The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

I tried not to wince as I lifted the chair and set it upright. I turned to see what else needed to be righted when I noticed Deirdre glaring daggers at her father’s back. Her husband, Kenneth, looked ready to strangle him.

I braced for the blowup. But none came. Deirdre’s and Kenneth’s features simply contorted, then relaxed again, as if enduring such assaults was a regular occurrence, as if giving in had become a habit.

As I already mentioned, I’d gone through the same thing back in New York—not just in my job but also in my marriage. Some battles you’d already fought and lost so many times that it suddenly seemed a waste of energy to even try fighting anymore.

Someone took my arm. I saw it was Shelby. She patted it and pulled me away, steering me toward the main bookstore as she quietly said, “Don’t you worry now. Let me handle it. I’m a publishing professional.”

“I’ve got it, Shelby!” A fresh-faced young man in khaki pants and a blue blazer rushed up to us brandishing a small paper bag.

“Good, Josh. Heel, boy,” said Shelby. Josh narrowed his eyes at the polished publicity manager but said nothing.

Snatching the bag, Shelby reached inside and brought out a bottle filled with green liquid. “Thank God you got the right brand.”

“What is that?” I asked, curious.

“Throat spray,” said Shelby.

“Brennan won’t speak without it,” said Josh.

“That’s fine, Josh,” said Shelby through gritted teeth. “Now be a good boy and help us get this room fixed the way it should be.”

“What way is that, pray tell?” asked Josh, batting his eyes and smirking.

“Okay to come in now?” called a man’s voice.

Curious customers started wandering through the archway from the main store area. I rushed forward, embarrassed by the chaos of fallen chairs, a messed-up refreshment table, and a still-irate Timothy Brennan.

“Everything’s all right, folks,” I announced, shooing them back into the store area. “We’ll have the room ready in a jiffy.”

Glancing back, I saw Deirdre, Kenneth, Shelby, and Josh gathering up the fallen water bottles while Timothy Brennan told the technicians from the C-SPAN cable network how to do their jobs.

CHAPTER 3

A Postmortem Post

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work.

I want to achieve it through not dying.

—Woody Allen

IF THERE WAS a hell, Jack Shepard was in it. Or else the universe was playing the cosmic joke of the century. Why else would it doom a guy like him to a place like this?

In life, Jack’s blood had pulsed to the rhythm of the city’s streets. The smoky dice joints and swingin’ suds clubs, the back alleys, panel pads, and flophouses. The grifters and grinders, Joe-belows and triggermen, high rollers and sweet honeys—he knew them all.

He even got to know the uptown joints doing swing shifts as a bodyguard for cliff dwellers—those high-rise society types. Believe it or don’t, every third dame would get all hopped up, take him back to her posh Park Avenue pad, and jump his bones. “What do you say, big guy? Be my sixty-minute man?”

Why couldn’t eternity be a joint like that?

Instead, he got lead poisoning in the godforsaken sticks—eternity in cornpone alley.

Now the only excitement Jack ever got was scaring the crap out of small-town operators witless enough to invade his cave. And when that bored him—as it always did—he’d really scare them, running them the hell out of his space.

At times, whole years would go by with blessed peace and quiet. And Jack found, when human activity was sparse, he could get some true rest settling into a sweet, forgetful limbo, a cosmic sleep akin to passing out after a bender.

He’d been in precisely that state when the damn construction had started. Hammering, sanding, painting, sawing . . . a lousy, nerve-racking racket in the lousy bookshop where somebody had punched his last ticket and given him the big chill.

Sure, Jack had played some pranks on the construction crew—making them think work tools had disappeared, sending energy surges through the electrical wiring—but they’d finished anyway.

Then that buggy dame had started in with the folding chairs. He’d watched her arrange them, one by one.

Unfold the chair.

Place the chair.

Adjust the chair.

Unfold another chair.

Readjust the first chair.

Make a row.

Adjust the row.

Make another row.

If he’d been alive, Jack would have beat his own head against the stone wall until he’d blacked himself out. Instead, he’d made every chair appear turned on its damned head.

He had to give the broad credit, though. She hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t even made a peep, just hightailed it outta there, returning within minutes to see them set upright again.

Her name was Mrs. Penelope Thornton-McClure. And he had to admit she showed more moxie than a lot of grown men he’d pranked in the past fifty years.

Not a bad looker, either.

Had a nice face and soft voice. Certainly, she was the first living entity he’d even considered shifting himself toward since he’d crossed over, which was hilarious because, if he’d read her thoughts right, she didn’t even believe in ghosts.

Well, he hadn’t believed in them, either.

Concrete Jack. That’s what he’d been. “I’m the hardest case you’ll ever meet,” he once told a client who wanted help beating a murder rap. “Too many con artists to count in this world. You want me to believe something, I gotta see proof. Show it to me plain as the broken nose on my face.”

Just like Mrs. McClure, Jack had once believed that when you died, you died, and that was the end.

Brother, had he been wrong.

So he sat back and watched.

And right now, it was that broad, Penelope, he couldn’t stop watching. Despite her sweet-as-pie face and her hard-work ethic, this Penelope doll could be pretty damned annoying. The chair-fixing compulsion was just one case in point. Still, the dame didn’t deserve the crap she was getting from the biggest a-hole of the twentieth century if ever there was one—

Timothy Brennan.

Timothy Brennan, the lousy rat fink.

Before Brennan appeared, Jack had been observing the bookshop activities this evening with mild interest at best.

Now Jack was awake.

And alert.