Catching Teller Crow: Chapter 9. Beth: The Missing Summary & Analysis

Beth rejoins Michael and Allie in the car. As Allie drives, Michael asks whether she went to school with Derek and Alexander Sholt. She says she did, though they were a little older. Alexander went to boarding school for a while but returned after his grandfather, Oscar Sholt, spent too much of the family money preparing for the apocalypse he believed was coming. Alexander made a lot of that money back on the stock market as an adult. Beth, knowing Allie can’t hear her, suggests that Alexander made the money back dealing drugs or committing other crimes.

Allie praises Alexander Sholt’s charity, mentioning that some townspeople didn’t want him to set up the home. Others wanted to volunteer there, but unfortunately, they were told that by law, only people employed at the home could work there. Beth asks Michael whether that’s a real law. When he shakes his head slightly, she suggests that Alexander fabricated it to keep townspeople from the home.

Allie praises Alexander Sholt’s decision to stay in town and suggests that, if she had money, she’d leave—but then corrects herself, saying that she’d stay. When Michael asks what changed, Allie explains that her childhood best friend, Sarah Blue, vanished “twenty years . . . seven months . . . six days” ago, at age 14, after getting off the school bus one day. Derek’s father (Gerry Bell), who investigated her disappearance, believed she’d run away, but Allie is convinced that Sarah wouldn’t have done that without telling her parents. Allie admits she still wants to find Sarah, though Derek has told her it’s a pipe dream.

When Michael says that the police “never stop looking for the missing,” Allie fumblingly asks him to look at Sarah’s file. He agrees—and she admits that it’s in the glove compartment. Beth, laughing, suggests to her dad that Allie has had the file on her ever since she heard an experienced detective was coming to town. Michael nods, smiling, and Beth knows he approves of Allie’s determination. When he examines the file, Beth sneaks a look and sees a photo of Sarah, an Aboriginal girl with a fierce expression.

Michael suggests that Sarah Blue’s file is pretty scanty. Allie agrees. Derek claims his father, Gerry Bell, did everything he could, but when Allie talked to Gerry Bell about the case, he was standoffish. Allie thinks that Gerry believed Sarah would “be back anytime.” When she asks Michael how the case could be pursued in the present, he suggests doing all the legwork over again and offers to help Allie with it after the current case ends.

Allie smiles so intensely at Michael’s offer to help that Beth is shocked. Beth thinks that she’ll need to be more perceptive about people’s hidden qualities if she wants to follow in her father’s footsteps as a detective—and then realizes that’s not going to happen anyway, since she’s dead. She wonders about “mov[ing] on” but stops herself, blaming Catching for the thought. Instead she spins a fantasy that she’ll find her mom in the afterlife and bring her back to exist as a half-ghost family with her and her dad.

The car reaches Alexander Sholt’s house, a large brick building. Beth notes that it wasn’t hard to locate the way Derek claimed and concludes that Derek sent Allie so she could spy for him. Likely thinking the same thing, Michael asks to interview Alexander alone. When Allie agrees without arguing, Beth concludes that she didn’t want to spy for Derek.

Michael knocks on the Sholt house’s door. A sickly, unfriendly old man opens it. When Michael asks for Alexander Sholt, the old man—who identifies himself as Alexander’s father, Charles Sholt—claims that Alexander departed for the city earlier that day. Michael indicates with a subtle eye movement that he wants Beth to search the house. Inside, she finds a bedroom on the second floor with a shattered window, a few black hairs stuck to the frame. She recalls that Director Cavanagh had black hair in the photo she saw and wonders whether he broke in.

Beth, finding nothing else, returns to Michael and explains what she saw. Michael tells Charles Sholt he needs to go but leaves his card for Alexander. As he and Beth return to the car, he explains that he can’t search the house based on testimony from a ghost—but he does think that what she found is intriguing, and he’ll start investigating the Sholts more intensively. Beth is happily imagining her future as “Beth Teller, ghost-detective” when Allie jumps from the car, holding her phone, and tells Michael that two people have been discovered stabbed to death.