Chapter 22
The sleet had relented to a meek drizzle by the time we’d reached the peeling clapboard siding at the rear of an old country market adjacent to Barbara’s property. The Westovers’ family plot was a short walk through the woods from where we’d parked.
“What’s the plan?” Vero asked. She’d ditched the sunglasses at least, but she still looked like a kid in her big brother’s Halloween costume.
“We’ll go to the house first and see if she’s home.” Barbara kept a rifle in her kitchen, and it probably wasn’t wise to leave anything to chance.
“And if she’s not?”
I didn’t think Vero really wanted an answer to that.
We headed into the woods, in what I hoped was roughly the same direction we had taken the last time we’d been here. Vero aimed her flashlight at the ground and I followed close behind her, careful not to trip over fallen logs as we descended the sloping hill toward the Westovers’ house.
“The lights are out,” Vero said.
“It’s four thirty in the morning. She’s probably asleep.” I climbed the porch steps and knocked loud enough to wake the dead.
Vero peered in the window. “Maybe she’s staying with Theresa,” she said through chattering teeth.
“We can’t just show up at Theresa’s. She’s got twenty-four-hour surveillance on her town house since she violated her house arrest.”
I turned, rubbing my arms, staring at the shed beside Barbara’s empty driveway.
“Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it,” Vero chanted.
With a heavy sigh, I plodded down the porch steps. “Let’s check her shed. Hopefully, she has a shovel.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
We found a heavy-duty shovel and a pair of gardening gloves inside, and we trudged them back up the hill to the small graveyard behind Barbara’s house.
“Give me some light,” I said.
Vero aimed her flashlight at the dirt in front of Carl’s grave marker.
I paused, one foot poised on the head of the shovel.
Everything about this felt foolish and futile.
I had moved Steven’s key from its hiding spot, but that hadn’t kept him from breaking into my house.
If anything, it had only fueled his determination to get inside.
Moving Carl’s body would be no different.
Nick would know the grave had been tampered with as soon as he laid eyes on it, and it would only make him more determined to get a warrant.
I tossed the shovel to the ground. Plucking off a glove, I pulled out my phone.
“What are you doing?” Vero asked. I walked between the handful of graves, typing the names of the deceased into my browser as Vero aimed her light at the headstones. “I thought we were moving the body.”
“Not the body. Just the marker.” Maybe the solution wasn’t moving Carl, only creating the illusion that his body was somewhere else.
“I don’t follow.”
“If we dig Carl up, we have nowhere to put him. The soil will be loose when Nick gets here tomorrow and he’ll have all the justification he needs to pull a warrant.
All we need to do is slow him down a little.
If we switch two of the headstones, Nick will come tomorrow and find a marker in place and the ground intact.
And even if he does manage to get a warrant to exhume the grave—”
“He’ll find someone else’s body inside it.”
“Here,” I said, kneeling beside a plot that was smaller than the rest. I held up my phone to show Vero the death record.
Her forehead wrinkled. “Doris Westover? But she’s a woman.”
“Her obituary was published by a crematorium. Her plot is probably smaller than the others because they didn’t bury a coffin.”
“Just the ashes,” Vero finished.
Carl wouldn’t have had a memorial or a public obituary.
Barbara wouldn’t have wanted to draw that kind of attention to his death.
According to Barbara, she’d simply told his family and colleagues that he’d been buried during a small, private ceremony at home.
All we had to do was move the grave marker and make sure she corroborated that one small detail—that he’d been cremated and these were his ashes.
“Whatever we’re doing, we’d better do it fast,” Vero said. “It’ll be light in a few hours, and we should get the car back to the academy before sunrise.”
Vero and I worked quickly, using the head of the shovel to leverage the two heavy markers off the ground.
Vero hoisted up one side and I lifted the other, both of us bickering and tripping over the landscape as we carefully switched the positions of the headstones.
The exercise was reminiscent of the obstacle course we’d tackled two days ago, with a lot more cussing and a few more stubbed toes.
By the time we’d finished, our hands were calloused and our noses were red and dripping from the cold.
We kicked the scattered dead leaves back in place around the graves, panting steam as we surveyed our handiwork. Every inch of me hurt.
Vero’s lips had turned blue. “My lady bits are frozen.”
“Let’s put this stuff back where we found it and get out of here.”
Ty’s pant legs dragged on the ground as Vero plodded along beside me down the hill toward the shed.
I used an old rag to wipe dirt and fingerprints from the shovel as Vero slipped off the gloves and hung them back on their hook.
Bright slashes of light cut through the cracks in the siding.
Vero and I went still as tires crunched over the gravel.
I peered through the cracked door of the shed in time to see Nick’s car pull into the driveway. My heart leapt into my throat as he killed the headlights.
“Is it Barbara?” Vero asked hopefully.
“No. It’s Nick and Charlie.” By the faint moonlight, I could just make out Charlie’s profile in the passenger seat.
“I thought Nick wasn’t supposed to come until the morning!” Vero whispered.
“I guess he got antsy.”
Nick squinted through the windshield at Barbara’s house. If we opened the shed door now, he’d spot us. “When they get to the porch, we’ll make a run for it.”
Vero looked at me like I’d just described a scene from Mission: Impossible . “Have you seen yourself run?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
A car door opened. I peeped through the crack as Nick and Charlie got out of the car and Charlie followed him to the front porch. Nick’s cane thumped up the steps. A series of loud knocks rattled the door. I tip-toed out of the shed and peeked around the side.
“So this is where it happened,” Charlie mused, staring over the porch rail at the blackened scorch marks that stained the front yard. A smile tugged at his scar. “Molotov cocktails, huh? I can see why you like her.”
Nick leaned on his cane beside him as he waited for Barbara to answer. “I’m glad,” he said with a smile. “She seems to like you, too. Now if I could just get Joey to come around.”
“What do you mean?”
Nick shook his head. “He and Finn have been acting strange ever since the shooting. Suspicious of each other. Both of them dancing around it.”
“Kind of like you and Joey?”
Nick choked out a laugh. “Why the hell would I be suspicious of Joey?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Charlie asked. “Why’d you bring me out here instead of your partner, Nick?”
“Because I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t feel like waiting until the morning. I texted you and you were up. That’s all.”
“Did you even tell him you were coming?”
Nick looked away.
“You already know how I feel about him. I’ve never held back. And Georgia’s sister is smart. You said it yourself, she’s got good instincts. If she suspects there’s something off with Balafonte, I’d pay attention if I was you.”
Nick frowned at the yard.
“What is it?” Charlie asked.
“It’s just… I don’t know, Charlie. There’s something about that night that doesn’t sit right with me. I read Finlay’s statement a million times. She said she found this address in Steven’s calendar that afternoon when he went missing, and she came out here looking for him.”
“So?”
“So he wasn’t here. Theresa was. And so was Finlay’s missing phone, which means the two of them must have been together a few days before. But why? Theresa and Finlay can’t stand each other.”
“Maybe what’s not sitting right with you isn’t Finlay’s relationship with Theresa, but Finlay’s relationship with her ex-husband.
Whatever she was doing here, she was obviously doing it to protect him, and now there’s a little green monster eating away at you, and your mind’s working overtime trying to invent some other reason she might have come, because you don’t want to admit you’re jealous.
” Charlie held up a finger as Nick opened his mouth to protest. “And don’t bother telling me you’re not. I know you better than that.”
Nick sighed and shook his head in defeat.
Charlie dropped a hand on his shoulder. “No one’s home, so why don’t you and I go find that graveyard and take a look around. It’ll be like old times.”
Nick smiled and tapped his cane. “Sure you can keep up with me, old man?”
“I’ve had six months of chemo and radiation, and I’m still in better shape than you.”
They laughed as they descended the porch steps. I leaped back into the shed, pulling the door closed a second before they rounded the corner, their shoes crunching against the frozen grass.
I waited for their voices to fade. “We should make a break for it now,” I whispered. “We can take the long way through the woods and find our way back to the car.”
Vero nodded. I slunk out the shed door and held it open for her. As she stepped down, Ty’s pant leg caught on the handle of a rake, sending it crashing to the floor. The rattle of its tines echoed through the yard.
“Did you hear that?” Nick’s voice was faint but clear at the crest of the hill.
“Sounded like it came from the house,” Charlie said.
Vero and I sprinted from the shed, underbrush snapping as we darted into the woods. Flashlights clicked on behind us, their beams breaking over the landscape as Vero and I ducked behind two trees, breathing hard.
“Police!” Nick called out. “Who’s out there?”
Vero and I pressed back against the trunks as their footsteps crackled closer through the bracken.
I pressed a hand over my mouth so their lights wouldn’t catch the fog of my breath.
Charlie’s shoes paused a few feet beside me.
My pulse ratcheted higher. I was certain he could hear the slam of my heart against my ribs.
“See anything?” Nick called out to him.
“Nothing,” Charlie said, kneeling in the brush. “Probably just a couple of raccoons making trouble. Come on.” His light swung away, his footsteps fading with it.
Nick’s light made another slow pass before clicking off again. Vero and I waited until they disappeared up the hill before breaking into a run.