The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

closet, and it was filled with state-of-the-art electronics devices including three surveillance screens, a sound system, CD and DVD players, all operated by a complex control panel.
    “What the hell is this?” Seymour demanded.
    Leo touched the control panel and the television screens sprang to life with black-and-white images of the mansion’s interior. “Hey, that’s my living room!” Seymour said. “And there’s the bedroom and the hall.”
    I touched another button and the secret room echoed with the same sobbing and rushing sounds Seymour and I heard inside the mansion the other night. I quickly switched the CD player off.
    Seymour pushed a button labeled VAPOR and we watched the den inside Todd Mansion fill with fog. I toggled the switch beside it, and the flickering image of Gideon Wexler appeared on the surveillance screen. We watched the ghost float across the room and then vanish.
    “A projector’s hidden somewhere in the den,” Leo explained. “That’s just an old newsreel image of some guy projected onto the mist to make it look like a ghost.”
    “Where did this stuff come from?” I wondered aloud.
    “From my store,” Leo said, frowning. “I special ordered this equipment last year for one of my best customers.”
    “You mean Mrs. Fromsette?” I asked.
    Leo shook his head. “It was Jim Wolfe.”
    Eddie laughed.
    “What’s so funny?” I asked.
    “Leo just blew my big reveal.”
    “What are you talking about?” I demanded.
    “Remember those prints I lifted from the undercarriage of Seymour’s VW? Well, I got a beauty of a thumbprint off the brake cylinder that was punctured and the state just confirmed the match. Apparently Mr. Wolfe has a prior arrest and his prints were on file. I was going to take him in anyway.”
     
    TEN MINUTES LATER, we were back inside the mansion. Once Leo knew what to look for, the electronics hidden throughout the house were easy to locate.
    The smoke machine was tucked away in the attic, the mist pumped into the den through a pipe in the chandelier. The projector was in the light fixture, too. The cold spot was created by a hidden air-conditioning unit, and dozens of tiny speakers were secreted in the house, four of them inside the columns of the four-poster bed.
    “That’s why you heard the noise before I did, Pen,” Seymour said. The four of us were standing in the master bedroom. “Those speakers directed the noise right to your ears.”
    “This is so twisted,” I said. “All these devices just to drive poor Miss Todd crazy.”
    “It takes days of work to set this stuff up,” Leo said. “And you can’t do it in secret.”
    “Jim Wolfe had almost two weeks to do it!” I recalled the story Mr. Stoddard had told me in his Millstone office. “After his backhoe ‘accidentally’ ruptured the gas main on Larchmont late last summer, Miss Todd was evacuated. While she was suffering a mini-breakdown in a Newport hotel, Wolfe was installing the equipment to push her over the edge.”
    Leo shook his head. “Two weeks isn’t enough time to dig that tunnel or build a secret room.”
    “I think the house’s previous owner, Gideon Wexler, built all of that back in the 1940s,” I said, remembering Jack’s case and Fiona’s research. “I’m betting he tricked his followers using the same basic ploys, just with older equipment.”
    Seymour scratched his head. “What did Jim Wolfe expect to gain from this stunt?”
    “Wolfe had to be working with someone or for someone,” I said. “Most likely Mrs. Fromsette.”
    “Why not the Lindsey-Tilton group?” Seymour asked.
    “The haunting was too personal,” I said. “The newsreel footage of Wexler tells me someone who knew Miss Todd intimately was involved. It has to be Mrs. Fromsette. Remember that trail leading to her house? It wasn’t overgrown. Someone’s been using it.”
    Eddie frowned and folded his arms. “And how are we going to prove that she paid off Wolfe?”
    I thought about the vicious tricks Mrs. Fromsette pulled on her sister and decided the woman needed a taste of her own medicine.
    “I have an idea, but I’m going to need help to pull it off.”
    “What are you thinking, Pen?” Eddie asked.
    “I’m thinking that turnabout is fair play.”
     
    IT WAS NEARLY three A.M. when we finally made the call using Buy the Book’s telephone. Mrs. Fromsette’s phone rang once, twice, three times.
    “You’re sure this is the right number?” I whispered.
    Seymour nodded.