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—”
“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.