They were still trying to explain to Chip what they were about to show him.
“Didn’t this Reardon dude have a copier?” Chip asked. “Or a printer? Couldn’t he have printed you an extra copy, instead of making you take pictures?”
“No, no,” Jonah said. “Mr. Reardon didn’t give this to us.”
“He wouldn’t tell us squat,” Katherine agreed. “The file of papers came from a ghost.”
“What?” Jonah and Chip both said, almost exactly at the same time. Jonah glared at his sister, and added, “So help me, Katherine, this is all weird enough. If you think it’s funny to just make stuff up—to, to make fun of me—”
“I’m not making anything up!” Katherine said, her eyes wide and innocent. “Honest! That’s what I was trying to tell you before, why I was so scared. Didn’t you wonder how the file ended up on Mr. Reardon’s desk in the first place?”
Jonah hadn’t thought to wonder that. There hadn’t been time.
“Wasn’t it one of the janitors—?” he began.
“Only if the janitors there have supernatural powers.”
“Katherine!” Jonah complained.
“Really!” Katherine said. “When you went off to throw up—”
“You threw up?” Chip asked, intrigued.
“Too much Mountain Dew,” Jonah said quickly, to make it clear that it hadn’t been from nerves or anything like that.
“Anyhow,” Katherine continued, “I looked away from the hallway because I didn’t want to see anything gross. And then, right before you came back, this man just…appeared. He was right beside Mr. Reardon’s filing cabinet. He took out the file, put it on Mr. Reardon’s desk, and then he just…vanished.”
“Maybe you blinked,” Jonah said. “Twice.” There was a cruel edge to his voice. He didn’t need this. Not when he was already stressed out about what he was about to see on the computer screen.
“I didn’t blink,” Katherine said indignantly. “I know what I saw.”
“What did the ghost look like?” Chip asked. “Kind of wavery and see-through?”
Amazing. He sounded like he was taking Katherine seriously.
“Maybe a little bit,” Katherine said, tilting her head to the side thoughtfully. “I mean, I didn’t have time to look at him closely. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans but he didn’t look scruffy at all.” She giggled a little. “Really, he was kind of cute.”
“Brown hair?” Jonah asked. “Cut short? And greenish eyes, with kind of crinkles around them?”
Katherine nodded.
“That was the guy from the bathroom, then, the one who told me about the file,” Jonah said. “You just, I don’t know, missed seeing him walk into and out of the room.”
Katherine narrowed her eyes.
“Did Mom and Dad see him?” she challenged.
Jonah hadn’t thought of that.
“Give me that phone,” he said, reaching for the cell.
“It’s still downloading—here.” Chip handed Jonah the cordless phone he’d used before, to call Mr. Reardon.
Jonah began carefully dialing their home number. Mom answered.
“You and Katherine will be home soon, won’t you?” she asked anxiously. “It’s getting late.”
“Sure,” Jonah said. “Soon. We’re just working on a…project.” He swallowed hard. “Hey, Mom, you know, this afternoon when I was, um, throwing up? Did you see anyone walk out of the bathroom and into Mr. Reardon’s office?”
“No,” Mom said. “Except for you. Why?”
“Katherine thought that—”
Katherine glared at him. Jonah decided to try another approach.
“I thought I heard, um, footsteps,” Jonah said. “Like there was somebody else in the bathroom with me. But then when I came out of the stall, there wasn’t anybody else there.”
Incredibly, that was almost entirely the truth.
“Was there maybe another door into and out of the bathroom?” Mom asked.
“No.”
“Well, then, you must have been imagining those footsteps, because I was standing out in the hall the whole time,” Mom said. “And I didn’t see anyone come out of that bathroom besides you.”
Jonah thought about this. It didn’t make any sense.
“Did Dad see anyone?” he asked.
“Jonah, if I didn’t see anyone, how could Dad have seen anyone? There wasn’t anybody there!” Mom didn’t usually get so impatient. Jonah could tell by her tense tone of voice that she was still upset from the meeting with Mr. Reardon. “Why does it even matter?”
“Never mind,” Jonah said.
He hung up. Chip and Katherine were staring at him.
“There must have been a secret passageway or something,” he said stubbornly. “Like, underground.”
“Oh, and you think I would have missed noticing if this guy came up out of a secret underground passage?” Katherine asked sarcastically.
Jonah shrugged. He didn’t think he could have missed noticing a secret passageway in the bathroom either. But he wasn’t going to admit that to Katherine.
“The pictures are ready on the computer,” Chip announced.
Jonah was glad of the distraction.
The first photo that came up was lips.
“Oops—that’s from Rachel’s sleepover,” Katherine apologized. “Molly kissed the phone. She wanted to see what her lip print looked like.”
“Girls really do stuff like that?” Chip asked, looking stunned.
Jonah thought Chip needed a sister of his own, so he’d know how stupid and disgusting it all was.
Katherine skipped ahead through the pictures. She stopped on the first shot full of words.
“ Witnesses,” it said at the top. Then, below, “ Angela DuPre, 812 Stonehenge Court, (513) 555-0184…”
“You only got one of the names?” Jonah complained.
“The rest is in the next shot,” Katherine said. “I was trying to follow a pattern, six shots per page, right side, then left side, then down….”