Linda and her husband, Milner Logan, operated the Cooper Family Bakery, a small but profitable bread and sweet shop down the street from Buy the Book. Linda handled the comfort foods, and Milner the fancy French stuff. (He and Linda had met when Milner was teaching a cooking school class in Boston on the art of French pastry.)
“Honestly, I can’t thank you enough,” I told her.
“So what’s going on? I’ve got to know,” Linda asked.
Yeah, said Jack Shepard. I’m with the blonde porcupine—What in hell happened at Bird-Woman’s lace-doily nest?
I was about to reply when I looked beyond Linda’s shoulder, to see the look of worry and apprehension on Mina Griffith’s face. Mina, in turn, was watching Bud Napp and Sadie head toward a set of comfortable chairs near the back of the store, speaking in hushed tones as they went.
I took a deep breath and broke the news to Linda and Mina about the discovery of Angel Stark’s body along the wildlife trail near Finch Inn. I also told them that Victoria Banks, Bethany’s sister, was also missing. Linda was intrigued, but as I expected, Mina took the news hard. Harder still was the next bombshell I dropped on the poor girl.
“Chief Ciders believes Angel was strangled, murdered—and he thinks Bud’s nephew Johnny had something to do with it.”
“My God,” Mina choked. The shock was too much and she broke down. Linda took over the register, and I brought Mina upstairs to privately comfort her with a cup of tea and a shoulder to cry on. I hated having to tell Mina the truth, but I knew it would be better for her to hear it from me than Chief Ciders, when he sought her statement.
Mina didn’t say much, just sipped her tea and said that she couldn’t believe this was happening—that Angel was dead and Johnny was being sought as a likely suspect.
“I admit he was really stupid to go off with Angel like that,” said Mina after blowing her nose, “and I was really angry with him . . . but, Mrs. McClure, I really like Johnny. Up until last night, he’s been the kindest, sweetest guy I’ve ever gone out with.”
I nodded. “I’m glad,” I said, “but I really don’t know Johnny.”
“He spent hours last weekend helping my little brother and his friends build a treehouse, which he knows how to do because for years he’s volunteered his time to Habitat for Humanity to help build low-income houses. He loves his uncle, and I know he cares about me . . . he told me so . . . he’s a good guy, Mrs. McClure, he . . .”
Mina began to cry again. Then she shook her head. “One minute with that stupid Stark girl would tell anyone she’s trouble,” murmured Mina, wiping her nose. “I don’t know why he went off with her like that.”
As I poured the last of the tea for Mina, I felt the slightest whisper of a cool breeze on my cheek. You know this is a frame job, don’t you? said Jack in my head.
“I want it to be,” I silently told the ghost. “But is it really? How can you be so sure Johnny isn’t guilty? Jack, I’m afraid Johnny just isn’t as ‘nice’ a guy as he wants Mina and his uncle to believe.”
You could be right. But there are an awful lot of notes in play here . . . and it’s a kind of tune I’ve heard before.
After Mina dried her eyes and insisted on continuing her shift—she said it would help keep her mind off her worries for Johnny—we went back downstairs to the store.
Bud and Sadie were still deep in conversation, and things seemed fairly quiet. I thanked Linda for her help. She went on her way, and Mina took over the register.
“I think we need fresh stock on the new release table,” I told her. “If you cover the counter, I’ll take care of it.”
“No problem,” said Mina, blowing her nose one last time as I headed toward the archway leading to the Community Events space. I crossed the empty room, then strode quickly down the short corridor, past the restrooms. When I got to the storage area, I called to Jack, hoping to continue my communication with the gumshoe from beyond.
“You were saying that someone might be trying to frame Johnny . . . ?”
Like an original van Gogh, doll.
The storage room was nothing fancy: a plain white box with stacked cartons of books waiting their turn to be placed on the selling floor and an old wooden desk from the store’s early days against one wall—which we now used to hold office supplies. The room felt warm and a little bit stuffy when I’d walked into it, but Jack’s presence had dropped the temperature and the air around me felt comfortably cool. Too bad his ghostly presence couldn’t be constant and in every room, I mused to myself; the store would save a fortune in air-conditioning.
Very funny, said Jack, overhearing.
“Come on, Jack, don’t get testy.”
The cool air suddenly got decidedly colder. I shivered as a mini whirlwind swirled around my thin sleeveless cotton blouse and bare shoulders, seemed to whisper at my ear. You remember that dream I gave you last night? There’s a case file in those boxes that’ll finish the story. Look for the file marked “Stendall.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have the time for that right now.”
Make the time, baby. The files are five feet away.
Jack was right, of course. After his still-unsolved murder here in 1949, one of Jack’s acquaintances, a young reporter named Timothy Brennan, took possession of his files—and created an internationally best-selling series of books featuring the hard-boiled private detective Jack Shield. On every dust jacket, Brennan boasted that the Shield stories were based on Jack Shepard’s case files (a boast Jack wasn’t exactly keen to learn about).
After Brennan was also murdered here a year ago, his son-in-law, who subsequently took over the writing of the still-popular series—and owed me the favor of a lifetime—agreed to let me keep the original files here for him in storage. His only condition was that he first review them himself so he could Xerox “selected files” that interested him. I assumed the ones selected would be precisely the ones his late father-in-law hadn’t yet gotten around to exploiting for his fictional Jack Shield book series.
A week ago, the promised boxes finally arrived, and I had been hoping for the time to go through them—a part of me even fancying the idea that I myself might be able to puzzle out some theories about who might have killed Jack and why. But finalizing the Angel Stark appearance had left me with very little free time to peruse the files. And now that she was dead and Bud’s nephew the prime suspect, I really didn’t have the time.
“Couldn’t you just give me the shorthand on that case?” I asked Jack as I gathered and stacked on a handcart an array of hardcovers and paperbacks that made up the most recent releases by various publishers.
The shorthand is that this Johnny was obviously framed for the Bethany Banks murder. Legal technicalities can throw out confessions and incriminating statements, but if he’d really done the deed, there would have been enough physical evidence on the body for the DA to put him on trial. What seems more likely here is the frame didn’t stick—the locals didn’t have the stomach to look hard at the sons and daughters of any powerful, well-heeled families and the deb’s real killer got off. Except now your authoress was trying to keep the case alive in the public eye—so she gets bumped and once more Johnny gets blamed.
“You’re saying the person who killed Angel also killed Bethany?”
That’s the bet, honey. Not a sure thing, but if it were a horse, I’d give it pretty decent odds.
“Who then?” I asked.