The Ghost and Mrs. McClure Read online

I watched the shadow move off the wall, watched as it became three dimensions and stepped like a dark figure through an invisible archway and into the room. Outside, headlights from a passing car shot shafts of silver through the window, and in the briefest moment of illumination, I glimpsed his visage plain as day: the sunken cheeks, the crooked nose, the iron jaw, and the one-inch scar in the shape of a dagger slashing across the flat, square chin.

  Whoever he was, he held the same relentlessly masculine features of the man whose grimacing photo graced every one of Timothy Brennan’s books.

  “You can’t be Jack Shepard. You can’t be. He’s dead!”

  Now you’re gettin’ it.

  My bat dropped to the floor. And about two seconds later, so did I.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Morning After

  Publicity darling, just publicity. Any kind is better than none at all.

  —Raymond Chandler, “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,” Black Mask, December 1933 (Chandler’s debut short story)

  “HOWYA FEELING, HONEY?”

  First I heard the voice. Then the rattle and snap of a shade going north. The warmth of sunlight streaked across my face, and I lifted my thousand-pound eyelids. The silhouette of a heavy oak bookcase came into focus like the dark center of a blinding eclipse. I read the spines of dust jackets: Rendell, Rhode, Rice, Rinehart . . . Obviously, I was in the R’s.

  I turned to see Aunt Sadie’s slight form bustling from the tall picture window to the store’s front door, the streaming sun rays illuminating those “Shirley MacLaine highlights” in her short auburn hair. She was out of her dress and back in her preferred sort of outfit: gray slacks and a white T-shirt, over which she’d thrown a large unbuttoned, untucked denim shirt.

  “How am I feeling?” I repeated. “Like a full floor display got dropped on my head from the top of the Empire State Building. I swear I’ll never touch hard liquor again.”

  “Just sit tight, dear, I’ll get you something to drink.” She unlocked the door, then vanished, her four-foot-eleven frame dashing so fast across the polished plank floorboards it made my already spinning head spin even more.

  “ ‘Something to drink,’ ” I muttered. “I don’t know . . . seems to me I got into this state with that advice. . . .”

  I was still wearing last night’s outfit, less than presentable after a night tossing in a rocking chair: My black skirt was wrinkled, my pale blue sweater set felt grungy against my skin, my slingback heels had been kicked off—where? I had no clue—and my pantyhose displayed more than one run.

  Suddenly Sadie was back. “Here,” she said, handing me a steaming mug of coffee along with one of the Cooper Family Bakery’s leftovers from the night before. “I managed to save a few of the carrot-cake muffins with cream cheese icing. They’re your favorite, aren’t they?”

  “Okay,” I said, “maybe life’s worth living after all.”

  “Wasn’t easy saving them, I can tell ya. That crowd was cooped up here for two hours giving their names and statements to Welsh and Eddie. Seems like a lot of fuss over an unfortunate incident.”

  Officers Welsh Tibbet and Eddie Franzetti (of the Franzetti’s Pizza Place Franzettis) were the two Quindicott cops who’d been sent to the bookstore after Brennan’s death. Our town was large enough for a small police force but way too small to support anything more. For investigations, forensics, and the like, the old Q cops relied on the state. I figured taking names and statements was simply routine.

  “Where’s Spencer?” I asked.

  “Upstairs, still sleeping. It was a late night for everyone.” Sadie unlocked the front door but left the CLOSED sign in place since, mercifully, we weren’t scheduled to open for another hour. Then she turned to me and grinned.

  Now, why the heck is she so happy? I wondered. We’d just had our first author appearance—and the author hadn’t survived it. And how the heck did my derriere get back into this rocking chair? I remembered passing out on the floor.

  Well, if I woke up in this rocker, I reasoned, I must NOT have passed out on the floor, which pointed to one conclusion:

  “I had a funny dream,” I blurted, my mouth half full of muffin.

  “You don’t say,” Sadie said. “Ha-ha funny or spooky-weird funny?”

  “I talked to the ghost of Jack Shepard.”

  Sadie was quiet a long moment. “That’d be the spooky-weird kind then, wouldn’t it?”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “What did he say to you, Pen?”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know. . . .” I ate more muffin, chewed, swallowed, and suddenly regretted saying anything. “It was just an outlandish dream. . . .”

  “What did he tell you?” Sadie’s voice wasn’t kidding around. Her pine green eyes had focused in and locked on.

  “He didn’t say much,” I hedged. “Just that we sold all of our Jack Shield books, for one thing. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, nobody sells three hundred hardcovers out of a store this small in one night.”

  “We did.”

  “What?” I nearly dropped the hot mug of coffee into my skirt’s wrinkled lap.

  “We sold every last copy.”

  “HOW? There weren’t three hundred people in the store last night!”

  “No, but there were just over one hundred, and these were serious fans. Most bought multiple copies of Shield of Justice along with every last title in Timothy Brennan’s backlist. There isn’t one Jack Shield book left in the store.”

  “They bought multiple copies?”

  “Darn right. Some bought four or five, just to have the sales receipt that showed the date it was purchased—the day Brennan died—and to show where it was purchased.”

  “Where it was purchased,” I repeated, distracted. For most bookstores, turnover of an initial print order took six to eight weeks, not one night.

  “Yes, where it was purchased is now vital to these fans,” said Sadie. “Before he died, Brennan announced he’d traced Shepard’s last movements in ’49 to this very store. Our store!”

  “Right. I remember. It still sounds crazy, though.”

  “Hey,” Sadie suddenly called from the archway connecting the main store with the events space, “what’s my baseball bat doing on the floor?”

  I rose so fast from my cross-hatched Shaker seat, I set my head to rocking more violently than the chair. In stockinged feet I managed to stumble over to the archway without landing on my face, although I did end up shredding the last vestiges of nylon covering my toes.

  Sadie pointed to the aluminum bat. It rested on the wood plank floor in the exact spot where I’d been talking to the ghost—before I blacked out, that is. My slingbacks were here, too.

  “I think . . . I must have been . . . sleepwalking,” I concluded.

  “Part of your ghost dream?” asked Sadie, picking up the bat.

  “Yes,” I said, slipping back into my shoes. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  I stuffed the last bit of muffin into my mouth—hoping to swallow my anxieties along with it. Then I drained my coffee mug and headed toward the stairs, intending to check on Spencer, shower, change, and stuff at least one more delicious muffin in (my size fourteen skirt was already tight, but after the night I had, I figured I deserved a little baked-good comfort). That’s when the bell above the front door tinkled and a female voice sharply called out:

  “Sadie Thornton!”

  Completely ignoring the CLOSED sign, town councilwoman Marjorie Binder-Smith barreled through our front door, wearing one of her numerous pink suits.

  “Now, what in hell could she want?” muttered Sadie.

  “Have you seen the morning paper?” Marjorie waved a copy of the Saturday morning Quindicott Bulletin in front of our faces and commanded, “Just take a look at this!”

  We did. The headline, which stretched the width of the front page in letters at least two inches tall, stated: Noted Author Dies in Local Bookstore Mishap!

  “Please tell me, ladies,” said the councilwoma
n, “why someone choked to death on a doughnut in a business that does not have a license to sell food?”

  “Choked to death? On a doughnut?” I repeated. I skimmed the story. The general news was correct, but some of the details were all wrong.

  “Well, what have you got to say for yourself?” demanded the sixtyish councilwoman. Her voice sounded outraged, but her eyes, edged by the cracks that came from applying a copious amount of face powder, held the glee of a driller making an oil strike—a timely issue to exploit was just the thing to raise a politico’s profile.

  I was about to answer her charge when Aunt Sadie put herself between us.

  “Calm down, Marjorie,” she said. “You don’t want to pop any plastic surgery stitches, do you?”

  Ha! Hahahahahaha!

  The laughter in my ears was deep and loud. The laugh of Jack Shepard. I looked immediately for a reaction from Sadie or Marjorie, but neither appeared to have heard it.

  “You can’t be real,” I silently told the Jack Shepard voice. “I dreamed you up. That’s all you are. A delusion.”

  Think again, babe, said the deep voice. I’ve been here since before you were born.

  “Be quiet now,” I silently told the voice. “I can’t deal with this delusion on top of everything else!”

  The councilwoman was now shaking her finger in Sadie’s face. “Don’t you threaten me, Sadie Thornton!”

  “Threat?” Sadie said calmly. “That was no threat. Really, Marjorie, can’t you recognize a simple insult when you hear it?”

  I so hated confrontations. But whenever Sadie and Marjorie were in a room together, friction seemed inevitable. Sadie would never discuss the reason, but the bad blood between the two women was long-standing. It predated even the feud between Marjorie and the Quindicott small-business owners, which had been going strong for well over a decade.

  Linda Cooper-Logan had actually dubbed the woman “the Municipal Zoning Witch” because of the relentless list of regulations and taxes she continually attempted to pass on local businesses.

  The woman had very wealthy backers, too, thanks in part to her willingness to advance their private concerns. The McClures were among them. They still owned quite a bit of land in Quindicott, despite the fact that most of their residences were in New York, Palm Beach, and Newport.

  In return for her various “favors,” to people such as the McClures, Marjorie expected backing for the Council president’s office next year and maybe even the governor’s office in the future—or so she liked to tell people. Lately, she’d taken to wearing Hillary Clinton pastel suits, and, according to Colleen, she’d even asked for her brown hair to be dyed blond and cut short à la Hillary.

  “Hillary Smillary,” Aunt Sadie had said when Colleen had passed along the gossip. “Thirty years ago that woman was obsessed with the Kennedys. Even dyed her hair black like Jackie O’s. Marjorie is just a silly, silly woman.”

  “I know your tactics, Marjorie,” said Sadie, tightening her grip on the aluminum bat and raising it up just a fraction from her side. “You’re always looking for some issue to advance your political profile. Well, you’re not latching onto this one—even if it is the biggest news that’s hit this town since Seymour Tarnish won twenty-five thousand dollars on Jeopardy!”

  “You’re wrong, Sadie.” Marjorie’s eyes narrowed and she actually poked her manicured finger into Sadie’s small shoulder. “This isn’t about politics, it’s about rules. You haven’t paid the town for the proper license to sell food!”

  What a shakedown artist, said the Jack Shepard voice. You want some advice? Grab that bat and give it a swing or two.

  “Shut up,” I rasped.

  “What did you tell me?” said Marjorie, wheeling to confront me.

  “Take it easy,” I said, quickly backing up a step. “We don’t have a license to sell food because we aren’t selling food. You can check with the people who came last night. Welsh and Eddie took down all their statements—”

  “You’re denying you had food here? What about the doughnut Brennan choked on, then?”

  “We did serve complimentary refreshments during the social gathering, which is within our right,” I said. “But Timothy Brennan didn’t choke to death on a doughnut. He didn’t even eat.”

  “What about the news report?” challenged Marjorie, slapping at the paper in my hand.

  “It’s the Quindicott Bulletin, not the Boston Globe!” cried Sadie. “It’s Elmer Crabtree, for cripes sake!”

  Elmer, the Quindicott Bulletin’s publisher, was pushing eighty these days, but his age wasn’t the issue. His primary business had always been as local printer of things such as supermarket flyers, sales brochures, and wedding invitations. More than forty years ago, he’d started the Bulletin not to extend the fourth estate or to put truth on the kitchen tables of the Quindicott citizenry, but to make a tidy profit from local business ads and grocery store coupons.

  The Bulletin’s contents, therefore, mostly consisted of verbatim press releases from town officials, notices for local meetings, sports scores from school teams, and classified ads for selling used cars and the like. He wrote up the occasional “hard news” story on his front page—like the piece on Brennan’s death. But he was almost never an eyewitness—and neither were his usual sources. The accounts, in fact, were primarily told to him third- and fourthhand.

  “You know how he gets most of his news?” said Sadie. “Busybodies leaving messages on his phone machine!”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It’s in print!” cried Marjorie.

  “I can understand your concern,” I said quickly, trying to defuse the argument. “But even Brennan’s own daughter Deirdre can verify he ate nothing. In fact, Brennan told me he never eats at author appearances—he probably had a nervous stomach or something.”

  “Well, if he didn’t choke on a doughnut, what did he die of, then?” asked Marjorie.

  “His daughter mentioned in passing that he had a weak heart.” I was reaching—my nervous shrug making that patently obvious. “But I’m sure the state medical examiner’s autopsy results will be made public.”

  Then I thought about all those fans dressed as Jack Shield and the terrified look on Brennan’s pale face before he died. My stomach nearly lost its contents. Of course, I kept as brave a face as possible in front of the councilwoman. My bright idea may have inadvertently helped along Brennan’s heart attack, but Buy the Book certainly hadn’t done anything criminal.

  “Well, I’m warning you both right now that I’ve already made a few phone calls to the proper authorities,” said the councilwoman, turning her pink leather pumps toward the door. “And no matter what the outcome of their investigation, it’s more than apparent you’ve brought bad luck to this town—and most likely busted our budget, too. I shudder to think of the municipal overtime costs incurred from last night’s . . . mishap.”

  After a martyr’s sigh, she continued, “I tell you, I’ve been working for years to bring business back to Quindicott, and this botched event is sure to set the economic clock backward. I swear, if you’ve ruined this town’s chances for a recovery, I’ll come after your license to operate a business at all!”

  Marjorie opened her mouth, about to continue, when she stopped abruptly, her eyes taking in my disheveled appearance, from my shredded hosiery to my copper tangles. “Penelope Thornton-McClure, what in the world happened to you? You look as though you’ve been out partying all night! What sort of life have you got your son involved in? I just spoke to your sister-in-law, and I’m sure the McClures would not approve.”

  Here we go, I thought.

  After Calvin’s leap, the McClures—led primarily by Calvin’s older sister, Ashley McClure-Sutherland—never came right out and said they blamed me for Calvin’s suicide; that maybe I was the crazy one; and that my son would be better off with them than me. But I knew very well they were constantly looking for an excuse to take my boy away.

  “Aw, get lost, already,” Sad
ie told Marjorie.

  “Fine,” she said, “I’m going. But I must remind Penelope that the McClures are expecting to see her and Spencer at Gardener’s big birthday party tomorrow. The precious boy is turning nine. It’s a very big day, you know. I’m invited as well, of course.”

  “Marjorie, I’m sorry, but I told my sister-in-law already, Spence and I can’t make it. Sadie and I just reopened the store a week ago, and I need to be here to work.”

  “Yes, well, Ashley said you might be too busy, with this store and all. That’s why she told me to tell you she’s going to have her chauffeur pick up Spencer and drive him to the Newport estate. Spencer has a right to see his cousin, you must admit.”

  “I don’t think Spence should go without me—” I began, but Marjorie cut me off.

  “Nonsense!” said Marjorie. With one more snide look, she added, “You don’t want me to suggest to them that I found you looking as though you’d been out partying all night . . . do you?”

  Tell her to go to hell, the ghost voice said in my head.

  I gritted my teeth and ignored it.

  “The car will be here at nine o’clock sharp. Make sure he’s ready. Ta!” With a wave of her hand and a tinkling of the door’s little bell, Marjorie was gone. Sadie looked mad enough to spit. But she didn’t have time.

  The door’s Tinkerbell impersonation started up again, followed by a loud “Hi-yooooooo!”

  Vinny Nardini, our Dependable Delivery Service man, strode in with clipboard in hand and the old Tonight Show Ed McMahon greeting. A gentle guy with bark-colored hair and a full beard, Vinny had been on the Quindicott High School football team with my late older brother, Pete, who’d died at age twenty while drag racing his souped-up GTO to impress MaryJo Lerrotta. Whenever I saw Vinny’s large frame sporting the universally recognized DDS brown uniform, I couldn’t help thinking of Peter.

  If my brother had lived, I was certain he would have made close to the same choices as Vinny, who had taken a job in Quindicott, married a girl from Quindicott, and quickly begun to raise three children in Quindicott. Vin was pretty typical of most of the people with whom my brother and I had gone to school. He was also one of the happiest guys I knew.