The Scariest Night by Betty R. Wright

Author:Betty R. Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504013338
Publisher: Holiday House

Chapter Eleven

The sky was just beginning to turn gray when Erin switched off her alarm, slipped into jeans and a top, and tiptoed down the hall. She planned to use her bedroom for Detective Lindsay’s office, but most of the video would take place in the living room. She’d left some spools of thread on the coffee table the night before, and now she set right to work. For what seemed like hours last night, she’d planned the “tricks” that the ghost could play.

By the time Erin’s parents and Cowper wandered down the hall, she was ready. Standing at the door, she could make a vase slide mysteriously across a table, simply by tugging on a length of invisible nylon thread. Another piece of thread, double strength, made a footstool tip over. The heavy painting over the couch slid sideways with a couple of tugs; a little metal plate fell off its shelf with a startling smack.

“What’re you doing?” Cowper asked dully.

“Watch,” Erin said. She crouched and pulled a thread. The pottery vase full of fake flowers began to move slowly toward the edge of the end table.

Cowper’s eyes widened. “How’d you do that?” he demanded.

Erin showed him the thread wrapped around her finger. “You and Mom and Dad are going to have to do all the tricks,” she said. “I’ll be acting.” She’d practiced looking scared in front of the mirror before she went to bed last night.

Cowper picked up another thread and gave it a tentative pull. The painting over the couch slipped sideways. “What else?” he asked. “This is fun.”

“I’ll show you later,” Erin told him, relieved that he seemed willing to help. “You’re going to have a little extra acting to do,” she said cautiously. “That’ll be fun, too.”

Cowper dropped the thread. “You said I could be a dead body,” he said. “That’s all I’m going to do. I don’t know how to be an actor.”

Erin frowned. She didn’t want to argue with him before they even started the video, but she felt her temper rising. Fortunately, Mrs. Lindsay chose that minute to call them to breakfast.

“Okay,” Erin’s father said after his first sip of coffee. “Tell us what’s going to happen this morning, Madame Director.”

Erin hadn’t forgiven him for being interested in the video only as a means of entertaining Cowper. Still, when she began explaining the plot, she couldn’t hide her excitement. “You’re Mr. and Mrs. Dooley,” she told her parents. “They’re nice, but they’re kind of chicken—I mean timid.”

“Thanks a lot,” her father said dryly. “I won’t have to act much. I’ll just be my plain old chicken self.”

“Spooky things start happening in their apartment, so they go to see a famous ghost-detective,” Erin hurried on. “That’s me. And the detective decides to spend some time in the apartment all alone to see what she can find out. The Dooleys go away so she can have the apartment to herself.”

“Good!” Mrs. Lindsay-Dooley exclaimed. “I’m much too timid to be of any help.”

Erin described the ghostly tricks she had planned.

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