The Eight Year Ledger novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Lobby Camera

I showed Beau the phone.

He read both messages, and his face went from soft to practical in about a second.

"Ninety days from tonight," he said. "That's early August."

"August seventh," I said. "That's one of the dates."

"How many are inside the window?"

I didn't need the ledger for that.

"Four. August seventh. September fourth. September twenty-fifth. October seventh."

"Then you go now," he said. "Before it eats August."

"The kids."

"Are asleep in a pile of Snickers wrappers." He nodded at the window. "I'll stay. I'll sit on your couch and not touch anything."

"You'll fix something."

"I might tighten one hinge," he admitted. "Your screen door's loose."

I texted the clerk back.

Can I come now?

He answered right away.

I'm back on at eleven. Come at midnight. Bring a thumb drive.

I didn't have a thumb drive.

Beau went out to his truck, still in the bottom half of the screw.

He came back with three of them in a plastic bag from his store.

"Inventory," he said.

The Lakeview Inn at midnight looked even worse than it had in October.

The pool had a cover on it now, with leaves on top of the cover.

The clerk was behind the desk under a buzzing light, eating cereal out of a mug.

He put the mug down when I came in.

"I talked to the owner,"

he said.

"He's in Florida. I told him a lady's being blamed for stealing from third-graders, and our camera proves she didn't."

"What did he say?"

"He said nobody steals from kids in his lobby." He shrugged. "Then he said not to use the good printer."

He took me behind the desk to a little office with a monitor on a filing cabinet.

The footage was in folders by date.

He opened August seventh and scrubbed forward to the evening.

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