The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

for the community events space again, the bottle tucked under one arm and the bat raised high.

“Stay out of my way if you don’t want a bashed-in skull,” I said.

Too late, said the man.

I flipped the main switch. Dozens of bulbs sparked to life in the newly installed track system. The entire space brightened and revealed . . . no one.

I moved toward the exit to the rest room and the back room area, swiping at switches the whole way. When I got to the chilly, bare storage room, I almost dropped the bat.

In the corner were more than a dozen crushed cardboard boxes. Not one was left unravaged.

“Three hundred hardcovers,” I murmured, doing the math in my head. “That’s twenty-seven fifty a copy times three hundred . . . forty-six percent of which we keep. That’s almost four thousand dollars. In one night!”

An average annual income in my time. Good haul, honey.

I wheeled, searching for the man who kept speaking. But there was no one. “Where in hell are you!”

Right here. With you.

I couldn’t take it. I ran from the storage area, bat still in hand.

“I’m calling the police!”

To tell them what? You’re hearing voices?

My steps slowed. I looked around again. He wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t see him. What was I going to tell the cops? An invisible man was talking to me. The Quindicott police would have trouble finding a criminal who walked up to their front door!

(It wasn’t their fault, really. They had little resources and even less experience with anything close to a felony. Mostly they broke up fights at the high school football games and gave out speeding tickets to those high- priced performance cars on their way to Newport or Cape Cod.)

“What’s your name?” I demanded, hoping I could just talk him out of hiding.

Name’s Jack.

“Jack what?”

Jack Shepard.

“That’s not funny.”

I’m not trying to be funny.

“No, you’re trying to scare me, and I don’t appreciate it.”

Well, ain’t that a tragedy. At least you sold your books.

“Yes. True. That’s good news. And you were right about it. But I’m sure it’s just a one-night fluke.”

Maybe. But I’ll tell you what’s not a fluke: Brennan’s death.

“What do you mean?”

He was murdered, honey. Set up. And sent up.

My mouth still felt like an arid wasteland. I pulled the bottle from under my arm, unscrewed the cap, and drank again.

Don’t choke now.

I lowered the bottle. “That’s an awful thing to say.”

Awww, take a break from Miss Priss-land, would ya?

“What?!”

You nice-thinking Janes really burn me up.

“Well, the same to you, whoever you are—”

I told you. Jack Shepard.

“Shut up! I’ve had just about enough. If you’re such a big, tough, hard-boiled dick, then why are you hiding, huh? Where the heck are you? Too afraid to show yourself?” I moved slowly through the store, still seeing no one. I edged back toward the community events space.

There was a long pause. I tightened my grip on the bat. Finally the deep voice spoke again.

Turn off the light.

Oh, shit, I thought.

Deep male laughter filled my head. Thought you didn’t use such language.

“How could you hear that? I didn’t say it.”

Baby, I don’t know how, but I can hear your thoughts. I just can. So? You want to see me? Turn OFF the lights.

This was just someone from the book-signing party, I told myself. Someone playing a game. I moved to the end of the room, where I felt I could dash away quickly if I didn’t like what I saw.

I licked my lips nervously and took a final swig from the bottled water, draining it completely. It tasted good, I realized. There was a subtle flavor I couldn’t place. For some reason it reminded me of one of Milner’s pastries.

Had Sutter Spring started flavoring their water now?

The thought might have bothered me, but I had a more pressing consideration at the moment, so I put the bottle on the floor, positioned the bat in a defensive position, and flipped off the lights.

The dull glow of the recessed security lights were the only illumination. That and the silvery streaks from the street-lights beyond the big front window on this side of the store.

Bat at the ready, I scanned the room. Then I saw it: a shadow on the wall. A fedora on a square-jawed profile. Broad-suited shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist.

Whoever he was, he had obviously read my newspaper ads and come in costume.

The shadow moved, and I took a step back. I saw the figure’s arm come up. One finger pushed at the brim of his fedora, moving it back on his head. Then he folded his arms over his broad chest. It was a confident gesture, masculine and sure.

I’m Jack Shepard, Mrs. McClure. Or to be absolutely precise—you like precision, don’t you? I’m his ghost.

I watched the shadow move off the wall, watched as it became three dimensions and stepped like a dark figure through an invisible archway and into the room. Outside, headlights from a passing car shot shafts of silver through the window, and in the briefest moment of illumination, I glimpsed his visage plain as day: the sunken cheeks, the crooked nose, the iron jaw, and the one-inch scar in the shape of a dagger slashing across the flat, square chin.

Whoever he was, he held the same relentlessly masculine features of the man whose grimacing photo graced every one of Timothy Brennan’s books.

“You can’t be Jack Shepard. You can’t be. He’s dead! ”

Now you’re gettin’ it.

My bat dropped to the floor. And about two seconds later, so did I.

CHAPTER 6

The Morning After

Publicity darling, just publicity. Any kind is better than none at all.

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

“HOWYA FEELING, HONEY?”

First I heard the voice. Then the rattle and snap of a shade going north. The warmth of sunlight streaked across my face, and I lifted my thousand-pound eyelids. The silhouette of a heavy oak bookcase came into focus like the dark center of a blinding eclipse. I read the spines of dust jackets: Rendell, Rhode, Rice, Rinehart . . . Obviously, I was in the R’s.

I turned to see Aunt Sadie’s slight form bustling from the tall picture window to the store’s front door, the streaming sun rays illuminating those “Shirley MacLaine highlights” in her short auburn hair. She was out of her