The Unholy Wife

A gold-digger floozy marries a wealthy wine producer but she secretly takes a young lover with whom she conspires to murder her husband for his fortune. Wealthy vintner Paul Hochen meets blonde bombshell Phyllis in a bar...and marries her. In due course, Phyllis is bored by Paul, and finds an exciting new lover in rodeo rider San. To adjust matters, she forms a murderous scheme, which seems to be going wrong...or is it? Will irony intervene in time to thwart a seemingly perfect crime? —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> From the proverbial wrong side of the tracks, Phyllis Hochen tells the story of what she considered the perfect crime in relation to her marriage to wealthy and successful Napa Valley vintner Paul Hochen, they living with his frail, nervous, and elderly mother Emma Hochen in the many traditions handed down in his family. While Phyllis' seven year old son, Michael, from a previous relationship attends boarding school in Los Angeles, Paul really wanted him to live full time with them. She and Paul met one year ago in a Los Angeles bar and got married after a whirlwind weekend courtship, she admitting to him at the time that she wasn't a good person including not being a good mother, but arguably married him as he, treating her and Michael well, provided stability that was missing in her life. But also arguably not ever having loved Paul, Phyllis met and embarked in a clandestine affair with poor rodeo performer, Sanford. Wanting her cake and eating it too, she planned to get rid of Paul while having the comfort from his wealth and being with San. That plan necessarily morphed into the aforementioned perfect crime in an emerging issue between Paul and his best friend, Gino Verdugo, the supplier of the winery's grapes. While both Emma and Michael factored into what happened, it is Paul's brother, Stephen Hochen, a Catholic priest, who provides a moral center to her story. —Huggo