right. We couldn’t. I also decided that once he was dead, he wouldn’t have any use for our money. I looked all over his house, trying to find where he might have hidden it, but I couldn’t find it.” Mina shrugged. “No biggie, though. It’s only fifty thou.”
Mark was almost hyperventilating. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. She hoped he wouldn’t have a heart attack and die. That would spoil Mina’s fun.
“But what if the cops make the connection and come looking for us?” Mark objected. “What if Richard tried to double-cross us? What if he kept backups of the work he did for us that will lead investigators straight here? What then?”
“Do you think I’m stupid? Of course Richard kept backups,” Mina replied. “He was that kind of guy, but I reformatted his hard drive. I also stole his Time Capsule. Had a big bonfire right here on the beach early this morning while you were sleeping the sleep of the dead. I burned up the capsule and I burned up the clothing I was wearing when I killed him. The ashes should be cool by now. I want you to go outside and bury them.”
“Where?”
“Where do you think? Over on the beach. No one will pay any attention. People bury bonfire ashes there all the time.”
Mark studied his wife. He seemed confused, as though he wasn’t sure if she was telling him the truth.
“I don’t believe any of this,” he said at last. “You’re kidding, right? Running me up the flagpole because I stayed out late?”
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “Not kidding at all. But don’t worry. They won’t come after us. I’ve got the perfect fall guy for us-a fall woman, for that matter.”
“Who?”
“Brenda Riley, Richard’s old girlfriend.”
“The one who came to the office looking for him a year or so after we let him go?”
“One and the same.”
“You think you can pin this on her?”
“I don’t just think we can pin it on her,” Mina said. “I know we can. In fact, we already have.”
She was careful to underscore the word “we.” She wanted to let that one sink in. She wanted Mark to get the message. She wasn’t going to let him get off easy simply by burying the ashes from her bonfire. She wanted to force Mark to accept the fact that he was an active player in all this, that he too was culpable.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “How do we frame her?”
“By providing blood evidence, which I’ve already done. There’s only one tiny problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Right this minute, Brenda Riley is still alive. At least she’s probably still alive. Somebody needs to kill her and ditch the body in some spot out here in the middle of the desert where no one will think to go looking.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Mark asked. He sounded horrified.
Mina laughed outright. “Kill her and bury her? Oh, you poor baby,” she said. “Who do you think? Do you think I’m going to do all the dirty work for you? I killed Richard Lowensdale. Now it’s your turn. You kill Brenda Riley and get rid of her body, then we’re even, fifty-fifty. And Tuesday night, once Enrique gives us our new IDs, we’re gone. Out of here. Both of us together. Otherwise, somebody might be left holding the bag.”
“I can’t do that,” Mark croaked. “I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”
“It’s not that difficult,” Mina said. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“Where is she?”
“In San Diego in the assembly room. I locked her inside the parts cage. She hasn’t had food or water since Friday, so she’s probably pretty thirsty right about now. And cold. I doubt she’ll be in any condition to put up much of a fight.”
Mark stared at Mina in apparent disbelief. “You can’t be serious,” Mark said. “You can’t possibly mean this.”
“Oh, but I do,” Mina told him. “I mean every word.”
He stared at her for the better part of a minute, then he raced for the bathroom. Mina listened while he puked his guts out. It did her heart good to hear it.
Richard Lowensdale hadn’t had a clue about the dangers of messing around with Mina Blaylock. Neither did Mark. Sadly, Richard had already learned his very important lesson on that score, and Mark was about to do the same. Even if Richard had given up the money, Mina would have killed him anyway. The same thing was true for Mark as well, but he had yet to figure it out.
He had been a dead man walking long before he decided to screw around on her Friday night, but now there was more to it. Of course she would kill him, but before that happened she intended to toy with him a little.
He came back out of the bathroom still looking green-green and haunted. Mina knew he was a beaten man. So did he.
“Where are you going?” she asked as he headed for the outside door.
“To get my wheelbarrow,” he said. “The wheelbarrow and a shovel.”
42
Borrego Springs, California
Just after six on Monday morning, Mina closed the shutters on the Salton City cabin for the last time. She had every expectation that no one would go looking inside the place for a very long time. She left the house wearing a track suit and taking nothing but her purse and a single briefcase. Not that there was anything of value in the briefcase-only Lola Cunningham’s cookbook. Mina had long since smuggled the contents of her safe out of the house. Everything that could be converted to cash had been, and all the cash, in turn, had been sent along to her numbered account.
She took Highway 78 west toward Julian and Escondido. Along the way, she looked for likely places to dump a body. Mina’s original plan had been to fake Brenda’s suicide by dumping the unconscious woman into the Scotts Flat Reservoir beyond Grass Valley on Friday evening. She had managed to unload both Brenda’s purse and her shoes and was about to wrestle Brenda herself out of the trunk when everything had gone to hell. Some people-kids most likely-had turned up at a most inopportune time, leaving Mina no choice but to slam the trunk shut and drive off.
Mina prided herself on coping under pressure. With no other dumping places scoped out in advance, she’d felt she had no choice but to bring Brenda with her on the long drive back to San Diego. On the way Mina rationalized that things would probably work out for the best after all. It seemed likely that the abandoned shoes and purse would lead the local hick authorities to conclude that Brenda Riley, Richard Lowensdale’s presumed murderer, had committed suicide. That assumption would hold regardless of whether her body ever surfaced.
Mina had gotten a kick out of tormenting Mark with the idea that she expected him to do the dirty work for her, but that had never been in the cards. She had known all along that he didn’t have the stomach for it. She did.
It was a shame that Mina hadn’t hooked up with someone like Enrique Gallegos to begin with. Compared to Mark, Enrique was a far more suitable partner, someone who did what he said he would do when he said he would do it. Mina had enjoyed doing business with him.
In exchange for the UAVs, Enrique had given her money. As a side deal, he had agreed to supply her with a specific set of illicit drugs without making any inquiries as to how she intended to use them. Finally, and for a steep price, he had delivered a set of impressively well-forged documents.
Mina’s new passport, dog-eared and thoroughly worn, contained Mina’s photograph, but the bearer of same was identified as one Sophia Stanhope, the divorced former wife of a British diplomat. Sophia herself hailed from Bosnia, with a home address in Sarajevo. Mina had no idea how Enrique had managed all those little details, and she didn’t want to know, but according to the official-looking immigration stamps in the passport, Sophia had arrived in the United States via Cabo San Lucas two weeks earlier and was scheduled to depart for home on board an Air France transatlantic flight on Tuesday evening.
This evening she would have her final meeting with Enrique. He would give her receipts for the last transfers
