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

There was more besides. Walls were adorned with diplomas recognizing Dennis’s accomplishments, letters of thanks from charities acknowledging his invaluable contributions, and articles about him that had been clipped or copied from newspapers and magazines. It was as if someone had created a shrine to Dennis. It was Mary’s way of assuaging her guilt, perhaps. Thomas found the effect oppressive.

He did not take long to convince himself that his suspicions were correct: Mary had done away with Dennis, and now she was having a few laughs, slumming. Thomas imagined rich women did this a lot with men and boys who came to work the garden or clean the pool. This was not a problem for Thomas. He figured he would still get paid for building the deck, and perhaps get a little something more out of it besides. He just had to wait for the right moment to bring it up. “Oh, yeah, baby, I found something out back that, uh, I kinda gotta ask you about.” It wasn’t time for that yet, however.

In the middle of the night, Mary put the proposal to him. “Why don’t you stay here? At least until the job’s done.”

“I didn’t bring anything with me. No clothes.”

“I think I can find something that’ll fit.”

“No toothbrush, either.”

“I’ve got a spare.”

Thomas smiled to himself in the dark, thinking, That was easy.

Work went slowly over the next few days. Thomas decided to build the hot-tub end of the structure first, wanting to maintain access to the body as long as possible. He couldn’t have told anyone exactly why, but he had learned to trust his instincts over the years and there was something nagging at whatever part of the brain got nagged by thoughts like that. There was more to Thomas’s leisurely pace than that, of course. He was smart enough to understand that once the job was done, he would be sent away, and he wanted the situation to last as long as possible.

As the work went on, Thomas realized that he would often forget entirely that the body was there. He would be in the middle of doing something else and his glance would find the short footing. Then the image of the body at the bottom of the hole would come back to him, and he would wonder how long it had been gone. The ability of the human mind to shunt aside unpleasantness is a marvel, he thought.

Five days into the job, Thomas needed more supplies. Mary, or more probably Dennis before he died, had miscalculated the amount of nails required, and Thomas wanted stringers for the stairs instead of building them from scratch. He knew that store-bought stringers could be of doubtful quality, but they would make his job easier.

It was in the parking lot of the lumberyard that Thomas ran into Pig Eye and Larry. The two of them were helping a small-time contractor load his truck. Thomas knew they were there before he saw them, Pig Eye’s familiar high-pitched voice coming from behind the truck.

“Working hard, boys?” Thomas asked as he came up on them.

“Hardly workin’,” Pig Eye replied, looking surprised as ever to see Thomas.

It turned out that Pig Eye and Larry had spent the last few days hanging around at a couple of working-men’s bars and prowling lumberyards, looking for bosses who wanted cheap labor for cash. They had picked up an hour here and two hours there, but nothing to write home about. Today they were a couple of strong backs for a while at twenty bucks a man. “This is the last of it,” Pig Eye said. “No more work today and no prospects for tomorrow.”

Thomas had always believed that good things got passed along and that you were wise to share your good fortune — as long as it cost you little and there was a chance of a bigger payback. As he looked at his two acquaintances, a notion struck him.

“Say, Pig, I got a proposal for you. You could make a couple bucks.”

Pig Eye looked wary, as if he expected to be asked to donate a kidney. “What needs doin’?”

“How are you at building decks?”

Pig Eye laughed. “I’ve nailed more decks than doxies.” Later, back at Mary’s house, Thomas had to look up the meaning of doxy in the Oxford dictionary, but at the time he just grinned and nodded. He’d been around Pig Eye long enough to get the drift.

Thomas laid out his scheme. “Since I been doing good on this deck thing, I thought I’d share the wealth. You cover for me a couple days, I’ll pay you cash. You get fed, too.”

“Me and Larry both?”

Thomas shook his head. “I don’t think she’d go for that. Just one of you, but the pay’s good enough for two.”

Pig Eye looked at Larry and then back at Thomas. “I’ll be the man for the job, then. When it comes to hammers, Larry there has no kind of proper feeling. He misses more often than not. Except if it’s his thumb.”

Larry frowned and looked hurt, but Thomas wasn’t sure if that was because of Pig Eye’s criticism or because he was being squeezed out of work so easily.

“Fine,” Thomas said. He gave Pig Eye the address and told him not to show up before ten. “That’s enough of a day. And I’ll square it with the lady of the house.”