The Ghost and Mrs. McClure Read online

  Linda and Milner were speaking, saying something like all this was in no way the store’s fault, and I should just go on as if nothing had happened. But their voices seemed as fuzzy as their faces. And then the room began a slow spin.

  How could this have happened? I wondered. How?

  I’d worked so hard to prepare. Just two hours ago, everything had been in perfect order . . . just two hours ago . . .

  CHAPTER 2

  The Author Arrives

  [N]ice men often write bad verse and good poets can be monsters. . . . It seemed easier all around not to be able to put a face to a name, and judge solely on the printed page.

  —A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study in Suicide

  Two Hours Ago . . .

  “How are things going?” I asked my aunt as she rang up—thank the ISBN gods!—four Shield of Justice purchases for one of the early guests now browsing the stacks. Timothy Brennan was scheduled to appear in exactly fifty-three minutes, and I was trying not to worry.

  I had dressed with care in a crisply ironed black skirt, baby blue short-sleeved sweater set, nude stockings, and slingback heels. Sadie had made an effort, too. She’d actually brought out one of her few dresses—the belted, pine green number that matched her eyes and complemented her short gray hair, colored auburn and accented at Colleen’s Beauty Shop with “Shirley MacLaine” strawberry blond highlights.

  “Hard to tell how things are going,” said my aunt. “Not many arrivals yet.”

  “This event will bring us heaps of new business. You’ll see,” I told her.

  “Well, if it doesn’t, look on the bright side. We can stack those three hundred hardcovers in the back room straight up to the part of the ceiling where it’s starting to droop and call it a literary pillar.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Okay. We’ll burn them for kindling, then. We haven’t used that potbellied stove on the back porch since my father was breathing.”

  “Still not funny,” I said. “And you know very well we’d have to return them unsold or else pay the publisher fifty-four percent of each copy’s retail cover price.”

  “So we’ll burn the invoices and overdue notices then,” Sadie said. “Either way, dear, if this shindig doesn’t bring in new business, we’re going to need something to keep us warm this winter.”

  I inspected the floor display we’d unpacked and assembled hours earlier. The dump was typical corrugate from the publisher, with a big image of the book’s cover and the handsome author photo that appeared on every one of Brennan’s dust jackets. Space for twelve hardcovers also was provided—four face-outs, three deep.

  One of the books seemed a tad out of line. I adjusted the angle, then fiddled with the life-size cut-out display of the handsome author. Timothy Brennan had sandy blond hair and a charming grin. His standee image looked about forty and very fit.

  True, he had to be older than the photo, but some men aged very well, never losing their virility (I wouldn’t turn down a date with Sean Connery or Clint Eastwood, for instance), and I’m embarrassed to admit I’d developed a bit of a crush on Mr. Brennan.

  “Have you actually seen Mr. Brennan yet?” I asked, resisting the urge to chew my thumbnail.

  “No, dear,” said Sadie. “But I noticed—” Sadie paused to let out a little sneeze.

  “Bless you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I was about to say—I noticed an older man who looked a little like Brennan. Maybe he was an older relative. He came in with three well-dressed people—” This second sneeze was so sudden her glasses fell from the end of her nose to dangle from the string of red beads around her neck.

  “Bless you,” I said again.

  A vile stench tickled my own nose. A cigar, I realized with a shudder. Obviously someone was ignoring the No Smoking signs posted all over the store.

  I’d find the offender and set him straight, but I wanted to check on Spencer first. He was wandering around in his little gray Brooks Brothers pinstripes.

  “You look very handsome,” I told him, my maternal pride gushing forth.

  “Yes, Mother, you said that already.”

  Spencer remained less than thrilled with our move up to Rhode Island. But I couldn’t blame him, really. His seven years on earth had been spent living in a luxurious Manhattan apartment. Our move forced him to live in six small, run-down rooms above an old bookstore with the looming prospect of public school—an institution his wealthy in-laws had convinced him mainly housed potential convicts.

  Tonight, we’d actually argued about his coming downstairs. He insisted on watching TV. I insisted he get dressed and show some support of what was now our family business.

  ACTUALLY, MY BOOKSTORE-OWNING days had started about three months ago. Standing in the marble lobby of my doorman building, I’d been reading Aunt Sadie’s periodic letter about the local goings-on in Quindicott when my gaze locked on her casual postscript: By the way, the store is about to go belly up and I’ll be closing the doors in a few weeks.

  I’d phoned her that day, the modest check from the life insurance policy of my late husband, Calvin, in my hand, and proposed we go into business together.

  Two weeks later, after Spencer finished second grade at the expensive private school Calvin and his family had insisted he attend (with a faculty so pompous and intimidating I practically needed one of Calvin’s Valiums to get through Parents’ Night), I moved us out of the posh McClure-owned penitentiary on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and into my aunt’s humble walk-up. Now, at least, I could raise my son in peace—that is, without the thinly veiled financial threats of my in-laws.

  My own income, working at a publishing house, had been modest, and Calvin had never worked—his income having been supplied by his wealthy mother. So the life insurance money was practically all I had now.

  Apart from my young son’s trust fund, which I was legally forbidden to touch, no inheritance or any “financial aid” would come my way unless I agreed to remain under the thumb of the McClures and their opinions, which actually included the idea of an English boarding school for my little boy.

  (Excuse me? Not now. Not ever.)

  So I’d shocked them all by packing up and moving beyond their hypercritical gazes. Now I was a full-fledged co-owner of my own failing business. And I was determined to remake it from top to bottom.

  To Sadie’s credit, from the day I’d arrived, she stood back and let me. Buy the Book hadn’t even been the original name of the place. Personally, I’d liked the old Thornton’s sign, which stated in that unadorned, pragmatic way of the 1940s: We Buy and Sell Books. But the past was dead, and our future depended on recognizing this.

  “If we’re going to attract those book-buying urban dwellers with wads of disposable income,” I’d explained to my aunt, “we’ve got to have a name that’s postmodern.”

  “What do you mean? Something cutesy? Like Book-ends?”

  “No. Something more deliberately ironic and self-aware. Remember, the elite, übereducated generation of today disdains literal plain speaking. We must find a name that has a double meaning.”

  “Double meaning?”

  “Something slick and smart aleck-esque, you know? Something a precocious kid might think was funny.”

  Aunt Sadie nodded. “In that case, let’s ask Spencer.”

  So I called up to my bright little boy.

  “Yes? What do you want?” Spencer yelled from the upstairs window with the perfect diction of a privately schooled New York child.

  “Come down and help us rename the store,” said Sadie.

  “But Sergeant Friday’s getting ready to book the bad guy!”

  “Well, dear, after the man is cuffed, come on down!”

  From the day we’d moved in with Sadie, Spence wanted to do little more than watch old cop shows on Sadie’s new digital cable and stroke the marmalade-striped kitten she’d given him.

  I loved the kitten, but I was worried about his watching so much
television. On the other hand, Spence was still adjusting to a lot, so I saw no harm in indulging him a little—although this cop show obsession was truly peculiar. I couldn’t recall Spence ever having such an interest.

  Then again, how would I have known? Calvin had refused to allow a television in any room of our apartment—he claimed it stressed his nerves, but then almost everything did, including Spencer himself.

  You know the pathetic truth? The truth I’d never admit to anyone? Calvin Spencer McClure III had been a lousy father. But he’d been the only father Spence had known, and Spence missed him.

  So when Spence came downstairs, the three of us brainstormed.

  “ ‘Booked’ . . . ‘You’re Booked’ . . . ‘Central Booking’ . . .” I threw out, because our store specialized in mysteries.

  “Why not just ‘By the Book’?” suggested Spencer, who’d just heard the phrase on Dragnet.

  “That’s it! That’s perfect!” I said. “Only we’ll spell it ‘B-u-y.’ ”

  “ ‘Buy the Book.’ ” Sadie shrugged. “Okay, whatever you think will help business, dear. But don’t help it too much. This town’s got parking problems, you know.”

  (What Sadie actually said was “pahkin’ problems.” The “Roe Dyelin” accent is sometimes light, sometimes heavy, but pretty much incomprehensible when written out on paper. Car, pocket, pasta, meatballs, letter, chowder, and Europe would sound more like cah, parkit, pahster, meatbowls, letta, chowda, and Yerp. You’ll just have to trust me going with the conventional spellings on this one.)

  So anyway, the hip new name on a hip new sign went up on the shop and the rest of the life insurance money went into a new beveled glass door, front window, and awning. Out went the ancient fluorescent ceiling fixtures and old metal shelves. In their place I put track lighting, an eclectic array of antique floor and table lamps, and oak bookcases.

  I restored the chestnut-stained wood plank floor, and throughout the stacks, I scattered overstuffed armchairs and Shaker-style rockers to give customers the feeling of browsing through a New Englander’s private library.

  Finally, I overhauled the inventory, keeping the store’s original rare book business but adding plenty of mysteries along with some New England travel guides and Yankee cookbooks.

  I had hoped the BMWs, Jaguars, and Mercedes rocketing through Quindicott for gas fill-ups on their way to the resort towns of Cape Cod or Newport would pause to check out the “quaint”-looking mystery-themed bookshop. But they hadn’t.

  Sadly, the years of economic booms and busts had taken their toll on “Old Q,” and many of the shops on Cranberry had become run down, not just our bookstore.

  Empty storefronts didn’t help, either, and we had one right next door. People had taken to calling it “cursed,” not only for hosting the most “going out of business” sales in Quindicott, but also for being “haunted.” (Ridiculous, of course.)

  Not yet ready to lie down and die, I decided what we needed were some well-publicized book-related events and the space to stage them. So I mortgaged Buy the Book to purchase the so-called cursed storefront adjoining ours, expanding the bookstore to its original size for the first time in fifty years.

  Now Buy the Book occupied the entire freestanding stone building at 122. And, lord, was I proud!

  Okay, so it was a huge financial risk. “Like betting on the horsies,” to quote Sadie exactly. But we hit it big right out of the gate because, for some reason, the legendary Timothy Brennan had chosen our little Quindicott shop to kick off his big national book tour, promoting Shield of Justice, the latest novel in his famous series.

  Tonight was the make-or-break moment for Buy the Book, and I was determined to see that it came off without a hitch.

  I BENT DOWN to adjust Spencer’s blue-and-silver striped tie, which seemed just slightly off center. As I wiggled the knot, Spencer stared at the ceiling and let his hands fall to his sides like a tiny Wall Street rag doll. It reminded me of a remark he’d made last Christmas to one of his little friends in the lobby of our building while Calvin, Spencer, and I waited for a cab to Lincoln Center: “Once my mother starts with the fixing, resistance is futile.”

  “Now, Spencer, remember what we talked about,” I said as gently as possible. I was feeling bad enough for making him put on the suit and come downstairs.

  “I’ll behave, Mother. I told you already.”

  “No tricks.”

  “I told you ten times. I did not do anything to the chairs.”

  “I know, honey. I just can’t explain it otherwise.”

  “Well, I wish you wouldn’t go blaming me just because you don’t have a perp to fit your profile.”

  My eyebrow rose. Maybe Spence was watching too many of those TV cop shows. Well, I thought, at least it’s a sign he might one day show some interest in our store.

  With a sigh, I brushed his copper bangs, made a note that they were getting long again, and nodded. When I’d first come downstairs, after showering and changing, I had found all the chairs in the community events space—the chairs I’d painstakingly arranged into rows rectilinear enough for a military parade ground—turned upside down.

  I’d raced back upstairs to find Spencer watching an old Mike Hammer episode. My son had claimed innocence. So I went to find Sadie.

  Once she’d put on her shoes and found her belt, she came downstairs with me to see “the deed for herself,” as she’d put it. Spencer had already gone downstairs to look, and we’d found him just standing there in the community events space, staring.

  “Mom,” he’d said, “there’s nothing wrong with the chairs.”

  In no more than five minutes, all the chairs had been righted again.

  Now, a seven-year-old boy may have been able to turn over one hundred chairs upside down in forty-five minutes, I’d thought, but not in five.

  “Do you think you imagined it?” Sadie had asked me.

  “No. I did not,” I’d told her. “I know what I saw. And five minutes ago, those chairs were upside down.”

  Sadie gave me a sidelong glance.

  “I was not hallucinating.”

  “Must be the ghost,” she’d said with a shrug.

  “The ghost?” I’d said.

  “Sure. Quite a few stories like yours over the years with this part of the building. Even the construction boys had some strange things happen, you have to admit.”

  Okay, so during the renovations some of the workmen complained about vanishing tools and unexplained power surges. But I’d chalked all of it up to ancient wiring and maybe Spencer playing a practical joke with the hardware.

  “Goes to show how gullible some of us can be,” I’d muttered, annoyed by the accelerated pounding of my stupid heart.

  “Some say ghosts can affect your senses,” Sadie had pointed out. “Make you see things that aren’t there . . . see things the way they want you to see them.”

  “Humbug” had been my muttered reply. “What are we? Cavewomen? We see lightning and right away think some sky god is angry at us?”

  Sadie had just shrugged again. Then we’d searched the entire building for some intruder. But there’d been none. And the doors and windows had all been secure.

  “No more ghost talk,” I’d told her when she gave me an annoyingly knowing look. “There is no ghost here. Some hand turned those chairs. Some human hand.”

  But whose? I still wondered.

  Could Spencer really have been so disturbed and angry that he’d managed to pull off a nearly impossible prank for a boy of his size and age—turning them first upside down, then, in mere minutes, right side up again?

  “That’s right!” a loud voice suddenly boomed from the new events space. “Let’s get this crap out of the way.”

  I told Spence to help Aunt Sadie at the register. Then I rushed over to the adjoining storefront in time to see a padded folding chair clatter to the wood plank floor.

  “Good lord,” I muttered, “not my chairs again!”

  My gaze l
ifted to the center of the events room. There, shouting commands to a trio of well-dressed people, stood a man in his seventies: Timothy Brennan.

  I hadn’t recognized him at first because he looked at least twenty-five years older than the photos on his book jacket, floor display, and life-size standee. His hair was gray and thin; his bushy brows crowned bloodshot eyes; and his ruddy, jowl-framed face reflected the hundred additional pounds he was now carrying.

  Two young men in baggy jeans and flapping flannel suddenly barreled into the room, carrying a video camera, tripod, and heavy silver cases. Mr. Brennan waved his pudgy finger under their noses.

  “The camera goes on my right,” Brennan garbled to them around a foul-smelling cigar. “I want those lucky C-SPAN book TV viewers to see my best side.” Then he glanced at the well-dressed couple moving my meticulously arranged refreshment table. “Come on, Ken, move that thing already! We haven’t got all night!”

  The staccato thumping of a dozen plastic water bottles came next. I had personally set them on the goodies table near the room’s entrance to make our guests feel welcome. Juices, sodas, and plastic bottles of Sutter Spring water now tumbled to the floor as the man named Ken, and a well-dressed woman about his age, jostled the table toward the back of the room.

  Ken was fiftyish with salt-and-pepper hair and silver temples, model-perfect features, and a well-tailored camel-haired jacket that flattered his strong physique. The middle-aged woman, holding the other end, was a slender redhead whose impeccably tailored burgundy suit and matching scarf helped take the bite out of her otherwise very plain face.

  Another woman, much younger, wearing a chic black pantsuit with a very pretty face in contrast, and short, shiny, raven hair, was pushing the neatly arranged chairs in haphazard directions. I winced at the scraping sound the chairs made as they were dragged across the newly polished floorboards.

  “Excuse me,” I said, approaching the pretty young woman in the chic black pantsuit, who was sliding the chairs around. “I’m Mrs. Penelope Thornton-McClure, the co-owner of this store.”