Chapter Thirty-Six
Quinn and Holly arrive at the group home just after eleven. It’s in a quiet neighborhood of modest homes with well-maintained lawns. Holly has her own keys and she opens the front door. She seems hesitant; she’s not one to disrupt the residents.
Does George have the Red Flag file? Why?
George was known to abscond with trinkets from around the house.
A silver spoon from the kitchen, one of Mom’s bracelets, even some of Quinn’s books.
Maybe he took the file from the cubby and it was packed up with his things when they moved him to the group home.
Or maybe Mom hid it with his things deliberately.
Inside the house is dark, lights out at ten. Holly says hello to Luke, who works the night shift and is sitting on the sofa in the living room. He lifts a hand but his eyes don’t move from his Game Boy.
The old wooden stairs creak as they pad upstairs. The long hallway is lined with eight doors, and it’s clear from the mishmash construction that the place has been renovated to add bedrooms. Holly goes to the third door and taps on it softly, waits a moment, and then goes inside.
George is curled up on the bed, just like he used to at home. His breaths are loud and he doesn’t stir. He still wears the headphones to bed.
The bedroom has framed cartoon dinosaur pictures on the wall, left from the last tenant and too young for a seventeen-year-old. Other than the bed, the only furniture is a dresser and small desk. On top of the desk is a stack of books, the one on top with a big, hairy spider on its cover.
Holly slides open the desk drawer. Inside is the small wooden box with George’s treasures Quinn remembers from his brother’s old bedroom. Coins, a miniature Smurf figure, a tiny rubber snake.
And under the box is a green file.
Holly pulls it out, places it on the top of the desk without opening it, looks at Quinn in the weak light.
Quinn feels adrenaline ripping through him. It’s too dark to closely examine the file and he doesn’t want to wake up George, so he signals for them to leave the room.
Downstairs in the kitchen, he lays the file flat on the table and scouts through the small sheaf of papers.
“What is it?” Holly asks, fully invested in the mystery now.
“I don’t know.” The first sheet of paper has cryptic words in his mom’s handwriting: “Pearl” and “Megan” and “D-302.” The next pages look like schedules for something.
Dates and places. Could they be related to whatever his mom was going to report to the company?
Someone stealing deliveries, maybe? Mom worked with a man named Kenny Pearl, Quinn remembers—her asshole supervisor who never would grant her days off.
But who is Megan? What’s D-302? What does this all mean?