Sixteen people attended the service at the Mattauk funeral home. Jo’s family was there. Nessa’s girls, Breanna and Jordan, took the train in for the day. The rest of the attendees were ladies from Nessa’s Bible study group. Even with tears in their eyes, several of them had a hard time pulling their gaze away from Franklin as the pastor delivered the sermon. Only Harriett had skipped the service. There was work to do at the cemetery, she’d informed them.
Wearing the same black dress she’d worn when she’d buried her parents, Nessa sat in the first pew and stared numbly at the coffin. A closed casket had been the only option. One look at the corpse, and the mortician had informed her there would be no way to camouflage the discoloration. Still, Nessa had spent an entire day shopping for a new dress in the right shade of blue, and she’d requested the girl’s makeup be done, though no one at the service would see it. Then she fixed the girl’s hair herself. When she was finished, she’d looked up to see the girl’s ghost watching her from the end of the mortician’s table.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she’d told the girl. She didn’t know what else to say. The ghost was still standing there when she left. When Nessa got home later that night, her sofa was empty. The ghost had chosen to stay with her body.
For two days, Nessa had felt grief pressing at the dam she’d built to hold back the tears so she could get things done. As the pastor began the Lord’s Prayer, the walls gave way and Nessa wept openly. The girl’s mother should have been there to see her off, but Nessa hadn’t been able to locate her. She’d failed her first test. Even her tears were proof that she didn’t deserve the gift she’d been granted.
“Mama.” Breanna slid her arm around Nessa and whispered in her ear. As always, she sensed the source of her mother’s pain. “That girl knows you did everything that you could. I’m sure she’s grateful.”
Nessa couldn’t find the breath to argue, so she shook her head. It didn’t feel true. She cried so hard that Franklin had to guide her out the door after the service. She kept crying in the passenger seat of Franklin’s car as they drove to the gravesite with her daughters sitting quietly in the back seat.
“Is it all right if I have a word with your mother?” Franklin asked the girls after he’d parked. “And if you don’t mind, ask the others to wait a few minutes till we get there.”
Blinded by tears, Nessa heard the doors open and shut. Then she felt Franklin take her hand. The fingers he wrapped around hers were warm.
“Hey,” he said. “This isn’t over.”
“It is,” Nessa sobbed. “Even her ghost is gone. She hasn’t come back since I did her hair. She’s given up on me, Franklin. She knows I can’t help her.”
Franklin didn’t rush his response. He sat back and seemed to think it through.
“You did the girl’s hair at the funeral home?” he asked.
“Of course I did!” Nessa had to stop to blow her nose. “I couldn’t let her meet Jesus looking like some old white man did her hair.”
“Did you ever consider maybe that was all the proof she needed?” Franklin asked. “I think it showed her how much you care. She trusts you to take it the rest of the way.”
Nessa looked over to make sure he was serious, though she’d never known him to be anything but. She’d worked around sick people long enough to tell the difference between words intended to make you feel better—and words meant to convey the truth. Franklin wasn’t just pumping sunshine. Whether he was right or not, he meant what he said. “You think?” she asked.
“I really do,” he said.
Nessa sniffled. “But what am I going to do now that she’s in the ground and the case is closed? How am I supposed to find the person who killed her?”
“Did you gather DNA at the funeral home like you said you would?” Franklin asked.
She shot him a wary glance before she answered. “Yes,” she admitted. He hadn’t approved when she’d mentioned her plan, but she’d taken a few strands of the girl’s hair, anyway.
“And I suppose you’ve still got Laverne Green’s coffee cup?”
She nodded. “In a plastic bag on my kitchen counter.”
“Okay,” Franklin said. “After the funeral, let’s get the hair and the cup to a lab. The first thing we’ll need to do is prove that the two women aren’t related.”
“Are you saying you believe me now?”
“Yes,” Franklin said, letting the word drop as if he knew exactly how much it weighed. “I sent Laverne Green an invite to the funeral like you asked me to. I even offered to drive into the city to pick her up. I never heard back from her.”
“That’s because she was lying.”
“If so, the test will confirm it.”
“Are you going to get in trouble for doing all of this?” Nessa asked. “The case is supposed to be closed.”
He could get in trouble—she saw it in his eyes. Franklin wasn’t a renegade. He was patient, methodical, strictly by the book. He believed in process. He believed in the law. And yet she knew what he was about to say. He was going to throw all that out the window for her.
“You told me the girl was murdered, and that there are two other girls out there whose bodies haven’t been discovered. I believe you, and I want to catch the man responsible before he kills anyone else. If that gets me in trouble, so be it.”
It was exactly what she’d expected from him. Nessa looked down at their hands, still woven together.
“God gave you a gift, Nessa,” Franklin said. “Now he’s brought us together twice. I think it’s pretty clear that I’m supposed to help you. I think that’s what I was sent to do.”
Franklin wiped a tear from her cheek with his free hand. Then he leaned over and kissed her. It wasn’t hurried or anxious like the kiss Nessa had given him. Franklin wasn’t conflicted. He knew what he wanted, and Nessa got the feeling he’d wanted it for a very long time.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling back. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
“I don’t think you’re sorry,” Nessa told him.
Franklin smiled. “You’re right. I’m not.”
He leaned back in toward Nessa, and this time she met him halfway. She thought of the spark Harriett had said was inside her. She’d taken it for a metaphor, but now she wasn’t so sure. Something inside her felt like it was burning bright.
The kiss lasted only a few seconds. Then Franklin was out of his seat and walking around the car to open her door. She slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. As they walked side by side across the graveyard, she was still glowing. Once, she might have felt guilty to feel so alive with the dead all around her. Now she knew she’d need that light for the darkness ahead.
Harriett had wanted to bury the girl in her garden, but that would have broken a dozen laws and the morgue had refused to deliver the body to Woodland Drive. So she’d purchased space in a local graveyard instead. When she took Jo and Nessa to see the plot, they were surprised to find that Harriett had picked a barren corner on a hill overlooking the highway for the girl’s final resting place.
“Are you sure this is the best spot?” Nessa had asked. There was no shade in sight and the grass beneath their feet was brown and brittle. “There are plots on the other side of the cemetery with flowers and trees.”
“I bought three plots side by side,” Harriett had told her. “That should be enough room for what I have in mind. Don’t worry about grass. There will be plenty of that soon enough.”
Now the brown grass was gone. In its place was a meadow filled with orange daylilies, purple ironweed, and white Queen Anne’s lace. A path just wide enough for a coffin and pallbearers led to a clearing in the center of the flowers. A mound of dirt sat at the head of the open grave, and the mourners had gathered on either side. At the bottom of the hole, a biodegradable cardboard casket lay with a linen shroud on top of it. Harriett hadn’t wanted a casket at all. Burial was meant to return a person to nature, she’d argued passionately. Wrapping the girl’s body in a toxic cocoon of plastic and chemicals would defeat the purpose. The ecofriendly solution was the compromise they’d arrived at. Nessa had insisted on the linen covering, knowing her friends from church would take one look at a cardboard casket and assume she’d gone with the cheapest option.
Jo watched Nessa arrive on Franklin’s arm, bearing her grief bravely. She, Art, and Lucy stood among the church ladies. Her own family, while proud of their heritage, had not been religious. Growing up, she’d been inside more churches than synagogues. The rites and rituals of Christianity were familiar, but they weren’t her own. As a little girl, she’d been fascinated by the Christian vision of heaven, with its white-robed God and plump little cherubs. A friend had told her heaven is where Methodists go if they’ve led a good life. Her mother had tutted when Jo repeated that.
“Anyone who needs a reward to be good isn’t good. They just like rewards. Good people do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.”
Those words had stuck in Jo’s head for forty years—and they were still there, long after her mother had met her own reward. Jo remained skeptical of those who wore their religion on their sleeves. But she had no doubts where Nessa was concerned. If there was one person alive whose goodness could counter the world’s evil, it was the woman who’d just come to bury a girl she’d never known.
Harriett was another story, Jo thought. She had purchased the plots. She had planted the flowers. For all Jo knew, Harriett might even have dug the hole. But she hadn’t done it out of pure benevolence. Harriett’s motivations weren’t so easy to comprehend, but Jo was certain she had her eyes on a goal as well. As the pastor spoke, Jo let her gaze linger on the tall, regal woman with the mane of silver-blond hair. She wore a long, sleeveless dress of unbleached linen and though her feet were hidden, Jo knew they were bare.
Once the pastor had finished, Nessa and her daughters left ahead of the others so they could get home before their guests arrived at the funeral reception. Harriett didn’t appear to be in a hurry to leave, and Lucy seemed keen to stay by Harriett’s side.
“You worked wonders on the gravesite,” Jo told Harriett. “It’s lovely.”
“Yes.” Harriett no longer had time for false modesty. “But I’m not finished.”
“Do you want a ride to Nessa’s house?” Jo asked Harriett. “We’re heading over there now.”
“If you don’t mind, I could use a hand before you leave.” Harriett picked up the two shovels that lay atop the mound of dirt by the grave and held one out to the Levison family.
“You’re kidding,” Art Levison said with a nervous grin. His wife and daughter knew it wasn’t a joke.
“I’ll help!” Lucy offered eagerly.
“Great!” Harriett passed the second shovel to the little girl without a second thought. Lucy, dressed in her best shoes, hopped right into action.
Art looked over at his wife. “Is this okay with you?” he muttered.
Jo shrugged. “I know it’s weird, but I guess it still counts as a mitzvah.”
“I hope so,” he said as they watched their eleven-year-old daughter shovel dirt into an open grave. “Isn’t there someone at the cemetery who gets paid to do this?” Art asked Harriett.
“Yes, of course,” Harriett replied. “But if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. And find an eleven-year-old kid to help you. Am I right, Lucy?”
“Yeah!” Lucy said.
When the hole was almost filled and both Lucy and Harriett were covered with dirt, Harriett pulled a small burlap pouch out of her bag. “I’ll do the rest of the shoveling. Take one of these and plant it when I’m done.”
“What are they?” Jo asked.
“Brugmansia insignis. Angel’s trumpet.” Harriett opened the bag and pulled out a strange seed, which she placed in the palm of Lucy’s hand. “Amazing, isn’t it? One of these tiny seeds will grow into a twelve-foot-tall monster. Each of its flowers will be the size of a party hat, and every part of the plant will be chock full of poison.”
“Wow.” Lucy marveled as she studied the seed up close.
“You’re planting a giant poisonous bush on this girl’s grave.” Jo didn’t know what to say.
“Yes, because when the plant is in flower, it’s impossible to ignore.” Harriett pointed past the cemetery’s fence at the highway that stretched from the city to the end of the island. “I want everyone passing by to look. I want whoever did this to know that the girl buried here hasn’t been forgotten. I want him to see what we can do. And I want that motherfucker to worry.”
“Woohoo!” Lucy cheered.
Jo felt her phone buzz in her pocket. When she pulled it out, she saw the call was coming from her gym, where she’d left her assistant manager in charge.
“I’m sorry to bother you.” Heather was speaking so softly that Jo strained to hear. “But you need to come to the gym as soon as you can. The police are here.”
“What? Why?” Jo asked.
“One of our clients passed away. They want access to her locker. I’ve told them I can’t do anything without your permission.”
Jo felt the energy flowing beneath her skin. Her body sensed where the conversation was going. The phone’s connection briefly faltered. “Which client?” Jo asked.
“Rosamund Harding,” Heather said.
A second surge made the line crackle. “Ask all the clients to leave. Tell them there’s a plumbing emergency. I’ll be at the gym in three minutes.”
“Trouble at work?” Art asked when she hung up. Harriett had paused from her labors to hear what had happened.
“A client of mine died,” Jo announced, her eyes trained on Harriett. “Rosamund Harding.”
Harriett shook her head, disappointed. “I guess she didn’t get to her husband first.”
“I guess not,” Jo confirmed. “Now the police want access to her gym locker.”
“What a tragedy. Go do what you need to do,” Art told his wife. “I’ll hose off the kid and take over from here.”
Harriett gave Jo a slight nod. She’d made Spencer Harding a promise, and she intended to keep it.
When Jo arrived at Furious Fitness, Tony Perretta and his young partner were waiting for her at the front desk. The younger man held a pair of bolt cutters in his hands. They were going to get what they were after one way or another.
“It’s been years since I’ve seen you in a dress.” Tony gave Jo a once-over. “You look good as a girl.”
“Dress or no dress, we both know I could take you out in ten seconds tops,” Jo said.
“Is no dress an option?” Tony asked. They’d gone out a few times in high school, which Tony seemed to feel gave him license to say whatever he liked.
Jo gritted her teeth and let the comment slide. She needed something from him. “Listen, Tony, could I have a quick word with you in my office?” she asked.
She led the older cop around the corner and held a door open for him.
“That isn’t an office,” he said. “It’s a supply closet.”
“Wow,” Jo marveled with big eyes. “Sherlock Holmes has nothing on you, Tony.” Then she gestured toward the closet. “Let’s have a chat and I won’t make this too hard for you.”
The cop grumbled under his breath and stepped inside.
“How did they kill her?” Jo asked as soon as the door was closed.
“What? Nobody killed Rosamund Harding,” Tony told her. “She crashed her car into a utility pole on Danskammer Beach Road this morning.”
“Was she drugged?”
“I don’t know what kind of drugs she’d been taking,” Tony said. “The toxicology report isn’t back yet. But that’s one of the reasons I’m here. The husband said she has a history of opioid abuse. He thinks she may have drugs stashed in her locker.”
“Rosamund hasn’t been back to the gym since her husband’s bodyguard chased her off. Even if she has drugs in her locker, they didn’t have anything to do with her death.”
Tony sighed. “Listen, Jo, I’m not here to chitchat. I just came to collect Mrs. Harding’s things for her husband.”
“Ah, so let me guess—this isn’t really part of the investigation. You’re just cleaning up any messes that may have been left behind. This mean you’re taking odd jobs from the Culling Pointe set?”
She’d hit a nerve. Perretta reached for the door handle.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No shit,” Perretta said, but he let his arm drop. “If you want to know the truth, Jo, I offered to come as a courtesy to you. Mr. Harding wanted to send his bodyguard to empty the locker, but I know you’re not the guy’s biggest fan. Now maybe you can quit being a giant bitch for one minute and let me do my goddamned job.”
“Fine,” Jo said. “But I want to see everything that comes out of her locker.”
“I can’t agree to that, Jo. There’s no investigation. Her death was clearly an accident. So the stuff in her locker is private property. Rocca told me to sweep everything into a bag without even looking at it.”
“Come on, Tony,” Jo said. “Let me have a quick look. Otherwise, I’m going to have to insist that you leave my gym and bring me back a copy of the death certificate before I reveal which of the three hundred lockers in my establishment was rented by Rosamund Harding.”
“You are such a pain in the ass,” Tony said, not unappreciatively.
“Oh man, you have no idea,” she said.
“I pity your poor husband.”
Jo had to laugh at that one. “Really? I think he’d tell you he’s got it pretty damn good. Now let’s go. Get the bolt cutters and leave the kid at the desk. It’s just you and me from here on out.”
Jo peeked into the changing room to make sure it was empty. Then she guided Tony to locker 288, which was secured with a simple combination lock. A single snip of the bolt cutters and the lock fell to the ground at their feet. Jo stood back and watched as Tony retrieved a pair of sneakers, three sports bras, and a pliable purple item that resembled a small closed funnel.
“What the hell is this?” he asked, holding it up to the light.
“That, my Neanderthal friend, is a menstrual cup.”
“You mean it’s been—” With a grimace of disgust, he tossed the cup across the room into a garbage can.
“Probably should have worn gloves,” Jo noted. “That it?”
Tony turned back around and ran his hand along the bottom of the locker. “Guess so.”
“No drugs or stacks of cash or amateur porn. Still, can’t say it was wasted time.” Jo patted him on the back. “You learned a little something new today, didn’t you, Sparky?”
She walked Tony back to the front desk, where he was reunited with his young partner, who seemed a bit miffed he’d missed out on the fun. Jo watched through the window as their cruiser drove away. Then her smile fell, and she turned to the young woman behind the desk. “Do me a favor, please. Print out a list of all the lockers that are rented by the month.”
With the paper in hand—and a pack of Post-its—Jo returned to the changing room. Around a third of the lockers were rented on a monthly basis. The rest were free to be used by anyone who supplied her own combination lock. It was against the rules to keep your stuff in a locker overnight unless it was rented, but Jo had never been one to strictly enforce the rules. Sometimes she even used the lockers to stow Hanukkah and birthday presents that she didn’t want her nosy little girl detective to find.
Jo suspected that was why the police had been sent to clean out Rosamund’s gym locker just a few short hours after she’d been declared dead. Her husband was worried that she’d stashed something in it. Jo wondered if he was hoping they would return with something specific—or if he’d be relieved when they didn’t.
Jo went locker by locker. She opened the ones without locks—finding nothing more than an occasional tampon or pair of shower shoes. Whenever she came across a combination lock, she checked the locker number against the rental list. She’d brought the pad of Post-its with the idea of marking each locker that wasn’t officially rented but was still being used. In the end, there were only two, and one of them held a pair of riding shoes she’d purchased as a surprise gift for Lucy, who’d soon be heading to summer sleepaway camp. The second locker was in an unpopular spot in the middle of a bottom row. The lock was a simple five-letter-combination sort that would be no match for a pair of bolt cutters. Jo pulled out her phone to text an employee to run out and pick up a pair at the hardware store. Then she stopped midsentence and put the phone down on a nearby bench. She squatted in front of the lock and dialed the letters until they read FAITH. Then she closed her eyes, gripped the base of the lock, and pulled downward. When the lock opened, Jo fell back on her ass in surprise.
Before she’d had time to fully recover, she was on her knees and inching forward. Jo peeked inside the locker and immediately slammed it shut again. Her fingers were trembling so violently that she could barely replace the lock. Then she grabbed her phone and fled to the opposite end of the changing room. She wanted to be as far as possible from what she’d just seen.
“Nessa,” she said when her friend answered. “Get Harriett and come to the gym.”
“I’m in the middle of—”
“Leave your daughters in charge of the reception,” Jo said. “You need to get over here right away.”
Then she hung up the phone and went outside to wait. Ten minutes later, she was still pacing back and forth when her friends pulled into the parking lot.
“Come with me,” she told them.
Nessa caught Harriett’s eye. She’d never seen Jo in such a state.
“Rosamund Harding died this morning,” Jo said as she marched through the gym. “They say she crashed her car into a pole. Her husband had the police come collect her things from her locker. After the cops were gone, I started wondering if she might have been using another locker off the books.” Jo pointed down at locker 165. “This one was never officially rented. There’s no way to know whose stuff is inside. Except for one thing.” She showed them the combination lock that read FAITH.
“Whoa,” Harriett said.
“Exactly,” Jo agreed. “There’s more.”
She pulled off the lock and took a step back.
Nessa hesitated. “Tell me there’s not a severed head in there,” she pleaded.
“Just look,” Jo ordered.
Nessa stepped forward and opened the locker. Inside was a Polaroid of a naked girl. She stared blankly at the camera, her eyes wide with terror and her arms held out to the sides as if someone had ordered her not to cover herself. “Oh my God.” Nessa dropped down onto a bench. “Is that her?”
Harriett, wearing a pair of latex gloves she’d found in the supply closet, was the one to pull the photo out. “It’s her,” she announced.
The girl in the picture was the one they’d just buried.
Nessa rubbed at her eyes as if trying to scrub away the image they’d seen. “Why would your client have a picture like that?”
“I think her husband took it,” Jo said. “Rosamund must have found it and—”
“Jo?” Harriett interrupted. “Hold on for one second. Where did those flowers come from?”
All three heads swiveled toward the enormous vase of white lilies that stood on one corner of the changing room counter. They were identical to the ones Harriett had received at her house.
“I don’t know.” Jo felt the blood drain from her face. She hadn’t noticed the flowers until that moment. She stuck her head out of the changing room door and called for Heather, who immediately rushed over. “Do you know where that bouquet came from?” Jo asked.
“No idea. When they arrived, I asked Art, but he said he hadn’t sent them. So I put them in here. I can’t believe they still look that good. They’ve lasted for over a week.”
“What day did the delivery come?” Harriett asked.
“Memorial Day,” Heather answered.