The Ghost and the Dead Deb (16 page)

“Speaking of secrets,” I said, continuing to fill the handcart with books. “I wish I knew what Bud and Sadie were talking about. They’ve been at it since we got back.”

“Bud’s a good man . . . but I think you’re mistaken. They’re just friends. So what’s my next move?”

“I can’t do that, Jack. I’m worried about too many people here. If Johnny’s guilty, I want to know it—as much for Mina’s safety as every other young woman in this town. And if he’s not guilty then I want to help the kid—for Bud’s sake.”

“Okay, fine. I haven’t learned the angles. So you can teach me along the way. You can help me prove Johnny did it—or find the real killer.”

There was a long silence. The room, which had been comfortably cool, was slowly becoming warm and stuffy again. I felt Jack’s presence receding.

“Jack? Don’t leave me. Come on! You can consider it a pastime. Helping me solve another murder has
got
to be more interesting than watching a sluggish parade of overheated customers make their beach reading selections.”

The silence was interminable.

“Jack?
Listen
. I’m going to do it anyway—with or without you.”

Finally, the room cooled again. I felt a whisper of a breeze against my cheek.

One condition,
he growled in my head.

“Name it.”

“Fine. Okay, after I . . .”

I jumped. “Okay, okay, calm down . . .” I swallowed nervously, hating that Jack’s haunting temper could still rattle me and walked over to the files—eight boxes of them. I lifted the top off the first, hoping to find some part of the alphabet, the M’s through the O’s or the T’s through the W’s. But the files weren’t alphabetical.

“Talbot, Lionetti, Hague, Zika, Walters, Karpinsky,” I recited, reading the typewritten labels on the dusty beige folders. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Jack, what was your filing system?”

Alphabetical, sweetheart. Two things I prided myself on when I was alive
—
an organized mind and an organized office.

“But these
aren’t
alphabetical. They’re a big mess is what they are.”

With a sigh, I pawed through the first box, then placed the lid back on it and went to the second. I finally found it in the fourth box I opened.

“Stendall! Found it!”

As I pulled the folder free of its dusty confines, a tremendous sneeze shook me, and I nearly dropped the file. In the process, I felt something slip out and fall to the floor with a ding.

“What fell?” I muttered, looking around my feet. The wink of silver caught my eye and I bent down to pick up the coin. “It’s a nickel . . .”

A buffalo nickel, to be precise—a coin minted only from 1913 to 1938, after which it was replaced with the Jefferson nickel. Seymour Tarnish had excitedly brought one in a few months back after one of his ice cream truck customers had passed it to him without noticing.

The profile of a rugged, dignified American Indian’s head was engraved on one side with the word
Liberty
and the year 1937. I remembered Seymour saying that the artist based his image on a composite of three models: Iron Tail, Two Moons, and Chief John Big Tree. The reverse side displayed an American bison in the center of the coin,
United States of America
arced over the bison’s head, and
Five Cents
stretched beneath its hooves.

“Jack?” I whispered, running my fingers over the old coin. “Was this yours?”

“Yeah, baby.”

With my eyes still fixed on the engraved buffalo, I slowly realized that Jack’s answer hadn’t been in my head. The ghost’s voice, for the first time since I’d initially heard it almost a year ago, sounded as if it had been projected from two feet in front of me. Perplexed, I lifted my eyes—and gasped.

“Jack . . . ,” I rasped, “I can . . . see you . . .”

“You’ve seen me before,” he pointed out.

“But not . . . like this . . .”

Over the past year, I’d seen Jack Shepard in my dreams mostly, or in the black-and-white photo on the flap of Timothy Brennan’s Jack Shield books. On very rare occasions, I thought I’d glimpsed him in other ways—as a silhouette or shadow, but nothing more than a flickering blink. This time, Jack appeared before me as real and solid as the stacked brown boxes around me in this storage room.

He was tall, over six feet, and his powerful form was draped in a gunmetal-gray double-breasted suit that rose in a V from his narrow waist to his acre of shoulders. Beneath his fedora, his forehead was broad with brows the color of wet sand; his nose like a boxer’s—slightly crooked with a broken-a-few-times bump. His jaw was iron, his chin flat and square—with a one-inch scar in the shape of a dagger slashing across it. And his eyes were the most intensely piercing gray I’d ever seen.

He blinked at me, then pushed up the brim of his hat with one finger. A tiny smile touched his lips. “Take it easy, baby. You look like you’re ready to kiss concrete.”

I swallowed. My mouth was suddenly filled with cotton balls. “Yes . . . I do feel a bit . . . shaky . . .” I turned away, went to the old wooden desk, and sat down, placing the nickel carefully on the desktop to wipe off my suddenly sweaty palms. I spun the chair to face Jack again—but he was gone.

“Jack?”

“Pen! . . . Penelope?”

The voice was male, but it wasn’t Jack’s. And it was coming from down the hall.

“Bud?” I croaked, seeing Bud Napp pop his head into the storage room. The space had become warm and stuffy again. My throat was still dry, my heart still pounding like a carpenter working overtime.

“I’m about to head out, but Chief Ciders is pulling up. Sadie wanted me to let you know. He’s probably here for Mina’s statement.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll be right there.”

Bud left, and I rose on unsteady legs. I crossed the room to pick up the Stendall file, placed it on the handcart, and rolled it into the hallway. Before I snapped off the light, I remembered the buffalo nickel. I went to the desk, picked it up, and shoved it into the front pocket of my khaki pants.

“Jack?” I called again. But he was gone.

“Mind your own business about my sister Leila,” she spit at me. “You leave my sister Leila out of your dirty remarks.”

“Which dirty remarks?” I asked. “Or should I try to guess?”

—Raymond Chandler,
The Long Goodbye
, 1949

 

 

 

WHEN I ARRIVED on the selling floor, I saw Sadie had taken over the register. Mina stood by the new-release table, wringing her hands as she peered at Chief Ciders speaking to Bud on the sidewalk.

I rolled the handcart up to Mina and asked her to help me arrange the titles—a task I’d hoped would get her mind off what was to come. Within five minutes, however, the bell over the front door tinkled and Chief Ciders came swaggering in.

“Mina Griffiths,” he called.

The pale, freckle-faced girl seemed to go even paler.

“Take it easy, Mina,” I said softly. “He’s just going to ask you a few questions.”

“You know why I’m here?” asked Ciders, striding up to her.

“Yes,” said Mina.

“You want to come to the station to talk to me about Johnny or answer my questions here?” asked Ciders.

“There’s no need for Mina to have to go to the station, Chief,” I interjected.

“That’s right,” agreed Sadie, rushing up like a mother hen. “There’s plenty of privacy in the Community Events room. You can talk to Mina in there.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I told Sadie. “You cover the register.” Sadie nodded and I led the way into the adjoining room, set up two folding chairs, and gestured for Mina and the Chief to sit down.

I took my place, standing behind Mina, and the Chief looked at me the same way he had back at the Finch Inn—like a wad of chewing tobacco had just gotten stuck in his esophagus.

“You can go now, Mrs. McClure.”

“Oh . . . um . . . but couldn’t I stick around?” I threw a worried glance at Mina.

“No,” barked Ciders. “Please give us some privacy.”

“Oh, okay . . .” I sighed. At least he’d said
please
, I thought, feeling my spine stiffen. I spun on my heel, but then slowed my movements and drifted ever so languidly toward the archway that led to the main store. I lingered there, trying to eavesdrop. Unfortunately, there was nothing to hear. When I turned around again, I found the Chief squinting at me with open hostility.

“Mrs. McClure, you’ve already given me your statement. If you don’t leave the
premises
, I
will
have to take Mina to the station—”

“No, don’t do that,” I said. “I’ll go. I just have to get my purse and car keys upstairs, okay? It’ll take a few minutes.”

“Fine, you do that.”

Cursing silently, I snagged the Stendall file before ascending the stairs. Then I dropped the file on my bed and grabbed my purse and car keys. I told Sadie I’d be back in an hour and, in the words of Chief Ciders, left the premises.

A brand-new All Things Bed & Beautiful superstore had opened recently on the highway and I had yet to check it out. I decided to spend an hour away from “the premises” there. We needed a new shower curtain, Spencer would love a set of Spider-Man sheets, and I hadn’t been able to find imported English lavender shampoo since I’d left Manhattan. If the superstore carried it, I’d probably indulge myself with one bottle of the obscenely expensive product—if only to use as a once-a-week treat for the next six months.

Behind the wheel of my used blue Saturn, I powered down the windows to enjoy the warm summer day. I drove along Cranberry, past the outlying suburbs, and through the thick Quindicott woods where an occasional clearing would reveal a small farm. The radio, which would normally be blaring Radio Disney’s hip-hop “light” for Spencer’s amusement, stayed off as I tried to consider Johnny Napp and whether or not he was capable of murder.

I came to the highway on-ramp and joined the relatively sparse traffic pattern. The thick Quindicott woods flanked the four-lane road. Oaks, pines, and maples flew by as I sped along. After a few miles, I noticed the sunset-orange Comfy-Time Motel sign looming up ahead and got to thinking about what Eddie Franzetti had said—that Victoria Banks and her friends had been staying there last night when Victoria disappeared.

“Jack thinks Victoria had a strong motive to kill Angel,” I muttered. “Which I suppose she does . . . especially if she thinks Johnny killed her sister and got away with it. She could have killed Angel out of spite and revenge and simultaneously set up Johnny as the killer . . . the perfect crime . . .
if
she gets away with it . . .”

As I considered that maybe Victoria’s two friends were still at the motel, my heart beat a little faster, and my foot pressed a little harder on the gas pedal. “I’m sure if Jack were here, he’d have me stop,” I continued to mutter. “I mean, what harm could it do to check out the parking lot for a black Jag with a blue and white bumper sticker?”

I jammed on the brakes and swerved to the shoulder. A surprised driver laid on the horn behind me.

“God in heaven! Jack?! Is that you?”

I exhaled, my hands shaking as if I’d just been spooked. Then I realized—I
had
.

“I don’t understand!” I cried, automatically searching the empty confines of my Saturn. “I’m not in the bookstore, I never heard you outside the bookstore—you said you couldn’t leave the bookstore!?”

“Nickel . . . Jack . . . the buffalo nickel from your files.” I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out the dull silver coin, running my thumb along the grooves of the engraved bison. “You must be attached to it somehow . . . either that or you’re still trapped in the store and you’re . . . I don’t know,
transmitting
through it, like some kind of cosmic cell phone.”

I gathered my wits and pulled back on the highway, then quickly turned off again into the paved parking area of the newly built Comfy-Time Motel. The place was part of a national chain of budget lodgings that provided clean, affordable rooms for travelers—just the sort of place you’d find on a highway outside of Anytown, U.S.A., its design and décor exactly the same whether you were standing under the blistering sun of Albuquerque, New Mexico, or the threatening snow clouds of Erie, Pennsylvania.