Page 17 of The Family Plot
I look at the women for one more moment, their faces indistinct from this far away, and then I turn around, hurrying toward the back entrance of the house.
On my way, I glance toward the woods, that yellow tape and mound of dirt—and that’s where I see Elijah Kraft, staring down into what I can only imagine is a human-size, Andy-size hole.
Grief gushes through me like a shot of adrenaline. I’m stopped short by the raw, potent force of it.
From where he stands near the headstones, Elijah gestures for me to wait. He takes one last look at the dirt, jots something in his notepad, then weaves through the trees and out into the yard.
“Glad you turned up,” he says. “Your brother told me he didn’t know where you were.”
For a moment, I think he means Andy, and my heart leaps into my throat. It stays there, pounding, even when I remember Charlie.
“I know this probably isn’t the best time,” Elijah says, “but I have some questions for you, and I—”
“You’re right. It’s not the best time.”
Tears creep into my eyes as Elijah regards me. I bite my lip to keep them from spilling.
“I understand,” he says. “But I’m trying to figure out what happened to Andy, and I could use your help. Should we head inside?” He fiddles with the lapels on his unbuttoned coat, drawing them closer against the cold. “Or if you’re uncomfortable speaking around your family, I’m happy to take you down to the station instead.”
“Why would I be uncomfortable speaking around my family?”
He shrugs, flipping to a fresh page in his notebook. “I’m just offering.”
Even now, before I’ve agreed to anything, his pen is poised, reminding me of his father. Whenever Chief Kraft spoke to Dad, hisnotepad was always out, his pen digging into the page like a shovel stabbing at dirt. I glare at Elijah for a few seconds before I feel myself loosen. I’ve got no energy for resisting.
“Inside is fine,” I sigh, leading him toward the back door.
As soon as we enter, I hear clinking sounds in the kitchen. I imagine bowls colliding as Mom fumbles through another attempt at cookies. At least the smoke is gone, for now.
Walking toward the center of the house, where two hallways branch off just before the foyer, I hear something scrape against the floor. Elijah and I pause, our heads tilted toward the noise, and when Charlie appears, hunched over, pushing a large box out of the living room, I clench my teeth until pain jolts through my jaw.
Charlie hasn’t noticed us yet. He’s frowning at an open box, hands on his hips, as if its contents have disappointed him. I wave Elijah down the hall and open the second door on the right.
Together, we enter the victim room.
“Wow,” Elijah says when I close the door behind him. He moves toward the farthest wall and points to a portrait hanging there. “Is that Kitty Genovese?”
I nod. It’s one of Tate’s paintings, which Mom would sometimes let her do in lieu of a murder report. Tate really took to Kitty’s story; theNew York Timesclaimed—erroneously, it later turned out—that thirty-eight people witnessed her stabbing in Queens, but none of them did a thing. When Kitty’s Honoring came around each March, Tate would bow her head, ignoring Charlie’s eye rolls.We can’t restore your life, but we strive to restore your memory with this breath, we’d chant, and after we blew out the candles, Tate would add, quietly, “I’m sorry everyone’s such a coward.”
“What is this room?” Elijah asks. His eyes skim over the newspapers stacked along the built-in shelves. He touches one of the brightred tabs poking out:B, it says, denoting the section where articles about Penny Bell, Kirsty Bentley, and the Boy in the Box are stored.
“It’s our… library,” I say—careful not to use the name we’d coined. “It’s where we keep information about murder victims.”
As he cocks a brow at me, I regret my choice of room. Even the foyer would have been preferable; Charlie’s preparations would be less a distraction than the newspapers stacked fold out, one of which blares the headline “Woman Found Dead in Grade School Playground.”
“Do you want to sit?” I ask, gesturing to the couch in the center of the room. He has to drag his attention away from the shelves, but then he nods, sloughing off his coat and settling onto the cushions. I take a seat in the reading chair across from him.
Scribbling at the top of his notepad, Elijah peers at me. His gaze is dark and tight, eyes like buttons sewn too snugly into his face.
“So,” he starts, “did Andy have any enemies?”
I almost laugh at the question—lifted, it seems, straight from a police procedural.
“Of course not,” I say.
We hardly had anyone in our lives; how would we have managed to acquire any enemies?
“No one who had a grudge against him?”
