Freddie was screaming too. In fact it was hard to tell where my screams began and his ended.
“Freddie! Skeleton!” I yelled, finally making words. I jumped back and grabbed him.
“I know!”
“There wasn’t supposed to be a body!”
“I know!”
I think I would have fallen down if Freddie and I hadn’t been clutching each other so tightly.
“We are bad, bad people, Freddie.”
“I know!”
I shook his arm. “Would you please say something other than I know!”
“This … is now a felony.”
“Oh my God! Not that!” I brought one hand up to my face. I was feeling hot and cold and a little buzzy all over. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Ramsbottom,” I said quietly, glancing back down to the skeleton’s face. “Wherever you are, we are so sorry.”
“We’re going to need more lawyers,” Freddie said. “A lot more lawyers. A team of lawyers.”
“It’s still dark,” I mumbled. “Maybe we can get it all covered back up, put the sod back in place. Maybe it will rain. Or better yet snow. I—”
“Stop it! You’re babbling,” Freddie snapped. “You know that’s not going to happen. Would you look at this hole?”
I shook my head. He was right. Our dig looked nothing like those dug-out graves in the movies. It was a big ugly gaping hole. “Matthew’s never going to be able to hide this from his mom. I thought you knew how to work that thing.” I flung a hand up at the backhoe.
“And so the blaming begins,” Freddie said, nodding. “Why do I let you get me into—”
“You can’t put this all on me, Mr. New Face of Security!”
“Fine,” he said sharply. “But you can’t deny that whenever you come back to town, things get crazy! I get crazy!” He shook his head some more. “This isn’t me. I used to lead a quiet life, telling fortunes on the Internet.”
“Don’t you even—” I stopped myself and took a breath. “Okay, we need to focus here. We have to at least try to make things right. But first—” My eyes traveled against my will back down to the remains of Mr. Ramsbottom.
“Oh, don’t look at me,” Freddie said, backing himself up against the dirt wall.
“We’ve come this far,” I said with a hard swallow. “If there’s something to save the twins in this casket, I have to find it.”
Freddie nodded. “Although I gotta tell ya, I’m starting to think our hundred-year-old source may have some of his details wrong.”
I leaned toward the coffin, hands reaching ever-so-slowly toward the inside when I suddenly snatched them back. “Are you going to help me?”
“I can’t, Erica,” Freddie said, not able to meet my eyes. “Skeletons are just … too much. I can’t. What if I get, like, a piece of bone on me? I’ll start screaming again.”
“Well, that’s just great,” I said, jumping up to grab my flashlight before passing it to him. “Hold this. Point it at the … you know what.”
Freddie twisted his face into a pained grimace, but he did what he was told.
“Okay, so,” I said, not ready to look down yet at Mr. Ramsbottom, “if the lawyer just tossed it into the coffin, it should be easy to find. I’ll just—” I reached down again with my hands, but I couldn’t quite turn my face to look.
Freddie was shaking his head no. His lips curled in between his teeth.
I felt my fingertips brush against the satin lining of the coffin.
“Erica?” Freddie whispered.
“What?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Seriously?” I shouted, cranking my head to look up at him, but all I got was the glare of the flashlight. “You’re asking me that now!”
“It’s just I’ve had some weird experiences lately—whoa,” he said. “You look freaky. We can talk about it later.”
I moved my hands up and down the near side of the coffin, from shoes to shoulder … staying away from the skull. Then I leaned farther across the body to search the other side. Freddie moaned in the background.
“You know,” I said, blowing a piece of hair from my eyes that had somehow managed to escape my cap. “If we don’t end up in prison, I think we need to remember this moment. This is why we can’t work togeth—Whoa!”
Suddenly Freddie hip-checked me to the side. “I see something.”
I struggled to get back on my feet on the uneven ground as I watched Freddie reach into the coffin. A second later, his hand shot into the air clutching a letter.
“I don’t believe it.” I could barely hear my words over the pounding in my chest. “Open it! Open it!”
“Hold the flashlight,” Freddie said, tossing it to me. It hit my knuckles and tumbled to the ground.
“Erica! Learn how to catch!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I said, scooping it up.
I heard the sound of the envelope opening.
“I got it,” Freddie said, unfolding the letter. “Hold the light.”
I directed the beam toward his hands. Freddie grabbed my wrist, adjusting the angle. He then ran his finger in a line across the paper. I could hear him reading under his breath.
“What does it say? What does it say?”
“Give me a second,” Freddie hissed. “I’m still reading. Oh my…”
“What! What?”
Suddenly his finger stopped and he gasped.
“So help me—”
“No,” he whispered.
“Freddie!”
He slowly looked up to meet my eyes. “Well, this just might change everything.”