The Ghost and Mrs. McClure (23 page)

It worked, too. Those novels sold like gangbusters—each a hard/soft best-seller. New titles probably would have continued to sell—as long as they were ghostwritten by Franken. If only Brennan hadn’t announced that
Shield of Justice
was “his” final novel and that he was turning to nonfiction.

“Follow the money and you find the motive,” said Seymour. “I still think it was Deirdre. She stood to inherit her father’s estate.”

“Maybe not,” said Brainert. “There’s Bunny, Timothy’s third wife. I’m sure she’ll contest any will that doesn’t give her full control of the estate.”

“That makes
her
a suspect, too,” said Milner.

“Except she was nowhere near her husband or the bottled water,” said Fiona. “Remember, a murderer needs access as well as motive. Bunny was back in New York.”

“She could have hired someone,” said Seymour. “A hit man from Planter’s Peanuts, maybe.”

“Not funny,” said Sadie.

“We’re forgetting something,” said Fiona. “What about Kenneth Franken? With Brennan out of the way, Franken could resume his ghostwriting career.”

“Ghostwrite for a dead author?” said Milner. “That’s crazy!”

“Not so,” Sadie replied. “V. C. Andrews has been dead for a decade, but
somebody
is writing new V. C. Andrews novels, because one is published every couple of years.”

“Maybe they’re written by Anna Filactic,” quipped Seymour.

I was pretty sure Fiona was headed down the wrong path again. If Kenneth Franken used the syringe to tamper with the bottled water, I could see why he had to get rid of the syringe. But why would he hide it in the women’s room? Jack had already pointed out to me that someone would easily notice a man going into the ladies’ room in a crowded bookstore.

Then I remembered the way Kenneth Franken stormed off in search of his wife’s makeup case yesterday afternoon—a makeup case Deirdre claimed was lost in the women’s room! Could it be that Kenneth and Josh were working together, to kill Brennan and frame Deirdre?

I dismissed that idea immediately. If Kenneth hid the syringe in the women’s room on the night of the murder, he could certainly have retrieved it when he and his wife returned the next day. And if he was the one who’d sent Josh Bernstein to retrieve it, then he could have told the young assistant where he’d hidden it and not forced Josh to search for it. And that’s exactly what Josh had to do—he’d had to
search
to find it.

No. In my mind, Kenneth Franken was no more involved with the murder of his father-in-law than his wife was. Beyond that, I couldn’t prove a thing because right now, Josh Bernstein was the only key to unlocking the mystery.

“Maybe the Staties have it right,” insisted Seymour. “The money trail leads right to Deirdre.”

“Or Kenneth Franken,” Brainert countered. “With Brennan out of the way,
he
could have taken over the Shield series the same way Kingsley Amis took over the James Bond franchise after Ian Fleming passed away.”

“Eeesh! I couldn’t finish
Colonel Sun,
” said Milner with a groan.

“Oh, yeah. As if every one of those Fleming novels was a masterpiece!” Seymour shot back.

“Boys! Let’s not turn this into a reading group!” Sadie cried.

“Brainert did that already,” said Bud, chuckling.

“Only to prove Penelope’s point about Kenneth,” Brainert shot back. “Look, Kenneth had a good motive for murder. Not only the franchise, but also the other woman. Didn’t Penelope say he’d been carrying on with that woman from the publishing house? Shelby? Well then, Franken had a motive to frame his wife for the crime as well.”

The room was silent for a moment as everyone considered Brainert’s point. Fiona spoke first.

“So you’re saying that Kenneth Franken might have killed his father-in-law, framed his wife for the murder, and is now poised to take over the literary estate and live happily ever after with his mistress? Why, that’s so devious. So cruel. So monstrous . . .”

Then Fiona nodded with enthusiasm. “I like the way you think, Brainert.”

Except for one thing, I thought to myself. A
woman
had to be involved in the murder in some way—because the syringe was hidden in the
women’s
room on the night of the crime. “Right, Jack?” I asked silently.

“That lets Deirdre off the hook, of course,” I quietly added, “because she wouldn’t frame herself—and the syringe turning up in her room was too pat, anyway.”

On the money again, babe,
said Jack.
It’s a big, fat frame job with Deirdre posing pretty in the picture. But she doesn’t fit, and she didn’t do it.

At that point, the Quibblers’ meeting degenerated into several private conversations and even a loud argument. Linda and Milner drifted over to me, Milner glancing at his watch.

“We’re heading home,” he said. “We’ve decided to open up tomorrow, after all, which means four in the morning is our rise-and-shine time.”

“What happened to your day off?” Sadie asked. “You never open on a Monday.”

“We do now,” said Milner. “If tomorrow proves half as busy as today and yesterday, we’ll make a killing.”

I rose and unlocked the front door for them, my polite good-night smile fading. Why did Milner have to use that particular turn of phrase? I thought. But what happened next made the words almost prophetic.

Linda was apologizing—again—for Milner’s Oreos when we all saw the scarlet lights flickering down Cranberry Street.

“I think there’s been an accident,” Milner declared.

That much was obvious. I glanced down the street to see one of Quindicott’s three police cars. A long black limousine was parked at an angle. No, not a limo, I realized with a shiver. It was the van from Arthur J. Tillinghast Funeral Home on Crawford Street.

Just then I heard the siren. An ambulance from Rhode Island General—fourteen miles away—squealed to a halt near the police car.

I hurried outside. The night was chilly, the wind biting. Paramedics had jumped out of the ambulance and hurried to a spot where a small crowd had gathered. Whatever they were looking at was obscured by Seymour’s ice cream truck.

I stepped off the curb, and Eddie Franzetti suddenly grabbed me.

“No, Pen, you don’t want to see this.”

Milner and Linda stepped past me and out into the street. Linda squealed and covered her eyes. Milner turned pale and led her back to the sidewalk. More people moved out of the shadows, and Eddie rushed to move them back.

Despite Eddie’s warning, I moved onto the street. The paramedics were down on their knees over a crumpled form lying in a puddle. No, not a puddle. Blood. It was blood.

The side of Seymour’s truck—which held placards touting Orange Push-ups, Chocolate-Covered Luv Bars, and frozen yogurt—was splattered with it. And the window Seymour sold ice cream out of was shattered. The side of the truck was dented from an object’s impact—I shuddered to think of what that object was.

I heard voices. Snatches of conversation.

“He just flew in the air . . .”

“Don’t know who he is . . .”

“One of them strangers . . .”

“It was Zeb Talbot. . . . I recognized his truck. . . . Zeb didn’t even stop. Musta been soused again. . . .”

Officer Franzetti appeared at my side. “Go inside, Pen,” he said. “There’s nothing you want to see here.”

“What happened?”

Eddie cocked his hat. “About half an hour ago, Zebulon Talbot reported his truck stolen from out front of the Quicki-Mart. He’d left the keys in the ignition and the motor running when he went in for a pack of smokes.”

Eddie shook his head. “Teenagers, probably . . . it’s happened before, though they don’t usually pull this kind of stunt until the
end
of football season. Those high schoolers do stupid things to impress one another—and sooner or later someone always gets hurt.”

Eddie’s eyes met mine. Years ago, a stupid drag-racing stunt had cost Eddie a best friend and me a brother.

“Who is it?” I asked.

Eddie shrugged. “Nobody I know.”

The radio in Eddie’s police car crackled. So did the one on his shoulder. He flicked a button and listened to his headphones.

“They found Zeb’s pickup in the Embry lot,” Eddie told me. “Nobody’s there, though. . . .” He made a sour face. “Chief Ciders is on his way.”

“What the hell happened to my truck!” Seymour cried, hands on his head. “I just had it repainted!”

Seymour raced out into the street. Eddie and I ran to intercept him. At that moment, the paramedics lifted the stretcher and moved toward their ambulance. They weren’t in a hurry, and with the ghastly amount of blood on the side of Seymour’s truck I could understand why.

“Wait!” I cried. “I have to know!”

Eddie nodded. He reached down and gingerly pulled the white sheet away from the victim’s face.

Even in the flickering scarlet light and the blood-flecked cheek, I could make out the young man’s features. The corpse on the stretcher was Josh Bernstein.

Pinning a frame on an innocent dupe is the cheapest, low-down dirtiest swindle of them all. Only a third-rate miscreant would do it, the kind of bum who’s lookin’ to earn two slugs through the girdle.

—Jack Shield in
Shield of Vengeance
by Timothy Brennan, 1958

 

 

 

The Quibblers’ meeting was over, the mess from the “accident” outside mopped up. Spencer had arrived home from his cousin’s Newport birthday bash via the McClures’ chauffeur—mercifully
after
evidence of the tragedy was gone. He was so tired, I put him straight to bed. Sadie had retired, too. Now I was alone in the store, listening to interior dialogue courtesy of Jack Shepard’s ghost. He would not stop badgering me on the subject of Deirdre Franken.

“The electric chair? You’re living in the past. Almost nobody goes to the chair these days.”

“Listen, Jack, I’m not comfortable with
anything
that’s happening. I know Deirdre Franken is innocent. But what do you propose I do? Go to the State Police and tell them the ghost haunting my bookstore insists that Deirdre has been framed and the evidence planted? They’ll either think I’m crazy or they’ll think I’m guilty. And I’m not ready to make my son a de facto orphan, either way.”

“What?”

“How, for heaven’s sake?”

“The bottled water came from Koh’s Grocery. Mr. Koh’s son delivered two cases on the morning of the event. The cases were shrink-wrapped and well sealed. I had to use a knife to cut through the thick plastic. One of the last things I did to prepare for the event was pull the bottles out and arrange them on the goodies table.”

“Mr. Koh is
Korean
.”

“You’re not going to like the answer,” I replied. “Deirdre had access. Deirdre and her husband, Kenneth. They were moving the tables around because Brennan didn’t like the setup for the cameras . . .”

I slapped the table. “Hey! What about the two cameramen?! Brennan was very rude, pushing them around. And they sold the footage after the murder angle broke. Those are good motives, aren’t they?”

“But they benefited financially from the crime.”

So let me get this straight. You figure one of those spool-junkies spiked Brennan’s fancy tap with peanut oil, on the off chance that he’s allergic, that he’ll get hinkey in front of the cameras, do the
danse macabre,
then croak deader than vaudeville?

“Okay, maybe that’s not the best scenario,” I told him with a sigh.

“Brennan didn’t like the setup, so he bullied Deirdre and Kenneth to move the tables around. Some of the water bottles tumbled to the floor, and Deirdre picked a few up. So did Kenneth.”

“Shelby Cabot? I had to leave the events room, so I didn’t see what happened next, but I doubt she lifted a finger. She’s not the type.”

“That’s right. Doesn’t make much sense. I mean, her affair with Kenneth Franken was obvious from the conversation I’d overhead, but I never did stop to figure out why she’d come by in the first place—”