Chapter 12
Dinner is weird. It’s not just the food, although that is definitely a bit weird—a ground-beef-heavy pasta thing invented by Shippy, which, he repeatedly tells us, is easy to make.
I believe him. It’s not terrible, just a bit odd: The texture of the meat is rubbery, and there’s a strange aftertaste that makes me refill my water glass twice.
I don’t ask anyone how long the meat has been in GG’s freezer, because I don’t want to know.
What’s even weirder is how everyone’s acting.
It starts when I get to the kitchen and the adults stop talking, like a scene from a Western.
Nobody in the kitchen blows me away with a six-shooter, but there’s a long beat of silence before Aunty Bec asks me, loudly, to set the table.
(It’s already set.) Dad, meanwhile, is leaning in to Aunty Vinka at one end of the table, talking intently and gesturing with his hands like he was born just south of Rome.
While Shippy is doing the rounds, dolloping out huge servings of pasta almost against our collective will, Dad moves on to Aunty Bec.
The whole thing couldn’t be more suspicious if Dad had regrown the unfortunate mustache of the Pandemic Years.
Nick’s still in the hospital, by the way (told you).
My chair scrapes as I drag it closer to Dylan, who is moving lumps around his plate with one hand and holding a book open with the other. He yelps when I elbow him in the ribs, but I think he’s faking it.
“What was that for?”
“The grown-ups are acting weird.” I say this as quietly as I can, but the adults are so busy talking to each other in suspiciously vigorous whispers that they probably wouldn’t notice if I screamed it across the table.
“Where have you been?”
“I think Dad took something from GG’s room.”
“What?”
“I have no idea. But remember I said there was a hidden drawer?”
“You said secret drawer.”
“Same thing and who cares. I think he took something out of it.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
It’s a fair question, and the answer, because I think he’d lie, feels like a betrayal of Dad. Instead, I pivot.
“There’s something else.”
“You killed GG? I knew it.”
“I really want to go back and have a proper look for that missing box.”
Dylan puts down his book (Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead—a man’s legs are on the cover and, call me the world’s greatest teen detective, I don’t think he’s sleeping). “Why?”
“You’ve got to admit it’s weird. She asks me to get this box down. Hours later she’s murdered. Then the box disappears. What if the murderer stole the box?”
“What if she just put it under her bed, like a normal person?”
“Then I’ll find it and we’ll know.”
Any answer Dylan might give disappears as Dad sits down on my other side, scraping his chair up to the table.
“What are you two whispering about?” Okay, so it’s possible Dad is not quite as preoccupied as I thought. He forks a twirl of pasta into his mouth, then chews for a long time. When he speaks, it’s around half a mouthful of tagliatelle. “What is this?”
“Just deconstructed Bolognese,” Shippy says quickly. “It’s a cinch to make, honestly. You just take some ground beef and brown it in a pan—”
Dad shifts in his chair, possibly preparing to leap at Shippy if Shippy’s Recipe Corner goes for much longer. As he does, his T-shirt rides up and I see half a centimeter of paper protruding from the pocket of his jeans.
Before I can pause to ask myself some tough questions—like (a) What are you doing? and (b) Is this a good idea? and (c) Seriously, though, have you thought this through?—I snatch the paper and slide it clear of Dad’s pocket.
“Whatha—” he says around a mouthful of (allegedly) deconstructed Bolognese. I’m exhilarated. This must be how Hercule Poirot feels when he unmasks the murderer because of a chance remark made by a gardener about the tulip bulbs or something.
“Ruth, what are you doing?”
What I’m doing is trying to make sense of the paper in my hands. I see Gertie’s name. A corporate firm I’ve never heard of. A dollar sign with a lot of…
“What is this?” I ask, holding the paper tight in one hand and crossing my arms so it’s pressed against my body.
“Nothing important.”
“You took this from GG’s room.”
It’s not really a question but Dad nods anyway.
“Seeing Dylan ransacking the wardrobe made me think of the secret drawer and wonder if Gertie had kept anything there.” He gives Dylan a jock nod he’s not nearly blokey enough to pull off.
“You almost had the right idea, mate.” No mention of the fact that it was my nosiness and my disregard for parental authority that got us to GG’s room in the first place.
This must be how Hercule Poirot feels when he has to let the police take credit for the crimes he solves.
“It’s some kind of life-insurance policy.” I only just manage to make it not sound like a question.
“Can you give it back now?”
I do, but only because I think I get it.
“Life insurance?” Shippy repeats in a way that makes it clear this is news to him. “How much?”
Rob, who hasn’t touched his own pasta, shifts uncomfortably in his seat but doesn’t offer to leave the family to it. No judgment: I look out the window when we drive past car accidents too.
“Doesn’t concern you, mate,” Dad says. “It must have been taken out a long time ago, because the beneficiary is Gertie’s son, who died years back. What was his name?”
“Henry?” Aunty Vinka asks, sounding vaguer than usual.
“I went to school with a Henry,” Shippy offers, as helpful as ever. “He ended up in jail.”
“He wasn’t called Henry,” Dad says, grumpy at the interruption. “His name was Martin McCulloch.”
“Life insurance?” I prompt.
“Right,” Dad says. “So if Gertie’s son is the beneficiary and he’s dead, she probably stopped paying the premiums a long time ago and it’s a moot point.
But if not, maybe there’s a possibility the money goes into her estate?
” He starts to fork up some more pasta, then changes his mind.
“I’ll have to take this to her lawyer. I’ve made an appointment for tomorrow anyway. ”
“Is her lawyer in Perth?” I ask.
“Margaret River. I’ll go tomorrow and then I’ll call the cops and see if we can head back to Perth. You’ve missed enough school as it is.” (We’re not going anywhere, in case you’re wondering. This house is like that song about the hotel: You can never leave.)
“How much?” Shippy asks.
“I don’t know if we should be discussing this,” Aunty Vinka says, getting up to put on the kettle.
“Why not?”
“Isn’t it a bit gauche?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Shippy says.
“Course you don’t, mate,” says Dad. “But you don’t need to flap your hands either, Vinx.
It’s not a secret. Potentially it’s worth about half a million dollars, but like I said…
” Dad has to repeat his last three words to drown out Shippy’s four-letter word.
“Like I said, it’s probably a moot point and we should all take a deep breath before Shippy starts sketching plans for a backyard pool. ”
I look sideways at Dylan, who’s looking down at his plate, and I wonder if he’s thinking the same things I am.
I’ve always known that Dad would inherit a slice of the farm.
But it’s hard to get excited about inheriting part of a house that may or may not be sold or where you may or may not be forced to take all future family vacations until the end of time.
Inheriting cash is so much more exciting.
We could go on a trip to somewhere that isn’t a three-hour drive from Perth.
I might be allowed to buy a new phone that isn’t just Dad’s old one.
“Do you want more?” It takes me a moment to realize Shippy’s talking about pasta, not money, and that at some point I finished everything in my bowl. I very much do not want more, but what I do want is a reason to stay at the table.
“Maybe a bit more.”
He blobs in a huge spoonful, looking pleased.
Only when I look down at the mound of gray meat and slightly congealed pasta do I realize the depth of my mistake.
Looking up the table to where Aunty Vinka is eating plain pasta laced with olive oil and pepper is one of the few occasions I’ve ever thought longingly of veganism.
Still, I sit there, listening to the grown-ups speculating about family law, a rare subject on which their knowledge is roughly comparable to my own (none of us has a clue), while also mentally sketching out every possible hiding spot in GG’s room where she might have concealed a box.
Why she would do such a thing, I have no idea, but I can’t move on from the suspicion that the box is important and that, if I could just figure out what happened to it, I might know why GG died.
I’m right, but not for the reason I think.