Motor Mouth - Janet Evanovich [59]
Hooker turned and trudged through the muck, back to the SUV. I followed him, no longer caring where I stepped. I was in mud to my ankles. My hair had succumbed to the relentless drizzle and was plastered to my face. My jeans were soaked through to my underwear. And I was cold clear to the bone.
Beans popped up when Hooker opened the side door. Beans was wearing his excited now what expression, looking like he wanted to be part of the adventure.
“Sorry, big guy,” Hooker said. “Too much mud. You’re going to have to stay in the car.”
Here’s the irony of it. The dog would have loved to roll in the mud, and he had to stay in the car. I wanted to stay in the car, and I had to wallow in the mud.
I grabbed a shovel and the flashlight, and I followed Hooker back to the gravesite. I took a stance, rammed the shovel into the dirt and flung the dirt about ten feet to my side. I just kept ramming the shovel in and throwing the friggin’ dirt away. I looked up and found Hooker watching me.
“You keep digging like that and you’re going to rupture something,” Hooker said. “And you have that look on your face like your underwear’s riding up.”
“I’m wearing a thong. It’s always up.”
“Oh, man,” Hooker said. “I wish you hadn’t told me that. It’s all I’m going to be able to think about.”
“Then I’m happy to be able to supply a diversion, because the other things we have to think about aren’t pleasant.”
Actually, I was digging like a demon because I was furious. There was no justice in the world. This had all started out as a good deed, and good deeds weren’t supposed to end like this. Where’s the reward for being a good person? Where’s the satisfaction?
I plunged my shovel into the dirt and hit something solid. Not a rock. A rock would go chink. This hit with a muffled thud that caused my breath to catch in my chest. I pulled my shovel back and a ragged scrap of material clung to the shovel tip. My mind went numb, and I froze with the shovel a foot off the ground. Cold horror slid through my stomach, my pulse pounded in my ears, and it was lights out. I heard someone call to Hooker. I guess it was me.
When I regained consciousness, I was in the back of the SUV and Beans was standing over me panting. Hooker’s face hovered beside Beans’s big dog head. They both looked worried.
“I think I found Bernie,” I said to Hooker.
“I know. You turned white and went face-first into the mud. Scared the crap out of me. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. Do I look okay?”
“Yeah. A little muddy, but we’ll get you cleaned up and you’ll be good as new. You can breathe through your nose, right?”
“Yeah. Now that we’ve found him, what should we do with him?”
“We have to move him,” Hooker said.
“No way! It’s so horrible. The rain, and the mud, and the body’s probably all wormy.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s too soon for maggots, but there are some real good night crawlers back there. Big suckers.”
The bells started clanging in my head again.
“I feel like a grave robber,” I whispered.
“Darlin’, we’re doing him a favor. He doesn’t want to be buried behind my shop. He didn’t like me. We’ll put him in a nice clean garbage bag and take him to a better place. We could even buy him flowers.”
“Flowers would be nice.”
I thought I saw Hooker roll his eyes, but I could be wrong. I was still sort of cobwebby.
“Stay here with Beans,” Hooker said. “I can finish up.”
I lay perfectly still, willing my head to clear. Beans flopped down next to me, warm and reassuring. When the feeling returned to my lips and my fingertips, I crawled out of the SUV. It was dark and still drizzling. No moon. No stars. No streetlights. Only degrees of blackness to differentiate between sky and building.
I heard Hooker before I saw him. He was dragging Bernie. And it looked like he had Bernie by the foot, although it was hard to tell since Bernie was bagged and wrapped with bungee cords.
“It’s sort of an odd shape for a body,” I said to Hooker.
“Yeah, I don’t know how he got like this. He had to have been folded up in the trunk when he went rigor-mortis