The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

that whatever this boy did back here wouldn’t matter anyway. These were Jack’s memories, his long-past memories. This little boy, whoever he was, might very well be deceased already. Feeling like an idiot, I closed my eyes.
    “Easy, baby,” Jack whispered. “We’re here for a reason, remember? Your case—and mine.”
    My eyelids lifted. “This boy is your case?”
    Jack nodded.
    “What’s his name?”
    “John James Conway’s the name,” the boy announced loudly between us. “But you can call me J. J.”
    I looked back down at him. “Okay, J. J. Maybe you can tell me what I’m doing here?”
    “That’s easy. I just hired Mr. Shepard for a finder’s job.”
    I smiled at Jack. “Lost dog?”
    Jack shook his head. “Mother.”
    My face fell. “His mother’s missing?”
    “She went off to work two weeks ago and never came home,” J. J. said.
    “Where does she work?” I asked.
    “At a school uptown. She’s a teacher.”
    “What school exactly?”
    The boy shrugged. “She never told me.”
    “Where’s your dad, J. J.?”
    “What dad?”
    I met Jack’s eyes above J. J.’s head. “What do I need to know here?”
    “His mother’s a schoolteacher. She went off to work uptown, never came home. Kid doesn’t know where she teaches. Mother never told him.”
    My lips pursed. “I know that already. The boy just informed me of those facts.”
    “And?” Jack took another drag on his cigarette, blew it out. “What’s your next step?”
    “ My next step? This was your case.”
    “Not anymore, baby. If you’re bucking for partner, you’re going to have to show me what you got.”

CHAPTER 11
     
    Lost and Found
     
    Listen, darling, tomorrow I’ll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don’t worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.
    —Detective Nick Charles to his wife, Nora, in The Thin Man , Dashiell Hammett, 1933
     
     
     
     
    I DRUMMED MY white-gloved fingers on the dull green countertop and considered my options. “Just tell me one thing, Jack. What does this case have to do with what’s happening in my time?”
    “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He picked up his coffee cup and threw me a wink. “If you’re up to it.”
    “Who’s she ?”
    Once again, it was a high-pitched voice asking the question, only this time it wasn’t a boy’s. This voice belonged to a grown woman—very grown.
    Standing in front of Jack, holding a plate of roast beef and mashed potatoes, was a waitress wearing a pink apron. The woman was young—probably mid-twenties. She was also quite tall and, much like our Zara Underwood standee, built with conspicuously above-average lung capacity. Beneath her little pink waitress hat, her face was roundish, her features handsome. She wore her light blond hair in curls, and her big blue eyes were presently glaring at me.
    It was painfully obvious the waitress was unhappy to see some other female on the receiving end of a Jack Shepard wink. She banged the plate of food down on the counter in front of the PI and pointed.
    “She your sister or something?”
    Jack tossed an amused glance at me. “Or something.”
    The waitress scowled, sizing me up.
    “That sure smells good,” J. J. announced, eyeballing the Blue Plate special.
    Jack observed the boy. “You hungry?”
    J. J. nodded.
    “Well, that’s good. ’Cause, come to think of it . . .” Jack scratched the back of his head. “I’m not that hungry after all.”
    “No foolin’?”
    “No foolin’. So help me out, kid.” Jack slid the plate over. “Take this off my hands, will ya?”
    “Sure thing, Mr. Shepard!”
    J. J. dug in, shoving the potatoes into his mouth like he hadn’t had a hot meal in days. I met Jack’s eyes again. He shrugged, looked away.
    The waitress was still standing in front of him. She propped her shapely hip and put a hand on it. “So what about those big plans of yours, Jack Shepard? The ones you had for us tonight?”
    Jack glanced at my raised eyebrow and shifted on his stool. “We’ll have to make it another night, Birdie. See, I just took on a case.” He gestured in the general direction of J. J. and me.
    “Oh.” Birdie’s arm fell off her hip and her scowl relaxed into the semblance of a sympathetic frown. She lowered her voice. “The dame and her kid your new clients, huh?”
    “Yeah, Birdie, something like that.”
    J. J. snickered between bites of roast beef. Jack lightly elbowed him. The waitress caught the