The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

Jack.”
    How the heck did they even discover the body after all those years?
    “Seymour decided to redecorate the master bedroom,” I whispered to the ghost. “He had to move that four-poster platform bed into the other bedroom to paint. That was when he found Miss Todd’s secret diary, hidden with Gideon Wexler’s corpse.”
    Talk about ghoulish.
    “I returned the diary to Seymour yesterday,” Eddie told us. “I know Miss Todd wanted him to have it.”
    “She did,” I said. “I believe that was the book she mentioned in her will. She must have known Seymour would eventually find Wexler’s body along with her written confession.”
    “No offense to the authors on your shelves, ladies, but I think that diary was the most fascinating thing I’ve ever read.”
    “I’d have to agree,” Sadie said, shaking her head.
    So did I. Miss Todd’s story was downright operatic. According to her diary, Timothea lived in thrall of Gideon Wexler since the day they met, despite the fact that the man was thirty years her senior. Wilomena also loved Wexler. But the romantic triangle was not the reason for the rift between the half-sisters.
    During their time together in Newport, Timothea learned of Gideon Wexler’s guilt in engineering the 1947 Long Island fire that killed J. J. Conway’s mother and seven other innocent people. Just like Todd Mansion, Wexler had rigged his Long Island manor with an elaborate setup to fool guests into believing the house was inhabited by spirits.
    Ectoplasmic mists, ghostly apparitions, weird lights and sounds had been set up on the Long Island estate courtesy of Frankie Papps, who used his knowledge of stagecraft to create the effects. Frankie recruited Mabel Conway to act as a phony medium for Wexler, too. But their arrangement fell apart when Frankie and Mabel threatened to expose Wexler unless he gave them the big payoff he was continually holding out on them.
    When the couple went out to his Long Island house to collect, Wexler drugged and imprisoned them until the time was right to stage the fire. I shuddered to think of the horror J. J.’s mother experienced as the flames roared around her.
    Because Timothea was intimate with the man, she finally realized what kind of monster Wexler really was. She knew it was only a matter of time before he killed again. To prevent that from happening, she placed enough poison in her lover’s tea to kill him on the spot. In those days, when a fiftysomething man, who pushed the scale at three hundred pounds, keeled over dead, no one questioned it. No one but Timothea’s half-sister, Wilomena Field. She knew what really happened and made a pact with her sister to never reveal the truth. The two never spoke again—about that or anything else.
    In the end, Miss Todd’s own guilty conscience made her a prisoner. She served a life sentence for murder in her own home. And after years of isolation, the fake haunting unhinged her completely. She really believed that she was battling the ghost of Gideon Wexler, who’d finally risen from the grave to exact revenge.
    “Well, Eddie,” I said. “Truth is stranger than fiction, and Miss Todd’s case is certainly strange. I can’t believe you kept it out of the news.”
    “I had plenty of help, Pen. Councilman Lockhart. The chief. Doc Rubino. Even Bull McCoy. Nobody wants Quindicott to become a stomping ground for lunatic spiritualists or television spook hunters.”
    You can say that again, pal!
    Eddie glanced at his watch. “Well, I’d better hit the road.”
    I walked Deputy Chief Franzetti to the door. “How’s Zara Underwood these days?”
    He laughed. “She’s wearing a police uniform now, courtesy of the policewomen on staff. You should stop by the station and check her out.”
    “I will. Good luck in Providence, Eddie.” I unlocked the door to let him out.
    Admit the truth, baby. You couldn’t wait to get rid of Miss Underpants.
    I grinned, happy to hear Jack’s voice again, happy he was with me still.
    “Well, you know, Zara sold a lot of books for us, and she even helped solve a crime or two. And these days the public’s pretty unforgiving: It’s out with the old, in with the new.”
    Guess it’s only a matter of time before you toss me aside for some blue-eyed Viking with a dimpled chin and an easy line.
    “Never, Jack.”
    From across the floor, Spencer called to me. “The new standee’s finished. Check it out!”
    Yikes! Who’s that Alvin?
    “That’s no Alvin,