The Ghost and Mrs. McClure Page 18

  I rose and unlocked the front door for them, my polite good-night smile fading. Why did Milner have to use that particular turn of phrase? I thought. But what happened next made the words almost prophetic.

  Linda was apologizing—again—for Milner’s Oreos when we all saw the scarlet lights flickering down Cranberry Street.

  “I think there’s been an accident,” Milner declared.

  That much was obvious. I glanced down the street to see one of Quindicott’s three police cars. A long black limousine was parked at an angle. No, not a limo, I realized with a shiver. It was the van from Arthur J. Tillinghast Funeral Home on Crawford Street.

  Just then I heard the siren. An ambulance from Rhode Island General—fourteen miles away—squealed to a halt near the police car.

  I hurried outside. The night was chilly, the wind biting. Paramedics had jumped out of the ambulance and hurried to a spot where a small crowd had gathered. Whatever they were looking at was obscured by Seymour’s ice cream truck.

  I stepped off the curb, and Eddie Franzetti suddenly grabbed me.

  “No, Pen, you don’t want to see this.”

  Milner and Linda stepped past me and out into the street. Linda squealed and covered her eyes. Milner turned pale and led her back to the sidewalk. More people moved out of the shadows, and Eddie rushed to move them back.

  Despite Eddie’s warning, I moved onto the street. The paramedics were down on their knees over a crumpled form lying in a puddle. No, not a puddle. Blood. It was blood.

  The side of Seymour’s truck—which held placards touting Orange Push-ups, Chocolate-Covered Luv Bars, and frozen yogurt—was splattered with it. And the window Seymour sold ice cream out of was shattered. The side of the truck was dented from an object’s impact—I shuddered to think of what that object was.

  I heard voices. Snatches of conversation.

  “He just flew in the air . . .”

  “Don’t know who he is . . .”

  “One of them strangers . . .”

  “It was Zeb Talbot. . . . I recognized his truck. . . . Zeb didn’t even stop. Musta been soused again. . . .”

  Officer Franzetti appeared at my side. “Go inside, Pen,” he said. “There’s nothing you want to see here.”

  “What happened?”

  Eddie cocked his hat. “About half an hour ago, Zebulon Talbot reported his truck stolen from out front of the Quicki-Mart. He’d left the keys in the ignition and the motor running when he went in for a pack of smokes.”

  Eddie shook his head. “Teenagers, probably . . . it’s happened before, though they don’t usually pull this kind of stunt until the end of football season. Those high schoolers do stupid things to impress one another—and sooner or later someone always gets hurt.”

  Eddie’s eyes met mine. Years ago, a stupid drag-racing stunt had cost Eddie a best friend and me a brother.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  Eddie shrugged. “Nobody I know.”

  The radio in Eddie’s police car crackled. So did the one on his shoulder. He flicked a button and listened to his headphones.

  “They found Zeb’s pickup in the Embry lot,” Eddie told me. “Nobody’s there, though. . . .” He made a sour face. “Chief Ciders is on his way.”

  “What the hell happened to my truck!” Seymour cried, hands on his head. “I just had it repainted!”

  Seymour raced out into the street. Eddie and I ran to intercept him. At that moment, the paramedics lifted the stretcher and moved toward their ambulance. They weren’t in a hurry, and with the ghastly amount of blood on the side of Seymour’s truck I could understand why.

  “Wait!” I cried. “I have to know!”

  Eddie nodded. He reached down and gingerly pulled the white sheet away from the victim’s face.

  Even in the flickering scarlet light and the blood-flecked cheek, I could make out the young man’s features. The corpse on the stretcher was Josh Bernstein.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Girl in the Frame-Up

  Pinning a frame on an innocent dupe is the cheapest, low-down dirtiest swindle of them all. Only a third-rate miscreant would do it, the kind of bum who’s lookin’ to earn two slugs through the girdle.

  —Jack Shield in Shield of Vengeance by Timothy Brennan, 1958

  IT’S A FRAME job. And pretty as a picture, too, with Deirdre trimmed to fit. But the charges are smoke and the case is a Tower of Pisa—it’s shaky and not on the level.

  The Quibblers’ meeting was over, the mess from the “accident” outside mopped up. Spencer had arrived home from his cousin’s Newport birthday bash via the McClures’ chauffeur—mercifully after evidence of the tragedy was gone. He was so tired, I put him straight to bed. Sadie had retired, too. Now I was alone in the store, listening to interior dialogue courtesy of Jack Shepard’s ghost. He would not stop badgering me on the subject of Deirdre Franken.

  If you don’t do something, an innocent kid is going to walk that last mile to the electric chair.

  “The electric chair? You’re living in the past. Almost nobody goes to the chair these days.”

  Maybe that’s what’s wrong with this Coney Island geek pen of a “modern” world you live in. Too many square johns take it on the chin and too few grifters get what’s coming to them.

  “Listen, Jack, I’m not comfortable with anything that’s happening. I know Deirdre Franken is innocent. But what do you propose I do? Go to the State Police and tell them the ghost haunting my bookstore insists that Deirdre has been framed and the evidence planted? They’ll either think I’m crazy or they’ll think I’m guilty. And I’m not ready to make my son a de facto orphan, either way.”

  But you can do something.

  “What?”

  You can solve this yourself and find evidence they will believe.

  “How, for heaven’s sake?”

  Use your head, for starters. Trace the murder weapon backward. Frankly, I can’t think of a bigger flimflam than putting water in a bottle and charging money for it, but that’s the grift on the table, so where did those bottles of H2O come from, anyway? Who had access to them—before you opened up the joint to the general riffraff, that is?

  “The bottled water came from Koh’s Grocery. Mr. Koh’s son delivered two cases on the morning of the event. The cases were shrink-wrapped and well sealed. I had to use a knife to cut through the thick plastic. One of the last things I did to prepare for the event was pull the bottles out and arrange them on the goodies table.”

  All right. Suspect one: the grocer. We can eliminate him because I doubt your Chinese pal had a motive—

  “Mr. Koh is Korean.”

  I don’t care if the guy’s Samoan. Who had access after that?

  “You’re not going to like the answer,” I replied. “Deirdre had access. Deirdre and her husband, Kenneth. They were moving the tables around because Brennan didn’t like the setup for the cameras . . .”

  I slapped the table. “Hey! What about the two cameramen?! Brennan was very rude, pushing them around. And they sold the footage after the murder angle broke. Those are good motives, aren’t they?”

  Rude works mainly for assault and battery beefs. People die because they’re rude to a guy with a gun or a knife in a gin joint or crap game—not in a bookstore.

  “But they benefited financially from the crime.”

  So let me get this straight. You figure one of those spool-junkies spiked Brennan’s fancy tap with peanut oil, on the off chance that he’s allergic, that he’ll get hinkey in front of the cameras, do the danse macabre, then croak deader than vaudeville?

  “Okay, maybe that’s not the best scenario,” I told him with a sigh.

  Go back again to the night of the murder. Take it step by step, from the moment the happy author arrived.

  “Brennan didn’t like the setup, so he bullied Deirdre and Kenneth to move the tables around. Some of the water bottles tumbled to the floor, and Deirdre picked a few up. So did Kenneth.”

  What
about our other suspect? Miss Priss?

  “Shelby Cabot? I had to leave the events room, so I didn’t see what happened next, but I doubt she lifted a finger. She’s not the type.”

  And yet Miss High-and-Mighty showed up yesterday, in the middle of the night. And a rainy night, too, risking ruination of the hair and makeup. She served you up some insult for a midnight snack, and then she left.

  “That’s right. Doesn’t make much sense. I mean, her affair with Kenneth Franken was obvious from the conversation I’d overhead, but I never did stop to figure out why she’d come by in the first place—”

  Yeah, and he just happened to show up right after she arrived, don’t forget that.

  “What are you getting at?”

  He followed her. Maybe because he was helping her tie up some loose ends.

  “Oh, my God,” I breathed. “Last night, when Shelby came here, she asked to use—”

  The ladies’ john—to “freshen up.”

  “I didn’t get suspicious because she’d asked to use the one upstairs—”

  Misdirection, babe. Made her appear innocent. Oldest trick in the book.

  “Did you see what she did in there?”

  No, I stuck with you. Franken was with you at the time, and I wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “I remember Shelby was pale when she came back from ‘freshening up.’ She seemed nervous, too.”

  Because she didn’t find what she was looking for. Josh Bernstein had already snatched it.

  “I don’t know, Jack, this is going to be awfully hard to prove—”

  Suddenly a wave of raw emotion washed through me, and I reeled, grabbing the counter to steady myself against what felt like the wind being knocked out of me.

  We can’t let this frame-up artist get away with murder—twice. You and I know that hit-and-run tonight was no traffic accident. Brennan is dead. Brennan’s daughter is innocent. And some peach-faced kid ended up as roadkill, maybe because he tumbled onto his boss’s and her lover’s plan and was ready to dish dirt to the cops.

  I took a deep breath, not sure whether I was more shaken up by Jack’s reality check or the intimate rush of his intense emotions.

  “Where does that leave us?” I asked.

  If I were the hangman, I’d place the noose around Shelby Cabot’s neck. Hers and Kenneth Franken’s.

  My heart sunk. It had been a disillusioning few days for me. First I discovered that a much-admired literary figure was, in reality, a cruel, bitter old tyrant who bullied everyone around him. Then I’d learned that the sour old man stole most of his ideas from a real-life detective, and that he hadn’t even written some of the best work attributed to him. Now Jack was telling me that the very son-in-law who had written those novels—without thanks or credit—was probably a double murderer. From this set of facts alone, one might get the impression that a life in book publishing was as ruthless as a career in the Mafia.

  “Okay,” I said. “How do we prove to the State Police that Deirdre is innocent? And that Shelby and Kenneth are the real murderers?”

  Jack Shepard’s glee was a palpable thing, carbonating my veins like soda pop.

  Call them up and invite them over for a chat.

  “That’s crazy! For starters, Fiona told me Kenneth went to Providence. That’s where the State Police took Deirdre, and he’s trying to secure a high-profile criminal lawyer before her arraignment tomorrow. Fiona said he’d be back after that to pick up the luggage.”

  The faithful husband routine, Jack replied. Or maybe Kenneth was the one who stole farmer Zeb’s truck and used it to run down Josh Bernstein. Either way, it works out better for us. You might not be able to handle Franken, but Shelby will be a pushover for a saucy tomato like you.

  “I’m no saucy tomato, Jack. And Shelby’s no pushover. She’s tough as nails and twice as hard. I butted heads with women like her during my eight years in publishing—and it was I who wore the bruises.”

  That was before you met me, doll, Jack said. I can show you the ropes. And I’ve always found the toughest nuts are the easiest to crack. Poke a few holes in their skin and they deflate like balloons. You just have to muster the nerve to take a jab or two.

  “Okay. Even if I buy your mixed metaphor, how am I going to convince Shelby to come over here?”

  Play the blackmail card. Tell her you have something she left, the very thing she was looking for the other night. Giver her the drift that you know the score, that you have the syringe. And this is key: make her think you’re on her side.

  “But I don’t have the syringe. The police do—”

  That’s our ace in the hole. My bet is the police haven’t enlightened Deirdre or Kenneth as to what they found yet—and no one else saw it except Bird Woman—

  “Fiona Finch!”

  —And that kind of information won’t be made public until after the arraignment, if at all. So even if Shelby and Kenneth planted the evidence on Deirdre themselves, your mentioning a syringe will set Shelby’s blood boiling because you ain’t supposed to know. How could you? Unless you saw something.

  In fact, as far as Shelby’s concerned, you just might have the real syringe, and the one Josh Bernstein found was a phony. Make her believe that, and you’ll have her eating out of your hand.

  “Are you sure?”

  Sure I’m sure! Even if she thinks you’re bluffing, she’ll know something’s up—something that smells like blackmail. And if she thinks you have the real syringe, even better.

  Shelby probably wiped the fingerprints off the syringe, but she’ll still have doubts. Murderers always do, and doubts prey on guilty minds in the wee small hours. It gnaws at their edges, exposing the raw fear of being caught. You’re in a good position to take advantage of that dame’s night sweats. Dangle that syringe as bait and you’ll get her over here. Then you can give her the third degree.

  “I’m supposed to give her the third degree? I don’t even know the etymology of the term.”

  Keep your panties on. I know the routine. I broke con artists, hit men, and nickel grifters as a private dick—and without breaking their knees, either. Well . . . most of the time. Anyway, I’ll be right here inside your head, telling you what to say.

  “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t do it. I’m just not very good at being tough, Jack. I’m sure I’d just fold and mess it all up somehow.”

  There was a long, empty silence. A chill bit the air, and I shivered.

  “Jack? . . . I’m sorry . . .” But there was no response. No voice. Not even a sense of him. Just a cold, empty room.

  Suddenly, a hard, sharp series of knocks sounded on the glass of the store’s front door. I jumped and turned. A dark blue uniform shifted from foot to foot on the sidewalk: Officer Eddie Franzetti.

  I went to the door, unbolted it. “Eddie? What brings you back?”

  He didn’t speak right away. I didn’t like the expression in his dark brown gaze.

  “Oh, hey, I saved you a copy of Shield of Justice,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. I moved into the store and reached behind the counter. With a sharp box cutter, I opened the very last of the twenty boxes and held the book out to Eddie. But he didn’t take it. Instead, he took off his hat and looked down at the floor.

  “I knew you lied to me, Pen,” he said in a whisper. “You said you didn’t recognize that corpse. But I could see in your face that you did.”

  I nodded. There was no use denying it now.

  “I figured you had your reasons, so I gave you a little time. But we still haven’t I.D.’d him, so I had to come back.” Eddie lifted his head and his eyes met mine. “Who was it, Pen? And why didn’t you tell me his name?”

  “His name was Josh Bernstein. He was a publicity assistant with Salient House. And his death was no accident,” I replied.

  “You should have told me, Pen. Lying just makes it worse. Chief Ciders is already fit to be tied that we haven’t caught the driver yet.”

  That sounded like Ciders,
all right. I remembered how angry he’d looked when he finally got to the scene of the hit-and-run. He’d come straight from Embry’s lot, where Zeb’s stolen truck had been recovered. He still had the lot’s brick-red mud on his boots.

  “I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t want to tell you it was Josh because I needed some time to think. I just didn’t want the police talking to Shelby Cabot. Not yet, anyway. Something’s going on. Something I can’t explain.”

  Eddie shook his head again. His face was so grim I was really starting to worry. “Eddie? Is there something else on your mind?”

  “I shouldn’t say anything,” he said. “I could get in a lot of trouble. But your brother Pete was one of my best friends. And your dad. He was the one who encouraged me, you know? Said I could become a cop like him, introduced me to the chief back when Ciders was still a patrolman.”

  “I know.”

  “They were good men, Pen. Both of them. God rest their souls.”

  “Eddie? Come on. You’re scaring me. What’s this all about?”

  “I got wind that the State Police are going to be coming by tomorrow. Deirdre was arrested for murdering her father, but they think she had an accomplice. And since you were the one who gave Brennan the bottle, and they got it on film . . . I’m really sorry, Pen, but you’re at the top of their list.”

  “You’re kidding?” I rasped. My mouth had gone suddenly dry.

  “Pen, just call a lawyer. Get some protection. I don’t know how far they’re going to go, but somebody really wants your hide. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. Is there anything I can do?”

  I barely heard Eddie’s words. As my hand slowly set down the Shield of Justice book on the edge of the counter, I felt my body and mind go numb—except for one thought: My son. Spencer.

  It’s time, Penelope, said the voice in my head. It’s time you learned how to fight.

  “Okay,” I said out loud. “You’re on.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Booked

  She thought most men were weak and trusted her brains to slide her through anything.