Over Her Dead Body(78)

Zander was waiting by the car. I waved to him from the front porch—coming!—then started down the stairs.

At first I thought the sharp pop was my imagination. I often conjured the sweet sound of Zander’s bat connecting with a fastball when I fantasized about his future—oh, the home runs he would hit! But then I heard it again.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

I paused on the front porch steps. Nathan was standing with a man and a woman in the side yard. Their little dog was barking and jumping up and down.

“Brando, stop it,” the skinny dark-haired woman standing next to Nathan said, but the dog just kept on barking.

Theo stirred, then opened his eyes. A moment later he was shrieking, and three sets of eyes were upon me.

“Sorry,” the skinny woman said, then bent down to reprimand the dog. “Brando, stop it!”

“Where are Winnie and Charlie?” Nathan called to me, and I shifted my gaze to meet his. This was my last chance to abort the plan. I could have played the clueless, overwrought wife—“You mean they didn’t come out of the bomb shelter yet?” I could have pretended I didn’t know how those bags of cement wound up on the trapdoor—I may have felt like Wonder Woman a few moments ago, but I certainly didn’t look like her. I could have helped them push those bags off the door, then cried with relief to see my husband come out alive. But I was on the final lap of the marathon I’d been running for eight years. I was not going to quit now.

“I told you, I don’t know,” I said, then continued down the front porch steps. Theo’s shrieks had subsided to a dull whine, and I covered his head with my hand and snugged him to my chest. The presence of a dog barking and running in circles was unsettling, but he was an oversize lapdog, not a bloodhound. If he had the ability to sniff out my husband and his sister, I was pretty sure he would have done it by now.

I was almost to my car when the dog stopped barking. I thought I was home free. But it wasn’t the dog who I should have been worried about. Because somebody else had been spying on us and was about to ruin everything.





CHAPTER 66




* * *



NATHAN


“Where are Charlie and Winnie?” I called out to Marcela, who was walking toward her car.

“I don’t know,” she shouted without looking at me, and I knew it was a lie. She had done something, she’d all but confessed it. I was ready to call the police to force the issue when a little voice spoke out.

“They went in the shed.” I looked at Zander to see him pointing toward the far side of the garden.

“The toolshed?” I asked. Zander nodded, and I took off running.

The wooden door to the shed was secured by a metal latch. I flipped it open, stepped inside, and surveyed the cluttered interior. Rakes, hoes, shovels, and gardening shears hung on the walls. I saw an overturned wheelbarrow, some empty pots, two full bags of powdered cement. But no Winnie and Charlie.

“The kid must be confused,” Ashley’s roommate said, stepping in behind me. And for a second I thought he was right. This place could barely hold the two of us; there was no way Charlie and Winnie could be in here, too.

I was about to run back to ask Zander about what he’d seen when—

Bang! A firecracker went off between my ears. White powder plumed into the air like a mushroom cloud, as if one of those sacks of cement had been hit by lightning.

“What the fuck?” I murmured. As I stood there like a deer in a snowstorm, Ashley charged into the shed and pointed at the ground.

“Down there!” she shouted.

“Down where?”

“Under the bags!” She pointed at the sacks of cement. A moment later, the roommate was gripping one of them with both hands.

“Help me move this!”

I scrambled over to where he was standing and grabbed the bag.

“One, two, three!” he shouted, and we both pulled while Ashley pushed. Chalky white powder dusted our arms and shoes as we dragged the heavy sack of cement toward the door.

“The other one,” he commanded. “One, two, three!” We pulled the second bag toward the entrance of the shed, and suddenly we were staring at a rubber mat with a hole the size of a bullet in it.

“Is that a . . . bullet hole?” the roommate asked. But before I could answer, Ashley fell to her knees and yanked back the mat, revealing the rectangular outline of what looked like a door.

“Root cellar?” I guessed. Cellars were rare in Los Angeles, given how earthquake prone the city was. But what else could it be?

“How do you open it?” Ashley asked, pawing at the edges. I crouched down beside her. Powdered cement flew up into my eyes as I broomed the surface with frantic hands.

“Got it!” I shouted as my fingers found the rope handle, snugged inside its carved-out pocket. “Stand back!”

I leaned on my heels and pulled the rope. The door flew open. The roommate caught me as I stumbled backward into him. As I scrambled to my feet, I heard a voice that sent a waterfall of relief cascading down my spine.

“Nathan?”

“Winnie!”

She was still holding the gun as she stumbled up the stairs. Her face was a torrent of tears and grief. “Oh, Nathan!”

“Win, are you OK?”

“Charlie’s not breathing,” she blurted between her sobs.