Chapter 30
There’s no tea. Somehow over the course of the past few days we’ve drained the farmhouse dry, not just of proper tea but of Aunty Vinka’s disgusting herbal stuff too.
This turns out to be a good thing, since one of the policemen summoned by Detective Peterson boils up a batch of hot chocolate on the stove, using a jar of chocolate powder that’s been hiding at the back of the pantry all this time.
Everyone takes a mug, and a packet of gingersnaps (seriously, there were gingersnaps in the house?) is passed around. The double sugar hit feels restorative.
We’re mostly all here, gathered around the table, including Bec and Shippy, who arrived in the other car two minutes too late to be of any help at all.
Detective Peterson has stayed behind to take some preliminary statements (her words) from us all.
She’s not such a badass that she’s doing this while bleeding all over the floor or anything: She was wearing a bulletproof vest when Sasha shot her, and so she has only a gross red lump just under her collarbone that will rule out spaghetti-strap sleeves for a week.
Sasha was last seen in the back of an ambulance, which turned on both its lights and sirens this time.
Do people still die of snakebites, I wanted to know only a few days earlier.
I don’t know it yet, but they do, and Sasha is one of the unlucky ones.
He’s that Body Number Two I promised you, or he will be pretty soon.
Nick and his suspected broken arm took the second ambulance, and he waved Aunty Vinka away (figuratively, not literally) when she offered to go with him.
The paramedics were buddies from his last hospital stint, apparently.
“Alex and Sarah will take care of me—we’re watching Yellowjackets together” were his last words before the doors shut (not last words as in he’s going to die—don’t worry, he’ll be fine).
“You must be wondering why I turned up,” Detective Peterson says to Dad, who looks blank because he really hasn’t had time to think about that: He’s been too busy apologizing for leaving me and Dylan alone.
I’m trying to enjoy it because he’s not going to be nearly so sympathetic when he learns I tried to bait a would-be murderer into a confession.
“Did you find out about Sasha being in prison with Rob, I mean Martin?” I ask, for once not showing off but genuinely curious. All the faces in the room turn in my direction, embarrassingly catching me trying to dunk the last chunk of cookie into my hot chocolate and losing my grip.
“That’s right,” Detective Peterson says, giving me an X-ray of a glance. “I came here to ask you all how much you knew about Gertie’s son and got a bit of a surprise when I looked through the window and saw Sasha holding a gun.”
“A gun?” says Dad.
The X-ray intensifies. “But how did you know about Martin and Sasha, Ruth?”
The blush starts at my neck, but I ignore it. I figured this out and I’d like to get some credit for it.
“I knew that GG’s son was still alive, so—”
“Sorry, GG is Gertrude?”
“Yeah, that’s just what I called her.”
“Go on.”
“So, uh, I knew that GG’s son was still alive because Sasha told us he was and Laura at the library confirmed it.”
“I know about that.”
“We didn’t figure out that Sasha was in prison with GG’s son until we saw the video, but it makes sense.”
Silence. Then: “Sorry, did you say video?”
Oops. I meant to save that bit for later. Or maybe I should have opened with it.
“GG recorded a video the night she died,” I say, feeling exhausted at the prospect of trying to explain it all and (almost) wishing Dylan would step in and take over.
“It actually, uh, I was going to tell you all, of course, but it shows everything that happened that night.” I explain about the video GG made for her son and the money she’d been sending him via Sasha, all over a chorus of “What?” and “Are you kidding?” and “How am I just hearing this now?” When I do the big reveal about how GG died, there’s a long beat of silence.
Obviously, now, I can see I should have opened with this.
Aunty Vinka starts to cry with what I assume is relief.
“Where is this phone now?” Detective Peterson asks.
“She was trying to lift the typewriter down?” Dad says, and there’s not really anything I can say to him about that.
Too late I realize my dad might be the most responsible of any of us for what happened.
If he’d taken the typewriter downstairs like GG had asked, presumably so she could give it to Sasha to pass on to Rob/Martin, GG might still be alive.
I let him put his arm around me, but that’s as close as I get to telling him it’s not his fault.
Parents get to lie to kids all the time, but I don’t think it really works in reverse.
“Where is this phone?” Detective Peterson asks again. “And why didn’t you bring it to us immediately?”
“We only found it last night,” Dylan says, and heads whip around to him too.
“You knew about this?” Bec asks her son.
“You’re really going to give me a hard time about keeping secrets?”
“Where is the video?” Detective Peterson asks again, and even though she’s not talking all that loudly, somehow her voice shuts everyone else up.
“We gave the phone to Sasha,” I say.
“How did he know you had it?”
“We showed it to him.”
“You what?” That’s Dad, catching up.
“He just turned up,” I say, which is not a super-solid defense. “I had the idea that we could, uh, you know, that he might give himself away about having tried to kill Rob.”
“Sasha tried to kill Rob?” Dad asks.
“Sorry, yeah, I should have said. Rob is GG’s son. His real name is Martin.” I thought I’d love this, but I’m already tired of telling this story, which I’ll spend months telling and retelling.
“What?” Detective Peterson says.
“Are you serious?” Dad chimes in.
“Dylan, were you involved in this too?” Aunty Vinka demands.
“I’m going to need you to explain, please.”
Since that last question comes from Detective Peterson, I decide that’s the one I’ll deal with first.
“Along with GG’s phone, we found a bunch of photos.
Most of them are GG with Rob/Martin when he was really young, so we didn’t recognize him at first. But some show him when he’s older, before he went to prison, I guess, and it’s pretty obviously Rob, so we figured Rob must be Martin.
That’s why Sasha tried to kill him.” The room is silent: Everyone is hooked, except Shippy, who, rather than meditating on this string of revelations and contemplating his own role in bringing about Rob’s potential untimely death, is reading a two-day-old racing guide from the paper.
“There’s other stuff too: The date of birth on Martin’s birth certificate was a week ago, and when we met Rob, he said the surfing trip was a birthday present to himself, so that lined up too.
” I try to get this bit out modestly, but, seriously, I’m smug about having noticed this.
Unfortunately, nobody else seems impressed.
“Plus, Martin’s middle name was Robert, so, you know, once I saw that… ”
“Ruth,” Dad says.
“I don’t know why Sasha wanted Martin’s birth certificate and stuff,” I say. “It’s not like it’s worth money.”
Detective Peterson nods. She’s the only one who seems to be taking this even slightly in stride, and if I could crack open her skull (which I wouldn’t, gross), I think I’d see the bits of this mystery clicking together.
“It’s possible Sasha’s original plan was to assume Robert’s, which is to say Martin’s, identity. ”
“But Sasha couldn’t have convinced GG that he was her long-lost son,” I say.
“No. It’s not plausible that Gertrude wouldn’t have recognized her own son. It’s just a tragedy that she never got to see Rob. He only missed her by a matter of days.”
This is basically the moment I’d hoped for, when Detective Peterson and I get to pool our theories, but I’m barely able to enjoy it because I’ve thought of something else.
“If that was his plan, it would only have worked if GG was dead,” I say, thinking aloud. “Did Sasha plan to kill GG and assume Martin’s identity to inherit?”
Detective Peterson doesn’t pat me on the head and urge me to enroll in the police force, but she doesn’t laugh, either. All she says is: “We don’t know what he was planning.”
I sit with that for a moment, wondering if Sasha had planned to kill GG and Rob/Martin all along.
If we’d gone back to Perth as intended, and he’d bumped her off that night and Rob/Martin another time only to turn up later as Martin, GG’s long-lost, surprisingly alive son, would there be anyone to say otherwise?
Or were we being too harsh on Sasha and he never had murder on his mind, just some light fraud and theft?
The number of questions to be filed under Never to Be Known is really annoying for someone like me, whose preference is to have every loose end double-knotted into place.
“Sasha said he and GG were supposed to meet that evening at the house, but he got put off when he saw that we were all still here,” I say, remembering.
“I think maybe GG got all the stuff out for that meeting but she didn’t have a phone to call and cancel.
” I try to think back to that night and replay it in my head.
Was GG waiting that whole evening for Sasha to rock up and trying to figure out what to tell the rest of us when he did?
Could it be that she didn’t want to take her meds for fear they’d knock her out, or was she just being stubborn?
“Did Rob come here to see his mother, or was he trying to track down Sasha?” I ask, probably pushing it, but, hey, I have basically solved a non-murder and a near murder today.
The most surprising thing about this whole exchange is not so much that Detective Peterson seems willing to chat but that my dad is letting it happen.