“I think he’s gotten heavier,” Vero said after our third breathless try. My hands were raw and red with the effort. Damp flyaways had come loose from my mom-bun and were plastered by sweat to the side of my head. “How did you get him in the van by yourself?” she asked.
“I lured him with promises of sex,” I panted. Vero quirked an eyebrow, unconvinced. Clearly, amateur-killer-in-sweaty-yoga-pants was not my best look. I rolled my eyes and said through a huff, “He was under the influence of drugs, okay?”
Vero snorted.
She was right though. There had to be an easier way to do this.
“Grab Delia’s skateboard,” I said. More likely, it was the bourbon talking when I pointed to the hot pink plastic deck propped against the far wall.
Vero wheeled it alongside Harris. “Did you get this idea from one of your books?”
“Not exactly.” I was pretty sure it came from an episode of Sid the Science Kid. At this point, I didn’t care as long as it worked.
On the count of three, we hefted Harris onto the board and rolled him to the open trunk of Vero’s car. Using the bumper for leverage and Harris’s head as a counterweight, inch by inch, with a lot of cursing and grunting, we managed to stuff him inside. When it was done, I leaned against the rear quarter panel of the Honda, dripping sweat and feeling a strange sense of accomplishment.
Vero grabbed the small pink trowel from the workbench and tossed it on top of him.
“What’s that for?” I asked as she slammed the trunk closed.
“What else do we have to bury him with?” She shrugged and got in the car.
CHAPTER 11
According to our parents, the first question out of Georgia’s mouth the day I was born was, “When can we send her back?” Georgia had never asked for a baby sister, and in her defense, she’d only been four years old at the time. But this remained the defining question of our relationship until the day Georgia left home for the police academy. As kids, I had always been the bad guy—the one person in the house Georgia could point a finger at whenever anything went wrong. But once Georgia became a cop, it was as if she’d suddenly run out of fingers to point at me. The bad guys were everywhere else, and by comparison, I guess I wasn’t so bad.
Only it didn’t feel that way as I stood in the doorway of my big sister’s apartment, smelling like vodka and sweat and Harris Mickler’s saliva, fully aware that his body was probably slowly decomposing in the trunk of Vero’s car. Hopefully, Georgia would be so relieved to see me, she wouldn’t notice anything odd.
Zach was splayed on her shoulder when she answered the door. She wrangled my limp toddler into her arms, pausing as I leaned in to take him from her. She wrinkled her nose. “I thought you said you were working.”
Damn cop senses. Georgia’s nose might as well be a Breathalyzer. “I was.”
I reached for Zach. She held him just out of reach. “Why do you smell like booze?”
Because bourbon might be the only thing holding me together right now. “Writer’s block. I needed something to loosen up my brain.”
“Are you okay to drive?”
“I didn’t.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder at my partner in crime.
Georgia rose up on her toes, glancing over the balcony. Below it, Vero’s butt stuck out the back of her Accord as she wrestled the kids’ car seats into place. “I thought you said Steven let her go.”
“He did.” I scratched my still-sweaty neck, finding it hard to look her in the eyes. “She came over to the house to pick up her things, and we ended up…” Destroying my table linens, dividing what’s left of my assets, and stuffing a dead guy in her trunk. “… working something out.”
As if summoned, Vero appeared behind me. “I’m going to move in and watch the kids in exchange for room and board,” she said, reaching for Zach.
And forty percent of my soul.
Georgia sagged as if a huge weight had been lifted off of her as she hefted Zach into Vero’s arms and she whisked him off to the car. Georgia rubbed her shoulder, inclining her head toward the sofa behind her. Delia lay curled under a blanket, her fine blond hair rising in a staticky halo around a silver crown of duct tape, her brow furrowed in her sleep. The TV was on low, its pale glow flickering over Delia’s soft cheeks. I was glad she wasn’t awake to hear it as the anchorman recounted the details of three grisly homicides only a few miles away. I glanced up at the headline: Man suspected of ties to mafia acquitted of all charges.
I gestured to the TV. “I’m sorry you missed your night out with the boys from OCN.”
Georgia loosed an exhausted sigh as she watched two men descend the courthouse steps and disappear into a sleek black limo on the screen. “There’ll be plenty more nights like it,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing sticks to these guys. The Russian mafia could murder half the city and still find someone to bribe. That asshole will never spend a day behind bars as long as Zhirov’s around to bail him out.”
I hadn’t watched the news in as many weeks as I could remember, and I had no idea what Georgia was talking about, but I nodded sympathetically as I slid the diaper bag over one shoulder and scooped Delia onto the other.
“Thanks for watching them for me,” I whispered, feeling the weight of Georgia’s eyes on me all the way to the door. The day, the adrenaline, and the hangover were all catching up to me, dragging at my heels.
“Finn.” My name was a quiet command. Slowly, I turned around, terrified I’d given something away. “I’ve been worried about you,” Georgia said. She handed me Delia’s cap and scratched her chest, grimacing as if something inside it made her uncomfortable. She stared at her feet, at the diaper bag, everywhere but right at me when she said, “I’m glad you’re not alone.”
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat, suddenly unsure which was worse: the secrets I was hiding from my sister, or the body I was hiding in Vero’s trunk. Georgia was always alone here. And as much as she’d insisted that was exactly how she wanted it, sometimes—times like this—I wondered how she could stand it.
I folded Delia’s cap into my pocket and held her body a little tighter. The duct tape in her hair stuck to my jaw. For a moment, I considered telling Georgia everything. About what had happened in Panera. About what had happened in my van, in my garage.
Georgia reached for the TV remote on the table.
“Georgia…?” I started in a thin voice, clutching Delia to my chest. When my sister looked up at me, it was hard to hold her stare. My gaze skipped away, to the replaying scene on the TV behind her. All I could think of was Patricia’s warning. About dangerous people with friends in high places. About how my children would never be safe if anyone knew what I’d done. If Georgia and her police friends couldn’t keep dangerous people off the street, maybe Patricia had a reason to be afraid. Maybe Vero was right, and I didn’t have any choice but to see this through and keep it to myself.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
I turned for the door, feeling those cop-bright eyes on my back all the way to Vero’s car.
* * *
“Where to now?” Vero asked as I shut the door. She made a face at Delia’s duct tape crown in her rearview mirror. The kids slept like the dead in the back seat, as still as Harris Mickler had been when we’d shut him in the trunk with the little pink trowel.
“I don’t know.” I hadn’t had time to think about what we’d do with the body. Maybe because part of me figured we’d never make it this far. I gnawed my thumbnail, my mind spinning over every gory bit of research I’d ever done about body disposal. If we tossed him into a river, with my luck he’d wash up. And a fire would attract far too much attention; the last thing I needed was an arson investigation on top of a murder charge. “I guess we should find a place to bury him.”
“Any ideas?” She pulled slowly out of my sister’s apartment complex, careful to use her turn signal as she eased out onto the road.
I choked back a laugh. Part of me wished Steven was here. I’d nev
er been good at hiding things. I could never keep secrets the way he could. He’d always been the one in charge of hiding the Christmas presents from the kids and the Easter eggs in the yard. In hindsight, the hardest ones to spot were the most obvious, loosely covered in foliage or patio cushions right under the kids’ noses. It was the same way he’d hidden his affair with Theresa for months. He hadn’t taken her on extravagant trips or squirreled away money in strange bank accounts. He’d screwed our real estate agent during his lunch breaks in her home office right down the street and buried the scent of her perfume under his own cologne. He’d handled all the household bills, so I’d never see the expenses and connect the short distance between the dots. Like the fling he was probably now having with Bree, Steven kept his secrets close, hiding his indiscretions in mundane places no one would bother to …
“Oh.” I felt the breath slip out of me. Felt Vero’s eyes dart to my face as an idea took hold. “Go to Steven’s house,” I said.
“Why the hell would we go to Steven’s house?”
“Because we need a shovel.” A really big shovel. And if anyone had the tools to bury a secret as big as Harris Mickler, it was definitely my ex-husband.
CHAPTER 12
It was well after midnight by the time we snuck the shovel from Theresa’s shed and made the long drive to Steven’s sod farm. The dark, unmarked rear entrance to the property wasn’t nearly as inviting as it had been in the daylight. Vero killed the headlights and we sat in the car, listening to the children’s soft breaths in the back seat, waiting for our eyes to adjust. Blue moonlight draped over the grass. It billowed for acres all around us, except for a single square plot in the rearmost field where the earth had been freshly turned, waiting to be planted.
Vero and I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the field. The muddy clumps of churned-up dirt glowed gray under the moon. The night was warm for October, quiet except for the rush of fallen leaves tumbling along the line of tall cedars behind us. There wasn’t a headlight or porch light anywhere for miles. I could picture Steven and Bree out here, screwing in the back of his pickup after hours. It was the kind of place secrets could go undiscovered for years as new grass grew up all around them.
I drove the tip of Steven’s shovel into the ground, relieved to find it soft, pliable. Mercifully, Steven and Theresa hadn’t been home when Vero and I parked a few car lengths from her driveway and I’d crept along the thin tree line behind their town house to raid the toolshed in the backyard. I’d slunk off with a heavy shovel boasting a broad steel blade, along with a pair of gardening gloves.
“We’ll take turns,” I told Vero. “I’ll dig first. You keep watch.” With any luck, Steven would seed this field before anyone knew Harris Mickler was gone.
My throat went dry as I stared down at the shovel. If this had all been a novel, this moment would be a turning point. A point of no return. If we left right now and went back to Georgia’s house, we could still claim negligent homicide. I could tell her everything that had happened in that bar. How I’d accidentally killed Harris Mickler when I’d left my van running in the garage. I could turn in all the evidence on his phone and try to do the right thing, even if it meant going to prison and losing my kids for a while.
I glanced back at the car where they were sleeping. Once this hole was dug, there was no going back. Stealing a shovel, burying a body, claiming the money Patricia Mickler promised—it all pointed to a premeditated crime. A felonious, horrible, unspeakable crime. And as my foot hovered over the lip of the shovel, I wasn’t sure I was any less a monster than Harris Mickler.
“C’mon, Finlay!” Vero’s sharp hiss jolted me. I leaned into the shovel and hauled out the first full scoop of dirt as she paced, her breath bursting out in short hot clouds that looked like ghosts against the night sky. “How far down do we need to go?” she asked, bouncing on her heels, her eyes darting between me and the kids and the rural road through the line of cedars behind us.
I’d hoped for six feet—deep enough to keep the farm machinery from accidentally tilling up his corpse, but my back was already on fire, I had a cramp in my side, and I hadn’t even cleared the first foot. At this point, I’d settle for four.
Impatient, Vero grabbed the pink trowel and jumped into the field with me, scooping up the small mounds of dirt that cascaded over the sides of my shovel.
“Next time we do this—”
“There isn’t going to be a next time,” I panted, glaring at Vero sideways as I dug faster, anxious to be done with it and get home. “This was an accident. That’s all.”
“Maybe the world could do with more accidents,” she said under her breath. “If I had as much money as Patricia Mickler, I probably would have hired you, too.”
I paused, letting the shovel rest against the ground. I’d assumed Vero had so readily signed up for this because of the money. I hadn’t stopped to consider the money wasn’t worth the risk for either of us. That maybe she had her own reasons for digging herself into this hole with me. She threw me a sharp, urgent look and shoveled faster with her trowel. My own hands were already stiff and sweaty inside my gloves, and the skin was raw with searing, fresh blisters. I kept digging anyway.
“Who would you have gotten rid of?” I asked between scoops.
Vero only shrugged. “I’m just saying, there’s no shortage of assholes out there. And in this town, there’s no shortage of money either. I say we corner the market while it’s hot.”
I dumped a pile of dirt beside the hole, the edge already level with my knees. “Easy for you to say,” I said between labored breaths. “You have the small shovel.”
“Exactly why we need one of those.” She pointed her tiny pink trowel at the hulking outline of the front-end loader Zach had been so eager to climb only hours ago.
I held out the big shovel, swapping it for the pink trowel, hoping after fifteen minutes of heaving dirt she might feel differently about the likelihood of a “next time.” Or maybe because I was worried I might start feeling differently about that front-end loader if I had to shovel any more. I checked the time on my phone. An hour had already passed. At this rate, we wouldn’t be home until dawn.
“We don’t even know how to drive one,” I reasoned.
She jammed the shovel into the ground, her sneaker braced against the blade, grunting as she heaved out a scoop. “There’s nothing you can’t learn on YouTube,” she said between ragged breaths. “My cousin Ramón learned how to hot-wire a car. How hard could it be?”
Her cousin sounded like he should be the one out here digging the hole. “We are not adding grand larceny of farming equipment to our growing list of felonies.”
“Think about it.” She leaned against her shovel, her face coated in grime. “We could have had this entire hole dug in five minutes with one of those things. I learned about this in economics class. It’s the time value of money. If we’re going to be professionals, we need to start acting like professionals.”
“And professional contract killers bury bodies with front-end loaders?”
“I’m just saying, we should be working smart. Not hard.”
“Killing people for money is not smart!”
Vero clapped the dirt from her gloves and hauled herself out of the waist-deep hole. She traded me the shovel for the little pink trowel and pointed it at me. “We’ll see how you feel when you’ve got your fifty thousand dollars.”
She popped the trunk of her car. I climbed out of the hole and peered over her shoulder, sighing at the human-shaped lump wearing my table linens.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing the bungee cord around his ankles. “Let’s bury this pervert and get out of here.”
Together, we heaved Harris Mickler out of the trunk, balancing his weight against the lip before dumping him to the ground and unrolling him. Vero bundled the linens and stuffed them back in the trunk. I took Harris’s phone, car keys, and wallet from his pockets and passed them into her waiting hands.
“Shouldn
’t we burn off his fingerprints and yank out his teeth or something?” she asked.
I threw her a sharp look, even though she was probably right. If anyone did find Harris Mickler’s remains, even without his wallet and phone, it wouldn’t be hard to identify him.
I grimaced as I took Harris under the arms. His hands were already cold, his fingers and neck slightly rigid, his arms and legs grossly limp. “Digit removal and dentistry are where I draw the line,” I said through a grunt as we dragged him to the edge of the hole.
“I wonder if we could charge extra for that.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
Vero and I gave Harris Mickler one last look.
“Are we doing the right thing?” I asked.
In answer, she reached in her pocket and offered me Harris’s phone. I didn’t take it, unable to stomach the thought of opening those photos again. Vero slipped the phone back in her pocket. Then we rolled Harris Mickler onto his side beside the grave we’d dug, and on the count of three, we dumped him in.
CHAPTER 13
I’d first met Veronica Ruiz eight months ago, while the kids and I were in line at the bank. It had been a busy Friday afternoon, payday for people with regular jobs, and while getting a regular check made most people happy, apparently the man in line behind me was an exception to that rule. He’d grumbled to himself about the noise. Zach had been teething, his raw, chapped face distorted with angry tears because I wouldn’t let him down to run wild through the lobby. He’d thrashed in my arms, refusing to quiet. We’d made it almost all the way to the front of the line when Delia decided she had to pee and couldn’t hold it any longer. Left with no other options, I’d abandoned my place in line and ushered my children to the restroom. By the time we came out, the line had grown a cramped and winding tail, extending all the way to the vestibule.
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It Page 8
