The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

expansive lawn now resembled a manicured golf course; and, in the spring and summer, the path to the front door was bordered by an array of flowers.

The porch no longer sagged—because the rotting vertical banisters had been torn out and new ones put in. But the entranceway was what impressed me the most. Simple windows had been replaced with stained glass, and a carved oak door purchased from a bankrupt Victorian hotel had replaced the original flimsy plywood.

It was somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 when I parked my Saturn at the curb and strode up the pathway to Brainert’s house. I noticed his front door stood wide open—but my friend was nowhere in sight.

I began to worry. Moving closer, I spied a plant overturned on the porch, its clay pot shattered, rich, black soil everywhere. Now I was alarmed. I cautiously climbed the porch steps.

“Hello, Brainert? Are you there?” I called.

No answer.

I took a few steps through the doorway and gasped. The interior hall was a total wreck—tables overturned, a framed painting knocked askew, a floor lamp tipped over and smashed on the parquet floor.

Panic mode now. “Brainert!”

I was far enough inside the house to peer around the corner, into the living room. That’s when I saw my old friend, Jarvis Brainert Parker, lying facedown on a bloodstained Persian rug.

IN MY SATURN, I hugged the bumper of the ambulance the whole way to Benevolent Heart Hospital, a stone’s throw from St. Francis College. By the time I parked my car and made it to the ER’s front desk, Brainert had been admitted and the doctors were working on him.

I used my cell to call Sadie, told her Brainert had been assaulted, that I was at the hospital with him. We both knew this was no random crime, no mugging or burglary, but we left that thought unspoken. My aunt promised to watch for Spencer, while I stayed to hear about Brainert’s condition. It was an hour before I heard any news.

Finally the tending physician, a soft-spoken man named Dr. Rhajdiq, found me in the waiting room. I was hunched in a chair, my legs curled under me, quietly praying while I twisted and unwound the handle of my purse. Dr. Rhajdiq’s darker-than-dark eyes regarded me with concern. When he addressed me, he spoke slowly and carefully and paused several times to make sure I understood what he said.

“Mr. McClure, I have moderately good news,” he began. “Mr. Parker will recover. He’s conscious now, but groggy—”

“Thank God,” I moaned.

Dr. Rhajdiq ran a hand through his thick, curly hair. The other he kept tucked in the pocket of his OR scrubs.

“Unfortunately, the man has suffered quite a beating. He has a minor concussion and the pain and discomfort that results from it. There are also lacerations to the face and scalp caused by glass. We had to extract a few shards. Fortunately there was no damage to his eyes.”

“Is he in pain?

“We’re doing what we can to manage his discomfort. But a concussion is a serious matter and can be very dangerous. We are going to keep Mr. Parker here overnight, for observation.”

“When can I see him?”

Dr. Rhajdiq smiled. “He’s asking to see you, Mrs. McClure. Right now the staff is in the process of moving the patient to a private room. In a few minutes I will send a nurse to escort you there.”

True to his word, an attractive blonde in her early twenties approached me a little while later. Slender and delicate, she looked almost ethereal in her white nurse’s uniform.

“Mrs. McClure, please come with me,” she said, her voice as wispy as her demeanor.

I rose and followed the nurse to a bank of elevators, trying to avoid thinking about how much I hated hospitals.

Me, I kind of like them, Jack said, his first words since I’d found Brainert. Hospitals got great features, like this angel who’s giving us the grand tour. She’s got gams right up to her neck.

“Gee, Jack, and I thought I was the only woman in your life.”

You’re the only one who’ll talk to me, so I guess you are, baby. But I guess the scenery ain’t bad here at the ol’ krankhaus.

“Well, I loathe this place. The smells, the sadness, the specter of death—nothing personal.”

You’re disregarding the good stuff.

“Good stuff?”

Yeah, like a brace of cutie-pie angels of mercy waiting on me hand and foot.

I tried not to laugh out loud. “You better have a look around. Half the ‘cutie-pie’ nurses in this establishment are men.”

What! I thought they were orderlies! What’s this stinking world coming to when an angel of mercy has facial hair?

We exited the elevator on the third floor and passed the nurse’s station. Brainert’s room was all the way down the hall, in the corner.

From the doctor’s cautious tone, I expected to find my friend flat on his back, swathed from head to toe in bandages, tubes running into a vein in each arm. Then I rounded the doorway to his room and heard:

“I’m quite comfortable, nurse! Please stop fussing!”

Brainert’s voice was shaky, but his cranky stubbornness was undiminished, which meant he was practically back to his old self!

“Please nurse,” he declared, “stop fiddling with the bed and find my friend in the waiting room. I must see her at once!”

I entered to find Brainert sitting up, a nurse gamely trying to adjust his position. He was bandaged, but thankfully no tubes were visible, though a wire ran from a dressing on the tip of his finger to a pulse and respiration monitor beeping next to the bed.

“Pen! Please come in,” Brainert called when he saw me—out of one eye; the other was covered by a thick bandage. So was his nose, and both of Brainert’s forearms were swathed in thick gauze.

“Your face!” I cried.

“Broken glass,” muttered Brainert. “Didn’t damage my eye, so it’s good news. And the scars—I’m hoping— will make me look distinguished, maybe even a little dangerous. It would be a nice change for me to start looking a little dangerous, don’t you think?”

Jack laughed. Tell your bird to lose his bow tie and he might have a fighting chance.

“I think you’ll wear any scars with as much panache as you wear everything in your life, Brainert.”

He smiled, then lifted his arms. “Fifteen stitches in the left, twenty-two in the right.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Now you just sound like you’re bragging.”

Brainert and I fell silent until the nurse finished her tasks. Finally she departed along with Jack’s favorite blonde angel of mercy, and we were alone.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It was around noon,” Brainert began, his voice low. “I was working in the living room, papers spread out on the coffee table. I’d made several phone calls and was compiling notes, and I heard a crash on the porch.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to investigate.” Brainert sighed. “Like a fool I unlocked the front door without first looking to see who was there—I might as well have invited my attacker to mug me!”

“Who was on the porch?”

“A tall man. He wore a black denim jacket and a crudely improvised mask—”

“Was the mask black?” I interrupted. “Did it have ragged eye slits like he’d cut the knitted cap himself then pulled it down over his face?”

Brainert nodded. “I remember your description from the Quibblers meeting of the man who assaulted you. I’m positive this was the same person. As soon as I saw the mask, I knew he wanted my notes—”

“Notes? What notes?”

Brainert chatted on as if he hadn’t heard me. “He demanded money, of course—in that raspy whisper meant