Page 74 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder

“So,” Dylan says when Dad is busy with the pump.

I jump in before he can come up with the second word in that sentence, twisting around in my seat to face him in the back.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Clearly, you just have,” Dylan deadpans.

“Aren’t you a bit young for dad jokes?”

“What is it, then?”

“You didn’tknow,did you?” I don’t need to addabout your mum and Shippy.I’ve already had the answer from Bec and I believed her. I think. Mostly. But I want to hear it from Dylan, and havingthisexcruciating conversation is better than finishing the one we started at the bookshop.

“No,” he says, without jokes. He doesn’t even seem pissedoff.

“Sorry to ask.”

“I get it. We should be able to talk about this stuff if we’re proper partners in crime. No, wait, that’s the term for people doing the illegal stuff. Detectives in crime? That’s not right either. There’s a word for it, right? What do you call the two guys in a buddy-cop movie?”

“Cops?”

“Shut up.”

“Buddies?”

“You know what I mean. And, just in case you’re wondering: I know my mum would never hurt anyone.”

“What about Shippy?”

“Straight-up psycho.” We both crack a smile and I decide to just jump right back in and pretend the bookshop awkwardness never even happened (which maybe he didn’t even notice and so, essentially, it didn’t?).

“One thing I keep thinking about is how weird it is that GG was killed on the night that we were supposed to be backin Perth. Like, if Shippy—just for the sake of argument—did want to kill her, then why would he wait untilthatnight? He didn’t know Nick was going to try to catch that snake, so he didn’t know we’d have to stay. He shouldn’t have even been here. And if it was an outsider, like GG’s son, is it just a coincidence he did it on the night we were supposed to have left?”

“Maybe whoever did it knew we were leaving. Maybe they’d been waiting for us to leave,” Dylan says. We both sit with that for a beat, trying to unpick what it might mean. “There’s another thing I wanted to ask you,” he says, and my paranoid mind immediately leaps to my bookshop humiliation, so it’s a relief when he goes on. “What was that about Vinka going up to GG’s the night she died?”

“Oh, that. Shippy said Aunty Vinka took a cup of tea up to GG on the night she died.”

“Is that it?”

“Aunty Vinka didn’t tell us. Why would she keep it a secret?”

“Why wouldn’t she? She might not have thought it was important.”

“It’s suspicious.”

“How?”

“GG died that night.”

“She didn’t die from a cup of tea, Ruth.” Dylan’s voice sounds spiky, and his face has gone a little blotchy.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re just…” His lips twist around like he’s trying to find a nice way to say something not so nice. “You’re just very quick to believe the worst in people.”

“What does that mean?” It’s not that he’s wrong, but I sort of thought that was why we got along.

“My mum. Your aunt. Who are you going to suspect next—me?”