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

Heading home, which is how Thomas had come to think of the big house with its curtain of cedars, pines, and tamaracks, he felt pleased with himself through and through. He was counting on Pig Eye to do the same kind of job on the deck as he had done on the parking lot. Moreover, Pig Eye did poor work slowly. This would delay the inevitable and actually add more time, because whatever work Pig Eye botched, Thomas would have to make right. Yes, Thomas thought, sometimes life could be just fine.

The next morning, Thomas was pleasantly surprised when Mary announced that she was going out for the day. This was good. It meant there would be no questions about Pig Eye on the job. Even if Mary threw a fit and she forced the situation back to the way it had been, it would still add a day — and you could do a lot in twenty-four hours if you planned it right.

Pig Eye showed up more or less on schedule. Once he had the job in hand, Thomas decided to relax. He made himself some coffee and sat reading the newspaper. When his attention began to waver, he tried watching television, but he could find nothing that captured his interest. He prowled through the house, looking at all the things that Mary and Dennis had accumulated in their life together and that were now hers. The volume and diversity of the stuff fascinated him. It also struck Thomas how quiet the house was. He had not noticed this before. The phone never rang, it seemed, and no one visited. Thomas aside, Mary was always there alone. These things had not fazed Thomas before, he was so full of thoughts of Mary. But now that he was alone, the circumstance settled on him and made him uneasy. There was something bothering him, but he could not put his finger on what it was.

Thomas felt irritable and restless and out of place in the big rich house. He missed working and regretted giving the job to Pig Eye. In the distance, he could hear the sound of Pig Eye driving nails. If he were closer, Thomas was certain he would be able to hear the old man’s constant muttering, for he talked whether there was anyone there to listen or not. Thomas decided to go for a walk.

“I’m going out for a bit,” Thomas said to Pig Eye. “You need anything?”

“A deck of smokes would speed the job along,” Pig Eye replied.

Thomas knew the brand.

Thomas was gone for about an hour and a half. The house was in the kind of neighborhood where people did not duck out to the corner store for a quart of milk when they ran low. You got the chauffeur to drive the maid and they had to travel a mile or more. Some of the houses were so far apart, Thomas figured people drove just to visit the folks next-door.

Thomas walked slowly and, by the route he took, he figured it was more like two miles to the nearest store. With every step the unease tugged at the back of his mind. He picked up the cigarettes, got himself a lemonade to drink on the spot, and bought some chocolate bars to share later with Pig Eye. By the time Thomas started back, the sun was high and the heat was building.

Somewhere between the store and the house, the right course of action came to him. He realized that he could not stay at Mary’s house anymore. There was too much Dennis there and not enough Mary. It was as if she were dead while Dennis’s life raced exuberantly on.

That thought, coupled with the reality of the body at the bottom of the hole, kept flashing before him. It was clear evidence that he couldn’t trust Mary and it put him in mind of the fact that, once the deck was built and she was tired of him, there was nothing to stop her from killing him, too. After all, if she could get away with murdering someone as appreciated and oft-photographed as Dennis, then killing someone like Thomas, consequence-free, would be easy. He had no connections in the world, except maybe to Pig Eye and Larry, and that link tenuous at best.

As Thomas approached the house, he saw Mary’s car parked in front of the closed garage. There was another vehicle beside it, an expensive European car. It was the first car other than hers that Thomas had seen there. He had hoped to be back before she was, so that Pig Eye’s presence would not come as a surprise, but it was too late to do anything about that now. He hoped that her having unexpected company would not complicate matters.

When he met her coming along the pathway from the backyard, he could tell by her face that she was not happy. “Don’t go back there,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

Thomas took this to mean that she was annoyed about Pig Eye.

“Get out of here,” Mary said. “Now.”

That was a bit much. If she was the kind of woman who would react like this over one old man pounding nails, then to hell with her. He would go, all right. But he was not about to do it without taking the few tools he had brought with him. He did not own many to begin with, and he was damned if he was going to leave them to people who already had more than they could figure out a use for. There was money coming, too.