The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

Its air conditioner had sputtered into dysfunction last September, and I had yet to get it fixed.
    I powered down the car’s windows and tied my shoulder-length auburn hair into a ponytail. I was dressed for summer in flat leather sandals, beige capri pants, and a white sleeveless blouse, but now I was really beginning to bake. Sticking my head out the window, I longed for that fresh glass of Del’s frozen lemonade Miss Todd would likely be whipping up for me, and considered passing the slow-mo procession.
    Dogwood was a narrow route with the dark density of Montague’s Woods on its left and the old graveyard’s rustic, gray fieldstone fence on its right. There wasn’t much of a shoulder on either side; and, unfortunately, the painted line running down the middle of the road’s black tarred surface was solid yellow. This area was a no-passing zone.
    But no one was coming toward me in the other lane (at least that I could see), and a quick glance in my rearview mirror told me there wasn’t a police car around, either. In fact, there was no one behind me.
    “Should I risk it?” I turned the wheel a fraction, ready to veer into the oncoming lane and put the hammer down. “Why not?”
    ARE YOU INSANE!
    The explosive masculine voice in my head was accompanied with a sudden decrease in the temperature of the warm car. The double whammy jolted me backward.
    “Jack?” I called to the chilly blast of air. “Is that you?!”
    What do you think?
    “Where’ve you been all day?”
    With you, baby. Every step of the way. You’ve been blowing around Cornpone-cott at full speed so long you didn’t notice.
    “It’s Quindicott, Jack, not Cornpone-cott—and I was beginning to think you’d abandoned me . . .”
    I once seriously considered therapy to sort out whether Jack was an actual ghost (i.e. spook, specter, spirit of a dead guy). I mean, a private detective named Jack Shepard was actually gunned down sixty years ago inside the bookshop my aunt Sadie and I now owned. Not long ago, a major mystery writer had revealed Jack’s fate as a true-crime fact.
    Still . . . I was the only one who ever heard the ghost, which sometimes made me question my sanity. I mean, add it up: I’d always been an admirer of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. So Jack could be the equivalent of an “imaginary friend,” created by my subconscious to help me (say) cope with life’s relentless stresses. In that case, any shrink would probably just reduce Jack down to an alter ego with a fedora, ready to coach me through things my vulnerable self didn’t think it could handle.
    On the other hand, I had to wonder why my vulnerable self would use off-color language and slang so outdated I couldn’t follow it. And if I really was a candidate for (as Jack once put it) “the cackle factory,” would I even be able to rationally consider psychological options?
    Tired of debating myself, I threw in the skeptical towel. There was, however, another key reason why I was determined to keep the dead gumshoe all to myself: my late husband’s wealthy, well-connected family. Ever since my chronically depressed young husband had decided to stop taking his meds and instead take a stroll out the window of our New York high-rise, any hint of crazy from me was going to be enough for the McClures to put me away and ship Spencer off to boarding school (their original “suggestion” for me the summer after my husband killed himself).
    That infuriating advice (more of a threat, really, if you knew the McClures) had been quite enough motivation for me to move Spence up here to my small Rhode Island hometown so we could both start over again. It was also more than enough reason to keep my mouth shut about Jack the PI ghost.
    By now, I’d become quite fond of the ghost. We’d been through a lot together. His police and PI experience on the mean streets of New York had come in handy more than once. Even his supernatural chills turned out to be handy—particularly when riding around in a hot car with a broken air conditioner.
    There was a downside to Jack, too, of course. His 1940s sensibilities weren’t always, shall we say . . . enlightened ?
    “I’m glad to have you on board,” I told the ghost. “I was beginning to think you’d stayed in the store to hang out in our new occult book section. I mean, given your own state, you might find some interesting reading.”
    That hocus-pocus aisle is the last place I’d haunt. Have you seen some