The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

head.
    “What’s so funny?” I silently snapped.
    The cardboard dame’s holding the rod. But she’s the one who got covered!
    “After the Spinners left,” Bonnie said in a rush, “I tried to undo it and pull it all off, but those ladies are really good at making knots! I didn’t want to risk damaging the standee, so I just left it—”
    “It’s okay.” I patted her shoulder and dug out my keys. “Spencer, unlock the stock room and bring me a box cutter.”
    “Okay, Mom,” Spencer said, stifling giggles as he hurried away.
    Bonnie went home, and Spencer returned to the front of the shop not only with the box cutter but also with an arm-load of Bang, Bang, Baby .
    “The dump’s almost empty, Mom.”
    “Thanks, honey. I’ll take those.” I grabbed the stack of hardbacks. “Now go upstairs and get ready for bed. You have a big day tomorrow. Your bus for camp leaves at nine.”
    “I know, Mom.”
    When Spencer was finally out of earshot, I faced my aunt. “Why didn’t you tell me there were complaints about the standee?”
    “Because they weren’t worth wasting my breath over. This is a mystery bookstore, not a monastery. The standee’s racy, but so what? So is the book. So are a lot of the crime novels in our stock. That standee is appropriate advertising for the product. It lets readers know what’s on sale and what to expect from the book they purchase.”
    I shook my head as I bent down to refill the display. “It is a terrible book.”
    “Maybe to you, Penelope. But did you know that Bud is reading it right now and enjoying it?”
    “He is? Really?”
    “Yes! He thinks it’s a hoot. And before you let a few opinionated customers tell you how to run your business, I suggest you check today’s receipts. We’ve sold more copies of Bang, Bang Baby than any other hardcover front-list book in the store.”
    “You’re joking.”
    Sadie folded her arms. “I’ve been in this business a lot of years, dear. And when a loudmouthed customer complains about a book I’m carrying, do you know what I ask myself? ‘Sadie, are you a literary critic or a bookseller?’”
    “But look at her!” I pointed to the yarn-wrapped cardboard. “She’s practically mummified!”
    Sadie shrugged. “We’ve gotten complaints about our new occult books, too. Over the years I’ve gotten complaints about any number of authors: James Ellroy, Philip Pullman, even Mickey Spillane. Do you remember what CNN said about Spillane the day he died?”
    “Yes, I remember,” I said with a sigh. “Nobody liked him—except the reading public.”
    “And our reading public—our customers—are the ones who’ll tell us what they want through their purchases.”
    “But the people who complained about Bang, Bang Baby are our customers, too!”
    “And they’re perfectly free to purchase what they like to read. In this store everyone is, and no one will ever be made to feel bad about reading whatever speaks to them, whatever makes them happy. Did you know a St. Francis Ph.D. candidate once asked me in serious, earnest tones why I sell cozy mysteries?”
    “What?!”
    Sadie snorted. “Apparently this young man hadn’t heard that Agatha Christie is one of the most widely read authors in the English language, and the genre in which she excelled is still very much alive and loved, not to mention one of our most popular sales categories.”
    She shook her head and continued. “Should I stop selling the Yarn Spinners their favorite books because some young man, paying oodles of money to read a professor’s syllabus, has an opinion about what some of my very best customers ‘should’ be reading?”
    “Of course not. That’s ridiculous.”
    “I’m not saying Zara Underwood and her ghostwriter are geniuses, or even that this year’s roster of bestselling authors will stand the test of time. But, you know, the novel itself was once considered a ‘disreputable’ genre; and some of the greatest books ever written—in my humble opinion—would be dismissed today as ‘popular’ fiction, given the literary theories of the moment. And I do mean moment, dear.”
    “You don’t have to tell me. Brainert Parker’s made the point dozens of times. He still hasn’t gotten over the Norton Anthology leaving out Robert Louis Stevenson from 1968 to 2000.”
    “My point exactly! Academia can be as changeable and trendy as the rest of society in what it decides to deem worthy, and people who go out of their way to make