The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller

by Cleo Coyle

  “Maybe it’s no more than a crazy crush on her boss,” Jack said. “Harry was right about one thing. She’s practically a child.”

  “That’s the impression she likes to make, but that look of jealousy wasn’t from a babe in the woods. More like a she-wolf. Hard, tough, a real fighter—and I found out how she got that way.”

  Jack gave me a sidelong glance. “You found out?”

  With puffed-up pride, I handed Jack the card I’d pinched from her purse.

  “Yowzah!” he cried. Jack pushed back his fedora and shook his head. “Yeah, this is real dynamite, baby. It changes everything—”

  We both heard a squeal of tires as a big brown DeSoto hopped the curb. This wasn’t the cab Jack whistled for. It was a weaponized ton of steel and gasoline.

  For a split-second, I caught sight of the driver. His cap was pulled low, his collar up, but I recognized the gritting grin of his golden teeth. They belonged to the street brawler Jack had bested.

  Behind the wheel of hurtling metal, the Tiffany shark laughed as he steered right for us.

  CHAPTER 43

  Paint the Town Red

  I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

  —Ray Bradbury

  FINGERS CLAWING THE bedsheets, I opened my eyes in a breathless state, still believing I was on a Manhattan sidewalk, facing a tank-sized DeSoto with a homicidal shark of a driver bent on flattening me.

  Then my alarm rang in my ear, and I nearly screamed. Heart pounding, I slapped the ringer off and sank back against the pillows.

  “Jack?!” I called in anger. “You never pulled a trick like that before! Why did you do it?”

  Silence was the only reply.

  The ghost was gone. For how long? I couldn’t know. After that dream, his energies were probably sapped. Well, mine were, too. Maybe some quiet time would do me good.

  KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

  This time I did scream. The sharp rapping on my door completed my scares for the morning.

  “Mrs. McClure?” called a little girl’s voice. “Are you all right? It’s Amy! Amy Ridgeway!”

  “Yes?!” I called. “Come in, Amy!”

  Her curly-haired head popped through the door. “Ms. Thornton sent me to get you. Your oatmeal is ready. It’s almost time to open the store! I can’t wait!”

  The girl was gone as fast as she came. Her bubbly enthusiasm almost gave me the energy to feel good about rising. Shining? Not so much.

  * * *

  * * *

  BY NOON, AMY had learned all about restocking, and I was taking stock in the dream Jack gave me.

  For hours, I asked myself why he’d left me in that terrified state. And then, working with Kevin Ridgeway’s young daughter, it struck me. Jack wanted me to know what it felt like, standing helpless in front of a hurtling piece of machinery, facing down your demise from a driver set on vehicular homicide.

  My gumshoe ghost was trying to make me focus on the death of Professor Ridgeway.

  Okay, Jack. I’ll do what I can.

  First, I called Chief Ciders to let him know Kevin’s daughter was staying with us for the week—in case he wanted to speak with her. Using that pretext, I asked about his investigation of the hit-and-run.

  Ciders was in a good mood for once, and willing to talk, but there wasn’t much to tell. They’d made no progress on finding the vehicle that struck and killed Amy’s father.

  When I suggested that it might have been intentional, even premeditated, he gave me the same reply his deputy chief presented to Amy. In the opinion of the police, it was a terrible accident, nothing more.

  They would try their best to keep looking for the vehicle that committed the “manslaughter,” but so far, none of the local garages or auto-body shops had turned up any probable suspects. Ciders was out of leads and short on manpower. The trail had gone cold, and the case would likely close that way.

  Next, I tried to contact Brainert—three texts and two voice mails, all of which he ignored.

  Eddie Franzetti was at the courthouse for hours, testifying on two cases of drunk driving. So I spent the afternoon waiting on bookshop customers, and (in between) calling animal shelters in the area, looking for Emma’s missing Yorkshire terrier. (Jack’s first dream, of that missing Manhattan dog, still resonated, too.) If a shelter could remember who brought the dog in, we’d have a lead. But none had a Yorkie in their care. No luck there.

  When Eddie finally called back, I asked for a progress report on Emma Hudson’s mystery friend, the one Mr. Brink mentioned.

  “Sorry, Pen, nothing to tell. I talked to her building’s landlord again, and he didn’t know a thing about the woman. Neither did the meth heads or any other neighbors. Except for Mr. Brink, no one else knew about her.”

  When Spencer got home from school, I put him to work in the store beside Amy, which made them both deliriously happy. After supper and homework, I thought they’d earned some fun, and allowed them to play Avenging Angel until bedtime.

  When my own bedtime came, Jack was still missing, but I didn’t mind. After that nightmare, I was looking forward to sleeping like the dead.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, I finally heard from my ghost.

  Amy was spending time with Sadie, learning how we processed online orders; Bonnie was taking care of customers; and I took charge of the Community Events space, making sure it was ready for our sold-out signing with the Bentley Prize winner taking place this very evening.

  I had just finished stocking our displays with copies of Dr. Leeds’s acclaimed work, Fiction Enslaved: Literature and Colonialism, when a familiar cold breeze washed over me.

  We should be making tracks, doll, not stacking books.

  “Oh, so now you’re back and giving orders? You know you’ve been gone for twenty-four hours—and after giving me that terrible nightmare, too!”

  But I steered you in the right direction with that careening car, pardon the pun.

  “If you mean you got me to thinking about Kevin Ridgeway’s accident as not being so accidental, you’re right.”

  So, what did you do about it?

  I gave Jack the rundown (pun intended) of the previous day’s activities, including calling shelters about Emma’s missing Yorkie.

  My gumshoe ghost was not impressed.

  You’re barking up the wrong tree. If you’re looking for answers, you’ve got to cage your cagey friend, and give him the third degree!

  “I’ve been trying! But Brainert’s been ghosting me—”

  He’s dead, too?

  “No, Jack—don’t even joke about that! It would kill me if anything happened to him. ‘Ghosting’ just means he’s been ignoring my texts and voice mails.”

  The way I ghost you, sweetheart, is a lot more fun.

  “I’ve noticed. As far as Brainert is concerned, I’m done putting up with his pouting. Tonight, after Dr. Leeds’s lecture, I plan to camp out on his doorstep. He’ll have to talk to me.”

  Why wait? Call your pal and invite him to listen to his colleague gas on, gratis.

  “He won’t come. You saw how Brainert reacted when he saw our promotional materials for Leeds. My friend has a bad case of professional jealousy. And, I’m sorry to say, after the awful way he left the Quibblers meeting, he’s been avoiding the bookshop completely—”

  Just then, Bonnie Franzetti crashed through the front door, her short black curls bouncing around her head. Like her tall, darkly handsome older brother, she had long-lashed brown eyes, and they were as wide as I’d ever seen them. She was panting, she could barely speak, and her olive skin was flushed.

  “Bonnie! What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Pen! It’s your friend, Professor Parker. Just now, he was hit by a truck speeding down Cranberry Street! There’s blood everywhere!”

  I rac
ed by Bonnie and out the door.

  Morning rush was over, and the streets were quiet. But at the crosswalk just past Koh’s market, a knot of fifteen or twenty people gathered in a tight circle. More emerged from the surrounding businesses and rushed to the scene.

  There was no truck in sight, no cars on Cranberry—nothing that wasn’t parked, anyway. But there were splashes of crimson. Lots of them. An almost impossible amount of red stained the pavement, the sidewalk, and even a storefront or two.

  “It was a hit-and-run!” Bonnie’s heart-shaped face was twisted with anguish as she caught up to me. “The van just kept going, until it accelerated around the corner.”

  I was accelerating, too. Though I dreaded the horror I was about to encounter, I had to know the fate of my lifelong friend.

  “Oh God,” I prayed. “Oh God, please, no . . .”

  As I approached, I could hear people tittering nervously—not everybody, mind you, but more than a few. Then someone actually laughed out loud!

  Suddenly, I heard Jack in my head. He was appalled by the laughter.

  Mother Machree! I thought the boys at Murder, Inc., were soulless. But these rural rubes chuckling over a fresh stiff really burns my bacon!

  I pushed through the giggling gaggle to find a moaning Brainert flat on his back. Like some deranged Red Sox fan on game day, he was stained from head to toe in crimson.

  As he began to stagger to his feet like a zombie in a horror movie, I realized my friend had not been resurrected from the dead. He was simply covered in red paint! A battered can lay in the roadway, while a dazed Brainert still clutched its metal handle.

  Because of the toxic mess, people were reluctant to get too close. I didn’t care! I rushed right up to him.

  “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  Staring straight ahead, Brainert blinked and shook his head. Then his near-vacant eyes met mine. “Oh, hi, Pen. I’ll have to purchase another gallon of Sherwin-Williams Heartthrob. The lobby needs a new coat. There’s such wear and tear . . .”

  He spoke in a shell-shocked monotone that made me fear he had actually been zombie-ized. Then his head lolled back as he fainted dead away.

  Fortunately, Bonnie helped me keep him upright, though we both became sticky with red goo in the process.

  “Hey, lady! That guy spilled paint all over my car!”

  Nearby, Fred Kelly clutched his bald head. “Look at my Laundromat. The windows are ruined!”

  Move it, doll. You better get Professor Paint-Can out of here before this hayseed mob grows ugly.

  “I’ll call Bud Napp for an emergency turpentine delivery,” I told Bonnie.

  Then we walked my semiconscious friend back to my bookshop.

  CHAPTER 44

  Eyewitness

  Girls can see all kinds of things that boys miss.

  —Sally Snoops and Her Curious Kitty: The Car Crash Caper

  IT SEEMED LIKE a Stooges gag more than a life-threatening event, but when Officer Eddie Franzetti learned that Brainert had been doused with a gallon of paint, he called Poison Control, and then Dr. Rubino.

  The situation was so dire that Quindicott’s resident physician actually made a house call. After Brainert cleaned up in Buy the Book’s utility closet, he absolutely refused treatment at an emergency room. So Deputy Chief Franzetti drove him back to his home, where Dr. Rubino ambushed Brainert at the door.

  The professor reluctantly submitted to the doctor’s care, along with a question-and-answer session with the deputy chief.

  Meanwhile, Bonnie and I took our turn in the utility room.

  After a lot of scrubbing and too many rolls of paper towels, I was running a brush through my auburn hair when Sadie appeared, offering fresh clothes with one hand, while clutching her nose with the other.

  “This place reeks like a turpentine factory and looks like an abattoir!”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I moaned. “My eyes are watering too much to see anything but a blur, and my sense of smell is pretty much shot.”

  “Mine, too,” Bonnie said. “But that might be a good thing.”

  Sadie went around opening all the windows. Soon there was a steady flow of refreshing autumn air—and a whole lot of street noise.

  “What’s going on outside?”

  “Mr. Koh and Fred Kelly are stripping paint off their businesses, and Bud Napp is power washing the street and sidewalk at the request of Chief Ciders.”

  “Do you know what the police think?”

  “You can ask Eddie yourself. He’s finished with Brainert. Now he’s on his way back here to speak with both of you.”

  Bonnie simply shrugged. And why not? How intimidated could a girl be when the cop about to grill her was her own big brother?

  Five minutes later, we found a frowning Eddie beside my newly stocked Dr. Leeds display, hands rested on his gun belt.

  “Sadie told me what happened.” He shook his head at his little sister. “You scared poor Pen half to death when you ran in here screaming about blood and making Pen think that Professor Parker had been killed.”

  “That’s what it looked like to me!” Bonnie returned, eyes still watering from the turpentine. “I saw a panel van run the red light at the end of the block just as Dr. Parker stepped into the street. I heard a smack and saw a huge splash of red. What was I supposed to think?”

  “You didn’t think. If you’d waited another second, you might have seen that Professor Parker was just shaken up.”

  Bonnie threw up her hands. “But it looked like a hit-and-run!”

  “Yeah . . .” Eddie glanced away and out our front window. “A hit-and-run by a dark-colored van. That’s a nice generic description I’m hearing from everybody who witnessed the incident. But no one managed to get the make, model, or license number.”

  “There were no plates,” Bonnie said. “And the van was black. As for the model, I’m pretty sure it was a Ford Transit. Maybe a 2012.”

  Eddie’s gaze whipped back to his sister so fast I thought he would need a neck brace.

  “Don’t be so surprised, Officer.” She glanced my way. “Since my older brother’s a cop, I know enough to memorize things like license numbers and any other pertinent details.”

  Eddie scratched under his cap. “But how did you know it was a Ford Transit?”

  “I’ve been dating Ben Stuckley, Junior, for almost a year, remember? He works part-time at his dad’s used-car dealership, and I’ve chilled with him enough to pick things up.”

  Cri-man-ee, Jack cried. She’s a Wanda Clark in training. These salesmen must talk cars more than bookies talk horses.

  “Did you see the driver, sis?”

  “Sorry, bro. I can’t help you there. The windows were tinted.”

  “Probably a teenager,” Eddie said. “First-time drivers have been trouble around here since the school year started.”

  Aunt Sadie stepped forward. “What about those traffic cameras? You must have gotten a good picture of Brainert’s hit-and-run driver with them.”

  Eddie frowned. “Those cameras won’t be fully installed until the end of next month. But don’t worry. That truck has got a new bright red paint job. It shouldn’t be hard to identify. We’ve already put out a BOLO.”

  Sadie hummed skeptically. “You know what I don’t understand? Traffic cameras are something that would make this town safer. Yet that project gets put on a back burner, while we business owners have all been saddled with a touchy alarm system and petty violations. Can you explain that to me, Eddie?”

  The poor guy actually hung his head—and it wasn’t his fault.

  “Let’s not get off topic,” I quickly said, and not just to save Eddie from embarrassment. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin Ridgeway’s hit-and-run. “It sounds to me like someone deliberately tried to run Brainert down. Will you be investigating this
incident as an attempted murder?”

  “I told you what I’m looking for, Pen. A teenager behind the wheel of his daddy’s van.”

  “With no license plates? Who drives around without plates?”

  Eddie’s frown deepened. My stressed-out accusation finally broke his patience.

  “You know what, Pen? We’re the police in this town, law enforcement professionals. We know what we’re doing, whether or not you think we do!”

  This from the cornpone cops who are too busy writing littering tickets to catch a killer. Don’t buy into it, honey.

  I took a breath to calm down. I hoped Eddie would, too.

  This man is my friend, I assured Jack, and I do trust him, even if he does sound like he’s starting to drink the Chief Ciders Kool-Aid.

  What’s a fruity kid’s drink have to do with police work?

  No, Jack, I didn’t mean he’s actually drinking Kool-Aid! It’s a modern term. It means, I don’t know, swallowing the chief’s malarkey.

  That I get!

  As I spoke my thoughts to Jack, my expression must have morphed into a mask of pure frustration, because Eddie took one look at my face and shook his head.

  “All right, Pen, I give up. If you don’t believe me, then ask Professor Parker if he thinks someone tried to kill him.”

  “You know what, Eddie? That’s a brilliant idea. And don’t worry. I’ll be asking Brainert plenty more questions, too.”

  CHAPTER 45

  The Impatient Patient

  The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

  —Voltaire

  “HYDROCARBONS ARE HIGHLY toxic,” Dr. Rubino said in a whisper, so as not to wake my friend in the next room.

  I was standing in Brainert’s sunny yellow kitchen, listening to Quindicott’s favorite bachelor physician explain his prognosis. While the doctor spoke, I peeked around the corner.

  Brainert was stretched out on the living room couch, eyes closed, wrapped in the handmade quilt Sadie and I bought for him at last year’s church Christmas market. He wasn’t wearing much else, and his scrawny, naked chest looked pallid and too bony. But at least he was breathing.