I dropped my head against the steering wheel, the seconds drawing out painfully long while I waited for his reply. What if I’d misread him? What if he was just being polite? What if the burp rag killed the moment?
My phone buzzed in my lap. I sat up and covered my eyes, barely brave enough to read his text through the gap between my fingers.
Pick me up anytime. You know where to find me.
I glanced up at the tinted windows of The Lush. I could just make out Julian’s white dress shirt on the other side, the subtle wave of his hand through the glass. I lifted my fingers from the steering wheel, wondering if he could see me wave back. Wondering if he saw through me—everything about me—the way he’d seen straight through me last night.
CHAPTER 16
Exhaustion washed over me as I stood in the garage thirty minutes later, staring at the space where we’d wrapped Harris Mickler’s body just yesterday. The concrete floor was wet and smelled faintly of bleach, the bay door left open to the afternoon sunshine to dry it. Vero must have hosed it out while I was gone. The little pink trowel had been washed and dried, returned to its usual place on the pegboard. Harris Mickler’s personal possessions had been wiped clean and locked in his car at The Lush. Steven’s shovel was back in his shed. And I’d just burned through twenty dollars in quarters vacuuming every trace of Harris Mickler from my minivan. I’d done everything I could think of to cover our tracks, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something.
Guilt. This gnawing, nagging feeling that kept pulling me back to the garage had to be guilt. And it would probably follow me around for the rest of my life.
A flutter caught my attention across the street, the subtle shift of Mrs. Haggerty’s kitchen curtain falling shut. I strode to the ga rage door, stretching up on my tiptoes to drag it down with both hands. It slammed closed, rattling the garage.
Stupid. I’d been so stupid. I sank down on the short wooden step to the kitchen as my eyes adjusted to the dark, all the what-ifs of last night crashing down around me, as heavy and jarring as that damn garage door.
What if I had never called Patricia Mickler?… What if I’d never borrowed Theresa’s dress and gone to that stupid bar?… What if I’d never stuffed Harris in my van?… What if I’d never driven him here, to my own freaking home?… What if I hadn’t left the engine running after I closed my gara—
My back stiffened, one chilled muscle at a time. As I lifted my head, my focus jumped from the van to the garage door. The details of the night before were still fuzzy in my mind, blurred by champagne and panic, as if someone had taken an eraser to the edges, but I remembered … I remembered pulling into the driveway. Remembered clicking the remote on the visor and waiting for the door to grind open. The bright cone of the van’s headlights had illuminated the pegboard and that little pink trowel, and I distinctly remembered getting out of the van and squeezing between the workbench and the bumper, eyes narrowed against the glare as I’d raced into the house. The kitchen had been dark. Quiet except for the hum of the engine through the wall as I’d slid down it and made that call to my sister … Those details in my memory were all vivid and clear.
It’s what I didn’t remember that stuck in my throat now.
I didn’t remember tapping the button on the wall as I entered the kitchen. Or the mechanical grinding sound of the garage door lowering to the floor …
I hadn’t shut the garage.
I had left the van running. But I hadn’t shut the garage.
I stood up fast, flipping the light switch on the wall. The single bulb in the center of the ceiling washed the concrete floor in dim yellow light. I stood under it, staring up at the motor that mechanized the door. My eyes climbed the dangling red emergency cord, pausing on the pulley that raised and lowered the door. The pulley was disengaged from the belt. That explained why the motor had run when Vero pushed the button on the wall, but the door wouldn’t budge—the door wasn’t connected to it.
But that didn’t make sense.
The opener had been working when I got home from the bar. I’d pressed the remote on my visor, the door had opened itself, and I’d pulled into the garage. Yet, just twenty minutes later, when I’d come out of the house, Harris was dead and the garage door was disengaged from the motor. It was shut—though I was certain I hadn’t shut it.
But how?
I stared up at the red cord dangling above my head.
Pulling the emergency release cord was the only way to disengage the belt and free the door from the motor—the only way to manually open or close the door. Which meant someone must have pulled the cord and shut the door while I was inside the house. While the van was running. Which meant …