Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

by Elle Cosimano

  “Or setting you up to take the fall.” Vero picked up the envelope and slid it into the waistband of her yoga pants—my yoga pants—as if she were afraid I might suddenly decide to give it back. She yelped as I yanked it free, but there was nothing to be done about it now. I had already claimed the money. Regardless of who’d shut Harris inside the garage, I was the one who’d accepted payment for the hit job. And if anyone ever found Harris’s body, we were the ones who’d go down for it.

  * * *

  When the kids went down for their afternoon naps, I retreated to my office and closed the door. Patricia’s envelope rested on top of my desk. It was noticeably lighter since Vero had counted out her forty percent of the cash, but that didn’t make it any easier to look at, and I tucked it inside my desk drawer.

  The money from Patricia was no different from my book advance, just one more unearned payment for a job I hadn’t done. Just one more thing to feel guilty about. As many problems as Patricia’s money could solve, it had come tied to even bigger ones. Scarier ones. The kinds of problems that meant losing my kids. The kinds of problems that meant spending the rest of my life behind bars. And the only way I’d ever have a leg to stand on if Harris’s disappearance came back to bite me was to know for certain what had really happened in my garage. To be able to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I hadn’t been the one to murder him.

  I flipped on the old PC, waiting as it coughed and sputtered to life. I opened a blank Word document and titled it, typing the first words that came to mind, the one thing Sylvia and my editor were expecting of me—THE HIT by Finlay Donovan. The screen was blindingly white. The cursor stared back at me with an indifferent, slow blink as my calloused fingers hovered over the keys. It had been months since I’d been able to climb out of my own mire of self-defeating thoughts. Since Steven left, I hadn’t been able to cobble more than a few words together on a page. Every plotline seemed hopeless, every romance fell flat, and every story I dreamed up felt like a complete waste of time.

  When I’d missed my first deadline after Steven moved out, Sylvia had called to lecture me. I’d told her I had writer’s block, but she’d insisted I push through it. Sometimes, she’d said, you can’t see the whole story until it’s laid out on the page, and the only way to figure out what happens next is to write your way through it, one scene after the next, until it’s done. Sylvia was all about tough love and finding your own answers. Mostly, Sylvia was all about earning a paycheck. Maybe I should’ve been, too.

  I touched the keyboard, trying to figure out exactly where to start my contracted novel, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Harris’s story. Probably because, through my own stupidity, I’d managed to put myself in the middle of it. If the police managed to trace Harris from The Lush to my garage, I’d become their prime suspect. And Vero and I would go to prison unless we could prove the murder had been committed by someone else.

  I knew the opening scene. Harris Mickler had been murdered right under my nose. All I had to do was uncover the backstory to figure out the rest of the plot. I just had to put myself in the heads of the characters—to figure out who they were, what they wanted, and what they stood to lose. It all boiled down to means, motive, and opportunity. How hard could it be to solve my own crime?

  I started typing, beginning with the note Patricia had slipped on my tray during lunch, recalling as many details as I could: the call I placed from my van, my trip to The Lush, sneaking Harris to the parking lot, then finding him dead in my garage. As I wrote, I lost myself in the story, letting my memory fill in the gaps. The names—Harris’s, Patricia’s, Julian’s, mine, even the name of the bar—I changed, letting the rest of the events of the night spill unfiltered onto the screen.

  The keys clicked with increasing speed. Paragraphs became pages, and I typed until the sun pulled its tired pink fingers from the slats between the blinds. Until the clatter of dishes quieted in the kitchen, and the kids fussed in their beds before finally drifting off to sleep. I wrote through the long hours of silence that followed, until the light from my screen was the only light in the house.

  CHAPTER 17

  The house was quiet, the kids already down for their afternoon naps when I woke the next day. Vero had fallen asleep on the couch, her blistered hands curled around the throw pillow under her head and her face slack with exhaustion. I didn’t see any sense in waking her when I left. A local news channel was playing softly on the TV in the background. She’d probably been up all night watching the headlines, listening for the police, waiting for them to show up at our front door. The only way either of us would ever sleep peacefully again was if we knew who had really killed Harris Mickler.

  I’d written through the night but was no closer to understanding the chain of events that had led up to that moment when I’d found Harris dead in my garage. Who, aside from Patricia and me, had a reason to want to kill him? Everything I knew about Harris had come from his social media profiles and his cell phone. Surely every woman in those horrible photos had had a motive to want to end Harris’s life, but I’d locked it in his car at The Lush, and I couldn’t risk going back for it now. Patricia was the only person who could help me solve Harris’s murder. That is, if she’d bother to answer any of my calls.

  Desperate, I tracked down the number for the firm where Patricia was employed. The receptionist apologized, explaining Patricia had called in sick that morning, and she would be taking leave for the remainder of the week. I didn’t know much more about Patricia than I knew about Harris, but thanks to the note she’d left on my tray in Panera, I knew her home address.

  North Livingston Street was already dressed for Halloween, cottony cobwebbing strung from the limbs of the trees and bright pumpkins dotting the front porches. I eased to the curb a block away from number forty-nine. The Micklers’ house was a modest 1960s split level, landscaped to blend in with its unassuming surrounds. Like most of the others in this zip code, the simple brick shell had probably been remodeled inside, with granite counters and ornate trim and sunken jetted bathtubs to suit the lofty price and high-end tastes of this corner of North Arlington.

  The plantation shutters through the windows I could see were all drawn shut, and the driveway was empty of cars. As far as I could tell, no cops were poised to pounce outside.

  I dialed Patricia’s number for the third time since I’d left my house, tossing my phone in my drink holder with a muttered swear when an automated voice told me her mailbox was full. I got out of my van, aiming for nonchalant as I strolled casually up the sidewalk toward the Micklers’ house. Most of the neighbors were probably at work, which was precisely where Patricia Mickler should have been.

  She’d been foolish to call in sick the day after she’d paid someone to kill her husband. Or maybe she was just playing up the role of the worried wife. I hoped, wherever she was, she hadn’t skipped town. If she ran, the police would be sure to find her, and if they questioned her about her husband’s disappearance … Well, I didn’t want to think about what she might confess in exchange for reduced prison time.

  Satisfied I wasn’t being watched, I crossed the street to Patricia’s house. The front stoop was neat: no stacks of mail, no knickknacks or Halloween decorations. I rang the bell. Its faint chime was just audible through the foyer window. No thump of approaching feet. No barking dogs. I waited a minute before rapping hard on the door. The house remained quiet. I peered through the window. The lights were off inside.

  Where would she have gone?

  I turned to go, pausing by the mailbox mounted beside the Micklers’ door. My hand hovered over the lid. I was pretty sure tampering with someone’s mail was a criminal offense, but if Harris’s mail was anything like mine, it contained plenty of things I didn’t want people to know about me.

  I glanced over my shoulder, then both ways down the street, before cracking it open. The stack inside was thin. Slender enough to fit inside my coat without drawing notice. Before I could talk myself out of it, I tuck
ed the mail into my open jacket and hurried to my van. Locking myself inside, I hurriedly thumbed through the envelopes.

  A handful of bills, some coupons, a few advertisements … All the mail had been jointly addressed to Mr. & Mrs. Harris Mickler. Except a single monthly bank statement, addressed to an LLC—Milkman Associates.

  Milkman, like the password to his cell phone.

  I slipped my car key inside the flap and sliced it open, scanning the statement. This was clearly not an account he shared with Patricia. There were no withdrawals for groceries or utility bills or mall stores. No hair salons or doctor appointments or routine expenses related to their house. My stomach went sour as I read the charges. Payments to upscale bars and high-end restaurants, a flower shop in Vienna, and the glitzy Charleston-Alexander jeweler in town. There were several recurring charges to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, halfway between Harris’s house and The Lush. This must have been Harris’s operating account—the one he used to wine and dine his victims before he drugged and blackmailed them into silence.

  I flipped the page and found a list of twelve deposits, all for the same amount—two thousand dollars—all bank-to-bank wire transfers on the first day of the month. Harris must have been doing some financial consulting on the side. And, apparently, his consulting business was doing well. By the looks of it, he had twelve regular clients on retainer, making payments every month. In the last week of September, Harris’s balance on the account had been a little more than a half million dollars. But the total in the account by the end of that month, when the statement closed, was … zero?

  I flipped back to the withdrawals. Harris had withdrawn the full balance of his account the week before he was killed. A week before Patricia had attempted to hire me.

  Or had he…?

  I was going to use it to leave him. But it will be better this way.

  Suddenly, it made sense how Patricia had come up with fifty thousand in cash so easily. She must have withdrawn it from her husband’s account, planning to use it to run away, hoping he’d never come after her. But then she’d met me and figured she had enough cash to ensure he never would. The missing money would fit the narrative she had probably planned to tell the police—that he’d cashed out his assets and run off with another woman. Meanwhile, Patricia had all the money she’d need to start a new life someplace else.

  Only two questions remained: Who killed Harris? And where had Patricia Mickler gone?

  As I tucked Harris’s bank statement in my pocket and prepared to return the rest of the envelopes to the Micklers’ mailbox, a sleek black Lincoln Town Car rolled slowly past my van. I ducked low in my seat as it stopped in front of the Micklers’ driveway.

  A man swung open the passenger-side door. The long legs of his tailored suit took crisp, precise strides to Patricia’s front door. He rang the doorbell, running a hand over his dark, meticulously styled hair as he waited for someone to answer. The driver stayed back in the car, concealed behind its tinted windows.

  The man rang the bell once more, following it up with two sharp knocks I could hear in my van. When no one answered, he moved to the garage, his tall frame allowing him to peer easily inside the high, narrow windows. He turned back to his car with a tight shake of his head.

  The driver’s door flung open. A pair of broad shoulders and sturdy, thick legs wedged their way out. With heavy, lumbering strides, the driver stalked around the side of the house, a silver blade slipping from his sleeve into his meaty hand as he disappeared behind it.

  The man in the suit laced his fingers behind him, casually pacing the driveway, his eyes roving the street as he waited beside the Town Car. I sank lower in my seat, peering over the top of my steering wheel, hoping he couldn’t see me with the low afternoon sun at my back.

  A moment later, the driver returned. He brushed his empty hands together, and with a tight nod to his passenger, they ducked back into their fancy black car. Heart racing, I dropped to the floorboard as the Lincoln reversed out of the driveway and swung in my direction. I waited for the purr of its engine to pass before cautiously sitting up.

  Were these the people Patricia had warned me about? The ones with eyes and ears all over town?

  My husband was involved with some very dangerous people.

  Checking my mirror to be sure they were gone, I threw open my door and returned the mail to the box. Every voice in my head was screaming at me to go. To run. But what if Patricia had been home all along? What if she’d been hiding, not from me, but from those men? The driver had been carrying a very large knife, and it hadn’t been in his hand when he’d come back. I couldn’t just leave without making sure Patricia was okay.

  I crept to the garage, leveraging myself on the edge of a raised planter beside the driveway to peek in the window. A brown Subaru wagon was parked inside, the same one she’d disappeared in when she’d left me in Panera, its rear window layered in stickers—JMU, Animals Are Friends Not Food, Adopt Don’t Shop, and Shed Happens. Stick figures of a man and a woman and two stick-figure dogs trailed across the glass.

  Patricia was home.

  I ran through the side yard and rounded the Micklers’ house, stopping short in the middle of her back porch. Sunlight glimmered off the long blade of the knife embedded in the trim beside the door. A piece of paper fluttered, held in place by its teeth.

  YOU’VE TAKEN SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO ME.

  YOU HAVE 24 HOURS BEFORE MY PATIENCE RUNS OUT.—Z

  I touched the bank statement in my pocket. Had all those small, incremental monthly deposits been retainer payments from clients? Or had Harris been embezzling money from his clients’ accounts?

  … if they find out what we’ve done, they’ll come for both of us.

  I had assumed Patricia had meant these dangerous people would find us if they knew what we had done to Harris. But what if that wasn’t what she was suggesting at all? What if she was referring to what she and Harris had done? What if the money in his account had belonged to these men and she’d stolen it—not from her husband, but from them? Could these men be the ones who had killed Harris?

  I blew out a shaky breath. At least the men hadn’t gone inside.

  I banged on the back door, cupping my hand to peer in the window. The kitchen was dark, the sink empty of dishes and the counters tidy. I dragged my sleeve over my hand and tried the doorknob, but it was locked. So was the window beside it. I looked around for a pet door I might open and shout through, surprised she didn’t have one. I knocked again, but if she was home, she clearly had no intention of answering. After what I’d just seen, I couldn’t say I blamed her. If I were Patricia, I would have hidden under my bed and called the …

  Oh, no.

  I let go of the knob, ears alert for the sound of sirens, nearly tripping off the porch stairs in my rush to get back to my van. Patricia would be fine, I told myself as I shut myself inside. By the end of the night, forty-eight hours would have passed since Harris’s disappearance, and the police would be crawling all over this place. The scary man in the suit and his very scary driver wouldn’t be foolish enough to come back. And if I were smart, neither would I.

  CHAPTER 18

  I was being prodded by instruments of torture. I prayed to every god, in every corner of the globe, my prayers consisting mostly of four-letter words, to please, please, for the love of all that was holy, make it stop.

  Peeling open one eye, I waited for the room to come into focus. Delia sat on the edge of my bed, her spiky hair silhouetted against the light streaming into my bedroom from the hallway. She rocked me fervently back and forth, her tiny hand pressing into my right kidney until my bladder threatened to burst. Zach leaned over me with his milky breath, his pudgy finger poking my cheek.

  I covered my face with a pillow.

  Delia plucked it away from my head. “Wake up, Mommy. Vero says it’s time for dinner.”

  “Dinner?” I pushed up on an elbow. What day was it? What time was it? The last thing I remembered was putting m
y computer to sleep, closing the door to my office, and lumbering to my bedroom like a zombie.

  Zach giggled when his wet pacifier found my ear. I shuddered at the memory of Harris’s tongue as I sat up, the events of the previous three days slowly coming back to me. “How long have I been sleeping?”

  “All. Day. Long.” Delia rolled her eyes so hard I could see their whites in the dark.

  “I know. I get it. It’s a mood.” I sat up and stretched, the muscles in my back and shoulders howling. I was sure it was karma. The pain I was suffering for burying Harris Mickler was directly proportional to my own stupidity.

  Maybe Vero had been right about the front-end loader.

  I switched on the bedside table lamp, wincing as the light threw my life into stark relief. My captors took my hands and dragged me from my room. The hallway smelled like garlic butter, oregano, and simmering tomatoes, and my stomach growled as I hoisted Zach onto my hip and carried him downstairs.

  Something was different. Or maybe everything was different. I looked around the kitchen as I strapped Zach into his high chair. At the clean stretches of countertop where random piles of clutter used to gather. At the vacuum tracks in the living room carpet and the baskets of clean, folded laundry. At the open notebooks and calculator and accounting textbooks where the missing piles of collection notices in the dining room had been yesterday.

  A sinking feeling swept over me. “Where are the bills?” I asked Vero.

  “I handled them,” she said, serving out bowls of spaghetti and garlic bread.

  “What do you mean, you handled them?”

  “I paid them.”

  “With what?”

  She raised an eyebrow as she slid Delia’s plate onto the table. I ran upstairs to my office and threw open my desk drawer. Patricia Mickler’s envelope was gone.

  I rushed back down, nearly slipping on the fresh floor polish at the bottom of the stairs. “Where’s the money?” I whispered, darting an anxious glance at the kids. Delia slurped up a long noodle. Zach picked up a handful of pasta and sauce, dropping it onto his tray with a squeal.