I clambered out of the van, grabbed his shiny leather loafers, dug in the heels of my sneakers, and pulled. His body was like lead, his expensive suit clinging to the short fibers of the carpet on the floor of the van and snapping with static sparks.
“Come on, Harris, you sadistic fuck!” Leveraging my weight, it took me three hard tugs to move him. His butt hovered just over the running board and I threw my whole body into it as I pulled again. His rump slid forward, followed by the rest of him, his skull smacking the side of the van with a loud crack as he slumped out. I winced when it finally thudded against the concrete.
I let go of Harris’s feet. The soles of his dress shoes thumped against the floor. I dropped to my knees beside him, swearing to myself as I lowered my mouth to his. Suddenly, from behind me I heard—
“Oh, shit! Sorry, Ms. Donovan, I didn’t know you were home. I just came to get my…”
My head snapped up at Vero’s startled gasp.
My children’s nanny stood in the kitchen doorway holding a cardboard box. I swiped my lips furiously against my forearm. Her false lashes widened on Harris as I stumbled to my feet. “Vero? What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, stealing narrow-eyed glances at the dead man behind my back.
“You first.” I planted my hands on my hips, standing as tall as I could make myself to shield Harris from view.
“Why?”
“Because it’s my house.” Sort of. Actually, it was Steven’s since he’d refinanced me out of it, making him my landlord. But that hardly seemed important at the moment. “How did you get in?”
“Through the front door. With my key. You said you were going out, so I came to get my stuff.” Vero hoisted the cardboard box higher on her hip, her crop top riding up her midriff as she peered around me. “Who’s that?”
“Who?”
She jutted her chin at Harris’s feet.
“Oh, him?” I scratched my neck, perspiration making the skin itch as I angled myself to stand in her way. “He’s just … someone I met earlier … in a bar.”
She leaned sideways to see around me. Her jaw fell open as she crept down a step closer. Her voice climbed an octave and broke. “Is he dead?”
“No!” My nervous smile made the muscles in my face do weird things, and I pressed my hand to my cheek, feeling the blood rush to it. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you think that?”
“Because he looks dead!”
I risked a glance down at Harris. His lips were purple and his skin was a strange shade of grayish blue. Oh, god.
She sidestepped away from me, toward the wall. “You know what? Never mind. I’m just going to go.” She tapped the button to open the garage door. The motor kicked on, whirring above our heads, but the door didn’t budge.
“Wait! I can explain.”
“Nothing to explain,” she insisted, smacking the button again, harder this time, her eyes darting between me and the garage door. “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know anything. I don’t care about the dead guy,” she said over the hum of the motor.
“Please,” I said. She jabbed her thumb at the button, cursing the garage door when it didn’t move. “Vero.” I lowered my voice, struggling to keep it steady. “I know how this must look, but it’s not what you think. This man is not a nice person. He did some very bad things.”
“I’m guessing he’s not the only one.” Vero backed toward the kitchen, muttering under her breath as the motor fell quiet, looking frantically around her, probably for a weapon. “You know what? You’re both crazy. You and your husband.”
“Ex!” I snapped. “Ex-husband!”
“Fine! Your ex-husband. Whatever. You’re both nuts!” She held the cardboard box out between us like some kind of a shield. A familiar stainless-steel handle protruded from the loose flaps on top.
“Hey!” I pointed at my favorite nonstick pan. “That’s mine! What are you doing with that?” I reached for the handle, but Vero grabbed it, letting the rest of the box fall to the floor. She crouched, wielding the frying pan like a bludgeon.
“Worker’s comp,” she said, her stance daring me to come near her.
“You think you’re entitled to cookware because my ex-husband laid you off?” She took a swing at me and I leapt backward, nearly falling over Harris’s body.
“Your husband didn’t lay me off! I quit!”
“Quit?” I reached behind me for the workbench, my fingers skimming the surface for a screwdriver or a hammer. Anything I could use to defend myself against my favorite All-Clad pan. My grip closed around the small pink gardening trowel and I held it out in front of me, crab walking around the perimeter of the garage away from her. “I thought you liked my kids!”
“I love your kids!”
“If you love my kids then why would you quit?”
“Because when I went to your ex’s house to collect my check, he told me he’d only keep paying me if I slept with him!”
My hand went limp. The garden shovel dropped to the floor with a hollow thud.
I laughed, silently at first, then out loud through my painfully tight throat, just to keep myself from crying. “Oh … Oh, that is so Steven.” I sank down on the rough wooden step to the kitchen. “You know what? Keep the damn pan.” She’d put up with enough. She deserved that much. I buried my face in my hands, revolted by the smell of vodka and Harris Mickler’s mouth on my own breath. “You’re right. We’re both nuts,” I muttered, swatting at a tear.
Vero eyed me sideways. She crouched a safe distance away, carefully placing the last of her spilled contents back inside her cardboard box as if she was afraid to make any sudden movements. She stood up slowly, the box tucked under her arm. I didn’t care how much of it was mine. What did it matter? I was going to lose everything anyway.
“It was stupid to think I could do this,” I said as she tiptoed to the garage door. She heaved it open a few inches with one arm, the box still propped under the other.
Great. The garage door was broken. Just one more thing Steven knew how to fix, and I didn’t. And now I’d have to pay some handyman to repair it.
I shook my head, mentally stacking one more bill on the pile outside on the stoop. “If Steven hadn’t insisted on being such an asshole, I never would have thought about it,” I said to myself. “I never would have gone to that bar and brought this creep home. But can you blame me? Anyone in my shoes would have considered it for fifty thousand dollars.”
Vero’s hand froze. The door hung open, level with her knee. “What did you say?”
I choked out a dark, desperate laugh. She already thought I was nuts. There was a dead guy on the floor of my garage and now I was talking to myself. “I said you’re right. My ex is an asshole. I’m sorry for what he did to you.”
The door fell closed, the clatter reverberating off the walls of the garage. I lifted my head, expecting her to be gone, but Vero was still there, holding her box to her chest.
“How bad?” Her eyes darted curiously to Harris’s body. Her ponytail bounced as she jutted her chin at him. “You said he did some bad things. How bad are we talking?”
“Really bad.”
“Fifty thousand dollars bad?”
Vero’s fingers closed tighter around the frying pan as I rose slowly to my feet. I crossed the garage to the van and fished under the seat for Harris’s cell phone. Angling it toward her, I swiped open his photo album and held it out for her to see.
“What’s this?” She set down the box, clutching the pan as she took the phone from me. I told her everything … about my meeting with my agent and the conversation Patricia Mickler had overheard. About the note Patricia had left me and what I had witnessed at the bar. Her expression warped with equal parts horror and disgust as she swiped from one image to the next.
“I never meant for this to happen,” I explained. “I only followed him because I was curious about why his wife would want him dead. I tried to tell her she had the wrong person, but
then I saw him put that drug in that woman’s glass, and the next thing I knew—”
“You killed him.”
I winced. “Not intentionally.”
She passed me Harris’s phone. “What are you going to do?”
“I was going to turn him over to my sister, but then…” I glanced down at Harris. I’d made the decision to turn him over to Georgia while he was still breathing. Before I knew he was dead. “If I explain to the police that it was an accident, it won’t be so bad, right? It’s not like I murdered him. Manslaughter’s a lesser charge.”
“I don’t know, Finlay.” Vero set down her pan. “After the Play-Doh incident, this looks pretty bad.” She was right. The charges Theresa had filed against me were a matter of record. I had never intended to hurt her—only to damage her car—but to the police, it might look like I had used my car to poison Harris on purpose. Especially after I’d stalked him, drugged him, and brought him home.
I sniffed, exhaling a shaky breath as I considered what I was about to do. “Delia and Zach are already at Georgia’s place. If I turn myself in and the police arrest me, will you help her with the kids?”
Vero nodded, her full lips turning down at the edges.
“I guess I should tell Patricia that he’s…” We both looked over at Harris’s ashen face. If I told the police everything, Patricia would be implicated for conspiracy to commit murder. She would serve time in prison right alongside me. The least I could do was give her fair warning. With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and dialed Patricia’s number.
“Is it done?” she asked with a desperation I finally understood. Harris was a horrible man. I couldn’t blame her for wanting him dead.
“Yes, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not—”
“Did you get rid of his body?”
“No. That’s why I called. I can’t—”
“You have to,” she insisted.
“I’m turning myself in to the police.”
“You can’t do that!”
“You don’t understand. This wasn’t supposed to—”
“You have children, don’t you?”
My breath caught. Something in her tone had shifted, hardened. A deep crease of worry formed between Vero’s brows as she watched my face fall. She leaned closer, listening. “Why would you ask me that?”
“That was a diaper bag you were carrying in Panera. There were baby wipes inside. I saw them. If you love your children, you will dispose of my husband’s body.”
“Or what?” Vero and I locked eyes.
“Or the police will be the least of your worries.” The words shook. “My husband was involved with some very dangerous people. And if they find out what we’ve done, they’ll come for both of us. They will find us, and they will kill us. It won’t matter if we’re behind bars. They have eyes and ears all over this town. They have friends in very high places. You and your children will never be safe. They can’t know. No one can know. Do you understand me?”
“What kind of people?” I asked.
“Believe me, you’re safer if you don’t know.” I did believe her. I believed the wobble in her voice that said she was every bit as afraid of these people as she had been of her husband. Maybe more. “Get rid of Harris tonight. I don’t care where. Just make sure no one ever finds him. That’s the only way we’ll both be safe. Don’t contact me again until it’s done.”
The call disconnected.
Numb, I lowered the phone from my ear.
“Do you think she meant all that … about people coming after you?” Vero asked, her eyes wide.
“I don’t know,” I said in a small voice. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to take any chances. Not with my kids. Or my life.
We were both quiet for a long time.
“Assuming you don’t get caught, she’s still going to pay you, right?”
“I guess.”
Vero paced the garage. She tapped her nails on her crossed arms, thinking. “And you know about this stuff? I mean, you write books about it, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“So you know how to get rid of a body.” Vero stopped pacing. She raised a thinly plucked brow when I didn’t answer. I knew how to get rid of a fictional body, but the one on my garage floor was very, very real.
“I think so.”
The tension slid from her shoulders, as if she’d resigned herself to some decision. “In that case, fifty percent.” My mouth hung open as she folded her arms over her chest. “I help you get rid of the body, and we split everything. Fifty-fifty.”
What was happening? Was my children’s babysitter seriously offering to help me get away with murder? This was definitely not okay.
With an impatient roll of her eyes, she said, “Fine. I won’t take a penny less than forty percent. But I want my job back. Plus forty percent of any referrals.”
“Referrals?” I sputtered. “What do you mean referrals?”
“We don’t have all night.” She planted her hands on her hips, tapping her nails on her waist when I didn’t answer. “Are we doing this together or not?”
Together.
This was not okay. We were not okay. But together sounded a whole lot better than doing this alone.
She extended her hand. My fingers trembled as I shook it. Hers did, too. Vero bent to put my pan back in her cardboard box. She pulled a fifth of bourbon out by the neck, twisted the cap, and took a sip, wincing as she held the bottle out to me.
“That’s mine, you know,” I said, snatching it from her hand as we both slid down the side of the van.
“Only sixty percent of it,” she said.
I threw her a sharp look as I took a swig.
“I should probably just move in with you,” she said. I choked, spraying bourbon down the front of my shirt. “Don’t worry. I’ll take the smaller bedroom.”
I took another gulp. It burned all the way down. When I opened my eyes, Harris Mickler was still there, one hundred percent dead, Vero was still sitting beside me on the floor next to a box of stolen household gadgets that, by my best estimates, were now only sixty percent mine, and I was pretty sure we’d spend the next forty percent of our lives in prison if we couldn’t find a way to pull this off.
CHAPTER 10
In fiction, it always came down to the shower curtain. A hotshot cop would tear a crime scene apart, searching for evidence, and immediately spot the glaring absence of a shower curtain. Because people use shower curtains. They need shower curtains. And if you’re involved in a homicide investigation and don’t have a shower curtain, you might as well call 911 and slap the cuffs on yourself.
Which was why I was wrapping Harris Mickler’s body in my best silk table linens.
They’d been a wedding present from my Great Aunt Florence eight years ago when I’d married Steven, and I had never once used them. And since I’d sold my dining room furniture six months ago on Craigslist to make my van payment, if some hotshot cop did come to search my house, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t even notice they were gone.
Vero and I spread the maroon fabric on the garage floor at Harris’s feet. Then Vero took his hands and I took his ankles. Together, we hoisted him a few inches off the ground and swung him down in the middle of the sheet.
I dropped his legs, rearranging the linens at an angle to cover him, kind of like arranging a sandwich on a sheet of cellophane. Then, with exhaustive effort and a lot of grunting, Vero and I rolled Harris Mickler into a giant corpse burrito.
“His feet are sticking out,” I panted as we finished the last roll.
“Better than his head.” Wisps of Vero’s hair had escaped her ponytail, and sweat bloomed on her chest. She was almost ten years younger than I was, and in far better shape. My muscles screamed as I bent over my knees.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked between labored breaths. She was young, single, smart. Once she finished her degree, she’d have her whole life ahead of her.
“I need the money.”
>
“What for?”
“Student loans.”
I put my hands on my hips, chest still heaving as I gaped at her. “Let me get this straight. You’re helping me dispose of a body to pay for school?”
“Clearly, you’re too old to remember how much a bachelor’s degree costs,” she said bitterly.
“I’m not too old. I just … never had to worry about it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be paying interest until I’m fifty.”
“Assuming we don’t get arrested first.” We both stared at the messy enchilada on the floor.
There was no way we were unrolling him—it had been hard enough to roll him up the first time—but he’d be far too unwieldy with his feet dangling out. Rummaging through the contents of Steven’s old workbench, I found a lone bungee cord in a bucket of rusted nails. The hook on one end was missing, which was probably the only reason he hadn’t taken it when he’d left. I wrapped the elastic around Harris’s ankles and tied it in a knot, leaving the single remaining hook wobbling off the end.
“I have to pick up the kids at my sister’s house,” I said, afraid to check the time on my phone.
Vero gestured to Harris. “What do we do with him?”
I couldn’t put him back in the van with my kids. But I couldn’t leave him lying in the middle of the garage where they might see him when they got home.
“We’ll put him in your car.”
“My car?” Vero’s eyes flew open wide, her ponytail swinging with her recoil. “Why my car?”
“Because you have a trunk. Everyone knows dead bodies go in the trunk. Don’t look at me like that. What do you want me to do? Strap him in Delia’s booster seat? His shoes are sticking out!”
Vero muttered a string of expletives in Spanish as she pulled her keys from her pocket. We snuck out the side door, where I waited in the rhododendron bushes, watching for faces in the neighbors’ windows as Vero crept to the street and backed her Honda tightly to the door of the garage. We turned off the porch lights and the lights inside the garage, and by the dim glow of the streetlamp at the foot of my driveway, together we heaved open the broken garage door and attempted to hoist Harris Mickler into her trunk.
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It Page 7