The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

own yard work. Sometimes I’ll see a maid or a gardener, but there wasn’t anyone on the street during my rounds today.”
    “So what happened after you left Miss Todd’s house?”
    Seymour scratched his head. “Well, I didn’t leave right away. I was really hungry by then, and that delicious pizza smell was driving me nuts, so I sat down under that big oak tree in her front yard and ate my lunch. And then I ate the cheese off of one of Miss Todd’s slices—waste not, want not, right?”
    “You said you were really hungry?”
    “Starving.”
    “Then you must have been in a hurry to eat, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Were you in enough of a hurry to neglect latching Miss Todd’s door properly?”
    Seymour closed his eyes. “Oh, damn. I did that once before.”
    “Okay, so that’s why the doors were opened. The wind must have blown them in and knocked down the mail and overturned the little table.”
    “That’s a stretch, Mrs. McClure,” Ciders said.
    Tell him, doll.
    “There wasn’t any blood in the foyer—not on the mail or the floor leading up to the corpse. So the ‘signs’ of a struggle are suspect if there’s another explanation, right? Wouldn’t a defense attorney argue that?”
    Ciders scowled. “You’re reaching.”
    I turned back to Seymour. “What happened after you ate your lunch?”
    “I was full and it was a hot day,” Seymour said. “I kind of nodded off. When a squirrel ran across my chest, I finally woke up.”
    “And that sauce on your uniform?” Eddie prompted.
    “The squirrel spooked me, and I rolled over Miss Todd’s two slices. Got the sauce all over me. But that isn’t why I was running—”
    Bull McCoy snorted. “What? You’re afraid of squirrels?”
    “When I woke up, I realized I was late making the rest of my deliveries. Real late. Last month, I got slapped with a reprimand, and I didn’t need another one on my record.”
    Seymour looked at his Wonder Woman watch, then openly glared at Bull McCoy. “I’m still not done with my deliveries, thanks to Deputy Dawg here.”
    Bull’s face flushed. “Watch your mouth—”
    Seymour smirked. “Bite me, Bull!”
    Bull stepped forward—and suddenly there I was again, mashed between two angry men. This time the ghost wasn’t cursing. He was laughing.
    “You’re not helping, Jack!”
    Oh, yeah? Watch this—
    A brisk, cold breeze suddenly banged the dining room window so hard the two men started. I heard another bang and realized Jack had blown in the front doors, too. (Nothing like making your point!)
    “Calm down!” I shouted, taking advantage of the momentary surprise. I pushed against them until I held the two at arm’s length. “You have to get a grip, Seymour.” Then I shifted my gaze to Bull McCoy and Chief Ciders. “And you both know Seymour’s innocent. Why don’t you let him go?”
    Chief Ciders shook his head. “Pizza sauce or no pizza sauce, he’s still my prime suspect in this murder—”
    “Sorry, Chief, but I don’t think so.”
    The deep voice that interrupted was new to the gathering. All eyes shifted to the doorway, where Dr. Randall Rubino was now standing.
    A divorced Bostonian, Rubino had moved to Newport to start his life over. A few months back, he’d agreed to remain on-call for Ciders whenever the town of Quindicott needed an official medical ruling on a death. Then just a few weeks ago, Rubino decided to make another move—to Quindicott itself. Now he lived on the other end of Larchmont Avenue, where he was preparing to take over the practice of our local GP, who was retiring to the Florida Keys in another month.
    Rubino wasn’t anything like the town’s longtime physician, a short, lean, balding sixty-eight-year-old. The young doctor was more like one of those physicians you saw on the daytime soaps—tall, fortyish, with darkly handsome features and a toothpaste-commercial smile. Between his good looks and impressive profession, he’d become a pretty popular guy with some of the locals (most of them female).
    Today Dr. Rubino was dressed in wrinkled, salt-stained khakis and scuffed deck shoes. The man had a private boat and a passion for fishing, so I wasn’t surprised when Eddie mentioned picking him up at Mullet Point, which had some of the best ocean fishing in the state. Rubino’s tanned face had just the right amount of weathering, and his wavy brown hair had been raked by the wind.
    Whoa , I thought, the man even smells like the sea.
    You mean he reeks