The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

“I don’t understand. Why don’t you just try?”

I have tried.

“And? What happens?”

Have you ever tried breathing on the bottom of the ocean? It’s like that for me, honey. Water, water everywhere—and I’m no fish. That’s how all-powerful I am. Getting noplace fast, and this joint’s my life raft . . . so to speak.

“Great.”

So, doll, you’re the one who’s gonna tail them.

“Me?!”

You saw it yourself. Shelby Cabot and Kenneth Franken behaved like they had something to hide. And a little eavesdropping will probably tell you what pretty quick. So get going.

“Jack, I don’t know—”

Don’t go limp on me now, baby. They know something. And the state’s suspect list could easily have your name on it, so you better get tough and get going. Your marks are going to be gone in a few.

“Crap!”

I hurried to the top of the stairs, where wooden pegs held the family coats. Instead of my traditional canary- yellow slicker, I reached for Sadie’s slate gray fisherman’s coat with a wide-brimmed hood—outerwear designed to stand up against stiff nor’easters. My choice was not guided by the weather, however. I needed the camouflage.

Down the stairs and out the door, I caught sight of my “marks” ahead of me on Cranberry Street. Kenneth and Shelby were slowly moving through the drenching rain, their silhouettes outlined by a nearby streetlight.

The air was raw. Gusts of chilly wind blew the pelting rain up under my hood, spattering drops against my face and dewing my black-framed glasses.

I walked at a brisk pace, though it took only a few steps to determine that my low-heeled shoes weren’t nearly as weather-resistant as my outerwear. In only a moment my feet became soaking wet. Fortunately, the wind and the rain were loud enough to muffle the sound of my footsteps as I began to catch up to Shelby and Kenneth.

“Is this how you tailed ‘marks’ when you were a detective, Jack?” I asked to dispel my nervousness. But before I even finished the question, I knew he wouldn’t reply.

I wanted to believe he’d lied to me, that he’d played me just to get me out here on a tail, but the gaping feeling of emptiness told me he’d been truthful. A void seemed to open up inside me, and I suddenly felt very alone.

“I wish you were here, Jack Shepard,” I murmured.

By now I was close enough to hear Kenneth’s and Shelby’s voices, though I couldn’t quite make out the words. They were agitated; that much was obvious. At one point, Kenneth reached out and grabbed Shelby’s elbow. He tried to push her forward, but she yanked her arm free. I dared to move a little closer.

“Brennan was a bastard . . .” I heard Kenneth say, his tone bitter. “He stood in the way . . .”

The rest of his words were lost in the downpour. Luckily the pair paused at the corner and faced one another. I moved closer, aware that darkness and rain were my only covers.

“Are you sorry you did it?” Shelby asked.

“Of course not,” said Kenneth. “I’d do it again. If only Tim had been reasonable, or even a little grateful, but ‘thank you’ just wasn’t in that man’s vocabulary.”

“Who cares if he never thanked you,” Shelby said, grabbing his wrists. “It doesn’t matter now. Think of the future. Now you can divorce Deirdre. We can have a life. Together.”

Now, this is interesting, I thought.

“Don’t be stupid, Shelby. The police know I had a motive. Deirdre saw to that. She told that lieutenant everything. Who do you think they’re going to arrest, if it comes to that?”

“Don’t worry, darling—”

Kenneth pulled his hands free of her grasp. “Stop it, Shelby!” Kenneth cried. “What’s done is done. It’s over now. All of it.”

Shelby stared at him in silence for a moment. I waited to hear what would come next, but a mechanical roar drowned out her words. A large truck, its driver most likely lost, thundered around the corner and down Cranberry —and I was standing in the street.

For a moment, I froze like the proverbial trapped deer as the glare of headlights bared down. I blindly leaped, falling into a shadowy stairwell just under the fire escape of Lew’s Plumbing and Heating Contractors, Inc.

I had successfully avoided being flattened by the truck or detected by my marks— unfortunately, I’d also landed face first in a puddle of water. Spitting in disgust, I rose to my knees, crawled up the steps, and peeked above the edge of the stairwell. But the rain-swept sidewalk under the streetlight was now deserted. Kenneth and Shelby were gone.

CHAPTER 15

An Open Book

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves . . . far distant in time . . . speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.

—Gilbert Highet

AFTER I RETURNED to the bookstore, I locked the door behind me, shut down the lights, and went straight to the second-floor bathroom to clean up and dry off.

Several times, I tried addressing Jack to discuss what I’d overheard between Shelby and Kenneth, but he wasn’t there—or wasn’t answering. So I kissed my sleeping Spencer and went to bed.

For a good fifteen minutes, I lay uncomfortably stiff in the dark, wondering vaguely if my ghost had any interest in me—in this particular position. But I assumed he didn’t. Or else he’d chosen to honor my request that he not haunt the second floor—or else he was here and had clammed up for fear of the grief I’d give him.

Such were my thoughts as I tossed and turned. Finally I gave up, reached to click on the bedside gooseneck, and grabbed Shield of Justice off my nightstand.

To my surprise, even though my eyes were burning from fatigue, I couldn’t put the book down. Page after page went by with exhilarating ease.

Brainert had told me he thought the last three books, and especially this one, represented a marked improvement on the older entries in the series, and I had to agree.

Whatever his faults as a human being, Timothy Brennan had, in his waning years, revived his skills as a writer. The story structure of Shield of Justice was more sophisticated than in novels past. The expected hard-boiled patois was there, but the speech patterns that had once felt dated and at times corny were now portrayed with a kind of bravado—a false front erected by the world-weary characters to hide their damaged souls. More like the Shamus Award-winning Dennis Lehane than the retro purple prose of Mickey Spillane. In fact, the overall use of language was more refined—adjectives in particular were restrained. And the characters felt richer, deeper.

As one critic had recently put it, where the first sixteen entries in the Shield series felt canned and stale, like warmed-over leftovers from tales already told, these latest offerings felt fresh, like the first time Brennan ever put ink to paper:

“Close the door, doll,” barked a gruff voice. “You’re ventilating the room . . .”

I rubbed my eyes. It was nearly 2:00 a.m., and I had promised Aunt Sadie I would be up for church.

“One more chapter,” I told myself, even as I yawned and my eyes half-closed. Readers of these books had their favorite parts, and I had just reached mine. The ingenue had entered the story—and the lady was about to enter the lair of Jack Shepard, er, Shield. . . .