Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(38)

Vero was still gripping my arm when the news anchor cut to a commercial break.

“Mommy, can I be excused?” Delia pushed her half-eaten bowl away, a deep wrinkle in her nose.

“Yeah, sweetie,” I said in a hollow voice. “Go wash your hands. You can play in your room.”

As soon as Delia was up the stairs, Vero turned to me. “What do we do?”

This was not a plot twist I had planned on. “We are not going to panic,” I insisted. Who was I kidding? We were definitely panicking.

“Where the hell is she?”

“Patricia? She probably got scared and left town.”

“It makes her look guilty!” Zach’s sauce-covered face snapped up at her outburst. His eyes ping-ponged between us and Vero lowered her voice. “If the police find her, she could confess everything.” She swiped my cell phone from the counter and held it out to me. “Call her and tell her she’s making a mistake. She needs to come back.”

“I’ve called her a dozen times. She wouldn’t answer my calls, so I went to her house—”

“Are you crazy?”

“No one saw me.” At least, I hoped not. I swallowed hard, remembering the knife protruding from Patricia’s back door. “But … while I was there, two men showed up.”

“What men?”

“I don’t know. But I think they might have been the men Patricia warned me about. They left a note. I think they might have been Harris’s clients. I think he was stealing from them. When I opened his mail, I found a bank statement—”

“You opened his mail? Your fingerprints are probably all over the envelope!”

I reached inside my pocket and put the bank statement on the table. “It’s fine. I took it with me.”

Vero choked. She snatched it off the table and opened it, her eyes narrowing as they skimmed the statement. “Twelve deposits, all on the first of the month, for the same amount. You think he was embezzling from his clients?”

I nodded. “It gets worse. Turn the page.” Vero flipped to the balance sheet, her mouth forming an oh around the big fat zero at the bottom. “The note said Patricia had twenty-four hours to return what she’d taken.”

“You think these men were the ones who killed Harris?”

“They definitely had a motive. They want their money back. And we have fifty thousand of it.”

Vero hugged my phone as she paced the kitchen. “Patricia paid us in cash. If these men did follow you home from the bar, they could just assume you were on a date and he’d had too much to drink. They’d have no way of knowing Patricia hired you. With a half million dollars, she could run anywhere. If they don’t find Patricia, they won’t find out about us, right?”

“Right.”

Zach fussed in his high chair. I wiped pasta sauce from his face, plucked him from his seat, and set him down to toddle after his sister.

Vero fell into her chair. She pushed her plate to the middle of the table, looking at it as if she might be sick. “What if the police find Patricia before we do?”

“The only thing she knows about me is my number. She doesn’t know my name or where I live. I doubt she could even identify me in a lineup.” I’d been wearing a wig and high heels and plenty of makeup. Hopefully it was enough. “Besides, I have you for an alibi,” I said, dropping into the chair beside her.

“I thought I was an accomplice.”

“Not if they can’t prove it. As far as anyone else is concerned, I was here at home with you the night Harris Mickler went missing. I called my sister from the house phone in the kitchen. And Georgia saw us together when we picked up the kids. All we have to do is get rid of any evidence that could lead the police back to us.”

Vero looked down at my phone. She dropped it on the table in front of me as if it were crawling with lice.

“Relax. It’s a prepaid cell. Verizon shut off my account last month when I was late on my bill. I bought this one at the pharmacy.”

“Can’t the police find a record of the payment?”

“My credit cards were all maxed out. I paid in cash.” I rested my elbows on the table, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes. “There’s nothing tying the phone to me.”

“Don’t you watch Law and Order? They can trace those things!”

“Only to the nearest tower it pings.”

“How close is that?”

“I don’t know … a few miles maybe?”

“Too close for me.” Vero rose from her seat. My head snapped up as she threw my phone down on the cutting board. She grabbed a meat tenderizer from the utensil drawer and raised the metal mallet behind her head.

“Wait!” I snatched my phone before she could smash it. Turning my back on her, I thumbed through my contacts. Vero stood on her tiptoes, peeking over my shoulder as I copied Julian’s number onto a sticky pad.

“Just a friend, huh?”

“He’s a lawyer,” I said, tucking the sticky note in my pocket. “His number might come in handy.”

“He’s too young to be a lawyer.”

“He’s a public defender,” I quipped. “Or at least, he will be. Someday. When he graduates.”

“Nu-uh.” Vero nixed that idea with big exaggerated sweeps of her head. “If we get caught, we’re not hiring some Abercrombie underwear model to keep us out of prison. I want an old white dude with cuff links and a Rolex. Like your ex’s attorney.”