The Hired Man by Dorien Grey

he’s well past trying to protect his reputation.”
    There was a frustratingly long pause before Richman said, “And what did you want to tell me?”
    “I’m pretty sure Anderson was bisexual,” I said. “I realized that the minute he came to my office and had obviously taken off his wedding ring—I could see the untanned circle on his finger. Straight guys don’t normally take off their wedding rings when they know they’re going to be around gay guys unless they don’t want you to know they’re straight. And that means he may well have picked up a hustler and was unlucky enough to get the wrong one. I could be wrong. Hell, he could have picked up a hooker whose pimp got in on the action—I don’t know. I just felt bad about not being totally honest with you.”
    Another pause, then: “Well, I appreciate your calling, Dick. We’d pretty much figured out the same thing.”
    “Oh?” I asked. “Can you tell me how?”
    “Not in detail, but there was…well, a definite indication other than the brutality of the murder that whoever did this is a pretty sick puppy who just might have a grudge against married men. Keep your eyes and ears open, would you? We want to get this guy, and soon.”
    “I promise I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”
    “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, and I got the message.
    We exchanged goodbyes and hung up.
    “A definite indication,” huh? Like Richman’s use of the word hacked instead of stabbed, I knew I had to find out what he was getting at, even while I realized I definitely wouldn’t like it. It was sort of like approaching a car wreck ahead of you on the freeway—you don’t want to look, but you know you will.
    *
    I took two contracts out of the drawer, filled in the few blanks, looked around for a fresh piece of carbon paper, made a sandwich of the three, folded them and put them in an envelope. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the Glicks had a copy machine somewhere in the house but didn’t want to chance it.
    I waited until around 10:30 then drove to the Glicks. There were a couple small work trucks in the parking area and a new sports car at the far end—Mrs. Glick’s, I assumed. I parked and walked to the front door to ring the bell. After the second ring, it was opened by a very large, pleasant-looking black woman wearing an apron.
    “Is Mrs. Glick in?” I asked.
    “Yes, sir,” she said. “She’s in the back by the pool house. You can just go around, if you’d like.”
    I thanked her and retraced my steps, going through the parking area to the back of the house. The already huge house was made even larger by the four-car garage at the far end, and beyond that stretched an eight-foot-high wall surrounding the pool, pool house, and about an acre and a half of park-like grounds.
    A heavy wooden, stockade-type gate stood open wide, apparently to allow the tanned, shirtless, sweaty and well-muscled workers I could see milling around a huge mound of earth to move back and forth to the trucks in the parking area. As I entered, mentally playing my favorite kid-in-the-candy-store games ( I’ll take one of those, and one of those, and… ), I noticed the mound of earth created an artificial small hill totally surrounding three sides of the pool house. The parts of the hill facing the pool were being terraced to provide what would be a cascade of water. Bucolic as all hell.
    When I was able to tear my eyes away from the workers, I looked around for Mrs. Glick and spotted her—the tiger-striped tank top and gold toreador pants made her a little hard to miss—standing between two tall, very handsome guys in white shirts, ties, and sports jackets. One was very butch-looking, in his mid-twenties, the other roughly the same age, sandy hair, nice tan and, when he looked in my direction, the most spectacular sea-green eyes I think I’ve ever seen.
    Given the fact they were fully and very well dressed, it was fairly clear they weren’t