Okay, so even though I saw the ending far in advance, this is still a terrific story!
I truly love John's "sales" jargon; makes him extremely believable as a salesman. I liked how you kept returning to the terrible state of Benny's house as well as that unidentifiable 'stench'. (Didn't take too long to conclude exactly what the source of that stench was!)
I was just expecting John to find *two* corpses there - that of the wife and the vacuum salesman who wooed her.
Guess John won't be making that bonus...
Anyway, this was extremely well-written. Keep up the great work!
Oh my goodness! What a complete psychopath. That end I did not see coming. Of course we all knew Tom killed Sue; the husband's usually the one who 'did it'. Wasn't until the end that the motive became clear, of course, and a real case of the pot calling the kettle black! Poor Diane. It's chilling to think that when she finally found out what happened to her friend, it was too late to save herself. Good job creeping me out.
If I have any complaints, it is that the punctuation in the story could be polished a bit: for future reference, you may pay attention to comma use. As well, dialogue is usually started in a new paragraph (unless of course, you lead into the dialogue like so:
Diane gaped at Tom and said: "You unbelievable bastard!".)
You can also make use of lots more descriptive language to really hammer home the emotions of the characters. For instance, in the opening paragraph of your story, we only get a very shallow sense of Diane's irritation at the constant inability to find her keys...
Diane sighed as she sorted through her handbag.
“Why are the keys never there?” she muttered to herself. Finally finding her keys at the bottom of the bag, she made sure the debit card was in her purse,
closed the front door behind her, and set off to the supermarket.
Passing her friends’ house, she noticed that the car was standing in the drive.
“If it’s still there when I get back, I’ll call in,” she mused, knowing that either Sue or Tom would be pleased to see her.
"Mused" was a great choice there on your part! Do this sort of thing more often, especially when emotions shift and escalate in a scene.
OK, that's all I can think of to say. Hope I didn't come across as being too critical. Keep writing!
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