Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Damn, that poor kid had it rough,” Oscar said as Nigel stopped the tape. The sun sank toward the horizon, lengthening the shadows outside the bay window. The waves had grown louder as the day went on and now roared against the shore.
“I feel so bad for him.” Tina sipped on a cup of coffee, after having slept most of the day away. “I hope he grew up okay.”
Nigel’s face wore the pensive expression that Oscar had grown to recognize as a sign he was thinking deeply about something. “Gloria didn’t like it when Karen called her a liar.”
Distracted by Andy’s tears, Oscar hadn’t noticed. “Huh. Good point.”
“Did you notice the book she threw?”
“No.” He hadn’t even thought to look.
Nigel ran the tape back, then paused it. A slim book with a brown cover hung in midair between the shelf and Karen’s head. “I think that’s the ledger we found.”
“Huh.” The Vanderwalls left it behind…but they’d also abandoned or forgotten the other paperbacks on the table. “It might be coincidence, but if Gloria chose it deliberately instead of grabbing the first thing to hand, then we need to take a second look at it.”
Nigel paced a few steps, then stopped and retraced them. “So we have two ghosts powerful enough to move objects. Ullman with the toys, then Gloria with the ledger.”
“Can I just say, I’m not a fan of ghosts throwing things at us,” Chris said from behind the camera.
“Me neither.” Oscar rubbed his face, where he still bore tiny scars from being hit by straight pins during their first investigation with Nigel. “I’ll go ask over at the trailer and get the ledger back from Montague.”
Ethan was reading something on his phone when Oscar entered the trailer. Probably a book he’d downloaded, since they had no cell service out here. Looking up, he said in a low voice, “The ladies are napping at the moment to get ready for the seance tonight.”
“They’re coming?” Given it was the room where Robin had been shoved to her death, he’d expected them to stay away.
On the other hand, having them there might encourage Robin to make contact. Especially if they could keep Ullman away. Both Montague and Lawson would surely want to have a chance to speak with her, if only to say good-bye.
“So I’m told,” Ethan replied neutrally. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“The ledger we gave Ms. Montague the other day—it could be more important than we realized. Do you know where she put it? We’d like to borrow it for a bit.”
“Of course.” Ethan tucked his phone in his pocket.
There were storage cabinets above the bench seats at the table; he stretched onto his tiptoes and hit the latch on the nearest one.
It swung open to reveal a small selection of books on the Outer Banks, but no brown ledger.
“How odd—this is where she had me put it.”
“Could she have taken it down without you realizing?”
Ethan stretched to his fullest to pull the cabinet door closed again. “I don’t think either woman is tall enough, but I’ll ask. And I’ll check other places in the trailer where it might have been put by mistake.”
Oscar walked back to the house empty-handed. The ledger had probably just been put in the wrong cabinet, or Ethan misremembered where he’d stored it. But he couldn’t shake the sense that more was going on than he knew.