The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

had taken its toll on the man (or at least that was my theory).
    Decades of dealing with routine drunk and disorderlies, traffic accidents, and teen vandalism would have been enough to dull the edge of any gung-ho rookie. But Ciders’s job as chief of police included years of butting heads with loud-mouthed City Hall bureaucrats, every one of whom had an opinion on how he should enforce the town’s ordinances. By now, I could almost understand Ciders’s knee-jerk reaction to any crime scene, serious or trivial: For him, it seemed to come down to how much time the confounded case was going to take away from his fishing trips and card games.
    “I thought Eddie was coming,” I said in a less hysterical tone.
    Adjusting his ten-gallon chief’s hat (the rest of the force had the regular flat-topped kind), Ciders regarded me. “I sent my deputy chief to fetch the medicl ’xaminah . Not that the management of my police pahsonnel is any of yowah business, Mrs. McClu - wah .”
    I winced. Here we go . . .
    Stiffen your spine, baby. This scowling speed-trap jockey has less than half your brains. And don’t get me started on his idiot nephew. That’s who the big jerk is, right? Standing there with that not-too-bright look on his face.
    “Yeah, Jack,” I silently told him. Bull McCoy was essentially Chief Ciders’s 2.0: a much bigger, much younger, much dumber version of the original model.
    Ciders moved closer, until we were literally standing toe to toe. His grizzly-bear frame seemed to blot out the sun. “You said there was a body?”
    “Inside.” I pointed. “In the living room.”
    A pair of paramedics hurried past us, up the steps and across the entryway. They were followed by the stomping black boots of Bull McCoy, who entered Miss Todd’s house with one fist closed on his gun butt. I felt like warning McCoy not to touch anything, but I bit my tongue, deciding that was Chief Ciders’s job.
    I looked up at the tower looming over me, and saw Ciders’s suspicious frown. “You’re pretty far away from your bookstore, Mrs. McClure. What were you doing at Miss Todd’s residence?”
    I told him about the book order and pointed to the box in the backseat. I explained that Miss Todd’s front doors were wide open when I arrived and no one answered the door, even after I rang.
    “That’s when I went inside and found Miss Todd on the floor in the living room.”
    “Did you go upstairs?”
    I shook my head.
    “Did you see anything unusual on Larchmont?”
    “Nothing,” I said immediately.
    “Nothing? Not one thing? Not one person . Think, Mrs. McClure. You’re usually pretty observant,” he said, “if not overly so.”
    Those last few words were muttered with naked condescension. I bristled, and Jack warned: Steady, baby. Just answer the man’s questions.
    “There was one thing,” I told the chief. “Uh, I mean, person. I saw one person on the street.”
    The chief’s bushy gray brows drew together over eyes the color of acid-washed denim. “Who?” he asked.
    “Seymour Tarnish. He sort of ran across the street, right in front of my car. The sun blinded me for a few seconds, and I nearly hit him.”
    “But you didn’t hit him?”
    “No. I stopped just in time.”
    “So you saw Seymour, eh? And he was in some big hurry for no particular reason? Is that what he told you?”
    I frowned. “Seymour didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t stop to talk.”
    “Sounds to me like he was fleeing the scene.”
    “Scene? What are you taking about? I didn’t say he came from this crime scene. He was just in a hurry to cross the street for some reason. He must have been in a hurry, because he didn’t stop.”
    “Uh-huh. Describe his appearance for me, Mrs. McClure. Tell me exactly what you saw. You claim you’re observant. Prove it.”
    “I just caught a glimpse of him, really. He was wearing his blue postal uniform.”
    “Slacks or shorts?”
    “Shorts.”
    “What kind of socks?”
    “White tube.”
    “Anything else you can remember? Think.”
    I shook my head. “Just the stain . . .”
    “What stain?”
    “A red stain on the back of Seymour’s uniform. I was worried for a minute that I’d hit him with my car. But then I realized he wasn’t hurt, because if he was really that badly hurt he wouldn’t have been able to rush off the way he did.”
    Ciders shook his head. “Let me get this straight. You saw a bloodstained man fleeing the scene of a crime, and you don’t think there’s