I’d been ready to give up and walk out when a teller waved me to the front of the line from behind her Plexiglas divider. She’d gestured at the cranky man who’d been standing behind me, signaling him to wait as I approached the counter. Zach stopped crying, flashing Vero a shy smile from under my neck. Meanwhile, the cranky man had started a ruckus, spewing insults at Vero as she slid a red lollipop through the slot in the glass for Delia. Vero cashed the check Steven had written me, her sharp dark eyes trailing the man as he’d stormed from the line in search of a manager. She’d counted out my crisp bills with a snap of each one and waved good-bye to Delia and Zach. As I’d turned to hold open the vestibule door for Delia, I saw the manager approach Vero’s register. His harsh admonishments had filtered through the garbled speakers in the glass, and I’d hovered in the open door, listening, riddled with guilt as Vero put up her CLOSED sign, gathered her things, and left through an exit around back.
Taking Delia’s hand and hoisting Zach higher on my hip, I’d rounded the building and found Vero kneeling in her high heels, slashing a small hole in her boss’s tire.
“You seem to like kids,” I’d said as she stood and wiped the grime from her hands. “I could really use a sitter.” I’d held out a wad of cash, nearly half of the check I’d just cashed, partly out of guilt and partly desperation. Vero had raised an eyebrow as she considered the money, then my children, and that had been that.
* * *
Vero and I sagged in our seats, the closed garage door looming in front of us, both of us too exhausted to muster the effort it would take to open it. Vero’s hands were raw and red, stiff around the steering wheel. My own were coated in a layer of filth, my cuticles ringed in dark crescents of soil. I extricated myself painfully from Vero’s car and hobbled to the keypad beside the door. Fighting to uncurl the fingers of my right hand from the ghost of the handle of the shovel, I punched in the four-digit code before remembering the opener was broken. I rested my forehead against the keypad as the motor whirred on the other side of the motionless door.
Then, my back groaning and the blisters on my palms screaming in protest, I heaved the garage door up its track so Vero could pull her car into the empty space beside my van. Mrs. Haggerty’s kitchen windows were dark across the street, but I knew better than to assume the old woman wasn’t watching. My arms shook as I held the door above my head. Still, I was tempted to flip her off with one hand, just to see if anything moved behind her curtains.
Mrs. Haggerty had been the one who’d first discovered Steven and Theresa’s affair when Steven had made the mistake of bringing Theresa to our house while I’d taken the kids to visit my parents. The old woman had cornered me against the mailbox as soon as I’d returned home, asking me if I knew about the attractive blond woman my husband had been entertaining while I was gone. I know they say “don’t shoot the messenger,” but I’m pretty sure whoever came up with that line of horseshit didn’t live across the street from someone like Mrs. Haggerty.
Exhaust bloomed hot around my ankles as Vero’s Honda inched past me into the garage. As soon as the car was safely inside, I let go of the door.
The full weight of it came slamming down, the clang of metal on concrete loud enough to rattle the walls. If Mrs. Haggerty hadn’t been watching us from her kitchen before, I was certain she was watching us now.
Vero got out of the car and threw me a sharp look as Zach and Delia stirred in their seats. We leaned back against the side of the car, waiting through the fragile silence as the children settled back to sleep. When their breaths became long and even, Vero hauled Delia into her arms, frowning at the uneven spikes of tacky, clipped hair sticking up around my daughter’s face. I hugged Zach to me, nudging the car door shut with my hip.
A pale, watery dawn was just beginning to seep around the edges of the curtains of their rooms as we tucked them into their beds. If we were lucky, Vero and I might have time for a hot shower and a cup of coffee before they roused for the day, and I groaned, remembering the mess of spilled grounds I’d left on the kitchen counter just yesterday.
Without a word, Vero and I stripped down to our underwear in front of the washing machine. We loaded in our clothes, dumping the table linens and gardening gloves and our shoes on top, pouring in two capfuls of color-safe bleach, and finishing it off with a mountain of powdered soap. Vero set the machine running before disappearing into the spare bedroom. She locked herself inside with a soft click.
I padded to the kitchen, determined to clean up at least one mess I’d made before trying to sleep. Careful not to draw unwanted attention from Mrs. Haggerty’s house, I left the lights off, searching for the spilled grounds by the dusky morning light filtering through the kitchen curtains, but the mess was gone. The floor and counters were already wiped clean, the dirty dishes that had filled the sink already rinsed and put in the machine. Vero must have tidied up last night as she was packing my frying pan into her cardboard box. Right before she’d found me trying to resuscitate a corpse.
Maybe Vero was right.
Maybe Harris Mickler did deserve what had happened to him. Maybe his wife would show up tomorrow with an envelope full of money and we would actually get away with murder. But as I scraped the loose grounds from the inside of the coffeepot and dumped them into the overflowing trash can under the sink, I wasn’t feeling optimistic. I’d killed a man. Whether or not I had done it intentionally hardly seemed to matter anymore. I’d buried him, which made me guilty of something, even if I wasn’t entirely sure what that something was. Or what it would become if I took Mrs. Mickler’s money.
* * *
I woke to the clank of silverware against cereal bowls in the kitchen. The chatter of cartoon voices from the TV was almost loud enough to drown out the low thrum of the vacuum downstairs. Bright sun seared through the blinds of my bedroom. I checked the time on my phone and buried my face in my pillow. It was damp and cold where my still-wet hair had soaked through it when I’d climbed into bed after a long, hot shower, less than four hours ago.
My muscles were stiff, reluctant to wake as I dragged on a pair of sweats and twisted my loose hair into a bun before shuffling downstairs to the kitchen. The dishwasher hummed quietly in the background. The stack of bills from the front stoop had been brought inside, sorted into leaning piles, and organized on a folding table in the empty dining room.
Delia blinked up at me from her chair, her spoon poised over her cereal bowl. A dribble of milk trailed down her chin as she chewed. I blinked back, only partly certain the girl staring back at me was my daughter. Her hair had been shorn close to the scalp, cleaned of the sticky adhesive. The scratch where she’d sliced herself with the scissors was just visible between the errant gelled spikes that remained. A pair of reflective Aviator sunglasses rode on her nose, dwarfing her freshly scrubbed face. And her clothes—a pair of artfully shredded jeans and a torn hot pink T-shirt layered over gray long-john sleeves—had been sprinkled with bleach to complete the ensemble.
I raised an eyebrow. She raised one back as she stuffed another dripping spoonful of cereal into her mouth. Her tiny hands were wrapped in a pair of striped fingerless gloves that had definitely had fingers when I’d bought them last week, and had been far less fashionable yesterday.
Vero’s sunglasses slipped down the bridge of Delia’s nose as she chewed. “It’s a mood,” she said with a careless shrug, as if answering the question on my face. “That’s what Aunt Vero says.”
I clamped my lips against the retort building behind them.
The vacuum cleaner stopped. Vero came into the kitchen wearing one of my sleep shirts and a pair of my yoga pants. I didn’t want to think about what she was—or wasn’t—wearing underneath them, and I sorely hoped my underwear was cataloged under the sixty percent of personal belongings I would never have to share with her. Her long hair swayed from her loose ponytail as she set my cell phone down on the counter. Her hands were clean, the nails scrubbed, trimmed, and filed short, sporting a layer o
f fresh pink polish that matched the color peeking through Delia’s gloves.
“Aunt Vero, huh?”
Vero smirked. “If Theresa can have an Aunt Amy, you can have an Aunt Vero.”
Zach laughed in his high chair, his own hair gelled into matching spikes long enough to curl over themselves. My poultry shears were nowhere to be seen, and no one was bleeding or throwing a tantrum. Too tired to argue, I lumbered sleepily to the table.
“Go get dressed,” she said, setting a cup of coffee in front of me and giving me a cursory once-over. I took a greedy sip. “And do something with your hair. You’re meeting Mrs. M at Panera in an hour. Try to look the part.”
I choked, spitting coffee down the front of my shirt. “What did you do?” It sloshed over the sides of the mug as I rushed to pick up my phone. I scrolled, my face falling, numb as I read the two-word message from Vero to Mrs. Mickler.
It’s done.
Mrs. Mickler had replied almost immediately. Panera 11:00.
“Jesus, Vero,” I whisper-hissed, hoping the children wouldn’t notice. When I glanced over, they were engrossed in whatever cartoon Vero had playing on the TV in the next room. “No, I am not meeting with her!”
She planted her hands on the table in front of me. “You are meeting with her. How else are we going to get paid? I did not get these calluses for nothing.”
I grabbed Vero by the sleeve and dragged her into the dining room, pitching my voice low. “I am not taking that woman’s money. If I do, that makes us guilty of murder for hire.”
“As opposed to what?” she hissed back. “Just murder? The only difference between them is fifty thousand dollars. Fifty. Thousand. And I vote we take the money.”
“Oh, you vote? Well, last I checked, I still held a majority. Which means my vote counts more!”
“Think about it, Finlay. We need that money.” She gestured with a sharp finger behind her. Stacks of bills were piled on the folding table, sorted in order of importance. House payments first, then van, then HOA, insurance, and electric bills, followed by a stack of miscellaneous overdue invoices to credit card companies for accounts I’d maxed out months ago. “We finished the job and we might as well get paid for it. Just give her Harris’s wallet and phone and take the money. That’s all.”
I looked at the mountain of envelopes on the table. Maybe Vero was right. Not paying my bills wasn’t going to make me a better person or absolve me of what I’d already done.
Vero’s shoulders unwound, as if she sensed I was giving in. “I put Steven’s shovel in the back of the van. The sooner we get rid of it, the better. You can drop it by Theresa’s shed on the way to meet Mrs. Mickler. Then take the van to the car wash and vacuum the shit out of it on the way home. I’ve watched every episode of Bones. If Brennan and Booth can get a conviction with a single speck of pollen, then those boneheads your sister works with could probably arrest you for a freaking hair from Mickler’s pants.” I grimaced as she held out the van keys.
“I’ll clean the car and return the shovel, but I’m not meeting Patricia. How am I supposed to look her in the eyes?”
Vero snatched up an envelope from the dining room table and held it in front of me. The scales of justice were emblazoned on the top left corner in dark red ink—another unopened letter from Steven’s attorney. “You can either look Patricia in the eyes and take her money. Or you can look in the eyes of your husband’s lawyer as he takes your children from you.” She held the van keys and the unopened custody letter side by side. One of them felt decidedly more wrong than the other. I took the keys. Then I sucked down my coffee, kissed my children on their heads, and stomped upstairs to get ready to take Patricia Mickler’s money.
CHAPTER 14
The wig-scarf itched like hell. I was clearly being punished. God or karma or Harris Mickler’s ghost was determined to make me miserable. I wedged a finger inside it and scratched, hoping a brown strand didn’t come loose as I searched the packed dining room of Panera through the dark lenses of my sunglasses. My gaze settled on the tables we’d occupied the first time Patricia and I had laid eyes on each other. I heaved a relieved sigh when I didn’t see her sitting there. Now I could honestly tell Vero I’d come and I’d tried, and Patricia Mickler hadn’t shown up. Then I could go home and eat a bucket of Ben & Jerry’s and cry. I just wanted to put this whole nightmare behind me and pretend it never happened. Regardless of how creepy Harris Mickler was, or the terrible things I knew he’d done, I’d killed him. Killed him and buried his body where I hoped no one would ever find it. And it seemed wrong to collect a reward for that.
I pushed my dark glasses up the bridge of my nose, ready to leave, when I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. Mrs. Mickler hunched in a booth in the corner, her purse tightly clenched in one hand, her other still raised as if she’d been waving me over. It withered as our eyes met. She cast an anxious glance around the dining room as I tucked a blond lock behind my ear and walked briskly toward her.
Her face was as pale as I remembered, with that same wide-eyed look she’d worn when I’d caught her staring at the bloody rag and duct tape in my diaper bag, her expression vacillating between horror and fascination as I slid into her booth.
I clutched my own purse tightly under my elbow. Harris’s wallet and car keys and cell phone were in it, Exhibit A, just in case Mrs. Mickler insisted on seeing proof. But in truth, all I wanted was to be rid of them. All I wanted was to get out of here and spend fifty thousand dollars’ worth of quarters on the industrial vacuum at the car wash—to suck every cell and fiber that had ever belonged to Harris Mickler from my life.
“It’s really done?” she asked with a furtive glance at the neighboring tables.
I nodded.
Patricia’s hands shook as she withdrew an envelope from her purse and pushed it across the table. Her eyes were ringed in purple shadows, as if she hadn’t slept. I imagined she wanted this whole ordeal over with as much as I did. Still, I hesitated to reach for the envelope.
“You can count it. It’s all there,” she insisted, pushing it toward me another inch.
“I believe you.” The envelope was fat, stuffed so thick the flap hardly closed. I whisked it off the table into my lap and reached into my purse for Harris’s wallet, keys, and phone. Patricia took the key ring, her trembling fingers fumbling over it as she separated one tiny key from the others.
“I’ll wait until tonight to report him missing,” she said, palming the key. “That should give you time to wrap up any loose ends.” She pushed the rest of the ring back across the table, along with Harris’s wallet and phone. She swallowed hard, unable to look at them, as if she wanted to be rid of every part of him, too.
“You want me to get rid of them?” I asked.
“Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?”
The nerve of the woman. If Delia had opened a mouth like that I would have sent her to her room for being sassy and confiscated her toys. Patricia withered, clearly mistaking my mom face for something else … some callous expression worn by contract killers and hit men. Maybe they’re similar. I wouldn’t know. Her nervous smile made her lips quiver as if she might start crying.
I bit my tongue as I slid her husband’s personal effects back into my purse along with the money.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, clearing her throat. “A friend of mine … more of an acquaintance, really. We have Pilates together at the club on Tuesdays and Saturdays,” she admitted with a guilt-ridden wince, as if stretching was the crime. “She’s having some … issues … with her husband. I told her I might know someone who could help.” The folded slip of paper she pushed across the table left me with an ominous sense of déjà vu. My mouth fell open, my tongue fumbling over all the arguments scrambling to get out. Until I read the numbers beside the dollar sign.
All seventy-five thousand of them.
I stared at the name—Andrei Borovkov. The address was some fancy high-rise condominium in McLean. I folded t
he note and slid it back across the table.
“Look,” I started, “you’ve got the wrong idea about all of this. I don’t…”
The rest of my argument fell away. Patricia’s seat was empty.
I pivoted in the booth, searching for her by the trash bins. By the hall to the restrooms. By the dessert counter. But she was already gone. Through the window, I saw her duck into a car. The brown Subaru wagon tore out of the lot like it was on fire, the bumper stickers obscuring the back window as she darted between oncoming cars.
I stared at the slip of paper. The name on it felt familiar for reasons I couldn’t begin to guess. Or maybe it was just this moment, this all-too-familiar feeling of dread that I’d crossed a line I couldn’t come back from just by holding it. I tucked the note in my purse with the money and the contents of Harris Mickler’s pockets, wondering what the hell to do next.
CHAPTER 15
I left Panera and drove straight to The Lush. The bar wouldn’t open for another hour, and the parking lot was empty of all but a handful of cars, making Harris Mickler’s easy to find. A Mercedes logo was emblazoned on his fancy key fob, and the ring attached to it had only held three keys: one most likely to his office and one most likely to his house. The smaller key that had dangled between them—probably the key to a gym locker or to a secure cabinet or file drawer—Patricia had kept. I didn’t care. I wanted them gone. The last thing I needed was for some detective to track me down and find them inside my house.
My van idled between the only two Mercedes in the lot. I pressed a button on the key fob and caught the flash of taillights in my rearview mirror. Lining up our driver’s-side doors, I backed my van into the space beside Harris’s car. Then I used one of Zach’s burp rags to wipe everything down: his phone, his keys, his wallet … Curious, I pried open the billfold, my eyes widening at the crisp bills nested inside. I could take them, I thought. Make it look like a robbery. But then why would a common street thug leave a wallet full of credit cards and an expensive cell phone in Harris’s car?
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