“So why did you plug your husband, lady?”
“It was a white collar crime.”
That was all the cops were going to get out of Bernadine for a while. Mostly she sat in the interrogation room thinking about the laundry. It started about a month ago when her husband Stan bought himself a collection of red button-down collar long-sleeve shirts to wear to the insurance office, all different shades, puce, maroon, blood, scarlet and strawberry. Each one had special washing instructions so it would keep its bright distinctive color.
“I thought you had a white collar job,” she groused with a smile.
“That’s just a euphemism, a trite banality, you know, something someone made up a long time ago.” Stan was an unusual shade of cranberry. “Anyway, I look good in red. You always said I looked good in red.”
“Don’t make a federal case out of it. It’s just a lot easier to pour in the bleach to get a white shirt clean.”
By the end of the month, Bernadine was ready to make a federal case of it. She was tired of washing all the red shirts and demanded that Stan wear one of his standard white shirts to work the next day. She had a good job too, she reminded him, as a bank teller.
“I’ve been having a lot of luck—I mean, a lot of sales. The boss says I’m on top—of the sales chart, that is.”
“I’m tired. I’m not doing laundry. Wear the white shirt.”
When Bernadine returned home from her job at the bank that evening, she discovered Stan, his face that odd shade of cranberry, hunched over the sink scrubbing the white shirt. Without a word, she snatched it from his hands and looked at the collar, smudged with scarlet lipstick.
“Whattaya mean, a white collar crime?” the cop asked.
“Don’t make a federal case out of it. I just found out my husband’s new boss is a gal who likes red lipstick.”