The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

CHAPTER 8

Curious Jack

There are things happening. . . . They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them.

—Mike Hammer, My Gun Is Quick by Mickey Spillane, 1950

AFTER ALL THESE decades, the ghost of Jack Shepard knew the layout at 122 Cranberry like the back of his hand—that is, like he used to know the back of his hand.

Six rooms occupied the second floor: a sunny eat-in kitchen with faded gold wallpaper and yellow curtains, a cozy living room with a smoke-stained fireplace and tall front windows, two large bedrooms, one child-size bedroom, and one bath. The old rooms were always kept tidy, but they showed the wear and age of an owner who had neither the wealth nor the youth to upgrade them.

The ghost of Jack Shepard tailed Penelope Thornton-McClure up the stairs and into those well-worn rooms. First stop: her son’s bedroom, a ten-by-ten space in need of repainting. The kid was still asleep on a small twin bed. Like the chest of drawers and nightstand, the white wood headboard displayed scratches and knicks, but the Curious George covers appeared clean and new. When Penelope kissed her son’s copper bangs, he stirred.

“Mom?”

“Morning, honey. How did you sleep?”

The boy sat up. Yawned. Frowned. “Bad dream,” he said.

“Again?” asked Penelope, sitting on the narrow bed. “Same kind?”

The kid nodded his head in the affirmative. Penelope hugged her son close and rocked him for a long minute.

Jack had been in Penelope’s head for a while now, so he knew all about the kid—and her unending worry.

Apparently the kid had gone through grief counseling at school just after his father killed himself. At first, Penelope’s instinct was to keep him close to her, but her in-laws pushed hard for her to “get him back to a normal routine.” So, just as school ended, Spencer was sent away on his usual two weeks of foreign-language camp. After only one night, the kid called home, terrorized by nightmares, begging his mother to come get him.

“There’s this rare genetic disease that I once read about in a novel, familial dysautonomia,” she’d told her Aunt Sadie early one morning over coffee. “One in something like four hundred thousand children are born with it—they cannot feel physical pain. This condition is quite dangerous because pain, when you think about, is actually useful, a valuable warning against hazards, illness, coming disease. No mother would want her child to suffer from not knowing he’d broken a bone or burned his finger. But when you see your child’s face, completely bewildered, at his father’s funeral; when you hear him crying at night that Daddy left, that he killed himself, and maybe you will, too—well, you can understand why I wished some rare genetic disease existed that prevented all forms of emotional pain.”

Jack watched Penelope’s fingers lightly stroke her son’s hair. “I’m not going anywhere, honey. I’m right here. With you,” she whispered. “And that’s where I’m going to stay. We’re in this together. You and me—and Aunt Sadie, too. And we’re going to make this new life work. You got that?”

The boy’s head, tucked tight to his mother’s shoulder, nodded.

Mee-uuuwww . . .

At the bottom of the kid’s bed, that little orange striped kitten they’d named “Bookmark” stirred and stretched and reached out its little orange paws. Jack didn’t much go in for cute. But he supposed the furry thing was okay. And it seemed to cheer up the kid, who reached out to pet the kitten’s head.

The kitten began to purr. Then it stopped, arched its back, hissed at the corner where Jack was hanging, and fled from the room.

Damn stool-pigeon cat.

Pen stared after the kitten in obvious puzzlement. “She’s probably hungry, don’t you think?”

The boy nodded quickly.

“And I bet you are, too, right?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, there’s shredded wheat and blueberries on the table and milk in the fridge,” said Penelope. “Pour some Kitten Chow for Bookmark, okay? I’ll be in to eat with you in a few minutes. And after you eat breakfast and wash up, I’d like you to get dressed and come down and hang out with me and Aunt Sadie in the bookstore today, okay? Take a break from the TV for a little while.”

“Aw, Mom, do I have to?” he said with another yawn.

“What do you think?” called Penelope as she left the room. The bath appeared to be the widow’s next stop, which didn’t discourage Jack’s surveillance in the least.

Ancient aquamarine tiles covered the walls and floors; several were cracked, but all were spotlessly clean. Homemade shelves of rough blond wood held thick towels. A chipped old sink stood on a pedestal beside a small toilet. And against the far wall sat a big claw-footed tub, around which hung a shower curtain with a marine life themed design.

Penelope kicked off her slingback shoes as soon as she stepped onto the tiled floor. He watched her reach behind the whales, dolphins, and their ilk to fiddle with the old porcelain handles. For a long minute, she stood there, letting the stream sluice between her fingers. “Too cold,” she thought with calm annoyance. And then, “Too hot.”

As she continued to let the water flow, Jack could hear its deep drumming as it beat against the tub. He could feel the steam building up in the bathroom air, see the fog forming on the mirror above the old chipped sink.

The small window of blue-and-green stained glass was wide open, and the warm September breeze blew in, its fragrance sweetened by roses on the town green. Pines from a nearby thicket offered a pungent streak, along with the slight tinge of marshy salt carried in from the ocean miles away.

The ghost of Jack Shepard recognized each of these scents. They were as distinct to him as the red, green, and yellow of the corner stoplight. Jack’s body may have been dead for more than fifty years, but his state of awareness was very much alive.

Smells were stronger. Sounds were louder. Touch and taste were even possible in strange ways. And without any physical barriers to block his movements, he could now pass through furniture and floors, experiencing the feel of them on entirely new levels. Only the brick and mortar of this building were impenetrable to him, rendering him a prisoner here.

So what else was he going to do to pass the time? Surveillance work had been his profession—and, as they say, old habits die hard. Besides, the plain truth was, witnessing Timothy Brennan’s murder had awakened Jack Shepard in peculiar new ways.

“A little too cold . . . almost there.”

Jack heard Penelope’s thoughts and wondered yet again what made this doll so special. He didn’t know why, but he had to admit, he was curious.

First of all, in Jack’s experience, communication with the living had been rare, limited mainly to giving all comers the shakes to the gate. The very idea that he could hear her thoughts at all was an oddity. Only two other beings in the last fifty-plus years had been able to broadcast their thoughts to him—and they had been children.

Second of all—and this was the real kicker—she could hear his passing thoughts whenever he desired it, and with the least amount of effort on his part. Never happened before, not to Jack. And with her prissy attitude irritating the hell out of him, Jack wasn’t so sure he was very happy about it.

Case in point: Downstairs.

First, she refused to take his advice and give that insulting pink-cloaked goon of a councilwoman what for. Instead, she played the do-right girl, held her tongue to keep everything nicey-nice.

That sort of I’ll-do-anything-to-keep-from-upsetting-the-applecart philosophy of living really grated on Jack. While a poker face was routinely necessary for the detection racket, when it came to family and friends, Jack believed that cards on the table, face up, was the only way to play it.

Next, she completely brushed off his warning that the State Police were here to find a perp to fit their profile. The once-over that detective-lieutenant gave Penelope had “you’re a suspect” written all over it. Maybe that councilwoman tipped him, maybe he simply reviewed the witness statements from the night before, but he was making her for some sort of guilty party, and she refused to acknowledge it—yet another thing that grated on Jack: denial. Put your head in the sand and it’ll all go away. That’s not how Jack played the game, and if Penelope kept playing it her way, she’d be picked off like a clay pigeon at a sharpshooters’ picnic.

“Ah, yes . . . that’s the way I like it: warm . . . soothing . . . inviting.”

Penelope had finally adjusted the water temperature to her liking. Flipping up a central lever, she directed the flow through the shower nozzle above. Water rained down, and she leaned back to avoid its splash.

Stepping away from the curtain, she unzipped her wrinkled black skirt and let it pool at her feet on the tile floor. After stepping free of it, she slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of the pantyhose, whipping them off in one swift movement—much faster than Jack would have liked.

With an ethereal sigh, he remembered the old-style stockings that dames used to wear—garter belts holding up each silky leg separately. Some even put on a little grind for him, taking their good old time unsnapping them, rolling them off, their eyes watching his for a pleasurable reaction. A few dolls actually preferred to leave the silky stockings in place, removing only their panties so he could—

“You’re not here, are you?”

Standing with hands on hips in her pale blue sweater set and virginal white panties, Penelope had addressed the empty air. Or at least it would have looked like empty air to the living eye.

He considered for a moment revealing himself to her. But he instantly thought better of it. He was simply having too much fun. For a dead guy, fun wasn’t exactly a part of the daily vocab.

“You better not be here. I mean it.”

Jack was dying to ask how she thought a “delusion” could spy on her in the shower, anyway. But he exercised self-control and kept silent.

Next she removed her glasses, then the loose blue sweater set, first shrugging off the exterior cardigan and then tugging the pullover up and off.

An innocent cotton bra displayed ample mounds of flesh. Hers were the sort of generous curves Jack had favored when he’d been alive. And the sight of her womanly form, standing there in her bra and panties, struck Jack like a wall of bricks.

She seemed so vulnerable and soft, like the sweet idea of home. Here was everything he’d wanted in a woman . . . when he’d wanted a woman.

A longing washed over Jack, moving him. And, despite himself, he ached for something he knew he could never have.

Suddenly, he couldn’t watch anymore. He retreated instead, back through the closed door, down the hallway, and into the living room. The digital television was on again and—once he adjusted the channel changer to a good crime show—it was sure to provide a much-needed distraction.