Page 35 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder
Dylan shrugs. “Maybe the cops took it?”
“I guess.” I don’t really get why the cops would take one box over all the others. “It said ‘for M’ or something like that.”
“Who’s Em? Emily?”
“No,Mlike the letter.” The box might be nothing, but I can’t let go of the idea that its absence matters. In front of Dylan, though, I play it down. I’m not sure why. “Have you found anything good?”
“A bunch of personal papers. Plus the warranty and instructions for everything Gertie ever bought.”
“Seriously?”
“There’s a receipt here for a toasted-sandwich maker she bought in the nineties. She didn’t even live here then. At some point she packed this receipt and brought it with her.”
“What about the secret drawer?”
“What’s the secret drawer?”
Classic Dylan strikes again. Do I have to do everything myself?
The door to the bedroom opens and Dad comes in with a glass of wine and an air of triumph I don’t care for.
“I knew it,” he says.
“What?” But I know what he means: GG’s papers areeverywhere on the floor around Dylan, I’m rummaging through her belongings, and there’s absolutely no sign of the sheets we’re ostensibly here to collect. The only way we could look more guilty would involve a bloody knife and a headless corpse.
“The moment you offered to help, I knew you’d be snooping.”
“We’re not snooping.” Dylan would be more convincing if this defense wasn’t delivered while clutching the toasted-sandwich-maker receipt.
“Sure. And Shippy’s one of our leading thinkers.” Dad nods at the papers. “What did you find?”
There’s a moment when I could tell Dad about the box. I don’t, and like all good ideas unacted upon, it passes.
“Nothing,” I say after a pause that Dad would probably find more suspicious if his glass wasn’t half empty.
“A lot of papers,” Dylan says, pulling Dad’s focus. “Most of it is junk, but there’s her birth certificate, marriage certificates, that kind of stuff.” Dad crouches down next to Dylan and I see his eyes flick to the wardrobe’s ornate carving of a bird, which marks the secret drawer I never got a chance to tell Dylan about. It’s still closed.
“We’ll be down in a sec,” I say.
“Guess again. Grab the sheets and head down. I’ll tidy up so the cops don’t realize you’ve been up here trying to do their job for them.” In case I’ve missed the point, Dad reaches up to the top shelf of the wardrobe and pulls out an unfitted white sheet and a pillow that’s slightly yellow around the edges. Dylan gets a tartan blanket and pillowcase, and the two of us walk to thebedroom door as slowly as it’s possible to do while still meeting the definition of walking.
“Wait, Ruth,” Dad says as I go through the door, waving for Dylan to keep going. He steps out onto the landing. “How are you feeling about all this?”
“I’m okay. I mean, it’s awful, obviously, but I’m okay.” What I am is trying not to look over Dad’s shoulder at the wardrobe’s secret drawer. How could I not think of looking there right away?
“You know that the police are going to find out who killedGG.”
“Who do you think did it?”
Dad blinks at the question. “Probably some career criminal who was looking for money or jewelry.”
“Right.” I hate that Dad can’t be honest with me the way he can with Aunty Vinka and tell me what he’s actually thinking. But I can’t say that, so I settle for something I can say. “Where were you?”
“What?”
“You weren’t in your room the night GG was killed.” Dad gives me a look I don’t understand, which is weird because I’m usually fluent in Dad. “I didn’t tell the police.”
Dad opens his mouth and then shuts it again, a couple of times, like my old black moor fish before the cat killed it. “I was just checking on GG,” he says. “You haven’t been worried about that, have you?”
