Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
They held hands, the three of them, as they rode up in the elevator. “We have to be strong for Jenna,” Christine said.
“I’ll keep it together,” Diane replied.
Bonnie, who was already teary-eyed, said, “I’ll do my best.”
The doors opened. Their hands clutched tighter as they stepped out and around the corner, then down the hall toward Rosa’s room.
Bonnie took a triple breath that sounded like a spasm.
Christine blinked against the hot rush in her eyes.
The door was just ahead, open, slightly dim on the other side. Poor Jenna, in there all alone.
They reached the door and Christine raised her hand to push it open.
Rosa was sitting up in her bed smiling at them. Her sable and silver curls were all gathered into a messy bun on top of her head. She was wearing her favorite mean bunny pajamas and eating a piece of chocolate.
“Heeyyyyyyyy,” she said, and she opened her arms, including the one that was in a sling.
They rushed her, all talking at once as they took turns hugging her. “What’s even going on?” Bonnie’s question was the same one they were all asking.
Jenna, who was on the far side of the bed looking happier than Christine had ever seen her, said, “It was the accident. There was some swelling in her brain that caused her to lose consciousness. It wasn’t the tumor.”
“Ohmygod,” Christine said, and she kissed Rosa’s head.
“But with all the testing they did, they found something else,” Jenna went on. She looked at her mom, blinking hard, crying anyway as the girls peeled their arms from around her to let her speak.
Rosa said, “The clinical trial is working. The tumor has shrunk to half its size, and it’s stopped producing cancer cells.”
Christine’s jaw dropped and she looked from Rosa to Bonnie to Diane to Jenna.
“She’s in remission,” Jenna cried.
And then every female in the room shrieked for joy.
It took a couple of hours to wrap things up at the hospital. Honestly, the joy was so infectious that for a while, Christine forgot about the passenger in her Beamer’s spacious trunk. Her second husband. Her latest husband.
But then they were down there again standing around the car. Rosa would get a thorough workup tomorrow, and then decisions would be made about her release.
God, what a miracle! What a gift. They had their friend back. Surely, the universe couldn’t be too angry with them for what they’d done if it had seen fit to grant them this miracle. Hell, it might even be construed as a reward.
The back end of the car was still low with the weight in the trunk. Jeff hadn’t gone anywhere.
Diane took the back seat, and Bonnie sat up front with Christine, who was once again behind the wheel.
She put the car into motion, pulled out of the hospital parking lot and into traffic, heading north toward one of the area’s nicer cemeteries—the one where Dangerous Dan the Used Car Man was being laid to rest the next day, before the local news had even caught wind of his crimes.
“I think the best approach is to act like we belong there. Drive right in through the front gate, get it done fast,” Christine said.
“We didn’t bring shovels.” Diane sounded worried.
“Then pray there are shovels,” Christine replied.
The cemetery gates were closed. Bonnie got out and tugged them, and they opened.
Not locked. Thank goodness. Christine drove the car in, then shut off her headlights and stopped.
Bonnie closed the gates behind them. Diane was on her phone, tapping away.
“Dan’s grave is on the main path. Look for a tall black obelisk marker. That’s the Fitzpatrick family plot.”
“They have their own section?” Christine asked.
“We’re lucky they don’t have their own cemetery,” Diane replied.
Bonnie got into the car and closed the door. Christine drove on slowly, in the dark, until Diane said, “There it is.”
She pulled to a stop near a black granite obelisk, a pile of dirt, and an open grave.
The canvas canopy that was stretched over this one looked solid enough to withstand a storm, not flimsy like the last one they’d dealt with.
It wasn’t raining yet, and the menacing flashes of lightning and low rumbles of thunder were coming from further away, as if the storm was moving past them without even stopping to say hello.
Right beside the open grave, rose a neat conical dirt pile. The storm clouds parted, and a beam of moonlight bathed two shovels, as if revealing the holy grail.
Diane took one. Christine took the other, then popped the trunk and moved around behind it.
Jeff sprang out of it at her like a zombie on crack, emitting some kind of feral roar. Christine shrieked, backing up and swinging the shovel blindly. The clanging impact jarred her entire arm. Jeff toppled sideways, landing perfectly perpendicular to the open grave.
For a moment they all just stood there staring at him. Bonnie leaned down, felt for a pulse. “Oh, yeah, he’s gone.”
“Are you sure this time?” Diane asked.
“Yeah, you hit him with the edge of the shovel, not the flat side. See that gaping gash in his skull? Also, there’s brains oozing out,” Bonnie replied.
“Oh.” Christine blinked. Then just gave in to the full body shudder she’d been trying to contain. No question, though, he was dead. Christine was a widow, for the second time. The girls crouched beside Jeff, and rolled him, then stopped as something fell from the pocket of his cargo shorts.
Christine bent and picked it up. “Found his burner phone,” she said, and pocketed it.
Then they crouched once more and rolled him right into the grave. They covered him fast without even straightening him out first.
Nobody slipped in wet dirt. Nobody fell into the hole. They smoothed the earth over Jeff, wiping the goo off the shovel as they did, then stood back and studied their work.
Bonnie leaned on her shovel. Diane’s was over her shoulder. Christine stood between them. Behind them, distant lightning flickered as the storm moved away.
Rosa was on Christine’s burner phone, on speaker.
“That’s it then,” she said. “We’re done with this forever.”
“Maybe. If we can convince the world Jeff left on his own.” Christine wasn’t sure how she was going to manage that.
“Oh,” Bonnie said. “Oh, I’ve got that.” She pulled out her real phone, notched up its volume, and tapped a button.
It played a short recording of Jeff’s voice, sneering and hate-filled. “You know about T. You know about Dan. And you know about me.” That recording stopped, and she hit another. “Shit, baby, I’ll be on a private island in the Caymans by then.”
The second recording stopped.
“That’s it?” Christine asked, blinking in shock. “That’s all you recorded?”
“I figured that was all I’d need.”
“You’re frickin’ brilliant, Bonnie,” Rosa said through the phone.
Christine said, “So he left me. We have it on tape. He even cleaned out the bank accounts. It’s not my fault.”
Diane nodded. “And a discerning listener might deduce he had something to do with the other two pedo deaths,” she said.
“Especially if I say he confessed it to me,” Christine added.
“And we all overheard,” Diane put in.
Diane and Christine bumped fists and started toward the car.
Bonnie stayed put, though. She said, “What about the other men?”
Diane turned around slowly. Christine, too, holding her phone with Rosa still on the other end.
“Dangerous Dan and Jeff were only two of the ten men on that list. There are eight more,” Bonnie said.
“I thought of that,” Diane replied. “I think we can safely give that phone of Mr. Terrence’s to the police. Say you found it in Jeff’s things, Christine. They can trace the plate numbers easier than we can.”
Christine said, “But Detective Sterling was in that photo with them. What if he’s not the only one in the department involved?”
“He was beloved on the force, from what Sam’s said,” Bonnie told them. “Not to mention he’s running for mayor. I just…I hate to say it, but until we find out who these men are, where they are, and how powerful they are, I don’t think we can trust the police, with this.”
Diane lowered her head. “I don’t think we can trust men with this,” she said. “Look how long this has been happening to our children. And as the upper crust get richer, it’s getting worse instead of better.”
“You’re right,” Rosa said from the phone. “But what can we do about it?”
Christine sniffled. “I ordered a case of lipstick tasers online. Look like lipsticks, tase like tasers,” she said like a TV ad. “Thought I’d hand them out to every girl who works at the Marlborough Club. Boys, too, come to think of it.”
“Save two for my granddaughters,” Bonnie said.
Christine nodded, then looked the other two in the eyes, across the open grave. An owl hooted. “It’s not enough, though, is it?”
From the phone, Rosa said, “Not when we can do more. I mean, we’ve proven we can do more, haven’t we? And we have the phone, the license plate numbers.”
“That gold key with the double Ds on it,” Christine went on.
“And all Dangerous Dan’s security codes,” Diane added. “Which is a good thing, because somewhere, he has video of Bonnie killing Mr. Terrence. We’re gonna need to get our hands on that.”
“Jeff made three killings,” Bonnie said. “Does this make us serial killers?”
Christine shrugged. “Collectively, yes. Individually, no.”
“Get out of there before somebody sees you, already,” Rosa said. “And let’s destroy our burner phones and grab a new set. Love you.”
“Love you,” they replied as one, and Rosa disconnected.
As soon as she did, the phone lit again.
Diane glanced at it, frowning. “It’s just a news alert.
” And then she blinked at the screen and read it aloud.
“‘Retired Detective Charles Sterling has launched his mayoral campaign with endorsements from the sheriff’s office, the police department, and the governor.’”
The girls looked at each other, then at the ground.
Bonnie put the shovels back where they’d found them. Then she got into Christine’s white Beamer. Diane got in too. They’d both wiped their hands with wipes from Bonnie’s bag and brushed the dirt off their shoes in the nearest grassy patch.
Christine lingered for a moment longer beside the double-decker grave of Jeffrey James Schlotski, her husband of nineteen years.
Soon Dangerous Dan Fitzpatrick would join him there, on the upper bunk.
She gazed down into the smooth hole where no trace of Jeff was visible beneath twelve inches of soil.
Six was not enough, they’d learned from last time.
“Bye, Jeff,” she said. “I told you the way you ate would kill you.”