Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead(Finlay Donovan #2)(43)

“Do you have any garbage bags?”

Phyllis dug under a shelf and slapped a box of extra-large trash bags on the counter. As I reached for it, she tugged it back. With a begrudged “thanks,” I handed her the last twenty from my purse, snatching the entire box and tucking it under my arm before walking out the door. I carried the bags to the storage unit, checking over my shoulder to make sure the slats in the window blinds hadn’t moved. Vero waited inside the bay door, pacing and wringing her hands.

“Well?” she asked.

She jumped as I shook out a garbage bag and flung open the freezer door. “Call Ramón. Ask him how much he’d charge to haul a freezer to the dump.”





CHAPTER 20


Vero’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel, her eyes flicking regularly to her rearview mirror as she drove us back to South Riding. We’d long since lost sight of Javi’s van. Once we’d emptied and bagged the contents of the freezer, Vero had called her cousin, and after a heated, whispered conversation between them, he’d agreed to haul the freezer to the car crusher behind his garage.

Later, I would ask Vero where she’d spent her Thanksgiving. And why things seemed so tense between her and Ramón. All I wanted to do now was take a bottle of bleach to my hands and wipe away any traces of the dead man whose thawing parts were currently rolling around in trash bags in Vero’s trunk.

My phone vibrated. Cam’s cell number flashed on the screen. I put the phone on speaker and held it between Vero and me.

“What did you find?” I asked Cam.

“Nothing useful,” he said over the chatter of voices in the background. I could have sworn I heard a locker door slam.

“What do you mean, nothing useful? You said you could track her.”

“I said I’d search. And I did.”

“And?” The tension of the day had strained my temper to the breaking point. “You must have found something we can use to find her.”

“It’d better be fifty somethings,” Vero muttered.

“This FedUp person you’re looking for is a ghost,” Cam said. “There’s no record of anyone using that email address anywhere else. I searched the shit out of it, even checked variations. It’s not tied to any personal or social media accounts, no business profiles … nothing. Just that one forum you told me about.”

“I thought you were supposed to be good at this?” Vero snapped.

Cam’s voice dropped, low and muffled, as if he’d cupped a hand around the speaker. “Look, lady. I’m a hacker. Not a cop. I dug as deep as I could go. But this FedUp person was careful. They didn’t want to be found.” A bell rang in the background. “I’ve got to go,” Cam said. “We done?”

“Yeah. Wait, no!” I said before he had a chance to disconnect. “Can we try another email?”

“That’ll be another fifty.”

“I’m good for it,” I insisted. Vero threw me an exasperated look.

There was rustling in the background, the slam of a locker door, and the drone of a voice over a loudspeaker. “Text me the address.” Cam ended the call.

I texted him the address tied to EasyClean’s profile.

“What makes you think he’s going to have an easier time finding EasyClean?” Vero asked, her eyes fixed on the road. “If I was taking hit jobs online, I wouldn’t be running all over the internet waving my IP address around.”

“It’s worth a shot,” I said.

“You might think it’s worth a shot, but I’m betting my forty percent just flew out the damn window.”

“What other choice did I have? You heard what he said, FedUp is a ghost! She didn’t leave any tracks for us to follow.”

Vero leaned on the brake as we veered off the interstate. We both flinched at the thud that resonated from the trunk.

“Slow down,” I said. “The last thing we need is to be pulled over.”

“I cannot believe I let you talk me into this. We should have left him in the freezer and padlocked it shut. Cops pull over sports cars. No one pulls over repair trucks. And now I have a melting corpsicle dripping dead-guy juice in my trunk.”

The Charger eased to a stop alongside the curb in front of Theresa’s house.

“You sure she’s here?” Vero peeped over the rims of her sunglasses at the three-story townhome. Theresa’s blue BMW was parked in the driveway, but the blinds in every window were shut.

“Georgia said she’s on house arrest until Feliks’s trial. Where else could she be?”

Vero got out and popped the trunk. With a grimace, I hauled out the smallest of the bags, tucking it under my arm. I tried not to think about the fact that the contents of the bag felt a little softer than they had ninety minutes ago.

A set of curtains parted in a window upstairs as we approached the house. I caught a glimpse of Theresa’s long blond hair a second before the curtains snapped shut. Vero rang the doorbell. Seconds ticked by, and when nothing else seemed to move inside the house, I considered the possibility that Theresa might not answer.

Vero leapt back as the door flew open. A blast of stale, stuffy air rushed out.

“What the hell do you want?” Theresa braced a hand on the doorframe. Her sallow skin was free of makeup, her hair hanging in long, limp strands over an oversized T-shirt, the baggy legs of her sweatpants dragging on the hardwood floor. Her bare feet peeked out from under them, the flaking red polish of a grown-out pedicure staining the middles of her toenails. She crossed her arms, concealing her empty ring finger and pinning me with a cold glare.