What if I had never called Patricia Mickler?… What if I’d never borrowed Theresa’s dress and gone to that stupid bar?… What if I’d never stuffed Harris in my van?… What if I’d never driven him here, to my own freaking home?… What if I hadn’t left the engine running after I closed my gara—
My back stiffened, one chilled muscle at a time. As I lifted my head, my focus jumped from the van to the garage door. The details of the night before were still fuzzy in my mind, blurred by champagne and panic, as if someone had taken an eraser to the edges, but I remembered… I remembered pulling into the driveway. Remembered clicking the remote on the visor and waiting for the door to grind open. The bright cone of the van’s headlights had illuminated the pegboard and that little pink trowel, and I distinctly remembered getting out of the van and squeezing between the workbench and the bumper, eyes narrowed against the glare as I’d raced into the house. The kitchen had been dark. Quiet except for the hum of the engine through the wall as I’d slid down it and made that call to my sister… Those details in my memory were all vivid and clear.
It’s what Ididn’tremember that stuck in my throat now.
I didn’t remember tapping the button on the wall as I entered the kitchen. Or the mechanical grinding sound of the garage door lowering to the floor…
I hadn’t shut the garage.
I had left the van running. But I hadn’t shut the garage.
I stood up fast, flipping the light switch on the wall. The single bulb in the center of the ceiling washed the concrete floor in dim yellow light. I stood under it, staring up at the motor that mechanized the door. My eyes climbed the dangling red emergency cord, pausing on the pulley that raised and lowered the door. The pulley was disengaged from the belt. That explained why the motor had run when Vero pushed the button on the wall, but the door wouldn’t budge—the door wasn’t connected to it.
But that didn’t make sense.
The opener had been working when I got home from the bar. I’d pressed the remote on my visor, the door had opened itself, and I’d pulled into the garage. Yet, just twenty minutes later, when I’d come out of the house, Harris was dead and the garage door was disengaged from the motor. It was shut—though I was certain I hadn’t shut it.
But how?
I stared up at the red cord dangling above my head.
Pulling the emergency release cord was the only way to disengage the belt and free the door from the motor—the only way tomanuallyopen or close the door. Which meant someone must have pulled the cord and shut the door while I was inside the house. While the van was running. Which meant…
I didn’t do it.
I wasn’t the one who’d killed Harris Mickler.
Vero leaned back, one leg propped against the wall of the garage, watching me out of the corner of her eye as if I’d lost my mind.
“You actually think someone pulled that red cord and closed the garage door while you wereinsidethe house.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
There was only one possible explanation for it. “Someone else must have wanted Harris Mickler dead. Whoever it was must have seen us leave the bar and followed me home. When I went inside and left the van running, I left a perfect window of opportunity to kill him.” It was the kind of crime I might have written about. The kind no one would buy because it was so… neat.
Vero plucked Patricia’s envelope from my hand. I’d been squeezing it so tightly, I’d forgotten it was there. “Are you sure this isn’t just your guilt talking?”
“I may be guilty of a lot of things, Vero, but I did not close that garage door.”
She withdrew a stack of cash and held it to her face, her eyes closing as she fanned the edges and inhaled deeply. “Do we still get to keep the money?”
I reached behind me for the roll of duct tape on the workbench and threw it at her.
“Okay, fine,” she said, using Patricia Mickler’s envelope as a shield in case I decided to throw anything else. “Let’s assume for a minute you didn’t close the garage door and someone else did. Why pull the cord? Why not just push the button on the wall and run?”
I gnawed my thumbnail, sifting back through the events of the night. It would have taken awhile for the carbon monoxide to fill the garage. Which meant the killer must have closed the door right after I went inside. I’d been sitting on the floor of the kitchen, my back against the wall directly beside the garage as I’d talked to Georgia. We’d talked so long, I’d forgotten I’d left the van running. Then I’d gone upstairs to wash up and change. My bedroom was right above the garage. “No.” I shook my head. “No, they couldn’t have used the wall button, or even a remote. The motor’s too loud. I would have heard it. Whoever pulled that cord wanted to be silent.”
My eyes lifted to the red handle. Something still didn’t add up. The emergency release cord was anything but quiet. I’d used it one winter during a power outage, when the garage door was stuck open and the snow was blowing in. As soon as I’d pulled the cord, the door came crashing down, bouncing against the concrete with a bone-jarring smash, just as it had when I’d dropped it a few minutes ago to startle Mrs. Haggerty. Steven had heard the noise from our bedroom and had come running to see what had happened. He’d lectured me for a week about how I could have destroyed the frame. How I could have hurt myself or one of the kids. How I should never pull the release cord when the garage door is open. Not unless…
“What’s that look? I know that look,” Vero said as I grabbed the rusted step stool from the corner. “That’s the same look you got before you stuffed the Play-Doh in Theresa’s tailpipe.”
“Open the door,” I said as I positioned the stool under the red emergency cord.
“It’s heavy! You open it.”
“I can’t. I’m getting on the stool.”
