The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

CHAPTER 17

A Worthy Suspect

O. Henry wrote of crime, but he seldom wasted precious words on the dry-as-dust business of questioning stupid witnesses and hunting—through endless pages—for clues that mean little or nothing when found. . . . He wrote about real people—and the reader suffered and rejoiced with them, in direct proportion with their reality. . . .

Opening statement by “The Editor,” Detective Tales, August 1935

“EXCUSE ME, LADY, but you’re cutting the line.”

“Excuse me,” Aunt Sadie shot back, “but I’m trying to open my store!”

Cameras clicked and lightbulbs flashed. A microphone emblazoned with the letters of a local television station was thrust into Sadie’s face.

“Who do you think committed the Bookstore Murder?” a pretty young blond demanded. Behind her, a cameraman with a backward baseball cap tried to film us over the heads of the crowd.

“Er . . . ah,” Sadie stammered.

“No comment,” I said in a clipped tone, channeling every suspicious politician I’d seen accosted by the press for the past decade.

But the reporter wouldn’t quit.

“Do you feel it is right to profit from this crime?” she asked, moving the mike from her face to mine so fast I got it on the chin. Yow!

“You heard the lady. No comment!” shouted Seymour. As I rubbed the bruised skin, he quickly stepped in front of me. “If you want to get into the store, you have to get in line like everybody else.”

I appreciated the fact that Seymour had taken point, but if there was an actual line to get into Buy the Book, I couldn’t see it. Just about a hundred people milling around, blocking the front of the bookstore and the other business fronts along the block—most of them mercifully closed on a Sunday. There were dozens of cars parked—and double-parked—up and down Cranberry Street, and I saw a few satellite vans as well. More journalists were no doubt lurking about, waiting to spring.

Horns blared as people ignored the bumper-to-bumper traffic and ran across the street in front of moving cars.

“I can’t believe this,” I said with a moan.

Seymour shook his head. “It’s the insidious power of the mass media.”

Seymour, Sadie, and I again tried to push through the crowd, but we might as well have been trying to part the Red Sea. The sidewalk was packed and people were spilling over into the street, sitting on cars, the curb, even in the doorways of other Cranberry Street businesses. Clearly, these folks had been here awhile—the sidewalk was littered with paper cups, crumpled wrappers, and empty bags. I made a mental note to buy a steel trash can and plant it in front of the store—soonest.

Bud Napp, the sixtyish owner of the town’s hardware store, cruised by in his truck, which was crawling along with the rest of the traffic. “Someone tore down the chains the city council put up around the Embry lot!” he crowed through his open window, giving a clenched-fist, power-to-the-people, up-with-the-revolution arm gesture. “Now the lot is jammed with parked cars!”

“Pinkie’s gonna love that,” said Aunt Sadie.

The traffic began to move and Bud drove on, whistling tunelessly.

So the news was not all bad. Bud was positively ecstatic (he’d been pushing to make that abandoned lot a parking area for as long as anyone could remember), and I spotted a long line of folks waiting to get into Cooper’s Bakery for coffee and pastries. There was a long line in front of Koh’s Grocery, too. Mr. Koh, who was restocking fruit on the outdoor stalls, saw Sadie and me trying to negotiate the crowd. Smiling, he bowed to us. I bowed back and he actually beamed!

We got another positive wave from Joe Franzetti, who was throwing pizza dough in his store’s window. His booths and tables were full, and the sidewalk was jammed with customers waiting for a slice.

In front of our own store, Sadie impatiently pushed against the crowd again. Like a living thing, the throng pushed back.

“Folks, you can’t get into the store if we can’t open it,” I pleaded.

The mob moved a little, but there were angry cries as people were crowded off the sidewalk. Suddenly I heard the sound of breaking glass as a bottle hit the concrete.

“That’s it!” Seymour roared. “What the hell do you people think this is, a mosh pit?!” To my surprise, the crowd drew back as people scrambled to get out of Seymour’s way. “Make a hole! Make a hole!” he shouted.

I turned to my aunt. “Make a hole?”

“Navy term,” she told me. “He’s obviously flashing back to those four years when he was an enlisted man.”

“Bite me, asshole!” someone shouted from the crowd.

Seymour whirled to face the heckler, who wore faded Levi’s, a St. Francis College sweatshirt, and a red bandanna around his head.

“I’m a postal worker, buster!” Seymour cried, a vein bulging on his forehead. “Do you really want a piece of me?!”

The heckler shrunk back in terror. And the mass of people seemed to finally break and flow back like ice on a thawing river. They might not respond to orders very well, but they all understood the meaning of the term “going postal.”

“That’s more like it,” cried Seymour. “Now let’s form a nice, orderly, single-file line starting right over here. That way everybody will get in to see the pretty store.”

While Seymour wrangled the crowd, Sadie unlocked the door and we slipped inside. Seymour came in behind us, but only after he issued a final warning to the college student.

“I’m keeping an eye on you, bub.”

Once through the door, I turned to Seymour. “Thanks,” I said. “We never would have gotten through that crowd ourselves.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “I’ll stick around if you like. It’s Sunday, so I’ve got no mail to deliver, and my ice cream truck’s out of supplies till Monday.”

“That would be really great,” I said.

“We’ll pay you in trade,” said Sadie. “First dibs on any pulp magazines that come in for the next six months. And you can have the first two free.”

Seymour gave her a thumbs-up.

I jumped behind the counter and booted up the register, the monitor, and the computer. Sadie glanced at her watch.

“Time to open,” she announced.

I took a deep breath, then nodded. Sadie turned the sign around to read OPEN and unlocked the front door.

As the crowd rushed in, I saw flashing lights at the curb. Officer Eddie Franzetti came rushing up to the doorway, his hand firmly on the billy club attached to his dark blue uniform’s utility belt.

“Pen, you need help here?” he asked. “I would have been here sooner, but Rev. Waterman was crazed about setting up barricades to keep cars out of his church lot.”

“No problem, Eddie. Seymour helped us out with the crowd control.”

“Seymour? Seymour Tarnish?” Eddie’s dark brown eyes widened, the thick eyebrows rising. He lifted the hat off his short black hair and wiped his forehead with the same hand, scratching the back of his head before putting the hat on again.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Seymour was great. And I’m sorry about the litter on the sidewalk. I’m getting a trash can first thing tomorrow. So let Pinkie—uh, I mean Councilwoman Binder-Smith—know that in case she calls you guys up to complain about us again.”

“Aw, that woman complains on a daily basis. About everyone. Listen, I better go,” Eddie said. “The Embry lot is a mess. Someone ripped the chains down and it’s total anarchy.” He eyed the crowd warily. “But if there’s any more trouble here, you be sure to call me anytime. For anything, okay?”

“Thanks, Eddie,” I called.

“Save a copy of Shield of Justice for me, too,” he tossed back.

“Will do! And tell MaryJo and the kids we’re getting the next Harry Potter in soon.” (So Harry Potter wasn’t technically a part of the mystery genre. So what? There were mystery elements—and no bookstore owner in her right mind would say no to stocking it.)

I watched Eddie drive off, then started my own thrilling new installment of Adventures in Retail.

“I FEEL A presence in this place. An unearthly presence. A spirit of the dead.”

The speaker was a woman who’d been waiting among the throng. She was past middle age, with long, frizzy, gray hair. She stared at me through wide, unblinking green eyes.

“You feel it, too,” she said.

Okay, she looked like she’d stepped out of Central Casting, or one of those classic old Universal horror films featuring a band of singing and dancing Gypsies—right down to the long, flowing, multicolored dress and Birkenstocks. But what the hell . . . I was desperate. Maybe this woman could sense spiritual beings. Maybe she was channeling Jack Shepard. Maybe she had some answers.

Nix on that, dollface.

Jack had spoken inside my head for the first time today. I hated myself for it, but I felt my heartbeat quicken just a little bit.

This battle-ax is one booze jag away from the drunk tank.

“Thanks for the valuable input, Jack,” I said silently. “Good morning to you, too.”

Seymour, at his post near the front door, pointed to his head and twirled his finger. Cuckoo! Then he silently mouthed something that looked like, “CNN really brings out the lunatics, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, Seymour,” I thought to myself. “If you only knew what I knew.”

I turned to the woman and asked, “Can I help you?”

“The spirit is in torment. It cries out!” the woman said, loud enough for the other customers to notice. “The spirit demands justice.”

This woman sounds sincere, I decided. My heart began to beat faster, wondering for a moment if Jack could be wrong.

“Is this woman really a sensitive?” I asked Jack.

Yeah, she’s sensitive, all right. said Jack. To bathtub gin and rotgut whiskey.

The woman spun on her heels, her dress billowing.

“Oh, yes,” she said, gazing at the ceiling. “It is the ghost of Timothy Brennan, cursed to haunt these premises until his murderer is punished.”

Brennan? said Jack. Here for eternity? Look around, toots. There ain’t a barstool or bookie in sight. Why would Brennan bother to stay in this place?

“I must listen for his voice!” she cried.

Shut her up, would you? Jack told me. Or I’ll scare the hell out of her myself.

“Don’t do that!” I silently warned Jack. “There are too many people around!”

“Ma’am,” I said, touching her shoulder. She spun on me.

“Do not touch a sensitive!” she screeched. I recoiled.

That’s it! Jack cried.

A moment later, the woman’s eyes bulged. Her jaw dropped.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

“J-J-ack . . . J-j-jack Sh-sh-shepard!” she stammered, pointing at me.

“Great,” I thought. “Jack, what in the world are you doing?”

I’m projecting, he said. On you.

NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF MY STORE!

The woman screamed and ran. No one seemed to be aware of Jack or me. Or the fact that he’d just screamed so loud in my head I’d automatically put my hands to my ears—as useless as that was. All eyes were on the crazed lady running for the door.

“Well, that was certainly an education,” I told him.

Ha! Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?

“Actually, I didn’t.”

Well, it’s not a piece of cake or anything, said Jack. But when I’m really worked up . . .

“Remind me never to really work you up.”

With a sigh, my gaze followed the trail of the exiting lady—and my body froze. I felt as though I’d seen a ghost—but not Jack’s ghost, more like the ghost of felons past.

As the “sensitive” barreled through the front doorway, she jostled a familiar middle-aged woman. It was Anna Worth, the cereal heiress herself—returning to the scene of the crime, if Fiona Finch’s theory was correct.

This time Anna Worth came with a solicitous-looking older man in tow. He looked like a professor, graying at the temples and wearing tweed, with leather patches on his jacket.

Anna Worth, on the other hand, looked the height of fashion. Her sheer peach pantsuit was beautifully tailored, and pink-tinted sunglasses sat on top of her pale blond shoulder-length hair. I probably would not have recognized her had I not seen dozens of photographs of her at various ages not two hours ago. Seymour recognized her, too, and he casually moved toward the counter.

Despite her elegant attire, Anna Worth gave the impression not of a regal heiress but of a mouse stepping into the home of a very hungry feline. The farther into the store she moved, the more noticeably her shoulders drooped, the more rapidly her eyes began to dart about. When they finally strayed in the direction of the community space, she visibly paled.

The older man instantly reacted to her discomfort. He took her arm and steered the now nervous wreck of an heiress to the other end of the store, seating her in one of the Shaker rockers. She sat, and he kneeled at her side, speaking softly into her ear.

“Pssssst, Jack!” I thought as loudly as I could. “Be a help, would you, and eavesdrop on their conversation for me?”

I received no reply, and just hoped he had already gotten the same idea and was preoccupied with his “surveillance work” already.

Seymour leaned against the counter and said in a conversational tone, “Gee, maybe murderers do return to the scene of the crime.”

“Shhhhhh!” I hissed.

“Come on, you don’t really think this eighties flashback bumped off Brennan, do you? Fiona Finch has read one too many true crime books.”

“Look, look, she’s moving again,” Sadie whispered from the corner of her mouth.

Anna Worth had risen from the rocker and, with child-like baby steps, she began to move. Her companion followed her, rubbing his chin and eyeing Anna closely. The woman paused, and the man rushed to her side. Whispering, they moved through aisles of books, never once glancing at a title. Whatever they were doing here, they certainly weren’t here to purchase some light beach reading.

Seymour grinned and poked my arm. “Here’s your chance,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Follow them.”

“They’ll see me.”

“But you own the place,” Seymour insisted. “You’re practically help. And rich people like Anna Worth never notice the help. Ever. So go over and restock the shelves.”

I must have had a blank expression on my face because Seymour didn’t wait for my reply. Rolling his eyes, he reached into my carefully arranged new-releases section and grabbed a handful of titles off the table—the new Patricia Cornwell paperback, a Janet Evanovich, a brand-new thriller by Ed McBain, a short fiction collection by James Ellroy—and thrust them into my arms.

“Go restock the shelves,” he repeated, giving me a push.

Resigning myself to the inevitable, I pushed my black rectangular glasses up my nose; took a deep breath; and, assuming an air of what I hoped was casual indifference, set off to put copies of my brand-new releases among the older titles. A retailing erratum, but I told myself I was doing it in the name of ratiocination.

It didn’t take me but a minute to spot Anna Worth and her friend. They were standing near the Dennis Lehane novels. The closest letter I had in my hand was “M,” so Ed McBain would have to do. I approached the couple unseen. Fortunately, they were lost in conversation.

“Work through it,” the man whispered. “Face your darkest fears or they will own you, Anna.”

Anna Worth replied, but so softly I couldn’t hear her words.

I moved a little closer, pretending to adjust the Kellerman section—Jonathan and Faye—and even a Harry Kellerman rabbi mystery.

“You hated that man,” Tweedy replied. “How did it feel to watch him fall . . . to watch him die?”

His words startled me, and the entire Faye Kellerman collection tumbled to the floor. Anna Worth and the man spun around to face me. Anna had that deer-in-the-headlights stare.

It’s now or never, doll, Jack said in my head. Go ahead and ask.

Before I knew it, my mouth moved, and I spoke. “You’re Anna Worth, aren’t you? My name is Penelope Thornton-McClure, the co-owner of this store. I saw you here the other night, when Timothy Brennan died.”

Anna’s mouth moved, but no words came out. I could see torment—guilt, perhaps?—on her face. Whatever it was, her look made me bolder.

“Why were you here, Ms. Worth?” I said. “Surely you’re no fan of Mr. Brennan’s work.”

Anna Worth clutched Tweedy’s arm and turned her face away. “Please, Doctor, do something,” she whispered.

“Ms. McClure,” the man said indignantly, “surely you can see that this woman is distraught!”

“I can see that,” I replied. Then I turned to Anna Worth. “I am terribly sorry if I upset you. Of course, we’re all upset, knowing that we may have all witnessed a murder right here in this store the other night. You have heard the news, Ms. Worth? The police suspect foul play . . . poison.”

But Anna Worth really didn’t react to this news. She just blinked. It was the man in the tweed jacket who did most of the reacting. “I think you’ve upset my patient quite enough for one day,” he said, stepping between us.

“Your patient?”

Tweedy adjusted his tie. “My name is Dr. Stuart Nablaum, a practicing psychologist in Newport. Ms. Worth is my patient. I accompanied her two nights ago, and today, because we have some unfinished emotional business with Mr. Brennan.”

“You were here with Anna Worth the other night?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Every moment. Anna is in such a delicate emotional state right now she can go nowhere without supervision—my supervision. Nor could I be so remiss as to have Ms. Worth face Timothy Brennan alone.”

“Why did she want to face Brennan at all?” I asked.

The man’s nostrils flared, and I thought he was going to throw me out of my own store. Then Anna spoke.

“Tell her,” she said in a breathy, little-girl voice.

“But Anna—”

“Please tell her, Stuart.”

Dr. Nablaum scowled at me. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Anna came here to face Timothy Brennan and tell him how much he had hurt her.”

“The scandal, you mean?” I said. “The articles Brennan wrote about it?”

Dr. Nablaum frowned. “Mrs. McClure, you probably don’t understand how hard a person has to fight to overcome an addiction—any addiction. Any bump in the road of life, any psychic scrape or emotional bruise can reverse years of progress.”

“I think I understand,” I replied.

“Do you?” Dr. Nablaum said. “If you truly do, then you understand how Anna Worth suffered at the hands of that yellow journalist—that, that scandalmonger, Timothy Brennan!”

I was a little taken aback by Dr. Nablaum’s passion. Maybe I should be considering him a suspect.

Not likely, Jack said. He’s steamed, all right, but I don’t make him for the killer. Or Anna. I’ve been eavesdropping on them since they toddled in. What you see is what you get—a frail frail and a low-rent head doctor who’s found his golden goose.

“Sad,” I thought.

Yeah, this broad’s a bundle of nerve endings. You can’t tell me she had the cool to poison Brennan and then remain calm when your local cops showed up asking questions. And that’s not even counting the fact that her doctor is a solid alibi.

I considered Jack’s logic. “Okay,” I thought, “maybe she didn’t do it. Maybe she hired someone. She has the money.”

Then why show up in the store on the night of the murder? Why implicate herself?

Maybe she wanted to witness the death with her own eyes.

Then why return to the scene and risk raising red flags?

“I guess you have a point,” I silently admitted.

Meanwhile, the doctor was going on about Anna’s condition. “Every time Anna made progress, a new article dredging up her past and opening old wounds would appear. Months of progress would fall away as poor Anna would sink again.”

“I see,” I said.

“All Anna wanted to do was unburden herself. Tell Brennan how he harmed her, and how she forgives him.”

“It’s part of my twelve-step program,” she said, gazing at Dr. Nablaum with something akin to awe.

I bit the inside of my cheek. The way she’d said “twelve-step program” so seriously and so reverently, I got the impression she’d never heard of it before she hooked up with Dr. Nablaum. I wondered in passing what he was charging her.

More than he’s worth.

Dr. Nablaum gazed at the heiress with eyes full of compassion. “For Anna, there can be no closure now.”

“That’s right,” said Anna. “Now I can never say the things I need to say to Timothy Brennan.”

Tell her to say it anyway, Jack said. Take it from me, the dead can hear.

I told Anna what Jack said (not mentioning, of course, that the advice actually came from a dead guy). Anna and her doctor considered my suggestion.

“Take all the time you need,” I said, pointing to the community events space. There, the carved oak podium still stood—a good enough stand-in for Brennan, I figured, since I was fairly certain that Jack was the only spirit haunting the bookstore.

I returned to the counter, where Seymour and Sadie looked at me expectantly. Before I could say a word, Fiona Finch burst through the door and hurried up to the counter.

“The State Police have been at my inn for the past two hours,” she declared.

“My God!” Sadie cried. “Whatever for?”

“A Criminal Investigation Unit showed up with a warrant. They searched the Frankens’ guest room from top to bottom. Then two detectives arrested Deirdre Franken for the murder of her father!”