The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

to my hometown, Chief Ciders and I had clashed numerous times. At first, I thought the chief was nothing more than a tool of the small-minded town council, a body ruled by the manicured fist of Marjorie Binder-Smith, who had no love for me, my aunt, or our bookshop. But I’d since revised that opinion. Ciders’s more recent animosity, I decided, was simply the result of my tendency to show up his police force.
    Fortunately, Eddie Franzetti was different. Married with children, Eddie had escaped working in the family’s pizza restaurant by joining Quindicott’s finest instead. After a rocky start on the force, Eddie had helped me close a case or two. Consequently, when the Staties made him an offer, Ciders was forced to recognize his value and promote him to second-in-command.
    Eddie was more than just deputy chief, however, he was also my late older brother’s best friend. I was happy to call him my friend, too; and that was why, whenever I needed a cop, I called Eddie.
    He answered on my second ring. “Pen! I know what you’re calling about. I’ve been meaning to get to the store and pick up those Narnia books you’re holding for my kids. I just haven’t had the time—”
    “This isn’t about my business, Eddie. It’s about yours,” I interrupted. “There’s trouble at Miss Timothea Todd’s house. The address is 169 Larchmont—”
    “I know where Miss Todd lives,” he said, a note of irritation in his voice. “What’s the problem this time?”
    This time? Jack echoed in my head.
    “She’s dead,” I told Eddie, ignoring Jack.
    “Aww, no,” Eddie said. “When?”
    “When? I don’t know. I just found her—”
    At least thirty minutes, but no more than three hours. That’s my estimation by the look of the remains. Tell him.
    I did. “But, like I said, Eddie,” I added, “I just found her. Listen . . . I think she was murdered.”
    “Are you there now?”
    “Yes . . . I’m outside her house, in front of my car.”
    “Stay there, I’m on the way. And do not touch anything.”
    “I know! I’m not a rookie anymore, you know—”
    Eddie hung up before I had a chance to ask about his previous encounters with Miss Todd. I closed the phone, shoved it into my shoulder bag, and thought again about that freezing curtain of air in Miss Todd’s living room.
    “There was definitely a cold spot in there,” I told Jack. “In Miss Todd’s house, I mean.”
    Yeah? And?
    “And nothing. That’s just what the phenomenon is called. I mean, according to those occult books in my store.”
    It’s a creaky old house. Could be all you felt was a draft.
    “You sure are changing your tune from a minute ago, when you ordered me to scram. Weren’t you picking up anything? You know, like a psychic vibration of a fellow spirit?”
    I wanted you out of there for your own good. It’s not too long a crap shoot that the murderer’s still in that house.
    “Well, listen, okay. Unexplained cold spots are found in haunted places. You’re a cold spot, for goodness’ sake.”
    Now ain’t that a rotten apple to throw.
    Jack’s irritation was easy to hear, and he got a whole lot colder. “You know, you have an awful lot of attitude for a ghost.”
    Wailing sirens cut off any reply from Jack. A few moments later, a Quindicott police cruiser was bouncing up the mansion’s cobblestone drive, trailed by the volunteer fire department’s ambulance. Jack noticed the ambulance the same moment I did.
    Your second meat wagon of the day.
    “Second?”
    What, you already forgot about that hearse train you caboosed onto?
    “Oh, yes.” I closed my eyes, remembering the electrocuted electrician, and took a breath. Death, death, and more death, I thought, then exhaled. “I’m really glad Eddie’s here.”
    But when the cruiser stopped behind my compact, it was Chief Wade Ciders’s bulky body that emerged from the passenger seat. His even bigger nephew, Deputy Bull McCoy, climbed out the driver’s side.
    “Where’s Eddie Franzetti?!” I blurted out, rather undiplomatically.
    Ciders’s black boots clomped across the cobblestones until his giant shadow fell over me. He wasn’t fat so much as large, with a broad nose, a jowly face, and a barrel chest that strained the shirt of his blue uniform.
    The chief had been on the QPD going on thirty years now. He’d been happily married to the same bride for even longer. He had grown children and small grandchildren. But the pettiness of small-town law enforcement