The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

dress and back in her preferred sort of outfit: gray slacks and a white T-shirt, over which she’d thrown a large unbuttoned, untucked denim shirt.

“How am I feeling?” I repeated. “Like a full floor display got dropped on my head from the top of the Empire State Building. I swear I’ll never touch hard liquor again.”

“Just sit tight, dear, I’ll get you something to drink.” She unlocked the door, then vanished, her four-foot- eleven frame dashing so fast across the polished plank floorboards it made my already spinning head spin even more.

“ ‘Something to drink,’ ” I muttered. “I don’t know . . . seems to me I got into this state with that advice. . . .”

I was still wearing last night’s outfit, less than presentable after a night tossing in a rocking chair: My black skirt was wrinkled, my pale blue sweater set felt grungy against my skin, my slingback heels had been kicked off— where? I had no clue—and my pantyhose displayed more than one run.

Suddenly Sadie was back. “Here,” she said, handing me a steaming mug of coffee along with one of the Cooper Family Bakery’s leftovers from the night before. “I managed to save a few of the carrot-cake muffins with cream cheese icing. They’re your favorite, aren’t they?”

“Okay,” I said, “maybe life’s worth living after all.”

“Wasn’t easy saving them, I can tell ya. That crowd was cooped up here for two hours giving their names and statements to Welsh and Eddie. Seems like a lot of fuss over an unfortunate incident.”

Officers Welsh Tibbet and Eddie Franzetti (of the Franzetti’s Pizza Place Franzettis) were the two Quindicott cops who’d been sent to the bookstore after Brennan’s death. Our town was large enough for a small police force but way too small to support anything more. For investigations, forensics, and the like, the old Q cops relied on the state. I figured taking names and statements was simply routine.

“Where’s Spencer?” I asked.

“Upstairs, still sleeping. It was a late night for everyone.” Sadie unlocked the front door but left the CLOSED sign in place since, mercifully, we weren’t scheduled to open for another hour. Then she turned to me and grinned.

Now, why the heck is she so happy? I wondered. We’d just had our first author appearance—and the author hadn’t survived it. And how the heck did my derriere get back into this rocking chair? I remembered passing out on the floor.

Well, if I woke up in this rocker, I reasoned, I must NOT have passed out on the floor, which pointed to one conclusion:

“I had a funny dream,” I blurted, my mouth half full of muffin.

“You don’t say,” Sadie said. “Ha-ha funny or spooky-weird funny?”

“I talked to the ghost of Jack Shepard.”

Sadie was quiet a long moment. “That’d be the spooky-weird kind then, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re telling me.”

“What did he say to you, Pen?”

“Oh . . . I don’t know. . . .” I ate more muffin, chewed, swallowed, and suddenly regretted saying anything. “It was just an outlandish dream. . . .”

“What did he tell you?” Sadie’s voice wasn’t kidding around. Her pine green eyes had focused in and locked on.

“He didn’t say much,” I hedged. “Just that we sold all of our Jack Shield books, for one thing. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, nobody sells three hundred hardcovers out of a store this small in one night.”

“We did.”

“What?” I nearly dropped the hot mug of coffee into my skirt’s wrinkled lap.

“We sold every last copy.”

“HOW? There weren’t three hundred people in the store last night!”

“No, but there were just over one hundred, and these were serious fans. Most bought multiple copies of Shield of Justice along with every last title in Timothy Brennan’s backlist. There isn’t one Jack Shield book left in the store.”

“They bought multiple copies?”

“Darn right. Some bought four or five, just to have the sales receipt that showed the date it was purchased —the day Brennan died—and to show where it was purchased.”

“Where it was purchased,” I repeated, distracted. For most bookstores, turnover of an initial print order took six to eight weeks, not one night.

“Yes, where it was purchased is now vital to these fans,” said Sadie. “Before he died, Brennan announced he’d traced Shepard’s last movements in ’49 to this very store. Our store!”

“Right. I remember. It still sounds crazy, though.”

“Hey,” Sadie suddenly called from the archway connecting the main store with the events space, “what’s my baseball bat doing on the floor?”

I rose so fast from my cross-hatched Shaker seat, I set my head to rocking more violently than the chair. In stockinged feet I managed to stumble over to the archway without landing on my face, although I did end up shredding the last vestiges of nylon covering my toes.

Sadie pointed to the aluminum bat. It rested on the wood plank floor in the exact spot where I’d been talking to the ghost—before I blacked out, that is. My slingbacks were here, too.

“I think . . . I must have been . . . sleepwalking,” I concluded.

“Part of your ghost dream?” asked Sadie, picking up the bat.

“Yes,” I said, slipping back into my shoes. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

I stuffed the last bit of muffin into my mouth—hoping to swallow my anxieties along with it. Then I drained my coffee mug and headed toward the stairs, intending to check on Spencer, shower, change, and stuff at least one more delicious muffin in (my size fourteen skirt was already tight, but after the night I had, I figured I deserved a little baked-good comfort). That’s when the bell above the front door tinkled and a female voice sharply called out:

“Sadie Thornton!”

Completely ignoring the CLOSED sign, town councilwoman Marjorie Binder-Smith barreled through our front door, wearing one of her numerous pink suits.

“Now, what in hell could she want?” muttered Sadie.

“Have you seen the morning paper?” Marjorie waved a copy of the Saturday morning Quindicott Bulletin in front of our faces and commanded, “Just take a look at this!”

We did. The headline, which stretched the width of the front page in letters at least two inches tall, stated: Noted Author Dies in Local Bookstore Mishap!

“Please tell me, ladies,” said the councilwoman, “why someone choked to death on a doughnut in a business that does not have a license to sell food?”

“Choked to death? On a doughnut?” I repeated. I skimmed the story. The general news was correct, but some of the details were all wrong.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?” demanded the sixtyish councilwoman. Her voice sounded outraged, but her eyes, edged by the cracks that came from applying a copious amount of face powder, held the glee of a driller making an oil strike—a timely issue to exploit was just the thing to raise a politico’s profile.

I was about to answer her charge when Aunt Sadie put herself between us.

“Calm down, Marjorie,” she said. “You don’t want to pop any plastic surgery stitches, do you?”

Ha! Hahahahahaha!

The laughter in my ears was deep and loud. The laugh of Jack Shepard. I looked immediately for a reaction from Sadie or Marjorie, but neither appeared to have heard it.

“You can’t be real,” I silently told the Jack Shepard voice. “I dreamed you up. That’s all you are. A delusion.”

Think again, babe, said the deep voice. I’ve been here since before you were born.

“Be quiet now,” I silently told the voice. “I can’t deal with this delusion on top of everything else!”