Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(6)

$50,000 CASH

HARRIS MICKLER

49 NORTH LIVINGSTON ST

ARLINGTON



And a phone number.

I crumpled up the note and held it over the bin. But the dollar sign—and all the zeroes that followed—piqued my curiosity. Who was Harris Mickler? Why did he have so much cash? And why had the woman sitting beside me left the paper on my tray when she could have just as easily disposed of it herself?

I tucked the strange note in my pocket and gathered my bag. The midday sun glared off the windshields of the sea of cars outside, and I groped blindly in my bag for my keys, struggling to remember where I’d parked. I still hadn’t found them by the time I reached the dry cleaner, and I stood beside my locked van, swearing into the abyss of my bag. A few of Delia’s stray hairs tickled my wrist as my fingers snagged on the sticky roll of duct tape I’d used to fix her hair. Something bit me as I shoved it aside. With a yelp, I whipped my hand from the bag.

A thin line of blood beaded along my fingers. Carefully, I plucked aside the blood-stained burp rag I’d used to clean my daughter’s forehead that morning. Below it, I found the dull kitchen knife I’d thrown in with it, along with the keys to my van.

I pressed the burp rag to the shallow cut and turned the AC on high while I waited for the bleeding to stop. The air outside was cool, autumn-crisp, but the van was boiling in the noon sun and my hair was already damp with sweat under the itchy scarf. I peeled it off, dropping it into the diaper bag along with the dark sunglasses. A heavily made-up woman with a tight mom-bun stared back at me from the rearview mirror. I swiped off the deep burgundy lipstick on the burp rag, feeling like an impostor. Who was I kidding? There was no way I’d finish this book in a month. Every day I spent pretending to make a living as a writer only put me one day closer to losing my kids. I should have called Sylvia right then and there and told her as much.

I dragged my phone from my pocket. The strange note slipped out with it. I pried it open.

Fifty thousand dollars.

I looked back at my cell. Then again at the note, curiosity making me linger on the phone number written at the bottom.

I could always say I’d misdialed and hang up, right? The phone beeped as I keyed in the number. A woman answered on the first ring.

“Hello?” Her quiet voice wavered.

I opened my mouth, but nothing intelligent came out. “Hello?”

“You found my note.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I erred on the side of vague. “Did I?”

She expelled a shaky breath through the phone. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t even know if I’m doing it right.”

“Doing what?”

She giggled, a panicked, almost hysterical laugh that died in a sniffle. Our connection was so clear, it was like she was sitting right in front of me. I searched through the windshields of the adjacent cars, expecting to see her staring back.

My finger hovered over the red button on the screen. “Are you okay?” I asked, against my better judgment. “Do you need help or something?”

“No, I’m not okay.” She blew her nose into the receiver and our connection became garbled, as if she were talking into a wad of tissues. “My husband … He’s … not a nice man. He’s doing strange things. Terrible things. If it was just the once, maybe I would understand, but there have been others. So many others.”

“Other whats? I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.” I should hang up, I thought to myself. This was all getting really weird.

“I can’t tell him I know. That would be … very, very bad. I need you to help me.” She drew a deep breath through the phone, as if maybe her finger was poised over the red button, too. After a heavy pause, she said, “I want you to do it.”

“Do what?” I asked, struggling to keep up.

“Whatever it is you do. Like you said, neat. I just want him gone. I have fifty thousand cash. I was going to use it to leave him. But it will be better this way.”

“What way?”

“He’ll be at a networking event at The Lush tonight. I don’t want to know how it will happen. Or where. Just call this number when it’s done.”

The connection went dead.

I shook my head, still lost in the bizarre turn of the conversation. I glanced down at the bloody burp rag in my lap. At the knife in my open diaper bag and the duct tape threaded with Delia’s hair. I thought back to the woman’s pale face as she listened to our conversation between covert glances at my bag on the floor.

The bad guy gets handled, our sympathetic woman reveals the depths of her gratitude, everyone lives happily ever after, and you get a big fat check.

Oh, god.

I’m not taking a penny less than fifteen thousand … Let’s bury this one and move on to the next.

Fifty thousand dollars. She thought I’d said fifty thousand dollars.

Oh, no. No, no, no!

I stuffed everything back in the diaper bag. The paper. What was I supposed to do with the paper? Throw it away? Burn it? Run back into Panera, tear it into pieces, and flush it down the toilet? The faster I got rid of it, the better. I crumpled it and rolled down my window, holding it in my fist over the burning pavement.

Fifty thousand dollars.

I rolled up the window, stuffing the note back in my pocket as I put the van in gear. My heart thumped wildly as I eased out of the parking lot, careful to use my turn signals and check my speed. What if I was pulled over and searched and a police officer found it? My Google search history alone was probably enough to put me on a government watch list. I wrote suspense novels about murders like this. I’d searched every possible way to kill someone. With every conceivable kind of weapon. I’d researched every possible way to dispose of a body.