In her latest effort toward being “politically proactive,” she’d insisted on soliciting outside bidders to compete for the contract to repair the severely damaged Quindicott Elementary School (an electrical fire in early June had completely wrecked the classrooms).
Typically, the town council would have hired Ronny Sutter, who’d been doing Quindicott’s construction for decades. But hiring Ronny was what Marjorie termed “long-standing cronyism,” and she insisted they search far and wide for outside bidders. The woman had swayed a majority of the council, many of whom were brand-new to their seats, and off they went, searching for bidders.
Because of the subsequent motions, consultations, and delays, too much of the town council’s time was wasted accessing competing bids from contractors located in Providence, Warwick, Newport—even as far away as Brattleboro, Vermont. The project was delayed for six weeks. By the time the lowest bid was in and the builders went to work, the job was hopelessly behind schedule.
While Councilwoman Binder-Smith preened about the process at last being “impartial, unbiased, and fair,” the rest of the town watched Labor Day come and go without the start of elementary school classes.
Now, finally, on the cusp of All Hallow’s Eve, the children of Quindicott were heading off to their very first day of school. Needless to say, there would be no spring break this year. And I doubted a “snow day” would be called unless Quindicott was subjected to weather conditions bordering on Alaskan whiteout.
“Mom, can we go to the haunted house on Green Apple Road this weekend?”
I moved to the counter to fetch a squeeze bottle of clover honey. “I don’t know, Spencer. It might be a little too intense for a ten-year-old.”
A year ago, Spencer would probably have whined. Today he shot me a look that said I didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Puh-leaze,” he said. “You forget I watched Silence of the Lambs last month.”
“You watched half of Silence of the Lambs before I caught you. That won’t happen again, kiddo. The V chip has been activated and is in full force.”
Spencer rolled his eyes. “How scary could a haunted house be? If it was too scary, people would be having heart attacks and stuff. Then people would sue, and there wouldn’t be any haunted houses anymore. See my point?”
I saw his point. But the truth was, after last night, I’d had my fill of haunted houses….
IT WAS A dark and stormy night.
No, really.
Just after my aunt and I set out for our drive, a nor’easter smashed against the New England coast. Rain came down in sheets, pelting the new wax job off my battered Saturn. Intermittent flashes lit up the indigo sky, burying the radio’s weather report under bursts of static. And, after the lightening, of course, came the—
BOUMMMMMM!
Sadie shuddered in the passenger seat. I glanced worriedly her way, my hands choking the life out of the steering wheel. We’d both agreed to take this trip to obtain a tasty commission. It was a “one-night-only” offer to claim a stash of rare books from a lifelong collector, and we didn’t want to lose it.
New England winters were brutal. We were barely into fall and the energy bills were already murder. We needed the money. So we told ourselves we were being brave and responsible in defying the storm forecasts.
I began to reconsider that defiance.
Sadie saw me glancing her way. She gave me a little smile. “It’s not a fit night out for man nor beast,” she quipped, her bravado undercut by a nervous little laugh.
Apparently, it was also a night for clichés.
If you babes want to chin-dip for cornpone, piped up the masculine voice in my head, just say, “It’s raining cats and dogs,” and be done with it.
The spirit of Jack Shepard was nothing if not pithy. His gruff cynicism was also, oddly, a comfort to me in times of trouble. If Sadie had known about the ghost (which she didn’t), she probably would have described him as the kind of friend who bucks you up when you need it the most.
“Offended by clichés, Jack?” I silently replied, his wise crack momentarily averting my worries about the growing reduction of visibility in front of me. “I didn’t know you were a literary critic.”
Neither did I. Chalk it up to fifty years stuck in a hayseed library.
“Buy the Book is not a hayseed library, thank you very much. It’s been a respected independent bookseller for years.”
Of course, it had almost gone out of business in recent years, but I left that part out. Long ago, Sadie had taken over the shop from her father, but with her age, came the inability to manage alone, which had put the store in jeopardy. So, after Calvin took his flying leap out the bedroom window of our Manhattan high-rise, I leapt too (figuratively, anyway).
Defying the threats from my wealthy in-laws to cut me off financially, I’d left my publishing job and moved back to my Rhode Island hometown. I’d endured the enforcement of my in-laws’ threats (Calvin’s wealthy mother and sister did cut me off, although Spencer would still get his trust fund later in life). But Calvin’s modest life insurance benefit was still mine, and I’d cashed it to relocate my life and go into business with Sadie.
We mortgaged Buy the Book for renovations, expansion, and inventory overhaul, and, for the most part, brought the nearly defunct store back to life. I was supremely proud of what we’d done thus far. Our little bookstore had led the way in resuscitating Cranberry, Quindicott’s previously depressed main street.
“We have a smart, literate clientele from all over,” I reminded Jack. “We have author chats and—”
Listen, baby, between your pulps, those glorified True Confessions tomes, and the low-rent mooks and grifters you trot in for jawboning, I’ve heard every cliché in the book, going on times ten over.
“They are not mooks and grifters. They are authors, reading their works.”
Jack really was impossible with his complaints about the store. On the other hand, how thrilled would you be about a place where you’d had (as Jack put it) your lights put out and your ticket punched?
Jack Shepard was killed in our bookstore in 1949 while investigating the murder of an old army buddy. That’s all I know. That’s all, apparently, he knows. He claims his case files (hundreds of them), which I have on loan, contain notes on the investigation he’d been running at the time. But I have yet to locate them—and Jack refuses to help me out.
He says whoever killed him wasn’t “playing,” and he doesn’t want me anywhere near that particular murder mystery. It hadn’t stopped me from solving a few others, however, and, I have to admit, Jack had been a big help in that regard. But then, he had been a private detective.
In life, anyway.
A flash of lightning brought me back to the potentially deadly weather.
“It is an ugly night,” Sadie murmured.
Clutched in her wrinkled, seventy-three-year-young hands was a frayed piece of paper containing the directions to our destination. The instructions had been faxed to her just two hours ago, right after the urgent phone call summoning us to Newport, which was between thirty to fifty minutes away from Quindicott, depending on the traffic and the—
BOUMMMMM!
“Jeez-Louise. I hate thunder.”
“I am sorry about the storm, dear,” my aunt said, as if she’d been the one who’d brought on the weather in the first place. “Mr. Chesley said it was important that we come tonight. Urgent, was the word he’d used.”