It doesn’t take the police long to figure out the brand of the shoe, an athletic shoe in a size that pretty much rules out the intruder being a woman. Within half a day, they discover that a pair was sold to Mason Patterson at the Athletic Aerie over in Ardsley. Then the police search the school, and the shoes are found dumped in the waste can in the gym. Way to go, Beewick Police Department.
There’s only one problem—Mason has an alibi. He was hanging with two of his buddies, Andy and Dylan, goofing off in the woods outside school.
Or so they say.
I ask Joe what he thinks Mason’s motive was, and for once he lets me in on what he’s thinking. He’s come over to give us the news, and he and Shay have a truly awkward conversation, and I offer to walk him to his car. We stand by his car in the driveway. Joe must be distracted, because he doesn’t seem to mind answering my questions.
“He might have broken into your house just to scare you because he’s got it in his head that you’re a pipeline to me,” Joe says. “The Pattersons are furious that I’m including their son in the investigation. So just because he broke in doesn’t mean he killed Hank Hobbs.”
“Why would he kill Hank Hobbs?”
“Maybe Hobbs caught them at the house, they were in the middle of some prank, and he tried to stop them, and things went bad.” Joe’s hands are in his pockets, and he stares back at the house. Behind the lighted windows, Shay is moving around, preparing for evening, switching on lamps, bringing a wool throw to the sofa. She was wearing her work clothes, but she disappears and comes back in sweats. The woman can’t bear to wear a piece of clothing with a zipper, I swear.
“Maybe Hobbs had his boat at the dock, and Mason was aboard, and pushed him or something, and he fell off into the water,” I say. “So they take the boat out to sea and just hope the body never turns up.”
“Not quite, Gracie,” Joe says. “Leave the detecting to me, remember?”
Joe turns and opens his car door. He looks back at me. “Go back inside. I’ll wait.”
“You’re going to wait for me to go back inside? It’s right across the lawn!”
But the shadows are lengthening, and I suddenly do feel spooked. Joe just looks at me. So I turn obediently and start back across the lawn, secretly glad he is there to watch me.
I’m just waking up the next morning when I hear it. Dah doh din daa do. In my head, it’s a familiar tune. But then I’m fully awake, and I realize it’s not a tune, not really. It’s a series of notes. Like something out of that movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when they communicate with the alien spaceship through this giant synthesizer.
Dah doh din daa do.
The tune is still in my head as I stumble into the kitchen for my morning cereal. Diego is chomping on some toast. We haven’t really talked since the Marigold incident, or since Joe told us the footprint belonged to Mason’s shoe.
“How’re you doing?” he asks.
“Okay.”
“Mom says I should take you to school today. She’ll pick you up.”
I look up, surprised. “Why?”
“Because she’s worried about you, spook doozy.”
Diego calls me spook doozy sometimes, and I don’t mind. It’s kind of cool to have a nickname, and he says it with affection. But this morning, it hits me wrong.
“I don’t want to interfere with your morning plans,” I say huffily.
“I talked to Marigold,” Diego says. “She’s sorry about what happened. She was upset. Her parents are freaking out.”
“You told her that my father could be the killer,” I say, looking down into my cereal bowl. “You told her all about him.”
I sneak a look at Diego. He doesn’t look guilty, and that makes me more angry at him.
“But your father could be the murderer,” he says. “You think that, too. And why shouldn’t I tell Marigold that your father came to see you? She’s my girlfriend.”
“She told the whole school that he could be a murderer!”
“The whole school thinks that Mason could be a murderer. Looks like you’re even.”
He’s not on my side. He’s on Marigold’s side.
What is family? It’s people there to catch you when you fall. What happens when they step back, when they’re looking at someone else so hard, they don’t notice that you’re falling?
Dah doh din daa do.
The music in my head sends a shudder through me. I am afraid of this house.
Diego gets up. “Let me know when you’re ready to leave,” he says.
Dah doh din daa do.
I realize something, something I picked up in my vision, and I didn’t even register it.
The killer is thinking about killing someone again.
He is thinking about killing me.