44. Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody
Charlotte
Sometime in the Dead of Night
I park my borrowed vehicle behind the theater, grab the shovel from the bed of Dad’s truck, and unlock the side door to the scene shop. Gritting my teeth at the sight of Rochelle’s Ford Ranger parked inside, I make my way toward the costume shop and the basement door.
I knew where she’d be when I got to her place and she wasn’t home.
All the lights are on, but since there are no windows in this part of the building, it doesn’t matter.
The second I open the basement door, I can hear the sound of music playing, digging, and swearing.
“I told you not to do this. Plan B sucks. I could have come up with something to get RealFreedom to call it off,” I shout down the stairs.
The digging stops momentarily, then I hear the sshick of her shovel forcefully entering dirt once more. “I don't know how you did it as long as you managed, but I can’t, Charlotte. These people are insane. He’s going in the ground somewhere no one will decide they need to renovate. Ever,” she calls up.
I take my last gulp of fresh air and tromp down the metal stairs. I enter to find Rochelle knee-deep in dirt and digging. A silver boom box sits on a bookshelf propped against the wall. The basement is otherwise empty, other than some plywood and rope, since the clean up after the flooding last winter.
“You brought music? Really?”
She swipes a muddy forearm across her brow. “Do you remember how long it took us to put him in the ground? I needed something to pass the time. Besides, it’s creepy down here in the silence,” she says.
“So you chose Dragula by Rob Zombie to keep you from getting wigged out?” I ask incredulously.
“It seemed appropriate. I made a ‘Dig Up Polford’ mixtape to psych me up,” she says as the song switches to Bohemian Rhapsody .
I take a deep breath and jump in the hole with her. Freddie Mercury croons to his mama about killing a man, and I dig.
It’s a lot faster going than when we put the corpse here in the first place. The dirt isn’t packed nearly as firmly as it was that night. The ground isn’t frozen, and I’m not recovering from childbirth or having to take breaks to nurse a newborn.
My shovel hits bone within half an hour. Rochelle and I grimace at each other, then keep going.
Only after she’s climbed out, and I’m looking up at her as I stand squished next to the rolled up backdrop, do I ask the obvious question. “Did you have a plan for how we were getting the body out of the hole? I can’t lift this thing over my head to you.”
She nods and first slides down a six-foot piece of plywood, then tosses down a coil of rope. “We tie it to the board,
and I’ll rig a pulley system. We can handle it as long as it stays wrapped up.”
Highway to Hell starts on the boom box. “The music was a good idea.”
She climbs back into the grave with me. “I know, right? It’s easier to disassociate from what we’re actually doing with it playing.”
“Plus—” We bend and the two of us begin the process of wedging the board under his body. “—anytime we start to freak out, all we have to do is sing along,” I say.
“Totally. Is this how we convince ourselves we’re badass bitches, instead of idiots?” she asks.
“Speak for yourself. I’m dead certain we’re dumb as this dirt right now.”
We’re singing along to AC/DC in our valiant attempt to pay as little attention to the actual disgusting nature of what we’re doing as possible when the door to the basement opens. That has to be why the first sound we hear is the ring of shoes on the metal stairs.
Rochelle and I freeze and stare, wide-eyed, in horror.
“Who’s there?” I call.
No one answers. Instead, I hear the heavy tread of a large man stomping his way down those steps. One. At. A. Time.
Rochelle and I clutch each other, cheek-to-cheek, and watch as first a pair of black shoes and suit pants enter our line of sight. A huge man comes into view. Reese enters the basement, takes one look at us, heaves a breath, and walks over to press Stop on the boom box.
Then he approaches the edge of the open grave, tugs on his pants at the thighs, and crouches beside the hole. “Busy night, ladies?”
As Long as You Love Me
I n the kitchen of an unused groundskeeper’s cottage near the Rosalind Estate, Rochelle and I sit beside each other at the green and white Formica dinette set. Handcuffs secure my left wrist, and her right, to opposite legs of the table. The dirt under my fingernails makes me want to gag, but not nearly as much as the fear does.
Reese walks into the kitchen, puts his flip phone back into his waist holster, and crosses his arms.
Rochelle scowls. “You can’t keep us prisoner. You’re not the police.”
Reese lifts an eyebrow. “Consider it a citizen’s arrest until the proper people can deal with you.”
She huffs. “How long do you expect us to sit here?”
He plants his hands on the table in front of her and leans close. “Are you uncomfortable, Ms. Rhodes? Do you need another potty break? Another glass of water? Another cushion for your ass?”
We’ve been here for less than an hour, so his impatience is, maybe, justified.
“I need a blanket,” she says. “I think I’m going into shock.”
He straightens, takes another of those deep breaths, and removes his black suit coat. Rochelle gasps at the sight of his jacked-up muscles under the white shirt and shoulder holster. Body-builder beefy isn’t my type, but it’s definitely hers.
“Time and place,” I mutter.
“This has been the most horrible day of my entire life, and now this terrible man is going to destroy the lives of two innocent victims of circumstance.” Her chin wobbles, and she bats her eyelashes at him. “And he’s so big and muscle-y and broody-looking. People make air noises when they’re scared, Charlotte.”
He tucks his jacket around her shoulders, and she slumps into her seat and sniffles.
Reese rolls his white shirt sleeves up his tattooed forearms. “You can’t make me pity you into letting you go. And you can’t flirt your way out of it either.”
With the hand not attached to a table leg, Rochelle shoots him the middle finger.
I hear the click of the front door opening, then closing. Then a man’s footsteps sound on the brown asbestos-tile flooring.
There’s no question Reese called Arden, but he’s hours away, no doubt tucked up behind his nice big walls and alarm systems.
Is it the new sheriff? One of the deputies? The state police? I crane to see if there are any cop lights showing through the window.
Arden steps into the room. He spares a glance for Rochelle, then turns his attention my way. A muscle flexes in his jaw.
I clear my throat. “So…about that prison record.”
If I thought my callback to the day he came to meet me at the theater would soften his expression, I was wrong. The look he gives me makes me cold to the roots of my hair.
“Man trouble,” he says slowly.
“Technically,” I say.
He continues to watch me, then he spins one of the empty kitchen chairs on the opposite side of the table and straddles it. I shift, and he glances down at my hands, then back up at my face.
“You’re not going to attack Reese or run away if we take those off, right?”
Rochelle mutters, “Rude.”
“You have my child. If you run away, I’ll track you down,” I say.
Reese unlocks my wrist, and I straighten, rotating my hand.
“Hey, Mr. Muscles, my turn,” Rochelle says when he steps away.
Reese snorts. “You’re the one who threatened me with a dirty shovel.”
“Because I was scared of you,” she says.
“You exhumed a corpse from the dirt-floor basement of The Rosalind Theater,” Arden says.
“Yes, but I can explain,” I say.
“Can you?”
“Greg Wilson is obsessed with wanting to put a hydraulic lift under the stage. I ran interference with RealFreedom to keep them from doing anything with that basement. Then Rochelle took over for me as liaison, but they’re doing Peter Pan in the fall, and Greg wanted his pirate ship to rise from the floor, and don’t think I don’t see the irony, because I absolutely do. But since the summer theater programs take place outdoors, that makes spring and summer ideal for renovations, and that sneaky usurper went to RealFreedom behind Rochelle’s back to tell them we needed a lift installed as soon as possible. And, as I’ve mentioned, RealFreedom has been an angel about anything we ask for, so they immediately agreed. But no one told Rochelle because Greg, correctly, guessed she was blocking the project, and if it hadn’t been for RealFreedom including her in an email to Greg, we’d have never known that they plan to start digging to pour concrete tomorrow.”
He doesn’t blink, but he does slowly lift one eyebrow.
“Oh. You mean . . .” I say.
“Who? Why? When?” His voice is utterly flat.
“Are you asking as my defense and giving me attorney-client privilege? Or are you asking as a prosecutor and the guy whose staff member caught us?”
“Goddamn it, Charlotte.” His hands slam down on the table top as he rises. “I’m asking as Arden. The man who loves you and wants to know what the fuck you’ve been hiding,” he roars.
I jolt and Rochelle makes a “meep” sound. Tears flood my eyes, and I blink hard trying to keep them at bay. Don ’ t cry. I can’t think when I do. Rochelle’s sniffles are real now.
“It was an accident.” I shake my head. “No. That’s the wrong word. You went after Jeremy Polford with a sting operation. But you called his best friend to be there to arrest him, so Calvin Marsh told Polford.”
He nods. “Yes. I know.”
“Polford said it was my private investigator that set up the sting. He said I caused all his problems. He saw Rochelle and me leaving the pediatrician’s office with Bronnie. He followed us back to her house, which is in the middle of nowhere. While she was inside, he came after me with a gun. He said he was going to kill Bronnie and me and Rochelle and make it look like I was depressed, and it was murder/suicide.”
Arden looks like I slapped him. “In the crosshairs.”
I lift one shoulder. “Rochelle snuck up behind him while he was monologuing like some action movie bad guy with the gun in his hand. When he turned his head because he heard her, I knocked the gun out of his hand and Rochelle smacked him on the head with her garden shovel.”
“It was all me,” Rochelle says. “He went down. He was dead. I killed him. Then I wrapped his body in a tarp, drove it to the theater, wrapped him again in a paint-covered backdrop, buried him six feet deep, sprinkled a bunch of kitty litter on top of him, and I, uh, told Charlotte I’d kill her too if she ever, you know, told on me or whatever, so she had to keep my secret because . . . I’d have done it too. I’m a badass.”
“That isn’t true.” I glare at her, then look back at Arden. “I killed him. She put a dent in his head, yes, but his eyes opened when I bent over to check on him, and I panicked because I was still afraid of him, and I grabbed the shovel out of her hand, and I hit him again. All she did was protect me, and I’m the one who murdered him. It was my idea to hide the body in the basement because the ground outside was frozen, but they used to keep a space heater down there, and there are heat guns for projects, so we could kind of thaw as we went, and Mabel was off her feed so we couldn’t give him to the pigs.”
Arden wipes a hand across his jaw.
“I made Rochelle help me because I, you know, told her I’d shoot her or shovel her if she said anything, so she had no choice.”
“You liar,” she says. “Don’t listen to her. She still had stitches on her hoo-ha and was wearing adult diapers. She couldn’t have done it. It had to be me.”
Arden lifts a hand. “Neither of you considered calling the police to report that he’d come after you?”
Rochelle and I stare back at Arden in silence. Finally, I burst. “Gee, no, Arden. I wasn’t calling the people who tipped him off to come murder us in the first place. When I reported Jeremy Polford for assaulting me when I was fifteen, I had bruises on my body and his blood under my fingernails, and they did nothing. What were they going to do if they came out to find Rochelle and I didn’t have any marks on us, an unregistered gun, and Jeremy Polford having clearly been brained from behind ?”
I wait for him to tell me how disappointed he is in me. For him to explain how if we’d only followed the right steps, we wouldn’t be here today with Rochelle and me headed to prison with funk under our fingernails.
He stands.
A sob rips out of me. Snot runs from my nose. “I couldn’t have done it differently. Or if I could, I didn’t know how. It was desperation, and I know you said there’s never an excuse, but—”
“I was an idiot.” He drags me into his arms and holds my head against his shoulder. “Shhh, Charlotte. Ah, Charlotte. You’re okay. Everything is going to be fine. I’m so sorry for not being someone you could trust with this from the beginning. I put you in danger. I caused this when I didn't consider the potential consequences for you. Every bit of your suffering over this can be traced back to me one way or the other. You were right not to trust me when it happened. I had blinders on, and I'm so damn sorry. Never again, Charlotte. I swear it.”
My brain is on a single track. I don't absorb his words at all. “You have to call the cops. I know."
“The fuck I do.” He leans away from me so he can look into my eyes. “What did I say to you? I will love you until my last breath. And I will protect you. Nothing is hurting you, Charlotte. Not your body or your heart. I’ll fight Satan himself to keep you safe. And I’m not about to be thwarted by a dead asshole whose very existence was a stain on humanity. Right now, you don't need a prince. I’m more than ready to be your villain.”
My sobs dry, and I stare back in shock.
“The body is going to disappear like it was never there. Where’s his car?” Arden asks.
“It’s in the Susquehanna. We didn’t want to put his corpse in it though because if someone found it, it was pretty obvious he was hit in the head,” I say.
Metal clinks as Reese lets Rochelle go. She stands with a scrape of her chair legs and sobs noisily.
I turn to look, ready to hold her, but Reese already has her wrapped in a hug. She clings, with her arms around his neck.
“All right, spitfire. We’re going to take care of everything.” Reese rubs her back.
I look at Arden. “How?”
“One of the women on the team is wearing your clothes, a wig, and is strategically peeking through the curtains of my brownstone every hour or so. The press also know the children are in the house. I spoke briefly to the paparazzi before I went inside the gates in the Hamptons. They don’t know I left fifteen minutes later hiding in the back of Phyllis’s minivan. The guy from the masquerade remembered your name, but since the only thing he knew about you was that you lived in the city, their focus is on New York and on waiting for you to make a statement. There are 512 Charlotte Millers with New York listed as their residence. The press is busy filtering through them. It’ll give us enough time.”
I shiver. He takes off his suit jacket and lifts and eyebrow. I nod, and he drapes it around me.
“You two are going to stay here. Dump your clothes and shoes into the plastic tote with strong bleach water in the attached garage and leave them there. Someone will arrive to clean this location within an hour. Go straight from the garage to the bathroom upstairs. Don’t retrace your steps. Stay away from rooms you’ve already been in.
“Shower and change. I’ll leave a go-bag with clothes and specific hygiene products and instructions for you. Follow them to the letter. Help each other, so you don’t miss a single spot on your bodies. Then you’re going out the back door and up to the main house. They’ll be expecting you. My aunt only uses this place as a vacation home most of the time, so she’s not here. The staff think you’ve had a water line break in your house,” he says.
My mouth drops, and I look over to Rochelle who appears just as shocked.
“I called your dad,” Arden says.
Behind me, I clutch the back of the chair.
“Reese will deal with RealFreedom and the basement cleanup. No one will be the wiser. We’ll give Greg the concrete floor he wants. I can access resources quickly.”
I lick my bottom lip. “Have I mentioned that kind of power is a little scary?”
“Somehow, I think you can handle me,” he says. “Your dad and brother know how to operate a backhoe and a cement mixer. Reginald is getting a bigger coop with a nice, extra-thick concrete pad under it. He needs a castle to match his big cock energy. We’ll take care of it before morning.”
“I didn’t want to involve them in this.”
He cups my face. “If, one day, Bronnie has some asshole come after her, would you want to help her?”
Unable to speak, I nod.
“Nobody’s the sacrificial lamb tonight. Everybody but Polford gets a happily ever after,” he says.
I lift my hand to touch his jaw. When my filthy nails come into view, I pull away without touching him. “How could you arrange this before you knew who was in the backdrop and why?” I ask.
“Because if Charlotte Miller hid a body, there was a one hundred percent chance he needed to die.”