Page 75 of A Murder is Going Down

‘Who’s Nancy Drew?’

Michael ignores that. ‘The Hardy Boys are brothers who investigate crimes in an old series of novels. They’re actually pretty … I’m getting distracted. My point is, why would Patrick push for an investigation if he was secretly a murderer?’

The wordmurderershuts us all up, but not for long.

‘Guilt. Or, like, the thing murderers do when they return to the scene of the crime.’ Lilia is hitting her stride. ‘Also, I’ve read Nancy Drew.’

‘I think that only happens in bad crime procedurals. I’ve been in a few of them,’ Michael says.

‘It’s a weird lie,’ I say.

‘I know my brother. Anyway, we’re nearly here. Lilia, didn’t you have some big revelation you were supposed to share with Heidi here?’

I’d forgotten all about that.

I twist in my seat and Lilia gives me a nervous smile. ‘It’s not that big of a deal,’ she says. ‘Not like the luggage tag or anything.’

‘Are you planning on revealing it via charades? Spit it out,’ I say.

‘I looked at Ben’s phone. He erased his messages withFelix, but he didn’t wipe his call log. He called Felix the night he died, just after six p.m.’

I think about the timeframe. Felix died around eight p.m.

‘Felix would have still been alive then.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did Felix pick up?’

‘No.’ Lilia frowns. ‘At least I don’t think so.’

We pull up outside Felix and Elena’s house. I’m all for going straight to the trail, but Michael blurts out he’s busting for a wee and bolts inside, barely pausing to stab in the alarm code before running for the bathroom.

‘He seems nice,’ Lilia says after a long silence.

‘Does Ben know you looked at his phone?’ I ask.

Lilia shakes her head. ‘Of course not.’

‘Did you find anything else juicy on there?’

I’m joking, but Lilia’s silence makes me look sideways at her.

‘What?’

‘It’s probably nothing,’ she says, just as Michael comes back out the front door.

‘Those three coffees this morning might have been a mistake,’ he says. ‘Shall we go?’

I lead the two of them around the house and away from the river to show them the place where the police think Felix fell. Or jumped. Or was pushed. Then we bush-bashthrough the scrub to find the window, from which Haruto must have seen whatever it was he saw.

It takes a while, but that’s only because the bushes are scratchy and Michael’s jacket gets briefly caught on a tree branch, which makes him swear a lot.

‘Is it expensive?’ I ask, because it looks like it is.

‘It’s Patrick’s,’ he says, then grins. ‘So what am I even worried about?’

‘What’s it like, the two of you living together in Melbourne?’