was a planner: she knew that her husband Ted would fall down flat next to the welcome mat-- just inches away from their freshly-pruned rose bush. She watched on the live security-cam as months of thought and schemes turned into televised reality.

“My husband’s been murdered!” she shrieked in a well-contemplated hysteria.

Her husband gasped his last and Emily hyper-ventilated at the rehearsed pace, waiting for the 911 operator.

Everything went according to plan including the poisoning of poor love-struck Donovan, the empty-headed teenager who did the yard work. So handsome, she thought, as she expertly dressed the scene of the “double suicide.”

“I never knew Ted and Donovan were so close,” the widow sobbed at the funeral with the requisite amount of innuendo.

She smiled inside. Yes, everything exactly as intended.

Until that nosey police detective asked her about her receipts she had organized in tastefully color-coordinated folders. There were a number of items:

The hammer purchased with a gift certificate (from lovely Karen, what a dear).

The Halloween mask ordered off-season (best time to shop for one.)

And, of course, the real money-saver: pre-ordered funeral arrangements.

“What can I say? I’m a planner,” Emily shrugged just before the judge sentenced her.

Months later, she reflected but did not regret. No, she had too much to do. She looked down at the elaborate schematic for this evening’s prison break and then turned the page over to add another item to her after-party list. If there was an after-party, she smiled hopefully. We’ll need some very good cheese, she thought. And crackers.