Page 27 of The Family Plot
But first, I need to talk to Fritz. I need to know what happened in the shed a week before our birthday, because there’s a rotten, slithering thing in my gut telling me it’s somehow connected to that ax in Andy’s skull. And I need to disprove that theory. Because wouldn’t it mean that Fritz is connected too?
The backyard is empty when I round the corner of the house. Once again, no Fritz, no tools. Just a handful of leaves tumbling across the grass. As I step into the woods, I see the police tape, a yellow smudge bouncing in the breeze, and I force myself to focus on other things. The trees with scars from Andy’s ax. The nearly naked branches.
Fritz’s shed.
Its brick walls are as dirty as I remember. Ivy hugs the corners, threatening to fill in all four sides, transform this shed into a living thing. I asked Fritz once why he didn’t scrape the ivy off—or do whatever it is that keeps climbing plants at bay.Who am I to take away its home?he had answered, and he’d stroked the side of the shed like it was a pet in need of soothing.
“Fritz?” I call from just outside. Only the wind answers back. As I open the door, its hinges creak, and within the sound, I hear an old warning:You’re not supposed to be here.
Inside, shadows splay against the walls, dowsing the equipment in darkness. I blink a few times, letting my eyes adjust, and when I see that Fritz isn’t here, I almost turn to leave.
But something about Ruby’s story keeps my feet on the floor. She said Andy seemed to be following Fritz in secret, trying to remain unseen. But this shed is only so big; I can stand in its center and see every corner, every scrap of unused space. Fritz’s equipment is lined up neat and tidy along the perimeter of the room, leaving the middle of the floor, a large square covered in gray outdoor carpeting, wide open. So if Andy really was sneaking behind Fritz that night, how would he have remained undetected once he entered the shed?
Feeling like a trespasser, I study the unfamiliar space. I run my palm along the handle of the push mower, touch a leaf still stuck in the tines of a rake. From the wooden counter along the back wall, I pick up bottles of chemicals and packets of seeds. I have no idea what I’m looking for, but my fingers itch to search.
Crouching beneath the counter, I pull out a bucket, rummage through the gardening gloves inside it, then push it back in place. When I reach for another one, I tug too hard and tip the bucket over. Hundreds of nails spill out.
“Shit,” I breathe.
I sweep up the nails with my hands. Some have scattered, as far as the middle of the carpet, and as I crawl toward them, something jabs into my knee. I lift up my leg, expecting to find a nail on the floor beneath it, but all that’s there is a patch of bare carpet. Except—there’s a bulge in it, a few inches long, unnoticeable unless you’re down this close. I run my hand along it and feel something hard beneath the rug.
It could be anything. A skinny rock. A pencil nub. More than likely, it’s nothing worth discovering. But that itch in my fingers—it has me reaching for the corner of the carpet, and now I’m pulling at the edge, which resists my grip. I yank harder until it slowly peels away, making a ripping sound as it goes.
There’s some kind of tape on the bottom, keeping it from coming free. But now I stand and jerk my arms backward and a bigger section of the carpet pulls up. I examine the uncovered floor, part of me expecting that skinny rock, or that pencil nub. But what I find instead is a hinge.
A trapdoor.
My fingers latch around its handle, a metal ring in a recessed hole. I lift the ring so it swings outward, and I give it a good pull.
The door doesn’t budge.
Above the handle, there’s a keyhole, the kind for an old skeleton key. It glares at me defiantly, a dark unblinking eye.
I yank on the handle again, with more force this time, as if the problem is my strength and not the fact that the door is locked.
What could be down there? What could Fritz need to lock away, then cover over with a carpet? I think of his warnings about this shed:There’s too much that’s too sharp in there. It’s a dangerous place for kids like you.Only, looking around again, I see that everything dangerous—pruning shears, pointed trowels, an ax that isn’t Andy’s—hangs from hooks on the wall, too high for a child to reach.
I return my attention to the handle. Was this door the real reason Fritz told us to keep out?
And when Ruby saw him carrying something through the woods that night—something in a big, black bag—is this where he brought it, to the space beneath the floor?
And did Andy, creeping behind him, see something he shouldn’t have? Something that rattled him, darkened his mood, turned him sleepless and fidgety until the night he was killed?
As I stare at the door, the lock stares back, daring me to find its key.
“Do you know there’s a trapdoor in the shed?”
Mom spins around at the sound of my voice. She’s at the kitchen sink, wiping flour off her face, and the room smells like vanilla and char—a meager improvement from just the char. Cooling on the stove is a pan of peanut butter cookies, but I only identify them as such from the jar of Jif on the counter.
“Dahlia!” Mom says. “Here, have one!”
She picks up a cookie with a spatula and holds it toward my mouth.
“No, I’m—” She pushes it closer. “I’m fine, just—”
“No one’s eating my cookies,” she pouts, and she looks so dejected, so unlike the woman who staged crime scenes in the victim room, stretching out on the floor with her feet together, hand on her stomach—the exact position in which Elva Zona Heaster was found.
“I know they’re a little… dark,” she continues. “But I’m getting better, I swear.”
