The Ghost and Mrs. McClure (18 page)

I knew from past experience that such an event would include a catered lunch; a series of children’s games organized and run by the McClure nannies; a hired magician; live music; a rented carousel; hot air balloon rides; three flavors of cake; and, once twilight descended, twenty minutes of fireworks that culminated in the birthday boy’s name written in lights across the sky.

I frankly wasn’t thrilled about Spencer going anywhere near his father’s family, but he wanted to go, and I really did feel guilty saying no. I still didn’t like the McClures. And I didn’t trust them. But they were Spencer’s relatives, and he had a right to see his cousins and spend a day playing with children his own age.

The weather was glorious, too. Except for the whistling wind, all evidence of last night’s storm was gone. The sun felt warm and pleasant as we strolled along Cranberry Street. Families and couples were drifting toward the common, already taking up benches for the free concert this afternoon in the band shell.

I’d heard some honking in the direction of the empty old Embry lot. The reason why would be apparent within the hour, but at that moment I was walking swiftly in the other direction, and my mind was elsewhere.

“What’s going on?” I asked Fiona.

Fiona shushed me. “Not yet,” she said with a hiss, her eyes darting suspiciously. “The wrong people might overhear us.”

So we continued our journey in silence until we heard a man calling: “Stop! Wait!”

We turned to find our fortysomething mailman, Seymour Tarnish, running toward us, gesturing wildly. By the time he got to our side, Seymour could hardly speak.

“I . . . was looking . . . for you.” His round face was flushed and covered with a sheen of perspiration. Bending at his thick waist, he leaned on his knees, gasping for air.

I was more than a little intrigued to discover what had gotten slow-moving Seymour excited enough to gallop like Seabiscuit down Cranberry Street.

“Simmer down, Seymour,” Aunt Sadie insisted. “You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

“We have to . . . get to . . . a television,” Seymour wheezed between gulps of air. “Pronto!”

“What’s this about?” Fiona demanded. She displayed little patience for Seymour’s antics—especially when they threatened to steal her own gossipy thunder.

“Rather not try . . . to explain,” Seymour replied, mop-ping the sweat from his receding hairline with the sleeve of his flannel shirt, “you . . . have to see for yourselves.”

“We can use the television in the common room,” Fiona said.

“Can you make it, Seymour?” Aunt Sadie asked.

“I’m fine,” Seymour said between gasps.

 

 

 

SITUATED AT THE end of a drive lined with hundred-year-old weeping willows, Finch’s Inn was a classic Queen Anne-style Victorian era mansion. And, as Fiona liked to point out, the Queen Anne style itself made its debut just next door, in Newport (the William Watts Sherman House circa 1874).

Four floors of rooms boasted breathtaking views of Quindicott Pond, a good-sized body of salt water fed by a narrow, streamlike inlet that raced in and out with the tides from the Atlantic shoreline miles away.

A nature trail, one of the favorites of birders in the region, circled the pond and stretched into the backwoods, following the inlet for about eight miles. The inn rented bicycles for the trail and rowboats for the pond, which was usually pretty well stocked with fish.

Although Fiona and her husband, Barney, had not yet found the resources to fulfill their dream of opening a gourmet restaurant, they ran a respectable inn with thirteen guest rooms, all boasting fireplaces and decorated with their own unique character.

The four of us climbed the six long steps and thundered across the wide, wraparound wooden porch, which sat upon a sturdy gray fieldstone foundation. Fiona and Barney had even repainted the place in its original, dark, rich, high Victorian colors: reddish-brown on the clapboards of the main body, and a combination of olive green and old gold on the moldings and the spindlelike ornaments that served as a porch railing.

Brick chimneys, bay windows, steep shingle-covered gables, and a corner turret completed the picture—and a pretty picture it was. I just loved the place.

“You know how to find the common room,” Fiona said as we walked through the stained-glass front door, the grand oak staircase greeting us like a solemn butler. “I’ll fetch the things I wanted to show you,” she tossed to me.

As Fiona headed for the carved mahogany reception desk just off the entryway, Sadie and Seymour rushed along the hall and into the great parlor, which occupied most of the left side of the mansion. I followed more leisurely, soaking up the turn-of-the-century touches: the striped gold wallpaper, dark wood moldings, and the required Victorian clutter, from colorful vases and dried flowers to various glass-fronted collector’s cabinets of tiny porcelain birds.

Then I came upon the portraits. Two large rectangular renderings in dark wood frames, surrounded by five oval-shaped gilt-edged miniatures. All of the oil paintings depicted the same woman—the enigmatic “Harriet,” the Finch Inn’s version of Beatrice, the solitary painter who’d occupied Newport’s Cliffside Inn at the turn of the century and left a thousand self-portraits upon her death.

Harriet McClure didn’t leave nearly so many paintings, more like a hundred, but it had, nevertheless, disturbed the McClure relatives enough to sell her mansion to the Finch family—though the McClures kept ownership of most of the grounds, along with their holdings in town and around the pond.

I’d never heard the whole story about Harriet. I just knew she’d lived alone for years, save for the housekeeper and caretaker, Barney Finch’s grandmother and grandfather. She was occasionally seen taking lone strolls around the pond, but other than that, she seldom mixed with any townsfolk.

Upon her mysterious death at age forty-five, a hundred self-portraits were found among her things in the upstairs rooms. The Finches hung a dozen throughout the house—the best of the lot, so the story goes. The rest they’d tossed onto the fire during a particularly hard winter.

“The pool of fire . . .” I murmured, suddenly remembering Rev. Waterman’s sermon.

As I stared at poor, dead Harriet’s brown eyes and upswept hair, her high white Victorian collar encircling her throat, I felt a shiver go through me—not unlike the shivers I’d felt in the bookstore—and I began to wonder. . . .

Given my strange experiences with the ghost of Jack Shepard, could there be more spirits hanging around Quindicott? And if there were, what were they hanging around
for?

“The pool of fire is the second death,” I murmured. “The
second
death.” I stared hard at the portrait. I felt a little shiver go through me once more, but I heard no voice, saw no vision . . . and so I joined the others.

None of the inn guests were in the great parlor when I got there, which wasn’t a surprise on such a beautiful day. I sat on the smooth floral upholstery of the carved rose-wood and mahogany sofa, admiring the gilded ballroom mirror above the large fireplace and the bay window, where streaming sunlight washed the hanging baskets of flowers.

Seymour, meanwhile, banged open the large armoire, meant to tastefully hide the entertainment system. Remote in hand, his thumb began to bounce up and down on the buttons faster than I thought a human digit could move. Images flew across the screen like a wildly spinning roll in a slot machine. Finally the images slowed and landed on a grinning woman holding a box of plastic food storage bags.

“That’s the jackpot?” I teased Seymour. “You want us to switch brands of Baggies?”

“CNN Headline News has the heaviest rotation,” he explained. “Maybe after these commercials.”

Sadie and I watched an ad for Caribbean cruises, and another for a phone service plan. Seymour pulled up a cane-backed chair, facing us, not the television.

“I want to see the look on your faces!” he said.

Fiona breezed into the room with a tray of ice tea. Under her arm was a bundle of papers.

“Here you are,” she said as she put the papers on the coffee table. Then she handed everyone a tall glass of homemade ice tea with a sprig of mint in it. Fiona glanced at the commercials and put her hands on her hips. Scowling, she faced Seymour.

“Now, what is this all about?”

“Here it is!” Seymour cried, sloshing ice tea as he pointed to the television screen.

I found myself watching a videotape of a crowded room, the audience members packed into row after row of padded folding chairs, all facing a carved wooden podium.

“Good lord, that’s our store!” Sadie cried.

“Oh, no,” I murmured, guessing what was coming next. “Oh, no . . .”

There he was, big, florid Timothy Brennan interrupting his lecture to take a long swig of bottled water—just seconds after I stepped into camera range and handed it to him. A deft edit, and the screen revealed Brennan choking, then collapsing. The announcer’s solemn voice summed up Brennan’s long career as the visuals switched to a black-and-white clip of the old Jack Shield television show, then the cover of
Shield of Justice
.

“It had to be those two dudes doing the camera work,” Seymour said. “They were probably freelancers, and they didn’t strike me as all that sharp. I bet some agent approached them, brokered a deal for the networks.”

“Howie Westwood,” I murmured, suddenly feeling nauseated.

“Who?” asked Seymour.

“A man came to the store yesterday posing as a reporter for
Independent Bookseller
magazine. He wasn’t.”

“He wasn’t?” asked Sadie. “How do you know?”

“I know,” I said. “Because everything about him was fake.” As Jack Shepard’s ghost pointed out, of course, but I didn’t want to believe him at the time.

“But that doesn’t prove anything,” said Sadie.

“Believe me, he was the agent,” I said. “His eyes lit up like July Fourth fireworks when I mentioned the event had been taped.”

“He must have made a killing,” said Seymour. “Considering the tape’s news value.”

“What news value?” Sadie asked, outraged. “Authors are like everyone else. They keel over and die every day.”

“That’s not why they’re playing it. Listen!” Seymour pointed at the television.

On the screen, the image of Timothy Brennan’s final moments were replayed, but this time a tinted circle highlighted the water bottle in Brennan’s hand.

“. . . Authorities will neither confirm nor deny that foul play is suspected in the death of this best-selling mystery author,” the announcer said. “Though no suspects have been identified, CNN
has
learned that the Rhode Island State Police crime lab has conducted a toxicology study on the contents of the bottle, which the local police impounded the night of Brennan’s death.

“An anonymous source tells us there is evidence the bottle had been tampered with. Meanwhile, first-edition copies of
Shield of Justice
with the unique stamp authenticating its purchase at the bookstore where Brennan died are now going for as high as $300 a piece on eBay. In other news . . .”

“It’s on
every
channel,” Seymour crowed. “I saw it this morning and came to warn you.”

My shoulders slumped, and I held my head. Yesterday had been bad enough. If every news channel was carrying this story, then who knew what was coming next? Sure, I wanted Buy the Book to be profitable, but praying for rain doesn’t mean you welcome a hurricane!

“The police suspect murder,” Sadie murmured, her face pale.

Well, I
had
tried to warn her, but Sadie had chosen to ignore the signs. I reached out and took her hand. With the other, Sadie lifted her glass and swallowed some ice tea, all the while staring at the television screen.

My own reaction could best be described as muted. Given my conversation with Jack, the syringenapping by Josh, and the conversation I’d overheard when I’d eavesdropped on Shelby and Kenneth, I wasn’t all that surprised at this development. The hidden syringe had obviously played a part in corrupting the water bottle. But
what
had been in that syringe?

“What did they mean, ‘the bottle was tampered with’?” Sadie asked.

“Poison!” Fiona Finch said, her cheeks rosy with exhilaration. “I’ll just bet the cops found traces of deadly poison in that water bottle.”

“The problem is, I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said. “I randomly selected the bottle myself from over a dozen set aside especially for Brennan.”

“Did you set them aside?” asked Seymour.

“No. It was Linda Cooper-Logan who told me they’d been set aside. She started helping me with the refreshments after some of the guests started swarming the table.”

“You’re not suggesting Linda murdered Brennan,” said Seymour.

“Of course not! None of this makes any sense. How could the killer have known which bottle I’d grab of the dozen? And if they were all poisoned, then why didn’t anyone else get sick and die? After Eddie and his partner arrived that night, they took the bottle I’d given to Brennan as evidence, but that’s all they impounded. We were all cooped up in the store for hours giving statements, and there were plenty of people who ended up drinking from those reserved bottles of Brennan’s—even me. And, like I said, none of us got sick or died.”

“You know, Pen . . . that’s pretty incriminating,” said Seymour, lines furrowing his forehead.

“What’s ‘pretty incriminating’?”

“Well . . . you said it yourself:
You
were the one who handed the bottle to Brennan—which would be opportunity. And your store is profiting from his death—which would be motive.”