It was thirty-six minutes after ten when I finally made it to the Panera in Vienna, too late for breakfast but too early for the lunch rush, and I still couldn’t find a parking space. When I’d called Sylvia and explained I’d be too late to make our reservation at her fancy brunch restaurant pick, she’d asked for the name of a place that was close to a Metro station, opened early, and wouldn’t require one. Feeling guilty and frazzled while navigating a traffic jam on the toll road, Panera was the first place to fly out of my mouth, and Sylvia had disconnected before I could take it back.
The lot at Panera was full, brimming with shiny Audis and Beemers and Mercedes. Who were these people, and why did they not have office jobs? For that matter, why didn’t I?
I swung my minivan into the adjoining lot of the dry cleaner and picked a few last strands of Delia’s hair from my pants before finally giving up. Slipping on a huge pair of sunglasses that obscured most of my face, I tied my silk wig-scarf around my head, fluffed the long blond waves cascading from the bottom, and smeared burgundy lipstick beyond the natural lines of my mouth. I sighed at my reflection in the rearview mirror. This was the same version of me inside the cover of my books, but also, it wasn’t. In my headshots, I seemed mysterious and glamorous, like a romance novelist who wanted to preserve her secret identity from hordes of rabid fans. But in the drab lighting of my run-down minivan, with hairy syrup stains on my pants and diaper cream under my nails, and with a loose strand of my own brown hair poking stubbornly out of the bottom of the scarf, I just looked like I was trying too hard to be someone I’m not.
Let’s face it, I wasn’t wearing my wig-scarf to impress my agent—Sylvia already knew who I was. And who I wasn’t. Today, I just wore it to keep me from being kicked out of this particular Panera. If I could make it through lunch without being recognized as the disaster who’d been banned from this establishment eight months ago, that would be enough.
I threw my knockoff designer diaper bag over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and got out of the van, praying Mindy the Manager had quit or been fired since the last time I’d been here, when Theresa had requested to talk out our differences over lunch.
I stepped into the restaurant, peering through the long blond locks of the wig I’d left hanging over my eyes. Sylvia was already in line, scrutinizing the menu on the wall behind the registers as if it was written in some strange foreign tongue. I stood beside her for a full minute and a half, then said her name before she finally gave me a double take. “Finlay? Is that you?” she asked.
I slipped behind her, shushing her as I peeked over her shoulder at the employees behind the counter. When I didn’t see Mindy the Manager among them, or any familiar cashiers, I tucked the loose strands behind my ear. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you downtown,” I said. “My morning sort of exploded.”
“I can see that.” Sylvia had gone from scrutinizing the menu to scrutinizing me. She drew her glasses lower over the bridge of her nose with a long red fingernail. “Why are you wearing that?”
“Long story.” My relationship with Panera was complicated. I liked their soup. Panera didn’t like that I’d poured it over another customer’s head. In my defense, Theresa had started it when she’d attempted to justify her reasons for sleeping with my husband.
“You have something on your pants,” Sylvia said, grimacing at a hairy patch of syrup.
I pressed my lips tight. Tried to smile. Sylvia was everything you’d imagine New Yorkers to be if you watched too much television. Probably because she was from Jersey. Her office was in Manhattan. Her shoes were from Milan. Her makeup looked like it had flown in on a DeLorean circa 1980, and her clothes might have been skinned from a large jungle cat.
“I can help you over here,” an attendant called from behind an open register. Sylvia stepped to the counter, interrogated the young man about the gluten-free options, and then proceeded to order a tuna baguette and a bowl of French onion.
When it was my turn, I found the cheapest thing on the menu—a cup of the day’s soup. Sylvia held out her credit card and said, “It’s on me,” so I added a ham and brie sandwich and a slice of cheesecake to go.
We carried our trays to the dining room to find a table. As we walked, I filled Sylvia in on the gory details of my morning. She’d had children once, a long time ago, so she wasn’t entirely without sympathy, but she wasn’t exactly moved by the trials of my single motherhood shit-show.
All the booths were full, so we aimed for the last empty table for two in the middle of the bustling dining room. On one side of us, a college student wearing headphones stared at the screen of her MacBook. On the other side, a middle-aged woman picked at her bowl of macaroni and cheese alone. Sylvia squeezed between the tables and settled herself into a hardback chair, looking exasperated. I dropped my wallet in my diaper bag and set it down in the small gap on the floor beside me. The woman next to me glanced at it, then blinked up at me. I smiled blandly, sucking on my iced tea until she finally turned back to her lunch again.
Sylvia made a face at her sandwich. “Tell me again why we picked this place?”
“Because head wounds take forever to clean up. Sorry I was late.”
“Where are we with your deadline?” she asked around a mouthful of tuna. “Please tell me I took the train all the way down here for good news.”
“Not exactly.”
She glared at me as she chewed. “Tell me you at least have a plan in place.”
I slumped over my tray and picked at my food. “Sort of.”
“They paid you half up front for this job. Tell me you’re close.”
I leaned across the table, pitching my voice low, thankful the college student beside me was wearing headphones. “My last few murders were so formulaic. I’m becoming too predictable. I feel like I’m falling into a rut, Syl.”
“So change up your approach.” She waved her spoon in the air, like conjuring a novel was no big deal. “The contract doesn’t specify how the whole thing plays out, as long as you get it done by next month. You can do that, right?”
I stuffed in a bite of sandwich to keep from having to answer that. If I really pushed it, I could finish a rough draft in eight weeks. Six tops.
“How hard can it be? You’ve done it before.”
“Yes, but this one’s going to be messy.” I tested a mouthful of soup. It tasted like cardboard. Like everything else had tasted since my divorce. “I could kill for some hot sauce,” I muttered, checking the table beside me. Salt, pepper, sugar, and napkins. No hot sauce. But the woman hardly noticed. She was staring at my open bag on the floor. I tucked my wallet farther inside and folded the handles down, concealing the contents from view. When she continued to stare, I threw her a frosty look.
“I don’t understand what’s so hard. You’ve got a beautiful, sweet, sympathetic woman who needs to be rescued from a really bad guy. The bad guy gets handled, our sympathetic woman reveals the depths of her gratitude, everyone lives happily ever after, and you get a big fat check.”
I tore the end off my baguette. “About the check—”
“Absolutely not.” Sylvia waved her spoon at me. “I can’t go back to them and ask for another advance.”
“I know. But there’s a lot of research involved in this one,” I said in a low voice. “We’re talking seedy nightclubs, instruments of torture, secret code words … This is completely outside my area of expertise. I’m usually very neat. You know, conservative. Nothing too far out there. But this…” I severed the end of my cheesecake. “This one’s different, Syl. If I pull this off, I could become the next big name in the business.”
“Whatever you do, make it quick. Let’s bury this one and move on to the next.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to rush this. I need this to be a big hit. These two- and three-thousand-dollar advances aren’t worth the time or the effort. Whatever deal comes next needs to kick-start my career, or I’m out,” I declared around a mouthful of cheesecake. “If this one goes well, I’m not taking a penny less than fifteen thousand for the next one.”
“Fine. Knock ’em dead with this one, and we’ll talk about the next one.” Sylvia’s phone vibrated on the table. She narrowed her eyes at the number on the screen. “Excuse me. I have to take this,” she said, wriggling out from between the tables. As I twisted to let Sylvia pass, the woman at the table beside me caught my eye. Fork poised over her bowl of cold mac and cheese, she stared at me for an awkwardly long moment that made me wonder if she’d recognized me despite all the makeup and the wig-scarf. Or maybe it was the wig-scarf she recognized. No one had ever asked me for an autograph before. If she asked me to sign her napkin, I’d probably choke. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed when her gaze fell away and she reached for her purse.
I turned back to my sandwich, checking my phone for missed messages between bites. One from Steven, wondering how much longer I’d be. Two more from credit card companies reminding me I was past due. And an email from my editor, asking how the new book was coming. I had the odd feeling I was being watched, but the woman beside me was bent over a pen and a slip of paper.
After a few minutes, Sylvia’s heels clicked back into the dining room. My heart sank when she didn’t bother to sit down.
“I’m sorry, my dear. I have to go,” she said, reaching for her messenger bag. “I need to grab the train back to the city. I’ve got a major offer coming in for another client, and it’s got a drop-dead date in forty-eight hours. I’ve got to move fast before the deal’s off the table.” She slung the bag over her shoulder. “I wish we had more time to chat.”
“No, it’s fine,” I assured her. I was not okay. This was not okay. “It was totally my fault.”
“Yes, it was,” she agreed, slipping on her designer sunglasses and leaving me with her dishes. “Now get to work on that hit, and let me know when it’s done.”
I stood up and pasted on a smile as we exchanged awkward cheek-to-cheek kisses that made us seem like friends who didn’t actually want to touch each other. Her cell phone was pressed to her ear before she was out the door.
I sank back down in my chair. The woman who’d been seated beside me was gone and I glanced down, relieved to find my diaper bag and wallet still resting on the floor. I cleared Sylvia’s tray, sorting her dishes and utensils into the bins by the waste receptacle. When I returned to my table, a scrap of folded paper was tucked under my plate. I looked around for the woman who’d been scribbling beside me but saw no sign of her. I unfolded the note.
$50,000 CASH
HARRIS MICKLER
49 NORTH LIVINGSTON ST
ARLINGTON
And a phone number.
I crumpled up the note and held it over the bin. But the dollar sign—and all the zeroes that followed—piqued my curiosity. Who was Harris Mickler? Why did he have so much cash? And why had the woman sitting beside me left the paper on my tray when she could have just as easily disposed of it herself?
I tucked the strange note in my pocket and gathered my bag. The midday sun glared off the windshields of the sea of cars outside, and I groped blindly in my bag for my keys, struggling to remember where I’d parked. I still hadn’t found them by the time I reached the dry cleaner, and I stood beside my locked van, swearing into the abyss of my bag. A few of Delia’s stray hairs tickled my wrist as my fingers snagged on the sticky roll of duct tape I’d used to fix her hair. Something bit me as I shoved it aside. With a yelp, I whipped my hand from the bag.
A thin line of blood beaded along my fingers. Carefully, I plucked aside the blood-stained burp rag I’d used to clean my daughter’s forehead that morning. Below it, I found the dull kitchen knife I’d thrown in with it, along with the keys to my van.
I pressed the burp rag to the shallow cut and turned the AC on high while I waited for the bleeding to stop. The air outside was cool, autumn-crisp, but the van was boiling in the noon sun and my hair was already damp with sweat under the itchy scarf. I peeled it off, dropping it into the diaper bag along with the dark sunglasses. A heavily made-up woman with a tight mom-bun stared back at me from the rearview mirror. I swiped off the deep burgundy lipstick on the burp rag, feeling like an impostor. Who was I kidding? There was no way I’d finish this book in a month. Every day I spent pretending to make a living as a writer only put me one day closer to losing my kids. I should have called Sylvia right then and there and told her as much.
I dragged my phone from my pocket. The strange note slipped out with it. I pried it open.
Fifty thousand dollars.
I looked back at my cell. Then again at the note, curiosity making me linger on the phone number written at the bottom.
I could always say I’d misdialed and hang up, right? The phone beeped as I keyed in the number. A woman answered on the first ring.
“Hello?” Her quiet voice wavered.
I opened my mouth, but nothing intelligent came out. “Hello?”
“You found my note.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I erred on the side of vague. “Did I?”
She expelled a shaky breath through the phone. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t even know if I’m doing it right.”
“Doing what?”
She giggled, a panicked, almost hysterical laugh that died in a sniffle. Our connection was so clear, it was like she was sitting right in front of me. I searched through the windshields of the adjacent cars, expecting to see her staring back.
My finger hovered over the red button on the screen. “Are you okay?” I asked, against my better judgment. “Do you need help or something?”
“No, I’m not okay.” She blew her nose into the receiver and our connection became garbled, as if she were talking into a wad of tissues. “My husband … He’s … not a nice man. He’s doing strange things. Terrible things. If it was just the once, maybe I would understand, but there have been others. So many others.”
“Other whats? I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.” I should hang up, I thought to myself. This was all getting really weird.
“I can’t tell him I know. That would be … very, very bad. I need you to help me.” She drew a deep breath through the phone, as if maybe her finger was poised over the red button, too. After a heavy pause, she said, “I want you to do it.”
“Do what?” I asked, struggling to keep up.
“Whatever it is you do. Like you said, neat. I just want him gone. I have fifty thousand cash. I was going to use it to leave him. But it will be better this way.”
“What way?”
“He’ll be at a networking event at The Lush tonight. I don’t want to know how it will happen. Or where. Just call this number when it’s done.”
The connection went dead.
I shook my head, still lost in the bizarre turn of the conversation. I glanced down at the bloody burp rag in my lap. At the knife in my open diaper bag and the duct tape threaded with Delia’s hair. I thought back to the woman’s pale face as she listened to our conversation between covert glances at my bag on the floor.
The bad guy gets handled, our sympathetic woman reveals the depths of her gratitude, everyone lives happily ever after, and you get a big fat check.
Oh, god.
I’m not taking a penny less than fifteen thousand … Let’s bury this one and move on to the next.
Fifty thousand dollars. She thought I’d said fifty thousand dollars.
Oh, no. No, no, no!
I stuffed everything back in the diaper bag. The paper. What was I supposed to do with the paper? Throw it away? Burn it? Run back into Panera, tear it into pieces, and flush it down the toilet? The faster I got rid of it, the better. I crumpled it and rolled down my window, holding it in my fist over the burning pavement.
Fifty thousand dollars.
I rolled up the window, stuffing the note back in my pocket as I put the van in gear. My heart thumped wildly as I eased out of the parking lot, careful to use my turn signals and check my speed. What if I was pulled over and searched and a police officer found it? My Google search history alone was probably enough to put me on a government watch list. I wrote suspense novels about murders like this. I’d searched every possible way to kill someone. With every conceivable kind of weapon. I’d researched every possible way to dispose of a body.
This was ridiculous. I was foolish to worry about a stupid piece of paper. I couldn’t be a suspect for a crime that hadn’t happened yet. And there was no way I was even considering this. If his wife wanted him dead, she could find someone else to do it. And I could get on with my—
Oh …
My hands gripped the wheel. This woman had sounded serious. Fifty thousand dollars was serious, right? What would happen if she did find someone else to do it? Could I become a suspect? I might.
Unless …
I checked my rearview mirror as I merged into traffic. What if no one found a body? What if no one knew for sure this Harris Mickler person was dead? There wouldn’t necessarily be a suspect at all, right?
I could practically hear Steven’s voice in my head, telling me I was being ridiculous, that I was imagining the worst and making up stories. It was the argument he always fell back on, the one he’d unloaded on me when I first suspected he’d slept with Theresa behind my back.
Only this time, I hated that he was right.
I smacked the steering wheel, cursing myself as I hugged the far-right lane of the toll road. Why was I even thinking about this? I had real-life problems to deal with: looming deadlines without babysitters or advances, overdue car payments, relentless calls from bill collectors … And this whole situation with Harris Mickler, this was sick. This was twisted.
This was fifty thousand dollars.
A horn blared behind me, and I jumped in my seat, speeding up a little to stay with the flow of traffic. I should pitch the note out the window, I told myself, and forget this ever happened.
I tapped the wheel. Switched on the radio. Switched it off again. Checked my speed as I glided past the toll booths through the E-ZPass lane, unable to stop replaying the conversation in my mind.
My husband … He’s … not a nice man.
Was he “forgets our anniversary” not nice, I wondered? Or was he “sleeping around” not nice? Because banging your real estate agent isn’t a reason to want your husband dead. It might be a legitimate reason to want his balls maimed in an accident involving a Weedwacker, or to wish him a horrific venereal disease whose symptoms include the words “burning discharge.” But killing a man for cheating on his wife would be wrong. Wouldn’t it?
If it was just the once, maybe I would understand, but there have been others. So many others.
Exactly how many were we talking? Five? Ten? Fifty thousand?
And why would telling him she knew about the others be very, very bad?
I turned into my driveway, grinding to a stop beside the stack of unpaid bills on the front stoop, praying that Steven had paid my electric bill as I clicked the button on the remote. A relieved breath rushed out of me when the garage door groaned open. I eased the van inside and shut the door behind me, staring at the empty pegboard as I turned off the engine. The garage was dark and quiet, and I sat for a while, thinking. About my kids. About my bills. About Steven and Theresa.
About all the real-life problems fifty thousand dollars could fix.
I fished the crumpled note from my pocket and peeled it open, wondering how bad a husband Harris Mickler really was.