Chapter 15
I knock lightly on GG’s door (who do I expect to answer?) before swinging it wide open.
My chest feels tight with anxiety: This might be my only opportunity to be here without people bursting in to ask perfectly valid questions like Why are you in GG’s bedroom? and What are you looking for? and Are you insane?
I’m regretting not bringing Dylan with me. It would feel like an adventure with him cracking jokes. Solo, it’s harder to forget GG died here. I need the lights on.
The box isn’t back on top of the wardrobe or in it. It’s not behind the curtains or under the dresser.
When I crouch to look under the bed, I can see several boxes, all pushed hard against the wall where my stubby arms can’t reach them.
I can’t tell if any of them are the box I want.
Why GG would ask me to fetch her a box, only to almost immediately stash it in an inconvenient location, where presumably she would also struggle to reach it, I can’t say.
Then again, GG did plenty of weird things, up to and including getting killed with an antique typewriter, so it wouldn’t be the strangest thing she’s ever done.
From downstairs there’s the sound of a plate smashing and a yelp.
Dylan strikes again. Maybe excluding him from this excursion wasn’t such a bad thing—he’d probably trip over and smash GG’s bedside lamp, leaving me to explain to the cops why we were rampaging through what may or may not still be a crime scene, looking for a cardboard box that probably just contains fifty years’ worth of recipes GG never got to cook because all Grandad really liked was steak sandwiches.
Lying flat on my stomach, ignoring the pain in my shoulder (which thinks I’m ninety-four, not fourteen), I commando-crawl under the bed, shivering at each puff of dust that goes up my nose.
It’s streaming by the time I reach the boxes, and I see right away that none are the one I’m looking for.
Still, I drag them toward me, just in case they’re chock-full of clues and not, say, receipts for appliances that are currently failing to decay in a landfill.
I’m just about to wriggle out from under the bed with my (pretty lame) booty when I hear it: footsteps outside the door and voices, low but familiar.
“…now?”
“We might…home tomorrow. I don’t think poking around here at night is a good look, do you?”
“Dylan’s downstairs.”
“Just be quick.”
There’s a moment when I could alert them to my presence.
Things might have played out differently if I had.
Instead I instinctively curl into the fetal position, my body directed by the ancient bit of my lizard brain that believes in the need to protect my vital organs.
Never mind that I’m not hiding from saber-tooth tigers (did humans even coexist with saber-tooth tigers, or have the Ice Age movies lied to me?), my body has assessed the two people in GG’s room as a threat. Who am I to say it’s wrong?
“How long has this light been on?”
“Focus. Where did you say it was?”
“She put it in one of the shoeboxes with a bunch of old receipts.”
“Why?”
“She said nobody would ever look there.”
“Because it’s a mental thing to do. You’re sure the kids didn’t find it?”
“They would have said something. But I’ve got no idea where she put it.”
There are the sounds of GG’s belongings being moved about, of drawers running on their tracks, and I wait for their conversation to betray what they’re looking for. Lying as quietly as possible, not sneezing at the dust tickling my nose hairs, is all I can do.
“No, that’s not…Yes!”
“Have you got it?”
“No, I found Gertie’s old button collection. Yes, I’ve got it.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay. Um, what do we do with it?”
“Put it in your pocket.”
“I mean long-term. Do we throw it in the bin?”
“Would the police check the bins?”
“Light a fire.”
“This time of year?”
“What have you got, then?”
“We’ll get rid of it away from the house. Take it into town tomorrow or something.” There’s the sound of the wardrobe doors being closed, a little roughly. “I can’t believe you got me into this.”
“I didn’t get you into anything.”
“She was a sweet lady, that’s all I mean. I feel bad.”
“Hurry up, I think I hear something.”
Footsteps, some shuffling, and the bedroom door opens and closes.
“Was the door closed when we came in?” one of them asks, but I don’t hear the reply, possibly because my heart is busy loudly trying to remove itself to a location somewhere outside my body.
I stay under the bed for as long as I can, until my legs have gone past prickly to pins and needles and landed on numb.
Then I crawl out, dragging the boxes behind me.
I pull the lids off, more for something to do than because I’m excited by the possibilities.
One of them is full of old CDs, stacked three deep.
Another is full of Women’s Weekly magazines, each edition dog-eared and with slips of paper protruding from relevant pages, so maybe I wasn’t way off with the recipe prediction.
The third has one of those stretchy exercise bands and a pair of hand weights that look like they’ve done ten reps, tops.
I repack the boxes and push them back under the bed.
There’s no point in showing any of this to Dylan.
Worse, Dylan is now the last person I can talk to about what’s just happened.
Until now he’s been the Watson to my Holmes: the sidekick with whom I can discuss my thoughts (mostly) and kick around theories (definitely).
The conversation I’ve just overheard in GG’s bedroom has utterly wrecked that dynamic, however.
How, exactly, am I supposed to tell him that I just heard his mother and her boyfriend steal something out of GG’s wardrobe?
And, even if I could overcome that particular obstacle, how, please tell me, am I supposed to bring the conversation around to the possibility that they had something to do with her death?