Page 96 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder
“There’s something I want to ask you, Mum,” Dylan saysbefore Bec can speak or Shippy can elaborate on what Bitcoin-adjacent scam he’s about to lose money on. We sit opposite the adults and I keep my expression neutral, wishing there’d been time for any kind of background briefing so I could adjust my face accordingly.
“You can ask me anything,” Bec says.
“Will you tell me the truth?”
“What is it?”
“Just answer: Will you tell me the truth?”
Shippy gives me awhat’s all this aboutlook that I ignore. Mostly because I have no idea what all this is, in fact, about.
“I’ll tell you the truth.”
“Did you smash the window and put the ladder against the house the night Gertie died?” Dylan asks.
This is…not what I was expecting. If Dylan had asked me, real quick, to jot down a list of my top ten ideas of what this was about, that wouldn’t have made the cut. It’s not what Bec was expecting either, if the southerly location of her jaw is any indication.
“What?”
“Just tell me. Did you do it?”
Shippy licks the tip of one finger and runs it through a line of gingersnap crumbs on the table. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dylan.”
But Bec doesn’t look like Dylan is being ridiculous. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Just tell me the truth, Mum.” For a guy who usually operates somewhere between a two out of ten and a four outof ten on the intensity scale (one being comatose), Dylan has jumped all the way up to nine, and it’s freaking his mum out as much as it is me. Plus, what is he talking about? Did he miss the whole confrontation scene with Sasha, who, sure, denied breaking the window and setting up the ladder, but also confirmed himself to be a straight-up psychopath who cannot be believed?
“Yes,” Bec says, but quietly. “How did you know?”
Dylan looks at me, presumably to make sure I’m paying attention, as if something more interesting than this bizarre eleventh-hour confession (to what, exactly?) might have distracted me.
“I didn’tknow,” he says. “But you had a cut on your hand the morning after Gertie died.” I look at Bec’s hand and see a faint red line across one finger in the spot where I’d noticed a Band-Aid covering what I’d assumed was a burn from the stove. She immediately covers one hand with the other, as though this isn’t a bolting-the-barn-door/horse-on-the-loose situation. “I heard you get up early the morning Gertie died, but you never said anything about it. Plus, Sasha said it wasn’t him, and why would he lie about that, of all things? The window was unlocked and open, so the only reason it could possibly have been smashed was to make the police believe someone outside the house killed Gertie. It never really made sense that Sasha would bother trying to divert suspicion from people in the house.”
Um, rude? It made sense to me when I accused Sasha. Sometimes criminals have dumb plans.
“What’s this about, Bec?” Shippy asks.
“I did it, but that’s all I did,” Bec says quickly, her eyes on the front door. Through the window I can see a couple of police officers photographing the crashed cars. Dad, Aunty Vinka, and Detective Peterson are in conversation. “It was so stupid.” She puts her hand on top of Dylan’s and he doesn’t immediately pull it away.
“What happened?” he asks.
“I woke up really early,” she says. “Nobody else was up. Gertie was an early riser as well, and so I went upstairs to see if she wanted anything. I wanted to talk to her too. You might not believe this, Dylan, but I wasn’t sure if keeping up the lie about me being part of the family was the best idea.” She’s looking at her son but getting nothing in return. “I found her on the floor. I thought she had been killed. There was no sign of a break-in or a forced entry. I thought…I didn’t know. The last conversation we had, she basically confirmed I’d get a lot of money when she died.”
Nobody says anything becauseyikes.I can only think of one reason why Bec might have done such a reckless, fairly stupid thing.
“You thought Shippy had done it for the money?” Dylan asks.
“You thoughtIkilled Gertie?” Shippy, it appears, has finally caught up.
“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Bec says, now turning to Shippy. “I’d just told you that I was in Gertie’s will and then she died. You’d been out of bed that night and you took a shower before you came to bed.”
“To get rid of the smell of smoke.”
“I know that now. After I found Gertie, I went outside for a walk, just to clear my head—I was probably in shock, but I was planning to hike across the field to call the police. Then, when I walked around the house and saw the ladder right there, I thought, well, I thought I could make it look like someone came in from the outside. I smashed the window with a rock for the same reason. It was an insane thing to do, obviously.”
“Right.” Shippy looks into her eyes, which are big and pleading and, gosh, she really does manage to look so pretty, even in a crisis. I’m sort of bummed, just for the moment, that we’re not related so there’s no chance I’ll age like her. “You were trying to protect me.” (Is it just me or does Shippy seem…flattered?)
The front door opens, and Dad and Aunty Vinka come in.
