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Mary Eileen was nervous. She was scared. On the inside, she was falling apart. But outwardly, no one would have been able to detect the slightest tremor. But Mary Eileen was deathly afraid the plumbers below would find death in the cellar under the Coffee Shoppe.
Her worst fears were realized when she heard first one man and then another cry out.
Their screams echoed from under her feet. The sound of their voices bounced and slammed from rock wall to concrete ceiling and then come roaring out of the cellar door.
The men below were panicked. Working in proximity to all manner of sewers, sludge, and human waste as they did daily, these plumbers thought they had seen it all. With their discovery today, they had.
The men had frozen in place when the beams of their flashlights had spotted the first rock, if that is what it was, a cement stone with a human’s leg sticking out. And then there was another, this time they got closer and found a hand sticking out of a hunk of cement. The last and final rock with the back of a human head visible is what did it.
Their cell phones wouldn’t work in the cellar. They had to run upstairs, nearly knocking down a couple of Coffee Shoppe customers to get outside where they could breathe fresh air before vomiting on the sidewalk.
None of the customers knew what the plumbers had seen.
Mary Eileen knew what they had found. She hadn’t done a good enough job covering the body parts with cement.
She also knew what had to happen next. She tapped the ride-sharing app on her smartphone. She was ready to go.
Mary Eileen walked quickly back upstairs, avoiding contact with the customers who were still reeling from the fleeing plumbers. Mary Eileen marched. She didn’t run. Mary Eileen did not want to set off any alarms of suspicion before she had too. But still she didn’t hesitate to shove a couple of people out of her way.
What would St. Isidore think of Mary Eileen Sullivan? She couldn’t have cared less. Mary Eileen knew she was leaving the Coffee Shoppe for the last time. She would never return. Besides a couple of bags already packed, Mary Eileen was leaving her life behind. She would have to start all over again.
The rest of her belongings, her business, her obligations to creditors, her responsibilities to her employees, her life, especially the body parts of her ex-husband and ex-lover — it would all be erased from her life.
Mary Eileen was no longer scared or even nervous. She was on total autopilot. Her adrenaline was running high and fast, but it was completely under control. She felt just a little nauseous, but no less confident than when she’d left New York after dealing with a chef who had nearly raped her in a freezer.
Long story told short; she’d left him for dead with an ice pick in his chest.
Just as then, Mary Eileen had no doubt she could handle what came next. She was supremely confident of her ability to reinvent herself.
All she had to do was to get out of St. Isidore as quickly and smoothly as possible.
Where to go next? That question did give Mary Eileen a reason to pause. When the Uber driver showed up in the alley behind the Coffee Shoppe she took time to think about her next move, but only for a moment.
Mary Eileen made a decision. One word said it all.
“Drive,” she said.
~
MARY EILEEN TOLD THE driver to go north from lower Michigan to the state’s Upper Peninsula. She left the cityscape of St. Isidore behind, drove through a relatively flat landscape of farms, and then rows of magnificent evergreen and pine trees.
The ride was beautiful. With the shockingly blue panorama of Lake Michigan outside the window on her left, Mary Eileen was traveling through the most magnificent scenery Michigan had to offer. But she didn’t see the lake. She didn’t see the forests. She only saw herself losing Sean Patrick Flynn.
That hurt more than anything. Mary Eileen knew it was only a matter of time before the police put together the evidence and concluded that she had killed David and Hans. After that, they would not have to waste any time searching for her. Mary Eileen knew better than anyone that a person couldn’t just vanish in this day and age of GPS and smartphones that showed the NSA where you lived. Even if somebody had been shot in the head, drawn and quartered and buried in cement; they would be discovered. It was only a matter of time before the police found her.
And she knew that as soon as he was told what had happened, Sean would decide that he was done with her.
God, that hurt Mary Eileen. She had finally found her true love. She had just found him too late. And there would be no way to win him back.
Mary Eileen sighed. What was done, was done. She would have to start anew.
Even the day after she’d dealt with the chef in New York wasn’t the first time Mary Eileen had to reinvent herself.
She knew this time would not be the last, not unless she found another man just like Sean. But Mary Eileen had no misconceptions about the likelihood of that.
As soon as the Uber driver crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula, Mary Eileen told him to turn around and drive back down the Lower Peninsula to the Detroit area. She had to go to Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan. She might reinvent herself, but Mary Eileen would not surrender. Sean was her one true love. There would never be another. She had to find him. She had to win him back.
But first, Mary Eileen had to get away from the cops in St. Isidore. She knew they’d be after her and probably the state police, too. She would search for Sean. She would find Sean. However, that would have to wait. First, Mary Eileen Sullivan had to find shelter so that she could reinvent herself.
Mary Eileen needed to find another man.