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

Damn. Just what he needed at the end of the day. Thomas had been pleased by how few rocks there’d been so far: just some incidental stones that were easily dealt with. But as he poked around the bottom of the hole with the blade of the auger this rock felt like a mother. That seemed odd, because it had not sounded that big. There was more of a dull thud when he hit it, and not the usual sharp clang. Thomas fired the auger down a couple more times, from different angles, in case he was wrong. But no; the rock felt big and immovable. He would have to dig around it and pry it up.

Thomas lifted the auger out and tossed it aside. He knelt beside the hole and reached down to the bottom with a trowel, scraping away some loose dirt. Then, with his hand, he felt around the edge to try and get a fix on how big the rock was. There was something odd about it, as if something soft were covering it — something soft and loose. Thomas looked down into the hole and at first wasn’t sure if he had just been working in the sun too long. He reached in gingerly and pushed more dirt aside. There was no mistake. It wasn’t a rock at all.

Thomas sat back on a pile of dirt and thought for a minute or two. The sweat dried on his body, and he wiped himself with his shirt before he put it back on. Thomas didn’t know much about corpses. He’d gone out for a time with a woman who worked at a funeral home and who had shown him a couple up close, but that was a different thing. The body in the hole was fairly new, that much was certain. The hand and forearm were obviously a man’s. Who was it? Who put him there? There was only one reasonable conclusion to which Thomas could come. Mary, Mary, how does your garden grow? He knelt at the side of the hole, shoveled a foot of dirt back in, and straightened up the site. He had never been one for leaving tools and equipment scattered around. That was unprofessional. He did the work slowly, taking time to square the stacks of lumber, thinking all the while about what his discovery might mean, and what he was going to do about it.

Finally, Thomas walked around to the front door and rang the bell. Mary answered, wearing more than she had worn earlier. “I’m gone for the day,” Thomas said.

“It looks like you’ve made good progress,” she said. If she had been looking out the window, Thomas wondered just how much she had seen.

“It’s coming along okay. I’ll be mixing concrete tomorrow.”

“Very good,” she said with an innocuous smile.

“Yeah, and after I get that poured I’ll have to take a day off. Concrete takes about twenty-four hours to cure. Not as good to work on otherwise.”

She seemed to accept this with equanimity. “You’ll be back here Friday, though?” she said.

“As long as it doesn’t rain.”

“Of course.” She was so low-key about the whole thing that Thomas decided to try what he thought was his bombshell.

“Oh yeah. I found a little glitch in the plans.” There was no reaction, so he probed further. “They’re a little off, and I gotta make an adjustment.” He noticed a slight tightening of her eyebrows. “A few of the holes have to be made in different spots than the plans say. Otherwise the support won’t be right.” She pursed her lips and Thomas thought he had hit on something.

After a pause she said, “But if you make these changes the support will be better?”

He nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Fine,” she said, with no hint of concern. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Thomas went downtown and looked around a couple of places for Pig Eye and Larry, but didn’t see them. In the end, it was just as well. He had some thinking to do and Pig Eye’s constant yapping sometimes made thinking difficult.

For much of the trip Thomas had actually considered calling the cops. Then he began to think that there had to be something better to do than turning Mary in. He was still mulling over the decision when the bartender announced last call.

When he got there the next morning, Mary gave no hint that there was anything amiss. Thomas worked slowly, his mind half on the job and half on the body. There was still no sign of a living husband.

Thomas finished digging the remaining holes, changing the position of each one by six inches or so. After all, he’d told Mary that some adjustments needed to be made and he liked to think he was a man of his word. Sometime in the middle of the morning, Mary brought him a cup of coffee but they didn’t exchange more than a few words.

By noon, all the holes were dug, and Thomas started on the concrete. He ran a hose from a tap that rose from the ground in the middle of one of the garden beds. Then he dumped a bag of premix into a wheelbarrow, added water, and stirred with a spade. As soon as one bag was mixed and shoveled into a footing he started on the next. It was hard work, but good for the shoulders, he told himself.