Chapter 41
Sadie gets back to the house, locks the door and runs upstairs. She shoves the rucksack under her bed and turns on the shower in the en suite. She’s hot, sweaty and shaken. Today has been fucking full-on weirdsville. Right now, she just wants to wash it away. The dirt, the sweat, all the craziness.
After hiding in the alleyway for a while and trying Dad’s phone a few more times (still going to voicemail) she finally worked up the courage to walk home.
No sign of the creepy ice-cream van nor Larry Broom, but she can’t shake the jittery feeling.
Why was the van following her? Why was Larry Broom visiting Stella?
Why isn’t her dad answering his frigging phone?
Eventually she steps out of the shower and dries off, towelling her hair vigorously and sticking it in a bun.
She slings on her shorts and T-shirt and pads out on to the landing.
Below, the front door opens. Dad. She trots quickly down the stairs.
Dad is already in the kitchen, pulling a can of beer out of the fridge.
He turns as he pops it open. ‘Hi.’
She glares at him. ‘I’ve been trying to call you. Where’ve you been?’
His face falls. He pulls out his phone. ‘Shit. Sorry. I must have put it on silent at the hospital. Is everything all right?’
‘Not really. That weird ice-cream van I saw the other night followed me.’
‘Followed you? I mean, are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. And I saw Larry Broom again.’
Her dad’s face darkens. ‘He didn’t talk to you, did he?’
‘No.’
‘Good. You stay away from him.’
‘He didn’t see me. He was coming out of the coroner’s. I think he knows Stella.’
‘Stella?’ It takes Dad a moment. ‘The coroner. Right. Well, we should probably tell Jerry.’
Sadie doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t want to tell Jerry. She doesn’t trust Jerry. Instead, she asks: ‘Why were you at the hospital?’
‘Remember Hailey, the young mum I told you about?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, I gave her a lift to visit her aunt.’
She squints at him. ‘What’s wrong with her aunt?’
‘She’s being held under psychiatric care. They want to put her into a home.’
‘Because she handed out some leaflets?’
‘Well, it’s more than that.’ He pauses. ‘She’s insistent that Davey didn’t drown and someone called Milo saved him. Hailey has never heard of this Milo. He probably doesn’t even exist.’
Sadie feels a jolt. ‘You’re sure she said Milo?’
‘Yes. Why?’
She debates with herself. She promised the others she would keep Frankie’s documents safe. But she didn’t explicitly promise not to let anyone else see them.
‘I need to show you something.’
They sit at the breakfast bar. Dad stares at the newspaper story about Milo Miller and the gator attack. ‘So, he does exist?’
She nods ‘And now he’s Father Miller, the priest at the chapel. I met him when I was looking for Davey’s grave.’
Her dad frowns. ‘It could be a different Milo?’
‘Maybe, but I mean, it’s not a common name.’
Dad looks back at the other pieces of paper. Sadie has already talked him through Frankie and Cash, the ghost houses, the list of dates and the newspaper articles Frankie looked up.
He shakes his head. ‘So, Miller was attacked by a gator when he was a teenager. Four years later Davey Junior drowns in the pool and Miller saves him, or tries to save him. But what does that have to do with these other stories?’
He spreads them out on the breakfast bar, frowning. He taps the article about Weeping Wendy. ‘This picture. She looks familiar.’
Sadie shrugs. ‘Not to me. And I don’t know what links the stories. That’s why we should talk to Father Miller.’
Dad barks out a brittle laugh. ‘No, we shouldn’t. This … whatever this is … has gone far enough. And I’m not very happy about Ellis and her friends dragging you into it.’
‘But you were fine dragging yourself into Hailey’s drama.’
‘That’s not the same. I was trying to help her.’
‘And I’m trying to help my friends find out who killed Frankie.’
‘Sadie, this is not some TV show. We don’t know that anyone killed Frankie.
And we’ve got enough to worry about. Someone is dressing up to scare us and tampering with our security cameras, weird ice-cream vans are following you, you’re getting strange phone calls in the middle of the night. Shall I go on?’
‘You usually do.’
‘Fine. Well, there’s also the whole thing about Grandma leaving us this house – I think she knew Harold Winsom.’
‘Grandma?’
‘Remember that video?’
‘Yeah. All the stuff about the flood.’
Dad gets up and goes to one of the kitchen drawers. He places a card on the breakfast bar in front of Sadie. ‘I found this in Grandma’s things. In the video of Harold Winsom, there’s a menu on the table. Same logo.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘She worked a lot of jobs when I was small. It’s possible she worked at this club and their paths crossed.’
‘You think that’s why she bought this house?’
‘Bought, acquired … there are no legal documents in any of her things. Only the deed of ownership the lawyers showed me.’
Sadie lets this settle. If Grandma had some connection to Winsom, it might explain the house. It didn’t explain why someone was targeting them.
‘So, what do you want to do?’
‘I think we should leave.’
‘Leave?’
‘Just for a few nights. Get a motel somewhere. Just till I feel sure we’re safe here.’
Sadie stares at him. ‘We can’t leave now.’
‘I thought you were the one who wanted to get away from here.’
‘We need to find out what’s going on.’
‘No. We don’t. Look, I’ll talk to Lockhart in the morning. Explain the situation. And I think you should let me take all this stuff to Jerry—’
She stares at him in alarm. ‘No. Dad – he’s obviously part of this, and I promised my friends I’d keep this stuff safe.’
Her dad rolls his eyes. ‘They’re not your friends, Sadie. They’re Ellis’s friends. You barely know them, and you certainly can’t trust everything they tell you. This is not our problem. We need to look out for ourselves here.’
Her cheeks burn. She feels tears brimming behind her eyes. ‘Is this what you were like when Mum disappeared? You just gave up?’
‘What?’
‘I mean, did you really care about finding her, or did you just run away?’
He shakes his head, eyes full of hurt. ‘That is not fair, Sadie.’
‘No? We moved after Mum left. We ran away to fucking Florida because of that shit with Decker and his dad. When do we actually stay and face things?’
‘That’s enough.’
‘I just—’
‘I said – enough!’ His voice is hard. He never snaps at her like that … and then she realizes. She can hear something, faint but distinctive: tinkling, slightly discordant chimes.
Their eyes meet. Her dad strides across the hall to the front door. He yanks it open. The sun is just dipping below the houses. Across the street, in the milky twilight, the ice-cream van sits, idling, playing another old but familiar tune: ‘Daydream Believer’.
The street is empty. No children running out eagerly for cones. The serving window is closed and blacked out.
‘What the fuck?’ her dad murmurs.
‘I told you,’ Sadie says.
‘Stay here.’
He walks down the front path, pausing halfway to pick up a couple of ornamental rocks from around a small palm. The van starts to pull off. Dad reaches the gate. ‘Hey!’
The van moves faster down the street. Dad jogs after it.
‘Hey!’
He throws a rock after the van. It bounces off the back. He launches a second rock, and this one hits the rear window, leaving a large spiderweb crack.
‘And don’t come back!’
The van turns the corner and disappears. Dad marches back up the street, dark hair dishevelled, Bermuda shorts flapping around his calves.
Sadie stares at him. ‘Did you just attack an ice-cream van?’
He blinks. ‘I think I did.’ He takes a deep breath, puts his hands on his hips ‘Fuck. I whacked a Mr Whippy.’
They look at each other. She starts to laugh. She can’t help it. Her dad smiles.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t have said—’
‘It’s okay.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘Look. I’ll make you a deal. Tomorrow morning I will talk to Father Miller.’
‘But, Dad—’
‘No buts. I don’t want you involved. After that, I’m giving all this stuff to Jerry. I’m adulting here. That means making this someone else’s problem.’
She wants to argue, but she senses it won’t do any good. ‘Fine. But we should scan the documents first, so we have copies.’
‘That too. And then we’re packing our bags. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
She frowns, suddenly noticing something.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. It’s just … your nose is bleeding.’