Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 57, No. 1 & 1, January/February 2012

No Uncertain Terms C. J. Harper

When Doreen Martin opened the door that led from the garage to the mudroom, she knew her husband was dead. She sensed it in the dense, whispery silence that closed in on her like a shroud. A silence that made her aware of her own breathing. Of her own mortality.

She knew Tom hadn’t gone anywhere. His cancer had made him a prisoner in his own home. But it hadn’t progressed that far yet. He’d looked thinner this morning when she’d left for the casino, his face more gaunt and more gray than usual, but the death sentence in October had been six months. Only three had passed. How could he be dead?

And that’s when she knew. That’s when Doreen’s heart stumbled and her vision splintered at the edges. When her words came out in a shaky hiss. “That son of a bitch.”

She started toward the kitchen but stumbled over something. She looked down. Tom’s hiking boots lay on their sides like the feet of an invisible dead man. She kicked at them. Kicked at those damned, useless, overpriced hiking boots, the ones he’d bought only the month before for two hundred dollars.

She could feel her anger at him growing, filling the voids and veins and sinew inside her. Filling up more of her being than she thought she had.

When she passed into the kitchen she was hit with the sickeningly sweet smell of cigarettes, cordite, and blood. The sight of him hit her even harder. She began to shiver as if the cold winter air that had followed her inside had become trapped under her coat. Under her skin.

Tom Martin sat in a kitchen chair, his back to the sliding glass door. Blood and bits of brain tissue and bone slid slowly down the giant pane behind him. His head was lolled over to one side. His mouth hung open.

She moved closer to him.

The back of his head was little more than a gaping, oozing, red-and-white divot. His gray curly hair surrounding the wound had become dark and matted with blood. A rust-colored afghan — the one he’d been using to keep warm the last few weeks — covered his legs and feet. The gun lay lifeless on a slack hand in his lap, wisps of smoke still trickling from its barrel.

She looked at the table. A note the size of a full page of typing paper lay next to a fresh cigarette burning in a square, glass ashtray. A thin blue line of smoke floated up from a simmering Marlboro, then rippled into a churning, tangled web.

“You son of a bitch.” It came out in a whisper, but the sound of her own voice in the cryptlike kitchen startled her. Made the anger and irritation and shock unstable. Almost unmanageable.

Doreen took a deep breath to steady herself, then walked to the counter by the refrigerator where she kept her cigarettes, never taking her eyes off what was left of her husband. She scooped up the pack of Mores and fingered out one of the long, thin, dark brown smokes. Both hands trembled as she tucked it between her dry lips and repeatedly thumbed her temperamental lighter. Finally it caught and she lit the cigarette. Then she sat down in the chair across the table from Tom and took long, slow drags. Tried to calm her nerves.

It just happened, she thought. The bastard had waited until I sent up the garage door, and then he did it. Waited the three full hours I was gone until the very last minute. “You goddamned son of a bitch.”

She noticed her hand was still shaking as she held the cigarette between two fingers, propped up by her elbow. It surprised her, the trembling, the light-headedness. This was what she’d been secretly — and not so secretly — hoping for since the kids had left home, to be free of this bastard and this marriage. And yet, in some deep, almost primal way, she was upset by it. She could barely stand to look at him when he was alive, and now she couldn’t take her eyes off him. She’d wanted him to be gone, and now that he was, it was a shock. A palpable, gut-churning blow to the system.

He’d been threatening to kill himself since the moment they’d left the oncologist’s office in October. Stomach cancer. Inoperable. Too far along. Six months at best.

“I’m not going to waste away into nothing,” he’d said on the ride home, his hand incessantly tapping at his thigh as she drove. “I’ll kill myself first.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I sure as hell will.”

“You haven’t got the nerve.”

Turns out he did. She had to give him credit. The son of a bitch had somehow found the nerve. She reached over and flicked the ashes from her cigarette into Tom’s ashtray.

Noticing the note again, she pulled it closer to her. What she’d thought was a single sheet of eight-and-a-half by eleven paper was actually several pages — maybe a dozen — bound together by a pair of staples spaced evenly at the top. He’d written his suicide note on the back of the last page:

Doreen flipped over the packet of papers. Large, boldface letters ran across the top: POLICY OF LIFE INSURANCE. It was the two-hundred fifty thousand dollar policy they’d taken out on Tom a year and a half ago, when both of their old term policies had run out and Tom had still seemed healthy. He hadn’t even been smoking then, having quit cold turkey five years before. This allowed him to get the non-smoker rate, while she’d been forced to get the more expensive smokers policy — also worth two-hundred fifty thousand — because there was no way in hell she was going to quit.

But neither of them had been concerned with the rates. They’d each assumed they’d outlive the other, and both had regarded the premiums as a relatively short-term investment with a quarter million dollar return. It had been almost a bet between them, wagering themselves as beneficiaries.

But terms. What terms? There had been dozens of terms the agent had pointed out to them. Grace periods. Incontestability. Misstatement of Age or Sex. Changing beneficiaries. On and on. Some she had missed as her mind had drifted to daydreams of someone actually paying her that much money for the body of her dead husband. Like some sort of a bounty for an outlaw. Dead or alive. Preferably dead.

While part of her had dreamed, another part had figured that with her luck she’d never be young enough — she was fifty-eight at the time — to enjoy the money. But then, like a gift, Tom’s cancer had shown up. Initially she had wondered if she’d somehow brought it on, her hatred of him, her anger toward him, her resentment that of the two of them he was the one people liked more. The one who could make everyone laugh. Everyone but her.

And that laugh. God help us, that deep-barrel growl of a laugh. That self-righteous chortle. Others seemed to find it endearing — “Doesn’t Tom have the best laugh?” — but to Doreen it was infuriating. Maybe the thing she hated most about him.

But as the cancer had advanced, his humor had left him. The bitterness had grown. The laughter had died. And his so-called friends stopped coming to visit. And now he’d killed himself. She’d had nothing to do with any of that. That had all been Tom’s fault.

And now she was two-hundred fifty thousand dollars richer.

A charge ran through her. Made her hands tingle. She took a quick, excited puff on her cigarette.

But then it struck her. What Tom had meant by “terms.” The tingling in her hands became nausea in her stomach. She picked up the policy and flipped through page after page of numbers and boilerplate until she found the section.

Doreen flung the policy off the table. It landed near the refrigerator like a dead mallard. “Shit.” She pounded the table. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

She jumped to her feet and began pacing and screaming at him. “I hate you. I hate you. I’ve always hated you. I hope you burn in hell.” She paced some more and took hard pulls on the thin brown cigarette, her hand still shaking, the shock replaced by rage. Then she ground out the More in the ashtray as if it were his smiling face. She began nibbling at the skin at the edges of her fingernails, her breath scuttling back and forth through her curled fingers. She came to a stop at the edge of the table and stared at Tom’s open mouth.

“I’ll get you back for this, you son of a bitch.”

She needed that money. Her losing streak at the casino had been going on longer than she wanted to admit. She’d even been dipping into Tom’s retirement account — now that she had power of attorney — without his knowledge. But even that was running out.

I need that damn money, she thought, as she put her hands on her hips and surveyed the mess Tom had left behind. A mess worth exactly a quarter of a million dollars.

Twenty minutes later, she removed her gardening gloves and scanned the kitchen as if for the first time. Duct tape held Tom’s hands behind his back and his ankles together. The gun was in her purse. She’d scrubbed his hand, having read in some mystery novel about the gun powder residue that could be found on the shooter’s skin. She moved to the bathroom and assessed the cut screen, the open window and the shattered glass on the floor. It looked real enough. She checked the other rooms of the rambler. Some of the drawers were open and rifled through — enough but not too much. A robbery gone bad. Any burglar would be disappointed by what they’d find in our tiny house, she thought. Except Tom’s .38, which according to the new story she’d hurriedly concocted, the intruder had used to kill Tom and then had pocketed.

Satisfied, she fixed her hair, cleaned her shoes of Tom’s detritus, and left the house. She drove to the library — a place she hadn’t visited since the kids were small — and found a copy machine tucked away in the stacks. After carefully pulling the staples, she copied the policy side of the last page. Then she stuffed the suicide note into her purse and re-stapled the new last page to the policy, making sure to punch through the old holes.

In the car, she tore the note into a dozen pieces and deposited the remains into a brown paper grocery bag, the same grocery bag that held the gun, her garden gloves, and Tom’s overpriced boots. She rolled the top of the bag closed.

Her next stop was the A&P where, on her way in, she dropped the paper bag into an outside garbage can. Inside, halfway down aisle three, she let a bottle of spaghetti sauce slip from her hand and shatter on the floor. Red sauce splattered over her slacks and shoes. The store manager, Jerry, a big bear of a man with a thin gray comb-over, was very nice about it, particularly when she told him in a desperate voice that she needed to get home. Jerry knew Tom was terminally ill and had simply nodded his head, pursed his lips, and patted her shoulder. That’s when she began to cry, making sure Jerry would not forget that she had been there at that time of day.

And as luck would have it, as she left the A&P she saw that the garbage can was being emptied by some filthy, minimum-wage flunky who seemed to take no interest in what he was dumping into the truck. Soon, the gun and the boots would be well on their way to the garbage-burning plant downtown.

On the way home, though, the thought nagged her that the tears that had come in the store had come too easily. They’d been real — which was what she had wanted — but too real.

When she pulled into the garage a half hour after she’d left, Doreen tried to act as if she had no idea what she’d find. The stillness of death remained in the air, but the gunpowder smell had faded. She walked into the kitchen and dropped the bag of groceries on the floor.

The grisliness of the scene — the hyper-vividness of it; the finality of it — hit her harder than she’d expected. Her stomach tumbled over and she lost her balance for a moment. She stumbled to the phone and dialed 911.

When the dispatcher answered, Doreen’s heart began to pound. “My husband is dead,” she said, surprised by the emotion in her voice. “He’s been murdered.”

Doreen waited in the bedroom, smoking, while the police pored over the kitchen. She’d been interviewed by a Detective Jenkins shortly after he’d arrived, but it had been almost an hour since she’d seen him. Various officers had poked their heads in to offer condolences and see if they could get her something, but she had politely thanked them and declined.

It was Jenkins who stopped in the doorway now. His sport coat was off and his tie was loosened at the neck of a white, short-sleeved dress shirt. He wore brown pants and his brown hair was brushed straight down into bangs. There was no part and no style. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. “Mrs. Martin?”

“Yes, Detective?” Doreen made her voice quiver. “Are you about finished?”

Jenkins frowned. “No, ma’am. We’re treating this as a possible homicide, so it’s going to take us another day to go over the whole house for evidence. Do you have anyone you can stay with? Family? Friends?”

“My — our — kids live out of town. I’ll just get a hotel room if you think it will only be for one night.”

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

“It’s no inconvenience, Detective, as long as you find the animal that did this to Tom.”

“We’ll do our best, ma’am.” He started to leave, but stopped. “Do you mind if I take a look at the shoes you were wearing when you found him?”

Doreen looked at her feet, suddenly alarmed. “My shoes?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve found footprints in the... near the kitchen table and want to determine whose they are.”

She pulled off her loafers and Jenkins took them from her. “They could be mine, I guess.”

Jenkins cocked his head. “I thought you said that when you found him, you dropped the groceries and went straight to the phone.”

“Well, that’s right, I did say that, but I may have walked closer to make sure he was dead. I honestly don’t remember what I did exactly. It was such a shock to see him...” Not sure what else to say, she covered her face and leaned forward.

“I understand. We’re just going to make sure. Sorry for the trouble.”

She looked up, thinking that Jenkins had left, but he was still standing in the doorway, his brows raised by uncertainty. As if he didn’t know if he should stay or go.

Doreen tried to add some pain to her voice. “Is there anything else, Detective?” As if something else — anything else — might be too much for her to bear.

“Just one quick question. Do you keep your boots anywhere other than in the mudroom closet?”

“My boots?”

“Yes. There are tracks in the snow outside the bathroom window and we want to make sure they’re not yours or Tom’s.”

“I see. No, just the mudroom closet.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He looked relieved that he could finally go.

When she heard Jenkins’s footprints fade, Doreen stood up and began pacing. She wanted to follow him to keep an eye on him, on what the cops were most interested in, but she knew that might look suspicious. Instead, she lit a new cigarette. Lit it before realizing that there was one already burning in the ashtray on the nightstand.

At the Jolly Roger motel that night, Doreen sat on the hard double bed and smoked. She ran the scene over and over in her head, looking for flaws, trying to think like a detective. She’d acted impulsively when she’d read the suicide provision in the life insurance policy. Had felt the desperation to do something fast.

But in her haste had she forgotten something? She retraced her steps.

The murder weapon: Taken care of. By now it was probably irretrievably melting inside the toxic fires of the garbage-burning plant, destroyed like Frodo’s ring inside the Cracks of Doom. She smiled at the comparison.

The suicide note: She’d made a passable copy of the last page of the policy and had cleanly inserted the new staples through the old staple holes. There was no way anyone would ever know that the last page had been replaced. But something about the note bothered her. Tom said he was “triply sure.” That meant something, but what? The suicide term had been one thing, but she’d overcome that. Were there two other roadblocks to the money that he’d created for her? She’d have to give that some thought.

Her alibi: She’d created a convincing scene at the A&P close to the time of Tom’s death. A scene that Jerry, the store manager, would grimly attest to.

The fake burglary: The key had been to make it look like someone had broken in. She’d found a hammer hanging in the basement over the work bench and had taken it into the bathroom. She’d nearly broken the window from the inside, but had quickly realized that for someone breaking in the shards of broken glass would show up on the bathroom floor. So she’d decided to go outside.

She’d gone to the sliding glass door in the kitchen, still smeared by Tom’s effluvium — damn it, that’s probably when she’d stepped in Tom’s blood — and had thought about going outside to the patio to get to the bathroom window. But then she saw all the fresh snow — an inch had fallen overnight — and how exposed the backyard was to the neighbors when the leaves were gone from the trees. What would they think if they saw her cutting a hole in the screen and breaking the window glass?

She hadn’t wanted to be seen, so she’d shut the door and gone back to the bathroom window. She’d then opened the window, tom the screen so it would hang down, and used the hammer to break the window from the outside by reaching her arm under the raised frame. The result had been a very convincing looking break-in.

Finally, the boots: Using Tom’s hiking boots in the ruse had been her most inspired moment of the whole cover-up. She’d put on those damned boots and walked around the side of the house to the back, leaving large, man-sized footprints in the fresh snow. She’d gone to a spot beneath the bathroom window and pretended to survey the wood siding, as if looking for a crack or a leak or a loose board, something no Gladys-Kravitz-neighbor would think twice about. And like the gun, the boots by now were probably facing the same unforgiving inferno downtown.

She took a long draw on her cigarette and stared absently at the silent, flickering motel television. She let a small smile rise to the surface of her lips. She hadn’t missed a thing. Now it was just up to the cops to make the obvious deductions.

But the smile drifted away as her thoughts returned to those goddamned boots. She felt a tightening in her gut at the memory from that day only a month ago when he’d bought the boots. When he’d come home happy.

She’d been sitting at the kitchen table smoking when he’d come in from the garage.

“See my new hiking boots?” He held them up by their heels and let out that godforsaken deep-barrel growl of laughter. The only time since the diagnosis that she’d actually heard him laugh.

“What the hell did you buy those for?” she said, her elbow on the table, her arm straight up, a fuming cigarette resting on top between two lazy fingers.

“They were on sale. Two hundred bucks.”

Her arm dropped to the table, knocking ashes onto the Formica. “For one pair? You could have gotten them for half that price.” She stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Besides, you won’t even get a chance to use them. You’ll be dead first.”

Tom’s face had turned to stone. He’d simply tossed the boots into the mudroom and walked stiffly to his bedroom. And there the boots had sat, irritating her every time she tripped over them. Or saw them. Or even thought of them.

The tightness in Doreen’s gut grew sharper as she eyed the TV. She’d hated the man, and hated the boots, but she knew what she’d said had hurt him. Even more than she’d intended. Why was that bothering her now when she hadn’t thought twice about it up to this moment?

A loud double ring rattled the telephone next to the bed. Doreen jumped at the sound and her heart began to throb in her chest. Adrenaline pulsed through her veins. Everything seemed to startle her now. Everything a potential threat to her two-hundred fifty thousand dollar gambit. An all-or-nothing gambit.

She tried to calm herself. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” she said out loud, hoping the sound of her voice would carry with it some reassurance. It didn’t. It sounded harsh and worn-out. Vulnerable.

Maybe, she thought, the worst thing would be an insurance fraud claim against her. But wasn’t that just a fine? She could sell the house. Live in an apartment. Pay the fine and keep the rest for herself. Not so bad.

The phone double-rang again. She looked at the clock radio on the nightstand. Ten fifteen P.M. Too late for a call from most people. But she was staying in a motel because her husband was dead. There were no rules for phone calls when someone has died. Maybe it was one of the kids.

Earlier, she’d called each of them from the bedroom as the cops had searched her house and photographed the scene. Jenny had taken it better than Michael. He’d started crying immediately and had had to get off the line. Just like his father. Weak at heart. Useless in a moment of crisis.

Jenny, on the other hand, had immediately started asking questions about the break-in. A stay-at-home mom with a journalist’s heart. Who, what, when, where, why. Jenny would cry when she was alone. But when the chips were down, she’d step up and do what had to be done. Just like I had, Doreen thought. I’d stepped up. Outsmarted the old son of a bitch and taken back the money he’d tried to keep from me.

The phone continued its double ring.

Maybe it was Michael. Maybe he’d gotten himself together and wanted to talk about it.

Doreen reached for the phone. But it stopped ringing before she could pick it up. She stared at it as if it were a bomb, waiting for it to go off again. Realized she wasn’t breathing. Took a deep breath. Everything will be okay, she thought. I covered everything. I did it perfectly.

Then the red message light began flashing. She picked up the handset and punched in the numbers to retrieve it. It was Jenkins. The detective with the unstyled hair of a ten year old. His voice sounded distant, tired, formal.

“Mrs. Martin,” he said. “Sorry to call you so late, but I just wanted you to know that you are welcome to return to your home. We’re finished with the investigation and have transported Mr. Martin’s body to the morgue. You’ll have to contact a cleanup crew to take care of the... what was left behind. In fact, I would suggest you contact the cleaning crew in the morning and wait until they’re finished before you return home. We may want to contact you in the next few days if we have any further questions, so please don’t travel anywhere for the next week or so. Again, I’m sorry for your loss. Call me if you have any questions.” He recited his own number and the number for the cleaning crew, then the message ended.

Doreen dropped the handset into the cradle and watched the red light blink. Waited for it to stop. Was there another message? She reached for the phone again, but then the red light went out.

She stared at the phone, sitting there on the motel nightstand next to the clock radio. Sitting there coldly, as if nothing had happened, as if no one had died and nothing was at stake. An indifferent messenger.

She picked it up and left a message for the cleaning company. She wanted them to get started wiping away whatever was left of Tom. Whatever was left of her past life.

At her house the next afternoon, Doreen picked up the debris she’d spread to make the house look ransacked. The cleaning crew had taken care of the human mess, but not the household debris. But they’d done a hell of a job on what they had cleaned up. The kitchen floor and the sliding glass doors were spotless. No blood stains, no spatters, no lingering evidence that Tom Martin had sat at the kitchen table and put a bullet through his own head. The smell of death had been replaced by the smell of disinfectant.

She was mopping the kitchen floor when she heard the doorbell ring. Her heart jumped at the sound. No one ever seemed to ring the doorbell anymore, not since the kids had moved out and their friends had stopped coming by. She leaned the mop against the refrigerator and stepped warily into the hall. A man was peering in the side window, one hand against the glass to block out the glare of the sun. When he saw Doreen he leaned back and gave her a friendly wave.

She recognized him — was it from church? — but couldn’t come up with a name. He was thirty or so, with a baby face. The kind of face you only find on adults who, as kids in high school, had been active in church. Those socially awkward kids who had enjoyed organizing pizza parties with the youth pastor. It was a face that was at once smiley, perpetually blemished, and vaguely insincere. One that seemed to thrive on spotting the sinner inside you. A face that at that moment made her very uncomfortable.

Doreen opened the door. “Yes?”

He dropped the smile and replaced it with something that resembled a sour mixture of compassion and pity. “Mrs. Martin?”

“Yes?”

The smile returned, boosted by amused surprise. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Doreen thought about answering, but he didn’t give her the chance.

“Bill Yates, your insurance agent. I’m the one who sold you and Tom your life insurance policies eighteen months ago.”

Doreen tried to keep her mouth closed. Tried not to show the alarm that was ringing in her ears. How had he known? She hadn’t made a claim yet. Wasn’t going to make a claim for a while. Not until the cops had finished their investigation and suicide had been officially ruled out.

Yates broke through her panic. “I was driving by yesterday and saw all the commotion. And if there’s one thing I’m known for it’s staying on top of my clients’ needs.” More sour compassion replaced the smile. “And I was saddened to find out about Tom’s passing. My deepest condolences to you and your wonderful children, Michael and Jenny. My only hope is that as your insurance agent I can help in some small way to begin the process of healing.”

It sounded like it had come from a script. Something that had probably been included in a packet at the annual national sales convention for his insurance company. Something from some seminar with a ridiculous title like, “The Right Words at the Wrong Time.”

From behind his back he produced a small basket of flowers. “Just a little something from Covenant Insurance Agency to comfort you in your time of mourning. Please let me know if I can be of any service to you.”

She took the basket and held it away from her body, instinctively trying to avoid getting any dirt or water or flower petals on her grubby housecleaning blouse. “Thank you.”

“I assume that at some point you will be making a claim against Tom’s policy.”

She fumbled for a response, finally pushing out an unconvincing, “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Well, don’t you worry about it. It’s not greedy to want what you feel you have coming to you. And since your premiums were up to date, you have every right to receive the blessings due to you under the policy. Assuming of course that none of the terms of that policy had been violated.”

Terms. The word Tom had put in quotations in his suicide note. “Which terms?”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I don’t know. This and that.” He looked past her into the house like a ghoulish sightseer. “Do you mind if I return once I’ve reviewed the police report?”

She hesitated, stumbling over her thoughts, then managed to say, “No, of course not. Come back anytime.”

He smiled and gave a polite bow as he left. He seemed sincere, Doreen thought, but she still didn’t trust the son of a bitch.

It took him two days to return, once again peering in through the side window like some sort of Peeping Tom as he waited after ringing the doorbell. When she turned into the hallway and recognized him, she felt a chill shuttle through her bones. She wiped her hands on her slacks before opening the door.

He pasted on a mirthless smile, leaned toward her, and said, “May I come in?”

She wanted to say no, but her body moved back on its own and opened the door wider. He stepped inside.

She shut the door and stared at him, waiting for him to say something. Do something. She’d been preparing herself for ways to handle various scenarios, but this one — the one with the nosy insurance agent — was too difficult to manage. It could go so many different ways.

Finally, he said, “May we sit down and talk about your husband’s policy?”

Panic. Had that bastard, Tom, changed beneficiaries behind her back? “What about his policy?”

“Can we sit down?” That pious face again.

She led him into the kitchen. He seemed to be studying the room, as if looking for something as he sat down. She stayed on her feet. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure,” he said, with more enthusiasm than coffee ever requires.

She poured a cup for each of them and sat across from him at the table. Having to perform such a simple task in front of him seemed to calm her some. She began to feel more confident, more in control. “What about Tom’s policy? I’m still the beneficiary.” It was a statement but it carried with it a hint of a question.

Yates smiled. “Of course you are.”

Doreen smiled too, mostly out of relief.

“But I do have one question.” Yates wrinkled his nose. “I hate to pry, but did Tom smoke?”

Doreen’s confidence evaporated. She started to speak but stopped. Tried to buy time. Tried to think straight. “What do you mean?”

His head tilted. “I mean, was Tom a smoker?”

She started laughing. An unconvincing laugh even to her. She quickly reined it in. “Tom? Goodness, no. He used to but he quit years ago.”

“I only ask because the police report mentions that the ashtray on the table held several extinguished cigarettes in it, within reach of Tom’s chair.”

“Oh, I see. No, those were my cigarettes. I’m a smoker.”

“Do you smoke Marlboros?”

“I smoke Mores,” she said too quickly.

“Then whose Marlboros were in the ashtray?”

She didn’t answer. Nothing would come to her, other than, “I’ve no idea.”

“Because as you know, Mrs. Martin, Tom had purchased the non-smoker policy, and if he had taken up smoking again, he was obligated under the terms of the policy to inform us within thirty days of that change in conditions. I trust you’re right that Tom didn’t smoke, but the underwriter will need to see the autopsy report to verify that he hadn’t resumed smoking again.”

That’s when it hit her. That’s when Doreen realized that suicide wasn’t the only provision of the policy Tom had intended to violate to deny her of the benefits.

Anxiety flooded her chest, made breathing more difficult. She took an unsteady sip of her coffee. Saw her hand tremble. Used the other one to try to hide her agitation. Had to make a conscious effort to swallow the hot liquid. Felt its heat and caffeine heighten the anxiety.

Smoking was the second roadblock. If Tom meant something by writing that he was “triply sure,” did that mean there was a third barrier to her collecting the money?

She looked at the insurance agent. Yates was smiling vaguely at her, as if what he had just said had been a pleasantry. She wanted to smother that smile, and for a split second pictured the young man as she’d found Tom: his head tilted to the side, mouth open, a gaping hole in the back of his head where his brains had exploded out of his body. Pictured the gun in her hand, languid smoke drifting out of the barrel. The thought startled her. Not just in its vividness, but in how it seemed to calm her nerves. Left her with the vague feeling that there might be other options here.

“I’m not sure whose they were,” Doreen said, her voice seeming disembodied to her, “Tom had completely given up on smoking.” Then a thought, one that gave her a quick boost. “Maybe they were the murderer’s.”

Yates’s smile turned grim. “That’s what I thought too. Because if you tell me Tom didn’t smoke, I believe you. So I don’t anticipate any problems with the autopsy report. I’m sure everything will work out just fine.”

She tried to take on a lighthearted tone. “But if there was a problem, I mean theoretically, in other cases, where someone had bought the non-smoker policy and then started smoking again, what happens then?”

“Worst-case scenario?”

“Yes.”

“Denial of benefits.”

“You mean I’d — they’d — get nothing?”

“That’s right. They’d get their premiums back, but that’s it.”

Yates started to push himself back from the table as a prelude to getting up.

“How about another hypothetical case? What if the police, for whatever reason, say that the person killed himself. What happens then?”

“Same thing. That would violate the terms of the policy and would be grounds for denial of benefits.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that a possibility here?”

Doreen barked out a false laugh. “Goodness, no. Tom was dying, of course, but he would never take his own life. Never.”

Yates relit his smile and turned up his hands in halfhearted celebration. “Then we have nothing to worry about. These are all routine matters, Mrs. Martin. I anticipate sending you that check. And quite a large one, I might add.”

You’re damn right, Doreen thought. And no one’s going to take it away from me.

Bill Yates’s smile never faded as they said their goodbyes and he drove off down the street. It was then that Doreen realized how fast her heart was beating.

It didn’t settle back into its normal rhythm until twenty minutes later when she was sitting on a stool inside the casino. Until she was using one hand to hold her cigarette and a scotch, and the other to steadily plunk in gold-colored tokens and jerk the handle of a cold, one-armed bandit.

Two days later, Yates was at her door again. And just as before, he was leaning in toward the side window, one hand trying to shade his eyes as he peered through the midday reflection from a guiltless sun. When he spotted her moving slowly up the hallway, he gave a small wave and a non-committal grin.

At the sight of him, Doreen’s first thought was to kill him. If he had bad news, that is. If he denied her the benefits she deserved. It wouldn’t be hard to get rid of the body, she thought. Just bury him in the basement, or something. Or in the crawl space. She could ask him downstairs under the pretense of helping her move an old dresser — the one Michael had used up until he’d graduated from high school — and then, when Yates’s back was turned, kill him. With an aluminum bat. Or a golf club. Or a two-by-four. Or a hatchet. Whatever was close at hand. Just the thought of it gave her a sense of hope.

She opened the door. Propped up a welcoming smile. “Hello, Mr. Yates.”

“Please, Mrs. Martin. Call me Bill.”

“What can I do for you, Bill?”

He held up his thin, company-logoed briefcase. “I have the autopsy report. The medical examiner goes to my church. He always gives me an advance copy. Even before he gives one to the police.”

Her hope suddenly vanished. She felt faint, as if her soul was trying to leave her body. “What does it say?”

“May I come in?”

She tried to swallow. That couldn’t be good news. Why wouldn’t he just tell her? “Certainly.”

He followed her toward the kitchen. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “I was down in the basement trying to move an old dresser. But it’s just too heavy. Couldn’t get it to budge.”

He set his briefcase next to the kitchen table and looked at her with that same maddening, insincere smile. “I can help you with that.”

She smiled back and pointed toward the door to the basement stairs. “It won’t take but a minute.”

“No time like the present,” he said.

As they trudged down the wooden stairs — Doreen in front — she felt her blood rise, expand in her veins, pound in her ears. At the bottom she quickly scanned for a weapon. There had to be something amid all the old boxes and furniture, mattresses and couches, tools and electronics. Something that would be quick and decisive.

She hadn’t noticed him talking. Hadn’t heard it through the rush of noise in her ears.

“...quite interesting reading. I honestly don’t know how they can figure out so much stuff after the fact, but they do.”

“It’s that one over there,” she said, pointing to the yellowing dresser in the corner. “I need it moved over—” She looked for a spot, then pointed to an open space between a cluttered bookcase and the washing machine. “— there.”

Yates assessed the dresser as if it were a puzzle. “I think we can walk it.”

“I can’t help. I have a bad back.”

Again, the smile. “No problem. I can do it myself.” He spread his legs around one end of the dresser and slid it out a couple of feet. Then switched sides and moved the other end out twice as far. “As I was saying. Those medical examiners can really determine a lot about someone’s life...”

Doreen had drifted away in her search for the right weapon. Drifted toward the workbench.

“...what they ate...”

She spotted it. The hatchet. The one that Tom had used years ago to split kindling for the fireplace.

“...how much alcohol they drank...”

When his back was turned, she picked up the hatchet from the workbench and held it behind her back.

“...what pills they took...”

She watched his back as he faced toward the dresser. Waited for her moment.

“...how much they smoked...”

He was switching sides. She moved up behind him. Squeezed the handle of the hatchet. Raised it.

The doorbell rang upstairs. Doreen hesitated.

Yates looked up toward the ceiling. “I think you have company.”

Doreen quickly lowered the hatchet behind her and backed away from him.

“Anyway,” he said, turning toward her, “it turns out that, as you said, Tom hadn’t resumed smoking.”

Doreen froze. “What?”

Yates stared at her, unsure what she meant. “I said you have company.” He said it like a question.

“No. After that.”

“Oh. The autopsy report confirmed that Tom hadn’t shown signs of recent smoking. There was some discoloration in his lungs, some signs of damage, but the M.E. attributed that to secondhand smoke from you.”

“What about suicide?”

He shook his head. “The M.E. just said it was a bullet wound at close range. It’s up to the police to determine if it was suicide or not.”

She shook her head, trying to clear it. Trying to understand the implications of what Yates had just said. “So I’ll get my money?”

“You sure will. As long as it wasn’t suicide.”

The doorbell rang again.

“If you want to get that,” Yates said, “I can finish up down here. It will only take a minute.” Then he noticed her awkward posture, one arm behind her as she began to back toward the workbench. His eyes narrowed and the ever-present smile dimmed.

She stopped at the workbench, still facing Yates, and without looking let the hatchet fall from her hand onto the workbench. It slipped off the edge and clattered on the floor. Without looking at him she moved quickly to the stairs. “I’ll see who it is.”

Sweat was forming on her upper lip. She couldn’t seem to draw a full breath. Couldn’t focus, her vision splintering. Struggled between elation and fear. Elation that she was about to collect; fear that Yates had deduced that she was going to kill him.

And I would have killed him, she thought, if the doorbell hadn’t rung. And I’d never have heard the good news. I might’ve killed him for no reason.

She shuddered at the thought.

The doorbell rang again.

Elation began to win out. “I’m coming,” she yelled.

She reached the top of the stairs and moved quickly down the hallway. Through the side window of the door she spotted a navy blue shoulder. Noticed a patch on it. A police officer.

She opened the door to two cops and the detective with the bad haircut — Jenkins, that was his name — all standing with their hands behind their backs.

Jenkins stepped forward. “Mrs. Martin?”

Doreen gave a half smile. “Yes, Detective?”

“May we come in?”

“Certainly.” She moved back as the men stepped inside. The two uniformed cops stood closer to her, one on each side, as Jenkins faced her. His eyes were narrow. Hard. Harder than she’d thought he’d had in him.

“Are you Doreen Martin?”

That was funny. “Yes?”

“Doreen Martin, you’re under the arrest for the murder of Thomas Martin. You have the right to remain silent...”

A rush of panic blurred her vision, filled her ears. “What?”

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Thomas Martin.”

A white heat surged inside her veins. Made her dizzy. Breathless. “That’s impossible.”

He took a step toward her, handcuffs suddenly appearing in front of him. “You faked the break-in to cover up that fact that you murdered him.” She put a hand against the wall for balance. “No, no, no. Someone... someone killed him.”

The two officers spun her around. She would have fallen if they hadn’t each grabbed an arm. She could feel Jenkins move in close behind her. Felt the cold steel of the handcuffs bite into her wrists as they locked shut. His breath was hot against her neck. “You killed him.”

“What about the footprints in the snow?”

“They were Tom’s,” Jenkins said.

She tried to spin around to face him but the cops held her in place. She had to look at him over her shoulder. “Tom’s? That’s impossible. I threw the boots away.” She knew it was something she shouldn’t have said, but her disbelief had overcome her discretion.

Jenkins gave her a funny look then seemed to dismiss what she had said as the ravings of someone under extreme stress. “I have no idea what you threw away, Mrs. Martin, but Tom was wearing the boots that made those tracks in the snow. We compared them and they were an exact match.”

Doreen started to speak, but stopped, dumbstruck by understanding. Closed her eyes as all the pieces fell into place. “Triply sure.” The third roadblock to the money: the two-hundred-dollar hiking boots. A price that was twice what it should have been. A price that bought two identical pairs. Tom had waited until a new snowfall to kill himself. Knew she’d use the boots to make suicide look like murder. Knew she’d throw them away. Had worn the other pair — now the only pair — and hidden them beneath the rust-colored afghan.

Jenkins’s voice seemed to come from a distance even though he still stood behind her. “It was murder, and you were the only one who had the opportunity. The neighbors saw no one come and go other than you. You have the right to remain silent...”

Doreen tried the last thing left to her: the truth. It came out airless and unconvincing. “But Tom killed himself.”

Jenkins shook his head. “Changing your story, ma’am, can be used against you.”

Doreen became weak. Exhausted. Could barely stand. Let the truth drift out in a passionless confession. “It was suicide. I tried to cover it up to make it look like a murder so I could collect on the insurance.”

“I knew it.” It was Yates up from the basement, standing with his hands on his hips, that pious look turned lustful at the sudden uncovering of sin.

Jenkins ignored the insurance agent. “No, ma’am, Tom did not kill himself. We know what a suicide looks like and this definitely wasn’t one. This was a cold, brutal, execution-style murder, one that will put you away for a long, long time. Now as I said, you have the right to remain silent...”

Doreen Martin didn’t hear the rest. She couldn’t hear anything through the noise filling her head, the noise she hated above all other things: the distant, deep-barrel growl of Tom’s infuriating, self-righteous laughter.