Page 35 of The Family Plot
I scoff at how simply she says it.
“I’m serious,” she insists. “You have to go with your gut. You know my friend Alan, from my message boards? He was camping with his grandmother once, same spot they went every summer, when all of a sudden Nana gets this weird feeling and makes everyone pack up and leave. A couple days later? A dead body was found right near their campsite.”
Goose bumps swell on my skin, even as I shake my head. “I don’t think there are dead bodies under the shed.”
“I know, but… gut feelings exist for a reason. Now, do you want me to walk you through how to pick a lock? I’m not saying I once broke into an abandoned building because I thought it was the scene of a cold-case murder when actually it was just an old doctor’s office, but… let’s just say: I know how to get in places.”
I picture the lock again, that small black hole in the wood. I see the possibility of Fritz, returning to work, finding me tampering with a door I’m not supposed to know about. Then I see Andy, the week after he followed Fritz to the shed, when his eyes wouldn’t stop darting, when he rushed through meals, hardly even tasting his food.
And now, standing up from the closet floor, I answer Greta.
“I’ll pick the lock. Just tell me what to do.”
nine
The door to theshed is cracked open.
“Fritz?” I call.
He wasn’t shearing the hedges out front, or raking leaves onto a tarp in the yard. There weren’t any tools left out that would indicate he’s back. Still, I peek into the shed, expecting to find him there. When I don’t, I slink inside.
Dropping to my knees, I peel back one corner of the carpet, but it’s as resistant as the first time I tried to yank it up. Tugging back enough to look at the bottom, my heart hammers at what I see: fresh tape applied to each edge.
But if Fritz isn’t here, then who would have done that? And why?
As I throw the carpet back, the dark lock reveals itself. I’ve brought two bobby pins, which Greta said I would need. I open one and remove the rubber tip, then bend the other at the closed end to create a lever. I follow Greta’s directions, inserting both pins into the hole, pushing the first in deeper, twisting upward as I use the lever for tension, but all I hear are futile scrapes against the wood. Greta admitted she’d never picked a lock for a skeleton key.
I look around for something else to try and am just about to grab ascrewdriver when a throat clears behind me. I stiffen, spinning toward the open door.
“Ruby,” I say. “What the hell?”
“Maybe this will help,” she says, and at first I’m not sure whatthisis; she’s got her fingers on her sweater again, picking at the fabric along her sternum, just like she did the other times I saw her. But now she hooks a finger under her collar and pulls out a thin silver necklace. She grasps its pendant. Only—I squint through the space between us; she’s hard to see, backlit from the sun outside—it’s not a pendant at all. It’s a key.
A small skeleton key.
“Where did you get that?” I demand.
She unclasps the necklace, slides the key off the chain, and holds it out to me. “Try it.”
I eye her for another moment, her face giving nothing away, and then I grab it from her. Kneeling in front of the door, I put the key to the lock—and it slides in so easily, offering a satisfyingclickthe moment my wrist turns.
For now, I keep the door closed, snapping my head back toward Ruby. “Where did you get this?” I ask again.
“It was Andy’s,” she says.
The answer pushes me back, my weight thrust onto my heels. “What?”
“He was playing with it the last time I saw him. On his birthday. We met up, and—”
“Wait, you saw him on our birthday?”
“Of course. Not till late at night, but yeah.”
A sickening feeling slithers through my stomach.Late at nightmeans she saw him after I did, when I thought we’d both gone to bed.Late at nightmeans she might have been the last person—besides his killer—to see him alive.
“We were arguing that night,” Ruby says. “And I hate that. I’ve always hated it—that the last conversation we had was a fight.” She gestures toward the key, still slotted into the lock. “But he keptfiddlingwith it. And it was driving me crazy. I was already upset—we were having an important conversation—but it was clear he was distracted, just playing with the stupid key. So I grabbed it from him.”
I look at it again: dark brass, a circle at its end. I don’t remember ever seeing it before.
