“Nope, nothing,” George said flatly. “This place is quiet as a tomb. Never a creak, never a flicker, certainly no ghosts throwing books when no one’s looking.”
Ocean started to ask another question but stopped when George shot her a buzz off look.
Taking the hint, she left them and headed for the alcove where she’d found the local Harbor View books yesterday.
None of the tourists were lingering in that corner right now. Ocean stood by herself.
Her eyes drifted to the shelves. She froze. The books were alphabetized. Like, perfectly alphabetized, but not by author. They were organized by title. Weird. Had they been that way yesterday? She hadn’t noticed. Do bookstores normally line everything up that way? She didn’t think so.
Then something else hit her. A smell. Faint, but unmistakable.
She paused, sniffing the air. There were enough smoke shops in L.A. that she knew pipe tobacco when she smelled it. Her heart sped up.
“Hey, no smoking in the bookstore,” she murmured to no one in particular.
She listened for a second to the voices coming from the front. More customers had joined in the ghost tour. There was a burst of laughter. George was holding court.
Ocean turned back to the shelves, running her fingers over the spines.
That’s when it hit her. A prickly feeling along the back of her neck.
Someone was watching her.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Nothing. Just empty space.
Still, the feeling stuck tight in her chest, and now that smell was stronger. Pipe tobacco.
Seriously?
“Okay, gross,” she muttered, louder than she meant to. “That smoke? Total ghost giveaway. Just saying. If you're gonna haunt someone, at least take it outside.”
She turned back to the shelves, but her heart was thudding now.
A sudden noise snapped her around.
The window was open.
And she was positive it hadn’t been a second ago.
Chapter Fourteen
Skye
* * *
The first thing I did Thursday morning was text the real estate agent and cancel her walkthrough. It was supposed to be tomorrow, but I couldn’t deal with that now. Not with everything hanging by a thread.
Yesterday, I’d sent Bernie and Mateo home. I’d also asked Arthur not to share the driveway footage with Sheriff Craggs. Not yet. Right now, I had a hell of a lot more faith in Arthur helping me figure out what really happened to my mother.
Besides, in my gut I knew the teenager was telling the truth. Someone had already been in that barn before he got there. What Arthur told me later, about where he found Clare at the back of the barn, the stories lined up exactly.
The side door to the barn was accessible from our back yard. It was easy enough to get in that way too. The fence was barely waist-high, and it was rotted and broken in places. Anyone could’ve come in that way without breaking a sweat.
Arthur offered to talk to our neighbors who lived in the adjoining properties behind us on Second Street. Maybe see if any of them had security cameras. Or a motion sensor light had been triggered. One of them might have caught an image of something. At this point, even a blurry shadow on grainy footage would feel like progress.
Last night, Ocean and I were both wiped out, so we ordered takeout and curled up in front of Clare’s old TV to watch one of my mother’s movies on VHS. Of all the tapes on the shelf, Ocean picked Topper. I hadn't seen it in years.
