The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller

by Cleo Coyle

  “Excuse me, did you say Amy’s father set up a trust?”

  “Yes, and I can’t imagine where Kevin got that kind of money. While I was married to the man, he only taught college part-time while trying—and pathetically failing—to succeed as a novelist.”

  Mrs. Bergen said she was relieved when I told her of my plan to drive Amy up to Boston with Spencer and attempt to talk the administrators into letting them both back into the program.

  “Do your best!” she exclaimed. “And keep me informed.”

  Without so much as a thank-you, she hung up.

  * * *

  * * *

  HONESTLY, I WASN’T all that surprised by the woman’s rudeness. I’d encountered enough of the attitude in my late husband’s family.

  Whether they were accomplished, busy professionals moving in a kind of whirlwind of self-importance; spouses of the same; or dowagers like Calvin McClure’s imperious mother, they often had to be reminded not to treat “common” people with the same blunt directives they gave to their employees, service providers, and domestic staff.

  “Mom, can I have a mug of the Coopers’ hot cocoa, too?” Spencer asked after shutting down his game. “It’s wicked good chocolate!”

  “Get ready quick, and I’ll consider it . . .”

  At the moment, I had more to wrestle with than my son’s sugar consumption. I had a lawman to look up.

  Last night, while Philip Hudson pulled me into a thicket of conflicting statements, Jack advised me to track down a badge and tell him my story. So, while Amy and Spence were grabbing their coats, I put in a call to an old friend, one I could always count on to lead me out of the woods.

  “Hello, Eddie?”

  CHAPTER 26

  Civil Bakery Service

  Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!

  —CBS TV, Candid Camera, 1959–1967

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND, Pen. Why exactly do you want me to tap into the sidewalk security system archive?”

  “I’ll explain everything when we meet.”

  “Okay. I can be at your bookshop in half an hour.”

  “No, Eddie, we have to meet at the Cooper Family Bakery.”

  Suddenly, Deputy Chief Franzetti clammed up.

  “Eddie? Are you there?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Does it have to be the bakery?”

  “Why? Are you on a diet or something? It’s the bakery’s security footage I want us to look at.”

  Eddie blew out a sigh. “All right. I’ll be there in thirty.”

  That gave me just enough time to make the short walk down Cranberry Street, get Amy and Spence settled at a table with their doughnuts and cocoa, and bring the co-owners—Linda Cooper-Logan and her husband, Milner—up to speed.

  Despite all my preparations, I was not ready for what happened when Eddie arrived.

  “Well, if it isn’t Deputy Chief Franzetti!” Linda bit out with a distressing amount of venom. “Have you come to write me another prohibitively expensive ticket?!”

  I asked Linda to explain what happened, and she did—loudly.

  A few days before, a fifty-pound bag of flour burst on the street during a morning delivery to the bakery. The bakery was very busy, so it wasn’t cleaned up until afternoon. The security camera caught the incident, and Eddie cited Linda and Milner for littering. The word toxic was added to the citation—as in “unlawful dispersal of a toxic biodegradable”—because the bleached white flour “posed a significant threat to the gluten intolerant.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Appalled, I turned to Eddie.

  I could tell by the embarrassed look on his face that Eddie agreed with me. “What could I do? I didn’t write the law. Councilwoman Marjorie Binder-Smith saw the incident, showed us the security footage, and demanded that Chief Ciders issue the citation. Since Ciders likes his morning coffee and doughnuts, he passed the buck to me.”

  I held my head. These idiotic citations were just another brick in the wall of the business community’s divide with the city council—and the subject of our Quibblers meeting this very evening.

  The whole thing had started with the installation of the Usher Security sidewalk cameras on the facades and back entrances of all the Cranberry Street businesses.

  Just like Linda, Brainert, Bud, and every other business owner on Cranberry Street, Sadie and I had to pony up cash to install these 24/7 cameras in order to remain “compliant” with this new local “safe community” ordinance.

  Super, everyone thought, we all want safe streets and sidewalks.

  Shortly after the cameras went live, however, we business owners began discovering surprises on our doorsteps: littering tickets for loose trash and leaves that had blown in front of our store entrances overnight. Fines were issued daily for other minor (and sometimes idiotic) “infractions,” and some shops were getting hit two times a week.

  “If you ladies want to blame anyone,” Eddie told us, “blame the city council.”

  A short strand of platinum hair escaped Linda’s hairnet, and she shoved it back under. “That’s not who your dad blames, is it?”

  Eddie folded his arms. “That’s hitting below the belt, don’t you think?”

  According to town gossip, the elderly owner of Franzetti’s Pizza had been fined when squirrels scattered garbage in the back of his pizza parlor. He was so angry, he banned all Quindicott policemen (including his son Eddie) from his shop.

  “One of my microwaves is on the fritz,” Linda taunted. “Maybe you should ticket me for contributing to the possible leakage of radiation!”

  I stepped between them. “Can’t we all just get along? Please? For the next twenty minutes, anyway?”

  “Fine,” Linda said in a tone that indicated it wasn’t fine at all.

  But at least she stopped arguing with Eddie and focused instead on helping Milner wait on customers.

  Relieved, Eddie slapped a digital notebook on an unoccupied table. Still standing, he tapped into the shop’s Wi-Fi. “Okay, Pen, let’s get this over quick before Linda comes at me for Round Two. What do you want to see?”

  “Footage from Saturday morning, the day Emma died. From the moment the bakery opened until Linda ran out of cinnamon buns—”

  “That would be five minutes after the football crowd rolled in,” Linda reminded me from behind the counter.

  Eddie blinked. “What is this, a marketing study?”

  “No. Emma Hudson stopped at this bakery the day she died, and I suspect someone else did, too.”

  Eddie gave me a sidelong glance. “And who would that be?”

  “Philip Hudson, Emma’s ex.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “The man who just might have murdered her.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I Spy with My Little Eye

  “Probably,” Nora said.

  “It’s a word you’ve got to use a lot in this business.”

  —Nick Charles replying to his wife, Nora, in The Thin Man

  EDDIE OPENED HIS mouth to protest, but I cut him off.

  “Before you go all ‘Chief Ciders’ on me, I want you to listen to what I have to say . . .”

  I filled Eddie in on what I’d learned during my dinner with Philip Hudson—that his alibi about being in New York City on the day of his ex-wife’s death might be a lie. “He told me he was in Providence . . .”

  I informed Eddie about Hudson’s financial woes, and the deal he claimed to have made with a “Federal Hill moneyman,” which could lead to corruption in nearby Millstone, the kind of corruption that could creep into our own hometown next.

  Eddie frowned over the duplicitous alibi, but he waved off my shady moneyman worries.

  “Hudson wouldn’t be the first member of the snob set to be involved with criminal activity: Ponzi schemes, money laund
ering, tax evasion, embezzlement, stockpiling narcotics with bogus prescriptions. Hell, most people believe mob-linked bootlegging enriched a Boston family that produced a president. Hudson may be dirtying his fingers in a dubious pie, but it doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Here’s what I think probably happened,” I countered.

  “‘Probably’ being the operative word.” Eddie folded his arms.

  “Keep an open mind!” I pleaded and cleared my throat. “So Emma is broke and waiting around for her share of Philip Hudson’s inheritance, which Philip confirmed to me is legally owed to her. Philip makes up some reason to see Emma, and she invites him over for brunch. On the way to see his ex, Philip stops at this bakery and buys a box of cinnamon buns and a couple of baguettes—the items found in Emma’s kitchen the day she died, items we know Emma didn’t purchase herself because Linda remembered selling her a coffee and one bun—”

  “How could she remember one customer?”

  “Easy. Linda had clothes envy for Emma’s lilac cashmere sweater—and Emma was one of the few people who filled out a church raffle ticket that morning.”

  “Fine. Go on with your theory.”

  I took a breath before the big finish. “When Philip arrives at Pine Tree Avenue, he finds an emotionally distraught Emma. Maybe he’s been drinking. They argue. He might have lashed out and struck her, knocked her out. Panic sets in. She might call the cops on him when she comes around, maybe even sue. But if he tosses her off the balcony, flees the scene, and gets the heck out of Dodge to establish an alibi, he’s certain it will look like she jumped or fell. His troublesome ex-wife would be out of his life for good, and he’d be a richer man.”

  “This is all pure speculation, Pen, and very tough to prove. I canvassed the building, and none of Mrs. Hudson’s neighbors were at home at the time of her death. So we’ve got no witnesses to any kind of argument.”

  “Well, I was there. I heard footsteps leaving that apartment, and I think we can prove it was Hudson. Catch the man on that security tape with baguettes and cinnamon buns in hand, and you’ll not only prove he made a false statement to the police about his alibi, you’ll place him at the crime scene. Pressure him with that one-two punch of hard evidence, and he may just fold and confess.”

  Eddie still seemed doubtful, so I doubled down.

  “Think of it another way. Wouldn’t it be great publicity for Usher Security if Chief Ciders could tout the fact that the highly unpopular system actually provided evidence to catch a murderer in our midst?”

  “Okay, you sold me,” Eddie said.

  I tried to contain my self-satisfaction—and nearly asked Jack Shepard what he thought of my success. Then I remembered: I’d left his Buffalo nickel in its special little pillbox, which effectively kept Jack in the box of our bookstore.

  After his antics last night, I thought we both needed a break from each other. I mean, really, that crack about my ability to take care of myself being “debatable”—it made me steam.

  Now, however, I regretted my decision, if only to prove to the ghosted gumshoe that my PI skills were getting better. Or at least weren’t as “hinky” as he believed them to be.

  I’m sorry you can’t hear me, you big lug, but I think you’d be proud.

  As I stood there, missing my ghost, Eddie cued the sidewalk footage to the moment Milner opened the shop. In fast motion, we sped through the first half hour of images in less than a minute and a half.

  By nine A.M. on the digital clock, we’d seen Rita Kelso, Wanda Clark, Sylvia Lodge, and Eddie’s sister, Bonnie Franzetti, carry baguettes away from the bakery.

  “We’re lucky—baguettes are easy to spot,” Eddie said, and within a few seconds, he was freezing an image. “That’s Mr. Brink.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed out a heavy-set man in his seventies with a neatly trimmed gray goatee.

  “Whitman Brink. I know him. He’s a lovely man, and a regular customer at our bookstore.”

  “Well, he’s got a pair of baguettes, and a pastry box that might very well contain those cinnamon buns you saw in Emma’s kitchen.” Eddie checked the digital timer. “He purchased them at 8:55 A.M. Plenty of time to take them to Emma.”

  “Why would you assume that?”

  “Because of his address. Mr. Brink resides at 1919 Pine Tree.”

  “What?”

  “Emma Hudson’s landlord provided me with the names of all seven of his tenants. Brink lives on the first floor.”

  I chewed my lip. This wasn’t going the way I’d planned. “Mr. Brink’s purchase might be a simple coincidence, Eddie. Please, let’s keep looking for Emma’s ex-husband.”

  But we didn’t see Philip Hudson, not once.

  When a parade of SUVs brought a rowdy army of teens into the shop, I knew my theory was shot to hades. Linda already advised us that she’d run out of cinnamon buns during the Saturday morning football stampede. Eddie shut down the security feed.

  “Hudson isn’t here, Pen.”

  “I don’t understand. It all fit together perfectly. He has to be guilty. Hey! What about Emma’s phone? Did you find any calls from her ex?”

  “We haven’t recovered her phone.”

  “But you’ve accessed Emma’s account, right?”

  “We can’t find an account. We didn’t even find a bill in her mail pile. She was probably using a prepaid disposable phone.”

  “Which vanished, along with the book she took from my store.”

  I pondered that for a moment. “You said no one was home when you canvassed the building, but don’t you think it’s possible someone living at 1919 Pine Tree stole the phone before I arrived? When I got there, the door was wide open.”

  “I already checked them out. That old building is home to a criminal assault parolee and his common-law wife, two methadone addicts, and a registered sex offender—along with the late Mrs. Hudson and Mr. Brink, of course. But, like I said, none were home that morning.”

  “They all had good alibis, I assume.”

  Eddie nodded. “The methadone heads were at the clinic in Millstone, getting their fix. The parolee, his wife, and the sex offender were all at their jobs.”

  “What about Mr. Brink?”

  “When I spoke to the landlord, he told me Brink was gone. Said he drove away in his old jalopy, looking for subjects to paint. He did that every day.”

  “That’s right,” I confirmed. “Mr. Brink paints watercolors. He had some lovely work displayed in my Community Events space during the Summer Art Show. He even sold a few. I’m just surprised he lives at such a seedy address.” When Eddie shrugged, I acknowledged the obvious. “I guess money troubles can come to anyone’s door, can’t they? Even someone with artistic ability, a love of books, and a sharp mind . . .”

  Just then, I remembered that ridiculous “Fatal Building Mishap” headline in the Quindicott Bulletin. “Do you think Mr. Brink was the ‘anonymous source’ quoted in Elmer Crabtree’s article? The person who claimed Emma’s death was due to the balcony breaking?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Believe it or not, Elmer confessed to me who his anonymous source was for that story: Philip Hudson.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “My guess is Hudson’s running a scam, trying to set the stage for an insurance claim or negligence suit. With those newspaper quotes, he probably thinks he can sway a civil court judge to let a lawsuit go forward, even if it has no merit.”

  “A jury would never believe that claim!”

  “Like a lot of these cases, Hudson doesn’t need it to go that far. If he can threaten a suit, the property owner might be frightened enough of court costs and lawyers’ fees to pay off Hudson, some modest settlement that lets him off the hook and makes Hudson and his case go away.”

  “Or Hudson is trying to use gossip to influence the public,” I countered, “
keep people in town from becoming suspicious of Emma’s death. If that’s the case, it points even more strongly to him as a murderer.”

  “Maybe, Pen, but your theory has absolutely no proof. Hudson didn’t appear on the bakery security camera. And lying to me about an alibi—if he did—isn’t something I’ll be authorized to arrest the man for.”

  “At least question him again.”

  “Oh, I plan to, based on what you heard last night, but he may claim the lie was to you. Let’s see if he can produce evidence that he was out of town. If he can, then—”

  When Eddie stopped talking, I realized something had distracted him, something more immediate than Philip Hudson’s duplicity. Eddie’s outraged gaze was peering through the bakery window at his own police car.

  “What the heck do those two think they’re doing?!”

  I was about to ask Eddie who “those two” were when I followed his gaze and saw Amy and my son, Spencer, sitting in the front seat of Eddie’s cruiser, using police equipment, as if they were brand-new rookie recruits.

  CHAPTER 28

  Grand Theft Auto

  To a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.

  —Euripides, Helen, 412 BC

  DEPUTY CHIEF FRANZETTI was through the bakery’s front door in a flash, me on his heels.

  As we crossed the sidewalk to his patrol car, I noticed Spencer nudge Amy. She quickly punched a button on the dashboard and folded her arms, the picture of innocence.

  Meanwhile, Spence grabbed the steering wheel and pretended he was driving—complete with childish car noises—until Franzetti yanked the door open and ordered them both out.

  “What were you two doing?” he demanded.

  “I’ve never been inside a real police car,” Spence answered sheepishly. “I thought it was cool, like my Grand Theft Auto game.”

  “You’re lucky I don’t charge you with attempted grand theft auto!”

  Spencer spotted me behind the deputy chief, and his cheeks turned bright red. Then he lowered his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck in a peculiarly adult manner—once again, much like my late trouble-loving brother.