The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion (8 page)

“Excuse me,” Seymour interrupted. “But Miss Todd wasn’t suffering from any sort of delusions, audio or otherwise. I spoke with her nearly every day.”

“And I spoke with her over the phone earlier today,” I added. “She sounded perfectly normal to me.”

“Selective observations are far from conclusive,” Dr. Rubino said. “Neither of you are medical professionals.”

“But still . . .” I paused. “Don’t you think it’s at least remotely
possible
that Miss Todd was frightened to death?”

Dr. Rubino gave the notion about two seconds’ worth of consideration before laughing out loud.

I shifted with embarrassment.

Jack was right. I cleared my throat—loudly. “Isn’t it true, Doctor, that under certain circumstances strong emotions like fear or stress can initiate the onset of a stroke, a heart attack, or a hemorrhage?”

Ciders stared expectantly at the doctor and so did everyone else in the room. Now it was Dr. Rubino’s turn to shift uncomfortably.

“It’s possible, Mrs. McClure. Yes, I suppose. But dying of
fright
. . .” He shook his head. “That’s far from an
official
cause of death. Do you understand my meaning? It’s not something I’m going to rule.”

Seymour loudly exhaled. He’d obviously heard enough. “I’m out of here!” he announced. “This is a bummer, you know. I was Miss Todd’s friend . . . and anyway I still have mail to deliver, too—if I’m not fired already!”

Ciders stared at the mailman through furrowed brows. “I still suspect you, Tarnish.”

“Of what?!”

“Of causing those noises Miss Todd reported. I don’t know why you’d want to scare the old woman to death, but I’m keeping my eye on you.”

“You’re crazy, Ciders. Why would I want to scare a nice old lady like Miss Todd?”

“Who knows why you do anything, Tarnish. You’ve been a bad seed since I hauled you in for setting Montague’s Woods on fire—”

“I was in the eighth grade! Me and Keith Keenan were shooting off bottle rockets. One of them got away from us!”

“You started an illegal fire, drank beer while you were still underage, and you were in possession of pornography—”

“Porno? It was a
Playboy
magazine me and Keith found in the trash, for cripes’ sake!”

“Plus you were cutting school.”

“Just gym class,” Seymour said. “It sucked, and do you know why?” He stepped up to Chief Ciders and poked his finger into the man’s barrel chest. “Because it was full of a-holes like your Neanderthal nephew over there! And that’s the problem with bullies like him—and
you
—more brawn than brains. Just think about this logically for a second. What possible motive would I have for frightening poor old Miss Todd to death?”

Ciders’s face reddened. He didn’t have an answer. The room fell silent. No one moved. And then the doorbell loudly buzzed. We all tensed. Ciders gestured to the front door with an angry jerk of his thumb.

“Eddie! See who that is!”

He did. And a moment later he reappeared with a small, middle-aged man at his side.

Ciders faced the newcomer with zero patience. “Who are you and what do you want?!” he roared.

“My name is Emory Philip Stoddard, Esquire,” the little man said, clearing his throat. “I am, or rather . . . I
was
Miss Todd’s legal representative. I received a call from your dispatcher to come immediately—”

Ciders cursed. “Sorry, Mr. Stoddard. Sorry about the yelling there. My bark is worse than my bite sometimes. I forgot I told Joyce to call your office.”

Seymour rolled his eyes. “I get strip-searched, falsely accused of murder, and prevented from doing my job, but the
lawyer
gets a formal apology over a little harsh language?”

Ciders shook the lawyer’s hand, and introductions were made all around—though the chief pointedly neglected to introduce Seymour.

As I greeted the man, it occurred to me that Mr. Stoddard was the polar opposite of Dr. Rubino. Where the doctor was a tanned, toned
GQ
-type clad in rough-looking outerwear, Mr. Stoddard was a rough-looking character swathed in a
GQ
package.

About five-foot-two, he had a ruddy complexion with a receding blond hairline, a hawkish nose beneath smallish light eyes, and a pudgy body immaculately wrapped in a tailored cobalt suit. His Windsor knot was perfect, the thin silver bar gleaming as it held his Italian silk tie firmly in place along his opalescent dress shirt. He wore matching cuff links, too, with which he continually fidgeted.

“I guess Joyce explained the situation,” Ciders said.

Mr. Stoddard nodded. “I understand that Miss Todd has passed. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Yeah, Chief,” Seymour piped up. “Tell the man what happened.”

Ciders scowled. “Mr. Tarnish here was just
leaving
.”

“Tarnish?” Mr. Stoddard repeated. “Are you by any chance Mr.
Seymour
Tarnish?”

Seymour nodded. “The one and only. What’s it to you?”

“It so happens that you’re mentioned in Miss Todd’s last will and testament,” Mr. Stoddard replied.

Seymour’s jaw went slack. “Huh?”

“You’re a beneficiary, man.”

Chief Ciders’s eyes widened for a moment before narrowing down to tiny pinholes. “Tarnish here is
inheriting
something as a result of Miss Todd’s death?”

Mr. Stoddard nodded. “And so is Mrs. McClure and her aunt. I’ll be holding a meeting in my office forthwith.”

“What exactly is this man getting?” Ciders asked with naked suspicion.

“Oh, I
am
sorry, Chief, but for now that’s confidential.”

Ciders folded his arms and smirked. “Well, whatever the hell Miss Timothea Todd left her mailman, it better not be valuable. Because if Mr. Tarnish here winds up inheriting anything more than a souvenir ashtray and some dusty old books, I’d say that’s a motive for murder.”

CHAPTER 6

I loathe these dives . . . They look as if they only existed after dark, like ghouls.

—Raymond Chandler, “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,”
Black Mask
, December 1933 (Chandler’s debut short story)

 

 

 

AFTER LEAVING MISS Todd’s mansion, I’d watched clouds roll in all afternoon. Now it was twilight and darkness descended with more murk than usual for a warm June night.

Heeding Mr. Stoddard’s official request to appear in his Millstone office at eight P.M., Aunt Sadie and I closed the bookshop early, leaving the Community Events room in the trustworthy hands of the Yarn Spinners reading group as well as our young part-timer, Bonnie.

Seymour Tarnish picked us up in his pristine, vintage 1975 lime green “breadloaf” Volkswagen bus. We piled in, dropped off my son, Spencer, at the home of his best buddy, Danny Keenan (the son of Seymour’s old friend, “Bottle Rocket Keith” Kennan), and then headed for the highway.

Seymour didn’t say much as he drove us to Millstone, which was unusual for the loquacious mailman. Wearing a slightly wrinkled blue suit, white shirt, and Mighty Mouse tie wide enough to double as a lobster bib, he stared at the road ahead, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

Your postal pal looks nervous,
Jack said.

“Can you blame him?” I whispered in my head. “Given the day he’s had?”

Back at Miss Todd’s mansion, Chief Ciders had wanted to continue detaining and questioning Seymour, but with Dr. Rubino refusing to rule the scene a homicide and Eddie calmly suggesting that they wait for autopsy and forensic results,
and
Seymour threatening to hire Emory Stoddard on the spot to represent him, Ciders finally backed off.

Seymour stormed out of the mansion, and I followed, eager to smooth things over. He let me drive him over to Cooper Family Bakery, where I treated him to coffee and a few of Milner Logan’s lighter-than-air doughnuts. Once he calmed down, Seymour assured me (through gulps of Mocha Java and soothing mouthfuls of glazed fried dough) that I was forgiven for my part in the ugly incident, though he refused to give Chief Ciders and Bull McCoy, “the Boy Moron,” a pass for the nasty way they’d treated him.

“There’s the turnoff for Millstone,” I gently told Seymour, pointing to the ramp ahead.

“Oh, yeah . . . Thanks, Pen.”

Seymour was more than familiar with the way to Millstone, but he was looking so spaced-out I thought he could use the reminder. He drove his VW Bus up the steep ramp and turned at the top of the high hill. Skirting the back end of Prescott Woods, we continued to ascend the two-mile grade that led to the town’s center. Millstone’s main street was called Buckeye Lane, but it projected a substantially different atmosphere than Quindicott’s Cranberry Street.

The grand reopening and expansion of our Buy the Book shop a few years back had sparked a real boom in our little town. The new customers we’d attracted with reading groups, author signings, and book events came from all over the region, and before or after their visit with us, they began patronizing stores close by. Soon Napp Hardware, Cooper Family Bakery, Franzetti’s Pizza, Mr. Koh’s Grocery, Donovan’s Pub, the Seafood Shack, and a half dozen other shops were able to invest in new awnings, improved interiors, and local advertising, which helped spur even more commerce.

The Finches became successful enough to convert the condemned Charity Point Lighthouse into an extension of their bed-and-breakfast business. They’d even fulfilled a longtime dream of opening the town’s first and only gourmet French restaurant, Chez Finch, next to Quindicott Pond.

Our town’s latest story of commercial resurrection involved the (formerly) broken-down, boarded-up Movie Town Theater. Its grand reopening was just last month. Not only did the restoration of the old theater’s Art Deco façade and plush interior earn it landmark status from the local historical society, but its weekend film-and-lecture series were also drawing huge crowds of students from nearby St. Francis College.

The increased sales taxes had allowed the city government to upgrade the public commons, paint and repair the band-shell, and reinstitute Sunday summer concerts.

Sadly, however, all of this burgeoning new capitalist life had yet to benefit the dead little burg of Millstone—“the Hinterlands,” as some in Q had dubbed it. More than a decade ago, Millstone’s major employer, a textile plant, had shut its doors. A handful of politicians had attempted to revive the town with fresh ideas; but like a depressed neighbor who no longer sees much point in getting out of bed, the people of Millstone were unwilling to rally. No one wanted to take a chance, to invest in anything, not even their own businesses.

The mood was routinely gloomy in Millstone, and the waning summer sunlight hadn’t improved its atmosphere. As Seymour rolled down the town’s pothole-peppered main drag, we passed storefront exteriors in need of repair. But those were the lucky ones. Boarded-up windows and GOING OUT OF BUSINESS signs reminded me of the bad old days in Quindicott when Sadie was about to end the life of the family’s bookstore.

The law offices of Emory Philip Stoddard were located on Whippoorwill Road at the edge of the business district. We turned off Buckeye Lane and searched for the doorway marked 919. Unfortunately, there were a lot of residential buildings on this street and a lot of parked cars. Seymour’s VW Bus was too big to fit into the only two curbside spaces available.

“You two go ahead,” Seymour said. “I’ll drive around the corner and find someplace to park.”

Stoddard’s office occupied the ground floor of a three-story, Federal-style walkup. The red bricks were dingy, the white paint on the window frames flaked and peeling, and the plate-glass window had a hairline crack. Even the sidewalk was pitted, with dried leaves and stray candy wrappers littering the curb.

As we approached the front door, it opened abruptly. A seventysomething woman stood staring at us with chilly blue eyes. Her finely tailored suit and quilted leather handbag certainly didn’t fit the depressed neighborhood. She was a bit heavy, with full hips and thick legs. Her short brown curls were shot with gray, her patrician features buried in a fleshy face polished up with base, blush, and lipstick.

Sadie smiled and nodded a polite greeting. I said, “Hello. Are you a client of Mr. Stoddard’s?”

“Good evening,” was all she said in return, rather coldly. Then she swept past us toward a silver luxury sedan parked across the street. Until now, I hadn’t noticed the Mercedes idling there. A middle-aged man with dark hair, a mustache, and Hispanic features sat in the driver’s seat wearing a chauffeur’s uniform.

“Do you know that woman?” I asked Sadie.

“Never saw her before.” I shrugged, figuring she was just another client, and we stepped inside.

The interior of Stoddard’s office was even less impressive than the exterior. What passed for a waiting room consisted of five steel folding chairs on a threadbare beige carpet. The faux wood paneling covering the walls appeared badly scuffed.

Strange,
I thought.
These aren’t the sort of digs I expected for the immaculately dressed Mr. Stoddard.

The man’s a lawyer
, Jack said in my head.

“So?”

The drab space was so poorly illuminated that at first we didn’t notice the slender young woman sitting in front of high metal filing cabinets and behind a computer screen on a dented steel desk. The girl was college-age, maybe a little older, and like the client who’d just left this office, she wasn’t dressed anything like the few girls we’d passed on Millstone’s sidewalks with their cut-off shorts and denim skirts.

This girl’s sleeveless dress of black summer silk was finely tailored. Her head was bent over a thick book. She wore a chain of gold links and her long, sleek, precisely cut raven hair spilled down around her shoulders. When she moved, I could see the flash of a gold tattoo on her pale upper arm. It appeared to be some kind of cross, but I couldn’t really tell. Her dark veil of hair was too quick to cover it.