Chapter 23
The car ride home is excruciating. I’m so desperate to avoid looking at Dylan that I deliberately provoke Dad into one of his favorite rants: why bakery vanilla slices (he insists on calling them “snot blocks”) aren’t what they used to be.
The drive home is only twenty minutes and Dad can go on about custard-to-pastry ratios for twice that, so I’m not worried about awkward silences until he pulls into a gas station.
“I’ll just fill up and then we can go home,” Dad says.
Something occurs to me, probably later than it should have. “Don’t you have to go into the police station?”
He shakes his head. “I called Detective Peterson in town and she said they’ll come out to the house instead.”
“Right.” I want to prolong this conversation to avoid being alone with Dylan, but there’s really nowhere to go.
“So,” Dylan says when Dad is busy with the pump.
I jump in before he can come up with the second word in that sentence, twisting around in my seat to face him in the back.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Clearly, you just have,” Dylan deadpans.
“Aren’t you a bit young for dad jokes?”
“What is it, then?”
“You didn’t know, did you?” I don’t need to add about your mum and Shippy. I’ve already had the answer from Bec and I believed her. I think. Mostly. But I want to hear it from Dylan, and having this excruciating conversation is better than finishing the one we started at the bookshop.
“No,” he says, without jokes. He doesn’t even seem pissed off.
“Sorry to ask.”
“I get it. We should be able to talk about this stuff if we’re proper partners in crime. No, wait, that’s the term for people doing the illegal stuff. Detectives in crime? That’s not right either. There’s a word for it, right? What do you call the two guys in a buddy-cop movie?”
“Cops?”
“Shut up.”
“Buddies?”
“You know what I mean. And, just in case you’re wondering: I know my mum would never hurt anyone.”
“What about Shippy?”
“Straight-up psycho.” We both crack a smile and I decide to just jump right back in and pretend the bookshop awkwardness never even happened (which maybe he didn’t even notice and so, essentially, it didn’t?).
“One thing I keep thinking about is how weird it is that GG was killed on the night that we were supposed to be back in Perth. Like, if Shippy—just for the sake of argument—did want to kill her, then why would he wait until that night? He didn’t know Nick was going to try to catch that snake, so he didn’t know we’d have to stay.
He shouldn’t have even been here. And if it was an outsider, like GG’s son, is it just a coincidence he did it on the night we were supposed to have left? ”
“Maybe whoever did it knew we were leaving. Maybe they’d been waiting for us to leave,” Dylan says.
We both sit with that for a beat, trying to unpick what it might mean.
“There’s another thing I wanted to ask you,” he says, and my paranoid mind immediately leaps to my bookshop humiliation, so it’s a relief when he goes on.
“What was that about Vinka going up to GG’s the night she died? ”
“Oh, that. Shippy said Aunty Vinka took a cup of tea up to GG on the night she died.”
“Is that it?”
“Aunty Vinka didn’t tell us. Why would she keep it a secret?”
“Why wouldn’t she? She might not have thought it was important.”
“It’s suspicious.”
“How?”
“GG died that night.”
“She didn’t die from a cup of tea, Ruth.” Dylan’s voice sounds spiky, and his face has gone a little blotchy.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re just…” His lips twist around like he’s trying to find a nice way to say something not so nice. “You’re just very quick to believe the worst in people.”
“What does that mean?” It’s not that he’s wrong, but I sort of thought that was why we got along.
“My mum. Your aunt. Who are you going to suspect next—me?”
I look at him in surprise. “I thought that’s what we’re doing here.
I thought this was about trying to figure out what happened, and I’m just being realistic.
Until we learned about the existence of GG’s son, the most likely scenario was that someone in the house killed GG, and the only people in the house were us.
I don’t want to believe it, but it’s ridiculous not to admit that it’s a possibility. ”
Dylan looks out the window, then down to the phone in his hand, which is lighting up with WhatsApp notifications. “I know, it’s just…this doesn’t seem so fun anymore. Does it?”
“Did I ever say it was fun? You’re the one who just said this little excursion was your favorite part of the trip.”
“You seemed like you were enjoying it.”
“I’m just trying to keep my mind off my dead grandmother.”
“Step-grandmother.”
“That’s my line. Also, you were the one who wanted to come into town and track down Laura. Then I say Aunty Vinka took GG a cup of tea and suddenly you’re all over me.”
“Sorry.” Dylan looks uncomfortable. “It’s not really about that.”
“What is it, then?” When he doesn’t answer, I put my hand on the door handle, ready to escape inside to peruse the gas-station candy selection with Dad.
“Wait, don’t go. It’s just, ugh, I don’t know how to tell you this but I feel like I have to.”
“You have to…what?”
“Tell you something.”
“And that something is?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Dylan. I swear…”
“I overheard your dad talking the other night.”
“Okay?”
“I think he’s having money problems.”
“What do you mean?”
“Money problems. As in not enough of it. He was talking about selling the house, that’s what I heard.
Do you know about this?” My face clearly tells him that I don’t.
“I’m only saying this, you know, in the interest of considering all suspects.
” This is payback for daring to suggest Bec as a suspect, whatever Dylan says.
“What did he actually say?”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah.”
“He said something like how the inheritance couldn’t have come at a better time, but that he would still sell the house, something like that.”
“Sell the house?”
“That’s what he said.”
“He’s fine. We’re fine.” I try to think if this is actually true.
Dad’s never mentioned money being tight except, well, now that Dylan’s being a jerk and making me think about it, Dad did say something about canceling our streaming services, although he’s always threatening to do that, and he did sell one of his guitars, although he just said it was because he didn’t play enough.
He’s definitely still going to work, and I’m pretty sure he’s not sitting in a park for eight hours. He’d never have the patience.
“I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“There’s no way my dad had anything to do with this, okay. Just none.”
“I’m not saying he did.”
“You’re paying me back for suggesting your mum was involved.”
“That’s not what I meant. Look, maybe we should just leave it to the cops. This whole son thing probably means we’re all off the hook anyway. The cops will find this guy and we’ll be in the clear.”
There’s another theory that’s been bouncing around in my head that I haven’t yet shared with Dylan, but I’m not sure if now is the time.
It takes me a moment to decide whether Dylan and I really are a team, or if I’m going to treat him the way all fictional amateur sleuths treat their sidekicks and leave him in the dark until the last possible moment.
I go for option A, even if Sherlock would disapprove. “Has it occurred to you that Shippy is around the right age to be GG’s son?” I see right away that it has not.
“That’s crazy. We would know.”
“Would we?”
“Shippy’s been going out with my mum for years.”
“Maybe GG’s son’s been secretly out of prison for years.”
“Gertie would have recognized him, and why would they keep it a secret?” Dylan’s pissing me off a bit, making multiple good points today.
“What about Nick, then?”
“What about him? Why would you think he could be Gertie’s son?”
“I don’t, I’m just saying he’s the right age, and if we think GG’s son had a motive to kill her…”
Dylan shakes his head. “Nick’s one of the few people who couldn’t have done anything. He’s been in the hospital this whole time—he couldn’t be involved. Plus, not to be weird about it, but wasn’t Gertie’s husband white?”
“Okay, good point.” Another one? This guy.
Still, my mind is full of scenarios in which Nick, faking his injuries, could have slipped out a window or through a back door, or Shippy, still assumed by GG to be in prison, has multiple facial surgeries so GG can no longer recognize him, then spends years getting closer to the family in order to…
“I don’t know—” But I never do get to hear one of the many things Dylan doesn’t know, because a burst of static and a beep from the car audio system make me jump. A voice is coming out of the speaker like a ghost in a Victorian horror story.
“…outrageous. How can you ask me that?” It takes me a beat to recognize Aunty Vinka’s voice coming through the car speakers.
“Hello? Andy?” Out the car window, I see Dad with his phone pressed against his ear (surely a total safety hazard?) heading back to the car.
His phone call has been picked up by the car system.
It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it’s never been this…
juicy? “You can’t just accuse me of, what, trying to drug Gertie with her own medication? ”
I watch Dad pull the phone away from his ear to glare at the screen. His lips are moving but I can’t hear a thing.
Then the driver’s door opens and Dad gets in, chucking a bag of Licorice Allsorts onto my lap just as Aunty Vinka tries one more time. “Andy?” Dad’s face makes it obvious that he’s figured out what happened.
“Sorry, Vinka, I lost you for a second there. I’m in the car with the kids now, though.”
“Oh.” Aunty Vinka’s voice smooths out immediately. “Sorry. Hi, kids. We can talk about this later, Andy.”
“Sure,” Dad says, hanging up. “So,” he says to me, “how much of that did you hear?”