Chapter 5 #2
Then a loud crash of thunder split her sleep wide open, and she sat up in bed. The rain pounded her steel roof; it sounded like the stampede of a thousand wild horses.
In her mind’s eye, Rosa saw again the open grave with the flimsy, blue, in-case-of-rain canopy over it, supported by four skinny metal poles with stakes and twine.
Her phone beeped. The new one, the little disposable secret phone. She and the girls had bought them, activated them, and exchanged numbers before going their separate ways earlier.
It was Diane, of course. “I’m up,” Rosa said when she answered. Her phone said 4:23 a.m. “Is it as bad as it sounds from here?”
“Worse. That blue canopy won’t withstand this. He could be entirely visible—even now.”
Rosa got out of bed, opened her dresser drawers, and pulled out clothes with one hand. Jeans, heavy socks, sweatshirt. Better graveyard clothes than last time, for sure. She hadn’t known what she was dressing for, last time.
“Christine’s going to meet us there,” Diane went on. “You want to ride with me? I’m picking up Bonnie.”
“No, I’m picking up Bonnie,” Rosa said. “And you. Unless you plan to use sonar to find your way. You can’t see in the dark, hon, how’re you going to see in this?”
In the background Rosa heard Harry say, “You’d better let me drive you, hon.
” Age had made his voice gruffer, deeper, and Diane often remarked how sexy she thought it was.
Rosa didn’t disagree. Harry was a keeper.
Of the four of them Diane was the one who’d hit the jackpot in the romance department.
Rosa had too, once, she supposed. One magic summer twenty-four years ago.
“That’s okay, babe,” Diane said to her unicorn of a husband. “Rosa’s picking me up.”
“Be there in ten minutes,” Rosa said. She disconnected and finished pulling on her clothes. On the way out, she peeked into Jenna’s room to be sure she was asleep or make an excuse if she wasn’t. Her beautiful daughter was out cold, mouth open, a little drool in one corner, deeply asleep.
Lucky little shit, Rosa thought lovingly.
Christine did not have a lot of rain gear at the lake house.
She rummaged in the closet and found a London Fog trench coat and some mid-calf platform boots with chunky heels and flowers engraved right into the black leather uppers.
They were Swiss, and pricey, and she hadn’t worn them once, because they made her look, in her opinion, like a manga character.
However, these broad heels would not sink in wet graveyard dirt.
She pulled a hand-dyed silk scarf around her head and tied it under her chin.
The pattern was gray on ivory and it fit the weather.
The side door led into the small carport attached to the side of the one-story, glass-fronted lake house.
The carport had two sides, but the front and rear were open, so you could drive right through.
Jeff used it specifically so that his fully restored hot rod—his mid-life crisis car, as he called it— wouldn’t be exposed to the elements.
Whenever it was in residence, he covered it with a tarp, parked it there, and muttered about changing the carport into a full-blown garage.
It wasn’t in there now. Just her Beamer, which was large and comfortable, a sleek, white sedan, not a minivan or an SUV or a crossover. She was not a soccer mom.
She cranked the wipers up to “frantic” and pulled out into the pounding rain.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it rain this hard.
Dammit, tonight of all nights. Leaning over the steering wheel like she was as night-blind as Diane, she high-beamed anyone unfortunate enough to meet her.
Luckily, she only encountered two other cars.
It was a quiet part of the county. Rural. The houses had plenty of land attached, because the area had once been all dairy farms, and the tracts were still large.
She turned off onto the wooded side road where the cemetery lived. There was a pull-off just past the cemetery gate, which was still open, and that was where Christine waited, headlights off, wipers on.
The other three showed up in Rosa’s old Volvo station wagon. It was mud brown, and kind of blended in with the surroundings. Paint a couple of tombstones on the doors and it would be practically invisible in a cemetery by night. Note for future criming, she supposed.
She got out of her car, locked it. One of the Volvo’s back doors opened in the pouring rain. Christine dove in fast and said, “It’s really coming down!” because somebody had to state the obvious.
“Did anyone see the canopy when we passed the graveyard?” Bonnie asked. “Was it still standing?”
“We’ll know in a minute.” Rosa pulled out and drove back to the cemetery, then drove in through the gate and navigated straight to the open grave where they had left the unfortunate Mr. Terrence.
The blue canopy still stood over it, but it had filled with rainwater. The fabric bowed over the grave like a pregnant belly, and while they sat there, one of the poles tilted, and streams started spilling over the sides into the hole.
“Nonononono—” Bonnie cried.
Rosa dove out the driver’s door, and Christine was out just as fast right behind her. She went running toward the grave, through the pouring rain, behind Rosa. Diane and Bonnie’s car doors slammed. They were coming, too.
Christine reached the grave and stopped, but her boots kept going, and she slid right into the hole, plummeting down, howling all the way and landing hard. The mud went splat when her ass smacked down, and the impact rattled her head.
When she blinked up at them, her three best friends were down in the mud around the grave with their hands reaching for her, all of them asking some version of “Are you okay?”
She pushed herself up and her hand sank through mud and touched another hand.
His hand. Shrieking, she scrambled to her feet, her boots sinking as she raised her arms. “Get me out of here!” When she stood, her chin was above the edge of the ground.
“What is this? This isn’t six feet. I’m only five-six. ”
“The six feet thing is a myth,” Bonnie said. “Graves are usually closer to five, and we just padded the bottom of this one.”
“We’ve got you,” Diane said. The girls locked their hands around her arms and pulled and she pressed a manga boot into the side of the hole, probably leaving a mark.
She wound up face down on the wet ground, but at least out of the grave.
Lifting just her head to look up at them, she said, “What the fuck is happening to my life?”
Diane reached down, clasped her hand and helped her up onto her feet.
“We have to get the water off that tarp,” Rosa said, plucking out the stakes and twine as she spoke. “It’s not gonna hold much longer.”
“Okay, okay,” Diane said. “If we all push a leg at the same time, we can push it over in the right direction.”
“No,” Bonnie said. “While we push the front legs, someone should raise up the back legs as much as possible.”
“You and me for the lifting, Diane,” Rosa said. “Bonnie, Christine, grab those other two legs. Try not to bend ’em, we just want to dump the water, then stand it back up. Ready?”
Everyone had hold of a tent pole. Then Rosa said, “Okay, now!”
Christine picked up on her pole as it was pulled forward by the others, trying not to let the water sluice into the grave. A giant wave surged off the tarp onto the ground, and almost none of it wound up in the hole. It splashed onto the grass and rushed in the other direction, away from the grave.
They tipped it further and were able to shake most of the water off.
“Okay good. Now straighten it again,” Diane said. “Let’s get it upright.”
They all struggled, and it worked. They managed to get the poles back into their existing holes in the ground around the grave. Then they replaced the stakes and twine to pull the canopy tight.
When she finished pounding her stake into the ground with the back of a shovel, because nobody had a mallet handy, Christine brushed her hair off her forehead, felt the streak of mud she’d left behind, and cussed.
Rosa took out a flashlight and shone it in the hole. “Is he still covered?”
Everyone leaned over. “There’s a knuckle!” Christine said. “There’s a knuckle, do you see it? I touched that hand. Ick!”
“Christine, you’re losing it,” Rosa told her.
“I fell in a fucking grave with a dead guy. Sue me.”
Diane had run off with the shovel. She came back with a scoop of dirt and started shaking it gently over the knuckle.
Christine reached out and twisted the handle, dumping the whole scoop over the spot. “If it looks lumpy they’ll blame the rain.” Then she took the shovel and used the back of it to smack the footprints she’d made in the side of the grave with her manga boots.
“I think a few more scoops just to be sure,” Diane said. “Then we can go home.”
Rosa shook her head slowly, meeting each set of eyes. “We don’t go home until it stops raining or that grave is filled in, whichever comes first.”
“But it’s cold and we’re soaked,” Christine said, “and some of us are also muddy.”
“I think we’re all muddy.” Diane looked longingly at the Volvo.
Rosa said, “Wait, I think it’s letting up.”
They stood there, wet, muddy, and cold, but Rosa was right. The volume of the rain was slowing. Not enough, though, so she sighed heavily and said, “Oh, go on, get in the car. Just try to leave as much mud outside as possible.” That with a pointed look at Christine.
Nodding, Christine pulled the lower half of her trench coat up to her waist, so the mud she was sure covered the area over her ass would be blocked from the seat of Rosa’s car.
They all got in, taking the same places they’d had before, to keep watch over the grave until the rain stopped. Rosa turned up the heat.