The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

“confessing.”
    Of course, I had no intention of incriminating my friend. So I simply sat quietly in the corner, attempting to melt into the flocked and flowered Victorian wallpaper. (The entire dining room set appeared to be Victorian era. I was no antiques expert, but the heavy, carved, painstakingly polished pieces looked quite expensive to me. Miss Todd was certainly leaving behind a small fortune in this grand house and its contents.)
    “You’ve got to believe me, Ciders,” Seymour went on. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t even know Miss Todd was dead until Deputy Dawg over here snatched me up and tossed me into his Batmobile.”
    “Deputy Dawg. Real funny, Tarnish.” But Bull wasn’t laughing. He was glaring. Then he was crossing his overly muscled arms and flexing his bowling-ball biceps, which I suspected contained more brain cells than his actual brain pan.
    “Look, we know you did it,” Ciders stated.
    “Yeah, Tarnish,” Bull added after a substantial lag. “So why don’t you just ’fess up and make it easy on yourself?”
    “ ’Fess up?” Seymour repeated. “Interesting interrogation technique, Bull. Where’d you learn it? The Disney Channel?”
    The hulking deputy stared daggers at Seymour, obviously straining—and failing—to produce a retort. With an exhale of disgust, Seymour shifted his gaze to Quindicott’s chief of police.
    “I’d like to lawyer up now.”
    Ciders blinked, surprised. “Who’s your lawyer?”
    “I don’t have one.”
    Ciders’s jaw worked. “I liked it better when you were threatening to report me to the Postmaster General.”
    I silently groaned. “Are you listening to this, Jack?”
    I’m with you, doll. Don’t panic.
    “I’m not panicking,” I told the ghost. “I’m just frustrated with the chief. His ‘interrogation’ is going nowhere.”
    Seymour tried to rise again, but Bull McCoy stepped up and pushed him back into the chair. “Didn’t you hear the chief? Sit!”
    “Check your gorilla, Ciders,” Seymour snapped. “I didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t have to take any brutality from Barney Fife on steroids over here.”
    “He isn’t hurting you, Tarnish.”
    “Says who? In my opinion, being in Bull’s presence is cruel and unusual punishment.”
    “Stop ducking my questions,” Ciders said. “We’ve already determined you were in this house earlier today. You’re Miss Todd’s mailman, and the mail was delivered, which means you were probably the last person to see Miss Todd alive.”
    “I was here, but I didn’t see Timothea. Not today,” Seymour insisted.
    Ciders bent down until his broad nose was an inch from Seymour’s. “Did the old lady piss you off, Tarnish? Did she complain about lousy mail delivery, maybe?”
    Seymour shook his head. “Miss Todd was a nice person. She never complained about anything—”
    “Did the struggle begin in the foyer? Why did you drag Miss Todd into the living room? So no one could see you while you strangled her to death?”
    Seymour’s eyes bulged. “You’re crazy, Chief. I didn’t do a thing to Miss Todd. You’ve got to believe me!”
    “Explain the bloodstain on your uniform then,” Ciders barked.
    “I told you already,” Seymour said. “I told you ten times. That’s not a bloodstain!”
    Ciders folded his arms. “It’s clear to me the initial altercation broke out in the foyer.”
    Not to me.
    “What?” I asked Jack. “You don’t think the altercation began in the foyer?”
    No. I’m not so sure there ever was an altercation in the foyer.
    “I don’t understand. You saw the mess. The mail was everywhere and that little antique table was knocked over.”
    But there was no blood in the foyer or on the floor leading to Miss Todd. There was no blood anywhere but on the corpse itself. Meanwhile, look at that open window, doll. See the curtains? See the way they’re blowin’ around in the wind?
    “Yeah, it’s blustery today—” I closed my eyes. “Oh, God. The wind.”
    It’s possible there was no struggle. Don’t you remember what you did before you went in the house?
    “I retied my ponytail.”
    Because the wind was so strong.
    “Right.”
    Well, if the door latch didn’t click properly, a strong gust could have blown the old lady’s doors in, knocked down the mail, and overturned the little table.
    “But why wouldn’t Miss Todd have latched her doors properly? Unless . . . maybe the killer was leaving in a hurry and didn’t close