Page 20 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder

8

You’ll rarely find me complainingabout a lack of Shippy in my life. Under ordinary circumstances I regard Shippy the way I regard a mosquito bite: annoying without being dangerous. Or maybe he’s more like my Spotify subscription: a small price to pay for something I like (in this case Aunty Bec and Dylan).

And yet. By mid-afternoon, when he still hasn’t come home, I am distinctly unsettled. The whole household feels on edge, even Dylan, which I can tell because he’s curled up on a chair in the living room with the rest of us, instead of locked in his bedroom listening to Scandinavian rockers work out their trauma.

“At what point do you think we call the police?” Dad quietly asks Aunty Bec, who has started a thousand-piece puzzle on the coffee table. Clearly, she’s settling in for the long haul.

“What do you mean?”

“About Shippy.”

“I don’t think they take missing-persons reports seriously before forty-eight hours or something.”

“That’s a myth.”

“Still.”

“It doesn’t strike you as being a little…suspicious?”

The grown-ups are sprawled out over the living room. Dad is surrounded by a stack of DVDs, VHS tapes, and old board games he found in the cupboard. For the last ten minutes he’s been counting pieces inside the box for Risk, for reasons best known to himself. I’m in the nearest armchair, ostensibly still reading my book, although obviously mostly eavesdropping.

“What do you mean?”

“Bec, you don’t find it strange that the morning after our…stepmother is murdered, Shippy does a runner?”

Aunty Bec pauses in her separation of the puzzle’s edge pieces to give Dad areally?look I feel from across the room. “He hasn’tdone a runner,Andy, and please stop talking like you’re in a noir film. I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation.”

“Like what?”

“He might have gone for a…look around the farm.”

“In my car?”

“So he’s gone into town.”

“All day?”

“Dunsborough is a vibrant regional community,” Aunty Bec tries, and Dad snorts. “Okay, but you know Shippy—he’s probably off at the pub with someone he just met.”

“Let’s examine the facts. Fact one: Shippy disappeared mysteriously in the night.”

“He didn’t disappear. He’s just…not here.”

“Fact two: He stole my car and didn’t leave a note.”

“Borrowed.”

“Fact three: Gertie was murdered—”

“Andy.”

“She was, though.” Everyone goes quiet for a minute, but Dad’s never been able to let a silence sit for long. “I hate to state the obvious, but what do you think the police are going to think if they hear your boyfriend has disappeared right after our stepmother was brutally murdered?”

“Vinx, can you step in?” Aunty Bec appeals to the figure swathed in a caftan on the nearest armchair, who’s been mind-melding with her crocheting through all of this.

“I hate to say it,” Aunty Vinka says gently, the same way she talked to Grandad when he was almost dead but not quite and the same way I once heard her talk to a dog in the street, “but it is pretty odd behavior.”

“There’s a big gap between odd behavior and murder suspect, but don’t mind me—I’m going to drive out to get some service and see if Shippy has called.” Aunty Bec stands up and tosses her head so her bob swishes around her face. I wonder if my hair would do that if I took a photo of Aunty Bec to the hairdresser. She has to pause her attempt to storm out to borrow Aunty Vinka’s car keys, which is embarrassing for her.