The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

to pay, Mr. Shepard. It’s not dirty or nothing, neither.”
    The kid gaped at Jack then, his big, brown eyes all puppy-dog expectant. Jack exhaled long and hard, drained his coffee cup, and set it down.
    “Listen, son, I’m not in the business of finding lost poodles. Tack up some posters, maybe you’ll get lucky.”
    “I didn’t lose a dog, mister. What I lost was a person. She walked right out the door two weeks ago and never came back.”
    “Oh, yeah? And who would that be?”
    “My mother.”

CHAPTER 1
     
    Final Destination
     
    In the long run, we are all dead.
    —John Maynard Keynes
     
     
     
     
    Quindicott, Rhode Island
June 9, present day
     
    “OH, NO. DON’T tell me . . .”
    Since I’d crawled out of bed at seven this morning, I’d encountered setbacks galore: a stubbed toe, a misplaced wallet, a malfunctioning toaster, no milk for my son’s cereal, and a kitty litter shortage. That was only the first hour.
    Spencer was leaving for summer camp tomorrow and after I’d stuffed his clothes into our old washer, he told me about a list of things he was supposed to pack and didn’t have. So I was off, shopping for a second pair of swim trunks, rubber flip-flops for the shared camp showers, and sunscreen with an SPF high enough to block a nuclear winter—not to mention the milk and kitty litter we’d just run short on.
    (Until I got back, Bookmark had to make due with piddling on this week’s Quindicott Bulletin , which was actually a pretty good use for it, considering the rumor-as-journalism philosophy of the town paper.)
    Then Aunt Sadie called my cell to inform me the store just got saddled with a triple shipment of stripper-turned-television-actress Zara Underwood’s debut crime novel, Bang, Bang, Baby.
    I knew the book was sailing on celebrity for most of the country. She received a huge advance, and there was a big, expensive publicity campaign with print and radio ads, but the review galley was written on the level of “See spot run.” And since my customers actually liked to read the books they purchased, I figured we’d be lucky to sell five of the woman’s books, let alone the eighty-four copies the publisher had shipped us mistakenly.
    I raced back to the shop, and while Aunt Sadie rang up customers, I put together the cardboard dump (with the life-size standee of grinning “stripper-turned-actress-turned-writer” Underwood, who was practically wearing nothing but underwear), and then the store phone rang.
    Soft-spoken shut-in Miss Timothea Todd was calling to politely inquire about her June 1 book delivery. It was now June 9, and my aunt felt so badly about the oversight that I’d agreed to do a quick, there-and-back run after our lunchtime business had died down.
    Quick was the operative word until I’d hit the funeral cortege. Now I was trapped in my car watching a long parade of tiny black flags flutter on radio antennas behind a fully loaded hearse. Its final destination (pardon the pun) was the “Old Farm”—what we locals called Quindicott’s nondenominational town cemetery, a manicured area of gentle Rhode Island hills situated between the central district and the secluded mansions of Larchmont Avenue.
    The vast graveyard used to be part of the Montague family farm until the city forefathers bought the land one spring when a terrible fever ripped through the region and there were far too many dead for any one church to handle. (Seymour Tarnish, our shop’s mailman and the local repository for all manner of trivia, insisted the phrase bought the farm actually originated in our little town with that plot purchase.)
    Anyway, since Miss Todd lived on Larchmont, it was my destination—at the moment. I was well aware my final destination would be the Old Farm, too, since Quindicott’s dead had been planted there for going on three centuries now.
    I shifted in my car seat, watching the funeral party wind its way around a bend. All of the vehicles’ headlights were on, a typical funeral procession tradition, but I hadn’t noticed that fact until the caravan rolled under the dappled gray shadows of overhanging dogwoods. Funny, I thought, how something as bright as a headlight can be made to appear invisible by the glare of a sunny day . . .
    As I contemplated tricks of light, beads of sweat formed on my neck and began trickling beneath my blouse. My black-framed glasses slipped down my slick nose. I pushed them back up. My Saturn was more than ten years old.