Page 72 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder
“Sure, I thought they should.”
A man holding a stack of books lines up politely behind us and Laura’s eyes flick over my shoulder. We don’t have long.
“Did she ever tell you about a life-insurance policy to benefit her son?” Dylan asks, and the customer’s head performs an eavesdropper’s tilt.Way to be subtle, guy who should be using the self-checkout.
“No. Did she have one?”
“We only found it after she died.”
“She never mentioned it.” Laura nods at the waiting customer. “Now, I’m afraid I’d better serve this gentleman.”
“Okay, thanks.”
We’ve already turned to go when Laura says, “Wait!” and the customer’s book stack wobbles as he pretends he wasn’t ready to take our place anyway. “There is one thing that was a bit weird.”
(This is going to be good, right? You know it’s going to be good because that’s how it works in detective stories—the best stuff always comes when a suspect or a witness tells the detectivejust one more thing.)
“What?”
“Gertie was in here a few weeks ago. It was my last shift before Bali, so I remember. She said something about carrying a lot of cash on her. She’d just been to the bank.”
“How much is a lot?”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, but she was nervous aboutcarrying that much cash around, so I assumed it was at least hundreds.”
“Did she say what it was for?”
“No, it was a busy day. I don’t know if it’s even relevant, but it was out of the ordinary.” Laura turns to the man and motions for him to come forward. “Thanks for waiting, Michael.” Our interview is over, and Michael has some C-grade gossip to take home.
“What do you think?” Dylan asks as we walk out of the library together.
“It’s starting to sound like we’ve got some criminal mastermind son running around with the perfect motive.”
“Can he be a mastermind if he got caught?”
“Is that the point?”
Dylan looks sideways at me. “Why do you look kind of depressed about this?”
“It’s just, you know, up to the police now, isn’t it? They’ve known this whole time about GG’s son being alive. I wonder why they never told us.”
“So thoughtless of the police not to keep the teen detectives up to date.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Cheer up,” Dylan says, checking his phone. “This is good news. If the son did it, it means Shippy and my mum are in the clear.” He says it in this awful faux-casual way that might fool someone who didn’t know him or who had recently suffered a traumatic head injury, but nobody else.
“Dylan,” I say, pausing in the hope he’ll jump in and I won’thave to figure out the second half of the sentence. When he doesn’t, I go on, tapping his arm to make him stop and face me. “I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean to…”Didn’t mean to…what, exactly? Where am I going with this?I didn’t mean to imply your mum might be responsible for GG’s death?I didn’t mean to reveal your mum as a grifter? “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I like your mum.” There’s no point pretending I liked Shippy, even before I thought he might be a murderer.
“Forget it,” he says. “What about the money Gertie was carrying around? That seems like it could be important. Maybe she was being blackmailed?” The subject change is a little clumsy but I appreciate it.
“Sure, but don’t blackmailers tend to be the ones that get murdered, not the other way around?”
“If you’re going to bring logic into it.”
“I wonder how much money was a lot to GG.”
“We didn’t find any cash in her room.” Dylan’s phone beeps and he checks it again, frowning. “I guess the police might have found some. Do you really think Gertie’s own son could have come to find her and killed her?”
