He hardly ever swore around me. It made me feel grown-up. “Yeah,” I said, unaware that I was mimicking his response, his tone, until I noticed my hand about to tap my own chin exactly as he had just done.
“Who else have you told? Does Claude know? Junie?”
“No. Just me and Brenda. We swore to keep it a secret. We didn’t want to get Maureen in trouble. But now . . .”
A knock on his door made me about jump out of my sneakers.
“Come in,” Dad said, holding his hand up to me, palm out. Hold that thought, it said. I need to hear it all.
Agent Gulliver Ryan poked his ginger-dusted head in, spotted me. “I can come back.”
“What is it?” Dad asked, his voice tight. I stood straighter. Dad was the authority here, that’s what his tone and posture conveyed. My dad was in charge.
Agent Ryan held out a ring of keys. “I no longer need these. Have my own. Do I give them back to you or Jerome?”
“Jerome,” Dad said. His face was stony.
Agent Ryan nodded and closed the door behind him.
I looked at Dad, who ran both hands across his face like he was washing it.
“As it happens, Agent Ryan is setting up a temporary office here. We were hoping to have him gone within the week. No such luck.” He jerked his head like he wanted to shake off a bad thought. “But that’s not for you to worry about. You have enough on your plate. Brenda knows you came to me?”
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?”