Chapter 29
GG is smiling into the camera, and I don’t care how many times I’ve seen this, it’s still creepy as hell.
She’s sitting on the edge of her bed, twisted to face the phone, which must be propped up on her bedside table.
The cardboard box that so intrigued me is sitting beside her.
Also, just in frame, sitting on top of the wardrobe behind her, is the killer typewriter, and once you see it you can’t unsee it, lurking there the way a famous actor in a TV crime procedural never quite blends into the background: You just know they’re going to be outed as the killer in fifty minutes.
If you listen hard enough, there’s the grumble of distant thunder in the background.
“This video is for my son, Martin,” GG says.
“I’m filming it now because I’m not sure how much time I have left.
I don’t think I’m well enough to visit you in prison, Martin, even if you would agree to see me, which I’m not sure I deserve.
I’m so sorry that I’ve wasted so many years not being in your life.
I was ashamed by what you’d done. But now it all seems so very petty and ridiculous.
I hope one day you’ll forgive me. I hope one day you’ll be able to build a life for yourself.
“Your friend Sasha has been delivering my cards—I couldn’t trust them to the mail, and I’m sorry it’s not more—and he has promised to deliver you this message, along with some other things I want you to have.
You’ll probably think I’m ridiculous for having held on to some of these things, but if you ever become a father yourself, perhaps you’ll understand. ”
I look at Sasha, who is leaning forward so far, he’s in danger of toppling out of his chair.
“I’d better finish this now; I’m not sure how long this phone can record for,” GG says. “I wanted to leave you something to remember me by, in case we don’t get to meet again.”
GG stands up, with some visible effort, and walks toward the wardrobe.
“There’s one more thing I want you to have,” she says, her voice getting quieter as she walks away from the camera.
“This typewriter was given to me when I was a girl by my mother. I don’t know if you remember the way you used to love to type on it when you were little.
I always told you it’d be yours one day. ”
The three of us watch, transfixed, as GG reaches up to grasp the typewriter in both hands.
Even knowing what’s going to happen, I’m tense, like this is a choose-your-own-adventure book where a happy ending is still possible.
This time GG survives! But, no, instead I have to watch (again) as GG lifts the typewriter down.
The angle of the camera makes it impossible to say if she trips over something on the floor or merely staggers under the weight of the machine.
(I’ll never suggest as much to Aunty Vinka, but it’s also occurred to me this might be the drugs in her tea, rendering her limbs unreliable.) Either way, GG goes backward and the typewriter slips out of her hands, following the most gruesome possible arc to crash against her head.
The whole thing is made ten times more gruesome because, just as the typewriter strikes her, there’s a massive clap of thunder.
A moment later a flash of lightning illuminates GG as she falls out of frame to the spot where Aunty Vinka will find her the next day.
At this point I pull the phone back from Sasha, who lifts one hand to suggest he’s going to stop me, then puts it back in his lap.
“How…do you have this?” he asks.
That’s maybe not the question I’d be asking, especially given he must know the answer.
“We found it hidden under the floorboards in a box of things GG wanted her son to have. I guess whoever was here that night stashed it in a moment of panic—maybe they thought they heard someone in the house? Maybe they didn’t want to risk being caught with it?
—and planned to come back for it when everything had died down. ”
“What do you mean someone put it there the night Gertie died?” Sasha says. “This video proves that what happened to Gertie was just an accident.”
“It was,” I say, turning the video back around to face him. “But you might want to see this bit.”
Sasha must know what’s coming—we’ve seen this already, but he’s lived it—but still he cranes toward the screen again like it’s the sun and he’s a neglected houseplant.
We all watch the video on the phone as the door to GG’s bedroom swings inward and stops.
There’s a long wait before Sasha’s head appears around the door, staring at something on the floor.
I think we can all agree what he’s looking at, and, in my personal opinion, his face doesn’t look nearly horrified enough.
“Can you just—” Sasha reaches for the phone, but I’m ready and pull it back.
On-screen Sasha is already at work: looking under the bed, through the drawers in the wardrobe, rifling through GG’s dressing table.
He’s clearly looking for something, but carefully, replacing items as he goes rather than leaving things strewn around behind him.
He finds what he’s looking for at the back of the dressing table drawer: a blue velvet box containing GG’s jewelry collection.
The box goes into the pocket of his vest as he looks at the writing on the side of the cardboard box and grabs that too.
Then he looks up in triumph to notice the phone and his face filling the phone screen.
Sasha’s hand looms large, folding over the phone, and everything goes black.
I slip the phone back into my pocket as fast as I can, but Sasha doesn’t even reach for it.
“Did you mean to put GG’s phone in the box or was that a mistake?” I ask. Sasha ignores me, probably because he’s doing an hour’s worth of thinking in about five seconds.
“I want to know about the phones too,” Dylan says, possibly feeling left out. “Did you tamper with the landline and hide Gertie’s phone bill or something, so there was no chance she could call the prison, or was that just a coincidence?”
“I don’t know what you kids think this proves, but that video only shows that Gertie’s death was an accident,” Sasha says.
“It was,” I agree. “Which makes it really weird that you were there at all, not to mention that you stole Gertie’s jewelry and smashed the window and dragged the ladder up against the house.
” I imagine it: Sasha trying to figure out what he’s just walked into.
I see him spotting the ladder on his way out of the house and coming up with a (let’s be real: bad) idea that would make the police look for an outsider and definitely not look too carefully at the ex-con already in GG’s life and living next door.
That’s the best I’ve come up with and it’s an objectively dumb plan, but who hasn’t acted on one of those?
Sasha shakes his head. “I didn’t touch the ladder or the window,” he says.
“You wanted to make it seem like this was an outside job,” I say, and if this was court, which it definitely is not, I can imagine some American-accented judge accusing me of leading the witness.
“You were scared that the police might look a bit too closely at the people in GG’s life.
Of course, if you’d been thinking clearly you would have left everything as is and hoped that the police wouldn’t notice the missing jewelry and would dismiss it as an accident, which it really was. ”
“I didn’t do anything to her. You saw that.
” Sasha has recovered some of his confidence.
“You can’t prove anything. I didn’t even break in that night: Gertie and I were supposed to meet up that evening, but, well, everyone was supposed to be gone and you were all still here.
I just came a bit later than we’d planned. ”
“In the middle of the night?”
“It’s not a crime to be a night owl.”
I’m only half listening. Mostly I’m trying to figure out if what Sasha has said is the truth: Was he standing out there, waiting for the house to fall asleep that night?
GG certainly seemed like she’d been getting things ready for Sasha’s arrival, between the box and the typewriter.
But she hadn’t said anything about expecting a visitor.
“Do you smoke?” I ask, and Sasha looks caught off guard, which is quite nice, actually.
“What?”
“Do you smoke?”
He hesitates, not wanting to give me even this, then shrugs. “Sure.”
Another couple of pieces snap together as I think of the cigarette butts Shippy noticed out in the driveway.
Maybe Sasha isn’t BSing and he really was supposed to meet GG earlier that night but stood out there instead, waiting and smoking, not knowing what about the plan had changed but still wanting his chance at getting GG’s money and whatever valuables he imagined she planned to pass along to her son.
“You must have come back to try and get the box,” I say, thinking as I talk.
“That was you in the garden on…Tuesday night”—I think I’ve got that right—“I guess. Was the idea to break in and get it? You must have been so stressed about that phone, which proved your innocence in GG’s death but also that you were up to some seriously shady stuff. ”
“This is ridiculous,” Sasha says, crossing his arms, and as the muscles in his biceps bulge menacingly, I’m suddenly aware of how big he is, and not in a charming Farmer Wants a Wife way so much as a not-much-else-to-do-in-jail-but-lift-weights kind of way.
“You kids are ridiculous, and you have no idea who you’re even talking to. ”
Letting Sasha into the house was insane; showing him the video was worse. I’m suddenly sure I’ve made a colossal mistake. I want him out of here.
“Why haven’t you shown that video to the cops yet?”
I wait a beat too long. “We have.”
He shakes his head. “Nah. I think you only just found it. I think you haven’t had a chance. I think maybe you haven’t even shown it to your parents.” He stands up. “I think I’d quite like to take that phone, actually. Just in case.”