Chapter 22 #2
“The police know Gertie’s son is still alive?”
“Sure, I thought they should.”
A man holding a stack of books lines up politely behind us and Laura’s eyes flick over my shoulder. We don’t have long.
“Did she ever tell you about a life-insurance policy to benefit her son?” Dylan asks, and the customer’s head performs an eavesdropper’s tilt. Way to be subtle, guy who should be using the self-checkout.
“No. Did she have one?”
“We only found it after she died.”
“She never mentioned it.” Laura nods at the waiting customer. “Now, I’m afraid I’d better serve this gentleman.”
“Okay, thanks.”
We’ve already turned to go when Laura says, “Wait!” and the customer’s book stack wobbles as he pretends he wasn’t ready to take our place anyway. “There is one thing that was a bit weird.”
(This is going to be good, right? You know it’s going to be good because that’s how it works in detective stories—the best stuff always comes when a suspect or a witness tells the detective just one more thing.)
“What?”
“Gertie was in here a few weeks ago. It was my last shift before Bali, so I remember. She said something about carrying a lot of cash on her. She’d just been to the bank.”
“How much is a lot?”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, but she was nervous about carrying that much cash around, so I assumed it was at least hundreds.”
“Did she say what it was for?”
“No, it was a busy day. I don’t know if it’s even relevant, but it was out of the ordinary.” Laura turns to the man and motions for him to come forward. “Thanks for waiting, Michael.” Our interview is over, and Michael has some C-grade gossip to take home.
“What do you think?” Dylan asks as we walk out of the library together.
“It’s starting to sound like we’ve got some criminal mastermind son running around with the perfect motive.”
“Can he be a mastermind if he got caught?”
“Is that the point?”
Dylan looks sideways at me. “Why do you look kind of depressed about this?”
“It’s just, you know, up to the police now, isn’t it? They’ve known this whole time about GG’s son being alive. I wonder why they never told us.”
“So thoughtless of the police not to keep the teen detectives up to date.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Cheer up,” Dylan says, checking his phone. “This is good news. If the son did it, it means Shippy and my mum are in the clear.” He says it in this awful faux-casual way that might fool someone who didn’t know him or who had recently suffered a traumatic head injury, but nobody else.
“Dylan,” I say, pausing in the hope he’ll jump in and I won’t have to figure out the second half of the sentence.
When he doesn’t, I go on, tapping his arm to make him stop and face me.
“I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean to…” Didn’t mean to…
what, exactly? Where am I going with this?
I didn’t mean to imply your mum might be responsible for GG’s death?
I didn’t mean to reveal your mum as a grifter?
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I like your mum.
” There’s no point pretending I liked Shippy, even before I thought he might be a murderer.
“Forget it,” he says. “What about the money Gertie was carrying around? That seems like it could be important. Maybe she was being blackmailed?” The subject change is a little clumsy but I appreciate it.
“Sure, but don’t blackmailers tend to be the ones that get murdered, not the other way around?”
“If you’re going to bring logic into it.”
“I wonder how much money was a lot to GG.”
“We didn’t find any cash in her room.” Dylan’s phone beeps and he checks it again, frowning. “I guess the police might have found some. Do you really think Gertie’s own son could have come to find her and killed her?”
“He’s got a better motive than anyone.”
“Money and revenge for the mum who disowned him, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“I wonder what he went to prison for.”
“It’s got to be bad. Nobody gets disowned for unpaid parking fines.”
Neither of us says the M-word.
“How old would he be?”
“I guess our parents’ age, give or take.”
“We’ve got some time to kill before we meet your dad. Let’s do some internet research while we’ve got coverage. It might bring up something?”
It doesn’t. Or, rather, Googling McCulloch and then McCulloch + jail brings up a lot of somethings, none of which appear to be related to GG or recent events.
It feels wrong in the circumstances, but we actually have fun, sitting on a bench and eating jam doughnuts that Dylan buys.
When we get tired of our useless attempts at research, we head to the secondhand bookshop.
“This might be my favorite part of this whole vacation,” Dylan says, browsing the fantasy aisle, a small but growing stack of maybes next to him.
“Can you call it a vacation if someone gets murdered?”
“I think it still counts.”
“D’you remember when my mum would bring us here at Christmas and let us each pick a book?”
“Of course. I used to wish I was part of your family. Just like my mum, I guess.”
“And then you were.” I hate this dumb thing I’ve said before I’ve finished saying it.
“And then I was not—again,” Dylan says lightly.
It’s then that I say the even dumber thing, in a failed effort to make Dylan forget that first dumb thing I said. Seriously, I’d take this part out if I wasn’t committed to giving you all the facts, because you’re going to die when you read it in three…two…one…
“At least we’re not cousins anymore, so that’s cool.”
At least. We’re not. Cousins. Anymore. So. That’s cool.
There’s truly only one way to interpret a comment like that and it’s this: I sometimes think about kissing you, so isn’t it a lucky thing we’re not related?
Dylan looks at me like he doesn’t know where to start.
Then he puts down the Garth Nix book he’s holding and takes a step toward me, over in the mystery section trying not to vomit.
“Ruth,” he says.
“Kids! I thought I might find you here.” It’s Dad, making the bookshop door jangle.
His arms are full of paper bags, he smells like jam and sugar, and there’s a suspicious crusting of white around his lips that suggests he’s either started on the baked goods without us or developed a worrying drug problem (and also, maybe, doesn’t know how to do drugs?). “What are you guys up to?”
“Nothing,” we say, the way guilty people always do.