Her voice was nearly lost under the constant swishing of the windshield wipers.
“Don’t worry about the weather. It’s not so bad,” I fibbed, watching blasts of wind ripple the black water pooling on the roadway. “Anyway, we’ve practically arrived.”
Sadie squinted at the directions in her hands. “You’re right, Pen. The next turn is just ahead. But it’s so dark you’d better slow down, or we might miss it.”
With the autumn sunset around five o’clock, half past seven seemed black as midnight, and lights were plenty scarce along this remote section of the Atlantic coastline, which only magnified the gloom.
We swung off the main highway and onto a winding, two-lane blacktop. According to Peter Chesley’s instructions, we were to follow this route until we reached Roderick Road.
On a sunny, dry day, this route might have been pleasant, even scenic. On a night like this, however, the eerie stretch seemed almost claustrophobic. Tall trees stripped of their leaves flanked our vehicle on either side like old, brown bones, rattling in the night.
On one narrow turn, the road swung onto the ledge of a high, narrow cliff. Jagged rocks swept down to the Atlantic’s roiling black plane. Typically, I’d enjoy the rhythmic sound of the lapping waves. But tonight the nor’easter winds were whipping the surf into a seething froth, then crashing it over the ragged shoreline with a fulminating roar.
“It is so strange to think of Peter living out here,” Sadie said with an eye on the desolate horizon. “When I knew him, he loved being in the middle of things, loved living in the bustle of Providence, loved teaching.”
“What did he teach?”
“He was a professor of American history at Brown University.”
I heard Jack groan. Not another egghead. Maybe I’ll just slip away now, before I croak from boredom.
True to his promise, I felt Jack’s presence recede. Where the spirit went, I don’t know. At first, Jack’s ghost appeared to be confined within the fieldstone walls of our bookstore. But last year I found a stray buffalo nickel in a cache of his yellowing private eye files. As bizarre and irrational as it sounded, as long as I had Jack’s old nickel in my possession, his spirit traveled with me. (Sure, the ghost has tested my limits with his wisecracks, jibes, and off-color barbs, but his streetwise advice has gotten me out of some big, hairy jams, so I held tight to that coin. Frankly, I preferred running with the insurance.)
Of course, I’d already considered that Jack wasn’t real at all, that the ghost was simply a figment of my imagination, some psychological split akin to the schizophrenia of John Nash, the famous Nobel Prize–winning mathematician.
Was Jack my alter ego? That small, buried nugget of id that had all the bravado I didn’t? Maybe he was some composite of all the hard-boiled novels I’d read over the years; a subconscious realization of those Black Mask stories my late police officer dad and I had loved.
But even if that were true (and I doubted it was), it was just one more reason not to inform anyone of Jack’s existence.
The McClure family owned a lot of land in this part of Rhode Island, and they wielded a lot of influence. They also blamed me for Calvin’s suicide (having conveniently forgotten that they themselves had refused to acknowledge the severity of his depression). English boarding school for Spencer had been their idea of a “helpful” suggestion after Calvin died; after which, I’d told them to take a flying leap and then moved in with my aunt in Quindicott.
My former in-laws would be only too happy to find a reason to take Spencer away from me. So telling anyone (including and especially a therapist) that I, Penelope Thornton-McClure, was having regular conversations with Jack Shepard, the friendly PI ghost, wasn’t something I’d be doing anytime soon.
The car radio was finally drowned out by static, so I switched the newscaster off and refocused on the task in front of us.
“Peter Chesley sounds like an impressive man,” I said.
“Yes. Oh, yes…he was.”
“How long have you known him? I don’t remember you ever mentioning him before.”
“I met Peter…let’s see…going on thirty years ago now.”
Sadie leaned back in the passenger seat—the first time since the thunder had started. Despite the tense storm around us, the thought of Peter Chesley appeared to relax her.
“He called to purchase a few titles in an estate library the store had taken on consignment. When he walked in to pick them up, that’s when we first met. He loved the store and he became a regular customer after that…and a friend.”
It sounded to me like he’d been more than “a friend,” but I wasn’t sure how to ask without prying.
“Of course, business was different in those days,” my aunt went on. “You’ve set us up on the Internet now, but back when I was your age, we had buyers dropping by every week, folks from Newport, New Haven, Providence, even New York City….”
She smiled at some memory. “Peter was one of the nicest. He never seemed to have much money, was forever scrimping to purchase rare books for his collection, but he was always well dressed in pressed slacks and a tweed jacket. I remember he had a glorious mop of thick golden hair and blue eyes, like Paul Newman…”
“Hmm.” I smiled. “Can’t wait to meet him.”
Sadie laughed. “Oh, no, no, no, Pen. My description of the man is from my past memories. He must be close to eighty by now.”
“Who cares?” I teased. “I’m a sucker for blue eyes.”
“Ah…but what could you possibly have in common with someone who was in their prime when FDR was president?”
I thought about Jack. “Actually, you might be surprised.”
“Don’t you go and start dating older men,” Sadie warned. “You’re too young for that…You’re still young enough to give Spencer a little brother or sister, someday.”
I snorted. “Considering the pool of available men in a little town like Quindicott, I probably have a statistically better chance of getting struck by—”
An electric flash lit the night sky, followed by an ominous boom.
“’Nuf said,” I concluded.
Aunt Sadie sighed. I could see she wasn’t happy with my lack of confidence that I’d be finding some knight in shining armor around the next bend. But she didn’t argue. The Thorntons always did have that in common—we were realists.
“So when was the last time you heard from Mr. Chesley? Before this morning’s urgent summons, I mean. Did you two have a falling out?”
A shadow crossed Sadie’s face. “Peter’s marriage fell apart the same year my father passed away. At that time, we’d known each other only through the book selling, but, for a short time, we became much closer. I’d go to Providence and we’d…socialize…you understand, dear, don’t you?”
“I understand.”
“Peter helped me a great deal, and I believe I helped him…but it wasn’t meant to be…we were different people, and after about a year, our relationship…well, it soured. Neither of us wanted to pursue anything permanent, but we parted friends. After that, Peter and I saw less of each other, but he remained a good customer, and he made a point of coming by the store at least once a month to see how I was, share a drink or some dinner. Like I said, he was always a good friend.”
“But what happened to him?”
“One afternoon, around, oh…going on ten years ago now, Peter showed up at my shop in something of a state. He spoke about a crisis in his family. An emergency. He told me I wouldn’t see him again for six months at least. But I never saw or heard from him again, until this morning, when he called out of the blue and told me he had some collectable books he wanted me to sell for him.”