Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave (The Finlay Donovan #5)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

The stern-faced woman stared down her nose at me, her solid black smock dress and crisp white collar framed by the regal arms of her leather chair. The fingers of her left hand closed around a fancy Montblanc pen. Her right fist rested on my open file like a gavel, each letter of my last name printed sideways on the tab. “Do you have anything to say, Ms. Donovan?” Her narrowed eyes pinned me to my seat, reading me like a rap sheet across her wide mahogany desk.

He had it coming was probably not the answer she was looking for. “This entire situation has been blown out of proportion,” I said as she took notes with harsh strokes of her pen. It was impossible to come off like a badass while I was down here and she was up there.

“The evidence speaks for itself.”

“What evidence?” I inched higher in my chair, trying to read her terse scribbles from my disadvantaged position.

“We have two witnesses to the assault.”

“Assault?” I held up a finger (not the one I wanted to raise), cutting her off. If she was going to conduct a trial and lay down a sentence, I’d be damned if I’d let her do it without putting on a defense. “That’s a very serious accusation to level at a person.”

“The victim suffered injuries that required treatment by a physician.”

“It was only a few stitches.”

“And two bruised ribs,” she added without looking up.

“I already said I’d be willing to cover his medical costs.”

“You can’t just buy your way out of this, Ms. Donovan. You said it yourself, assault is a serious accusation. If I were to let this go with a warning, I’d be setting a dangerous precedent.”

“But this wasn’t an assault! It was self-defense,” I insisted, fighting the urge to demonstrate the difference. “Whatever the outcome, Cooper provoked it. The situation clearly called for a response, and he got one. Unwanted touching is also an assault,” I pointed out.

Her eyes lifted from the file, meeting mine over the rims of her glasses. “ That would be blowing the situation out of proportion.”

I put my hands on my hips. Or rather I would have, if the arms of my chair had allowed me to. “If you were in the same shoes, what would you have done?”

“I would have reported it to someone with the authority to handle the situation.”

“Handle it how? With another slap on the wrist? He’s a repeat offender!”

“Violence is never the answer, Ms. Donovan. Please sit down.” She pointed a sharp finger at the small wooden chair I’d been relegated to.

I glanced down at myself, surprised to find I was indeed standing up.

I folded myself back into my seat.

The woman took off her glasses. She set them on her desk with an aggrieved sigh. Her weary lids made slow blinks, as if she hoped I might disappear between them. “Rules are rules, Ms. Donovan, and it’s my job to enforce them. I’ve spoken with Cooper’s mother about his behavior on the playground, and she has assured me the hair pulling will not continue.”

I glanced sideways at Delia. Her head hung between her hunched shoulders, the short, downy ends of her blond pigtails still noticeably uneven after she’d cut her own hair a few short months ago, mussed where Cooper had, according to Delia, repeatedly grabbed them. Her hands were tucked shamefully under her thighs, her tiny legs dangling from the edge of the chair she’d been perched on while she’d waited for me to pick her up after the principal had called me.

“Fine,” I said, ready to put the entire ordeal behind us. “I’ll have a similar talk with Delia about her behavior when we get home.”

Mrs. Carmichael, the preschool principal, gave a stern nod. “I expect you will. Cooper’s mother has filed a formal complaint. Given the extent of her son’s injuries, she’s expecting the school to take a hard stance. I’m going to have to ask you to keep Delia home for the next two weeks.”

I leapt up again, the child-size chair clinging stubbornly to my hips. “You’re suspending her!”

“Would you rather she be expelled?”

We both turned as her office door flew open behind me. My children’s nanny burst in, her lungs heaving as if she’d run the full five miles from my house to get here. Her hair was wild where it had come loose from her long ponytail, and her cheeks were red with exertion. She clutched my naked two-year-old son to her side, his dimpled butt hanging over her arm. “Thank god,” she said when she spotted Delia sitting penitently beside me.

The principal scowled at Vero. “Who are you?”

“This is Veronica Ruiz, my nanny,” I explained.

“I came as soon as I got the message,” Vero said, ignoring the principal’s disapproving look. “Is Delia okay? I was in the bathroom with Zach when the school called. All they said is that someone was hurt.” She rushed to Delia’s side and sank down on her haunches until she was eye level with both of us, checking my daughter for injuries.

“Delia’s fine,” I said, taking Zach from her and resting him in my lap. The pint-size seat didn’t leave room for his pudgy legs, so I turned him around and propped him on my knees. He beamed at the principal. She grimaced as every part of him wiggled in his relentless effort to get down. I set him on the floor to keep him from pitching a fit. He stood obediently beside my chair, momentarily content, beaming at the principal as he tugged on his tiny penis.

Vero threw her arms around Delia, prodding every inch of her, just to be sure she wasn’t injured. “What happened?”

“Cooper was pulling Delia’s hair on the playground. She asked him to stop, and he didn’t, so she defended herself.” I threw a pointed look at her principal. The school might be holding Delia responsible, but I knew exactly where the blame for this fell, and it wasn’t on my daughter.

Vero glowed with pride. “That’s my girl!” She held up a hand for a high five. I pulled it down before Delia could slap it. She might be the victim of a miscarriage of justice, but we didn’t need to invite any more punishment.

I covered my eyes, swearing quietly as my ex-husband’s voice boomed in the lobby. “Delia! Where’s my daughter? Is she back there? Back off, lady,” Steven shouted. “If my daughter’s in there, I’m going in and you can’t stop me!” He rushed past the front desk and through the open office door, blue eyes blazing and mud flaking from his work boots.

“Great,” Vero muttered. “What the H-E-double pumpers is he doing here?”

“What’s a double pumper?” Delia asked.

“Never mind,” I said.

“We’ll discuss it when we get home,” Vero added helpfully.

“What’s going on?” Steven asked, as breathless and red-faced as Vero had been when she’d burst in. “Why’d the school call my office? And why is Zach naked?”

“Potty training,” I said. Steven looked confused. “Vero saw some boot camp on the internet that’s supposed to guarantee success in three days. You take off their clothes and keep them close to the toilet.”

“Is it working?”

We all turned as Zach began peeing on the carpet. The principal gasped. I gritted my teeth.

“Guess that answers that,” Steven said.

Vero flashed a middle finger at him behind Delia’s back.

The principal stared sternly at all of us. “Need I remind you that you are in a school? We are models for young minds here. I’ll ask you both to show some decorum!”

Steven frowned at his mud-spattered flannel and the dirt-caked toes of his work boots.

Vero tossed a fresh diaper over the puddle on the floor and used the toe of her shoe to blot up the wet spot.

The principal closed her eyes, lips pressed between her teeth as if it was all she could do to hold back a retort. She reached inside her desk drawer for a bottle of ibuprofen and shook two tablets into the palm of her hand as Steven helped me out of my pint-sized chair and pulled me aside. “I was walking lots with a developer when the school called,” he said in a low voice. “I got here as soon as I got the message. They said they needed someone to come down to the school right away. What’s going on? Is Delia okay?”

Steven’s forehead crumpled as I explained. “A boy named Cooper has been harassing Delia on the playground. She gave him six stitches and a couple of bruised ribs.”

Zach giggled when Steven’s eyebrows shot up.

“And then I kicked him in the tentacles,” Delia said, “just like Vero showed me.”

Steven’s chest swelled like a Little League coach whose star player just took home a trophy. He offered Vero a tentative salute. She answered it with an almost conciliatory nod as she tossed the wet diaper in the trash can. My god, were they actually agreeing on something?

“What?” they asked in unison as I looked back and forth between them.

“Delia’s been suspended from school,” I said sharply.

Steven swore the equivalent of a double pumper, and Vero covered Delia’s ears.

Mrs. Carmichael nearly gouged out her own eye in her hurry to put her glasses back on. She signed her name to the bottom of a disciplinary action report and pushed it across the desk toward me. “I see now where Delia has learned to model this kind of behavior. I’ll ask Cooper’s mother to send you a copy of the medical bills. You can collect Delia’s belongings from her cubby before you leave.”

Delia’s lower lip began to wobble. I picked up Zach and settled him on my hip, then took my daughter’s hand and helped her down from her seat. Steven snatched the report off the principal’s desk, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the trash. Vero gave the principal a heavy dose of side-eye as I led our entourage out the door.

There was no way this day could get any worse, but I knew how to make it tolerable. “Come on, everyone,” I said. “We’re going out for ice cream.”