Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

Ignoring his comment, she proceeded to fill him in on the trivia of her day as she waited for him to settle down and for the sedative effects of the martini to take hold. When it was clear that he was as relaxed as he was going to get, she asked: “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, honey?”

He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not anything I want to get into. Let’s just say that I think someone in the office is out to get me.”

“That sounds a little paranoid, doesn’t it?”

“You know the saying: ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you,’ ” he replied. “Someone’s been sending letters and e-mails and—” He paused to consider his words. “—other things — in my name.” He added: “They’re sending them to someone who works for one of our competitors.”

“Are these... things... that could get you into trouble?” she asked innocently.

“Of a sort, yes,” he said, casting her a sidelong glance. “The sender has been setting me up for something I’m not sure I want to get involved in. At least, not yet and not to this extent. What baffles me is this person’s motivation.” He shook his head in perplexity. “Why is he pushing me into this course of action?”

She refrained from asking what the course of action was. “You’re being very mysterious,” she teased. “Never mind,” she added with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Obviously, you’re not in a position to tell me anything more.”

He shot her a grateful look over the rim of his martini glass.

“I assume the course of action this person is setting you up for is not a wise one.”

“Why do you say that?”

“If it were a wise one, it would mean this person wants you to succeed; if not, it would mean this person wants you to self-destruct. And,” she added, “knowing the office as I do, I doubt it’s the former. Who’re your enemies?” she asked, knowing that Ron sat atop an ambitious heap of middle managers, all of whom envied him his job.

“As you know, they’re legion,” he replied with an ironic chuckle. “But what I don’t understand is this: If this person is out to get me, why doesn’t he expose this—” He groped again for a phrase that wouldn’t be too revealing. “—ill-advised course of action that I’ve embarked upon. Why is he spurring me on?”

“Maybe he wants you to dig yourself in deeper?” she offered.

Ron was quiet. Robin could see the wheels turning. How would it look for him to leave his wife of twenty-seven years for a woman half his age, and one who worked for the competition, besides? Granted, insurance wasn’t rocket science, but consorting with the competition wouldn’t be taken lightly nonetheless.

“Or maybe he’s” (Robin readily accepted her husband’s choice of gender) “spurring you on as a way of helping you to recognize the folly of a course of action that might have been less apparent had it developed at a more gradual pace.”

“A guardian angel who’s pointing out the error of my ways?” he commented.

“Something like that,” she replied. A guardian angel who didn’t want to see him destroy the comfortable life it had taken him years to create, all on account of a simple lapse of judgment brought about by an infantile need to prove his virility.

Ron stared at the fire, sipping his drink thoughtfully. The pendulum was poised at the height of its arc; in a moment, if things went according to plan, it would start swinging back in the opposite direction — coming back home.

“How would Simon view this course of action?” she asked, knowing full well that the company’s chief executive officer was a self-righteous prig who would take a dim view of any extramarital affair, much less one with a competitor.

“Not very well, I’m afraid,” he said, finishing the last of his drink. Setting his glass down on the coffee table, he reached over for her hand and squeezed it. “Thanks,” he said. “I think you’re the one who’s my guardian angel.”

How right he was.

It was a principle of the cards — and of life itself — that, pushed to extremes, everything changes into its opposite. Thus, the libertine metamorphoses into the Holy Roller, the perfect child into the psychopathic killer, the steadfast employee into the swindler. And just so had all the good qualities of her husband — the sober King of Pentacles — turned under the pressure of earning a living, keeping his job, losing his youth — into their opposites: his reliability into unfaithfulness, his authority into arrogance, his talent with money into tight-fistedness. It had been happening for years. His affair with Julie was the culmination of that process. But that didn’t mean the pendulum couldn’t swing back. All it needed was a little push to get it going.

And that’s what Robin had provided.