Bad Boys of Romance(188)
“I thought we’d dump the bodies but you’re probably right, burying them would be best. But I still want the money first,” I told her, leaning my shovel against the building.
“No, the money’s buried, deep. It’s going to take some work but when we get it at least we will have somewhere to put the bodies.”
“You mean, we are retrieving the money from a body sized hole?”
“Yep.” She walked to the middle of the yard and felt around with her bare foot. She started digging, and I closed my eyes and saw Don Jenkins skeleton hanging on the wall again in my mind. He waved.
We dug for an hour, in silence, me doing most of the work since I could really get under the dirt using my boot on the blade of the shovel while Emery mostly moved the dirt I’d loosened up, before the rain came down hard. “Shit.” It’d been spitting rain the whole time, and I’d been hoping we’d be done before the storm. “How much deeper?”
“We’re almost there.”
Hitting something solid, I wiped at my brow as raindrops pelted me, making sweat run in my eyes. I finally asked, my voice straining to be heard over the rush of water. “You killed your husband and now you want to die?” I chortled. I was exhausted and frankly, confused. “I mean, you were free from him. Why not take the money and run?”
She didn’t say a word, shielding her eyes from the rain with her hand to her forehead. She just directed me to keep shoveling. Even with Emery’s flashlight and the light pouring out from the cabin, my eyes had only barely adjusted enough to make out the box. He was in a fucking makeshift coffin, not something you take the time to make if you off someone. I wondered for a moment if she had coffins lying around and planned to off me next.
We cleared the top of the man-sized box, scraping mud now instead of digging until she bent down and was able to pry the lid open. Inside was a stinking corpse, not much more than a week old and on top of him, an iron skillet and a briefcase. Emery handed me the briefcase and shut her husband back inside. She crawled out of the hole and walked away, into the house. Putting the case under my arm, I followed her, shutting the rain outside, tracking mud inside. My eye’s tracked her muddy footprints, she’d gone into the living room, but I went straight to the kitchen table, opening the case right away. It looked like it might be; but all the same, I dried my dripping hair and my hands with a kitchen towel and counted the money. It was all there.
Taking the briefcase out to the truck, to store under the seat, I ignored Emery, soaking wet and sulking on the couch. There was still work to be done. I didn’t have time to worry about her killing her husband, yet. The rain beat down harder as Don Jenkins gained two new neighbors. I drug Kym and Amun over one by one and threw them on top of Emery’s husband’s strange coffin and pushed the mud back in. Putting away the shovels, I locked the shed with the keys she’d left hanging in the lock. Maybe the rain would wash away my footprints and all evidence of our new grave but just in case I relocated the chairs and the metal fire pit from the deck to set on top, giving the bare ground beneath an alibi.
On my third trip to the truck, I retrieved my bag. It was time to say goodbye to Johnny Stevens for good. Emery still sat on the couch hugging her knees when I walked into the cabin. I dropped my bag beside her but she didn’t react. “I need a shower,” I remarked to get her attention, although if she’d looked at me, she would had seen I was sopping wet and splattered with mud. She pointed to the bedroom with the full bath. I went straight there and pulled off my boots, they were mine. I peeled off my other clothes, Johnny’s clothes, wrung them out and dried myself with the plush sea foam green towel, hanging beside me and wrapped it around my waist. My real clothes were in my bag, and I needed to burn Johnny’s.
Walking back to the living room, I knew I’d seen a fireplace. Emptying my bag beside Emery, I asked, “Where’s your purse.” Emery pointed to the coffee table, and I dug through it until I found her driver’s license, credit cards, checks and blood donor card. Behind her insurance card lied a picture of her with a man slightly resembling the man in the ground. It was further evidence Emery might have been telling me the truth all this time. But something was off; there was something she just wasn’t telling me. Studying the picture, she was smiling, almost looking like a different person. Crumbling all the evidence, papers tracking Amun and documents I used to fake Johnny’s identity, I wadded up the photo with the rest of her identifying documents. Strolling over to the big stone mantle, I moved the screen and tossed them onto the grate. Squatting down, I piled the wood on top. I was thankful Don had kept some inside and flicked my lighter open to set the incriminating kindling ablaze. Next, I piled Johnny’s clothes to the sides, they’d dry out and then I’d toss them on. Back in the bedroom, I searched in the closet for something for Emery to change into and draped a pair of jeans and random shirt over my arm. I showed the clean clothes to her, thinking it would please her. “Care to join me? I could use my back washed.”