The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

least she didn’t fall and break her neck,” I murmured, recalling a terrible incident, not too long ago, involving an elderly Newport man.
    I glanced into the dimly lit living room next, past the fireplace with the formal portrait of a heavyset man above it, past the Victorian clutter of dark wood furnishings, brass lamps, lace doilies, and knickknacks—and that was when I saw her.
    Miss Timothea Todd was sprawled in the center of a plush, jewel-toned area rug. Crimson stained the bodice of her nightgown. Her hands, blanched almost as white as her gown, were covered with blood and still frozen into a position clutching at her throat. Bloody foam flecked the woman’s pale, still lips, and her white hair seemed to be standing on end.
    I stumbled backward. “My God, I think she’s . . .”
    No thinking, baby. Look at her color. She’s gone.
    I wanted to run, to flee, but I fought the urge, my fingers curling into hard fists. I took a breath and surveyed the scene. The most upsetting thing about Miss Todd’s corpse was the obvious expression of stark fear on the dead woman’s face. Her sightless eyes were wide and staring; her mouth twisted into a final, frozen scream.
    “Look at her face, Jack,” I whispered into the still room. “It’s like . . . like . . .”
    Yeah, doll. It’s like she’s seen a ghost.

CHAPTER 3
     
    Cold Spot
     
    Death tugs at my ear and says, “Live, I am coming.”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes
     
     
     
     
    I WAS NO stranger to the dearly departed. As a young widow I’d not only seen my share of death, I was beginning to consider myself a magnet for it. Certainly by now I’d witnessed more crime scenes than your average American single mom. So Jack’s next piece of advice seemed almost unnecessary to me—if not a tad insulting.
    Scope the geography, but DO NOT touch a thing.
    “I know,” I told the ghost. “You’re not dealing with a rookie anymore.”
    Don’t get cocky, sister. And get out that Dick Tracy wrist radio of yours.
    “The wha—Oh! The cell phone!”
    Time to call Sheriff Cornpone and his Keystone Kops.
    “Right.” I began fishing around my shoulder bag’s less-than-organized interior.
    Your police chief’s not exactly Boston Blackie, but he’s the closest thing to the law you’ve got in this outpost.
    I shook my head at the sight of the poor woman, my eyes lingering on the blood, the horrible expression of dread frozen on her face.
    “I can’t imagine what Miss Todd experienced that terrified her so much . . .”
    I hate to bring up bad memories, baby. But being homicided myself, I can tell you the business isn’t a barrel of laughs.
    “Right, Jack. Sorry.”
    For what? You didn’t plug me.”
    That was when it happened. As my fingers closed around the cell phone in my bag, a chill enveloped me. It was a sudden, disturbing sensation, and I knew one thing instantly: This was not my ghost. No way. No how.
    Jack Shepard’s spirit, or aura, or whatever you wanted to call his existence, fluctuated around me like a kind of energy field. His typical “presence,” for lack of a better word, felt something like a pleasant spring breeze on a warm summer day. It was always moving, swirling, or pulsing like a beating heart. Jack felt like a field of living energy.
    Sure, he occasionally blasted me with an arctic chill, but it was always accompanied by an almost unconscious understanding of his mood. The cold I was experiencing now felt totally dead, without sensation or communication, like the lifeless chill of a coroner’s morgue slab.
    Whatever this was, it was disturbing. As soon as I felt the anomaly, I cried out. My breath formed a little steamy cloud, as if a New England winter had just descended inside the Second Empire’s front parlor. I quickly moved backward, toward the room’s exit; and within a few yards, the stifling heat of the June afternoon immediately returned. Tentatively, I moved forward again and stretched out my hand. Again I felt the cold air, as if I’d breached an invisible curtain.
    “Oh, my God, Jack. I don’t know what or who this is—”
    Get out of here! NOW!
    Jack didn’t have to tell me twice.
    More than a little unnerved by the bizarre phenomenon—not to mention poor Miss Todd’s corpse—I waited until I was outside before I made the call. But I didn’t dial 911, or put a call through directly to Chief Ciders office. Instead I called my friend Eddie Franzetti, Deputy Chief of the QPD.
    Since I’d moved back