The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion

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The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion Page 4

by Alice Kimberly


  I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold. "Miss Todd?" I called again.

  My voice echoed back to me. I took another step, moving into the hallway. There was nobody on the staircase; nobody lying at the base of the steps, either.

  "At least she didn't fall and break her neck," I murmured, recalling a terrible incident, not too long ago, involving an elderly Newport man.

  I glanced into the dimly lit living room next, past the fireplace with the formal portrait of a heavyset man above it, past the Victorian clutter of dark wood furnishings, brass lamps, lace doilies, and knickknacks—and that was when I saw her.

  Miss Timothea Todd was sprawled in the center of a plush, jewel-toned area rug. Crimson stained the bodice of her nightgown. Her hands, blanched almost as white as her gown, were covered with blood and still frozen into a position clutching at her throat. Bloody foam flecked the woman's pale, still lips, and her white hair seemed to be standing on end.

  I stumbled backward. "My God, I think she's ..."

  No thinking, baby. Look at her color. She's gone.

  I wanted to run, to flee, but I fought the urge, my fingers curling into hard fists. I took a breath and surveyed the scene. The most upsetting thing about Miss Todd's corpse was the obvious expression of stark fear on the dead woman's face. Her sightless eyes were wide and staring; her mouth twisted into a final, frozen scream.

  "Look at her face, Jack," I whispered into the still room. "It's like ... like..."

  Yeah, doll. It's like she's seen a ghost.

  CHAPTER 3

  Cold Spot

  Death tugs at my ear and says, "Live, I am coming."

  —Oliver Wendell Holmes

  I WAS NO stranger to the dearly departed. As a young widow I'd not only seen my share of death, I was beginning to consider myself a magnet for it. Certainly by now I'd witnessed more crime scenes than your average American single mom. So Jack's next piece of advice seemed almost unnecessary to me—if not a tad insulting.

  Scope the geography, but DO NOT touch a thing.

  "I know," I told the ghost. "You're not dealing with a rookie anymore."

  Don't get cocky, sister. And get out that Dick Tracy wrist radio of yours.

  "The wha— Oh! The cell phone!"

  Time to call Sheriff Cornpone and his Keystone Kops.

  "Right." I began fishing around my shoulder bag's less-than-organized interior.

  Your police chief's not exactly Boston Blackie, but he's the closest thing to the law you 've got in this outpost.

  I shook my head at the sight of the poor woman, my eyes lingering on the blood, the horrible expression of dread frozen on her face.

  "I can't imagine what Miss Todd experienced that terrified her so much ..."

  ‘I hate to bring up bad memories, baby. But being homicided myself, I can tell you the business isn't a barrel of laughs.

  "Right, Jack. Sorry."

  For what? You didn't plug me."

  That was when it happened. As my fingers closed around the cell phone in my bag, a chill enveloped me. It was a sudden, disturbing sensation, and I knew one thing instantly: This was not my ghost. No way. No how.

  Jack Shepard's spirit, or aura, or whatever you wanted to call his existence, fluctuated around me like a kind of energy field. His typical "presence," for lack of a better word, felt something like a pleasant spring breeze on a warm summer day. It was always moving, swirling, or pulsing like a beating heart. Jack felt like a field of living energy.

  Sure, he occasionally blasted me with an arctic chill, but it was always accompanied by an almost unconscious understanding of his mood. The cold I was experiencing now felt totally dead, without sensation or communication, like the lifeless chill of a coroner's morgue slab.

  Whatever this was, it was disturbing. As soon as I felt the anomaly, I cried out. My breath formed a little steamy cloud, as if a New England winter had just descended inside the Second Empire's front parlor. I quickly moved backward, toward the room's exit; and within a few yards, the stifling heat of the June afternoon immediately returned. Tentatively, I moved forward again and stretched out my hand. Again I felt the cold air, as if I'd breached an invisible curtain.

  "Oh, my God, Jack. I don't know what or who this is—"

  Get out of here! NOW!

  Jack didn't have to tell me twice.

  More than a little unnerved by the bizarre phenomenon— not to mention poor Miss Todd's corpse—I waited until I was outside before I made the call. But I didn't dial 911, or put a call through directly to Chief Ciders office. Instead I called my friend Eddie Franzetti, Deputy Chief of the QPD.

  Since I'd moved back to my hometown, Chief Ciders and I had clashed numerous times. At first, I thought the chief was nothing more than a tool of the small-minded town council, a body ruled by the manicured fist of Marjorie Binder-Smith, who had no love for me, my aunt, or our bookshop. But Fd since revised that opinion. Ciders's more recent animosity, I decided, was simply the result of my tendency to show up his police force.

  Fortunately, Eddie Franzetti was different. Married with children, Eddie had escaped working in the family's pizza restaurant by joining Quindicott's finest instead. After a rocky start on the force, Eddie had helped me close a case or two. Consequently, when the Staties made him an offer, Ciders was forced to recognize his value and promote him to second-in-command.

  Eddie was more than just deputy chief, however, he was also my late older brother's best friend. I was happy to call him my friend, too; and that was why, whenever I needed a cop, I called Eddie.

  He answered on my second ring. "Pen! I know what you're calling about. I've been meaning to get to the store and pick up those Narnia books you're holding for my kids. I just haven't had the time—"

  "This isn't about my business, Eddie. It's about yours," I interrupted. "There's trouble at Miss Timothea Todd's house. The address is 169 Larchmont—"

  "I know where Miss Todd lives," he said, a note of irritation in his voice. "What's the problem this time?"

  This time? Jack echoed in my head.

  "She's dead," I told Eddie, ignoring Jack.

  "Aww, no," Eddie said. "When?"

  "When? I don't know. I just found her—"

  At least thirty minutes, but no more than three hours. That's my estimation by the look of the remains. Tell him.

  I did. "But, like I said, Eddie," I added, "I just found her. Listen ... I think she was murdered."

  "Are you there now?"

  "Yes ... I'm outside her house, in front of my car."

  "Stay there, I'm on the way. And do not touch anything."

  "I know! I'm not a rookie anymore, you know—"

  Eddie hung up before I had a chance to ask about his previous encounters with Miss Todd. I closed the phone, shoved it into my shoulder bag, and thought again about that freezing curtain of air in Miss Todd's living room.

  "There was definitely a cold spot in there," I told Jack. "In Miss Todd's house, I mean."

  Yeah? And?

  "And nothing. That's just what the phenomenon is called. I mean, according to those occult books in my store."

  It's a creaky old house. Could be all you felt was a draft.

  "You sure are changing your tune from a minute ago, when you ordered me to scram. Weren't you picking up anything? You know, like a psychic vibration of a fellow spirit?"

  ‘I wanted you out of there for your own good. It's not too long a crap shoot that the murderer's still in that house.

  "Well, listen, okay. Unexplained cold spots are found in haunted places. You're a cold spot, for goodness' sake."

  Now ain't that a rotten apple to throw.

  Jack's irritation was easy to hear, and he got a whole lot colder. "You know, you have an awful lot of attitude for a ghost."

  Wailing sirens cut off any reply from Jack. A few moments later, a Quindicott police cruiser was bouncing up the mansion's cobblestone drive, trailed by the volunteer fire department's ambulance. Jack notice
d the ambulance the same moment I did.

  Your second meat wagon of the day.

  "Second?"

  What, you already forgot about that hearse train you caboose onto?

  "Oh, yes." I closed my eyes, remembering the electrocuted electrician, and took a breath. Death, death, and more death, I thought, then exhaled. "I'm really glad Eddie's here."

  But when the cruiser stopped behind my compact, it was Chief Wade Ciders's bulky body that emerged from the passenger seat. His even bigger nephew, Deputy Bull McCoy, climbed out the driver's side.

  "Where's Eddie Franzetti?!" I blurted out, rather undiplomatically.

  Ciders's black boots clomped across the cobblestones until his giant shadow fell over me. He wasn't fat so much as large, with a broad nose, a jowly face, and a barrel chest that strained the shirt of his blue uniform.

  The chief had been on the QPD going on thirty years now. He'd been happily married to the same bride for even longer. He had grown children and small grandchildren. But the pettiness of small-town law enforcement had taken its toll on the man (or at least that was my theory).

  Decades of dealing with routine drunk and disorderlies, traffic accidents, and teen vandalism would have been enough to dull the edge of any gung-ho rookie. But Ciders's job as chief of police included years of butting heads with loud-mouthed City Hall bureaucrats, every one of whom had an opinion on how he should enforce the town's ordinances. By now, I could almost understand Ciders's knee-jerk reaction to any crime scene, serious or trivial: For him, it seemed to come down to how much time the confounded case was going to take away from his fishing trips and card games.

  "I thought Eddie was coming," I said in a less hysterical tone.

  Adjusting his ten-gallon chief's hat (the rest of the force had the regular flat-topped kind), Ciders regarded me. "I sent my deputy chief to fetch the medicl 'xaminah. Not that the management of my police pahsonnel is any of yo-wah business, Mrs. McClu-wah."

  I winced. Here we go ...

  Stiffen your spine; baby. This scowling speed-trap jockey has less than half your brains. And don't get me started on his idiot nephew. That's who the big jerk is, right? Standing there with that not-too-bright look on his face.

  "Yeah, Jack," I silently told him. Bull McCoy was essentially Chief Ciders's 2.0: a much bigger, much younger, much dumber version of the original model.

  Ciders moved closer, until we were literally standing toe to toe. His grizzly-bear frame seemed to blot out the sun. "You said there was a body?"

  "Inside." I pointed. "In the living room."

  A pair of paramedics hurried past us, up the steps and across the entryway. They were followed by the stomping black boots of Bull McCoy, who entered Miss Todd's house with one fist closed on his gun butt. I felt like warning McCoy not to touch anything, but I bit my tongue, deciding that was Chief Ciders's job.

  I looked up at the tower looming over me, and saw Ciders's suspicious frown. "You're pretty far away from your bookstore, Mrs. McClure. What were you doing at Miss Todd's residence?"

  I told him about the book order and pointed to the box in the backseat. I explained that Miss Todd's front doors were wide open when I arrived and no one answered the door, even after I rang.

  "That's when I went inside and found Miss Todd on the floor in the living room."

  "Did you go upstairs?"

  I shook my head.

  "Did you see anything unusual on Larchmont?" "Nothing," I said immediately.

  "Nothing? Not one thing? Not one person. Think, Mrs. McClure. You're usually pretty observant," he said, "if not overly so."

  Those last few words were muttered with naked condescension. I bristled, and Jack warned: Steady, baby. Just answer the man's questions.

  "There was one thing," I told the chief. "Uh, I mean, person. I saw one person on the street."

  The chief's bushy gray brows drew together over eyes the color of acid-washed denim. "Who?" he asked.

  "Seymour Tarnish. He sort of ran across the street, right in front of my car. The sun blinded me for a few seconds, and I nearly hit him."

  "But you didn't hit him?"

  "No. I stopped just in time."

  "So you saw Seymour, eh? And he was in some big hurry for no particular reason? Is that what he told you?"

  I frowned. "Seymour didn't tell me anything. He didn't stop to talk."

  "Sounds to me like he was fleeing the scene."

  "Scene? What are you taking about? I didn't say he came from this crime scene. He was just in a hurry to cross the street for some reason. He must have been in a hurry, because he didn't stop."

  "Uh-huh. Describe his appearance for me, Mrs. McClure. Tell me exactly what you saw. You claim you're observant. Prove it."

  "I just caught a glimpse of him, really. He was wearing his blue postal uniform." "Slacks or shorts?" "Shorts."

  "What kind of socks?" "White tube."

  "Anything else you can remember? Think." I shook my head. "Just the stain..." "What stain?"

  "A red stain on the back of Seymour's uniform. I was worried for a minute that I'd hit him with my car. But then I realized he wasn't hurt, because if he was really that badly hurt he wouldn't have been able to rush off the way he did."

  Ciders shook his head. "Let me get this straight. You saw a bloodstained man fleeing the scene of a crime, and you don't think there's anything to report?" The chief almost laughed in my face. "That's the best you can do, Mrs. McClure? You, with your bookshop full of fantasy detectives!"

  "But Chief!" "What?"

  "Seymour Tarnish would never murder a poor, defenseless, little old lady! Seymour Tarnish wouldn't hurt a fly!"

  A grunt sounded behind me. Without looking, I instantly knew Bull McCoy had come back outside.

  "You lookin' at Tarnish for this, Uncle Wade—I mean, Chief!"

  There was boisterous anticipation in Bull's tone, if not outright glee. Sure enough, I turned to find the giant in a uniform smiling. Bull never could stand Seymour, and the feeling was mutual.

  "Pick him up, Bull" Ciders said. "Now."

  "Chief Ciders, please don't do that!" I begged. "I'm sure you're jumping to the wrong—"

  Stop, baby! Jack boomed in my head. Take a breath.

  My fists clenched. "Why?!" I asked the ghost.

  Because you should let the big lummox bring in your pal, that's why. Maybe the letter carrier saw something you didn't. Can't be any harm in asking him to answer a few simple questions, can there?

  I exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. "No," I silently told Jack. "I guess a few simple questions can't hurt."

  For once, doll, I'm actually in agreement with Chief Cornpone.

  "About Seymour?"

  Admit it, honey. Isn't there some small part of you that's dying to ask the mailman how he got that red stain on the back of his blue shirt?

  "Maybe," I told the ghost. "But there's a much bigger part of me that's afraid of hearing his answer."

  CHAPTER 4

  The Chiefs Suspect

  You stand for your side of it and I'll stand for mine. I didn't do it, and that's all I stand for.

  —Frank Chambers, lying to the DA in The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain, 1934

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Bull delivered my mailman to the Todd mansion. Chief Ciders escorted Seymour inside, sat him down, and started asking him those "few simple questions."

  "Why'd you do it, Tarnish? Why'd you murder the old lady?"

  Seymour leaped out of his chair. "Are you crazy?! I didn't murder anybody!"

  I gritted my teeth. Sunlight was streaming in through Miss Todd's tall dining room windows. Ciders had opened them wide to air out the room, and a hot breeze was now making the sheer curtains billow violently. As far as I could see from my seat in the corner, an even larger amount of hot air was being produced by the humans in the room.

  Seymour wagged his finger in the chief's face. "And another thing. I demand you return my uniform!" (Under Ciders's orders, Bull had already dra
gged Seymour into the kitchen and forcibly removed his shirt and shorts.) "That uniform is property of the Postmaster General of the U. S. of A.! And in case you need a refresher course in civics, the federal government supersedes your puny jurisdiction!" "Sit down!"

  For a few tense moments, Seymour refused to heed Ciders's command. I didn't think that was such a good idea. For one thing, Ciders was bigger than Seymour. Not that Seymour was a little guy. He was actually on the beefy side with heavy arms and a moderate belly (per his ice cream addiction) on top of sinewy chicken legs and bony knees (from his hikes carrying mail every day). At the moment, however, with Seymour's postal uniform impounded as evidence, he was dressed in nothing but his undershirt, a pair of Superman boxers, white tube socks, and black sneakers. Ciders, on the other hand, was packing a service weapon with (presumably) live ammo.

  "I said, sit down!" the chief barked again. "Or I'll have you hauled off and booked right now!"

  Ciders's voice was so loud it actually rattled the substantial collection of crystal displayed in Miss Todd's colossal china cabinet. I knew this because my chair was located right next to the mahogany showpiece.

  Decibel level aside, I was seriously upset with Ciders's treatment of Seymour. Not only was it brutish, I didn't find it at all helpful to the investigation. I was also eager to question Seymour myself, but I knew Ciders well by now. If I made any trouble, he'd banish me from the house. The only reason I was allowed to watch this interrogation at all was to "finger" Seymour for the chief: Ciders told me that if he ran into trouble getting Seymour to "talk," he intended to use my "witness statement" to pressure the mailman into "confessing."

 

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