The Ghost and Mrs. McClure Read online

  I was more than a little intrigued to discover what had gotten slow-moving Seymour excited enough to gallop like Seabiscuit down Cranberry Street.

  “Simmer down, Seymour,” Aunt Sadie insisted. “You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

  “We have to . . . get to . . . a television,” Seymour wheezed between gulps of air. “Pronto!”

  “What’s this about?” Fiona demanded. She displayed little patience for Seymour’s antics—especially when they threatened to steal her own gossipy thunder.

  “Rather not try . . . to explain,” Seymour replied, mop-ping the sweat from his receding hairline with the sleeve of his flannel shirt, “you . . . have to see for yourselves.”

  “We can use the television in the common room,” Fiona said.

  “Can you make it, Seymour?” Aunt Sadie asked.

  “I’m fine,” Seymour said between gasps.

  SITUATED AT THE end of a drive lined with hundred-year-old weeping willows, Finch’s Inn was a classic Queen Anne-style Victorian era mansion. And, as Fiona liked to point out, the Queen Anne style itself made its debut just next door, in Newport (the William Watts Sherman House circa 1874).

  Four floors of rooms boasted breathtaking views of Quindicott Pond, a good-sized body of salt water fed by a narrow, streamlike inlet that raced in and out with the tides from the Atlantic shoreline miles away.

  A nature trail, one of the favorites of birders in the region, circled the pond and stretched into the backwoods, following the inlet for about eight miles. The inn rented bicycles for the trail and rowboats for the pond, which was usually pretty well stocked with fish.

  Although Fiona and her husband, Barney, had not yet found the resources to fulfill their dream of opening a gourmet restaurant, they ran a respectable inn with thirteen guest rooms, all boasting fireplaces and decorated with their own unique character.

  The four of us climbed the six long steps and thundered across the wide, wraparound wooden porch, which sat upon a sturdy gray fieldstone foundation. Fiona and Barney had even repainted the place in its original, dark, rich, high Victorian colors: reddish-brown on the clapboards of the main body, and a combination of olive green and old gold on the moldings and the spindlelike ornaments that served as a porch railing.

  Brick chimneys, bay windows, steep shingle-covered gables, and a corner turret completed the picture—and a pretty picture it was. I just loved the place.

  “You know how to find the common room,” Fiona said as we walked through the stained-glass front door, the grand oak staircase greeting us like a solemn butler. “I’ll fetch the things I wanted to show you,” she tossed to me.

  As Fiona headed for the carved mahogany reception desk just off the entryway, Sadie and Seymour rushed along the hall and into the great parlor, which occupied most of the left side of the mansion. I followed more leisurely, soaking up the turn-of-the-century touches: the striped gold wallpaper, dark wood moldings, and the required Victorian clutter, from colorful vases and dried flowers to various glass-fronted collector’s cabinets of tiny porcelain birds.

  Then I came upon the portraits. Two large rectangular renderings in dark wood frames, surrounded by five oval-shaped gilt-edged miniatures. All of the oil paintings depicted the same woman—the enigmatic “Harriet,” the Finch Inn’s version of Beatrice, the solitary painter who’d occupied Newport’s Cliffside Inn at the turn of the century and left a thousand self-portraits upon her death.

  Harriet McClure didn’t leave nearly so many paintings, more like a hundred, but it had, nevertheless, disturbed the McClure relatives enough to sell her mansion to the Finch family—though the McClures kept ownership of most of the grounds, along with their holdings in town and around the pond.

  I’d never heard the whole story about Harriet. I just knew she’d lived alone for years, save for the housekeeper and caretaker, Barney Finch’s grandmother and grandfather. She was occasionally seen taking lone strolls around the pond, but other than that, she seldom mixed with any townsfolk.

  Upon her mysterious death at age forty-five, a hundred self-portraits were found among her things in the upstairs rooms. The Finches hung a dozen throughout the house—the best of the lot, so the story goes. The rest they’d tossed onto the fire during a particularly hard winter.

  “The pool of fire . . .” I murmured, suddenly remembering Rev. Waterman’s sermon.

  I saw the dead, the great and the lowly, standing before the throne, and the scrolls were opened. Then another scroll was opened, the book of life. The dead were judged according to their deeds. . . . Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the pool of fire. . . .

  As I stared at poor, dead Harriet’s brown eyes and upswept hair, her high white Victorian collar encircling her throat, I felt a shiver go through me—not unlike the shivers I’d felt in the bookstore—and I began to wonder. . . .

  Given my strange experiences with the ghost of Jack Shepard, could there be more spirits hanging around Quindicott? And if there were, what were they hanging around for?

  “The pool of fire is the second death,” I murmured. “The second death.” I stared hard at the portrait. I felt a little shiver go through me once more, but I heard no voice, saw no vision . . . and so I joined the others.

  None of the inn guests were in the great parlor when I got there, which wasn’t a surprise on such a beautiful day. I sat on the smooth floral upholstery of the carved rose-wood and mahogany sofa, admiring the gilded ballroom mirror above the large fireplace and the bay window, where streaming sunlight washed the hanging baskets of flowers.

  Seymour, meanwhile, banged open the large armoire, meant to tastefully hide the entertainment system. Remote in hand, his thumb began to bounce up and down on the buttons faster than I thought a human digit could move. Images flew across the screen like a wildly spinning roll in a slot machine. Finally the images slowed and landed on a grinning woman holding a box of plastic food storage bags.

  “That’s the jackpot?” I teased Seymour. “You want us to switch brands of Baggies?”

  “CNN Headline News has the heaviest rotation,” he explained. “Maybe after these commercials.”

  Sadie and I watched an ad for Caribbean cruises, and another for a phone service plan. Seymour pulled up a cane-backed chair, facing us, not the television.

  “I want to see the look on your faces!” he said.

  Fiona breezed into the room with a tray of ice tea. Under her arm was a bundle of papers.

  “Here you are,” she said as she put the papers on the coffee table. Then she handed everyone a tall glass of homemade ice tea with a sprig of mint in it. Fiona glanced at the commercials and put her hands on her hips. Scowling, she faced Seymour.

  “Now, what is this all about?”

  “Here it is!” Seymour cried, sloshing ice tea as he pointed to the television screen.

  I found myself watching a videotape of a crowded room, the audience members packed into row after row of padded folding chairs, all facing a carved wooden podium.

  “Good lord, that’s our store!” Sadie cried.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured, guessing what was coming next. “Oh, no . . .”

  There he was, big, florid Timothy Brennan interrupting his lecture to take a long swig of bottled water—just seconds after I stepped into camera range and handed it to him. A deft edit, and the screen revealed Brennan choking, then collapsing. The announcer’s solemn voice summed up Brennan’s long career as the visuals switched to a black-and-white clip of the old Jack Shield television show, then the cover of Shield of Justice.

  “It had to be those two dudes doing the camera work,” Seymour said. “They were probably freelancers, and they didn’t strike me as all that sharp. I bet some agent approached them, brokered a deal for the networks.”

  “Howie Westwood,” I murmured, suddenly feeling nauseated.

  “Who?” asked Seymour.

  “A man came to the store yesterday posing as a reporter for
Independent Bookseller magazine. He wasn’t.”

  “He wasn’t?” asked Sadie. “How do you know?”

  “I know,” I said. “Because everything about him was fake.” As Jack Shepard’s ghost pointed out, of course, but I didn’t want to believe him at the time.

  “But that doesn’t prove anything,” said Sadie.

  “Believe me, he was the agent,” I said. “His eyes lit up like July Fourth fireworks when I mentioned the event had been taped.”

  “He must have made a killing,” said Seymour. “Considering the tape’s news value.”

  “What news value?” Sadie asked, outraged. “Authors are like everyone else. They keel over and die every day.”

  “That’s not why they’re playing it. Listen!” Seymour pointed at the television.

  On the screen, the image of Timothy Brennan’s final moments were replayed, but this time a tinted circle highlighted the water bottle in Brennan’s hand.

  “. . . Authorities will neither confirm nor deny that foul play is suspected in the death of this best-selling mystery author,” the announcer said. “Though no suspects have been identified, CNN has learned that the Rhode Island State Police crime lab has conducted a toxicology study on the contents of the bottle, which the local police impounded the night of Brennan’s death.

  “An anonymous source tells us there is evidence the bottle had been tampered with. Meanwhile, first-edition copies of Shield of Justice with the unique stamp authenticating its purchase at the bookstore where Brennan died are now going for as high as $300 a piece on eBay. In other news . . .”

  “It’s on every channel,” Seymour crowed. “I saw it this morning and came to warn you.”

  My shoulders slumped, and I held my head. Yesterday had been bad enough. If every news channel was carrying this story, then who knew what was coming next? Sure, I wanted Buy the Book to be profitable, but praying for rain doesn’t mean you welcome a hurricane!

  “The police suspect murder,” Sadie murmured, her face pale.

  Well, I had tried to warn her, but Sadie had chosen to ignore the signs. I reached out and took her hand. With the other, Sadie lifted her glass and swallowed some ice tea, all the while staring at the television screen.

  My own reaction could best be described as muted. Given my conversation with Jack, the syringenapping by Josh, and the conversation I’d overheard when I’d eavesdropped on Shelby and Kenneth, I wasn’t all that surprised at this development. The hidden syringe had obviously played a part in corrupting the water bottle. But what had been in that syringe?

  “What did they mean, ‘the bottle was tampered with’?” Sadie asked.

  “Poison!” Fiona Finch said, her cheeks rosy with exhilaration. “I’ll just bet the cops found traces of deadly poison in that water bottle.”

  “The problem is, I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said. “I randomly selected the bottle myself from over a dozen set aside especially for Brennan.”

  “Did you set them aside?” asked Seymour.

  “No. It was Linda Cooper-Logan who told me they’d been set aside. She started helping me with the refreshments after some of the guests started swarming the table.”

  “You’re not suggesting Linda murdered Brennan,” said Seymour.

  “Of course not! None of this makes any sense. How could the killer have known which bottle I’d grab of the dozen? And if they were all poisoned, then why didn’t anyone else get sick and die? After Eddie and his partner arrived that night, they took the bottle I’d given to Brennan as evidence, but that’s all they impounded. We were all cooped up in the store for hours giving statements, and there were plenty of people who ended up drinking from those reserved bottles of Brennan’s—even me. And, like I said, none of us got sick or died.”

  “You know, Pen . . . that’s pretty incriminating,” said Seymour, lines furrowing his forehead.

  “What’s ‘pretty incriminating’?”

  “Well . . . you said it yourself: You were the one who handed the bottle to Brennan—which would be opportunity. And your store is profiting from his death—which would be motive.”

  “I know, I know. I’ve thought of that already,” I said.

  But Sadie wouldn’t hear of it. “Don’t be ridiculous, Seymour! Penelope is not responsible for anyone’s death!”

  An image suddenly came over me: my hand on the polished knob, the door swinging open, my late husband’s pinstriped pajamas, arms raised like wings on the fourteenth-floor ledge. I winced.

  “Sadie, calm down,” said Seymour. “Pen didn’t kill Brennan. I know that. I’m just saying it doesn’t look good. That’s all. And I just think Pen should be ready for the State Police to question her again.”

  “Well,” Fiona said with a self-satisfied smirk, “I don’t know how one bottle could have been tainted and not the others. But I do know one thing . . .” Fiona tapped the papers on the coffee table.

  “If it is murder, then I’ve solved the crime!”

  Sadie and I gaped at Fiona. Seymour slammed down his ice tea, sloshing liquid onto the coffee table—much to Fiona’s annoyance. She snatched up the papers before they were saturated.

  “Are we ready to pay attention now?” Fiona asked. We all nodded like schoolchildren.

  “On the night of Timothy Brennan’s death, Mr. and Mrs. Franken returned to the inn and had a huge argument. Why, they were so loud you couldn’t help but hear every word.”

  “And if you couldn’t hear every word you could always place an empty glass against the wall,” Seymour quipped.

  “Was it Mr. Franken doing the arguing?” I asked.

  “No,” Fiona replied, glaring at Seymour. “It was Mrs. Franken. She was screaming about some woman.”

  “Ah,” said Seymour. “Entrée la femme.”

  “Huh?” said Sadie.

  “Enter the woman,” Fiona translated.

  “How do you know it was a woman?” Seymour asked.

  Sadie and I nodded. Good question.

  “I heard her name,” Fiona replied, not a little indignant that her eavesdropping skills were being questioned. “It was Anna.”

  “Anna? Are you sure?” I asked, surprised. I’d expected her to say “Shelby.”

  But Fiona seemed certain. “Mrs. Franken kept repeating that she knew all about this Anna, and how dangerous this Anna was.”

  “Obviously Mrs. Franken suspected foul play,” said Seymour, scratching the back of his neck.

  “Darn right,” Fiona replied. “Mrs. Franken kept repeating that this Anna person killed her father. But I also got the distinct impression that she thought her husband was somehow involved in her father’s death, too. They argued for a while, then things got very quiet. When I made up their room in the morning, I discovered that Mr. Franken had spent the night on the love seat.”

  “Anna Worth,” I murmured.

  “Who?” asked Seymour.

  “Oh, Anna Worth!” cried Sadie. “Of course! She was there in our store the night Brennan died.”

  “And she is?” asked Seymour.

  “The cereal heiress,” said Sadie. “Worth Flakes and Nuts. She’s the one got herself in all that trouble for shooting her bodyguard’s gun at her boyfriend in front of that New York nightclub.”

  “Why, Sadie Thornton,” said Fiona, “I’m impressed that you remembered that whole Anna Worth scandal!”

  “Of course,” said Sadie with a wave of her hand.

  “Okay,” said Seymour, “so she was there the night Brennan was killed. That doesn’t mean she killed him.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Despite what you overheard about some ‘Anna,’ if Brennan was murdered by Anna Worth, we need a motive. Can you connect the dots between Anna Worth and Timothy Brennan?” Connect the dots, I repeated silently to myself—if only Jack could hear me now!

  “There’s no connection,” said Seymour. “I’ll bet Anna Worth didn’t even know Timothy Brennan.”

  “You’d lose that bet, mailman,” said Fiona
. “Look!”

  Fiona thrust the pages from the top of the pile into my hand—microfiche copies from archived magazine pages. The ads and the styles of clothing indicated that these clippings were nearly twenty years old. Sadie leaned forward and studied the pages. Seymour read them over my shoulder.

  “Where did you get this stuff?” I asked.

  “First I spent a few hours on the Internet,” Fiona replied. “Then I called Robby Tucker to let me into the library early this morning.”

  Fiona smiled again, as smugly as before. “These clippings clearly establish a connection between Brennan and Anna Worth—and Anna Worth’s motive for murder,” she declared.

  “Maybe you better explain this to us rubes?” Seymour said somewhat skeptically.

  Fiona glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was lurking about. Not satisfied that we were alone, she bit her lip, rose, went to the heavy parlor doors, and slid them shut. She returned, but when she spoke again, it was a whisper.

  “It was Gossip magazine that kept Anna Worth in the public eye for months after the nightclub shooting two decades ago,” Fiona continued. “If you look at those articles, you will see that every single story about the heiress and her troubles had the same byline. All of them were written by Timothy Brennan.”

  “That’s right!” Seymour said, snapping his fingers. “Brennan was a New York reporter, and he kept writing for magazines, even after the Shield series was published. That’s in his bio.”

  Fiona showed us a three-page story with photos of Anna Worth, clad in disco finery, partying with several well-known celebrities from that hedonistic era in New York City social history.

  “According to the first story, published less than a week after the scandal, Brennan claims he actually witnessed the shooting while on a date at the nightclub where it occurred.”

  Fiona faced me. “Obviously Brennan sold his exclusive tale to Gossip magazine. So he’d single-handedly made this relatively minor incident a national story—to the point where Johnny Carson was making jokes about Anna Worth on the Tonight Show.