The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

me that Detective Kroll had made up his mind before he’d even arrived at the mansion. But I took a deep breath and told myself to stop thinking about it.

“This is Kroll’s case now,” I muttered, “not mine.”

When I got to the bakery, I saw that half the mothers in Quindicott had gotten the same idea I had—send the children off to school and head over to Cooper’s. There was actually a line out the door. I waved to a few mothers who were also good Buy the Book customers.

“Penelope, did you get the new Patricia Cornwell in yet?”

It was Susan Keenan, the thirtysomething mother of Danny, one of Spencer’s new friends. Danny had two siblings: seven-year-old Maura, who was in school at the moment; and two-year-old Tommy, who was sleeping in a stroller by his mother’s side.

“It’s in, Sue,” I called to her, “stop by anytime.”

“Come on, come on, move along ladies,” a man’s voice boomed from the center of the perfumed mob. “Let me out of the pretty store and one of you can get in!”

Holding high his cup of steaming-hot coffee, Seymour Tarnish struggled to escape the packed bakery. As the women moved aside, I could see into the store. Behind the counter, Linda Cooper-Logan looked harried.

She wore a rainbow bandana over her short, spiky, platinum blonde hair (she’d had a thing for Annie Lennox since we were kids back in the eighties), and her husband Milner Logan (fan of noir thrillers) was nowhere in sight. My guess—the talented quarter-blood Narragansett Native American was in the back, doing his best to whip up more of those famous fresh, hot doughnuts that people drove from miles around to snag.

“Hey, Pen.” Seymour looked down at me with a crooked smile on his round face. He jerked his head in the direction of the bakery. “If you’re looking to buck that crowd, beware. Hungry housewives cruising for pastry are a dangerous breed. I almost lost my arm putting cream in my coffee.”

(What Seymour actually said was “almust lahst mah aahm”—using the typical dropped R’s and drawn out vowels of our “Roe Dyelin” patois. We might be the smallest state in the Union but, by golly, we’ve got a sizable accent. Sadie speaks with the accent, too, along with most of the people here in Quindicott. I lost mine somewhere between college and living in New York although the occasional slip—e.g., “You can never find pahkin’ in this town!”—just can’t be helped.)

Not exactly resplendent in his natty blue postman’s uniform with matching coat, his hat askew, Seymour was obviously on his way to his day job.

Although thickwaisted, our big, tactless, fortysomething mailman wasn’t always thickheaded. He’d won quite a bit of money on Jeopardy! a few years back and ever since, the town had its own local celebrity. It was the main reason the people on Seymour’s mail route put up with him. Still, their descriptions of the man spanned from “irascible” to “obnoxious,” depending on how diplomatic they were in choosing adjectives.

Seymour took a loud slurp from his steaming cup and smacked his lips. “Man, I needed that!”

“Late night?” I asked, enviously sniffing the aroma of his freshly brewed French roast.

“The haunted house is open right up until midnight through Halloween. I parked my ice cream truck on Green Apple Road at noon on Sunday and got home at one A.M. Cleaned up, though.”

One of the things Seymour did with his Jeopardy! winnings was purchase an ice cream truck. It had been his lifelong dream to become Quindicott’s one and only roving ice cream man (go figure), which he now was on evenings and weekends. The other thing he did with his prize money was purchase old pulps, usually collector’s items, which is why Buy the Book counted him as one of its most consistent (and, yes, at times, compulsive) customers.

After another gulp of coffee, Seymour gave me the fish eye. “Man you look wasted, Pen,” he observed, ever the charmer. “You got insomnia?”

“I had a late night, too. Sadie and I drove over to Newport and bought some items from a collector.”

Set wide apart, Seymour’s blue eyes gave his regular features an air of perpetual surprise. Now those eyes bulged like a hungry bug. “More swag! What’cha got? Anything hot and collectable?”

I mentioned the Phelps editions of Poe. Seymour shrugged.

“We also acquired an 1807 first edition of Thomas Paine’s An Examination of the Passages in the New Testament.”

Seymour’s bugging eyes quickly glazed over. “Not for me. But I’m sure your pal Brainert will wet his academic pants over them. I’m more interested in that 1931 issue of Oriental Stories your aunt has been tracking down for me. Any sign of it?”

“Not yet. We’ll keep you posted.”

Seymour glanced at his watch. “Well, it’s starting time for the day job. Back to the stamp mines. If I’m late again my supervisor will go postal for sure. See ya later.”

With Seymour gone, I glanced at the crowd around Cooper’s one last time. If anything, the line had gotten longer. Doughnutless and filled with sugary longing, I headed back to brew my own pot of coffee and open the store.

WHEN I UNLOCKED the front door at ten o’clock, there were a few more customers than I expected. They were mothers, mostly, out and about after sending their little ones off to school. They finally saw some quiet time ahead and were buying up new releases.

I rang up purchases, including Sue Keenan’s new Cornwell, and sorted the mail, pointedly ignoring the three cardboard boxes of books neatly stacked behind the counter—the books we’d brought back from Peter Chesley’s mansion in Newport the night before. At quarter to eleven, a local youth named Garfield Platt reported for duty.

“You’re early,” I noted.

Garfield shrugged and hung up his coat. “I left an hour early on Friday, remember Mrs. McClure? I have an hour to make up.”

“Good. The first thing you can do is carry those boxes to the storage room. Put them next to Sadie’s desk. And be careful, those volumes are quite valuable.”

“Can do, Mrs. McClure.”

Young Mr. Platt was our newest employee, hired because Mina could only work weekends due to her college classes. Unlike Mina, Garfield had disliked college and cut the experience short. He returned to Quindicott, and moved back in with his parents. He claimed he was making some money off a Web site he ran out of his home— doing what, I didn’t ask, nor did he volunteer that information—but Garfield needed more capital to move into his own place, so he worked two part-time gigs. He spent weekday afternoons and early evenings at Buy the Book, and the rest of the night doing odd jobs at the twenty-four-hour gas station out on the highway, finishing up at two A.M. The kid was motivated, I had to give him that.

Though Quindicott was a small town, I’d never met and didn’t know Garfield’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Platt. They didn’t attend our church and they didn’t mix socially with anyone I knew in the community, though they’d lived here for over two decades.

Garfield wasn’t as reclusive as his folks; in fact, he was outgoing, well-spoken, and possessed a wry sense of humor that made him fun to have in the store. Sadie and I had figured that out the day of his impromptu job interview.

It was a breezy autumn day in early September, a little over a month ago. I’d hung a HELP WANTED sign at the same time that I placed the new Dan Brown hardcover in the “hot picks” slot in the store window display.

Garfield blew in with a gust of wind fifteen minutes later. The cool, dry air had bristled his curly brown hair and spiked his full beard. He stood an inch shorter than me—though taller than my bantamweight aunt—with a broad shouldered build and a bright, direct gaze.

“My name is Garfield Platt. I’ve come to apply for the job,” he announced, reaching out to shake my hand.

Garfield’s voice rose a notch on the last word, so I thought he was asking a question. That miscommunication, and his lunge across the counter to shake my hand rattled me.

“Excuse me?” I replied, stepping backward.

“I think he’s applying for the job,” Sadie explained.

Garfield nodded, eyes unblinking. “I’d like to work here, if you’ll hire me. I have no experience and I just flunked out of college. But I read mysteries and I know authors, so I can help your customers find the titles they’re looking for. And I can count and make change. Seeing this is a commercial enterprise, I’d say that’s a plus.”