Page 22 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder
Mentioning the actual murder sobers everyone up. I’m about to mention the hot neighbor, Sasha, while we’re on the subject, and see if anyone else thinks he might have had a motive to kill GG, but Aunty Vinka gets in a question first.
“Why the typewriter, though?”
I think about it, the way I’d think about a math problem or how to handle a situation where Ali and Libby want to wear the same dress to the same party and neither of them has a planB (not a hypothetical situation, since that did actually happen last year when John from school had a party in a fairly transparent attempt to hook up with Kym, which, FYI, did not go well, although that was not the fault of my dress solution, which was perfect). “He never meant to kill her,” I say. “It was a crime of passion, and the typewriter was right there, I guess.”
“It wasn’t really, though; it was up on Gertie’s wardrobe. Why not use that hideous cat statue next to her bed or a lamp or something?” Aunty Vinka points out.
“It shouldn’t have even been in her room,” Dad says out of nowhere.
“What?”
“The typewriter. You know she loved that thing.”
“She told me it was worth a lot of money,” Aunty Vinka says.
“I once tried to type on it, and she gave me a ten-minute lecture about the lack of typewriter ribbon still available in the world,” Dad says.
“What do you mean it shouldn’t have been in GG’s room?” I ask, not quite ready to be edged out of the conversation.
Dad starts to pile the Risk pieces back into the box, not bothering to keep them separated by color, so you can tell that he’s Going Through Something.
“Gertie asked me to take it downstairs,” he says.
“What?”
“The typewriter. The night she…died, she asked if I could take it down for her. She didn’t say why.”
Aunty Vinka lowers her crocheting. “Oh, Andy.”
“She asked me at dinner, but I just…forgot about it. I got distracted and then I had to…make a work call”—he glances at me, his cheeks going pink for a moment—“and it slipped my mind.”
If you’re hazy on the timeline here, the important thing to note is that GG asked Dad to take down the typewriteraftershe asked me to fetch her that cardboard box. If I hadn’t been such a baby with my sore shoulder, would she have asked me to get the typewriter as well? It’s not a nice thought, so I chase it away and focus on the obvious thing here.
“Dad, are you saying she asked you to take the typewriter down and then that night someone killed her with it?”
Dad looks guilty. Notguiltyguilty, like he’s the one who hit GG with the typewriter, but guilty like someone who might have forgotten his teenage daughter is in the room.
“I know what you’re thinking, Ruthie. But life isn’t a detective story: Coincidences do happen.”
“Okay.”
Silence settles, and we all get back to whatever we were pretending to do until at some point Aunty Vinka throws down her crocheting and goes upstairs. Only a couple of minutes later…
“Andy!”
Dad’s on his feet and out of the living room before I’ve registered that it’s Aunty Vinka’s voice coming from upstairs.
“Should we—” Dylan starts to ask, but I’m already tripping over my feet to follow Dad.
When Dylan and I make it to Aunty Vinka’s bedroom, she and Dad are looking out the window. I come up behind them but can’t tell what in the back garden has so captured their attention, unless you find a lemon tree particularly shocking.
“What is it?”
“Vinka thinks she saw something,” Dad says.
“I don’tthinkI saw something. Isaw something.”
“Sorry. Vinka saw something. Which has since disappeared.”
