Chapter 27
“What are you doing up?” Dylan whispers.
“Same question,” I hiss back, looking at the hardcover copy of Anne of Green Gables in his hand. “Is that supposed to be a weapon?”
He looks at it, a little embarrassed. “It’s got sharp corners.
Plus, I heard someone…howling out here? Was that you?
” Then he sees the box and the cavity under the floorboards.
“What are you doing? Wait, is that the box?” I nod, and, now that my heart has returned to its regular rhythms, I’m glad to have him here, partly for the company and partly to be a witness to my brilliance.
“It was hidden under the floorboards,” I say as Dylan sits down next to me, placing Anne reverently on the bottom step of the staircase, where the next person to come down the stairs could slip on it and brain themselves on the floor.
(This isn’t foreshadowing, just an observation, but there’s about to be so much more than a dangerously placed book to worry about.)
“How did you find it?”
I milk my moment, explaining to Dylan how I fit the pieces together (eventually) and (here’s hoping) making him feel like an idiot for overlooking the same clues I did.
“Whoever put the box here must have knocked something loose that affected the lights in my room,” I say, really spelling it out in case he got lost along the way. “Grandad’s wiring is pretty dodgy. I guess they planned to come back for the box later, or maybe they just didn’t want it to be found.”
“Who?”
“The murderer.”
“Right.”
We both look at the box.
“What do you think is in it?” I ask.
“You haven’t opened it?”
“It can’t be gold bars,” I go on. “Not heavy enough.”
“Why would the murderer leave gold bars behind, exactly?”
“Cash, maybe?”
“This might be a crazy idea, but instead of speculating, should we just open it and find out immediately?” Sleep-deprived Dylan is no fun.
Now that I’ve found the box, I’m reluctant to crack the top in a way that must seem both ridiculous and annoying to an outsider.
I don’t know how to explain it except to say that it feels a bit like opening your end-of-year school report: You want to know, you have to know, but you’re also very aware that the information is going to determine not just your immediate mood (and, crucially, that of your parents) but, potentially, your future.
I drum my fingers on the box and push it toward Dylan. “Do you want to do it?”
“You found it.”
“We’re supposed to be partners.”
“Okay. Let’s do it together.” Dylan scoots closer, grabbing one side of the cardboard lid as I take the other, our heads bumping as we crane forward to see what’s in the box.
What’s in the box is…paper?
“At least it’s not, like, a head,” Dylan says, his mouth almost touching my ear. All those tiny little hairs on my neck I forget about ninety-five percent of the time stand up.
“Whose head would it even be?”
He ignores my question. “What did you think it was going to be, really?”
“Not a head.”
“I kind of can’t believe you actually found it.”
“That’s insulting.”
“It’s really not.” Then Dylan does a thing that…
okay, maybe it’s embarrassing to be focusing on this right now when you just want to know what’s in the box, Ruth, but this is how it happened.
First let me paint the picture: The two of us are sitting close together on the floor, our arms are touching, and we’re both leaning forward over the box, but supporting ourselves with one hand each on the floorboards.
(I’m getting to the thing, honestly.) Then Dylan picks up his hand, the one on the floor, and I think he’s going to dig inside the box, but instead he lays it back down on top of mine.
He does it without putting his weight on it, so it’s not so much that he’s crushing my hand but that his hand is resting on top of mine.
Take my word for it, it’s so much better than it sounds (and he’s definitely not my cousin, just in case you’re starting to feel squeamish).
Then he turns his head (remember, we’re right next to each other, and also, chill out, you’ll find out about the box really soon), so he’s looking right at me.
“Seriously, Ruth, you’re amazing.”
His eyes have gone a bit soft again, and this is the point where if I was, say, Ali, I would lean in and kiss him.
Or if I was Libby (and, in her case, if Dylan was a girl), I would stay right where I am and let him kiss me.
Definitely, there would be kissing involved.
I don’t know how to explain it, but my best friends were born knowing how to make these things happen.
I’m me, though, so, overthinking it, I ignore the hand situation and say, too loudly, “Let’s take a look, then. ”
Dylan’s face briefly drops, then rebounds. “Let’s do it.”
“Sorry,” I say quickly.
“What for?”
“Nothing.”
Unlikely as it seems, I’ve somehow made things worse because maybe the Moment was actually just a regular no-cap moment and I’ve imagined Dylan’s accidental hand placement was a thing when it wasn’t, and if the space under the floorboards was any bigger, I’d be tempted to throw myself into it.
Then I sneak a look at Dylan’s face and I’m pretty sure he’s trying not to smile.
Dylan lifts out the top layer of papers and starts to go through them.
I reach into the box for more and my hands hit plastic.
It’s a cheap sporting trophy with a softball player on top and Best Team Player engraved underneath.
Not…quite what I expected. There’s also a little drawstring velvet bag, which I weigh in my hand.
This is more like it. Diamonds? Rubies? Some kind of microchip…
thing, like in a spy movie? The thought exhausts me: I have seriously not got the energy for international intrigue/espionage/fighting anyone on top of a train, or whatever.
I tip the contents of the bag onto my hand, then immediately let them drop through my fingers to scatter on the floorboards.
“What?” Dylan asks in response to my stifled shriek.
“Teeth,” I say. “It’s full of teeth.”
We look at the small pile of beige-yellow teeth lying on the floor, and then at each other.
“So, Gertie was, like, a serial killer and these are her trophies?” he asks, joking but maybe not completely joking.
“I think they’re baby teeth,” I say when we’ve both calmed down.
“That’s worse, isn’t it?”
I pick up some papers.
“I’m scared it’s going to be a huge anticlimax. Like GG was secretly a tax dodger and this will be forty years’ worth of pay slips.”
“Well, let’s find out if the tax office needs to get involved.”
We spread the paper out on the floor and it doesn’t take long to get the picture. Here are the birth certificate, school records, sports trophies, and, yes, presumably baby teeth of someone called Martin Robert McCulloch. GG’s son. It’s got to be.
“So,” I say, wanting to be the one who puts it all together but also not sure what the hell I’m putting together. “GG kept all these mementos of her son—that makes sense. But why did her killer not want anyone to find them?”
“There must be something in here.”
“Like…what?”
Neither of us says anything. I go back to the box to see what else I can find, and I’m sifting through swimming certificates when my hand strikes something hard. It’s a phone. It’s old but not ancient—an iPhone from maybe four or five generations ago. It’s dead.
“I’ve found photos,” Dylan says, glancing quickly at a couple of them. “They look like some kid: Gertie’s son, I guess.” He looks up. “You found your phone.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Dylan. My phone is my fifth limb. This isn’t mine.”
“So, whose is it?”
“I dunno. It looks familiar, though.” I turn the dead cell phone over in my hands. “It could be GG’s, because Dad gave her one of his old ones. I think I recognize the chip on the screen.”
“What does that mean?” Dylan asks.
“I don’t know.”
We abandon the box for the kitchen and plug the phone into the charger.
“I’m so dusty,” I say, holding up my hands, and Dylan, oh so casually, like it’s not even a thing, takes one of them and turns it over in his.
“Filthy,” he says, dusting my hand with his own.
It tickles but I don’t laugh. When it’s clean(ish) he doesn’t let go but laces his fingers through mine.
I could write another whole chapter about the hand-holding, but I am aware you’ve come here to see a mystery solved (and we’re so close), so I’ll try to be restrained.
Just take my word for it that it’s…something.
“Ruth,” he says. “This is probably not the time, but there’s something I wanted to tell you.”
Then the phone beeps and we step apart, Dylan banging against the microwave so hard it skids across the kitchen bench.
“Crap,” he says, grabbing his elbow. “Hold up,” he says a moment later as he pushes the microwave back into place.
“There’s something here.” Then he’s holding another phone that’s a few generations younger than GG’s.
“Here’s your missing phone. It fell down behind the microwave when it was charging, I think. ” He hands it to me.
“That’s not my phone either,” I say, although I have to double-check because not only is it the same model, but the lock screen has a photo of what I’m pretty sure is Yallingup Beach—the same as mine.
When Dad took me there not even a week ago, the water was too cold to swim in, but it was chock-full of surfers.
The combination of that beach shot and the fact that the phone’s screen is crammed with missed calls and messages makes me sure I know who it belongs to.
“Seriously? How many lost phones can one house reasonably contain, do you think?”
“Seriously.”
“Well, whose is it?”
For now I don’t tell him. Instead I pick up GG’s phone, which is now asking for a passcode.
“What’s her passcode?” Dylan asks.
“I don’t know. Do you know?”
“How would I know? What year was she born?”
“I’m going to try 1234,” I say, stabbing it in.
“How old do you think she was?”
“GG wouldn’t have bothered putting on a proper security code—she would have left it with the default one or something she could remember.” I say this more confidently than I feel. It doesn’t work. “Nope.”
“9876?”
“Nope. I’m going to try four zeros. That’s what my mum has on hers; she says it’s the only one she can remember.”
I think we’re each as surprised as the other when it works.
“Now I’m impressed,” Dylan says.
“You weren’t impressed when I discovered the phone?”
“Can we call it discovered if it was just sitting in a box?”
“What happened to ‘oh, Ruth, you’re a genius’?”
“I literally never said that.”
“You thought it.”
Dylan laughs. “Come on. Let’s start with her messages.”
It takes minutes of scrolling through GG’s messages (hardly any), calls (minimal), and apps (she’s not on social media, what a shocker) before we think to check out her photos. It’s right there: a video, recorded the night she died. I tap it to play, then tap it again to stop.
“Do we watch it now?”
“Obviously, but wait.” Dylan grabs my hand to stop me before I can tap the screen again. “Just, before you do, that thing I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me later,” I say, wanting and not wanting to know.
“It’s just, uh, Lisa and I broke up.”
I cover my face with my free hand. “Do we have to talk about this now?” I say, talking as much to Dylan as to my own brain, which is filling up with questions.
When did he find the time to do this in a Wi-Fi and phone-service dead zone?
Was a carrier pigeon involved? Did he hire a skywriter on the DL?
Is Lisa right now answering the door to a singing telegram prepared to use music and dance to break the bad news?
“Just thought you might like to know.”
“Thank you for the update. Can we watch the video now?”
“I just didn’t want you to think—”
“I am up to speed.”
“I’m glad we had this enlightening talk.”
I mostly manage to hide my smile. Dylan doesn’t even try.
The video starts, and the moment it does, I forget about Dylan and Lisa and even about the hand-holding because I’m looking at GG’s face, speaking straight into the camera.
“Hello,” she says.