Skip stared curiously at the figure until she suddenly turned and descended the rise, disappearing from his sight. Then he forgot her and began discussing stucco walls with Ernie.
He didn’t even remember her two days later when the carpenter was killed, picked off by a rifleshot where he rested, perched on a piece of stone, while his buddy fetched more nails from the truck.
The village constable called in the county’s Sixth Precinct homicide squad, who finally allowed the carpenter’s body to be taken away. The lingering shock was still severe. Skip canceled everything for the day, even deliveries.
After buying the men a restorative beer at Murphy’s, he watched them hurry home. He thought about how someday he’d be hurrying home to Alexia in times of trouble... if he could pull this off.
It baffled him why anybody would shoot the carpenter, who’d seemed to be a pleasant guy, a hard worker with a family. As he ordered himself another beer, he wondered uneasily if it had anything to do with his scheme...
He painstakingly reexamined the details of this last — his very last — attempt to solve his problem. The problem wasn’t a new one to mankind anywhere — he needed money. Lots of money.
At first he’d tried saving it, skimping on food and clothes. But as he lost weight and stuffed cardboard into his work shoes, he realized that even if he starved it could take decades to accumulate the nest egg he needed. He tried investing in a small enterprise a school friend had started, and lost both his money and his friend. Other schemes had made him rich only in experience, but at least he’d kept the rest of his friends.
That’s when he’d begun working the lottery, buying hundreds of lottery tickets, until it became obvious that he wasn’t destined for any winning ticket — anywhere — anytime.
Then, down to the last of his savings and out of ideas, he’d driven to Atlantic City. In this final, desperate ploy, either he would win enough money to marry his angel, the female he ached for with every ounce of his being, or... he could think of nothing else to do... he’d jump into the cold dirty ocean that ran alongside the casinos and drown himself.
It would take a miraculous run of luck, but how else could he ever marry Alexia — gorgeous, laughing, light as air Alexia, whose parents had always provided her with the finest clothes and a luxurious home? Alexia, who, Skip never doubted, could choose any man she wanted... and she’d chosen him. How could he ask her to accept so much less than she was used to having?
He remembered that last fatal day, the final day when everything had happened, when fate had brought the edges of his plan together... he’d gone to pick up Alexia up from her job as a grocery store cashier. He remembered thinking as he’d stood to one side, watching her finish with the last customer of the day, that she was the object of his dreams, the future mother of his future children, the most breathtakingly beautiful female he’d ever seen in his life.
After pulling her jacket from under the counter and holding it for her, he’d swept her to his chest with one well-muscled arm. She’d giggled and squirmed out of his grasp. “Outside, Skip. Wait a second, will you?” he remembered her saying.
He’d yielded and followed her outside, but for the thousandth time he was dizzy with both bliss and despair as he watched her walk with dancing steps through the automatic doors.
When they reached his pickup truck, he opened the door for her. As she beamed at him, he remembered noticing how, when her pale hair moved in the cool breeze, it caught the light the same way that fishing line catches the sun on a sultry afternoon.
He’d driven her home, only letting her escape after ransoming herself with dozens of sweet-tasting, tender kisses. She’d whispered in his ear that she loved him, but by then he was so sunk in misery that he hardly heard her. Would he ever see her again? Only luck would decide.
After topping off his gas tank at the self-service station, he’d begun the trek to Atlantic City in New Jersey. He’d had plenty of time to think, then. To worry.
An apprentice carpenter’s salary was better than a gas station attendant’s, and he wouldn’t be an apprentice forever, but the fortunes of those in the building trades rose and fell with roller-coaster irregularity. What could he give her besides babies and bills and a sorry little house in mid-island? She only worked as a cashier now because she thought she was too old to be totally dependent on her parents. He certainly wouldn’t want her to keep working when the babies came.
She had soft hands, soft lips, a soft voice, and soft skin, like a princess. Skip had seen what a penny-pinching life took out of a woman. How it roughened their skin. Hardened their voices. Worry could squeeze the sweetness right out of a woman’s nature. He’d seen it happen to his mother. He wouldn’t risk that happening to his Alexia.
He had patted the rolled-up savings that made a thick ball in his pocket before gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled determination.
Seven hours later, he’d counted out his take with the house manager... twenty thousand, twenty thousand five hundred... in a voice hoarse from shouting at the dice, lack of sleep, and too many coffees alternated with whiskies.
At the end of the count, he breathed deep to steady himself, then rolled it all up into four bundles that he shoved deep into his pockets. He walked out of the casino, across the boardwalk, onto the sand, then leaned against a piling and inhaled the salt air, ridding his lungs of stale smoke and bar fumes.
Fifty thousand dollars. His shocked elation made him dizzy — until he suddenly remembered Alexia’s last birthday present from her parents. The sticker price for that little convertible was double what Skip paid in a year for his apartment. His precious goal, which for a few seconds he’d imagined won, slipped tortuously far from his grasp — again.
Fifty thousand dollars might seem a fortune to Skip, but to Alexia... he knew it wouldn’t be enough. He glanced swiftly up at the sky after that admission, ducking in case of retribution for ingratitude, because he’d lit a candle in church before coming.
Well — that’s it, he thought. And he meant it.
No longer despairing, feeling only numb from hopelessness, he walked off down the beach to work a few kinks out of his cramped muscles in preparation for diving, once and forever, into the water that beckoned beyond the pilings.
And it was while he was walking that he got it. The whole idea. It burst into his head full-grown, bypassing babyhood and adolescence. It stopped him dead in his tracks. He spent several minutes examining it up and down and backwards and inside out but found no flaws. And so he drove home...
The next day the homicide detective told Skip that the bullet was a common .303 used in hunting rifles. Though the killing was tragic, it was probably a hunting accident. The woods around Phantom’s long-vacant property were known to be full of small game. Lots of hunters in the area, more than usual in the last few economically lean years. The perpetrator would possibly never be discovered.
Skip explained all this to Ernie and Ernie’s crew. Even though the men were understandably upset at the loss of their friend, several shoulders lowered in an easing of tension at hearing that it could’ve been a hunting accident, and work resumed.
After a few more days, the crews were working up to speed again, and the shock faded.
Then, a week later, Ernie stepped into an animal trap. Ernie, a normally soft-spoken man, screamed in a shrill agony that caused the men to drop their tools and run to him from all over the site. The trap, an old iron one that he swore hadn’t been there the day before, was big enough to incapacitate a full-grown bear. Although the rusted jaws could’ve severed his leg, he was luckily wearing work boots that limited the damage to broken bones.