“Well, I’m happy for you then,” Hilary said doubtfully. “And I hope things work out this time around.”
“Oh, they will,” Ruby said. She hadn’t given any thought to what she’d do if Sean broke up with her. She’d been so focused on getting him, that she hadn’t given any thought to keeping him. Her heart sank. What was there to live for if she didn’t have him to look forward to?
“Ruby?”
“What? …Sorry. What’d you say?”
“I said that it’s sad though, about his girlfriend dying—”
“She wasn’t his girlfriend! They’d—”
“Already broken up. I know. Sorry. It’s sad that his ex-girlfriend died. I actually saw that on the news last night, but I had no idea who she was.”
“It is sad,” Ruby agreed. “Sean was pretty upset. But I’m sure they’ll catch the driver soon. Their car’s gotta be destroyed. You couldn’t hide something like that for long.” She held her breath as she waited to hear what Hilary would say.
“Oh, I don’t know. My brother hit a deer once, and his truck only had minor damage.”
“But there was some damage. Right?”
“Of course. But nothing like what you’d expect after hitting a seventy-pound deer. It was easily fixed, too.”
“I suppose. And if the killer needed to get rid of their car, they could just dump it in the woods or the ocean and be done,” Ruby said. Hilary had lived here her entire life. She might have some ideas.
Hilary snorted. “Yeah right. You’d never believe how many people there are traipsing through the woods at any given moment. Hunters, hikers, lovers, kids, you name it. It’d be discovered quickly. And the ocean has powerful tides.”
“Hmmm, I wonder how you could get rid of a car permanently. I mean, short of piecing it out like car thieves.”
“Let me think. A deep lake or a pond would be good, but there again is the problem of it being found by swimmers or fishermen. That’s an interesting question.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You know, an old mine or a quarry would be perfect.”
“A quarry?” There was no way she was going near any old mines. Even the word mine sent shivers down her spine. “Do you mean like in the Flintstones?” The bucket was full. Ruby turned the water off and took the phone with her into the garage.
“Yes! You’d need an abandoned quarry. A lake or a pond gets deep only gradually, but quarries have deep water. And the sides of a quarry are super steep. It’d be dangerous, but it’d take care of the problem. The car would sink, and no one would find it for years, if ever.”
Ruby’s eyes lit up. Years was long enough. “But wouldn’t you risk someone seeing you? You just said there are a metric shit ton of people traipsing about in the woods.” She grabbed an unopened bottle of bleach off the shelf and went back into the kitchen.
“Well,” Hilary said, warming to her subject,” You could do it at midnight in a non-hunting season. It’d be relatively safe.”
“But wouldn’t a quarry have a fence or a lock or a guard or something?”
“Not a guard, but probably a fence. But there’d likely be a section that was down. When a place is abandoned, things decay quickly.”
“And then what? You just drive it over the edge and jump out at the last moment?” Ruby imagined it and blanched. “That sounds dangerous.”
Hilary laughed. “That would be dangerous! Of course not. You’d have to rig it somehow.”
“Rig it how? Because I can’t picture what you’re talking about.” Ruby poured half the bottle of bleach into the water and added a generous squirt of dishwashing soap.
“Well…you’d turn on the engine, and then you’d have to wedge the accelerator down with a brick or a rock. Then you could just reach in with a long stick and push the gearshift into drive and leap out of the way. The car would lurch forward over the edge, and voilà! No more car.”
“But what if…” Her car had a manual transmission. “What if the car had a manual transmission?”
“It’d work better with an automatic,” Hilary said simply.
“That sounds like a lot of trouble. Couldn’t you just push it over?”
“You could, but if there was any kind of a lip at the edge, and there would be, it’d be hard for one person to push it up and over. Plus, you definitely wouldn’t want to follow the car over the side. If the fall didn’t kill you, you’d eventually drown because the sides would be far too steep to climb out of.”
Ruby shivered and rubbed her arms, which had broken out in goosebumps. Why was Hilary so sure a quarry would be full of water? Was it just collected rainwater? She wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to look stupid. “You seem to know a lot about this. Have you done this before?”
“Every weekend, like clockwork. You?”
“Same.” They both laughed.
“I wonder—” Ruby sucked in her breath as she realized that Hilary was going to see through this. She’d once mentioned in passing that she’d been Calua High’s valedictorian. Hilary didn’t miss much.
Her friend would think, Ruby’s obsessed with Sean. His ex is conveniently killed in a hit-and-run. Ruby asked me a bunch of nosy questions about getting rid of a car. Therefore…
And if Hilary ever heard it was a pink Mini Cooper that killed Tara…Ruby began to pound her thigh with her fist. How could she have acted so suspiciously around Hilary? Dammit!
“Rue?” she heard Hilary say. “Hello, Ruby? You still there?”
Ruby cleared her throat. “Sorry. I was searching for something to eat and my cupboards are bare. I gotta go grocery shopping. I’ll call you later.” She hung up.
What she needed was a plan.
▬▬▬
Ruby opened the garage door, wrinkling her nose in distaste. She thought she detected the faintest whiff of decomposing flesh. In her hand, she carried the bucket of hot bleach water. She hesitated, before flipping on the light. The door started to close behind her, and she lunged for it, soaking her shins in the process.
“Welp. There went the joggers,” she said, glad she had thought to change her clothes first. She wore a ratty sweat suit from her college days. She set the bucket down, shook off her wet hand and wiped it on her thigh.
She propped the inner garage door open with a kitchen chair. It was 10 a.m., not midnight, but she was about to scrub any lingering bits of dead body off her car, and she was just a wee bit creeped out.
She picked up the bucket again and made her way carefully down the steps. She set the bucket down near her back tire, shivering in the chill air. She took yellow dish washing gloves out of her back pocket and put them on.
With the trash bags over the windows, it looked like the night was pressing in. She crossed her arms and ran her gloved hands up and down her upper arms, which were covered in goose bumps. She was about ready to forget this whole thing.
Except she couldn’t. She needed to scrub this car squeaky clean and get it out of her house and out of her hair today.
She needed her hose. She tore off her gloves and pressed the garage door opener, but as the door went up, she spied Jeremy’s car next door. Crap. He was home. As soon as the door was up, she lowered it again. Scratch the hose.
She put her rubber gloves on again and fished around in the water for a rag. She blinked rapidly as the fumes burned her eyes. Probably shouldn’t have used so much bleach. However, in this particular circumstance, too much was much better than too little.
She scrubbed the car down carefully for over an hour. She scrubbed the entire car, even parts that she knew were clean because Tara’s body had come nowhere near them. After she changed the water for the fourth time (good thing she’d bought a case of bleach at Berry’s when she’d moved in), she went and got a mop and a scrub brush from the kitchen and began scrubbing and mopping the underside of the car.
It was difficult, unpleasant work, and the fumes made her so dizzy she had to keep taking breaks, even after she tied a bandanna over her mouth
and nose.
She forced herself to go slow and be thorough. She pretended she was a forensic, crime scene investigator, and made sure she forced that scrub brush into every nook and crevice she could find. She figured the police would check the underside carefully for Tara’s DNA, and she couldn’t miss a scrap of it.
Next, she got on her knees and began scrubbing the license plate and the front bumper, and when she was finished with that, she began on the tires. She forced the scrub brush into all of the tread she could reach, then put a towel on the seat, climbed inside the car, rolled it backwards a few inches and scrubbed the rest.
When she was finished, she wiped her brow with her wrist. She was sweating profusely, her lungs and throat and eyes were burning, and she felt like vomiting. Her blue sweatpants were soaked and spattered and splotched with bleach stains, as was her shirt. She felt grimy. She smelled bad.
…And she wasn’t done yet. She peeled off her gloves and shook her hands to dry the sweat. She really needed the hose now. She peeled back a corner of a garbage bag and peered out the window. Jeremy’s car was gone! She had to act fast. As the door rolled up, she smiled at the black clouds in the distance. A storm was coming. Even better!
She crossed the yard quickly, shivering as her sweat dried on her in the wind. She wished she’d put her sweatshirt back on before coming outside.
She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she whipped around, but no one was there. She dragged the hose across the yard and into the garage. She’d been afraid it wouldn’t reach, but it did easily, with hose to spare.
She left the garage door up about two inches so the excess water could flow outside, and then she stood back and began spraying.
She stopped a moment later in disgust. This would never do. She peered through the water droplets hanging in the air at the floor of the garage cluttered with old papers and boxes. She couldn’t move them out of the way, there was no place else to put them, and she didn’t want them to get wet. She’d have to do this outside.
Thank goodness Jeremy was gone. At least no one would see her car.
She backed up to just outside the garage door, and methodically hosed off the car. She moved quickly, while taking care to be thorough.
She should take the time to clean the floor of the garage while the car was outside.
She took the hose back inside and stood staring at the puddles of water and dirt on the garage floor. She saw no scraps of flesh, no blood. She hadn’t noticed any blood while she’d been scrubbing either, but it had to be there. No way she’d hosed all of it away the other night. She peered closer. It was hard to tell in the fluorescent lights, but maybe the puddles did have a slightly pinkish hue?
She quickly mopped the puddles, and then, using short spurts of water, she sprayed down the floor of the garage. She poured an entire gallon of bleach on the garage floor, pushed it around a bit with the mop and allowed it to soak into the concrete while she went outside and sprayed the car a second time. The stench of bleach stopped her short for a moment at the entrance to the garage, but she pushed forward anyway, eyes streaming, and mopped the bleach outside onto the driveway and then onto the soon to be dead grass.
She sprayed the floor once again, sacrificing two old bath sheets to dry it. She drove back inside, making sure to roll over the towels, before thoroughly hosing down her driveway.
She looked at her watch. It was almost noon. She needed to shower and start phase two.
She put away the hose before closing and locking the garage door. She piled the gloves and mop into the bucket and set it in a corner to be taken to the dump when she got back.
She undressed in the garage. When she was naked and shivering, she threw her clothes, including her bra, panties and shoes into a garbage bag, as well as all the rags and towels she’d used, and then topped it with the bucket and mop. She tied it closed around the mop handle and set it beside the garage door. All done.
Her limbs were heavy as she walked naked through the house to the shower, but she forced herself forward. She would rest later.
All in all, it had been a productive morning.
CHAPTER 21
Ruby’s windshield wipers were set on high, but they couldn’t keep up with the rain that was coming down in sheets. It was mid-afternoon, but the light that filtered through the trees was dim. She was alone on the road. Good thing, as she still only had the one headlight, and she couldn’t afford to be stopped.
She slogged along the isolated logging road that had become a lake of mud, and she had no clue where she was. Probably in another town by now, but it didn’t really matter. Her car was smothered in luscious mud, especially the undercarriage, and any last traces of Tara should have long since washed away.
She thumped along, her gaze scanning the narrow road on both sides for just the right spot…There! She stopped the car to get a better look. A shallow ditch, overgrown with ferns and shielded from the road by second-growth redwoods. It was perfect.
With any luck, her car wouldn’t be found for months.
In the time it took her to get her bicycle out of her trunk, she was already soaked. She fetched the bike’s detached tire from the backseat and desperately struggled to reattach it while the rain made everything impossible. Her hands kept slipping, but she needed this bike—this had to work! By the time she was done she was sobbing and ready to kick someone’s teeth in.
She climbed back inside the car, tightened her seat belt, and started the engine. She sat with the heater on high for fifteen minutes, soaking it up, before she finally forced herself to get moving. She pulled perpendicular to the road, took a steadying breath, revved the engine and careened through the ditch into a large redwood tree.
The impact was enormous, and she fought panic as her air bag unexpectedly deployed. She’d forgotten about it. Why hadn’t it gone off last night?
She was relieved when she saw the damage she’d managed to inflict on her car. The hood was an accordion, the engine shoved back and steaming into the relentless rain. Was this enough destruction to obliterate whatever damage Tara had done to her car? She wasn’t sure.
She shifted into reverse and amazingly, after an enormous crunch and groan as her front end released from the tree, her car inched backwards. She patted the dashboard fondly.
The ditch was too muddy and steep for her to back out, so she drove as far back as she could and slammed the tree again, this time a little off center. When she tried to back out a second time, it wouldn’t budge.
She hoped it was enough.
She pulled her radio out and cut the wires. She stuffed it into her backpack along with her walkie talkies and the loose change she kept in her ashtray. What else would thieves have stolen? She couldn’t think, and she didn’t have time to worry about it now.
Because she had no idea how to hot wire a car or even fake it, she had to remember to tell the police she’d kept a hide-a-key in her wheel well.
She pushed her seat far back and fixed the mirror so it looked like someone tall had been driving it, left the engine running, doors open, lights off automatic and on, and the heater on high. It had less than a quarter tank and would run out of gas soon. Hopefully the battery would run down and there would be little to salvage. Her insurance company would be forced to junk it and buy her a new car.
She squelched through the mud towards her bike, pushing her sodden bangs out of her eyes. Tree branches whipped around her, and she squinted into the stinging rain, wishing for goggles…One of her Converse got sucked off in the muck. She cursed, fished it out, and jammed her foot back inside.
She climbed on her bike, but when she tried to pedal, she sank into the mud. Luckily, it was a mountain bike, and through trial and error she found she could, with enormous effort, ride slowly along the left side of the fire road.
Shivering in her clammy clothes, she was relieved to finally get some momentum going. She glanced back at her car and almost fell over in shock. Her car was already completely hidden fr
om view, but she was leaving a clear bike trail behind her in the muck!
Well. She couldn’t help it now. She had at least a twenty-mile, hilly bike ride in front of her, into the wind and driving rain, mind you, and then she had to shower, report her car stolen, and call Sean, as she hadn’t heard from him yet today. And now she had to remember to ditch her bike and shoes so the police couldn’t trace any of this back to her. Hopefully though, time and heavy rain would take care of this problem for her.
Her car, her clothes and shoes and towels from last night, her bike, and now a second pair of shoes…Tara’s murder was costing her a fortune!
It was slow going, following her car’s mud trail the three or four miles back down to the paved road. By the time she made it, she was freezing, but at least the worst part was over. She sheltered under a tree, quickly checked the GPS on her phone, and set off for home.
If her bike broke down, she’d hitchhike. Luckily, she’d packed her gun. …Why oh why hadn’t she brought it along last night?
…Needless bother.
▬▬▬
When she finally made it home, the sun was down, the rain was gone, and she was hypothermic. She leaned her muddy bike against the shed in the back yard, kicked off her mud-encrusted shoes, and stumbled up the steps. Her teeth were chattering, her nose was running, and her lips and fingernails were blue. Her thighs quivered uncontrollably, her back felt like it might snap if she stood upright, her throat was still on fire from the bleach, and to top it all off, her vagina was numb, she assumed, from the awkward, new couple sex followed by the bike ride from hell.
She felt ancient and hobbled and sick.
Never again. She was done biking. This had been her swan song.
She needed Ben Gay, Aleve, cough drops, and Visine. Her eyes were so red it looked like she had pinkeye.
After a long, hot shower, she put on a thick hoodie and yoga pants, turned up the heat, and fell into bed. She checked her cell phone with high hopes, only to put it down with crushing disappointment. No recent missed calls.
Drawn To You: A Psychological thriller Page 19
