The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

ignoring the ghost.
    I pushed at Ciders, but it was my flat leather sandals that went skidding across the polished hardwood. Then Seymour charged and I was shoved in the opposite direction. Before I knew it, I was pressed against Chief Ciders’s chest, his cold badge digging into my cheek. Somewhere in my head, I heard the ghost cursing.
    What do you think you’re doing, sister?! Get the hell outta there!
    “That’s enough, guys! Break it up!” I yelled.
    The men finally broke their clinch so suddenly I nearly dropped to the hardwood. Ciders reached out to steady me. Meanwhile, to my surprise, Seymour turned his rage on me.
    “Don’t think I’m going to forgive you, either, Pen! You’re the rat fink who fingered me! Bull told me. Making up a crazy story about how I was covered in blood. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
    Aw, blow it out your mailbag, you stupid—
    “How could I know what you were covered in, Seymour! You didn’t even stop after I almost ran you down. You just took off! Why did you run away?”
    Seymour blinked at my question. “It . . . It was that darn pizza,” he said, the bluster going out of him. “I brought four slices up to the mansion today. Two for me, two for Miss Todd.”
    “You brought lunch for her?” I locked eyes with Seymour. “Just how well did you know Miss Todd?”
    He shrugged. “Pretty well now. I’ve been delivering her mail for a decade. At first I never saw her. Then one day, a few years back, I delivered something she had to sign for. Miss Todd answered the door with a book in her hand, and we got to talking about it.”
    “What book?” Ciders demanded.
    Seymour swallowed hard. “ The Boston Strangler .”
    Ciders narrowed his eyes on Seymour. “Didn’t the Boston Strangler break into homes and kill old women?”
    “Yeah,” Bull said. “The Boston Strangler killed a whole bunch of women, Chief. Tony Curtis didn’t even know he was the strangler until Henry Fonda hypnotized him. I saw it in the movie. He was like some kind of split personality.” Bull lowered his voice and sidled up to his uncle. “Maybe Tarnish here’s got a split personality, too. Did you think of that? Maybe that’s why he can’t remember killing the old lady!”
    Oh, brother, Jack said.
    “Oh, jeez,” Eddie muttered.
    Ciders rolled his eyes. “That’s enough, Bull.”
    I stepped closer to Seymour. “Tell us more.”
    That’s it, baby. Get some useful information out of him.’Cause Chief Cornpone here sure can’t.
    “Tell you more about what?” Seymour said. “I don’t understand.”
    “You were saying that Miss Todd talked about books with you,” I said. “How often did you two chat?”
    He shrugged. “Two or three times a week. Sometimes we’d have lunch together. We traded books, too. She was a very nice person.” Seymour shook his head. “I’m really sorry to see her gone. I’m going to miss her.”
    “But what happened today?” I pressed.
    Seymour sighed. “When Miss Todd didn’t answer the door, I let myself in and put the mail on the table in the foyer and left. I figured she was sleeping late or something. She did that sometimes when she stayed up late to see an old movie on cable.”
    “You said you let yourself in?” I pressed. “So she left the door unlocked?”
    Seymour nodded. “She has a mailbox by the front gate, but she doesn’t like to walk down the drive. So as a favor, I always take the mail to her door. She’s usually there to answer, but she told me that if she ever doesn’t answer, I was supposed to just set the mail on the foyer table for her. Frankly, I never bought the reason she gave me for not answering the door.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean she told me that she couldn’t always hear the doorbell and that’s why I was supposed to leave the mail without seeing her, but . . .” Seymour shrugged. “I just think that some days Miss Todd wanted company and some days she didn’t. On the days she didn’t, she’d just leave the door open and ignore the bell. No big deal.”
    “When you opened the door and stepped inside, did you hear anything in the house?” I asked. “Did you see anyone at all in the vicinity?”
    Seymour shook his head. “No. And that’s nothing new. Larchmont’s like a ghost town when I deliver the mail in the late morning. The hotshots are already at work, their kids are either in school or at some exclusive horsey summer camp, and the ladies who lunch don’t exactly do their