The Ghost and Mrs. McClure (5 page)

Get a grip, Penelope, I told myself. Refocus your attention!

As applause echoed off the walls, I concentrated on the crowd, scanning the mix of Quindicott townies, Providence professionals, and college kids, as well as Newport yacht-club and old-money types. All appeared entertained enough to shell out $27.50 each.

Then came the “no sale.”

Unlike every other enraptured member of the audience, the middle-aged blond standing at the back of the room in a cream-colored cashmere sweater with white fox trim appeared to be suffering through the speech, her delicate features sculpted into an anguished grimace.

I remembered she’d arrived late and brushed me off when I’d offered to find her a seat, asking instead for the rest room. Her face actually seemed familiar. Suddenly I placed it:

Anna Worth, the Newport cereal heiress.

Worth Flakes and Nuts had been the family’s claim to fame—it tasted somewhat like Wheaties but had nuts and dried fruit mixed in. Years ago she’d been involved in a scandal—typical eighties nightlife stuff, as I recalled, with shots fired at a boyfriend, a big publicized trial, and drug use afterward. It was odd to see her here in our little store, I thought—and not enjoying Brennan’s talk very much, either, from the look on her face.

“Folks always ask me what happened to Jack Shepard,” Brennan continued, “and I always had my stock answer: Jack Shepard let his weaknesses and, sorry to say, his stupidity get the better of him—”

Why you stinkin’, stealin’ son of a bitch!
shouted the voice.
The only thing that got the better of me was you—if you’re tellin’ me you swiped my case files instead of gettin’ off your lazy ass to look for me!

(Clearly, refocusing my attention hadn’t helped.)

“But it’s finally time to reveal the truth,” continued Brennan. Then he paused, taking time to look meaningfully into the camera. The audience seemed to collectively lean forward.

“In 1949, while Jack Shepard was working the case of a murdered army buddy, he vanished without a trace. Not even his body was found. For over fifty years now, I’ve wondered just what happened. Did the bad guys finally catch up with him? Did the corrupt authorities finally do Jack in? Or did someone set Jack up as a fall guy?”

“Shut up!” I rasped quietly to the voice in my mind, alarmed that I was losing my grip on reality. “Shut up! Shut up!”

Both Linda and Fiona again eyed me with concern. A few nearby guests even turned in their seats to deliver annoyed looks.

I felt the heat on my cheeks for the second time that night.

“Pen, are you okay?” Linda whispered. “Do you want to sit down?”

I shook my head.

“These questions will be answered in my
next
book,” Brennan said. “And my first
non
fiction book. Ironic for an old reporter, eh? But the truth is”—Brennan paused to clear his throat—“for several years now I have been quietly investigating Jack’s final case and his mysterious disappearance, and the solution to the fifty-plus-years mystery is close to being solved.”

The audience clapped wildly. Brennan waved them down.

“Though Salient House and my fans have been clamoring for more Jack Shield mysteries, I am here to announce that
Shield of Justice
will be the very last
novel
of the series.”

Disappointed murmurs sounded. Brennan’s handsome son-in-law Kenneth rose from his seat in the front row and left the room. In the next seat, his well-dressed wife, Deirdre, watched him go with a clear look of distress on her plain face.

“It’s finally time to find out . . .”

As Brennan cleared his throat again, he pulled the throat spray Josh had bought and spritzed it into his mouth.

“It’s finally time to find out . . .”

Again he cleared his throat, and I realized with a start that what he really needed was some water. I reached behind me and let my fingers close on a plastic bottle resting on the refreshment table. With a quick twist, I unscrewed the cap, then stepped forward and set the bottle on the podium.

“About time,” Brennan griped low before I returned to my spot.

“As I was saying, it’s time to find out what happened to Jack Shepard and why, and to share that information with the world. My preliminary investigation shows that Jack Shepard’s movements in the final days before his disappearance led him to a rare-book shop right here in Quindicott. Yes. The last place Jack Shepard visited in 1949 was
this
very store!”

As outcries of delighted surprise rippled through the audience, I decided I was probably the
most
shocked person in the entire room. My eyes found Aunt Sadie, who was standing just inside the archway that led to the other side of the bookstore. She simply shrugged, as if she had no idea what all this was about.

Timothy Brennan seemed pleased with the reaction and took a long pause to chug the entire contents of the Sutter Spring water bottle. Then he opened his mouth to speak again. Suddenly his eyes bulged and his face grew very flushed. His lips moved, but only a hoarse croak emerged. The water bottle dropped from his stubby fingers, and Brennan reached up to clutch his throat.

I watched, horrified, as his jowly face turned scarlet, then paled.

“Mr. Brennan? What’s wrong?” cried someone seated close to him.

He pointed to his throat, then reached out to grasp the podium, as if to steady himself. But a moment later, both man and podium tumbled to the floor.

“Call a doctor!” someone shouted.

I pushed through the throng of panicked people, looked down, and saw Timothy Brennan, his face chalk, his mouth opening and closing as rapidly as it had all evening, but this time without sound, just a terrible rhythmic sucking noise like a plunger desperately trying to pull something out of a blocked drain.

“Get back, please!” I cried. “Give him room!”

The sea of gray suits and battered fedoras backed away to give the flailing author room. All except Shelby Cabot of Salient House and his daughter Deirdre in her burgundy suit. They both knelt over the gasping man, their expressions grim. Josh stood back, behind Shelby, watching with equally grim concern. Deirdre took Brennan’s hand.

The man’s features relaxed, and his chest rose as he took a deep breath. His color began to come back. Then his eyes fluttered open.

“I think he’s coming around,” said Deirdre.

Brennan’s eyes seemed to focus on the person standing right next to me—Milner Logan. With a terrified gasp, Brennan raised his hand, frantically waving it as if warding away some evil spirit.

“Jack!” rasped Brennan, staring right up at Milner, who was now clutching his fedora in a white-knuckled grip. “J-J-Jack Shepard. It c-c-can’t be. You’re dead. You’re dead!”

That’s when Brennan’s eyes closed. His face turned as gray as the fieldstone walls, and his rib cage collapsed with his last living breath.

The guy was dead as hell.

—Mike Hammer in
Vengeance Is Mine!
by Mickey Spillane, 1950

 

 

 

“PEN? PENELOPE? CAN you hear me?”

“She just drank too much, Sadie. Let her sleep it off down here.”

“Okay, Milner. I’ll walk you and Linda out.”

I heard the voices, tried to open my eyelids, but for some reason they seemed to weigh more than a pair of unedited Stephen King manuscripts. “We gave him the heart attack,” I murmured. “Half the audience . . . costumed like Jack Shepard . . . Oh, god . . . we killed him.”

“Oh, no, she’s starting
that
up again.”

“It’s too bad what happened, Sadie.”

“Forget it,” said Sadie. “Fate’s fate. When your number’s up, it’s up. But thanks again for those baked goods. The crowd certainly devoured them.”

“More of a wake than a party.”

“So it was. But Brennan didn’t go anywhere we’re all not headed.”

“True, Sadie. Good night.”

“ ’Night, Milner. ’Night, Linda . . .”

 

 

 

MY POUNDING HEAD lolled from side to side as I wrestled with dreamland. When consciousness finally won, I rose from the rocking chair and moved shakily through the dimly lit store.

“Anyone here?”

My mouth was cotton. I checked my watch. Big hand on twelve, little on four.

Well, the party’s certainly over, I thought, looking at our beautifully renovated store, all the new inventory, the antiques, the fixtures. All our hopes and efforts . . .

More than the party was over, and I knew it.

Timothy Brennan had been Buy the Book’s very first author appearance, and he’d ended up dead. Talk about cursed. Now authors would avoid our store in droves—right along with the customers. Not that they hadn’t before. This incident just gave them a new reason.

I sighed. Who in the world would patronize us now?

Maybe Brennan’s ghost, I thought. If I believed in ghosts.

Brainert once said that ghosts in stories meant unfinished business. But he’d been talking about literary devices.

As my shaky legs moved beneath the archway that led to the community events space, I tried to recall the last time I’d considered actual spirits. It had been years. Back when I’d watched them lower my mother into the muddy earth of the Quindicott Village Cemetery.

At the ripe old age of thirteen, I had been certain that death was not the end. Every night I’d whisper into the dark from beneath my blanket. I’d tell my mother about my day at school, a boy I liked, a grade I got. I was certain my mom could hear, just couldn’t answer. Not in a normal way but in signs.

I had looked for signs of my mother everywhere, and I’d found them. In the shape of a cloud, or a piece of music on the radio. In the way a bird would follow me home or a phrase some stranger might utter on the street.

After school every day, rain or shine or snow, I used to visit my mother’s grave at the old Q cemetery, bring her a flower, read her a poem. Sometimes I’d visit other graves, too. A neighbor boy who’d been hit by a car. A favorite teacher who’d suffered a massive heart attack. A teenage girl who’d drowned.

I’d become an expert at talking to the dead. And, a few times, when I’d been under great stress at school, I even thought I could hear the dead speaking to me. A voice here or there.

But then I lost my older brother. And my dad.

At seventeen, I suddenly stopped looking for signs. Or visiting graves to talk to the dead. It seemed pointless: I was alive, and they were not. Wherever they’d gone, they’d left me behind. And it suddenly seemed clear that the only thing the dead left the living was
alone
. So that was that.

One of the store’s dim night-lights shone in the corner. The chairs had been folded up and stacked against the far wall, leaving a wide expanse of empty floor. No police tape or chalk lines or anything out of the ordinary. Why should there be? Brennan died of natural causes—a heart attack, perhaps. Or a stroke. I deliberately chose not to think about the other possibility: fright!
No,
I told myself,
we didn’t frighten Timothy Brennan to death, despite his puzzling last words
.

Sadly, I saw that the refreshment table was empty. Totally clean. No goodies, no soda, no bottled water. I sighed. My mouth felt as dry as the Sahara desert. No doubt from the whiskey. I could use a stiff drink of something wholesome and nonalcoholic, preferably bottled water.

I gazed at the carved oak podium, now standing in the corner, the spot where Brennan had fallen. A doctor in the audience had performed CPR on the author for ten minutes before the paramedics finally arrived to pronounce him done for. There would be no ghost.

“When you’re dead you’re dead and that’s all there is,” I mumbled.

I froze.

No, I thought. No way. I couldn’t be hearing the very same deep male voice that had heckled Brennan’s speech.

I took a step back, searched. But there was no one. Still, the room was too dark to see through every shadow.

“Whoever you are, the party’s over, okay?” I said, trying and failing to sound commanding. “You have to leave now.”

I told myself to keep steady. Sadie and Spencer were upstairs. I had to get this guy out. Now.

“What do you want? Money? I doubt we sold many books today.”

“What?”

I wanted to run full speed to the back room, but I hesitated. What if this man were hiding in the corner shadows? What if he were luring me into a trap?

“How did you know what I was thinking?”

I went back to the main part of the store, reached under the counter where the register sat, and let my fingers close on Sadie’s aluminum baseball bat. Sadie would have locked up the money in the safe upstairs, so the back room was the only evidence.

As I drew the bat out, I knocked over a half-filled bottle of water. After Brennan had collapsed, I remembered grabbing it off the table as a pacifier, drinking half the contents, then stashing it here during the craziness of the ambulance and police coming in.

I was dying of thirst, so I unscrewed the cap, took a swig from the bottle, put the cap back on, and started for the community events space again, the bottle tucked under one arm and the bat raised high.

“Stay out of my way if you don’t want a bashed-in skull,” I said.

Too late,
said the man.

I flipped the main switch. Dozens of bulbs sparked to life in the newly installed track system. The entire space brightened and revealed . . . no one.