FEBRUARY 2003 #5
“I’ve been thinking,” I said—because planning this out was a distraction.
Saving Harper was a distraction. “Tonight, you’ll drop me back off near London, and I’ll get a cab into the city.
I’ll claim I’ve been partying across town, and I’ll meet up with Caleb.
We’ll get photos. In the morning, you’ll be furious that I slept with your ex-fiancé. ”
She looked up from her own shovel, her expression hardly visible in the dark yet clearly displeased. “Are you going to sleep with him?”
“Yes, Harper. I am.”
She made a noise of discontent.
“Oh, please. You can’t still be jealous over a man you dated years ago. You’re married. And I’m doing this for you.”
I didn’t have some burning desire to have sex with Caleb, but I wanted to—it was clever, it was a distraction, and it was doing what needed to be done: surrounding this night with so much drama and chaos it would be near-impossible to piece together what actually happened.
And if he wanted to sleep with me too then what did it matter? He was probably using me to boost his profile as much as I would be using him for a B-plot in a murder.
Harper pressed her shovel back into the ground—for this the rain was beneficial, making the ground soft, malleable, and quick to shift.
“Alright, so you’ll craft yourself a nice alibi,” she said bitterly, like I was being selfish in this regard—as though any of this wasn’t for her.
“I’m creating a catalyst, you entitled bitch,” I snapped.
“You and Joel will wake up to the news, and you’ll be furious.
And then he’ll be furious—demanding to know why you care so much about an ex.
In a fit of jealousy, he’ll storm off. You’ll go about your day—go to the gym, see a friend for lunch.
You’ll be seen, out and about. Later, you won’t be seen, when you park that Jaguar somewhere and very conveniently forget to lock it.
You’ll get a taxi back near your house but not to it, doing your best not to be seen and not to be recognized.
You’ll say he came back that evening but wouldn’t speak to you so you stormed off instead.
Again, you’ll be seen somewhere, doing something. ”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“I wonder what that’s like,” I snapped as I threw another mound of dirt to the side. My shoulders trembled, the muscles across my back screamed, and my thighs burned from leaning over the pit.
“Before you leave,” I continued. “You’ll search things on his computer. The best places to hide from the press, ways to swindle your wife out of divorce payouts, countries that don’t demand child support, things like that.”
“I doubt that’s the sort of thing Jeeves can answer.”
“You don’t need the answers, just the search history.
Let the world think he skipped out on you all, went into hiding, and that’s when something happened.
Maybe he got mixed up in the wrong thing, maybe someone found him where he wasn’t supposed to be and took advantage.
Send an email from his computer to his PA, requesting that he arrange for thirty thousand pounds to be moved to one of his bank accounts and for five thousand pounds to be delivered to the house in cash.
You’ll give me the money when we’re back in LA. ”
“Don’t tell me you helped me commit murder for petty cash.”
“It’s insurance,” I growled. “Because you’re going to get twitchy after this, and you’re going to suspect me and you won’t understand why I helped you.
Giving me that money will tie me to the crime and put you at ease enough that you’ll stop wondering if and when I’ll turn you in.
I won’t. I’m nothing if not stubborn and evidently I’ve made my bed. ”
Harper stopped digging and leaned against her spade. “You know me well enough to have my future responses mapped out.”
“Yes, Harper, you’re predictable. Now dig.”
“Okay, so what next, oh grand criminal mastermind?”
“You’ll say you left the package for Joel on the table not knowing what it contained.
When you came back, it was gone, and so was the car and so was he.
You’ll tell people he ran out on you without notice over a stupid argument.
You’ll fly back to LA. You’ll pretend you knew nothing about the affair.
And you won’t report him missing—you’ll wait for his team to get in touch, saying they can’t find him and you’ll say he’s probably licking his wounds somewhere from your argument. ”
“This argument of yours is giving me quite a motive.”
“Days after he was murdered. Days when you are seen and accounted for. Besides, no one is going to consider that enough for a motive. Meanwhile, you’ll have made it clear that you knew nothing about the thing that would give you real motive.
And you’ll only start to panic when the rest of the world does. ”
“Is it that easy, do you think? To make Joel Ingram disappear?”
Is it that easy, I wanted to ask, to bury him?
But I didn’t ask.
I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
———
I was glad it was dark, so we didn’t have to look at him long as we stripped his body naked and tossed him into the hole we had dug. It was worryingly easy to take apart each button, to throw him like he wasn’t a him at all.
I’d suspected I was past saving for a long time, but Harper’s volatility meant she obviously cared. And that meant she was obviously hurting.
“I can do this,” I offered. “You don’t have to.”
“No,” she said, as she slid a sock off. “I have to. It’ll hit me later, I think. When I’m in his house. In our bed. The enormity of all of this. But right now it doesn’t bother me so much to do what needs to be done.”
She had a smudge of mud on her cheek, and I wanted desperately to wipe it away, but no part of me was clean enough to do that without making it worse. But that’s what we did, I suppose, made each other filthier and filthier.