Maida is still stuck talking to the bank teller.

“We have to go.” I say, she looks relieved.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry Phil, gotta go.” She says to him and begins to back away. I thank him for his time and we both walk outside.

“Thank god! What took you so long? I thought I was going to die of boredom.” Maida groans.

“Aww, he’s not that bad. You kind of did this to yourself.” I say.

“Yeah, to help you!”

“And I'm very appreciative. We have to go to my brother’s house.”

“Why?”

“He has a VCR.” A show her the video and notebooks. "These were in there."

“Elvira?"

We hop in the car and drive to my brother’s place. He lives in a modest brick house further up Main Street, right on the edge of town. It’s nice enough, surrounded by a white picket fence. He'd bought it when he moved back after graduating, our mother had wanted him to move into my uncle’s old place but he’d refused. We walk up to the front door, I unlock it and put the alarm code in. It smells amazing in here, like vanilla and coconut. I can't remember the layout of the house, so I peek inside each room until I find the lounge room. It's homey, with a red sofa and bright prints on the wall, a Stephen King novel sits on the coffee table with a tassel bookmark. There’s a big cabinet off to one side, I open it up and find the VCR. I grab the remote next to the TV and turn it on. I pull the tape from its case and put it into the machine. It makes a grinding noise and a click, followed by a soft whirring. I click the play button. Maida enters the room and sits on the couch, I sit down next to her. The video at first is black, it flickers, a series of white lines make their way down the screen. It looks like an empty tape. I hit the fast forward button. After a few seconds an image appears, I press play again.

“Where is that?” Maida asks.

“Not sure. It’s too dark.” I reply.

The video continues, it flickers again and then shows another image. My dad in his office. The video is black and white. There’s a time stamp on the edge of the screen. I recognise the date, the day he died.

“Is this your place?” Maida leans forward looking at the screen intently.

“Yeah, it looks like it.” I say.

“Dude, are there cameras in your house?”

"There must be." The video flickers again, another room this time, the sitting room. Nothing appears to be happening. I begin to fast forward the video once more, we see the kitchen, my bedroom, Maida’s room, the gardens outside. The rooms begin to repeat. It looks like the whole house is under surveillance, or at least it was. Agnes’ room doesn’t appear, I guess they didn’t bother to watch over the help. That must be why she would only talk to me in there.

It suddenly dawns on me that if the cameras are still in use, somebody could have been watching us this whole time. They’d know about the bookcase room, the documents, the key. The film continues, it’s back to my dad sitting at his desk. The film flickers again, I click fast forward.

Maida reaches over. “No, wait, stop!”

“What?” I ask.

“Look, in the back, pause it.”

I do as I’m told. I look at the screen and scan the frozen image. “I don’t see anything.”

“You went too far, give me the remote for a second.”

I hand it over and she rewinds the tape and stops. She hands the remote back. “Look!” Maida gets up and points at the screen. “See it?”

“No.” I squint and focus hard on the black and white picture.

“It’s a foot.”

I look again. I think she might be right but it’s hard to tell. It looks like a black military boot, the front has a slash across it. Could it be the killer?

Maida sits down again and I click play once more. The rooms continue to flicker by. It gets to a shot of the outside of the house. There’s Nick, by the front door, knocking. He’s looks like he's yelling, my dad probably couldn't hear him over the rain. The film flicks to an empty hallway, the foot is gone. Maida and I are glued to the screen. I know what’s going to happen, I don’t want to see it, but I’m desperate to figure out what happened to my father. The next room, empty, then another, also empty, the next room, my dad’s office. There he is, how I miss him, I begin to tear up. A shadow falls over my father’s desk and he looks up. He speaks to the shadow. I rewind it. "Can you make out what he's saying?" I ask Maida. Hitting play again.

"Why are you here? Maybe?"

"I wish this had sound."

The video flicks over to the outside of the house again, Nick isn’t there anymore, the front doors have been left wide open. The film flickers around again on an endless loop. Each room empty apart from my Dad’s office, my father slumped over his desk, a pool of dark black blood spreading on its leather top. The screen goes black, the fuzzy white lines run up and down once again. Me and Maida sit there silently. My face is wet from the tears sliding down my cheeks.

“It looked like Nick did it.” I say after a minute.

“What about the boot?” Maida asks. “He couldn’t be in two places at once.”

“Maybe the tape got messed up? Maybe it’s out of order, it’s probably Nick’s boot.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Nick wasn’t wearing boots.”

"Maybe somebody just left a boot in the hallway? Maybe it wasn’t even a boot?”

“We should give this to the police?”

“What are the police going to do? It doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves that Nick was there.”

“I don't have time to do that. I need to deal with this myself. That’s why I was brought back, isn’t it? If I sit here and do nothing or I solve this thing, there's no happy ending for me. My life's over either way. I don't have the time to let someone else handle this."

“I get it, I do.” There’s no way she can understand this. Maida stands up and puts her hand out to help me up off the couch. “Let’s go talk to Nick and sort this out.”

“Thanks.” I grab her hand and get up. I switch the TV and VCR off and we step outside. We get in her car once again and drive to Nick's house, Ridgemont’s one and only modern building. We don’t talk on the way there, I think we’re both too nervous. I’m scared that this might be the end.

Maida looks over at me. “I know this is a stupid thing to say, but have you ever thought that after all of this you might get to see your dad?”

“No, I didn’t think of that.” I answer. It makes me feel better to think that I could see him again, and tell him I got justice for him. I’d never believed in anything like that in life. But after this, anything seemed possible.

We drive up to Nick’s house, Maida stopping behind his Porsche which is parked haphazardly near his front door.

“I can stay here, if you want to do this alone?” Maida asks.

“No, we’re partners in this. I shouldn’t keep thinking I’m doing this alone. I’m not.” I say.

“We’re like detectives.”

“You ready?” I ask.

“As I’ll ever be.” Maida says, pulling the keys from the ignition.

We both get out of the car, the sun's starting to go down and it's getting colder. We get to Nick’s front door and I ring the doorbell. I can hear it ringing inside, the notes bleat out a familiar melody I can’t recall. The door opens and a portly redhead with an Irish accent greets us.

“Hi, is Nick here?” I ask.

“Yes,” she responds slowly, unsure if she should let us in, “I’ll let him know you’re here, what are your names?” We tell her and she backs up and closes the door in our faces. A minute or so later she comes back and opens the door as wide as she can, the wind hits it and she grabs onto the side of the door to stop it from slamming. “Go on upstairs, he’s in his bedroom.” She says while trying to control the huge metal door.

Maida and I make our way upstairs. I remember coming up here a few times with Esther and Rachel, having movie nights. He had a huge TV and stereo, back then I'd been so jealous. I stop before Nick’s door and take a deep breath.

“You okay?” Maida asks.

“Not really.” I laugh.

“You’ll be fine, we’ll protect each other.”

I nod at her, then knock on the door.

“Come on in.” Nick yells from within, we walk inside, he’s sitting on the floor going through piles of CDs. There are so many of them. “Take a seat.” He points to the couch behind him. “Unless you’d rather sit on the floor, like a cool person.” He laughs.

We both sit on the couch, sitting as far away from him as possible.

“So what’s happening? I don’t get visitors much anymore. At least not on a weekday.”

“Really?” I ask. I remember him being the most popular person in town.

“People only seem to come here if there’s a party involved. People love free beer.”

“We know what you did.” Maida spits out, I look towards her with dismay.

“What?” Nick looks confused.

"You were at my house the night my dad died." I say.

“This again? Are you kidding me? I was with Rachel, or Esther.”

“You can’t even remember?” I ask.

“Listen I didn’t do it, okay.”

“There’s a video.” Maida says.

Nick sits silently for a moment. His eyes dart from side to side, he’s thinking. “Where is it?” He asks.

I realise we left it at Michael’s house in the VCR.

Nick snorts. “Yeah, exactly. There isn’t even a tape, is there? Nice try, new girl.”

“There is. I can prove it.” I say.

“Okay, blow my mind, El.”

“We watched it. It was raining. My dad was in his office, you were yelling and knocking on the door. You left it open.”

“You were wearing jeans and white shoes and a Vanilla Ice T-shirt.” Maida joins in.

“I was wearing it ironically!” He says. “I’m not into Vanilla Ice!” He stops, realising he’s been caught out. “Okay, listen, sure I was there that night. But I didn’t hurt him, somebody else did. I was just there at the wrong time, okay? The police cleared me for the whole thing. Don’t you remember El?”

“I don’t believe you.” I say.

“Okay, listen, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I saw your dad and Esther talking outside the diner earlier that day. When they left I followed Esther back to her house. Rachel told me about them being together, I had to know what was going on, so I hid and waited for her to go inside and then I went and talked to her, so she says I’m out of control and she couldn’t believe I’d been spying on her. Then she breaks up with me. I was pissed off, came home, packed up some stuff and decided to get in my car and get out of this place. As I’m driving, I see your dad’s car go past on Main and I get this idea that I should go talk to him. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to say, but I turned the car around and went back towards your place. I parked in front of your gate and climbed over the fence, I didn’t want him to know I was coming. I wanted to surprise him.”

“This is making you sound really guilty Nick.” I say.

“Just let me finish. I walked up the driveway and it was getting really dark, it was pouring too. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could see the light on. I knocked on the door and nobody answered, I thought your maid would have been there or something, but nobody came to the door. I assumed your dad couldn’t hear me over the rain, so I let myself in, the door wasn’t locked. I reached your dad’s office and he was already dead. I called the cops from the phone on his desk and got out of there. I didn’t do it, I swear. I had nothing against him, really, I was just angry about getting dumped, Esther wasn’t worth killing a guy over.”

“Did you see anyone else?” Maida asks him.

“No, but I heard someone, I think. Like a squeak from wet shoes on the floor, there were muddy footprints on the tiles out the front. I didn’t take much notice though, I just got out of there, ran as fast as I could.”

“That’s typical.” I say.

Nick looks down and says nothing.

“The cops knew you were there?” Maida asks.

“Someone saw my car parked out the front, they came here the next day and asked me about it. They couldn’t prove anything, just like you guys can’t.”

“Esther is still covering for you.”

“We kind of reconnected lately. You run out of options living in a place as small as this. She’s alright though.”

I roll my eyes, I don't want to talk to him anymore. “Bye Nick.” I get up and leave, Maida follows after me, I don't give him the time to say anything else.

“You don’t want to ask him anything else?” Maida asks me.

"No, we're not going to get anywhere talking to him. Do you believe him?” I ask as we walk out of the house.

We reach Maida’s tiny car, she unlocks it. “Yeah, I do.” Maida answers. “I don't think he has it in him.”

“We need to watch the tape again, maybe we missed something. But if Nick didn’t do it, who did?”

“The boot.”

“The boot? Wow, that’s going to be an easy killer to find.”

"Trust me, the answer lies with the boot. I've got a feeling." Maida opens her door and slides into the driver’s seat.

It’s a short drive back to my brother’s place, Maida slows up and parks directly across the street. I glance over towards the house, the front door’s wide open. My blood runs cold, I quickly jump out of the car and race towards the house.

“What's wrong?” Maida shouts after me.

I climb the steps and go inside the house, it’s ice cold inside. I go to the lounge room hoping the video is still here. Maida steps into the room after me.

“Do you remember locking the door?” I ask her.

“No, I just assumed you did it.” She answers. “It doesn’t look like anybody’s been in here.” She’s right, everything looks the same as it did before. I open the cabinet and click the eject button on the VCR, nothing happens. I click it again. Nothing. The video’s gone.