The Ghost and Mrs. McClure by Alice Kimberly

Author:Alice Kimberly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Women Booksellers, Ghost Stories, Mystery & Detective, Novelists, Widows, Fiction, Women Sleuths, ghosts, General, Booksellers and Bookselling, Rhode Island
ISBN: 9780425194614
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2003-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Strangers in the Night

Somebody was nuts. I was nuts. Everybody was nuts.

None of it fitted together worth a nickel.

—Philip Marlowe, “Trouble Is My Business” by Raymond Chandler, Dime Detective magazine, August 1939.

OUTSIDE IN THE darkness, a trench-coated figure stood beyond the bookstore’s rain-splattered window. An open umbrella, tilted at an angle, masked the face.

“Who is it?” I whispered to Jack.

How should I know? I’m a spirit, not a psychic.

Tap, tap, tap went the person at the window once more. I stepped around the counter and into a cone of light cast by the ceiling fixtures. The big black umbrella moved, and I recognized the pretty pert face and short, shiny, raven hair of Shelby Cabot, the publicist from Salient House. She caught sight of me and waved.

“What should I say to her?” I whispered to Jack. “I mean, to get her to say what she might know about Josh and Deirdre and Kenneth?”

Just get her talking. About anything. Then turn the conversation where you want it, so she doesn’t get wise to being grilled.

“Okay,” I murmured, “wish me luck.”

Baby, you don’t need luck in this profession. What you need is brains, and you got plenty, so go to it.

I unbolted the door, and Shelby stepped in. “I know it’s late, Mrs. McClure,” she said as she shook the large umbrella, dripping water all over my newly restored plank floor. “I was strolling by the store and saw the lights on and, well—”

“Uh-huh,” I replied, frankly dubious that anyone would be “strolling by” on a night like this one.

Shelby pulled off her sopping raincoat and draped it over a nearby Shaker-style rocker. Dribbling water puddled in the cross-hatched seat.

“I heard sales were brisk today,” she said.

“Oh, yes.”

“How wonderful!” she exclaimed, though her forced grin gave me the impression she didn’t care in the least.

I turned to bolt the door, but something caught my attention: a man was loitering across the street, just beyond the dull beams of the streetlight on the corner. In my head, I whispered to Jack, “Who is that standing across the street?”

How should I know? he said.

“What kind of response is that?! You’re supposed to be a private eye. Go on over and find out!”

Can’t leave the premises, doll. Don’t ask me why.

“Why?”

Because I don’t have an answer.

Frustrated with Jack’s double-talk, I stared harder beyond the door’s pane, trying to make out the details of the dark silhouette, but I didn’t recognize the rain slicker, and the big hood was pulled up and around the man’s face.

I’d been peering through the window so intensely, I nearly jumped when Shelby spoke up behind me: “I don’t suppose you received that special order yet? The one I had sent directly from our warehouse?”

I turned to face her, noticing the woman’s gaze was not on me at all. She’d been looking at the figure across the street, too. When I answered, however, she immediately shifted her eyes to me.

“Actually, five hundred hardcovers arrived this morning,” I said.

“Isn’t it convenient the Salient House warehouse is just an hour away,” said Shelby.

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