Page 31 of What the Wife Knew

A tour of the shed didn’t turn up much. I now knew I’d inherited a riding lawn mower and lots of shiny probably-never-used tools, but neither of those things pointed me toward the bat.

The greenhouse had a pitched roof and tinted glass walls. Glass everything. Benches outlined the internal space and an empty table ran down the middle of the twenty-foot-long structure. Some empty pots and heaters. Nothing too exciting. Still, the cabinets around the sink at the far end of the building needed a quick check.

I walked along the wooden floor, scanning the area for hidden spaces. Buckets, a watering can, and assorted sprays and bottles under the sink were the only sign there was once life in here.

Frustrated and hungry, I spun around to leave and glanced up to see if the sun had bothered to come out. All the vents on the ceiling were closed. A hanging shelf about five feet off the ground ran down each of the long sides of the greenhouse. After a few steps I saw it. A sliver of something peeking above the shelf lip on the right.

I balanced on the bench and stretched up. The second my hand touched the wood I knew what it was. The bat.

One look at it and I saw the bloodstains.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Her

Present Day

Finding the bat and knowing what to do with it were two different things. I should have thought this through. My cellphone buzzed in my pocket, and I ignored it. Hiding evidence came first. Make that destroying evidence. Burning the evidence might be a possibility.

My mind raced with solutions and warnings. I’m not sure how long I stood on the bench, but my cell buzzed twice more. Now wasn’t the time for alarm companies or scam calls. I needed to think.

The weight of the bat felt familiar. The brown splashes and dots on it were new.

Think.

The answer came in a flash. Rinse off the bat, scrub off any stains, then hide it in a place, not at the house, where one might find a bat. A Little League baseball field came to mind. There were a thousand of them in the area.

If a kid found it, though... Enough people had been traumatized by Richmond. I didn’t want to add anyone else, especially not an innocent child.

Then there was the other problem. The police or Kathryn oreven Kathryn with the police’s help could be watching. Leading them straight to what seemed to be the murder weapon was not a great plan. Not that I had another one.

I jumped down. As soon as my feet hit the floor I saw movement outside. People in my yard. More unwanted company. The worst unwanted company—Elias and Detective Sessions.

“Is there no other crime in this town?”

They stood at the back of the house. They looked up. They looked around. They stared at the greenhouse. The damn door was open. Could they see me from that far away? Could they see the bat in my hand? I hid it behind my back as if that would help.

Holy shit.

When they started walking toward me, they weren’t rushing. But they weren’t going away either.

Clean. Clean. Clean.

I raced to the sink, trying to duck and stay out of sight, which was not an easy task in a building made of glass. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. Panicked, my brain started to shut down. That could not happen. I did a mental kick start as I reached into the cabinets and dragged out a bucket. A bottle tipped over and a can of bug spray rolled around, making more noise than I wanted, but I kept moving.

The men marched at a steady pace. I never appreciated the size of the three-acre property as much as I did right now. Fingers crossed that the greenhouse was too far from them to get a good look at my scrambling inside.

My breathing grew labored, almost staccato, as I alternated between reading labels on the bottles and cans under the sink and peeking behind me to see how close I was to being arrested. Insecticide. Liquid dish soap.A disinfectant with bleach. Thelast one. That should work. Actually, I had no idea if it would work. They didn’t teach me how to destroy DNA in that one community college English class I took.

I stood up, taking the bottle with me and dunked the stained end of the bat in the bucket. Cold water rushed over my hands as I poured a healthy portion of the hoped-for DNA killer over the bat then rinsed. The slight sting on my skin didn’t stop me from sloshing the mix of water and disinfectant around and wiping down the bat. But I still held the damn thing, which meant fingerprints. I scanned the sink and immediate area for the sponge or towel. No luck.

My T-shirt. The only choice. Without taking my sweater off, I slipped my arms out of the sleeves and then out of the shirt underneath and ripped the tee over my head. As an awkward preteen, I’d perfected the technique for removing a bra from under my clothes. The skill worked here, too.

The voices drew closer. I couldn’t hear the actual words. Only the low rumble of men locked in a discussion.

I soaked the T-shirt and rubbed it over the bat. Scrubbing, cleaning, and possibly erasing. The burning sensation from the disinfectant made my hands ache and the air catch in my throat. Another pour of the liquid and I’d rubbed down the entire bat.

The harsh stench of disinfectant filled the greenhouse. There was no way to hide that smell or the damp bat. The goal was to minimize the damage.

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