Page 41 of The Family Plot
I knead my forehead with my knuckles. “Ruby said Fritz was carrying a big bag into the shed, a week before our birthday. That would have been right around the time Jessie Stanton was found. Which means— He was probably carrying Jessie.”
Another moan drains from my lips.
That dark energy that had been fizzing off Andy the days before he died. Now I know its source—even if parts of it remain a mystery: how much he witnessed in the shadows of that night; if he knew exactlywhat Fritz had done, and to whom. But he saw enough, it seems, to wreck him for the rest of the week. So why, then, did he swallow down his discovery, never telling anyone—not even me?
I see the chest again, its splintered wood conveying desperation. Maybe he’d been waiting for evidence, for proof—the kind he gained access to only on the night he was murdered.
I take in a shaky breath, numb again, unable to feel the tears I know I must be crying.
“I think Fritz killed Andy,” I say, and my voice is so flat, so distant, it sounds like it’s coming from somebody else. “I think he killed him for what he saw. When I asked Fritz about that, he kind of crumpled, said if he’d known, he would have never. I don’t know what that means, but… he didn’t deny it.”
Charlie and Tate stare at each other, silent. Mom’s hand flutters up to cover her mouth.
“I can’t believe it.” She lets out another whimper, though her eyes, shifting to the scene outside, remain dry. “I’ve known Fritz for decades. We trusted him. My parents. Daniel and I. How could he have—”
Her question cuts off as Charlie nudges her aside to look out the window. An officer is walking from the shed, out toward the side yard, a clear plastic bag in his hand. Even from here, I can tell what’s inside it: a photograph.
Charlie groans. “Everyone’s going to know.”
“Maybe not,” I say. “Elijah told me not to speak to reporters. He said they don’t want this public yet.”
“Yet,” Charlie echoes with contempt. “And where is Detective Good Boy, hmm?”
“He took Fritz away for questioning.”
But before that, he disappeared into the shed while two other officers stood outside, guarding our groundskeeper. Fritz leaned againsta tree, gaze far off, defeated, as if waiting for the moment they’d haul him away. When Elijah finally emerged from inside the shed, he nodded to the officers to follow him, and they each wrapped a hand around Fritz’s arms, guiding him as he limped dutifully after the detective.
Now, officers continue to enter the shed as their colleagues exit. Whenever someone comes out, there’s a heaviness to their gait, like they’re trudging through mud that sucks at their shoes.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” Mom says. She turns to the kitchen island and digs a measuring cup into the canister of flour. She doesn’t scrape off the excess, like Greta always does when she makes the café’s muffins. Instead, she dumps the heaping cup into the bowl of wet ingredients before shoving it back into the flour.
“It’s too much,” she murmurs. “This is all too much.” She plops more powder into the batter. “First Daniel. Then Andy. Now you say Fritz… And the shed!” The measuring cup clatters onto the marble as her hands, shaking, hang in the air like she doesn’t know what to do with them.
Tate rushes toward her. She tries to embrace her, but Mom shrugs her off. “No, no, this is all my fault.”
“Yourfault,” Charlie says. He gulps from the bottle still clenched in his fist. “Do tell, Mother.” He smiles, wolfishly, as whisky glosses his lips.
Guilt fills Mom’s eyes as clearly as tears.
“I built our lives around victims of murder,” she says. “I taught you about them, held Honorings for them. And now, here they are, all over our backyard. Andy”—pain tightens her expression—“Andy was killed here. And god only knows what happened in that shed. So maybe… maybe it was karma, for the way I chose for us to live.”
There’s a beat of silence, all of us absorbing this strange theory. I’ve never heard her speak of karma without the context of her parents—the guns they made and were unmade by in return.
Charlie belts out a guffaw. “I’m sorry, but that’s insane.” He laughs some more until, abruptly, his smile evaporates. “If you’re going to blame yourself for anything, how about you start with what you missed.”
Mom’s eyes grow wide. “What I missed?”
“Dahlia says Fritz has a murder den under our shed. Shouldn’t you have known that something was going on? Shouldn’t you have seensomething?”
“Hey,” Tate says. “We never saw anything either. We… we were here for years, as close to it as anyone”—tears clump like mascara in her lashes—“and we had no idea.” She shakes her head, continues in a whisper. “We had no idea, Charlie.”
“That’s… that’s not the same,” Charlie says, but for a moment, he seems flustered. He rubs the back of his neck, then reaches for Tate’s hand, squeezing it once before letting go. “No, it’s… it’s not the same, Tate.”
He slams his gaze onto Mom. Drinking his whisky, he glares at her over the bottle. “We werekids,” he adds when he swallows. “Mom was the adult. If anyone should have known…”
He trails off, his implication heavy in the air.
Mom gapes at him in horror. Then she spins toward her bowl on the counter, stabbing at the clumps of flour with a spoon.
