These men had killed Jimmy. Whoever they were—Slater X’s gang boys or DFPD—if they came at her, she’d have no problem taking any of them out. Her eyes fogged with unshed tears. Was Nate dead? Should she go and look for him?
She’d only seen pictures of Jimmy’s body, his autopsy, and that had been startling in itself. Could she handle being the one who found Nate’s body? She didn’t think so.
With a sniff, she turned the car on. She had waited too long and was in danger if she stayed. If they’d gotten Nate, they would be coming for her next. If he’d gotten away, Nate would be calling her. She picked up the phone in one hand and waited for it to buzz. When the car clock turned over another minute, she hit the gas and pulled out, still wondering what the hell she was going to do.
The hedge at the end of the street made her nervous. Nate had commented on how people planted them to keep city noise down, but they blinded drivers, cops, and foot traffic alike. It made it easy for someone to surprise someone driving or walking along. Something was clearly wrong, because Nate had not come back.
It should have been two minutes tops. She was pushing thirteen now.
Grace came to a full stop at the hedge, just following the sign, not afraid that Slater X’s men were waiting around the corner to blow out her tires or her brains. Where was Nate?
She sniffed against the tears and looked at the phone again. Nothing.
So she took the turn and froze at the sight of a man on the sidewalk. His back was to her, his jacket bulky and his head hunched down as though he was on his phone. Grace took the turn and tried to smoothly drive past. She watched for moving hands, reaching into his jacket for a gun or something.
Instead, he turned and peeked up at her.
Nate!
It was Nate. She almost hit the brakes and hopped out to hug him, but the expression on his face stopped her cold.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nate turned his face away from Grace. They had not planned for this contingency. He’d been trying to signal her, but mostly he wanted her to drive away. If something went down, he wanted her far from that action.
He was only acting as though he was on the phone. So he spoke as though he was hanging up, shook his head and dialed Grace as he walked around the hedge and back into the yard it shielded.
As he’d opened Kevin’s car door, he’d seen someone lurking in the backyard caddy-corner to Kevin’s. Though Nate couldn’t put his finger on it, something about the man seemed off. Having learned to trust his gut years ago, Nate pushed the phone just under the edge of the seat, hoping it would slide out when Kevin braked on the way in to the office tomorrow morning. Nate also grabbed the jacket off the middle console.
Holding the handle up, he’d quietly closed the door, still hoping he hadn’t been seen. He’d rolled his way around to the other side of the car and out of Grace’s line of sight. He’d known then they were off book and hoped she could handle it. Shrugging into the jacket, he made his way through the bushes and stood up on the back porch at the neighbor’s house.
His only plan at that point was to look like he lived there and was getting out of the house and around the hedge to have a private phone call. No one was on the street, and in this neighborhood, he could see that happening. The houses were small enough and close enough together that anyone needing call privacy would step out beyond the big hedge.
Only, as Grace had finally come around the corner, he’d spotted a second man.
Nate had to assume they’d been watching Kevin. Grace picked up the phone this time, frantic.
“Why did you wave me on?”
“Hey baby.” He couldn’t say what he wanted. If there were two people watching, who was to say there weren’t three? Four? Anyone could be listening. Anyone could jump out at any time. “I’ve got two avocados for our dinner tonight but they’re both rotten. There might be more, but I don’t know.”
“Nate?” she asked, waiting for anything that made sense. She wasn’t going to get it.
“You know, the avocados you wanted.”
Still a pause. Then, “So you saw two bad things.”
“Yeah, like that.” Good, she’d caught on. “Suggest what you want to do instead.”
She paused again. And no wonder. He knew the area, she didn’t. She’d never even been to this neighborhood before since she hadn’t ever visited Jimmy and Kevin here. Nate tried again. “You tell me what you want to do and I’ll make it happen.”
“Drive around and pick you up?”
He played up the sound, even as he walked around the backyard with the one big hedge. He didn’t see anyone now and he liked that even less than seeing them. “Aw, baby, why’d you pick that? I do not have the stuff to make that. Try again.”
“Pick you up in front of the house behind the yard you just ducked into?”
“That I can do.”
She had to go around the block again, and that was suspicious. He tried to signal her to drive away, take about five minutes to come back. Hope they didn’t recognize the car or maybe had moved on. It was dangerous either way, but waiting was more dangerous for him, so that’s what he chose.
He walked the back yard, pacing it a few times, pretending he was still talking to his girlfriend about dinner. When he was close to the back fence, he found a hole and pushed through it, hoping he did it fast enough to go unnoticed.
Nate shed the jacket as he went, leaving it wadded in the corner of the adjacent back yard. He pulled out the hat he’d been carrying and tucked his hands in his pockets, cell phone hidden in his palm. He could only hope Grade didn’t call.
But there she was, slowly pulling up, stopping and looking indifferent while he climbed in the passenger side. He didn’t like it with her driving. She didn’t know the streets, hadn’t taken evasive driving courses, wasn’t prepared for a chase or a bullet through the back window. Still, he didn’t say that. Nothing he could do about it right now. “Good work.”
“That sucked massive monkey balls, Nate.”
He laughed. She was angry at him and he laughed. He shouldn’t have. He barely managed to point to the turn he wanted her to take.
“You disappeared, Nate. And I waited.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.” He pointed to the next turn and managed to keep from laughing harder. When he calmed himself down he managed to get out the words, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that term before.”
“Glad you liked it.” Her tone was flat, her expression still angry, and that was what sobered him up. She was clearly not glad about any of this.
* * *
“Do you think they were cops?” Grace asked him after they’d made the turn and she stopped worrying about a bullet shattering the back windshield. She was holding it together quite nicely, if you asked her.
“No, I don’t.” He adjusted his position in the seat, directing her to make certain turns as he pulled off his hat. Another change to not be noticed. Grace wondered if he’d think about changing her out for another woman soon. A mixed Asian woman was far more recognizable than an average Colorado girl. She definitely stood out. Didn’t wear the usual gear that said she liked hiking and boba drinks and owned a five-thousand-dollar bicycle, because.
“There was nothing about them that said ‘cop’ to me.”
Grace heard the words, though she was relatively certain she’d missed some in between, thinking about how she didn’t fit in. She hoped it wasn’t anything important. But she nodded at the thought. It was good they weren’t cops. Then she amended that thought. “Is that bad? I mean if they were officers, they’d at least try to take us down nicely, right?”
“Not if they’re dirty.” Nate shrugged as he looked out the window and motioned another turn to her. As though he hadn’t just proclaimed they’d get killed at the hands of whomever they ran into.
She drove on, thinking about it, then was shocked when she saw where they were going. “Still?”
He nodded. They were heading toward the cremator
ium. She’d thought that would wait for another day given the trouble at Kevin’s. So they were going to break in and steal Jimmy’s ashes. She wanted to bury her face in her hands, but she was driving.
“We can’t wait another day,” Nate told her. “If I’m right, and they made me at Kevin’s, then they know we’re in town. We have to get out as soon as possible. We can’t stay in Dark Falls another night. So we do this now, or we don’t do it. Your call.”
She startled at the idea that she could call this off. But she wouldn’t. He had to know that if there was one thing she would not call off it was the toxin panel test that might determine her brother’s death. That alone might prove a murder. It would simply take a while. But she had to have Jimmy’s ashes to do it.
Thinking it through, Grace tried another tack. She did not want to break into a facility and commit a theft at all, let alone now that it looked like Slater X’s men knew they were back in town. It was either that, or there was now a third player after them. None of it was good in her book. Felonies weren’t in her normal plans. “So, the testing could take weeks. First we have to do DNA testing to determine if they actually gave us Jimmy’s ashes—”
Nate interrupted, “You mean that we actually stole Jimmy’s ashes.”
She sighed at him. “Yes, we are stealing them, but we’re not taking a random bag and crossing our fingers that it belonged to my brother. We’ll take the one marked with his name. If that’s wrong, it’s just another layer of cover-up in a really ugly scheme.”
It sounded even worse out loud. But she had to keep going. “So, several weeks for that, then if they are his ashes, we can do a tox screen on them and see what the tests can still discern. That will take so long, I can’t imagine we’ll still be on the run then. So what if we wait and get them later?”
What was another week when it was going to be a minimum of six or eight to start with?
Nate, his tone ever reasonable, answered her. “We can wait if you want. However, they know we’re back in town. If they are going to get his ashes and hide them, then we need to get to the remains before anyone else does. So I’m afraid if we don’t get to them tonight, they probably won’t exist to test later.”
Grace nodded. It sucked that he was right.
Nate continued. “I realize you aren’t much of a thief. Honestly, neither am I, but I at least have some experience….We talked about stealing them, but wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t?”
“That’s what I just said!” But, of course, now he’d talked her into doing it.
“No, I mean, if it at least appears we didn’t.”
“You mean if, instead of flat out taking them, we swap them with something else?” She was seeing what he was getting at.
Nate nodded and pointed to another turn, they were getting farther out of town. That made sense to her though, crematoriums weren’t the neighborhood grocery. People didn’t tend to like to have them in their backyards.
“The best thing to swap with would be another person’s ashes, but you’re going to tell me how much that’s not okay.”
“Oh, my God, Nate! That’s so not okay! You’re interfering with people’s religious beliefs about the afterlife. You’d make someone’s else’s loved one disappear. That’s terrible!” She realized she was talking about cremains—the ashes that were gathered after cremation—in her normal mode, not as though she was speaking of her brother’s. For a moment, the lump came back. It formed a hard knot at the back of her throat and made her want to cry, because she’d never see Jimmy again. She fought it down and it settled near her heart, but at least she could mostly ignore it there.
“So, taking a handful from several other people and making a new fake batch would be just as bad…”
She felt her shoulders slump and couldn’t decide if he was trying to make her feel better by being outraged at him or if he really thought that was okay. “No, Nate. You have to keep all the remains together. I understand that most people won’t know the difference, but I honestly can’t live with myself by desecrating the dead that way.”
“Then what’s the best substitute? We probably need to get something before we go in. What should it be? Fireplace ashes?”
Grace shook her head as she drove down the dark, straight road taking her to a place she didn’t know. She was just following Nate’s lead here, but she was leading, too. It was a good partnership, even if he thought fireplace ashes might suffice. She probably said things that were just as ridiculous to him sometimes, too.
“Nope, they don’t look or smell the same. That would be really obvious. The best substitute that wouldn’t piss off most people is a cremated animal. Maybe an unclaimed one. But the chances that the crematorium has those lying around from the last time they cremated pets but didn’t throw out the unclaimed ashes, is pretty small. Our best bet is chocolate cake mix.”
Grace grinned as she watched his eyes go wide.
“Seriously? Won’t they smell it? Won’t it look wrong?”
“It’s the best.” She was smiling now, and it felt good. “Chocolate cake mix doesn’t smell strong enough to detect an odor through the bag, like fireplace ashes would. So unless someone unties the bag and sticks their head in and gets curious enough to take a taste, they’ll never know. The problem with cake mix is that it’s too consistent. It needs a few chunks and flakes.”
She could see the conversation was turning his stomach a little. Her topics of knowledge often did that to people. He should be glad she wasn’t talking about finding a partially decomposed corpse or using bugs to determine time since death. “So, we’ll put just a little muddy water into the cake mix and rub it until it flakes and powders again. That will help dampen the smell and make it look right.”
“Well, you learn something new every day.” He leaned back into his seat.
“It won’t fool everyone, and it won’t pass anything up close—”
“Or if anyone decides a taste test is in order.” He interjected.
Grace laughed. “I don’t know why they would do that. But if they look, they’ll see what they want. They’ll see Jimmy’s cremains.”
“Well, then. Take the next right. We’ve got some cake mix to pick up.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nate checked over his shoulder as Grace crouched down and duck walked along behind him. He’d located several cameras on the outside of the building. His plan was to avoid them, even though he was relatively certain they didn’t work. It wasn’t the time to take chances on that.
Grace carried her bag of fake cremains in her hand and Nate had spare ziplock bags shoved into the back of his pants. If the camera caught them, it would be clear they’d come to swap out some ashes.
They made it to the back door without any alarms going off. There was a light over the back door and he’d debated standing in it or shooting it out. Gunshots would be bad, so he’d picked up a thin but sturdy stick and hoped it would work.
Standing flush along the wall, he held the stick up and pushed it through the grill around the light. The yellowed bulb popped and everything went dark. Checking his watch, he turned to Grace and grinned into the darkness. “You look adorable in all black.”
“I hate you.” She replied, but there was no heat behind it.
“Nah, you love me.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized what he’d said. Well, he’d waited for an alarm long enough. If it was silent, their only hope would be to get in and out as fast as possible. So he turned away from the words he’d just put out there and started to pick the lock.
Like the light and the camera, he was pretty sure was fake, the lock wasn’t worth much. The bolt gave way easily, and the door swung open. Most businesses didn’t take as many security precautions with the back doors as the front, using their business facing doors to put up a good impression of security. But anyone trying to get in would likely come in the back. This time, he was grateful.
Motioning Grace inside, he lit up the
red flashlight that he carried. This particular wavelength of light didn’t generally trip alarms or motion sensors, though he and Grace physically moving around would. Nate didn’t think this place had them, given the ease with which he picked the locks.
He was about fifteen feet down the hallway before he realized he had no clue what he was doing. He didn’t think he’d ever been in a crematorium before. So he had no idea how the building might be laid out. Handing the light to Grace, he took the bag from her and asked if she wanted to lead the way. Assumedly, she would have been in these places, right?
She must have been. She still didn’t say anything about his comment, but the situation didn’t really allow for it. Grace made her way down the hallway with conviction. She must have a good idea where the ovens would be, the offices, storage, etc. He’d seen the smoke stacks, but other than that, he had no clue.
His wily partner opened three doors before he had to stop trying to look at her ass in the darkness. She turned around with a smile and pointed him toward a room stacked high with identical boxes. Each had a name in black marker on the end.
Until he’d talked to Grace, he’d thought of the place like a shelving unit for various urns. But the urns happened later. And usually, families just put the whole bag down into the urn, trying to prevent grampa’s ashes from blowing away or needing to get vacuumed up if someone tipped it over. Here, there were only stacks of brown kraft boxes likely bought in bulk.
“These are just the ones no one has picked up yet. Jimmy’s probably on that end.” She pointed. “It’s where the newer ones are.”
Dark Secrets Page 11
