“You can’t smell vodka,” R.J. said.
“I can,” Ariel said and gave him the look.
“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” R.J. said, staring at Ariel.
“Anyone have any ideas what to do? Besides call the police, that is?” Sara asked, meaning to distract R.J.
“Do you think the police will come bursting in on us if we don’t do something soon?” Ariel asked.
“Yes,” R.J. answered. He looked at his watch. “It’s been …” He looked at Sara.
“Twenty-three minutes.”
“Yes, it’s been twenty-three minutes since we found the body. They’ll be expecting us to do something soon.”
“There’s a chest freezer in the basement,” David said and the others looked at him, wide-eyed. “Remember?” he asked R.J. “She told us.”
“Right,” R.J. said, smiling. “On the stairs. She said her first apartment wasn’t as big as the freezer in her basement.”
For a moment, the four of them looked at one another.
“If the body is gone in the morning,” Ariel said, “they’ll know it’s in the house.”
“Not unless they see us take it out,” Sara said, looking at R.J. “Remember when you got Mr. Dunkirk so drunk he had to be carried out?”
“I didn’t get Charley drunk,” R.J. said. “He does it to himself every day. He—”
“What are you thinking?” Ariel asked her cousin.
Sara looked at R.J. “Could we fake it?”
For a moment he just looked at her, then a slow smile crept over his face. “Two of us take the body downstairs, while two more make the people who put it there think we’re hauling the body out of the house.”
“That’s exactly what’s in my mind,” Sara said.
“We always were a good team,” R.J. said softly.
“We should all stay together,” Ariel said firmly. “We shouldn’t separate.”
“Ariel,” R.J. said, “I want you to go into Phyllis’s room and get something of hers to put on the body. Something identifiable. Maybe monogrammed. If the body is found I want it to look like Vancurren did it. It won’t fool anyone for long, but we need all the time we can get.”
Ariel swallowed. It was one thing to snoop around her mother’s house, but quite another to snoop in a stranger’s bedroom—with the owner in it.
Sara stood up. “Let’s get going. I fear we’ll be spending the night in—”
“Don’t say it,” David said, standing up. “No one is to touch that body. No hair, no body fluids, nothing.”
Sara looked at David and saw that there were little white lines beside his mouth, and there were circles under his eyes. If his ambition was to have a political career, it could be ending right now. She wanted to go to him and comfort him, but R.J. stepped between them. “Ariel, you go …”
Sara could see that Ariel was scared to death. She walked with her to the door that opened on the stairs.
“What if she’s awake?” Ariel whispered. She was glad there was a light over the stairs.
“My guess is she wants to be asleep so she can’t be accused of knowing anything,” Sara said.
“Or maybe she has a conscience,” Ariel said to Sara, then they looked at each other and shook their heads no. “Maybe her bedroom door is locked.” Again, they shook their heads no. The last door in the house to be locked would be Phyllis Vancurren’s bedroom.
“Three, six, eight down, backwards coming up,” Sara whispered as she opened the door.