Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

Chapter Forty-nine

  I speared the earth with the point of the shovel. I shoved it in firmly, then stomped it in further with my foot. When the blade was threequarters of the way submerged, I shifted my hands so I could push down on the handle with all my weight. The shovel levered free of the ground. I lifted a bladeful of dirt, and with a twist of my wrist and arms, heaved it to the top of the small pile I had created. The hole was ten inches deep, ten inches wide. More than big enough now for what I needed.

  Sweat trickled down my chest and pooled in my cleavage, dammed off by my bra. I turned to look behind me, up the cleared grassy hill at the imposing yellow hulk of my house in side view. From this angle, I could see the third-story balcony to my favorite room, one I would use as a guest suite before too long. Not so long ago, that balcony was only a jutting concrete ledge. Now it was covered in red pavers that matched those on the patio by the nearly-finished pool. Soon, twisted black metal spindles would support a matching railing. It was nearly a real balcony now. A rock-covered chimney sprouted from the roof above it. Crazy had worked a miracle on Annalise. I’d done my share, too, including staining the mahogany staircase to a deep brown sheen. She wasn’t done yet, but I’d move in before summer.

  I soaked her in, then returned to my work, down on a knoll that overlooked the long valley full of mango trees. A cluster of cashew trees peeked over the edge of the slope, its fruit red and ripe. I sank to my knees in the dirt. It was cool, in contrast to the hot March air. I needed to hurry.

  I scooped a last few handfuls of dirt out of my burial pit, then patted the earth down to create a perfect resting place. My hand dug in the right pocket of my pleated khaki shorts until I found the cold metal I sought. My mother’s ring. My grandmother’s ring. A ring that I would have worn some day, too, if my mother had lived to give it to me on my wedding day. Assuming I ever got married, which I didn’t really foresee. If I had confessed to another woman alive that I was putting this heirloom under nine inches of dirt, they would have called the police for a 5150 pickup. I clutched it, stricken with an urge to keep it, to wear it, to feel it on my finger, but I didn’t waver. It was time to put the past to rest. Past time to do it.

  I dropped the ring into its grave. It landed with a soft thump, almost a plink. My eyes stayed dry. In the six months since Walker had flown off Baptiste’s Bluff, I had shed very few tears, and then only tears of vindication. When the charges against Ava were dropped. When Jacoby told me that the police had officially reversed their finding about my parents’ deaths, and posthumously charged Walker with murder, the murders of Frank and Heather Connell, and the murder of Guy Edwards. They left only Michael Jacoby’s death unsolved, but it was forevermore under a cloud of suspicion. When Bonds and Lisa were captured on St. John, gassing up his yacht before they tried to make their break out of U.S. territory, I’d wondered how far out to sea Lisa would have made it before Bonds tossed her overboard. The U.S.V.I. police had charged them with conspiracy to commit murder, times three. Word on the street was that the Feds would come after them for money laundering soon, too. I looked skyward and said, “Thank you, God.”

  I kneaded dirt from my hand. A thin layer formed over the ring. It hurt. It hurt a lot. “You’ll always be with me, Mom. You, too, Dad.”

  My next burial item was easier.

  A clear plastic Cruzan Light Rum bottle, empty. The same one I had poured down Ava’s sink on the day we almost suffered the same fate as my parents. I didn’t need it anymore. I had stayed dry ever since then, and I credited hard work and the influence of a big jumbie house.

  Not that I hadn’t faced temptations. When your boyfriend owns the hottest restaurant on island and hosts incredible wine tasting parties, temptation is a constant. Bart didn’t understand my decision to completely stop drinking, but he hadn’t known the old me. He thought I was the next best thing since crème brûlée, so maybe he didn’t need to understand. I looked over my shoulder and said, “Thank you, Annalise.”

  Bart’s car motored up the drive now. I couldn’t see him, but I heard the sound of the wheels on the dirt road. Spending time up here, I had come to recognize engines by sound: the loud rumble of Rashidi’s Jeep, the whine of Crazy’s truck as it strained under loads of building supplies, the purr of Bart’s well-tuned black Pathfinder. I picked dirt up in both hands, closed my hands over it like a book, then opened them from the reverse side, dumping the dirt in a splat on the liter bottle.

  One more item to go. The hardest one. The most secret one. The one no one else had to understand but me. The one I certainly hadn’t trusted Ava with. Even though we’d reached an understanding about how we would act toward one another’s men after she was so flirtatious with Bart, I knew Ava was still Ava. I didn’t feel safe putting this information in her hands, or anyone’s. I loved her, but I’d keep my boundaries, thank you very much.

  I reached into my left pocket and pulled out the SIM card to my iPhone. The old SIM card, the one for my Dallas phone number. I’d lived on St. Marcos for seven months now, and only this morning had I changed my cell phone to a 340 area code number.

  Letting go of my Dallas life shouldn’t be this damn hard. I squeezed the tiny black rectangle, and before I even knew it was coming, a sob escaped me.

  “Not now. I can’t cry now. I can’t let Bart see this.”

  It wasn’t letting go of my Dallas life that hurt. It was severing the last link to Nick. A number he knew. A number he could still call, if he wanted. A number he had not called in the months I’d lived here. A number he wouldn’t call.

  My breath came in sharp gasps now, but I held the tears in. I extended my hand over the hole, SIM card hidden away in it.

  “Drop it. Let go of it,” I ordered myself.

  I sensed a presence to my left. I whirled, feeling foolish but holding the SIM card behind me.

  Her. She stood only ten feet away from me, under the farthest branches of a flamboyant in full bloom. Her ebony skin shimmered below the crown of brilliant orange flowers. Her eyes glowed like agates. There wasn’t a drop of breeze, but her skirt was flowing out behind her. She shook her head, then held her arms open. I stepped toward her, toward those arms, that embrace.

  “Katie?”

  Bart’s voice. I willed my eyes to track the sound. He stood on the side of the house next to mini towers of biscuit-colored travertine floor tile ready for installation, up the hill from me. He looked taller from this angle, and blonder. He wore a powder-blue t-shirt and navy shorts, and he was fresh, like crisp linen and spring sunshine. He squinted, sunglassless. But he had seen me, and he waved.

  “What are you doing?” he called out.

  “Hey,” I replied, stalling.

  I turned back toward my mysterious friend, and saw what I expected. Nothing. Dammit. With my back to Bart, I flung the SIM card into my little pit, and I kicked dirt into it, then rotated my foot longways and used it to shovel more dirt in the hole. The SIM card disappeared. I shoved more. Now soil covered the entire bottle. Another, and another, and then one last time I pushed the dirt in. I couldn’t see anything but earth in the shallow, narrow hole. Good enough.

  Only seconds had passed. I faced Bart now. He had closed the distance between us.

  I said, “Just digging a test hole. I was thinking of planting a banana tree down here.”

  I held my fingers crossed behind my back. My pulse was so loud in my ears that I wondered if he could hear it. My mind ping-ponged between the hole and its contents and the here and now with Bart.

  Bart’s arms slipped around me and he pulled me in tight to his chest. I exhaled, and circled his body with my own arms. I laid my head on his chest. His heart thumped at an almost normal pace. He nipped my ear, then whispered into it.

  “I thought we would do that together. What are we going to do with you, little Miss Independent?”

  Before I could answer, he kissed me, something I had grown to like a lot, and a darn good way to forget about what lay beneath five inches of dirt at my feet.
I sank into his kiss for a moment, then pulled back to answer his question.

  “I think you’ll figure something out,” I said, lacing my voice with as much Angelina Jolie as a tall, skinny redhead could muster.

  He smiled, and his white teeth gleamed against his island-tanned skin. He looked like California, like the cover of Men’s Journal, like a man who wanted to lick my toes and eat me for dinner. He grabbed my hand and gave me a tug.

  “Yes, I know a few things we could try,” he said.

  “Wait,” I replied.

  I pulled my hand out of his and picked up the flat gray rock I had brought to mark the burial spot. I dropped it into position. I wondered if I should have put the SIM card in a ziplock, just in case.

  “What’s that for?” Bart asked.

  I looked straight into his eyes, blue as the Caribbean Sea. “To remind me this spot is too far from the house for the banana trees.”

  Bart scrunched his forehead, then threw back his head and laughed. “Only you, Katie. Only you.”

  And I put my hand back into his. I snuck one last glance at the earthen pile, then inhaled soundlessly through my nose. We walked up the hill, away from my buried ghosts, back toward Annalise and the sparkling promise of something new, together.

  The End

  Now that you have finished Saving Grace, won’t you please consider writing an honest review and leaving it on Goodreads and the online sales channel of your preference? Reviews are the best way readers discover great new books. I would truly appreciate it.

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  Excerpt from Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Mystery Series, #2)