Chapter 18 #3
“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you. T was a dirtbag tryin’ to claw his way up, and we knew damn well he was collecting dirt on us. Who wouldn’t? But he wasn’t a bad guy. Hell, he was an up-and-comer.”
“So was Dangerous Dan,” Christine said. “We would’ve done the same with his body, if there’d been time.”
“You really did have something to do with Dan?”
“Who do you think let the girl loose?” she asked.
“God, Christine, don’t antagonize him,” Diane whispered, even though Jeff was right there and heard every word.
“I don’t know how you think you can get away with killing the mom of a cop,” Bonnie said. “How are you planning to hide three bodies?”
“Take you out on the lake. Dump you in. Let the fish do the rest,” he said.
“It’s not that big a lake, Einstein,” Christine told him. “They’ll find our bodies, with bullet holes. And you’ll go to prison.”
“Shit, baby, I’ll be on a private island in the Caymans by then. Already drained the bank accounts. Nobody will ever hear from me again. Still…” He lowered his gaze briefly, then raised it again smiling. “Dangerous Dan’s funeral is tomorrow,” he muttered.
Christine got a chill as she realized what he was thinking. Exactly what she’d wanted him to think. She was the one who’d put the idea into his head.
He ripped into the muffin, eating most of what was left in a single bite, then slugged the milk back, and finally popped the final bit.
Bonnie came a few steps nearer. “We’re so lucky we didn’t get pulled over with a body in the car that night,” she said.
“So lucky,” Diane said. “We never should’ve risked it when we could’ve done the whole thing right there in the cemetery.”
Christine wondered what the hell they were up to, but she got it a second later.
Jeff tipped his head sideways. Then he blinked twice like he was trying to focus his vision and gave his head a shake. Bonnie’s muffin was working!
“We’re taking a little field trip,” he said. He got up and waved the gun. “Get in the Beamer. You two, back seat. Chrissy, you’re driving.”
Chrissy said, “I just drank a double.”
“Fine, Bonnie can drive,” he waved the gun at them.
“Bonnie doesn’t drive!” Christine and Diane yelled at once.
“That’s riiiight,” Jeff said, his lips pulling into a cruel smile. “Not since Mark died. Well, you’re driving tonight, Bonnie. You should thank me. It’ll be your last chance ever.”
As he walked around the car to get into the front passenger side, Christine whispered, “Great, he’s taking us to an open grave.”
“At least he’s not killing us here,” Diane murmured back. “How much longer before the muffin works, Bonnie?”
Bonnie shrugged and shook her head as Jeff got into the car. She took her place behind the wheel of Christine’s Beamer, started it up, and put on her seatbelt. “Where are we going?” she asked, as if the three of them didn’t already know.
Jeff laughed softly. God he was so pathetic. Christine wondered how she had ever thought she loved this man?
“The cemetery where my good friend Dangerous Dan will be buried tomorrow. You had something to do with killing him, or you want me to think so. Now, you get to rest with him,” he said. “Imma’venge my friends. Even the dirtbag.”
“You’re all dirtbags,” Christine muttered.
“Brentwood Cemetery,” Diane relayed. “That’s only thirty minutes away.”
“Yeah, Brentwood.” Jeff’s words were a little slurred already, the stupid fuck. Thank God he’d made poor Bonnie drive.
She’d started the car, put it into reverse, and backed around, hitting the brake too hard and jerking everyone in the vehicle before she was moving forward again. Belatedly, she turned on the headlights.
Lightning cracked in the distance, then seconds later, the rumble of thunder followed. “The wipers are there,” Christine said, and pointed from the back seat. Bonnie turned them on.
She did not push the car past thirty miles an hour, and Christine didn’t know if she was driving slow because she hadn’t driven in more than a year and was traumatized by being forced to do so now—in an approaching storm at gunpoint—or whether she was giving the toxic muffin as much time as possible to do its job.
Her husband was going to kill them. Christine marveled at the notion.
How could he possibly think she would allow that?
Had he ever even met her? She rode in silence as Bonnie drove and she watched the man she’d married after the death of her first and truest love, as his eyes got heavier and heavier.
They’d made it ten miles from home, when he fell forward, planting his face against the dashboard.
From the back seat, Christine poked him. “Jeff. Hey, Jeff. Wake up.” Poke poke.
Nothing.
“Check his pulse,” Diane said.
“No need. He’s still breathing,” Christine replied. “His breath is rancid.” She cracked her window a little bit. “Despite everything, I wouldn’t feel okay about burying him alive.”
“No, nobody deserves that,” Bonnie said.
“Oh, he deserves it,” Diane opined. “But I don’t have it in me either, Christine. Let’s just drive around until he’s done.”
“Are we really qualified to tell when that is, though?” Christine was really afraid he would wake up underground. The thought of it made her want to vomit.
“Well,” Bonnie said slowly. “The first one got stiff after a while.”
“So you want to drive him around until he’s stiff?” Diane asked.
Bonnie shrugged. “At least we’d know he was completely dead. As opposed to mostly dead.”
“She makes a solid point,” Christine said. And then all their phones went off at once.
Jenna: Come to hospital!
“Oh no. Oh no no no no,” Diane moaned.
“Rosa,” Bonnie whispered, and she stomped the gas pedal, pulled a U-turn, and floored it like a Nascar driver, while the others held on for dear life and prayed.
Eventually, Bonnie found a deserted stretch of road, pulled off to the side and popped the trunk. “We can’t have a dead man in the front seat of the car in a hospital parking lot,” she said. “Somebody’s gonna find him and haul him into the E.R.
So they rolled Jeff out of his seat and onto the ground.
Christine didn’t think he was breathing anymore.
Then the three of them picked him up like Father Pecola playing Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather in elementary school.
They carried him around behind the car, dumped him into the trunk, and closed it.
Christine took back the driver’s seat, and they drove the rest of the way to the hospital to say goodbye to their friend.