Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
Vero and I herded the children upstairs for baths right after dinner, hoping to get the kids down for an early bedtime. Then Vero took Zach to his room, singing silly songs to hold his attention and keep him still while she wrangled him into his pajamas. I drew back Delia’s comforter and tucked her into bed. Her eyelids were heavy, still swollen from her crying jag hours ago, after we had left her principal’s office and emptied her cubby at school.
“Mommy,” she said, playing with a loose lock of hair that had slipped free of my elastic band, “do you still love me?”
I kissed the thoughtful wrinkle in her brow. “I’ll always love you, Delia. More than anything in this world.”
“Even when I do something bad?”
I tucked her stuffed unicorn under her arm and pulled the blanket over both of them. “Making a mistake doesn’t make you a bad person, sweetie. There is nothing you could do that would make me love you any less.”
“But Daddy did something bad, and you don’t love him anymore.”
Vero stopped singing in the next room.
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“Cooper. He said Daddy is a cheater. I told Cooper my daddy never cheats when we play board games. But Cooper said he heard his mommy talking to Dylan’s mommy at the bus stop, and they called Daddy a cheating bag of dirt.” The crinkles in Delia’s tiny forehead deepened. “I tried to ignore him, like you told me to, but he just pulled my hair and kept saying it.”
“Cooper shouldn’t have said that. And neither should his mother.” The women in our neighborhood loved to gossip, but discussing Steven’s infidelities at the bus stop took gossiping a step too far. “Your father is a good man and a wonderful daddy.”
“But Daddy said it, too. He said he did something bad and that’s why you don’t want to be married to him anymore.”
A lump formed in my throat. I settled down onto the edge of Delia’s bed beside her, struggling to come up with the right way to explain the nature of my evolving relationship with her philandering father to my five-year-old without saying more than she was ready to hear. “Just because your dad and I aren’t married anymore doesn’t mean I don’t love him. I love your daddy very much—”
A muffled cough that sounded suspiciously like bullshit permeated the wall of Zach’s room.
I bit down hard and forced myself to smile. “—even if he made some very… very big mistakes.”
“Then why can’t Daddy live with us?” She picked at a thread in her frayed unicorn as I looked around her room at the frilly, pink curtains and watercolor rainbows and hanging kitten posters, searching for an answer.
“You love your brother, right?” I asked. Delia nodded. “You still love him even when he does things that make you angry, but you get along better with him when you each have your own room.”
“Like when he pooped in the bathtub and it made me cry, and now I don’t have to take baths with him anymore?”
“Exactly like that.”
“So now you take baths with Nick?”
Vero stifled a cackle. I resisted the urge to smack the wall.
“Yes… I mean no !” Detective Nicholas Anthony and I had only started dating a few weeks ago. We’d shared a bed (several times) but never a bathtub. “What I mean to say, Delia, is that just because your brother did something that made you angry doesn’t mean you love him any less. Because when you love someone, you love them no matter what.”
“Even when they poop in the tub?”
I fought back a grin. “Even when they poop in the tub.”
“Do grown-ups get in trouble?” she asked after a thoughtful pause.
A laugh broke free. Steven had made far worse mistakes in far bigger bathtubs. For that matter, so had I. “Grown-ups get in the most trouble of all,” I said through a heavy sigh. “The important thing is we say we’re sorry and learn from our mistakes. And we try to do better the next time.” One day, maybe I’d start following my own advice.
I smoothed the comforter around her and stood to go.
“If I say sorry, can I go back to school tomorrow?” she asked as I switched off the light.
“Not tomorrow, sweetie.”
“Then what will we do?”
“I don’t know.” That was a problem for future me. Present me had laundry to do, bills to pay, a house to clean, and a new book to write. Tomorrow, we would do what we always did. “We’ll figure something out.”
When the kids had both finally drifted off to sleep, I slumped onto the sofa beside Vero with a pile of take-out menus, too exhausted from the events of the last few hours to even think about cooking. We’d taken the kids out for ice cream after our meeting with Delia’s principal, then Steven had gone back to work and we had spent the rest of the day at the park. The kids had been exhausted by the time we got home. We’d fed them an early dinner of frozen chicken nuggets and instant mashed potatoes and given them both a bath; neither one of them had the energy to protest when we’d tucked them in for an early bedtime.
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked, thumbing through the menus.
“Chocolate,” Vero said.
“We had ice cream for lunch. We can’t have chocolate for dinner.”
“Then booze.”
I was about to object to that choice, too, but on second thought, it wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever had. It was Thursday night, which meant the week was almost over. Steven would pick up the kids for the weekend after work tomorrow, and I could look forward to a quiet weekend at home, watching TV in my pajamas. And we definitely deserved a few indulgences after the day we’d had.
There was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it!” Vero looked a little too eager when she jumped up from the couch to see who it was.
Curious, I set down my take-out menu and followed her to the door. Stacey Pickens stood on my front stoop. Stacey lived two streets down from us and had three kids at the local elementary school. She was active in the PTA, the HOA, the BSA, and all the other A’s, which were mostly dominated by the same moms who churned the community rumor mill.
“Delivery!” she sang. She held a brown paper bag over the threshold. Vero took it with greedy hands, peeked inside, and crushed the top closed again as I came into the foyer.
“How much do I owe you?” she whispered to Stacey.
“Twenty even,” Stacey said, not bothering to lower her voice. “I wasn’t sure how much stimulation you were looking for, so I went with something with a little extra oomph .” I raised an eyebrow, wondering what Vero and Javi were up to. Stacey had a home-based business selling marital aids out of the back of her station wagon. Her products came in inconspicuous boxes and bags, but while Stacey’s packaging was discreet, Stacey was not. Vero slapped my hand away when I tried to get a look. “Need anything for yourself, Finlay? I’m running a special this month on lube. I’ve got a few new flavors if you want to try some samples.”
“Thanks,” I said politely, “but I’m all set.”
“You sure? The ladies at the bus stop were all buzzing about some hot cop they saw leaving your house the other morning.”
I bit my tongue, hoping they hadn’t been so loose-lipped in front of their kids. “I’m sure.”
“Speaking of cops, does your new boyfriend have any idea when they’re going to take down the police tape across the street? I know it’s only been a week since they found the body at Mrs. Haggerty’s place, but the Patels are getting ready to put their house on the market and they’re worried the whole crime-scene vibe will make it harder to sell. I told them I’d ask you and see if you knew anything.”
“I don’t,” I said, not only because I refused to contribute to the gossip in the neighborhood, but because I honestly had no idea. “Vero and I were out of town for a while. We missed the whole ordeal,” I explained. We had returned from Atlantic City just in time to see the police arrest my elderly neighbor after human remains had been discovered in her yard. Mrs. Haggerty was president of the neighborhood watch and our community’s biggest busybody. Since I wasn’t Mrs. Haggerty’s biggest fan, I hadn’t troubled myself with the details of the crime. All I knew is that the body had been taken away and so had Mrs. Haggerty. Truthfully, I didn’t mind the yellow police tape if it meant I no longer had to worry about living across the street from the woman who had nothing better to do than binge-watch my dumpster fire of a life and document it all in her neighborhood watch diary for her own entertainment.
If Mrs. Haggerty had murdered someone, she was exactly where she belonged—in jail.
“Poor Arlene was traumatized,” Stacey said. “She saw the whole thing from her bedroom window after that ice storm we had. Mrs. Haggerty must have forgotten to winterize her sprinkler system in her garden and a pipe burst. Arlene noticed the pooling in her yard and knocked on the door, but no one was home, so she called an emergency plumber to stop the flooding. He came with a digger to find the broken pipe, and that’s when he found the body.” Stacey shuddered.
According to Nick and my sister, Georgia, who were both cops in the next county over, the body had been badly decomposed and had been carted off to the crime lab for identification.
“Have they figured out who he was yet?” Vero asked.
Stacey nodded. “From his dental records. His name was Gilford Dupree.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?” I asked. “Did he live here in South Riding?”
Stacey shook her head. “Remember that news story about the forty-five-year-old mortgage broker who went missing from Ashburn five years ago? The one who left for work one morning and they found his abandoned car at Ashburn Park? It was him.”
Ashburn Village was less than thirty minutes away, but as far as I knew, Mrs. Haggerty didn’t get out much. “How did he know Mrs. Haggerty?” I asked.
“That’s the weird thing,” Stacey said. “He didn’t.”
Vero looked confused. “If they didn’t know each other, why’d she kill him?”
Stacey blinked at us. “Haven’t you heard the news?”
“What news?” Vero asked.
“It’s been all over the TV. The prosecutors dropped the charges today and told her she was free to go. Every network has been reporting it since they released her this afternoon.”
A horn honked in the driveway. “I’ve got to go,” Stacey said. “David’s a little on edge and he’s waiting in the car. He insisted on driving me to my deliveries. Says he doesn’t want me walking alone in the neighborhood after dark with some unknown killer on the loose. I mean, for all we know it could be one of the other neighbors! Can you imagine?” She waggled her fingers in farewell. “You two ladies be safe, and keep that handsome detective of yours close, Finlay. If you change your mind about placing an order, you know where to find me.” With a wink, she was gone.
I closed the door and locked the dead bolt, feeling a little creeped out.
“I need a drink,” Vero said, carrying her brown bag with her to the kitchen.
I gathered up the take-out menus and put them back in the drawer. On second thought, chocolate and booze didn’t sound like such a terrible idea. I poured a glass of bourbon for each of us and broke open a package of Oreos while Vero rummaged in the freezer and came back with a tub of Cool Whip. We carried it all to the living room. Vero turned on the TV and changed the channel to the evening news.
“Look,” she said, “there she is.”
The ticker scrolled across the bottom of the screen: Suspect in Loudoun County homicide case released from custody.
The news camera panned to a reporter, the Loudoun County Police Department building forming the backdrop behind her. “According to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, all charges against the suspect have been dismissed in light of new evidence, which was discovered by investigators over the last twenty-four hours. Eighty-one-year-old Margaret Haggerty, the owner of the home where the body of Gilford Dupree was discovered a week ago, was released from jail earlier this evening after police confirmed she had no known connection to the victim. A spokesperson for the Loudoun County Police Department says investigators are already pursuing a promising new lead…”
The camera cut away to a prerecorded clip of my elderly neighbor being escorted from the police station under the arm of her grandson, Brendan. A reporter thrust a microphone in his face. Brendan’s smile was polite but tight as he shuffled his grandmother to his waiting car. “My grandmother has been through a terrible ordeal,” he said. “We’re grateful to put this injustice behind us, and we wish the Commonwealth’s Attorney and the investigators a speedy resolution to this complicated case. Thank you. No further questions.”
Vero frowned and turned the TV off. “They found a dead guy buried in her backyard, and they’re just letting her go?”
“Whatever new evidence they have must be pretty compelling.”
“Do you think she’ll come home?”
“Would you?” The woman was an eighty-one-year-old widow who lived alone and she’d just spent a week in jail because someone had buried a body in her rose garden. “I wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to come back.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she won’t,” Vero grumbled. “Living across the street from that woman creeps me out. She’s seen too much. I don’t trust her.”
I had harbored a strong dislike for Mrs. Haggerty since she blew the whistle on my ex-husband, after documenting his extramarital relationships with our real estate agent more than a year ago, but it was what my neighbor might have witnessed in the last five months that disturbed me most of all. Vero and I couldn’t be sure how much Mrs. Haggerty had seen the night Harris Mickler was murdered in my garage. I’d never intended to get involved when his wife tried to hire me to kill him, but when someone else left me holding the body, Vero and I had panicked. We’d buried Harris on my ex-husband’s farm and pinned the whole thing on the Russian mob, but that hadn’t been the end of it. Harris Mickler’s murder had set off a chain reaction of unthinkable events. Vero and I had spent the last five months finding bodies, hiding bodies, and trying to figure out who had murdered those bodies. Somehow, the two of us had survived it all unscathed, but I wasn’t foolish enough to assume we were in the clear for good.
Vero dunked an Oreo in the Cool Whip. “What if Stacey’s husband is right and the killer is someone who lives here in South Riding?”
I sucked crumbs from my teeth as I considered some of my neighbors. “The Patels don’t exactly give off serial-killer vibes. What about Frank Dwyer, the computer analyst? He’s a little weird.”
Vero shook her head. “All computer analysts are weird. My money’s on that big, muscle-y guy who’s always picking fights at the homeowners association meetings.”
“Don Weber? The car salesman?”
“Stacey thinks he’s a little crazy from all the steroids.”
“Stacey would know,” I said drily. She’d probably heard it at the bus stop from the other gossipy moms. “Sounds like the police already have a suspect in mind. I’m sure we’ll all hear who it is soon enough.” If the TV reporters didn’t tell us, the rumor mill would.
The doorbell rang. We both paused our chewing.
“You expecting someone else?” Vero asked around her cookie.
I shook my head. “Nick’s working late again tonight.” My boyfriend had been working late nearly every night since we’d returned from Atlantic City a week ago. I was pretty sure Commander Ortega was punishing him, reminding him that Fairfax County cops who sneak off on renegade investigations outside their jurisdiction wouldn’t do so without repercussions—in Nick’s case, a mountain of paperwork. But a niggling doubt had taken root in my mind that he was pulling away, putting distance between us. That he couldn’t keep turning a blind eye to the secrets I’d been keeping from him. I had texted him a few hours ago to remind him the children would be staying with their father this weekend. I also let him know I’d leave a key under the downspout beside my front stoop. His reply had been quick but short, promising he would try to come by on his way home from work on Friday night if he made it home at all.
“Maybe it’s your husband,” I teased.
Vero flipped me off. She and Javi weren’t actually married. Their tequila-induced trip to a neon-lit Atlantic City chapel last week hadn’t been legally binding, but there was no use trying to convince Javi of that. Vero’s childhood crush was hopelessly in love with her, and he’d taken it as a personal challenge to win back her affections after they’d spent the last three years apart. “You’ve got Oreos in your teeth. You should probably go brush them just in case.”
She called me a name under her breath as she sprinted to the bathroom. I took the liberty of finishing her drink for her on my way to answer the door.
I opened it, expecting to see a long-haired, tattooed Latino hunk on the other side.
Instead, I blinked at the conservatively dressed white man standing on my stoop. Mrs. Haggerty’s grandson smiled uncertainly and adjusted his tie. His sour-faced grandmother stood beside him. She glowered at me over the handle of her purple American Tourister carry-on bag.
“Mrs. Haggerty! This is… a surprise,” I said, fumbling over my greeting. Was there a polite way to greet your neighbor after she’d been released from custody on murder charges?
She pushed her way past me into my foyer, her bony elbow catching me in my bladder as the wheel of her luggage ran over my toe. Brendan gave me an apologetic smile, shifting the huge suitcase he held to his opposite hand so he could reach to shake mine. “It’s good to see you again, Ms. Donovan. Brendan. Brendan Haggerty?” His smile grew pained as he waited for me to respond.
The last time I had spoken to Brendan had been two weeks ago, during our last morning at our local citizens’ police academy. He’d been toting that same piece of luggage for his grandmother as he’d helped her into the bus that would take them both home. Our farewells had been cordial, but that was before any of us had known about the dead man in her backyard.
I glanced past him, to his grandmother’s empty driveway across the street. Mrs. Haggerty’s windows were still dark. Yellow police tape drooped from the corners of her fence, and the muddy tracks of a backhoe still trailed down her frost-covered lawn.
Brendan’s shiny white Volvo idled at the curb in front of my house. Steam billowed from its exhaust pipe and ghosted across my sidewalk. He sagged with relief as I stepped aside and held the door open, making an opening wide enough for him to wedge the giant suitcase past me into the foyer.
Vero ran a hand through her hair, primping as she hurried down the stairs. She skidded to a stop on the bottom step, frowning at Mrs. Haggerty. “What the hell is she doing here? And why does our foyer look like the baggage claim at Dulles?”
I shot Vero a look. “What Vero means is that we didn’t expect you back so soon, Mrs. Haggerty.”
“Why wouldn’t I come back?” the woman quipped. “Just because a body turned up in my yard doesn’t give anyone the right to assume I’m guilty of anything. I never met that man before in my life. I told the police as much, but I guess they had to figure that out for themselves. Took them long enough,” she muttered, unbuttoning her coat. “Those brutes had no business putting me in handcuffs. They’re lucky I didn’t sue the police department for unnecessary roughness.”
“I think you mean unnecessary force, Grandma,” Brendan gently corrected her. He set down the suitcase he was holding and rushed to help her out of her coat. When I didn’t offer to take it from him, he folded it awkwardly over his arm. “I apologize for barging in. It’s just that the power is still off in my grandmother’s house, and it’s freezing over there.” He rubbed warmth back into his hands. The tips of his ears and nose were red under the lights of my foyer, and I could practically feel the cold February air from outside radiating from them both. I could only imagine the state of Mrs. Haggerty’s home. It had been sitting vacant, without power, since the whole ordeal started a week ago.
Brendan continued in a low voice, “The Commonwealth’s Attorney dropped all charges and released Maggie tonight. She insisted on going straight home, but the place is a wreck. There was a lot of damage from the flood, and there’s no way I’ll be able to get someone out to fix it over the weekend—”
“Which is why I’m staying here,” Mrs. Haggerty finished.
“Here?” Vero shrieked.
“I’d let her come home with me, but my condo is only one bedroom, on the third floor,” Brendan explained.
“Isn’t there anyone else who can take her?” Vero asked.
Brendan shook his head. “We don’t have any other family in the area, and she insisted on staying close to home.”
“I’m sure she’d be more comfortable in a hotel,” I suggested.
“Hotels are expensive,” Mrs. Haggerty snapped.
Vero thrust my purse at me. “Finlay would be more than happy to pay for it.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll be just fine here,” Mrs. Haggerty said, dragging her carry-on toward the stairs.
Vero leapt into her path. “You can’t stay here! We have bedbugs. And lice. And a kid in preschool! This place is a Petri dish of child-borne diseases. You’d probably get cooties.”
Mrs. Haggerty pushed her aside. “I’ll take my chances.”
Brendan offered an apologetic smile as his grandmother helped herself up my staircase. One age-spotted hand gripped the banister as she lugged her tiny bag behind her, grunting like Yoda with every step and grumbling to herself when she finally reached the top. Vero gritted her teeth when the woman moved down the hall, poking her head in each of our bedrooms, giving herself the grand tour of my home.
I turned sharply to her grandson. There were limits to neighborly obligations, and I was pretty sure harboring a murder suspect was one of them. I lowered my voice to a harsh whisper. “My children are sleeping upstairs, and you’re asking me to take in a woman who is being investigated for murder!”
“A murder she clearly didn’t commit,” he argued. “The police never would have released her if they thought she was guilty. Does she look like someone who could bury a grown man and get away with it?”
I refrained from answering that. I probably didn’t look like one either, and I’d moved more bodies over the last four and a half months than I cared to admit.
He raised his hands in supplication. “My grandmother didn’t even know the man. All she wants to do is go home.”
“I know you’re in a bind, but there must be someone else your grandmother can stay with.”
“Preferably someone on another coast,” Vero muttered.
“She specifically asked to stay here,” Brendan said.
“Why would she do that? She doesn’t even like me!”
“Don’t be silly. She’s very fond of you.”
Vero snorted.
Brendan put a hand to his heart. “I promise, she won’t be any trouble at all. And I’d be happy to contribute toward whatever you feel is a fair charge for her meals and rent. At her age, she doesn’t eat much. All she needs is a bed and a TV to keep her happy. Please,” he begged. “She’s eighty-one years old, she lives alone, and I don’t know what else to do for her. All I’m asking for is a few days. Just until we can get her power and water turned back on.”
I sighed, already hearing my mother’s lecture, which would inevitably contain an abundance of Bible passages and guilt. “I suppose she can stay for a few days.”
Relief washed over Brendan’s face as he handed me her coat. He shook my hand fervently before I could change my mind. “These are her house keys,” he said, handing me a key ring. “I’ll call her insurance company first thing tomorrow and try to get some repairmen out to look at the place. And this is my cell number,” he said, scribbling a number on the back of a business card. “Call me if either of you need anything. The name and number of the detective in charge of her case is on the front. I left Detective Tran a voice message earlier, letting him know she’d be staying with you.”
“Presumptuous much?” Vero mumbled.
Brendan continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Everything Maggie needs is in her suitcase. If there’s anything she’s missing, this should cover it.” He opened his wallet and handed me several twenties. Vero plucked them away from me as Brendan gushed out a flurry of emphatic thanks and showed himself out the door. A moment later, he disappeared into his Volvo and it peeled off down the street.
“She’s not sleeping in my room,” Vero said.
“She can sleep on the rollaway in my office.” I hurried up the stairs, hoping Mrs. Haggerty hadn’t woken the children, but she was standing in my bedroom, rummaging in my drawers. She handed me a pile of my jeans and sweaters, then placed her own nightgown and a stack of granny panties in the drawer she had just emptied. My window blinds were open, even though it was well past dark, affording her a clear view of her deserted house across the street.
“Mrs. Haggerty, this is my room,” I said, plucking her panties out of my drawer. I slammed it closed with my hip before she could put anything else inside it.
“I suppose it will have to do.”
“There’s a rollaway bed in my office,” I said, taking a stack of clothes from her arms so I could return them to her suitcase. “You’re welcome to sleep in there.”
Mrs. Haggerty stole her clothes out of my hands. “I prefer this one. It’s on the right side.” She poked me in the ribs, nudging me away from the dresser.
“Right side of what?”
“The right side of the house. You know, facing the street. How else am I supposed to keep watch?”
“Over what?”
“My home! How else will I know if the killer comes back?”
I bit my lip, holding on to my temper by a thread. She had, after all, spent a week in jail after discovering a body in her backyard. I suppose I couldn’t fault her for being anxious. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Haggerty. I seriously doubt we’re in any danger here.”
“All the more reason to stay vigilant. Anything can happen in the middle of the night. Burglaries, vandalism, human trafficking, fires …” She pierced me with a look, pointedly reminding me of a night only a few short weeks ago, when Vero and I had been trapped atop a burning building at the police academy training grounds and Mrs. Haggerty had been the only one to answer our desperate calls for help. Whatever favor she felt she was owed, she was apparently cashing in now.
“Fine,” I conceded. “You can stay in my room. But is it really necessary to unpack? You’re only going to be here until—”
“Where’s my other suitcase? It’s late, and I’d like to get some sleep.” She stared at me impatiently over the rims of her glasses, though we both knew she was more than capable of carrying her suitcase herself. Not more than two weeks ago, she had tackled me, handcuffed me, and nearly beat me and Vero in a police academy obstacle course, but I also knew from experience there was little point in arguing with her about it.
“I’ll bring it up,” I offered grudgingly.
“I’ll need a fresh set of sheets, too. Yours smell funny.”
My hands clenched at my sides. Mrs. Haggerty might not have been guilty of murder, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to say the same for myself by the time the weekend was over. Surely this situation justified a homicide.
I negotiated with myself as I retreated down the hall to get her bag. One weekend. I would give the woman one weekend in my bed, if only to repay her for saving our lives. I would call Brendan Haggerty first thing on Sunday and have him fetch his nosy, overbearing, pain-in-the-ass grandmother and find somewhere else for her to stay, or I would load the woman into my minivan and relocate her body myself.