The Quarry Girls(55)

“Enough!” he thundered.

He could have punched me in the stomach and shocked me less. I’d never heard my dad raise his voice, not at me.

His face did that collapsing-in-on-itself thing again. “I’m sorry, honey, I really am. Look, between you and me, I’ll keep my nose to the ground on this. It’s who you know and who you owe in the Stearns County sheriff’s department, so I’ll have to be careful, but I won’t give up.” He looked at me, pleading. “If I promise to keep an eye on this, will you consider that Jerome might be telling the truth? You said yourself that there was a flashing light in that basement room, that faces weren’t clear.”

“I won’t,” I said, my voice revealing my misery. “Maureen did not kill herself.”

Movement caught my eye. Junie was sneaking down the stairs. She looked stricken. She must have heard the yelling. Mom must have, too, but there was no movement from her bedroom. I signaled to Junie to come to me. She dashed across the living room like a hunted animal, snuggling next to me on the chair. I threw my arm around her.

Dad took another swallow, didn’t even acknowledge Junie. “You don’t know everything, Heather.”

He didn’t say it mean. I waited.

He stared out the window, then back into his drink like it was a telescope pointed into the middle of the earth. “There is another theory, one that doesn’t involve Jerome or suicide.”

Junie’s hot breath warmed my neck where her face curved into it.

“The man I told you about, the one Gulliver Ryan came down from the Cities to check out, Theodore Godo? He goes by Ed, or Eddie. Dresses like a greaser. Been spotted around town driving a blue Chevelle, hanging out with Ricky Schmidt.”

Junie stiffened. I about swallowed my own tongue. Dad and Sheriff Nillson must not have seen Ed waiting for us backstage after the show, must not know we’d spent time with him.

I didn’t recognize my voice when I spoke. “Jerome thinks Ed—Theodore—is involved in Maureen’s . . . drowning?”

He nodded. “So does Agent Ryan. Any suspicions Jerome has about Maureen’s death—and I’m not saying he has any, officially—they’re looking at Godo to answer.”

Across the back of my eyelids, I saw Maureen flirting with Ed backstage at the county-fair gig.

“Why don’t they arrest him?” Junie asked, her voice breathy.

“It’s not that easy, Bug,” Dad said, and in that moment I heard it, the way we all treated her like a baby, or worse, a doll, talking down to her, protecting her. How had I never noticed before?

“Agent Ryan took him in for questioning back in Saint Paul when that waitress first went missing,” Dad continued, “but he had to let him go. There wasn’t enough evidence to hold him. Then Godo shows up in Saint Cloud earlier than we’d first thought. Next thing you know, Elizabeth McCain disappears, and Maureen drowns. Agent Ryan took Godo in again, this time with Jerome’s help. Again, there wasn’t enough to hold him.”

Those words filled the room, impossibly heavy. Dad was staring into the bottom of his glass, didn’t look up as he finished his explanation. “We’ve all been working late nights, some overnights, trying to get the goods on him, but there simply isn’t time anymore. We decided it today. Jerome and a deputy of his are running Godo out of town.”

Junie nuzzled deeper into me.

I shook my head. That didn’t make any sense. They thought he murdered two girls and kidnapped a third, and they were going to run him out of town? “But won’t he just get away with it, then?” I asked.

Dad swirled his drink, threw back the last of it. “We’ll keep investigating. In the meanwhile, it’s the best thing for Saint Cloud to get him out of here. Ed and probably even Ricky, you can’t ever change men like them.” His voice seemed to walk away, but his body stayed in the room. “Women always try, but men like that are born bad.”

I wanted to call him back, tell him to get rid of this impostor who was all right with running off a man they believed to be a killer, running him off to some other town that had women and children, just like this one.

But I couldn’t find the words.

“Understand, this information doesn’t leave the room or it would cost me my job,” Dad said, focusing on me again, earnest. “I need you to know, Heather . . . I need you to know that if there is any injustice here, it will not go unpunished. I give you my word. Do you believe me?”

He was almost begging.

My dad was pleading for me to believe him.

So I nodded, feeling alone inside myself.



It was quiet in the house, a stillness punctuated by Dad’s snuffling noises. He only snored when he had too much to drink. He’d kept throwing it back while I told him everything I knew about Ed, which wasn’t much. At least I could confirm that Ed and Maureen had known each other. Dad had called Sheriff Nillson to tell him, his words slurred. He’d returned to the couch, falling asleep shortly after. I covered him with a blanket, then walked quietly to my own room.

I lay under my covers, fully clothed, listening to the clock tick and Dad snore. When everything remained the same for thirty minutes, I slipped down to the kitchen, unlooping the skeleton key from the hook. I grabbed a flashlight and made my way to the basement.

Dad might trust Jerome Nillson.