The Quarry Girls(54)

I nodded.

“Good girl. That was smart. I’ll take it from here. Do you trust me to handle it?”

“Yes,” I said, tears heating up my eyelids. Things were going to be okay, as okay as they could be now that Maureen was gone.

Dad gave me a hug, promised me he’d be home for dinner tonight. I was almost to my bike before I remembered I hadn’t told him about the copper ID bracelet or the diary. The courthouse loomed behind me, imposing, glaring down at my teenager clothes, my messy hair.

I’d tell him about them when he got home.





CHAPTER 31


Dad didn’t make it home for supper. Though I knew last night’s hamburger hotdish squatted in the fridge, I’d biked by the Zayre grocery store to pick up Dad’s favorite Salisbury steak dinner in anticipation of him joining us.

It grew cold.

Mom had even left the bedroom to sit at the dining room table, her hair styled, makeup immaculate, smile brittle. She seemed as disappointed as me that Dad wasn’t here. We talked around Maureen, pretending she wasn’t dead, always pretending in Pantown. Mom asked about work, I asked her about her church group that she still sometimes attended, Junie talked about kittens, how Jennifer three doors down had one, how she wanted one, too, but a nice one, an actual baby, not a crabby appleton like Ricky’s Mrs. Brownie.

Then Mom returned to her room and Junie to hers after helping me clean up.

I was about to bike back to the courthouse when I heard a car pull into the driveway. I ran to the window. It was Dad! I held the door open for him. He looked like a time-lapsed version of himself, like him in twenty years, but it didn’t matter because he was home.

“I’ll reheat your dinner,” I said, running back to the kitchen to pop his steak into the still-warm oven.

When I returned, he was pouring himself a glass of brandy. “Want me to get ice?” I asked.

He dropped onto the couch with a sigh as heavy as lead. He studied the honey-colored liquid in his glass, not meeting my eyes. “The coroner agrees it’s suicide, Heather.”

I stepped closer to him, hugging the edges of the room. “What?”

“And Jerome unequivocally denies having Maureen in his house, ever.”

My jaw dropped open. Dad had said he’d investigate, not go straight up to the fox and ask him if he’d visited the henhouse. “You told him what Brenda and I saw?”

“No, of course not. I protected you. I told him it was a rumor. He said it was all bullshit, that Maureen was a troubled girl, and that she drowned herself. Period. The end of it.”

“She was troubled because of what he did to her!” I yelled. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

But I hadn’t. I hadn’t seen Sheriff Nillson at all, just a man I believed could have been him. “Besides, she never would have drowned. I told you that. She was a great swimmer.” I was panting as if I’d just run around the block. I paused, my thoughts tumbling. I still had the ace in my hand. Something was telling me not to share it, but I pushed through. This was my dad. “There’s something more.”

He frowned. “What?”

I let out a shuddering breath. “I read her diary after she disappeared, Dad. She was worried about someone killing her. She said that if she was murdered, to not let him get away with it.”

Dad leaned forward, his cheeks suddenly flushed scarlet. “Let who get away with it?”

I fought the urge to grab the diary and show it to him. “She didn’t say.”

Dad stared upward as if put upon, then took a big swallow from his glass. “Teenagers are dramatic like that, Heather. They’re not all nearly as levelheaded as you.”

I shook my head, unwilling to accept the flattery, shocked at how easily he was dismissing the smoking gun. “She knew she was going to be murdered!”

“Then why didn’t she name her killer?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

He took another swig of his liquor and grimaced. He was drinking fast. “Because it was a fantasy, that’s all. A fantasy she made up in her troubled head. You know she’s been wild since her father left, both her and her mother getting out of line. I’m afraid it was only a matter of time until something like this happened. Sheriff Nillson believes Maureen stole some of her mother’s heart medicine, her digoxin, to knock herself out so she didn’t fight the water. If it wasn’t the heart medicine, it was some of her downers. Lord knows she has enough pills to choose from, for all the good they do her.”

I sat carefully on the chair across from him. I needed him to hear me, to believe me. Why wasn’t he listening? I spoke slowly. “If that’s true, the medicine would show up in an autopsy.” I wasn’t sure of this, but it sounded right.

Dad shook his head. “Jerome’s not calling for an autopsy. Those are only done when there’s a question about the cause of death. He’s sure it’s suicide, and even if he ordered it, they’d have to know exactly what to test for or it’s just a thousand-dollar snipe hunt.”

I opened my mouth to object, but he held up his hand. “I’ve heard of it before, girls swipe something from their parents’ medicine cabinet to take the edge off and throw themselves off a bridge. All very dramatic.”

“But—”