The Eight Year Ledger novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Halloween

The elevator doors closed between us before I could answer.

I watched the numbers go down without him.

I didn't tell him about check 1047.

I took it to the district office that afternoon, with the registration and the wedding-gift page, and put it in the investigator's hand.

He read it twice.

"This is a police matter," he said. "And it'll take time."

"How much time?"

"Months."

"The trip deposit is due in January."

He didn't have an answer for that, so he wrote it down.

Halloween was the next night.

Dottie had decided in September what her father would be, and nobody had been allowed to argue.

Beau stood on my porch at six o'clock dressed as a screw.

It was a cylinder of silver-painted foam that went from his knees to above his head.

A gray foam disk sat on top with a cross cut into it, for the Phillips head.

His face looked out through a hole in the middle of the threads.

"Don't," he said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to say I look screwed."

"I was going to ask if you're a deck screw or a drywall screw."

He sighed through the foam.

"Two-inch," he said. "Labeled correctly."

Dottie was a mad scientist, in a lab coat to her ankles and swim goggles.

Gabe was a geode.

We'd made it the night before out of a cardboard box, purple glitter and a hot glue gun.

Both of us had burned our fingers.

He kept the lid open so people could see the crystals.

"Most people don't know what you are," Dottie told him as they ran ahead.

"That's the point of a geode," Gabe said. "You have to crack it open."

Beau and I walked behind them under the streetlights.

His costume made a soft squeak with every step.

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