Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

by Elle Cosimano

  No, better to leave it neat.

  If there was no sign of foul play, maybe the police wouldn’t investigate his disappearance too deeply. Maybe they’d assume he’d left the bar, ditched his life, and run off to Tahiti or Milan with some mystery woman he’d just met.

  Still wearing my wig-scarf, I slunk out of the van with my sunglasses on, the long strands of the blond wig hanging loose to conceal my face as I fidgeted with Harris’s key fob. His car alarm blared. The taillights flashed and the horn honked in time with my heart. I frantically pressed buttons until the commotion stopped.

  Peering around the parking lot, I used my sleeve to open Harris’s car door. Then I wiped down the key fob and dropped his possessions on the driver’s seat inside. I’d never been arrested and booked before, so I knew a fingerprint couldn’t be used to find me. But it could definitely be used to convict me if I ever became a suspect.

  I locked his car from the inside, my heart still pumping double time as I climbed back in my van and turned the key in the ignition.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered, depressing the brake and turning the key again as the engine made a stubborn clicking sound. “No, no, no, no!” I’d have to call a tow truck. Which meant there’d be a record of my vehicle being towed from this lot, from the parking space right beside Harris Mickler’s car.

  This was not happening.

  I jerked the hood release, stumbling out of the van in my rush to pop it open. I don’t know why I bothered. I had no idea what I was looking at as I stared at the mass of metal, tubes, and wires under the hood. I knew how to fix diaper rash, skinned knees, and dinners that came in a box. Auto maintenance—or any maintenance, for that matter—had always been Steven’s department.

  “Theresa?” I spun toward the voice behind me, my back pressed against the heat of the van’s grill, my heart beating so fast I thought it might fly right out of my chest. I pressed a hand to it, willing it to slow as I sagged against the bumper. It was just Julian.

  Julian, the bartender who saw me here last night.

  Julian, the law student who could probably smell my guilt from across the parking lot.

  Shit.

  “Sorry.” His gaze fell to the panicked flush I felt creeping up my neck. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that. Everything okay?” He frowned over my shoulder at the open hood.

  “Fine! Everything’s fine,” I blurted. My mind reeled. Had he heard the alarm? Had he seen me leave Harris’s wallet and phone? “Probably just a dead battery. What are you doing here?” I cringed at my own stupidity for asking.

  “Early shift.” He slung a crisp collared work shirt over the shoulder of his snug-fitting cotton T. Body wash and shampoo smells wafted from him as he raked his damp curls away from his eyes. He gestured to the engine. “Want me to take a look?”

  God, yes.

  Hell, no.

  “Sure.” I cleared my throat and hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “The keys are in the van.”

  The corners of his eyes creased with his smile. I hadn’t noticed their color in the bar last night. In the bright sunlight, his irises seemed torn between subtle shades of green and gold, and I was pretty sure I’d be content staring at them until they made up their mind. He leaned into the van and turned the key. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes as the engine made that terrible clicking sound.

  “Definitely the battery,” Julian said, stepping out from behind the driver’s-side door. “I’ve got a set of jumper cables in my Jeep. Hang on. I’ll pull it around.”

  There was an easy bounce in his step as he jogged to a maroon Jeep with a soft top. Weaving it through the lot, he pulled it in front of my hood until our bumpers were just a few feet apart. He emerged with a set of black and red jumper cables, and I tried not to stare at his backside as he popped his hood and leaned over the engine to connect them.

  Probably as hard as I’d tried not to kill Harris Mickler and take his wife’s money.

  “Was it giving you trouble before?” he asked.

  “Um, no. It was fine,” I told him as he hooked the other end of the cables to the battery in my van. That wasn’t entirely true. The van had been giving me trouble for weeks, and I’d ignored the occasional odd noises and dimming lights, hoping they’d eventually disappear, just like the money in my bank account. I guess things could have been worse. This could have happened last night while Harris was passed out in the back.

  “It’s probably your alternator. We’ll let it charge for a few minutes and get you back on the road, but you should swing by a mechanic on your way home and have it checked out.” Julian was closer now. Or maybe I was. Close enough to notice his face was smooth and he smelled faintly of shaving gel. And something intoxicatingly cool under that. “So what are you doing here anyway?” he asked with a lift of his brow. “The bar doesn’t open for a while yet.”

  It was the fumes, I told myself. Or maybe the heat coming off the engine making the air feel thin. It was definitely not the way he smelled. Or the way his hair fell over his eyes when he tipped his head. Or the way they glinted in the sun.

  “I … lost something in the parking lot last night.” Like my common sense. Or at least my good judgment. “But I found it,” I lied.

  “Oh,” he said with a wounded smile. “I was hoping you’d changed your mind.”

  I blinked away an image of Julian in the back seat of my minivan. I’d had one too many men in the back of my van this week already, and look where that had gotten me. The only thing I planned to do in this van was vacuum it. Or set fire to it. “Maybe next time?”

  “I’d like that.” The silence dragged out, unrelenting and awkward. He lowered his gaze, hiding a self-effacing smile. I tucked a lock of fake hair behind my ear as he checked his watch. He nodded once. “Go ahead and fire it up. It’s probably been long enough.”

  I reached into the driver’s-side door and tried the key. The engine turned over, and I exhaled pure relief as Julian disconnected the cables. He dropped his hood, slapping his hands together, his fingertips colored by grease and grime. Remembering the crisp white shirt he’d brought with him for work, I grabbed a pack of wet wipes and a dry burp cloth from my van, checking to make sure it didn’t smell like sour milk and that there wasn’t any blood or hair on it before I handed it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said, wiping the pads of his fingers.

  “Baker!” Julian turned toward the bar. A balding man with a broad belly held the door open and tapped his watch. I ducked my head, the loose blond strands falling over my face as I moved behind Julian, letting his body obscure me from the man’s view. Julian acknowledged the man with a nod.

  “That’s my boss. I’ve got to go. You sure you don’t want to stick around for a while?”

  “I can’t,” I said quickly, gesturing behind me to the humming engine. “I have to get home. To my kids. And … you know … real estate stuff.”

  “Right.” His mouth quirked up on one side. It was a great smile—genuine and warm. The kind of smile that made it hard for me to lie.

  “But thanks for jumping me.” His sunlit eyebrows disappeared under his curls, and heat poured across my cheeks. “That … Wow, that did not come out the way I intended it to. I’m sorry. It’s just been a really, really weird day.”

  “It’s okay. I know what you mean.” He bit his lip to keep a laugh from escaping. I wanted to crawl under the concrete as he handed me back Zach’s burp rag. “Still have my number?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I hope I’ll be seeing you around, Theresa.” He backed toward his Jeep, his eyes trailing over me in a way that felt totally innocent yet still managed to melt the skin from my bones. I climbed into the van and thumbed through my phone, checking to make sure his number was there as he swung his Jeep back into its parking space.

  My fingers hovered over the keys as he sauntered into The Lush with his dress shirt slung over his shoulder. If I texted him, he’d have my number. And I was sure that would be a very, very
bad idea. Harris was in the ground, and I’d just accepted fifty thousand dollars for murdering him. I should’ve been putting as much distance as possible between me and the place Harris and I were last seen together.

  And yet …

  Still okay with a minivan? I typed fast and hit send before I could change my mind. Clearly, I had not yet found my good judgment in this parking lot.

  I dropped my head against the steering wheel, the seconds drawing out painfully long while I waited for his reply. What if I’d misread him? What if he was just being polite? What if the burp rag killed the moment?

  My phone buzzed in my lap. I sat up and covered my eyes, barely brave enough to read his text through the gap between my fingers.

  Pick me up anytime. You know where to find me.

  I glanced up at the tinted windows of The Lush. I could just make out Julian’s white dress shirt on the other side, the subtle wave of his hand through the glass. I lifted my fingers from the steering wheel, wondering if he could see me wave back. Wondering if he saw through me—everything about me—the way he’d seen straight through me last night.

  CHAPTER 16

  Exhaustion washed over me as I stood in the garage thirty minutes later, staring at the space where we’d wrapped Harris Mickler’s body just yesterday. The concrete floor was wet and smelled faintly of bleach, the bay door left open to the afternoon sunshine to dry it. Vero must have hosed it out while I was gone. The little pink trowel had been washed and dried, returned to its usual place on the pegboard. Harris Mickler’s personal possessions had been wiped clean and locked in his car at The Lush. Steven’s shovel was back in his shed. And I’d just burned through twenty dollars in quarters vacuuming every trace of Harris Mickler from my minivan. I’d done everything I could think of to cover our tracks, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something.

  Guilt. This gnawing, nagging feeling that kept pulling me back to the garage had to be guilt. And it would probably follow me around for the rest of my life.

  A flutter caught my attention across the street, the subtle shift of Mrs. Haggerty’s kitchen curtain falling shut. I strode to the garage door, stretching up on my tiptoes to drag it down with both hands. It slammed closed, rattling the garage.

  Stupid. I’d been so stupid. I sank down on the short wooden step to the kitchen as my eyes adjusted to the dark, all the what-ifs of last night crashing down around me, as heavy and jarring as that damn garage door.

  What if I had never called Patricia Mickler?… What if I’d never borrowed Theresa’s dress and gone to that stupid bar?… What if I’d never stuffed Harris in my van?… What if I’d never driven him here, to my own freaking home?… What if I hadn’t left the engine running after I closed my gara—

  My back stiffened, one chilled muscle at a time. As I lifted my head, my focus jumped from the van to the garage door. The details of the night before were still fuzzy in my mind, blurred by champagne and panic, as if someone had taken an eraser to the edges, but I remembered … I remembered pulling into the driveway. Remembered clicking the remote on the visor and waiting for the door to grind open. The bright cone of the van’s headlights had illuminated the pegboard and that little pink trowel, and I distinctly remembered getting out of the van and squeezing between the workbench and the bumper, eyes narrowed against the glare as I’d raced into the house. The kitchen had been dark. Quiet except for the hum of the engine through the wall as I’d slid down it and made that call to my sister … Those details in my memory were all vivid and clear.

  It’s what I didn’t remember that stuck in my throat now.

  I didn’t remember tapping the button on the wall as I entered the kitchen. Or the mechanical grinding sound of the garage door lowering to the floor …

  I hadn’t shut the garage.

  I had left the van running. But I hadn’t shut the garage.

  I stood up fast, flipping the light switch on the wall. The single bulb in the center of the ceiling washed the concrete floor in dim yellow light. I stood under it, staring up at the motor that mechanized the door. My eyes climbed the dangling red emergency cord, pausing on the pulley that raised and lowered the door. The pulley was disengaged from the belt. That explained why the motor had run when Vero pushed the button on the wall, but the door wouldn’t budge—the door wasn’t connected to it.

  But that didn’t make sense.

  The opener had been working when I got home from the bar. I’d pressed the remote on my visor, the door had opened itself, and I’d pulled into the garage. Yet, just twenty minutes later, when I’d come out of the house, Harris was dead and the garage door was disengaged from the motor. It was shut—though I was certain I hadn’t shut it.

  But how?

  I stared up at the red cord dangling above my head.

  Pulling the emergency release cord was the only way to disengage the belt and free the door from the motor—the only way to manually open or close the door. Which meant someone must have pulled the cord and shut the door while I was inside the house. While the van was running. Which meant …

  I didn’t do it.

  I wasn’t the one who’d killed Harris Mickler.

  * * *

  Vero leaned back, one leg propped against the wall of the garage, watching me out of the corner of her eye as if I’d lost my mind.

  “You actually think someone pulled that red cord and closed the garage door while you were inside the house.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  There was only one possible explanation for it. “Someone else must have wanted Harris Mickler dead. Whoever it was must have seen us leave the bar and followed me home. When I went inside and left the van running, I left a perfect window of opportunity to kill him.” It was the kind of crime I might have written about. The kind no one would buy because it was so … neat.

  Vero plucked Patricia’s envelope from my hand. I’d been squeezing it so tightly, I’d forgotten it was there. “Are you sure this isn’t just your guilt talking?”

  “I may be guilty of a lot of things, Vero, but I did not close that garage door.”

  She withdrew a stack of cash and held it to her face, her eyes closing as she fanned the edges and inhaled deeply. “Do we still get to keep the money?”

  I reached behind me for the roll of duct tape on the workbench and threw it at her.

  “Okay, fine,” she said, using Patricia Mickler’s envelope as a shield in case I decided to throw anything else. “Let’s assume for a minute you didn’t close the garage door and someone else did. Why pull the cord? Why not just push the button on the wall and run?”

  I gnawed my thumbnail, sifting back through the events of the night. It would have taken awhile for the carbon monoxide to fill the garage. Which meant the killer must have closed the door right after I went inside. I’d been sitting on the floor of the kitchen, my back against the wall directly beside the garage as I’d talked to Georgia. We’d talked so long, I’d forgotten I’d left the van running. Then I’d gone upstairs to wash up and change. My bedroom was right above the garage. “No.” I shook my head. “No, they couldn’t have used the wall button, or even a remote. The motor’s too loud. I would have heard it. Whoever pulled that cord wanted to be silent.”

  My eyes lifted to the red handle. Something still didn’t add up. The emergency release cord was anything but quiet. I’d used it one winter during a power outage, when the garage door was stuck open and the snow was blowing in. As soon as I’d pulled the cord, the door came crashing down, bouncing against the concrete with a bone-jarring smash, just as it had when I’d dropped it a few minutes ago to startle Mrs. Haggerty. Steven had heard the noise from our bedroom and had come running to see what had happened. He’d lectured me for a week about how I could have destroyed the frame. How I could have hurt myself or one of the kids. How I should never pull the release cord when the garage door is open. Not unless …

  “What’s that look? I know that look,” Vero said as I grabbed the
rusted step stool from the corner. “That’s the same look you got before you stuffed the Play-Doh in Theresa’s tailpipe.”

  “Open the door,” I said as I positioned the stool under the red emergency cord.

  “It’s heavy! You open it.”

  “I can’t. I’m getting on the stool.”

  Vero uttered a few choice words about where I could stick said stool as she hauled the garage door open with both hands. She shivered as a cold autumn wind sliced under the opening and rustled her hair. Cursing me under her breath, she slung the garage door high above her head on its track until it was fully opened, resting parallel with the ceiling. I climbed up the rungs and reconnected the belt to the pulley, the way Steven had shown me. Then I pulled the cord.

  Vero shrieked as the door slid freely down the tracks, picking up speed as it dropped. She lunged, catching it before it hit the ground. “Are you nuts?” she hissed. “The last thing we need is Mrs. Haggerty hearing all this and poking her nosy ass all up in our business!” Vero eased the door to the ground with a quiet thud, a sound so small I might not have heard it inside the house.

  “There were two of them,” I said, climbing down from the stool. Vero wrinkled her nose at me. “It’s the only way someone could have shut this garage without making any noise. One person pulled the cord. Someone else caught the door and controlled the drop.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Vero said. “You mean to tell me someone else … no, two someone elses … killed Harris while you were on the phone with your sister?”

  “Making it look like an accident.”