Page 70 of King’s Ransom

She had long red hair and wore denim overalls and a green hoodie. A gardener of some kind.

When she saw our guns, her eyes sprang wide.

‘Miss, you work here?’ Merritt Garrett asked.

‘Uh, yeah . . .’

‘Any newly dug graves between us and the Chrysler mausoleum?’

‘I was gonna ask the boss about that.’ She pointed northward. ‘There’s a new one just past those bushes. I don’t know who authorised it to be dug—’

We bolted that way, shoving through some shrubbery.

And saw it.

A single newly dug grave.

The ground around it was covered in a couple of days’ worth of snow, but the grave barely had any snow on it at all.

Its dirt mound was dark and fresh.

We fell to our knees and started digging with our bare hands.

After half a minute of this, Garrett suddenly stood up and called to the gardener who was now watching us—with concern—from the bushes. ‘Miss? Do you have any shovels we can use?’

She had one hanging from her utility belt, a small gardening spade.

‘Just this,’ she said dumbly.

Garrett dashed over to her, took it, returned to our grave and started using the little shovel to fling dirt away more efficiently. It was better than his bare hands.

A few feet down, he struck something.

‘Is it wood?’ I asked. ‘Like a coffin?’

‘No . . .’ he said slowly. ‘It’s soft. Like a—’

We exchanged looks, dug some more . . .

. . . to reveal the body of a dead man.

He was mid-30s with a muscled neck, short hair and two ragged bullet holes in his forehead.

‘Who is this?’ Garrett asked.

‘I’m guessing it’s King’s bodyguard . . .’ I said. ‘This has to be the place.’

We hauled the bodyguard’s corpse out of the grave, jumped back in, and redoubled our digging efforts.

About thirty seconds later, Garrett’s shovel hit something hard, something made of wood. A coffin—

—suddenly, gunshots.

Three of them.

Pistol shots.

From down the hill to the east, from the bridge.