Page 64 of The Family Plot
For an hour after that, I barely even move. The possibilities, the suspects, pin me down—Lyle at my wrists, his breath rasping in histhroat; Fritz at my ankles, his long hair scraping my legs; and Edmond at my neck, his fingers squeezing my windpipe like a pen.
They stare at me, eyes dilated, daring me to decide which one is a killer.
“This is ridiculous!”
Charlie’s voice booms up from downstairs, disrupting the image of those men. Instantly, my body feels lighter, like I can actually feel them letting me go.
“It’s hysterical, how off base you are. Were you one of those color-outside-the-line sort of kids? That doesn’t mean you’re creative, you know; it means you’re wrong.”
I lift my head, pointing my ear toward the hall. The doorbell rang a while ago, but until now, I haven’t spared a thought for who might have arrived.
“Do you have one of your fancy littlewarrants? If not, I’ll have to see you out.”
Adrenaline sprints through me. I spring toward the doorway, trying to catch the other end of the conversation, but the person is too quiet. Creeping across the hall, I edge toward the top of the stairs until I’m able to identify the voice.
“It’s really just a question,” Elijah says.
“Hardly. It’s an insinuation.”
“It’s interesting you’d see it that way.”
I descend a few steps until I see them. In the living room, Elijah studies Charlie, whose shirt is rumpled, half untucked, hair sticking up and out, as if he’s been grabbing at it. In contrast, Elijah is pressed and put-together, a crisp green folder in one hand, a notebook in the other.
“What’s going on?” I ask, and they both look at me.
“Nothing,” Charlie says. But his eyes leap like a startled deer’s to Elijah’s folder.
“I heard something about a warrant,” I prompt.
Charlie ignores me, turning back to Elijah. “If you insist on badgering me with your embarrassingly transparent questions, let’s do it somewhere else, shall we?”
He takes off toward the back hall, and Elijah follows without another glance my way.
What was in that folder? Charlie’s eyes darted toward it the same way they darted toward Tate when the police were searching his room. He never answered my question about that, never explained the anxiety I saw.You have to trust us, is all he said.Me, Tate, Mom—we’re all you have left.
But Mom’s a liar. And Tate cares more about followers than family. And Charlie was nervous about that folder, nervous about the officers traipsing across his floor.
I want to lurk at the victim room door, listen to Elijah’s questions, Charlie’s answers, but my brother is clearly defensive right now, enough to be wary of an eavesdropper. I’ll need to speak to Elijah alone, after he’s talked to Charlie. And maybe I should be wary of an eavesdropper, too.
Slipping into my shoes near the door, I’m about to head outside to wait for Elijah when I register how the foyer’s been transformed. Small tables with white cloths dot the wide space. A typewritten card announcing the items that will be displayed sits on each table. The items themselves remain in piles in the living room, where more surfaces wait, draped in white.
It looks like a room full of ghosts.
I open the front door and walk into another gray day, clouds low and heavy in the sky. The wind carries the smell of the ocean, Andy’s least favorite scent, and I pull my chunky sweater closed. Elijah’s police cruiser sits at the end of our walkway, and as I approach it, voices drift up from the bottom of the driveway.
“… but that’s because it’s Murder Mansion. There was some kind of fuss there the other day. Tons of police.”
“Well, yeah. They found that boy.”
“No, this was after that. Susan said the driveway was packed with cruisers. There was even…”
The voices shrink and fade, belonging to walkers on the road. I take a few sips of air, trying to unhear how flippantly one of them spoke of Andy, how, just like Lyle Decker, she referred to him asthat boy.
“Hey.”
Ruby emerges from the trees near the side yard, as if I’ve conjured her by thinking of her grandfather. Or as if she’s been lingering in the woods. Watching.
“Did you talk to the police about me?” Her question is unexpectedly forceful. She squeezes her lips together, waiting.
