The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

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.

CHAPTER 20

The Girl in the Frame-Up

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

IT’S A FRAME job. And pretty as a picture, too, with Deirdre trimmed to fit. But the charges are smoke and the case is a Tower of Pisa—it’s shaky and not on the level.

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.

If you don’t do something, an innocent kid is going to walk that last mile to the electric chair.

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

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with this Coney Island geek pen of a “modern” world you live in. Too many square johns take it on the chin and too few grifters get what’s coming to them.

“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.”

But you can do something.

“What?”

You can solve this yourself and find evidence they will believe.

“How, for heaven’s sake?”

Use your head, for starters. Trace the murder weapon backward. Frankly, I can’t think of a bigger flimflam than putting water in a bottle and charging money for it, but that’s the grift on the table, so where did those bottles of H ₂ O come from, anyway? Who had access to them—before you opened up the joint to the general riffraff, that is?

“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.”

All right. Suspect one: the grocer. We can eliminate him because I doubt your Chinese pal had a motive—

“Mr. Koh is Korean.”

I don’t care if the guy’s Samoan. Who had access after that?

“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?”

Rude works mainly for assault and battery beefs. People die because they’re rude to a guy with a gun or a knife in a gin joint or crap game—not in a bookstore.