Page 15 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer (Summers in Seaside)

fifteen

. . .

Elle

It takes almost an hour and sheer herculean feats of strength, along with three heavy-duty plant dollies and Kiki V-T’s orthopedic pet ramp, but we finally manage to get Doug out of the Jenkins yard and into the back of my SUV.

The process leaves both of us covered in sweat, mud, grass, and a splash of eau-de-dead-Doug, which, as it turns out, is not a scent anyone is bottling soon.

My arms feel like overcooked spaghetti noodles, my back is screaming in protest, and Amy has a smear of something questionable across her cheek that I don’t have the heart to point out.

I wish I could say that the pet ramp was my stroke of brilliance, it would’ve been nice to feel like a full participant in escaping the idiocy I’ve created.

But no. That genius moment was all Amy. She remembered the whole saga from last year when Kiki V-T had her cruciate ligament surgery, and I nearly herniated a disc trying to lift her 85-pound diva-dog self into the car for every vet follow-up.

Amy, clearly a font of excellent ideas, mentions the ramp and next thing I know we are putting everything we’ve got into shoving two hundred and fifty pounds of dead Doug weight up that freaking ramp like we’re about to film an infomercial for DIY corpse transport.

And she was right.

It worked like a charm.

The rest of the plan is simple—if you squint at it and don’t think too hard.

Doug’s truck is somewhere in the neighborhood.

His keys were still in his pants pocket.

The idea is to find the truck, butt the back of my SUV to the truck bed, and slide Doug from one to the other like a grotesque human conveyor belt.

Then drive the truck somewhere remote and push it off a cliff.

Voilà. Problem solved. No body, no crime.

Just a very suspicious GPS history and the kind of lifelong trauma that settles deep in your bones.

It takes ten minutes of block-circling before we finally spot Doug’s big, ugly banana-mobile parked haphazardly beneath a leaning palm tree.

It’s oddly conspicuous for a man who’s made a career out of stealing from vulnerable women.

You’d think he’d drive something less visible.

Not Doug. He’s out committing fraud and attempting B this is not ideal corpse-hiding conditions.

“Okay, let’s do this,” I mutter, stepping out and praying the neighbors are deep in their red wine infused Ambien comas.

I press the button on the fob and hear the satisfying click of the hatch releasing. I walk to the back, grab the handle, and open the truck bed fully, ready to complete the transfer and move on with the rest of our crime-filled morning.

And freeze.

Because there, laid out neatly like some kind of macabre presentation, is another body.

For a split second, my brain refuses to process it. I think I might be hallucinating from adrenaline and exhaustion. The smell hits first—plastic with something sharp like rotted meat doused with bleach.

I blink once.

Twice.

And the shape registers. Heavy plastic. Zip ties. No head. Just... torso. Wrapped tighter than Doug, and honestly, with a lot more care and craftsmanship, leaking dark gelatinous fluids all over the bed of Doug’s truck.

Amy steps up behind me and lets out a shriek so sharp, a bird somewhere in the trees echoes back in protest.

“THAT’S NOT DOUG,” she whisper-shouts, eyes wide and panicked.

“Nope,” I croak, my voice about four octaves higher than usual.

“BECAUSE WE HAVE DOUG.”

“Yep.”

“THAT’S—THAT’S A WHOLE OTHER DEAD PERSON.” Her face is an unnatural shade of… something not normal.

“Mmm-hmm.” I nod in agreement.

We both stare in silent, stunned horror. It’s not every day you see a dead body wrapped in plastic. At least if I don’t count today.

My hands start tingling and my mouth goes dry.

Amy slaps my arm hard enough to jolt me. “This is bad! Doug killed someone before you killed him! That’s like—a double homicide or something!”

“I don’t know if I have the emotional bandwidth for someone else’s corpse right now,” I say honestly, because truly, this night has been a lot.

Amy starts pacing in frantic little circles. “We were about to launch Doug off a cliff. In this truck. With a second body already in it. Like some kind of low-budget mob movie!”

“That would’ve been so messy.”

She stops. “No! That would’ve been perfect!” She throws her hands in the air. “Like a murder-suicide double feature. He could’ve been a serial killer! This might’ve been his mobile murder office!”

“Amy…”

“No, really! What if Doug was planning to kill Celeste next? What if you stopped him before he could strike again? What if you’re, like, a hero?” She claps her hands together like she’s just solved a true crime podcast.

“Okay, okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I mutter, stepping back. I slam the bedcover shut, before the headless wonder inside can impregnate himself further in my brain. “I can’t look at that anymore. I’m good. I’ve reached my quota.”

Amy’s still pacing. “What if Doug didn’t scam you randomly? What if all of this is connected? Like, there’s some secret underground kill club and we just pulled the curtain back on it?”

I blink at her. “Like a murder ring?”

“Yes! A pyramid scheme but with corpses! It has that kind of energy.”

I let out a choked laugh. “You think Doug was involved in a murder ring?”

“I think we might be involved now. By default. You killed a guy who might’ve been a serial killer. That puts us, like, halfway up the murder pyramid.”

“Okay, well, great. I didn’t mean to join anything. And now I’ve got two dead bodies on my hands.”

“Not necessarily,” Amy says, her voice suddenly calm in that dangerous, 'I have a terrible idea' way she gets. “Who knows we were here?”

I scan the quiet, empty street. The houses are dark, the only sign of life the occasional flicker of a security light triggered by a rogue cat. “No one. I guess.”

“Exactly. So, we leave it that way.”

“I’m not following.”

“We go. Now. Pretend this never happened. We were never here. We saw nothing.”

“You want to just leave the body?” She gives me a flat look. “What’s your alternative? Shove Doug into a truck that already contains a decapitated John Doe and then drive the whole murder combo off a cliff?”

I look at her. Then the truck. Then the sky, which is now a pale blue smear on the horizon. The sun is rising fast, and we are running out of time and excuses.

This is insane. This is criminal. This is... my life now?

“I can live with that,” I say.