think there’s stock in these bogeyman tales about Mark Enright. I only mean, be careful in the general sense. People can take advantage of travelers during this season.”
“Sure,” said Claire.
She didn’t want to be rude, especially because Kerry seemed to be a nice person, and the way she spoke was gentle, like soft singing. It was hard to be polite, though, with terrible thoughts in her head. She shoved her shaking hands in her pockets and walked out the door.
What she needed was a plan.
A plan to leave Rockport as fast as she could.
FIFTEEN Murphy
We have to get out of here.”
Claire’s eyes were hard with purpose, the way they got at home when she scolded Murphy for not wiping up puddles on the bathroom sink. Only, this was more serious than puddles.
Murder. Murders.
Murphy was absorbing everything Cathy had said. People had died at 2270 Laramie. Weren’t you supposed to be able to sense a thing like that? Shouldn’t Murphy have gotten a bad feeling walking around that house? The way people did in horror movies, when they stepped into a room, made a face, and said, “Something bad happened here.”
Murphy guessed her sixth sense was broken. Maybe it still was, because she didn’t see why Claire was upset, or why she’d rushed them out of the diner and been rude to the sheriff. She frowned at Claire’s back as her sister charged down the street.
“Hey, slow down, would you?” Murphy puffed. “We didn’t ask about a mechanic.”
“On purpose,” Claire said sharply. “They can’t know we were at that house. I don’t want people asking questions, or suspecting. We shouldn’t have come here.”
Murphy frowned. Coming to Rockport was an adventure. Their first and probably only sister road trip. How could Claire regret that?
“Weren’t you listening?” Murphy asked. “Those murders happened a long time ago.”
Claire spun around so fast that Murphy pinwheeled her arms to stay upright.
“Weren’t you listening? She said Mark Enright is coming back to town. He could be here now.”
Eileen had been trudging behind them in silence. Now she came to a stop by Murphy’s side, chewing a mouthful of bubblegum that smacked and clicked between her words.
“She said Mark might come back. Dunno if you caught this, Claire, but it was a little … conspiracy theory in there. You pointed it out yourself: Cathy was getting tons of details wrong. Who knows how much of that was reliable?”
“Yes, okay,” said Claire. “They were bound to get some things wrong. It’s been twenty years. But do you think Cathy made all that up? Everyone in there agreed the murders happened. And they agreed Mark Enright was the prime suspect—who, by the way, is another uncle we didn’t know existed.”
“What are you saying?” Eileen scoffed. “You really think this big, bad Mark Enright is gonna come back, Michael Myers style, and kill us?”
Claire threw up her hands. “I think there are a lot of unknowns at play here. Scary unknowns. Why are you being so chill?”
“Dunno, Claire,” said Eileen, “maybe I have less to lose.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m not scared I’ll get arrested because I have to maintain a sterling reputation for my big, fancy, Ivy League college.”
Claire set her jaw. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, then why are you taking the word of a diner lady we just met? What, do you think this is actually true crime podcast world? Where a serial killer is on the loose in a sleepy, coastal town?”
“Oh my God. You’re being absurd.”
“Uh, no. I think that honor belongs to you.”
“You’re not evening listening—”
Murphy had heard enough. She edged around her sisters, leaving them to bicker, and kept heading down the street. She glanced back once to see that neither of them had figured out she was gone and, judging the coast to be clear, pulled out the Tupperware box from under her coat. That was the nice thing about puffer coats: You could hide turtles beneath them, and no one could tell.
“Siegfried?” Murphy whispered, tapping the container’s edge. “Hey, dude, you okay?”
Siegfried didn’t answer. He was dead. A tiny explosion of guilt went off in Murphy’s chest, and the cheese curds she’d inhaled felt leaden in her stomach. Their remnant taste was souring on her tongue.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the plastic coffin. “I’m gonna find you a place to do a good burial. You deserve that. You—”
“MURPHY.”
She froze. At last her sisters had noticed. She shoved the coffin back into her coat and turned around.