Doggone it!

As usual, some will like this, and some will not. The system will not allow 'murder' as a story tag, but you can consider yourself forewarned here, in case you don't want to read that.

All characters are 18 or over, and no resemblance to any person, living, dead or undead, is intentional. This story is purely fiction, and as some people have noted about my characters, there's really no good guy in it.

And as always, whenever I name a cheating wife character 'Traci,' it is in honor of Hooked1957.

oo0oo

I knew something was up as soon as Joe walked onto the pool deck. Our chocolate lab CC -- short for Chocolate Chip -- was very friendly, once she got to know you, but until she had been introduced, personally, by either Traci or me, she was stand-offish, on guard, and looking as though she was guarding the place.

After the introductions and a thorough sniffing of your hands, then she was a friendly, almost too friendly, galumph dog.

Joe had, to my knowledge, never been to our house. He was a former work friend of Traci's, who was a tennis pro at the country club, but Traci left her job at the club six years ago. There was really no reason for Joe to have been at our place since then, but CC trotted right up to him like he was an old friend. How did that happen?

CC came into our lives two years ago, when a friend of mine's dog had puppies. She was mostly a chocolate lab, but there were no papers, and we figured that there was at least some mutt in there. At any rate, we'd moved out to what was supposed to be our dream home four years previously, a farmhouse on nineteen acres, with shade trees, a nice stream running through the property, a barn I was able to convert into a shop, and an in-ground swimming pool. The economy was finally recovering, but it was recovering in the cities first; rural areas were last to recover, and in January of 2013 we found the perfect place. It was ridiculously cheap, at least compared to the kinds of prices we were used to in Columbia, and the perfect place for my business, despite the half-hour commute.

Me? I'm Three, as in Roman numeral III, Charles Winchester, and I've been dealing with people asking me if my real name is Charles Emerson Winchester III for as long as I can remember. You know how it goes: once someone hangs a nickname on you, it's stuck there! It stuck so well that, when we had the house on Third Street in Columbia, it just seemed natural to name my start up company Third Street Construction. We started as just framers, but then got into roofing as well, and within ten years, we were general contractors for building entire houses. That mostly involved hiring subs, but the framing, roofing and now siding, windows and doors were all in house. Getting a house dried-in was always important in homebuilding, and I trusted my crews more than those of subs.

With this new property, I could get out of the too-small house and the shop I was renting in Columbia, relocating the shop right on my property. And it also meant that we had room for a dog to run and roam. We had cats before, as my kids loved critters, but the old house on Third Street was just too small for a dog I had said. I had promised them that, if we ever moved to the country, we'd get a dog. Still, it took four years before we picked up the puppy.

And CC did run the property, assigning herself the job of guard dog. She barked at vehicles, and barked at people she didn't know, though she never actually bit anyone.

So, here it was, the Fourth of July of 2019, and a party on the pool deck for our friends just seemed the natural thing to do. Some of them had been here before, and CC knew them, a few had not, and had to be introduced to the dog, and that worked out fine as well. Once CC let you pet her, she was your friend for life.

I don't know, maybe Traci didn't notice that I had noticed, but once Joe had a beer in his hand and sat down in one of the chairs on the pool deck, CC trotted right up to him and sat down, licking his hand.

One thing about being a general contractor: you have to be observant, to notice things that seem out of the ordinary. If you didn't notice things, subcontractors would cut corners, like slabs which were supposed to be four inches thick being graded to three, to save money, or using lower quality paint. And CC's behavior was that of a dog who knew Joe all too well.

Because our property is also used for my business, I had a security system installed, but it didn't take pictures inside the house, and really, I didn't want cameras in the house. But I realized that I had my roving security system available, and later that night, in my office, I went onto Amazon and ordered a pet collar cam. You know the kind, the one which lets you see where your dog or cat has roamed.

The Fourth party had been a good one, on a hot, sunny day, with some cute wives in bikinis to watch. Tracy wore a green one piece herself, sort of modest looking from the front, though the legs were a bit high cut, but a 'cheeky' cut bottom which showed a lot of her ass from the rear. She had a cover-up on for the hottest part of the day, to assist her sunscreen, but the cover-up was mostly sheer, and her butt was on display eve while she was wearing it.

Our daughter Megan kind of rolled her eyes when she saw the suit Traci was wearing. Megan probably had a cheeky bikini herself, not that she was wearing it in front of her dad, but I could just see it, her thinking, 'Mom, you're too old for that shit.'

Well, maybe she wasn't too old, because Traci did have a fabulous ass! She was just naturally skinny, small tits and a mostly flat belly without having to work at it, and a skinny butt, too, but it was just rounded enough to be fabulously feminine. If you saw her from a distance, you might think she was 18 years old, though her age was apparent once you were within personal distance of her.

If Traci had kept her college girl figure, my physique was nothing like when I was twenty. I had held 175 lb on my 6'3" frame years ago, but two decades of hard work out in the sun had transformed me into a leathery, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested man. I hadn't lost my hair yet, and it was still brown, but my beard was shot through with grey.

And tennis pro Joe? He must've been 37 or so, and his skin was showing some of the effects of being out in the Carolina sun all the time, but he was lean, with wiry muscle showing through a body in which little fat could be seen. Yeah, I could see how he might be able to pick his way through other men's wives.

Why was Joe even here? Traci hadn't worked at the country club for years, and you know how it goes, people lose touch with friends from past employers. I had seen Joe, years ago, but had no idea that he and Traci were still in contact.

It was just what kind of contact they were in that was bugging the crap out of me. Had it just been Joe and Traci and me here, I might have moved in to intimidate him, but we had other guests, and I wasn't going to ruin the party and embarrass my wife if my immediate suspicions were unfounded.

Sex with Traci had taken a bit of a turn for the worse ever since we got the puppy. Why? CC wanted to sleep in the bed with us! If we shut her out of the bedroom, she'd whine and cry and scratch at the door. She'd been only three months old when she got big enough to climb her way up into the bed, and by four months could just jump up on the bed easily. Now? She was 60 lb of dog, and she wanted to sleep in between us, though at least it was more toward the foot of the bed. We were having a lot less sex at night, though Traci was making up for that with a lot more lovin' in the afternoon, when the dog was out running the property.

Megan had rolled her eyes more than once when Traci told her to take the dog out for a while in the evening. Just because she knew that her parents must have had sex to bring her into the world, the notion that two ancient people like us might still do that, well . . . .

It had taken almost two weeks, but there I had it: the dog collar cam showed that CC was in our bed, asleep, between Traci and someone. It wasn't me, and the cam didn't get his face, but the body looked like it could be the tennis pro's. No wonder CC had been so friendly with Joe; to her, his presence in our house and in our bed seemed normal.

I had to take stock of just what I could do. Traci's job at the country club had been bookkeeping, and when she quit there, she went to work for a small accounting firm in Columbia. She wasn't a CPA or anything, but knew her way around the books. A year after we had bought this place, business was really picking up for Third Street Construction, so much so that she was able to leave her job there and become the full time bookkeeper and buyer for my company. This left me with more time on jobsites; while I could always see what needed to be ordered and arranged, it was easier for me to call Traci with the details, and she would get things ordered, subcontractors scheduled, the bills paid and the banking and taxes done. To make things copacetic with the Infernal Revenue Service, Traci had the company pay both her and me a salary, to keep Third Street a limited liability company strictly on the up-and-up.

I have to admit it: she was good. We did have a professional accountant, the place where she used to work in Columbia, review our books quarterly, but everything was so meticulously done that there hadn't been a single question of issue raised. When Third Street was randomly audited in 2017, we passed with flying colors. The books all balanced, the bank accounts were perfect to the penny, the quarterly taxes right, everything.

And that was the issue: Traci was as much a part of Third Street as I was. We were already married when I started the company, so that was pretty much that: if I divorced her for fucking around on me, she'd get half of the company, and own half of the property. The company was doing really well, but there was no way I could buy her out. Yes, you can divorce your wife for adultery in South Carolina, and adultery can affect the division of marital assets, but Traci is so much a part of the LLC that she'd get half, regardless.

So, what was I going to do? I couldn't beat the crap out of her; that would just get me thrown in jail, and I don't hit women, period. Traci was untouchable, at least for the moment.

But Joe? That was something else altogether! There was no getting him fired, of course, because the country club managers would mostly laugh that their tennis pro was nailing some pretty wives. Heck, that was so much a stereotype that it was practically expected! To get revenge, I needed knowledge.

At least one thing about my job: I have lots of excuses to not be on a particular jobsite. I have a foreman for each crew, and if I'm not on a particular site, everyone just assumes I'm on another. That meant I could investigate Joe without any noticeable absences from work. It didn't take much effort to get a GPS tracker, for Joe's wheels, and, at the same time, I checked out my truck to make sure no one had placed one on it. Since I have a truck lift in the shop, that was easy to do.

Getting the GPS on Joe's car? That took a bit more doing, because I'm a big guy, and Joe drove a 1978 MGB, a pretty little sports car, but one that sat awfully low to the ground. Still, there was another way to do it.

There's absolutely no sense in locking a rag-top convertible, because someone can just cut through the roof. It makes more sense to simply leave it unlocked, and let a thief open the door rather than ruin your roof trying to rob the thing, and that's what Joe did. In the small cargo 'well' behind the seats is an access hatch to the battery and electric fuel pump. You pull up a shitty piece of carpet and lift up the hatch, and you're there. It took me a whopping four minutes to open that up, hang the GPS inside it, and get out of Dodge. My idea was simple: if Joe was screwing Traci, odds were he had a couple of other wives in his harem. If I could find out about those, I could use other guys to get my revenge on Joe. Maybe not as satisfying as kicking his ass personally, but I'll be damned if I'm going to go to jail over him! Then Traci would get all of Third Street!

And it turned out that Joe was just plain stupid. Yeah, he was fucking the wife of a bank president, a smart but physically wimpy guy, and he was fucking the wife of an insurance company owner, but, dumbest of all, he was fucking the wife of a retired NFL outside linebacker.

The guy had played fourteen years in the league, and if he wasn't a star, he was steady and solid, having bounced around the league, with the Packers, Cowgirls, Falcons and lastly, the Carolina Panthers. At 42 years old now, he could probably run the 40 yard dash in under two minutes on his banged up legs, but I'd bet that his arms are about as strong as they were when he was playing. A picture of Joe entering the Sheraton Columbia Downtown Hotel with the very petite trophy wife of that monster of a man, sent to him at the car dealership he now owned, and it didn't take long: the news reported that Joe Fontaine, local tennis pro, had been mugged and seriously beaten, brought a smile to my face.

The cops questioned Joe, trying to figure out who had assaulted him, but Joe said that he had absolutely no idea. His assailant was black, he said, but the retired linebacker was a white guy. That meant, to me, that Joe knew exactly who had beaten him up, but was too scared to report that to the cops, because it would have led to a trail of unpleasant discoveries.

But, somehow, though I smiled at the news, it just wasn't quite as satisfying as it might have been, because I had used someone else to do my dirty work for me. I was going to have to do something myself, and Joe was going to have to know just who had done it to him, and Joe could never be in a position to squeal to the cops. And the only way I could make sure he never talked to the cops was to kill him.

It's one Hell of a decision to make to actually kill a man. You can want to, and you can plan to, but there comes a time when you have to either decide, yes, you are going to do it, or no, you aren't. I finally decided: I was going to do it, Joe was going to die. Thing is, how could I kill Joe and get away with it?

Actually, it didn't take long to figure it out, because Third Street had an interesting project, a modern log cabin on the Piedmont. It was isolated enough, on 224 acres, that a body could be disposed of and never found. And I had a special plan, but the timing had to be right, and everything had to be precise.

It was a Friday evening, when I had told Traci I was going to be out late on a project I had to get done, because it was falling behind. Actually, I was waiting for Joe when he got back to his apartment; I figured that Friday night, he wouldn't have a 'date,' because all of his dates were weekday daytime trysts with married women. A pistol in my jacket pocket, and he didn't resist, he got into the truck I had rented and drove to that site; I had parked in an area in which I couldn't detect any security cameras. He was trembling with fear, and was too scared to resist; in the end, he really was a coward.

Out of town we drove, as I told him that he was going to get his ass seriously kicked, but led him to believe that he was still going to survive. The names of the bank president and insurance guy were spilled, making him think that OK, he'd still survive this.

He didn't. When I got him out of the truck, his ankles hobbled so that he couldn't make a break for it, he looked around, trying to figure out where he was, and where the other two guys were. That was when I hit him hard enough with the pistol to stun him into helplessness. I threw him down into the excavated hole, which had yet another hole in the ground in the center. Trussed up securely, he got thrown into the new hole in the middle.

Joe regained his senses, as I wanted him to, and was stricken with terror as he realized what was about to happen to him. I wanted him to see my face and hear my voice as I was shoveling the dirt on top of him, burying him alive. He was screaming as a shovel full of dirt hit him squarely in the face, and I guess that he kind of choked on that, because he said no more. The dirt kicked on top of him, and stamped down into place, I stayed there long enough to know he had to be dead.

Come Monday afternoon, I got the confirmation from the subcontractor: the septic tank had been installed on the jobsite. It felt good to know that good ol' Joe was going to spend the rest of eternity in a grave underneath a tank full of shit.

The story of the disappearance of the tennis pro hit the local news on Monday, but no clues were ever found. His MGB was still in the parking lot of his apartment, and his disappearance was only noted when he didn't show up for work on Saturday. Since the police want someone to be missing for 48 hours before they waste time and money looking for him, nothing really happened. Apparently the investigation turned up his affair with the insurance guy's wife, but that was it, and that guy had an iron-clad alibi: they were at a dinner and dance at the country club when Joe disappeared. If there was any evidence at all about his affair with Traci, the cops never investigated that.

I had a quiet STD test done, and came up clean, so Joe hadn't given anything to Traci. I did feel some guilt for killing that man, and that kind of tamped down my anger toward my wife. I was pissed off at her, but it was at a lower level of intensity. Thing is, I had kind of trapped myself as well, because if I tried to divorce her now, she'd know that I knew about her affair, and she was smart enough to put two and two together, and wonder if I had anything to do with her lover's disappearance. And filing for divorce on the grounds of adultery would connect me with Joe, and be suspected of having something to do with his disappearance. As of now, I'm still with Traci, and can't really figure out anything else to do, not without destroying everything else in my life.

Traci has been a pretty good wife since then. If she's messing around with someone else, I haven't seen any evidence of it, and I have paid attention. The dog cam pictures of her with Joe were stored on a flash drive, never my computer hard drive, and I destroyed that a while ago. More, I got a new laptop, and destroyed the old computer on which I had opened those dog cam pictures. I got rid of all software and receivers which could connect me with the GPS in Joe's MGB, something I hadn't been able to retrieve.

Why did she cheat? I don't really know. I thought our sex life had been decent, and if I wasn't a porn star, I knew that I was decent enough in bed. There was no way to know why unless I asked her, and if I asked her, she'd know that I knew about it.

The Piedmont log cabin? That job was completed, and a family is living there, slowly piling shit on top of Joe's final resting place. As for my dog, well, I bought her a nicer collar and a bigger food dish. She hangs out in the shop a lot, and even has her own 'nest' in one corner. She's like the best dog ever!