The Dead Lie by Ivanka Fear

Author:Ivanka Fear [Ivanka Fear]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Level Best Books
Published: 2023-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

I needed to work quickly. They were conspiring to send me home just as the truth was unraveling. The villagers were keeping a secret that concerned Dad. No one would talk about him. No one would admit to having known him. His family had moved away. The house he grew up in sat abandoned, except for the ghost of the murdered person. Or persons.

The next morning, I snuck out early, beating Grandma out of bed, which was quite a feat. I couldn’t have her stop me from snooping around town. I planned to move fast and cover every single house in town, including the ones out on the highway, by the end of the morning. In the time it took me to walk to the outskirts of town, stopping to chat with anyone outside, I assumed most people would be awake, as was the norm in Molono. Whether they wanted to have their Sunday morning intruded upon, I didn’t particularly care. I, Svjetlana Babic, belonged here in my parents’ homeland, and I was on a mission.

The crisp morning air, the sun rising over the hillside, invigorated my soul. Walking up the street, a sense of peace enveloped me, the history seeping into my bones, and I wondered what terrible things had happened years ago, things the locals wouldn’t talk about.

On the highway, a few cars passed the village. Hugging the edge of the two-lane thoroughfare, I faced oncoming traffic, until I reached the last house before the countryside took over. Rock jutted out of the hillside, bordering the highway; straggly vegetation grew on top of the hill. I strode back toward the village on the other side of the highway where the houses sat fairly close together, with an expanse of trees behind their back yards, and the rest of the village beyond. A body had been found in those woods three decades ago. Surely someone would have heard about it.

People admitted to knowing Mimica Babic. They respected her mom—my grandma. So that was a good place to start my questioning. Whatever the people in Molono thought they knew about my father, it was a lie. Not only did I need to know the truth about what happened to my parents before I was born and whether that related to their deaths, I also needed to set the record straight and clear Dad’s name. That was my top priority. Second to that, I had to find Luka Nikolov, although that didn’t seem to matter as much anymore.

Without regard for courtesy, I knocked on each of the doors, asking whether anyone knew Mimica Babic and her boyfriend, and what they could tell me about the body found in the woods behind their house. Someone must have warned the residents on the outskirts. Doors closed rudely before I could finish my questions. By the time I covered the twenty or so houses bordering the highway, fatigue took over, and the villagers left me none the wiser.

I started down the second turnoff

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