Of course, I had no intention of incriminating my friend. So I simply sat quietly in the corner, attempting to melt into the flocked and flowered Victorian wallpaper. (The entire dining room set appeared to be Victorian era. I was no antiques expert, but the heavy, carved, painstakingly polished pieces looked quite expensive to me. Miss Todd was certainly leaving behind a small fortune in this grand house and its contents.)
"You've got to believe me, Ciders," Seymour went on. "I didn't kill anybody. I didn't even know Miss Todd was dead until Deputy Dawg over here snatched me up and tossed me into his Batmobile."
"Deputy Dawg. Real funny, Tarnish." But Bull wasn't laughing. He was glaring. Then he was crossing his overly muscled arms and flexing his bowling-ball biceps, which I suspected contained more brain cells than his actual brain pan.
"Look, we know you did it," Ciders stated.
"Yeah, Tarnish," Bull added after a substantial lag. "So why don't you just 'fess up and make it easy on yourself?"
" 'Fess up?" Seymour repeated. "Interesting interrogation technique, Bull. Where'd you learn it? The Disney Channel?"
The hulking deputy stared daggers at Seymour, obviously straining—and failing—to produce a retort. With an exhale of disgust, Seymour shifted his gaze to Quindicott's chief of police.
"I'd like to lawyer up now."
Ciders blinked, surprised. "Who's your lawyer?"
"I don't have one."
Ciders's jaw worked. "I liked it better when you were threatening to report me to the Postmaster General."
I silently groaned. "Are you listening to this, Jack?"
I'm with you, doll. Don't panic.
"I'm not panicking," I told the ghost. "I'm just frustrated with the chief. His 'interrogation' is going nowhere."
Seymour tried to rise again, but Bull McCoy stepped up and pushed him back into the chair. "Didn't you hear the chief? Sit!"
"Check your gorilla, Ciders," Seymour snapped. "I didn't do anything wrong, so I don't have to take any brutality from Barney Fife on steroids over here."
"He isn't hurting you, Tarnish."
"Says who? In my opinion, being in Bull's presence is cruel and unusual punishment."
"Stop ducking my questions," Ciders said. "We've already determined you were in this house earlier today. You're Miss Todd's mailman, and the mail was delivered, which means you were probably the last person to see Miss Todd alive."
"I was here, but I didn't see Timothea. Not today," Seymour insisted.
Ciders bent down until his broad nose was an inch from Seymour's. "Did the old lady piss you off, Tarnish? Did she complain about lousy mail delivery, maybe?"
Seymour shook his head. "Miss Todd was a nice person. She never complained about anything—"
"Did the struggle begin in the foyer? Why did you drag Miss Todd into the living room? So no one could see you while you strangled her to death?"
Seymour's eyes bulged. "You're crazy, Chief. I didn't do a tiling to Miss Todd. You've got to believe me!"
"Explain the bloodstain on your uniform then," Ciders barked.
"I told you already," Seymour said. "I told you ten times. That's not a bloodstain!"
Ciders folded his arms. "It's clear to me the initial altercation broke out in the foyer."
Not to me.
"What?" I asked Jack. "You don't think the altercation began in the foyer?"
No. I'm not so sure there ever was an altercation in the foyer.
"I don't understand. You saw the mess. The mail was everywhere and that little antique table was knocked over."
But there was no blood in the foyer or on the floor leading to Miss Todd. There was no blood anywhere but on the corpse itself. Meanwhile, look at that open window, doll. See the curtains? See the way they're blowin' around in the wind?
"Yeah, it's blustery today—" I closed my eyes. "Oh, God. The wind."
It's possible there was no struggle. Don't you remember what you did before you went in the house?
"I retied my pony tail." Because the wind was so strong. "Right."
Well, if the door latch didn't click properly, a strong gust could have blown the old lady's doors in, knocked down the mail, and overturned the little table.
"But why wouldn't Miss Todd have latched her doors properly? Unless .. . maybe the killer was leaving in a hurry and didn't close the doors all the way—"
Just then I heard a door close, a car door. I rose up, hoping to catch a glimpse of Eddie and the medical examiner, but it was just two more of Ciders's regulars. With a sigh of disappointment, I sat back down.
"Okay, Tarnish. Let's change the subject," Ciders declared. "Tell us what you were doing last Tuesday night."
Seymour blinked. "Huh? What night?"
"Last Tuesday," Ciders said. "On most weeknights, your ice cream truck's parked down at Quindicott Pond. But for some reason, you weren't there last Tuesday."
"Wow," I whispered to Jack. "Guess I haven't been giving Chief Ciders enough credit for his powers of observation."
Jack laughed; his cool aura fluctuated colder for a moment. I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so quick, doll.
Gaping, Seymour looked impressed, too. "How do you even know that?" he asked the chief.
Ciders shrugged. "My two granddaughters wanted ice cream cones. You weren't there. It ticked me off."
"Let me guess why you were ticked," Seymour said. "You had to drive all the way up to Cold Stone Creamery on the main highway. Well, boo-hoo."
I rolled my eyes. So much for Ciders's powers of observation.
"Where were you, Tarnish?" Ciders barked.
"I took the night off, okay? So what?"
Ciders glanced at Bull. "You tell him."
Seymour smirked. "Tell me what?"
"Funny thing happened that very night. We got a call from Miss Todd. She wanted us to investigate strange noises." Bull put air quotes around the words strange noises.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Seymour said, imitating the air quotes.
"It means the old lady probably heard someone trying to break into her house," Bull replied. "That's what it"— (air quotes again)—"means!"
Ciders rubbed his jowly jawline. "My men did a routine investigation. They didn't come up with anything, but it seems pretty clear that someone was harassing Miss Todd. She reported 'strange noises' again a number of nights after that first report. Since her doors and windows never showed any attempt at forced entry, I figured it was just pranksters— local teenage crap. But seeing what you did to Miss Todd, I'm thinking there was a pattern here."
"What pattern?' Seymour threw up his hands. "And how the heck did you find a way to shoehorn me into it?"
"You're sitting here without a solid alibi for why you weren't working your ice cream truck last Tuesday."
"Oh, for pity's sake. I have an alibi! The brakes on my truck were on the fritz! Cost nearly a grand to get them fixed, too. Call Patrick Scotch at Scotch Brothers Motors if you don't believe me. It was Paddy who did the scalping."
Ciders shook his head. "Miss Todd made a number of noise complaints, all of them at night. I think it might prove interesting to match the dates of those calls against the receipts from your ice cream truck."
"Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you?" Seymour replied. "Prying into my private life like jackbooted fascists!"
In a disturbing coincidence of timing, the clomp-clomp-clomp of heavy boots sounded in the foyer. Eddie Franzetti entered the dining room a moment later, wearing his perfectly pressed blue uniform.
Eddie was more compact than Bull. He had a runner's physique with leaner muscles and a smaller stature, but his expression was light-years sharper. Under his flat-topped cop's hat, he had a thick head of black hair, like all the Franzettis. His complexion always appeared lightly tanned, even in the winter. And when he walked in the room his big, long-lashed, cow-brown eyes (the ones that made all the girls swoon in high school, including the girl he married) surveyed the room in a microsecond. The first th
ing he did was nod to me. I silently waved back.
Ciders appeared to notice Franzetti's arrival and the fact that I was still in the room at the same time. His face darkened when he glanced at me. Then he directed his words to his deputy chief.
"Where the hell have you been?"
Eddie shrugged. "You told me to find the medical examiner. The man was out of cell phone range, so I had to track him down. It didn't take me two guesses to figure out where to find Dr. Rubino."
"At Mullet Point," Ciders said.
Eddie nodded. "He's going for your fishing championship title, for sure."
Ciders waved that comment aside. "So where's the good doctor now?"
"In the living room with the victim. He's already begun his examination," Eddie said.
The chief pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed the sweat off his neck. "Do you have an evidence bag, Franzetti?"
Eddie put his hands on his hips. "Sure, Chief, in my car."
"Get it. Seymour's clothes are on the kitchen table and there's blood all over them. I want you to bag them up for the state forensics team."
Eddie ducked out to his car, came back in, and crossed to the kitchen. He glanced at me again on the way. I nodded again but continued to keep my mouth shut. My mind, however, was still working.
"Jack," I whispered to the ghost, "do you really think Ciders can pin this on Seymour?"
If he can, he will, and he's not about to lose sleep over it, either. In case you haven't noticed, your postal pal ain't so popular with the local law enforcement.
"There's got to be something we can do."
Sure, baby. Put your palms together and pray for a miracle.
Eddie emerged from the kitchen a few seconds later, holding up Seymour's shirt. The red stain was impossible to miss.
"Hey, Chief, we got a problem."
Ciders scowled at Eddie when he saw the uniform. "I thought I told you to bag that up!"
"But, Chief, I don't see why. There's no blood."
Ciders's bushy eyebrows leaped north. "What?"
"There's a big red stain, all right, but it isn't blood—"
"I tried to tell you, Ciders!" Seymour said triumphantly.
Bull pointed a finger. "Shut up, mailman!"
Ciders stepped up to Eddie. "Since when did you become a forensics expert?"
Eddie rolled his eyes. "I don't have to be a forensics expert to recognize my own family's pizza sauce!"
CHAPTER 5
The Postman and His Second Slice
Do you realize what you've done? ... You, with your sloppy mass of misinformation, your atrocious taste, and your idiotic guesswork?!
—"It's So Peaceful in the Country," William Brandon, Black Mask magazine, November 1943
CHIEF CIDERS SNATCHED the shirt from Eddie's hand and put the cloth to his nose. With a grunt he turned to glare at Bull McCoy.
"I thought you said these clothes were covered in blood!"
"It... It looked like blood to me—" Bull said.
"It reeks of garlic and oregano, you knucklehead!"
"Sheesh, Uncle Wade! You didn't expect me to actually sniff it, did you?"
Seymour stepped forward. "Can I have my clothes back now?"
"No," the chief said. "They're still going to the state's forensics people. If there's any blood, fibers, or anything whatsoever incriminating on here, they'll pick it up, and I'll want to know about it."
Ciders shoved the shirt back at Eddie, who shrugged and stuffed it into a plastic evidence bag.
"Damn pizza stains," Seymour muttered, folding his arms. "That uniform's ruined anyway."
"Wash them in white vinegar and cold water," Eddie suggested. "Works every time."
Ciders shot his second-in-command a nasty look. "You a law enforcement officer or a spaghetti bender?"
"Family traditions die hard. Here, Seymour, I had these in my trunk." Eddie tossed the mailman a pair of navy running shorts and an extra-large white T-shirt with HOT PIZZA! emblazoned on the front and WE DELIVER! on the back along with the phone number of his family's restaurant.
Seymour stuffed his chicken legs into the running shorts. They looked pretty tight over his boxers, even with the elastic band, but he didn't have much choice in attire at the moment. He pulled the T-shirt on next. Then he pointed to Ciders.
"Listen up, Chief. I don't have a lawyer yet, but I'm going to hire one. A civil rights attorney who's gonna sue you and this whole stinking town for false arrest!"
Seymour started for the door. Ciders blocked his exit.
"Where do you think you're going, Tarnish?"
"Leaving!"
"You're not going anywhere," the chief said. "You're not out of hot water yet." "Oh, yes, I am."
Seymour stepped to the right. So did the chief. He stepped to his left. The chief followed. I knew this dance wasn't going to go on much longer. For one thing, Bull's fingers were moving toward his nightstick.
"Crap," I muttered, feeling guilty for getting Seymour into this mess. Then I launched myself between the two angry men.
"Stop it right now!" I cried.
Baby, are you nuts?!
"You're both acting like children!" I added, ignoring the ghost.
I pushed at Ciders, but it was my flat leather sandals that went skidding across the polished hardwood. Then Seymour charged and I was shoved in the opposite direction. Before I knew it, I was pressed against Chief Ciders's chest, his cold badge digging into my cheek. Somewhere in my head, I heard the ghost cursing.
What do you think you're doing, sister?! Get the hell outta there!
"That's enough, guys! Break it up!" I yelled.
The men finally broke their clinch so suddenly I nearly dropped to the hardwood. Ciders reached out to steady me. Meanwhile, to my surprise, Seymour turned his rage on me.
"Don't think I'm going to forgive you, either, Pen! You're the rat fink who fingered me! Bull told me. Making up a crazy story about how I was covered in blood. You should be ashamed of yourself!"
Aw, blow it out your mailbag, you stupid—
"How could I know what you were covered in, Seymour! You didn't even stop after I almost ran you down. You just took off! Why did you run away?"
Seymour blinked at my question. "It... It was that darn pizza," he said, the bluster going out of him. "I brought four slices up to the mansion today. Two for me, two for Miss Todd."
"You brought lunch for her?" I locked eyes with Seymour. "Just how well did you know Miss Todd?"
He shrugged. "Pretty well now. I've been delivering her mail for a decade. At first I never saw her. Then one day, a few years back, I delivered something she had to sign for. Miss Todd answered the door with a book in her hand, and we got to talking about it."
"What book?" Ciders demanded.
Seymour swallowed hard. "The Boston Strangler”
Ciders narrowed his eyes on Seymour. "Didn't the Boston Strangler break into homes and kill old women?'
"Yeah," Bull said. "The Boston Strangler killed a whole bunch of women, Chief. Tony Curtis didn't even know he was the strangler until Henry Fonda hypnotized him. I saw it in the movie. He was like some kind of split personality." Bull lowered his voice and sidled up to his uncle. "Maybe
Tarnish here's got a split personality, too. Did you think of that? Maybe that's why he can't remember killing the old lady!"
Oh, brother, Jack said.
"Oh, jeez," Eddie muttered.
Ciders rolled his eyes. "That's enough, Bull."
I stepped closer to Seymour. "Tell us more."
That's it, baby. Get some useful information out of him. 'Cause Chief Cornpone here sure can't.
"Tell you more about what?" Seymour said. "I don't understand."
"You were saying that Miss Todd talked about books with you," I said. "How often did you two chat?"
He shrugged. "Two or three times a week. Sometimes we'd have lunch together. We traded books, too. She was a very nice person." Seymour shook his head. "I'm really sorry t
o see her gone. I'm going to miss her."
"But what happened today?" I pressed.
Seymour signed. "When Miss Todd didn't answer the door, I let myself in and put the mail on the table in the foyer and left. I figured she was sleeping late or something. She did that sometimes when she stayed up late to see an old movie on cable."
"You said you let yourself in?" I pressed. "So she left the door unlocked?"
Seymour nodded. "She has a mailbox by the front gate, but she doesn't like to walk down the drive. So as a favor, I always take the mail to her door. She's usually there to answer, but she told me that if she ever doesn't answer, I was supposed to just set the mail on the foyer table for her. Frankly, I never bought the reason she gave me for not answering the door."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean she told me that she couldn't always hear the doorbell and that's why I was supposed to leave the mail without seeing her, but..." Seymour shrugged. "I just think that some days Miss Todd wanted company and some days she didn't. On the days she didn't, she'd just leave the door open and ignore the bell. No big deal."
The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion Page 5