The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

CHAPTER 15

An Open Book

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves . . . far distant in time . . . speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.

—Gilbert Highet

AFTER I RETURNED to the bookstore, I locked the door behind me, shut down the lights, and went straight to the second-floor bathroom to clean up and dry off.

Several times, I tried addressing Jack to discuss what I’d overheard between Shelby and Kenneth, but he wasn’t there—or wasn’t answering. So I kissed my sleeping Spencer and went to bed.

For a good fifteen minutes, I lay uncomfortably stiff in the dark, wondering vaguely if my ghost had any interest in me—in this particular position. But I assumed he didn’t. Or else he’d chosen to honor my request that he not haunt the second floor—or else he was here and had clammed up for fear of the grief I’d give him.

Such were my thoughts as I tossed and turned. Finally I gave up, reached to click on the bedside gooseneck, and grabbed Shield of Justice off my nightstand.

To my surprise, even though my eyes were burning from fatigue, I couldn’t put the book down. Page after page went by with exhilarating ease.

Brainert had told me he thought the last three books, and especially this one, represented a marked improvement on the older entries in the series, and I had to agree.

Whatever his faults as a human being, Timothy Brennan had, in his waning years, revived his skills as a writer. The story structure of Shield of Justice was more sophisticated than in novels past. The expected hard-boiled patois was there, but the speech patterns that had once felt dated and at times corny were now portrayed with a kind of bravado—a false front erected by the world-weary characters to hide their damaged souls. More like the Shamus Award-winning Dennis Lehane than the retro purple prose of Mickey Spillane. In fact, the overall use of language was more refined—adjectives in particular were restrained. And the characters felt richer, deeper.

As one critic had recently put it, where the first sixteen entries in the Shield series felt canned and stale, like warmed-over leftovers from tales already told, these latest offerings felt fresh, like the first time Brennan ever put ink to paper:

“Close the door, doll,” barked a gruff voice. “You’re ventilating the room . . .”

I rubbed my eyes. It was nearly 2:00 a.m., and I had promised Aunt Sadie I would be up for church.

“One more chapter,” I told myself, even as I yawned and my eyes half-closed. Readers of these books had their favorite parts, and I had just reached mine. The ingenue had entered the story—and the lady was about to enter the lair of Jack Shepard, er, Shield. . . .

“Close the door, doll,” barked a gruff voice. “You’re ventilating the room . . .”

I wanted to read more. I really did. But about then, my eyelids closed completely, and my limbs went limp. . . .

I OPENED MY eyes. Startled, I looked around.

I was no longer lying in bed. I was standing in the doorway of an office—a cluttered and dingy office, with a battered, ink-stained wooden desk and scratched, fading file cabinets. An old typewriter with large, round keys and the word “Underwood” branded across the front sat in the middle of that desk.

I turned to leave. Behind me I saw a narrow hallway with a stained marble floor and fading industrial green paint on the walls. At the far end of that hall an elevator with heavy glass doors and black iron trimmings closed its doors. With a clang, the car began to descend.

One other office door stood open. A fat man in suspenders, leaning against the frame, picked his teeth and stared suspiciously at me.

I turned back toward the office I’d been facing and stepped inside.

The box was tiny and hot, despite the black table fan spinning on the window ledge. Street sounds were muted and far away. In the middle of the room, a gum-chewing brunette wearing a jacket with padded shoulders tapped the keys of the ancient typewriter on her battered desk. Her hair looked odd—and I realized she was wearing her bangs in a roll, like actresses I’d seen in movies shot in the forties.

A naked lightbulb dangled from the ceiling, but it wasn’t on, since the sun was shining brightly. Through the half-open window and the yellowing venetian blinds, I spotted a rust-encrusted wrought-iron fire escape. Beyond that, I saw the Manhattan skyline—but it wasn’t quite right. Although the Empire State Building stood clearly visible in the distance, its Art Deco facade dwarfed every other building around it. This wasn’t the New York I remembered; it was an older city, a city long gone.

A drawer slammed in the next room, and I jumped. A masculine arm encased in a gunmetal gray sleeve had sent a violent shudder through a heavy file cabinet. The arm waved me over. I hesitated.

“You want to talk, don’t you?” said a masculine voice. “Move those gams, then.”

I stepped forward, into the man’s private office. Once inside, the arm reached out and shoved the door closed. “Let’s not make it too easy for the chump in the next office to listen in. Let the bum mind his own business.”

The man’s voice was deep but not smooth, and there was not a trace of lightness to the monotone. The voice, at least, was familiar to me. I turned and stared up into the iron-jawed grimace of Jack Shepard.

His features appeared chiseled out of unmeltable ice. A flat, square chin held the slash of a one-inch, dagger-shaped scar. Granite-colored eyes stared with unnerving intensity, while shadows beneath suggested a long night—of work or play, I couldn’t guess. The gunmetal gray suit was typical forties double-breasted fashion. It flattened his physique, but I wasn’t about to believe his shoulders were so ridiculously broad, his waist so trim and narrow.

The overall impression was one of confident virility. He did not appear cheerful in the least, yet there was nothing weak or neurotic or depressive about him. His eyes, his posture, the very energy around him radiated vigor, vitality—life.

A firm hand touched my back, very firm. And rather brazen, I thought with mild irritation. The fingers were boldly splayed, sending heat through my clothing and into my skin. Jack pressed me toward a wooden chair across from the battered desk.

“Take a load off,” he said, finally removing the brazen hand. With it went the heat.

I sat down—then yelped. I lifted my leg, wondering what in the world I’d sat on. The quick motion threw up my skirt, which was considerably longer than the skirts I was used to wearing. The material was deep red and of high quality—inside, it was lined with crimson silk. To my surprise, under the lush material my legs were encased in dark nylon stockings. On my feet I saw four-inch heels and wondered vaguely how I had managed to cross the room. The stab of pain, I discovered, was the result of sitting on a twisted metal garter—something I had never worn in my life!

As I hastily adjusted my silky lingerie, I couldn’t help but reveal my naked thighs. When I looked up again, Jack Shepard was staring at me, his expression so open and raw, it gave me a moment’s shock. The man hadn’t bothered in the least to mask his interest. Clearly, he had no sense of propriety.

“Thanks, baby,” he said as he unbuttoned his jacket, holding my gaze. “A flash of gam always brightens a Joe’s afternoon.”

He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, a worn leather office antique—at least to my eyes. His white cotton shirt outlined a solid physique. Belying my earlier opinion about the fraud of the double-breasted jacket, the shoulders revealed actually were ridiculously broad; the waist, in truth, trim and narrow; and the dark shoulder holster, strapped tightly against his form, made the muscles even more impossible to miss.

I wouldn’t have expected such a slab of man to move around the room with grace. But he circled the heavy desk with the ease of a predator, his gaze continuously summing me up.

Finally he stopped directly in front of my chair and leaned against the block of battered wood behind him. A five o’clock shadow, a shade darker than his sandy-brown hair, dusted his square jaw. His tie was blue and frayed at the tips. I followed his hand as it reached down and lifted a spotted shot glass.

“Fill her up?” he asked, tapping the glass with one finger.

“Pardon me?”

“Would you like a drink? Scotch is all the hooch this bar is serving.”

“Scotch will be fine,” I replied, surprising myself.

A moment later, Jack placed a glass of amber liquid in my hand.

Jack poured another drink and swirled the glass. Then he leaned against the desk again. An eyebrow rose expectantly.

Stalling for time, I took a sip. The alcohol burned my throat.

“You ready to spill?” he asked while I sputtered.

I nodded, feeling like a suspect under the lamps.

“Tell me what they said. The marks I had you tail.”

“It was hard to hear everything. A lot of the words were muffled. But I overheard enough to make me certain they’re having an affair.”

“Tell me something I don’t know. That much was obvious from the way they treated each other in your store. I know feuding lovers when I see them—or ex-lovers.”

“Okay, here’s something you don’t know. I’m pretty sure I heard Kenneth Franken confess to killing Timothy Brennan.”

“Oh, you did? Did you? And you actually heard the words ‘I killed Brennan’ come out of the guy’s mouth?”

“Well, no. Not exactly.” I shifted uneasily. The long skirt annoyed me, so I pulled it up and crossed my legs. Jack’s gaze shifted from my face down to my knees, then slowly up again.

“Well, what ‘exactly’ did you hear?”

“Shelby asked Ken if he was sorry he did it. Ken said he wasn’t and that he’d do it again. And finally Shelby said it was all over and done with anyway—and now Ken could divorce Deirdre and have a life with her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you see, it sure sounds like Ken was the one who might have killed Brennan. He didn’t say how or anything, but you seem to think that syringe played a role. Maybe he stuck Brennan with poison somehow.”

“Don’t you think Brennan would have noticed something like a needle going into him?”

“Oh, right . . . maybe Ken simply pretended that he’d accidentally poked Brennan with a pair of scissors or a sharp pencil. Then maybe he gave the syringe to Shelby, who hid it in the women’s room for him—and Shelby had Josh retrieve it.”

“Except Josh had to search the women’s room, didn’t he? If he’d been sent to retrieve it, wouldn’t he know where it was?”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.”

“And what’s Kenneth’s motive for killing Brennan? What does he gain?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t like Brennan, though. He called him a bastard. Maybe he just disliked him enough to kill him.”

“Doesn’t fit. The man has too much to lose to risk a murder rap when he could have just told the old jerk to go to hell.”

I slumped in my seat. “I guess I don’t know what to make of it all, then.”

Jack’s eyes studied me some more. I put my hand to my throat, partially to hide my deep cleavage, where his gaze had decided to settle.

“Eavesdropping’s a funny thing, doll, your marks talking about washing the green and you think he’s talking about laundering money, when all along he’s making a salad.”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you hear anything else? Think, now.”

“Kenneth said something about how ‘thank you’ just wasn’t in Timothy Brennan’s vocabulary. And that Brennan ‘stood in the way.’ ”

“The way of what?” asked Jack.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“What do you think he meant, then?”

“How should I know?”

Jack narrowed his eyes and finished off his drink in a single gulp. “You’ve got to listen to more than words in this business, doll. You’ve got to listen to what’s under them.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ken was bitter because Tim had been ungrateful for something Ken did for him,” said Jack. “That means Ken did something big for Tim—so big that he was still boiling about it, even with the old man lying on an M.E.’s slab. Think. What could Ken have done for Brennan that was so big, so important that it would still be sticking in his craw?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Jack got up from the desk and strode to the window, his back to me. “To hell with you. You’re not even trying.”

“I am so! I tailed them, didn’t I? I almost got run down by a truck, for heaven’s sake!”

Jack wheeled. “Then you weren’t paying attention. And that’s your problem, doll face, you want to stick your head in the ground, avoid confrontation, run and hide from any jerk who challenges you. You want to keep thinking the world is some play-fair sandbox. But you’d better open your eyes, sweetheart, or next time that truck’s going to leave tread marks on your face. Then where will that little tyke of yours be—left without a mother or a father?!”

His words came so fast and furious that I broke down. Tears rolled over my cheeks. I lifted my hand to brush them away and noticed the deep red nail enamel on the tips of my perfectly manicured fingers—a color I’d never worn in my life. More lost and confused, my sobbing intensified.

“Turn off the faucet, doll,” Jack said gently, coming to my side. “I hate it when dames cry.”

My sobs lessened. “That’s better,” he said. “I only wanted to wise you up. Toughen your hide. You’re a sitting duck otherwise, and I’d hate to think . . .”

“What?” I said with a sniffle.

“I don’t know . . . I’d hate to think of someone serving you up with orange sauce.”

I laughed. A spotless handkerchief was stuffed into my palm, and I swiped at my eyes, leaving streaks of black mascara on the fresh white cloth.

“I’ll be happy to stay on the case,” he said. “My fee is—”

“I know,” I replied, “twenty bucks a day, plus expenses.”

There was a long silence. Jack’s single finger lifted my chin. I stared into his slate-gray eyes, swallowed hard. I felt his hand caress my cheek, his body lean toward me . . . but I’m a married woman, I thought . . . I can’t do this. . . .

I may have felt frozen, torn. But Jack didn’t. His rough hands gripped my upper arms and lifted me, pulling my lips to his without the slightest hesitation. My mind went blank. There were no thoughts left. Just feeling. Just his hardness and my softness, the vivid sensual impression of his body . . . the sweet weight of it . . . as it pressed into mine. . . .

“PEN? PENELOPE, DEAR! Time for church!”

My eyes slowly opened.

The dream was over. I was in bed, the heaviness of Brennan’s open book pressing against my chest.

“Did you hear me, dear?!” called my aunt from the hallway. “Coffee’s on. Rise and shine!”