I folded Delia’s cap into my pocket and held her body a little tighter. The duct tape in her hair stuck to my jaw. For a moment, I considered telling Georgia everything. About what had happened in Panera. About what had happened in my van, in my garage.
Georgia reached for the TV remote on the table.
“Georgia…?” I started in a thin voice, clutching Delia to my chest. When my sister looked up at me, it was hard to hold her stare. My gaze skipped away, to the replaying scene on the TV behind her. All I could think of was Patricia’s warning. About dangerous people with friends in high places. About how my children would never be safe if anyone knew what I’d done. If Georgia and her police friends couldn’t keep dangerous people off the street, maybe Patricia had a reason to be afraid. Maybe Vero was right, and I didn’t have any choice but to see this through and keep it to myself.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
I turned for the door, feeling those cop-bright eyes on my back all the way to Vero’s car.
* * *
“Where to now?” Vero asked as I shut the door. She made a face at Delia’s duct tape crown in her rearview mirror. The kids slept like the dead in the back seat, as still as Harris Mickler had been when we’d shut him in the trunk with the little pink trowel.
“I don’t know.” I hadn’t had time to think about what we’d do with the body. Maybe because part of me figured we’d never make it this far. I gnawed my thumbnail, my mind spinning over every gory bit of research I’d ever done about body disposal. If we tossed him into a river, with my luck he’d wash up. And a fire would attract far too much attention; the last thing I needed was an arson investigation on top of a murder charge. “I guess we should find a place to bury him.”
“Any ideas?” She pulled slowly out of my sister’s apartment complex, careful to use her turn signal as she eased out onto the road.
I choked back a laugh. Part of me wished Steven was here. I’d never been good at hiding things. I could never keep secrets the way he could. He’d always been the one in charge of hiding the Christmas presents from the kids and the Easter eggs in the yard. In hindsight, the hardest ones to spot were the most obvious, loosely covered in foliage or patio cushions right under the kids’ noses. It was the same way he’d hidden his affair with Theresa for months. He hadn’t taken her on extravagant trips or squirreled away money in strange bank accounts. He’d screwed our real estate agent during his lunch breaks in her home office right down the street and buried the scent of her perfume under his own cologne. He’d handled all the household bills, so I’d never see the expenses and connect the short distance between the dots. Like the fling he was probably now having with Bree, Steven kept his secrets close, hiding his indiscretions in mundane places no one would bother to …
“Oh.” I felt the breath slip out of me. Felt Vero’s eyes dart to my face as an idea took hold. “Go to Steven’s house,” I said.
“Why the hell would we go to Steven’s house?”
“Because we need a shovel.” A really big shovel. And if anyone had the tools to bury a secret as big as Harris Mickler, it was definitely my ex-husband.
CHAPTER 12
It was well after midnight by the time we snuck the shovel from Theresa’s shed and made the long drive to Steven’s sod farm. The dark, unmarked rear entrance to the property wasn’t nearly as inviting as it had been in the daylight. Vero killed the headlights and we sat in the car, listening to the children’s soft breaths in the back seat, waiting for our eyes to adjust. Blue moonlight draped over the grass. It billowed for acres all around us, except for a single square plot in the rearmost field where the earth had been freshly turned, waiting to be planted.
Vero and I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the field. The muddy clumps of churned-up dirt glowed gray under the moon. The night was warm for October, quiet except for the rush of fallen leaves tumbling along the line of tall cedars behind us. There wasn’t a headlight or porch light anywhere for miles. I could picture Steven and Bree out here, screwing in the back of his pickup after hours. It was the kind of place secrets could go undiscovered for years as new grass grew up all around them.
I drove the tip of Steven’s shovel into the ground, relieved to find it soft, pliable. Mercifully, Steven and Theresa hadn’t been home when Vero and I parked a few car lengths from her driveway and I’d crept along the thin tree line behind their town house to raid the toolshed in the backyard. I’d slunk off with a heavy shovel boasting a broad steel blade, along with a pair of gardening gloves.
“We’ll take turns,” I told Vero. “I’ll dig first. You keep watch.” With any luck, Steven would seed this field before anyone knew Harris Mickler was gone.
My throat went dry as I stared down at the shovel. If this had all been a novel, this moment would be a turning point. A point of no return. If we left right now and went back to Georgia’s house, we could still claim negligent homicide. I could tell her everything that had happened in that bar. How I’d accidentally killed Harris Mickler when I’d left my van running in the garage. I could turn in all the evidence on his phone and try to do the right thing, even if it meant going to prison and losing my kids for a while.
I glanced back at the car where they were sleeping. Once this hole was dug, there was no going back. Stealing a shovel, burying a body, claiming the money Patricia Mickler promised—it all pointed to a premeditated crime. A felonious, horrible, unspeakable crime. And as my foot hovered over the lip of the shovel, I wasn’t sure I was any less a monster than Harris Mickler.
“C’mon, Finlay!” Vero’s sharp hiss jolted me. I leaned into the shovel and hauled out the first full scoop of dirt as she paced, her breath bursting out in short hot clouds that looked like ghosts against the night sky. “How far down do we need to go?” she asked, bouncing on her heels, her eyes darting between me and the kids and the rural road through the line of cedars behind us.
I’d hoped for six feet—deep enough to keep the farm machinery from accidentally tilling up his corpse, but my back was already on fire, I had a cramp in my side, and I hadn’t even cleared the first foot. At this point, I’d settle for four.
Impatient, Vero grabbed the pink trowel and jumped into the field with me, scooping up the small mounds of dirt that cascaded over the sides of my shovel.
“Next time we do this—”
“There isn’t going to be a next time,” I panted, glaring at Vero sideways as I dug faster, anxious to be done with it and get home. “This was an accident. That’s all.”
“Maybe the world could do with more accidents,” she said under her breath. “If I had as much money as Patricia Mickler, I probably would have hired you, too.”
I paused, letting the shovel rest against the ground. I’d assumed Vero had so readily signed up for this because of the money. I hadn’t stopped to consider the money wasn’t worth the risk for either of us. That maybe she had her own reasons for digging herself into this hole with me. She threw me a sharp, urgent look and shoveled faster with her trowel. My own hands were already stiff and sweaty inside my gloves, and the skin was raw with searing, fresh blisters. I kept digging anyway.