Lawson brushed dust from his jacket, coughing like he’d swallowed a moth. “Ledger’s got more names than a phone book,” he muttered. “If this is a conspiracy, it’s the worst kept secret in town.”
Justin squinted at him over the rim of his glasses. “You ever seen a phone book with red pencil? That’s not sloppy bookkeeping. That’s someone playing God with an eraser.”
Notcho Dog sneezed, sending a puff of dust into the air. She pawed at the ledger again, this time nudging it toward Justin as if to say, "Look closer, genius."
And closer he looked. The names weren’t just crossed out—they were annotated. Tiny doodles in the margins: stick figures, crude sketches of houses, even a cartoon dog with floppy ears.
Justin blinked. “This isn’t a death list. It’s… a rehearsal.”
Lawson frowned. “Rehearsal for what?”
Justin tapped the page. “For a play. The Coffynails weren’t erasing people—they were casting them. This ledger’s a script list. The girl with the ribbon? She wasn’t erased. She was recruited.”
Notcho barked once, sharp and triumphant, as if she’d solved it herself.
The Coffynail family hadn’t buried their daughter’s memory—they’d hidden her involvement in a secret theatre troupe that performed underground during the post-war years. The satchel carried scripts, not debts. The shoe was a costume piece that was left behind during rehearsal. And the ledger? A casting book, where names were crossed out when roles changed.
The “vanished” children weren’t victims at all. They were performers, spirited away to play parts in a clandestine company that staged biting social satire too risky for the public eye.
Lawson groaned. “So all this time, we thought we’d uncovered a murder ring, and it’s just… community theatre?”
Justin smirked. “Worst crime in Bonnechance: bad acting.”
Notcho wagged her tail, clearly pleased with the revelation. She pawed at the satchel again, pulling free a yellowed flyer: The Ashgrave Players Present: The Erasure Ledger — A Comedy in Three Acts.
Lawson read it aloud, then shook his head. “They even named the play after the ledger. That’s either genius or the laziest branding I’ve ever seen.”
The girl with the ribbon hadn’t been erased—she’d grown up, moved west, and was now a retired drama teacher living quietly in Vancouver. The ledger, once thought to be a death list, became proof of Bonnechance’s hidden history of resistance theatre.
Justin closed the satchel, brushing dust from his coat. The ledger, once thought to be a death list, was now revealed as a casting book—a relic of Bonnechance’s underground theatre. The Coffynail family hadn’t erased their daughter; they’d hidden her in plain sight, a performer in a troupe that dared to lampoon the powerful.
Lawson chuckled, shaking his head. “We thought we’d uncovered a murder ring, and it’s just community theatre. Worst crime in town: bad acting.”
Justin smirked, raising his cold double-double. “Turns out crawlspaces don’t just hide ghosts. Sometimes they hide punch lines.”
Notcho barked twice, tail wagging, as if to say Case closed.
The silence of the house lifted, replaced by something lighter. Outside, the streetlights steadied, their flicker gone. Ashgrave Street exhaled, its secrets aired out at last.