The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

author is much more interesting than Quindicott’s parking problem!”

Then Bud turned to Fiona Finch: “What did happen at your inn this afternoon?”

That’s all the encouragement Fiona needed. She stood up, adjusted her bird pin, and launched into her story with gusto.

“The State Police arrived at around one o’clock, along with a Criminal Investigation Unit, and our local police chief Ciders. A Detective-Lieutenant Marsh showed me a warrant to search the premises. And another investigator—from the medical examiner’s office—started grilling me about the Frankens. Where had they gone? When were they coming back? I told him they’d gone to lunch in Newport—because, of course, we don’t have one decent restaurant in this town—”

“Stay on the subject,” said Bud.

“Well, you know how I feel about it—”

“We know!” cried half the room. Fiona’s decades-long reverie of opening up a gourmet restaurant at Finch’s Inn was as ubiquitous a notion as Harriet McClure’s self-portraits—and the wasted Embry lot.

“Just get on with it,” said Brainert.

“Fine,” snipped Fiona. “At that point, the search began. And within half an hour, I saw a woman from the Criminal Investigation Unit carrying a disposable syringe in a clear plastic bag to their police van.”

Hearing that last line, I nearly choked on my Oreo.

Could the syringe found in Mrs. Franken’s possession be a second syringe? I wondered. No, I decided. That would be too much of a coincidence. It had to be the same syringe. For some reason, Josh must have planted it in the Frankens’ room.

Now you’re thinking, said Jack in my head.

“A syringe?” said Brainert.

Fiona nodded. “I got a pretty good look at it, then I heard the detectives talking about dusting the syringe for fingerprints and testing the residue inside, so I knew what they’d found.”

“Poison!” Seymour declared. Fiona nodded and smiled smugly. It was, after all, her theory voiced that very morning that Seymour was now endorsing.

“It’s got to be poison,” he continued. “Maybe it was arsenic—you know, like that church poisoning up there in Maine. The pot of coffee to die for.”

Everyone began to chatter and toss out wild theories and rapid-fire questions. I kept my mouth shut, even though I wanted to scream the truth. For some reason, Josh Bernstein had set up poor Deirdre Brennan-Franken for murder.

But what was my proof?

A ghost saw Josh find the syringe in my store’s bathroom, and he told me all about it. I wasn’t about to fly that explanation past the State Police!

Crack wise all you want, sweetheart, purred Jack in my brain. I’m your ace in the hole.

Bud loudly clapped his hands. “Order!” he barked. “Fiona holds the floor.”

“At that point, Mr. and Mrs. Franken returned from their luncheon,” Fiona continued. “Detective-Lieutenant Marsh immediately placed the couple in the common room and asked them to wait there. Another State Policeman guarded the door. That presented a problem for me, so, of course, I had to go outside and creep around the house to the sun porch, where I could hear the conversation going on inside.”

“Oh, of course,” Seymour blurted, shaking his head.

Too wrapped up in her tale to take Seymour’s bait, Fiona simply tossed him a naked little glare and continued:

“Alone in the common room, the Frankens started arguing again. Mrs. Franken was very angry. I didn’t hear every word, but I remember her specifically mentioning that she’d caught her husband having an affair. She threw it in his face. There was some quiet talk I couldn’t hear, and then she started raising her voice about Anna. . . .”

Fiona looked at me meaningfully. “Deirdre didn’t mention Anna Worth, the cereal heiress, after all. That theory of mine turned out to be a dead end.”

No kidding, I thought, shuddering at my accosting of that poor, pathetic woman.

“No, this time Deirdre Franken mentioned another woman,” said Fiona. “This woman’s first name was Anna, and her last name was . . .”

Fiona paused for dramatic effect.

“Come on, Fiona,” said Sadie. “Drop the other shoe, why don’t ya?”

“Here it is,” said Fiona. “As plain as day I heard Mrs. Franken speak the name of the other woman. I wrote the name down, though it sounds foreign and my spelling might be a little off.”

Fiona drew a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. “The name of the other woman was Anna Filactic.”

“Filactic?” Bud Napp said. “Sounds Polish. I knew a Bob Matastic in the Marines. Nice guy. He was a Ukrainian, though.”

“Filactic you said?” Seymour cried. “Anna Filactic?” He rubbed his forehead. “My God, Fiona, you’ve got to be kidding. Anaphylactic is not a woman. It’s a physical condition. Mrs. Franken was talking about anaphylactic shock!”

Fiona stared blankly.

“Don’t feel bad, sweetie,” said Brainert. “Ms. Filactic may not be ‘the other woman,’ but it is very useful information.”

“Yes,” I said, “very useful. Timothy Brennan must have been allergic to something. Obviously, Deirdre believes anaphylactic shock triggered her father’s fatal attack.”

“What is anaphylactic shock?” asked Sadie.

“It’s a type of allergic reaction,” Seymour explained. “A sensitivity to some food or substance that causes the mucous membranes in the throat to swell and close up, thereby suffocating the victim. The most common cause is an allergy to nuts. Peanuts, especially.”

“Oh, my, yes,” said Sadie. “Peanut allergies in children are very dangerous. I remember reading a tragic story of a child dying after eating a cookie with just a few pieces of peanut in it.”

“They say even kissing someone who just ate a peanut butter sandwich can send someone with the condition into spasms,” said Seymour.

“Holy cow!” Milner cried, turning to his wife. “I served my five-nut tarts that night!”

Linda paled. “Honey,” she said, “there is no way they can pin it on you. You didn’t know!”

“But that’s not a murder at all,” Sadie said. “That’s just a tragic accident.”

These hicks are cracked. Brennan was clipped—planted by someone who knew him well enough to know how to make it look like an accident.

I spoke up. “Calm down, both of you. Mr. Brennan didn’t eat a thing. He refused any and all food. Insisted on water only.”

“And none too nicely,” Brainert noted. “Pen’s right. Brennan only drank bottled water. I watched him the whole time.”

“Yes,” I said. “The only bottle he drank from was the one I picked out and handed him. That doesn’t make me look very good, does it?”

“But the bottle you gave to Brennan was sealed. The plastic unbroken,” said Brainert.

I nodded. “I opened it myself.”

“There are many ways to contaminate a sealed container,” Seymour said. “I remember an old pulp story, published in the thirties, called A Vintage Murder. The narrator injects poison into a series of sealed wine bottles through the corks with a hypodermic needle.”

“Enter the syringe,” said Brainert.

“And remember that maniac in New York City a few years ago,” said Fiona, “he was injecting sealed water bottles with ammonia, right there on the grocery store shelves. It’s entirely possible—”

“Probable,” said Brainert.

“—that such a method was used to contaminate the water.”