The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

motion, he swung the bulky pillowcase at Jack’s gun. Jack reared back and in the second it took to regain his balance, the young man vaulted for the apartment’s front door. Out in the hall, J. J. stuck his leg out. The burglar tripped, sprawling across the cold concrete. He got up a split second later.
    By now Jack had recovered. “Stop!” he yelled. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
    The young man didn’t stop—but he didn’t get away clean, either. During his fall, the pillowcase had spilled its contents, and he didn’t have time to gather anything up. He raced for the stairs. Jack stepped into the hall, leveled his gun at the intruder’s leg, and fired. The shot just missed, lodging into the back wall while the intruder disappeared into the stairwell.
    Jack followed with surprising speed, forcing his bad leg to move faster than it had on Third Avenue’s sidewalk. I kicked off my peep-toed pumps and ran after him. By the time I reached the front steps of the apartment house, however, Jack was already holstering his weapon.
    “Where did the guy go?” I asked between deep breaths.
    “Getaway car.”
    “What?!”
    “He sprinted a block”—Jack pointed up the avenue—“then jumped in the back of a black Packard.”
    “Did you get a license plate?”
    “Half of it.”
    “The getaway car makes no sense. I mean, for a bank robbery maybe. But that apartment’s not exactly Fort Knox. What could there be to steal that’s of any real value?”
    Jack folded his arms. “Good reasoning, baby. What else do you think? What did you notice?”
    “The door wasn’t damaged. The burglar had a key.”
    “Or he was an expert at picking locks.”
    “But why that lock? Why not any other apartment?”
    “Let’s go.”
    Jack led me back to the basement where we found J. J. on his hands and knees in the hallway, stuffing items back into the pillowcase. We brought the case and J. J. back into the apartment and spread the almost-stolen booty on the scuffed wooden table.
    I expected to see cheap things that could be pawned—clothes, hats, shoes. What I saw instead left me gaping in confusion: tarot cards, a Ouija board, a large purple fur-lined cape, books about fortune-telling and séances, a cheap crystal ball, a costume jewelry tiara, and one more thing—
    “Oh, my God. I don’t believe it.” I picked up the polished steel dagger. On the hilt was a familiar embossed design—the same design I’d seen on the wrought-iron gate of the late Miss Timothea Todd’s Larchmont Avenue mansion.
    I ran my hand along the raised lines of the five-pointed star with the fleur-de-lis at its center. “It’s exactly like the one Leo Rollins handed me beside the highway. Except this one’s brand-new. It isn’t an antique.”
    “Not yet,” Jack said.
    “Who’s Leo Rollins?” J. J. asked.
    I glanced up at Jack.
    “Nobody, kid,” he replied. “Did you get a look at the bag man?”
    J. J. nodded.
    “Did you know him?”
    “Nope. Never saw him before. Did you shoot him, Mr. Shepard?”
    “Naw,” Jack said. “Too many bystanders.”
    “Awww, too bad!”
    Jack pointed at the occult items spread out on the table. “So what’s with all the fortune-telling gewgaws?”
    “You said exactly what I was thinking,” I murmured.
    Jack smirked. “Ain’t that a switch.”
    “This is my mom’s stuff,” J. J. said.
    I frowned. “I thought you said your mother was a schoolteacher.”
    “She is,” J. J. said. “But about a month ago, she said she hit her head and now she can see weird stuff, like promotions of the future.”
    “Don’t you mean premonitions of the future?”
    J. J. rolled his eyes. “That’s what I said, didn’t I? Mom told me she can talk to dead people now. You know, ghosts and stuff.”
    I exchanged a glance with Jack (sounds familiar, huh?), then picked up one of the occult books on séances, which included illustrations, case histories, and step-by-step instructions on conducting them.
    “My mom said the books were going to help her learn more about her new abilities and help her get better at using them. Some other people were helping her get better at it, too.”
    “People?” I shut the book. “What people?”
    J. J. shrugged. “She never told me. But she did practice an awful lot with the crystal ball and the Ouija board.”
    I examined the items, one by one, but there were no clues to where they came from—no names or addresses. I pulled Jack aside. “The best lead is still the