The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

CHAPTER 18

To Quibble or Not to Quibble

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

—Oscar Wilde

“OKAY, FOLKS, I think everyone’s here who’s gonna be. Let’s get started.”

In so many words, Bud Napp called to order the emergency meeting of the Quindicott Business Owners’ Association—or, as Sadie and I liked to call it, the Quibble Over Anything gang.

It was Sunday night, the store was closed, and the group of us were seated on the circle of padded folding chairs I’d set up in the community events space.

“Can we dispense with the roll call tonight?” Fiona Finch asked.

“I’m sorry, Fiona,” said Professor J. Brainert Parker, “but as this association’s secretary, it’s my duty to take accurate minutes.”

“Then mark me down as present and let’s get on with it,” said Bud.

“Cranberry Street Hardware is represented,” said Brainert, typing away on his laptop.

“And me,” said Fiona Finch with an annoyed sigh.

“Finch’s Inn,” said Brainert. “That notorious den of iniquity that spawned today’s raid by the federales.”

“Not funny,” Fiona huffed.

“Cooper Family Bakery,” said Milner.

“Sorry about the Oreos, everyone,” Linda blurted.

Milner turned to his wife. “I already explained we were out of baked goods.”

“I know, Mil. But Oreos?”

“What’s wrong with Oreos?” said Milner defensively. “Everyone likes Oreos.”

“You could have at least bought Entenmann’s,” she told him. “Or even Pepperidge Farms.”

“Everyone likes Oreos,” repeated Milner. He turned to the group. “Don’t you all like Oreos?”

Everyone generally stared a moment. Scattershot nods followed.

Brainert cleared his throat. “Let’s stay on topic, shall we?”

Sadie rolled her eyes. “Didja type in Buy the Book?” she asked. “I mean, since you’re sitting in it.”

“Yes, of course,” said Brainert testily. “And my own business concern has been logged as well.”

Brainert was one of four investors who, about eleven months back, had bought the old two-screen Movie Town Theater at the end of Cranberry Street. The place had been closed for years, and its ripped seats, filthy floor, and cracked candy counter had long been in dire need of repair. No bank would lend them the money to refurbish, so the renovations were slow-going.

“Not present are Colleen’s Beauty Shop, Sam’s Seafood Shack, Franzetti’s Pizza Place, Koh’s Grocery, and—”

“I chatted with everyone else today,” said Bud. “Consider me their proxy.”

“Hey, there, I made it!” called a voice from the door.

“Oh, hey, Seymour, come on in,” said Sadie.

“There’s our big winner,” teased Bud. “And I thought celebrities like you were too busy on weekends to bother with us little people.”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Bud! Besides, I’m out of ice cream.”

On evenings and weekends, Seymour liked to drive an ice cream truck around Old Q. He’d purchased it with part of his big winnings on Jeopardy the year before. Apparently it had always been his dream to become an ice cream man, or so he said. Go figure.

“I parked the empty truck outside,” Seymour said. “Not for nothing, but I never ran out of cones and dishes before! And that horde at the bookstore this morning? What a crazy day!”

“Thanks again for your help earlier,” I told him. “You really saved our hides.”

“Oh, my, yes,” said Aunt Sadie. “And you get the next four pulps for free.”

“Let’s get on with it, shall we?” said Bud.

“ ’Bout time,” said Fiona. “That all right with you, Brainert?”

“I don’t appreciate your tone, Fiona.”

“What tone?”

“You know what tone.”

“I didn’t use any tone.”

“Enough!” cried Sadie. “Get to the emergency issue, please.”

“Parking,” said Bud.

(Actually, what Bud said was “pahkin’ ”—his pronunciations displaying the dropped R’s and drawn-out vowels typical of many Rhode Islanders. But, as I noted much earlier, I’m sticking with the conventional spellings!)

“Parking!” repeated Fiona. “That’s what I’m talking about! Today I had cars jamming my parking lot that don’t belong there. Rev. Waterman had to post guards to see that there was no illegal parking in the church lot. Why, even the Embry land was vandalized—”

“I think ‘appropriated’ is a better term,” interjected Brainert.

“Right on,” said Bud Napp.

“Really,” sniffed Fiona. “Someone tore down the fence. No matter how you feel, that’s no way to solve the town’s parking problem! We’re here to find a solution, aren’t we?”

Aunt Sadie rose. “Look,” she said, “we don’t expect an author to be murdered in our store every other weekend. Nor do we expect to make national headlines and the news networks. This whole incident is going to blow over in the next few days, and then Quindicott can happily fall back into the coma from which it will most likely never emerge.”

“Not if you’re cagey, Sadie,” said Seymour. “There are ways to exploit this incident, draw it out, make it pay long-term. Like the arrest today—of Brennan’s daughter. That means more headlines, which means the crowds will be back here again tomorrow, not to mention the television cameras. That’s our chance to make the first move. . . .”

Everyone leaned forward with anticipation, waiting for Seymour to continue. In truth, Seymour had always had far-fetched ideas. But now, with the Jeopardy win, people actually took him seriously.

“Let’s look at the facts,” he said. “Firstly, the real Jack Shepard vanished in Quindicott decades ago. Secondly, the author of Jack Shepard’s fictional adventures drops dead in the very same town—probably on the very same premises. Now, that’s a Stephen King story.”

Brainert frowned. “Except King isn’t writing anymore.”

“That’s not my point,” said Seymour.

“Then what is?” asked Brainert.

“Here’s a story Sadie and Penelope could sell to Hollywood as Buy the Book: The True Story. That’ll keep this town on the map for years to come. Heck, those Hollywood types might even come here to film it.”

Silence followed. Sadie and I glanced nervously at each other in a sort of “Is he joking?” way.

Brainert cleared his throat. “While Seymour’s idea is . . . interesting, I’m not sure what it has to do with parking.”

“It has nothing to do with parking,” Bud Napp said, rising. “But who cares? A murder involving a best-selling author is much more interesting than Quindicott’s parking problem!”

Then Bud turned to Fiona Finch: “What did happen at your inn this afternoon?”

That’s all the encouragement Fiona needed. She stood up, adjusted her bird pin, and launched into her story with gusto.

“The State Police arrived at around one o’clock, along with a Criminal Investigation Unit, and our local police chief Ciders. A Detective-Lieutenant Marsh showed me a warrant to search the premises. And another investigator—from the medical examiner’s office—started grilling me about the Frankens. Where had they gone? When were they coming back? I told him they’d gone to lunch in Newport—because, of course, we don’t have one decent restaurant in this town—”

“Stay on the subject,” said Bud.

“Well, you know how I feel about it—”

“We know!” cried half the room. Fiona’s decades-long reverie of opening up a gourmet restaurant at Finch’s Inn was as ubiquitous a notion as Harriet McClure’s self-portraits—and the wasted Embry lot.

“Just get on with it,” said Brainert.

“Fine,” snipped Fiona. “At that point, the search began. And within half an hour, I saw a woman from the Criminal Investigation Unit carrying a disposable syringe in a clear plastic bag to their police van.”

Hearing that last line, I nearly choked on my Oreo.

Could the syringe found in Mrs. Franken’s possession be a second syringe? I wondered. No, I decided. That would be too much of a coincidence. It had to be the same syringe. For some reason, Josh must have planted it in the Frankens’ room.

Now you’re thinking, said Jack in my head.

“A syringe?” said Brainert.

Fiona nodded. “I got a pretty good look at it, then I heard the detectives talking about dusting the syringe for fingerprints and testing the residue inside, so I knew what they’d found.”

“Poison!” Seymour declared. Fiona nodded and smiled smugly. It was, after all, her theory voiced that very morning that Seymour was now endorsing.

“It’s got to be poison,” he continued. “Maybe it was arsenic—you know, like that church poisoning up there in Maine. The pot of coffee to die for.”

Everyone began to chatter and toss out wild theories and rapid-fire questions. I kept my mouth shut, even though I wanted to scream the truth. For some reason, Josh Bernstein had set up poor Deirdre Brennan-Franken for murder.

But what was my proof?

A ghost saw Josh find the syringe in my store’s bathroom, and he told me all about it. I wasn’t about to fly that explanation past the State Police!

Crack wise all you want, sweetheart, purred Jack in my brain. I’m your ace in the hole.

Bud loudly clapped his hands. “Order!” he barked. “Fiona holds the floor.”

“At that point, Mr. and Mrs. Franken returned from their luncheon,” Fiona continued. “Detective-Lieutenant Marsh immediately placed the couple in the common room and asked them to wait there. Another State Policeman guarded the door. That presented a problem for me, so, of course, I had to go outside and creep around the house to the sun porch, where I could hear the conversation going on inside.”

“Oh, of course,” Seymour blurted, shaking his head.

Too wrapped up in her tale to take Seymour’s bait, Fiona simply tossed him a naked little glare and continued:

“Alone in the common room, the Frankens started arguing again. Mrs. Franken was very angry. I didn’t hear every word, but I remember her specifically mentioning that she’d caught her husband having an affair. She threw it in his face. There was some quiet talk I couldn’t hear, and then she started raising her voice about Anna. . . .”

Fiona looked at me meaningfully. “Deirdre didn’t mention Anna Worth, the cereal heiress, after all. That theory of mine turned out to be a dead end.”

No kidding, I thought, shuddering at my accosting of that poor, pathetic woman.

“No, this time Deirdre Franken mentioned another woman,” said Fiona. “This woman’s first name was Anna, and her last name was . . .”

Fiona paused for dramatic effect.

“Come on, Fiona,” said Sadie. “Drop the other shoe, why don’t ya?”

“Here it is,” said Fiona. “As plain as day I heard Mrs. Franken speak the name of the other woman. I wrote the name down, though it sounds foreign and my spelling might be a little off.”

Fiona drew a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. “The name of the other woman was Anna Filactic.”

“Filactic?” Bud Napp said. “Sounds Polish. I knew a Bob Matastic in the Marines. Nice guy. He was a Ukrainian, though.”

“Filactic you said?” Seymour cried. “Anna Filactic?” He rubbed his forehead. “My God, Fiona, you’ve got to be kidding. Anaphylactic is not a woman. It’s a physical condition. Mrs. Franken was talking about anaphylactic shock!”

Fiona stared blankly.

“Don’t feel bad, sweetie,” said Brainert. “Ms. Filactic may not be ‘the other woman,’ but it is very useful information.”

“Yes,” I said, “very useful. Timothy Brennan must have been allergic to something. Obviously, Deirdre believes anaphylactic shock triggered her father’s fatal attack.”

“What is anaphylactic shock?” asked Sadie.

“It’s a type of allergic reaction,” Seymour explained. “A sensitivity to some food or substance that causes the mucous membranes in the throat to swell and close up, thereby suffocating the victim. The most common cause is an allergy to nuts. Peanuts, especially.”

“Oh, my, yes,” said Sadie. “Peanut allergies in children are very dangerous. I remember reading a tragic story of a child dying after eating a cookie with just a few pieces of peanut in it.”

“They say even kissing someone who just ate a peanut butter sandwich can send someone with the condition into spasms,” said Seymour.

“Holy cow!” Milner cried, turning to his wife. “I served my five-nut tarts that night!”

Linda paled. “Honey,” she said, “there is no way they can pin it on you. You didn’t know!”

“But that’s not a murder at all,” Sadie said. “That’s just a tragic accident.”

These hicks are cracked. Brennan was clipped—planted by someone who knew him well enough to know how to make it look like an accident.

I spoke up. “Calm down, both of you. Mr. Brennan didn’t eat a thing. He refused any and all food. Insisted on water only.”

“And none too nicely,” Brainert noted. “Pen’s right. Brennan only drank bottled water. I watched him the whole time.”

“Yes,” I said. “The only bottle he drank from was the one I picked out and handed him. That doesn’t make me look very good, does it?”

“But the bottle you gave to Brennan was sealed. The plastic unbroken,” said Brainert.

I nodded. “I opened it myself.”

“There are many ways to contaminate a sealed container,” Seymour said. “I remember an old pulp story, published in the thirties, called A Vintage Murder. The narrator injects poison into a series of sealed wine bottles through the corks with a hypodermic needle.”

“Enter the syringe,” said Brainert.

“And remember that maniac in New York City a few years ago,” said Fiona, “he was injecting sealed water bottles with ammonia, right there on the grocery store shelves. It’s entirely possible—”

“Probable,” said Brainert.

“—that such a method was used to contaminate the water.”

“If Brennan was allergic to nuts, a tiny squirt of peanut oil in his water would do the trick,” said Brainert.

“Nut oil!” I cried. “Yes, of course . . .”

The memory flooded back to me of waking up the night after Brennan’s death, the night I’d seen Jack in the shadows.

You took a drink from the bottle, Jack reminded me. The one you half finished after Brennan’s death and put under the counter before the police came.

And the drink I’d taken had reminded me of Milner’s pastry. Now I knew why. But who set the bottles aside for Brennan?

“Linda, you’re the one who told me about the bottles set aside for Brennan—”

“I didn’t do a thing!”

“Calm down,” I said. “I know you didn’t. Someone told you they’d been set aside, right?”

“That’s right, that’s right,” she said quickly.

The Quibblers leaned slightly forward.

“Well?” said Seymour. “Who told you? Spit it out.”

“Deirdre.”

The whole room erupted, as if Linda had just dropped the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle. But it wasn’t the right piece—and I knew it. Deirdre wouldn’t frame herself. Which meant someone else who was there that night had told Deirdre to tell Linda those bottles were set aside. Someone had saved that syringe for a reason: they’d meant to frame Deirdre all along.

“But what if Deirdre is innocent?” I blurted. All eyes now turned in my direction. And they all looked skeptical.

“Why in the world would you think that?” asked Seymour. “What’s your theory?”

I told the Quibblers what had happened the night before. How both Shelby Cabot and Kenneth Franken turned up at Buy the Book long after closing time, and how I later followed them into the night. Of course, I left out all references to Jack’s ghost, along with any mention of Josh Bernstein finding a syringe in the bookstore’s women’s room.

Privately, though, I made up my mind to track down Josh Bernstein and grill him like a raw T-bone. I told everyone what I’d heard—or thought I’d heard—when I’d eavesdropped on Shelby’s and Kenneth’s conversation under the streetlight. And I wrapped up my revelations with two conclusions:

“I think that the ‘other woman’ Deirdre was referring to was none other than Salient House representative Shelby Cabot,” I said. “And, finally, I believe that it was Kenneth Franken, and not Timothy Brennan, who wrote Shield of Justice.”