Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (Finlay Donovan, #3)(60)

CHAPTER 22


The sleet had relented to a meek drizzle by the time we’d reached the peeling clapboard siding at the rear of an old country market adjacent to Barbara’s property. The Westovers’ family plot was a short walk through the woods from where we’d parked.

“What’s the plan?” Vero asked. She’d ditched the sunglasses at least, but she still looked like a kid in her big brother’s Halloween costume.

“We’ll go to the house first and see if she’s home.” Barbara kept a rifle in her kitchen, and it probably wasn’t wise to leave anything to chance.

“And if she’s not?”

I didn’t think Vero really wanted an answer to that.

We headed into the woods, in what I hoped was roughly the same direction we had taken the last time we’d been here. Vero aimed her flashlight at the ground and I followed close behind her, careful not to trip over fallen logs as we descended the sloping hill toward the Westovers’ house.

“The lights are out,” Vero said.

“It’s four thirty in the morning. She’s probably asleep.” I climbed the porch steps and knocked loud enough to wake the dead.

Vero peered in the window. “Maybe she’s staying with Theresa,” she said through chattering teeth.

“We can’t just show up at Theresa’s. She’s got twenty-four-hour surveillance on her town house since she violated her house arrest.”

I turned, rubbing my arms, staring at the shed beside Barbara’s empty driveway.

“Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it,” Vero chanted.

With a heavy sigh, I plodded down the porch steps. “Let’s check her shed. Hopefully, she has a shovel.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

We found a heavy-duty shovel and a pair of gardening gloves inside, and we trudged them back up the hill to the small graveyard behind Barbara’s house.

“Give me some light,” I said.

Vero aimed her flashlight at the dirt in front of Carl’s grave marker. I paused, one foot poised on the head of the shovel. Everything about this felt foolish and futile. I had moved Steven’s key from its hiding spot, but that hadn’t kept him from breaking into my house. If anything, it had only fueled his determination to get inside. Moving Carl’s body would be no different. Nick would know the grave had been tampered with as soon as he laid eyes on it, and it would only make him more determined to get a warrant.

I tossed the shovel to the ground. Plucking off a glove, I pulled out my phone.

“What are you doing?” Vero asked. I walked between the handful of graves, typing the names of the deceased into my browser as Vero aimed her light at the headstones. “I thought we were moving the body.”

“Not the body. Just the marker.” Maybe the solution wasn’t moving Carl, only creating the illusion that his body was somewhere else.

“I don’t follow.”

“If we dig Carl up, we have nowhere to put him. The soil will be loose when Nick gets here tomorrow and he’ll have all the justification he needs to pull a warrant. All we need to do is slow him down a little. If we switch two of the headstones, Nick will come tomorrow and find a marker in place and the ground intact. And even if he does manage to get a warrant to exhume the grave—”

“He’ll find someone else’s body inside it.”

“Here,” I said, kneeling beside a plot that was smaller than the rest. I held up my phone to show Vero the death record.

Her forehead wrinkled. “Doris Westover? But she’s a woman.”

“Her obituary was published by a crematorium. Her plot is probably smaller than the others because they didn’t bury a coffin.”

“Just the ashes,” Vero finished.

Carl wouldn’t have had a memorial or a public obituary. Barbara wouldn’t have wanted to draw that kind of attention to his death. According to Barbara, she’d simply told his family and colleagues that he’d been buried during a small, private ceremony at home. All we had to do was move the grave marker and make sure she corroborated that one small detail—that he’d been cremated and these were his ashes.

“Whatever we’re doing, we’d better do it fast,” Vero said. “It’ll be light in a few hours, and we should get the car back to the academy before sunrise.”

Vero and I worked quickly, using the head of the shovel to leverage the two heavy markers off the ground. Vero hoisted up one side and I lifted the other, both of us bickering and tripping over the landscape as we carefully switched the positions of the headstones. The exercise was reminiscent of the obstacle course we’d tackled two days ago, with a lot more cussing and a few more stubbed toes. By the time we’d finished, our hands were calloused and our noses were red and dripping from the cold.

We kicked the scattered dead leaves back in place around the graves, panting steam as we surveyed our handiwork. Every inch of me hurt.

Vero’s lips had turned blue. “My lady bits are frozen.”

“Let’s put this stuff back where we found it and get out of here.”

Ty’s pant legs dragged on the ground as Vero plodded along beside me down the hill toward the shed. I used an old rag to wipe dirt and fingerprints from the shovel as Vero slipped off the gloves and hung them back on their hook. Bright slashes of light cut through the cracks in the siding. Vero and I went still as tires crunched over the gravel.