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Casper stirred and woke Paige before her alarm went off. It had been good to have uninterrupted sleep, and she was thinking more clearly. She glanced at her cell phone. Scott would definitely be awake. She tapped the phone screen and waited for her brother to answer. When he did, she asked him to come over. “Bring your cop stuff,” she told him. “I’ve had a couple of break-ins here that I want to tell you about.”
“What? Paige, I can’t believe you’re just now telling me this. I’m on my way.”
The line went dead. She got up, had a bowl of cereal, and quickly got dressed. As she did, she thought about what to tell Scott. She decided to leave Captain McDougall out of it for now. She could give him enough information without bringing up the ghost. Confirming the haunted bookshop tale would just further complicate everything.
When she got downstairs, she had just enough time to dump some food into Casper’s bowl. The kitty looked back at her with concerned eyes. He meowed just as he had when the captain had asked him a question. “I know. Jay is a pirate.” She bent down and rubbed his ears. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
Scott pounded on the front door. When she let him in, his eyes didn’t stay on her for long. They were moving all over the place as though he expected an intruder to jump out any second. His muscles were tense, and he had his cop face on.
She told him about the two break-ins. “It wasn’t Marco the first time, though. I believe him when he says it wasn’t. And when I talked to Neal at the hospital yesterday, he told me he saw drugs in the attic one day, but they’d disappeared by the time he went back up there to get them the next day.”
She followed Scott as he checked everything out on the shop’s main floor. “And you say the door was locked both times?”
“Yes.” Just then, Casper padded back over to her. As she looked at the cat, an idea appeared fully formed in her mind. Jay is a pirate. Right. Then she smacked her forehead. It was so simple—how had she missed it before?
“We should go look in the basement.”
“What basement?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Paige was already heading to the storeroom. She slipped around the cabinet, Scott right on her heels, and opened the door to the stairwell leading to the basement.
Her brother, even further in cop mode now, pushed her around behind him so he could go first, flashlight drawn. “I had no idea this was here,” he muttered.
“I didn’t either until Neal showed it to me.”
She pulled her shirt over her nose again as they descended into the dampness. She couldn’t wait to test her theory. The locks upstairs hadn’t been picked the night someone left the spray-painted message on the checkout counter. Someone had gotten into the shop without using those doors.
As Paige told Scott Neal’s story about the drugs, she remembered seeing the piece of plywood propped against the wall in the basement. “Help me move this,” she said, heading to one end of the plywood. Scott shoved his flashlight in his belt and complied. “Aha!” she cried in triumph.
When they moved the wood panel, Paige saw a small opening in the cement wall. She remembered Horace’s story, especially the part about bootleggers in this building and how they would hide their liquor and gambling equipment by moving it from building to building in secret underground passages. This was the only way someone could have gotten into the shop without using the doors upstairs. Someone, that is, who’d had red paint on his forefinger yesterday and ran the shop next door.
Paige glanced at her brother. “I think you’ll find a tunnel if you open this. One that leads to an identical doorway in the bike shop’s basement.”
Scott pulled the flashlight out and disappeared through the opening. He was back in less than a minute. “You’re right. There’s a door at the other end. It’s locked, though.”
Paige looked at the metal drums and noticed there was one missing from when she and Neal had been down there. “Grab that crowbar,” she said, motioning toward the corner. “I have a feeling I know what’s in these barrels.”
The irritating squeal of metal scraping against metal filled the small space as Scott pried open one of the lids as though he were opening a giant paint can. At last, he got it up enough to pop it completely off.
Paige didn’t move. She glanced around the dark room, suddenly chilled. Scott pulled the big flashlight out of his belt again, turned it on, and shone it into the barrel. The light bounced back up at his face, and she saw his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. Then he grabbed the radio strapped to the front of his shoulder, pulled it up to his mouth, and pressed a button. “Yeah, I’m over at Beachside Books.” He spoke clearly and loudly into the receiver. “I’m going to need some backup.”