Dwight would somehow benefit from the resulting mistrial. When Paulie repeatedly voiced disagreement or was indifferent to her aggressive legal suggestions, the saucy scientist exhibited another unusual and surprising side. She quickly dumped a shocked Paulie, not answering his repeated calls, and soon thereafter latched onto a chemist colleague. Joanna had always kidded with Paulie about his being “suicidal,” as she put it. By that, she meant that his behavior would, ultimately, be his undoing with his wife, Debbie. And so, several months later, when Paulie was compelled to get to the local 7-11 for the morning newspaper, he was dumbfounded at the headline: “Local Chemist Victim of Murder Suicide.” Joanna was dead and her new lover, of European descent he learned, had strangled her in her home, which her husband had abandoned only weeks before. Suicidal, the new lover had traveled to his own lab after the killing and inhaled the helium in a ballooning plastic device that had been tightly wrapped around his neck. I wonder if she teased him about being suicidal, too? Paulie wondered in his homicide-induced haze. The severely wounded legal warrior drove home from the 7-11, cried bitterly in his coffee, and confessed all to
Debbie, completely ignoring a defense lawyer’s first instinct. Joanna’s beauty, and a temporary, dizzying bliss, had turned him into a being that he didn’t recognize. Debbie pretended not to know most of the sordid truth, thanks to Myra’s call, but she was relieved at its finality anyway. Debbie and Paulie Samson remained married and are still together today but, as all cheaters know, it was never the same . . . Jim Rambo
Saw you in the Ojo 71