Sarah didn’t have a smart answer for that. She paused for a moment before saying, “It’s routine—they always have to look at the spouse in a suspicious death. It means nothing.” Even she didn’t sound convinced.
As I drove slowly through the cemetery, I wished, more than anything else, to be back in time, back before that phone call in the middle of the night, back before we’d made the decision that had brought us to this point.
I drove along the road in search of the Kershaw mausoleum, pausing to look at the printout of the map. Behind me a funeral procession was wending its way up to the cemetery chapel, a modern building with lots of windows that seemed out of place among all the old tombstones. The road continued over a hill and the cars dropped out of sight.
The mausoleum was all the way at the back of the cemetery, down a little road flanked by pine trees. “Okay, I’m here,” I said to Sarah and Julie as I pulled off on the side.
“We can see you,” Sarah said, but I couldn’t spot them. I glanced around before grabbing the duffel from the backseat and stepping out of the car. There was no other vehicle or person in sight, but I had that neck-crawling sensation of being watched.
It was a short, uphill walk across bumpy ground to the mausoleum, which looked like a miniature stone house, with a peaked roof above the inscribed name and a pair of scrolled copper gates that had gone green with age. Who was Randall Kershaw? Someone who’d clearly had enough money for this monument of a final resting place. Was there anyone left alive to remember him? I looked around surreptitiously, wondering whether the blackmailer had already come and gone, before quickly placing the bag against a back corner of the mausoleum, just as the letter had instructed.
I walked hurriedly back to my car, glancing back only once. The duffel bag was still sitting there. Some movement caught my attention and I turned in that direction, pulse jumping as I thought I spotted a figure darting behind a tree, but it was just a shadow.
We’d agreed that I had to be seen driving away, because the blackmailer was undoubtedly watching the drop-off site. As I came over the hill, the service in the modern chapel had ended and mourners crowded the road. In keeping with the day I’d been having, a woman I knew crossed right in front of my car. She was the mother of one of Lucy’s friends. When she spotted me, her eyes went wide with recognition and she waved before saying something to her husband, who also turned to look at me, before she waved again.
I waved back; what else could I do? Would they remember seeing me there if someone asked? The whole day had gone like that, just one mishap after another. As I drove out of the cemetery, I saw four ravens perched on top of a cross held by a downcast stone angel. It felt like an omen.
chapter twenty-eight
SARAH
We’d been sitting there for almost two hours and my legs were starting to cramp, but we couldn’t get out and walk around or the blackmailer might spot us. What if we had to use the bathroom? Of course, the minute I had that thought all I could think about was needing to pee.
“I shouldn’t have had so much coffee.” I squirmed in my seat.
“Yes, better to skip all diuretics.” Julie looked pointedly at my travel mug. As much as I loved Julie, she could be really annoying. It was the little things she said and did, things you wouldn’t notice under normal circumstances, but in a high-pressure situation they seemed omnipresent. Like the fidgeting—I knew she was high-energy, but she couldn’t seem to sit still, fiddling with the radio knobs, with the coins in my car’s center console, with her earrings. “Where are they?” she said for the umpteenth time. She’d moved on to tapping on the dashboard, drumming so hard on the plastic that I’d thought she’d snap off an index finger.
I ignored her, doing another circuit with my gaze—ahead at the mausoleum, up the hill to the right, down the hill to the left, and behind us. Alison’s car was long gone, but still no sign of the blackmailer. She’d mentioned the funeral procession, so I wasn’t surprised to spot a handful of mourners in the rearview mirror, carefully picking their way down a snowy hillside in the distance. Dressed in black and other dark colors, they were too far away for us to identify, which meant they wouldn’t be able to identify us either, or the minivan. In any case, they were too busy to do more than glance in our direction if they looked at all.
“Maybe he’s been scared off by them,” I said, pointing over my shoulder at the mourners.
Julie shifted in her seat to see them. “I hope not,” she said, before turning her attention back to the mausoleum. The duffel bag was tucked against the stone, but we could still see it. The wind played with the thin straps, lifting one like a black ribbon.
The rumble of an engine made us both sit up. A big yellow backhoe came around the hillside, huge tires crunching down the road, a man in a sheepskin jacket sitting behind the steering wheel stationed high up in the cab.
“I’m guessing that’s the gravedigger,” Julie said. “It’s sure a lot less romantic than two guys with shovels.” The backhoe came slowly down the road before stopping adjacent to the road we were watching, the massive machine groaning and sighing, like a dinosaur settling in to rest.
“What the hell,” I said. “He’s blocking our view.”
The mausoleum was now hidden by the backhoe; we could only see a corner of the stone building. For a second I wondered if the driver could be the blackmailer, but he didn’t get out of the cab, just lit up a cigarette and sat back, apparently waiting until the hillside service behind us finished to take a left down the road where we were parked.
“C’mon, move it,” Julie muttered, stretching her neck to try to see past the machine. “Should we get out and look?”
“No, the backhoe driver will see us, if not the blackmailer,” I said. “He didn’t stop the machine, he’s just paused. He’s got to move soon.”
A few agonizing minutes later he finally did, the backhoe revving up with a roar before crunching past us, veering onto the grass to do so, while far behind us the little figures in black filed back up the hill.
“Finally,” I said, watching him trundle away in the rearview mirror just as Julie said, “Shit!”
“What?”
“It’s gone!”
My gaze snapped back to the mausoleum—the black bag had disappeared.
“What the hell? Quick, where are they?” I bolted from the car, forgetting about the possibility of being noticed, forgetting about everything except the need to find the blackmailer. I ran toward the mausoleum, looking around, trying to spot a figure slipping between trees or behind another monument.
Julie came right on my heels. “They’re gone—they found a moment and they took it and the money.” She grabbed my arm, trying to pull me back. “C’mon, we don’t want anyone to see us.”
“How could they slip in and out without us seeing them?” I said. “Where did they go?” I scanned the hillside, the trees, the gravestones and other small buildings—it didn’t seem possible; this person couldn’t have just vanished. All at once I spied a figure in black moving off to the left, running down the hillside. “Down there! Near the trees!” I yelled, stabbing the air with my index finger. “Do you see him?”
Julie shaded her eyes. “Yes, yes!” She ran back toward the car. “Hurry, let’s try to catch him.”
We drove as fast as we could up the road, around the back side of the cemetery, but it was obvious that we weren’t going to catch this guy. He—it looked like a man, but I couldn’t tell for sure—had disappeared over the hillside on foot, and he could have gone in any direction. There was no way of knowing where to look. We drove up and down the roads, eventually finding ourselves back the way we’d come. For all we knew, he’d parked a car outside the cemetery property and run back to it.