The Ghost and Mrs. McClure (3 page)

You know the pathetic truth? The truth I’d never admit to anyone? Calvin Spencer McClure III had been a lousy father. But he’d been the only father Spence had known, and Spence missed him.

So when Spence came downstairs, the three of us brainstormed.

“ ‘Booked’ . . . ‘You’re Booked’ . . . ‘Central Booking’ . . .”
I threw out, because our store specialized in mysteries.

“Why not just ‘By the Book’?” suggested Spencer, who’d just heard the phrase on
Dragnet
.

“That’s it! That’s perfect!” I said. “Only we’ll spell it ‘B-u-y.’ ”

“ ‘Buy the Book.’ ” Sadie shrugged. “Okay, whatever you think will help business, dear. But don’t help it too much. This town’s got parking problems, you know.”

(What Sadie actually said was
“pahkin’ problems.”
The “Roe Dyelin” accent is sometimes light, sometimes heavy, but pretty much incomprehensible when written out on paper. Car, pocket, pasta, meatballs, letter, chowder, and Europe would sound more like cah, parkit, pahster, meatbowls, letta, chowda, and Yerp. You’ll just have to trust me going with the conventional spellings on this one.)

So anyway, the hip new name on a hip new sign went up on the shop and the rest of the life insurance money went into a new beveled glass door, front window, and awning. Out went the ancient fluorescent ceiling fixtures and old metal shelves. In their place I put track lighting, an eclectic array of antique floor and table lamps, and oak bookcases.

I restored the chestnut-stained wood plank floor, and throughout the stacks, I scattered overstuffed armchairs and Shaker-style rockers to give customers the feeling of browsing through a New Englander’s private library.

Finally, I overhauled the inventory, keeping the store’s original rare book business but adding plenty of mysteries along with some New England travel guides and Yankee cookbooks.

I had hoped the BMWs, Jaguars, and Mercedes rocketing through Quindicott for gas fill-ups on their way to the resort towns of Cape Cod or Newport would pause to check out the “quaint”-looking mystery-themed bookshop. But they hadn’t.

Sadly, the years of economic booms and busts had taken their toll on “Old Q,” and many of the shops on Cranberry had become run down, not just our bookstore.

Empty storefronts didn’t help, either, and we had one right next door. People had taken to calling it “cursed,” not only for hosting the most “going out of business” sales in Quindicott, but also for being “haunted.” (Ridiculous, of course.)

Not yet ready to lie down and die, I decided what we needed were some well-publicized book-related events and the space to stage them. So I mortgaged Buy the Book to purchase the so-called cursed storefront adjoining ours, expanding the bookstore to its original size for the first time in fifty years.

Now Buy the Book occupied the entire freestanding stone building at 122. And, lord, was I proud!

Okay, so it was a huge financial risk. “Like betting on the horsies,” to quote Sadie exactly. But we hit it big right out of the gate because, for some reason, the legendary Timothy Brennan had chosen our little Quindicott shop to kick off his big national book tour, promoting
Shield of Justice,
the latest novel in his famous series.

Tonight was the make-or-break moment for Buy the Book, and I was determined to see that it came off without a hitch.

 

 

 

I BENT DOWN to adjust Spencer’s blue-and-silver striped tie, which seemed just slightly off center. As I wiggled the knot, Spencer stared at the ceiling and let his hands fall to his sides like a tiny Wall Street rag doll. It reminded me of a remark he’d made last Christmas to one of his little friends in the lobby of our building while Calvin, Spencer, and I waited for a cab to Lincoln Center: “Once my mother starts with the fixing, resistance is futile.”

“Now, Spencer, remember what we talked about,” I said as gently as possible. I was feeling bad enough for making him put on the suit and come downstairs.

“I’ll behave, Mother. I told you already.”

“No tricks.”

“I
told
you ten times. I did not do
anything
to the chairs.”

“I know, honey. I just can’t explain it otherwise.”

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t go blaming me just because you don’t have a perp to fit your profile.”

My eyebrow rose. Maybe Spence
was
watching too many of those TV cop shows. Well, I thought, at least it’s a sign he might
one day
show some interest in our store.

With a sigh, I brushed his copper bangs, made a note that they were getting long again, and nodded. When I’d first come downstairs, after showering and changing, I had found all the chairs in the community events space—the chairs I’d
painstakingly
arranged into rows rectilinear enough for a military parade ground—turned upside down.

I’d raced back upstairs to find Spencer watching an old
Mike Hammer
episode. My son had claimed innocence. So I went to find Sadie.

Once she’d put on her shoes and found her belt, she came downstairs with me to see “the deed for herself,” as she’d put it. Spencer had already gone downstairs to look, and we’d found him just standing there in the community events space, staring.

“Mom,” he’d said, “there’s nothing wrong with the chairs.”

In no more than five minutes, all the chairs had been righted again.

Now, a seven-year-old boy may have been able to turn over one hundred chairs upside down in forty-five minutes, I’d thought, but not in five.

“Do you think you imagined it?” Sadie had asked me.

“No. I did not,” I’d told her. “I know what I saw. And five minutes ago, those chairs were upside down.”

Sadie gave me a sidelong glance.

“I was
not
hallucinating.”

“Must be the ghost,” she’d said with a shrug.

“The ghost?” I’d said.

“Sure. Quite a few stories like yours over the years with this part of the building. Even the construction boys had some strange things happen, you have to admit.”

Okay, so during the renovations some of the workmen complained about vanishing tools and unexplained power surges. But I’d chalked all of it up to ancient wiring and maybe Spencer playing a practical joke with the hardware.

“Goes to show how gullible some of us can be,” I’d muttered, annoyed by the accelerated pounding of my stupid heart.

“Some say ghosts can affect your senses,” Sadie had pointed out. “Make you see things that aren’t there . . . see things the way they want you to see them.”

“Humbug” had been my muttered reply. “What are we? Cavewomen? We see lightning and right away think some sky god is angry at us?”

Sadie had just shrugged again. Then we’d searched the entire building for some intruder. But there’d been none. And the doors and windows had all been secure.

“No more ghost talk,” I’d told her when she gave me an annoyingly knowing look. “There is no ghost here. Some hand turned those chairs. Some
human
hand.”

But whose? I still wondered.

Could Spencer really have been so disturbed and angry that he’d managed to pull off a nearly impossible prank for a boy of his size and age—turning them first upside down, then, in mere minutes, right side up again?

“That’s right!” a loud voice suddenly boomed from the new events space. “Let’s get this crap out of the way.”

I told Spence to help Aunt Sadie at the register. Then I rushed over to the adjoining storefront in time to see a padded folding chair clatter to the wood plank floor.

“Good lord,” I muttered, “not my chairs again!”

My gaze lifted to the center of the events room. There, shouting commands to a trio of well-dressed people, stood a man in his seventies: Timothy Brennan.

I hadn’t recognized him at first because he looked at least twenty-five years older than the photos on his book jacket, floor display,
and
life-size standee. His hair was gray and thin; his bushy brows crowned bloodshot eyes; and his ruddy, jowl-framed face reflected the hundred additional pounds he was now carrying.

Two young men in baggy jeans and flapping flannel suddenly barreled into the room, carrying a video camera, tripod, and heavy silver cases. Mr. Brennan waved his pudgy finger under their noses.

“The camera goes on my right,” Brennan garbled to them around a foul-smelling cigar. “I want those lucky C-SPAN book TV viewers to see my best side.” Then he glanced at the well-dressed couple moving my meticulously arranged refreshment table. “Come on, Ken, move that thing already! We haven’t got all night!”

The staccato thumping of a dozen plastic water bottles came next. I had personally set them on the goodies table near the room’s entrance to make our guests feel welcome. Juices, sodas, and plastic bottles of Sutter Spring water now tumbled to the floor as the man named Ken, and a well-dressed woman about his age, jostled the table toward the back of the room.

Ken was fiftyish with salt-and-pepper hair and silver temples, model-perfect features, and a well-tailored camel-haired jacket that flattered his strong physique. The middle-aged woman, holding the other end, was a slender redhead whose impeccably tailored burgundy suit and matching scarf helped take the bite out of her otherwise very plain face.

Another woman, much younger, wearing a chic black pantsuit with a very pretty face in contrast, and short, shiny, raven hair, was pushing the neatly arranged chairs in haphazard directions. I winced at the scraping sound the chairs made as they were dragged across the newly polished floorboards.

“Excuse me,” I said, approaching the pretty young woman in the chic black pantsuit, who was sliding the chairs around. “I’m Mrs. Penelope Thornton-McClure, the co-owner of this store.”

The young woman stopped pushing and smiled at me. Well, at least her mouth did. As far as I could tell, no
other
discernible facial tendon had been enlisted for the exercise.

“Hello, there,” she said, “I’m Shelby Cabot from Salient House.”

I had lived and worked in New York long enough to spot—from at least five paces—that plastic, time-to-handle-the-
non
-New-Yorker (i.e., simpleton) expression.

I extended my hand.

“Get those chairs rearranged, Shelby!” Brennan shouted. “These idiots gave me nothing but a blank wall and a rest room exit for a backdrop!”

Shelby shrugged, then turned away from me without a backward glance.

“Mr. Brennan,” I said, dropping my unshaken hand, “perhaps I can help. I’m the co-owner of Buy the Book.”

“Oh, yeah? So you’re the one to blame, then? Didn’t you even take the trouble to learn anything about how I like my appearances set up? We’ve got to turn this whole room forty-five degrees to the right. Get my back to those bookshelves over there. And put
my
novels
on
that bookshelf. Where’s your brain? In your backside?”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Brennan,” I said, praying the sudden heat on my cheeks didn’t come with the usual accompanying scarlet flush. (
Feeling
humiliated was one thing, but having one’s own coloring announce it to the world was beyond excruciating.) “I didn’t realize that your talk was being taped for television, or that you’d require a special arrangement of the space.”

The
truth
was, George Young, the beloved and knowledgeable sales rep for Salient House who was based in Boston but handled all the independent bookstore orders for the state of Rhode Island, had gone off on a well-earned cruise vacation. Before he left, George advised us to call Salient House directly and ask for Shelby Cabot, the manager handling the publicity tour for Brennan.

I’d called, all right. Not once. Not twice. But
six
times. Six times I’d left messages in an effort to get the correct information.
Nobody,
not Shelby or anyone else, bothered to return my calls. I wanted to scream all of this back at Brennan, I really did, but I knew Brennan would find a way to turn things around and claim I was simply trying to get Shelby into trouble. Believe me, I’d encountered this sort of unfortunate blame game countless times while working in New York City publishing. There was no winning it.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled again, feeling like the wimp of the century.

“You should be,” said Brennan. “This place is a mess, but my daughter Deirdre and her husband, Kenneth, over there know how to fix it. They’ve done this many times before.”

Another folding chair crashed to the floor. Kenneth, who was moving the refreshment table, almost tripped over it.

“God, Deirdre, your husband’s such a klutz!” Brennan barked, kicking the chair out of the way.

I tried not to wince as I lifted the chair and set it upright. I turned to see what else needed to be righted when I noticed Deirdre glaring daggers at her father’s back. Her husband, Kenneth, looked ready to strangle him.

I braced for the blowup. But none came. Deirdre’s and Kenneth’s features simply contorted, then relaxed again, as if enduring such assaults was a regular occurrence, as if giving in had become a habit.

As I already mentioned, I’d gone through the same thing back in New York—not just in my job but also in my marriage. Some battles you’d already fought and lost so many times that it suddenly seemed a waste of energy to even try fighting anymore.

Someone took my arm. I saw it was Shelby. She patted it and pulled me away, steering me toward the main bookstore as she quietly said, “Don’t you worry now. Let me handle it.
I’m
a publishing professional.”

“I’ve got it, Shelby!” A fresh-faced young man in khaki pants and a blue blazer rushed up to us brandishing a small paper bag.

“Good, Josh. Heel, boy,” said Shelby. Josh narrowed his eyes at the polished publicity manager but said nothing.

Snatching the bag, Shelby reached inside and brought out a bottle filled with green liquid. “Thank God you got the right brand.”