I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.
—Ray Bradbury
FINGERS CLAWING THE bedsheets, I opened my eyes in a breathless state, still believing I was on a Manhattan sidewalk, facing a tank-sized DeSoto with a homicidal shark of a driver bent on flattening me.
Then my alarm rang in my ear, and I nearly screamed. Heart pounding, I slapped the ringer off and sank back against the pillows.
“Jack?!” I called in anger. “You never pulled a trick like that before! Why did you do it?”
Silence was the only reply.
The ghost was gone. For how long? I couldn’t know. After that dream, his energies were probably sapped. Well, mine were, too. Maybe some quiet time would do me good.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
This time I did scream. The sharp rapping on my door completed my scares for the morning.
“Mrs. McClure?” called a little girl’s voice. “Are you all right? It’s Amy! Amy Ridgeway!”
“Yes?!” I called. “Come in, Amy!”
Her curly-haired head popped through the door. “Ms. Thornton sent me to get you. Your oatmeal is ready. It’s almost time to open the store! I can’t wait!”
The girl was gone as fast as she came. Her bubbly enthusiasm almost gave me the energy to feel good about rising. Shining? Not so much.
BY NOON, AMY had learned all about restocking, and I was taking stock in the dream Jack gave me.
For hours, I asked myself why he’d left me in that terrified state. And then, working with Kevin Ridgeway’s young daughter, it struck me. Jack wanted me to know what it felt like, standing helpless in front of a hurtling piece of machinery, facing down your demise from a driver set on vehicular homicide.
My gumshoe ghost was trying to make me focus on the death of Professor Ridgeway.
Okay, Jack. I’ll do what I can.
First, I called Chief Ciders to let him know Kevin’s daughter was staying with us for the week—in case he wanted to speak with her. Using that pretext, I asked about his investigation of the hit-and-run.
Ciders was in a good mood for once, and willing to talk, but there wasn’t much to tell. They’d made no progress on finding the vehicle that struck and killed Amy’s father.
When I suggested that it might have been intentional, even premeditated, he gave me the same reply his deputy chief presented to Amy. In the opinion of the police, it was a terrible accident, nothing more.
They would try their best to keep looking for the vehicle that committed the “manslaughter,” but so far, none of the local garages or auto-body shops had turned up any probable suspects. Ciders was out of leads and short on manpower. The trail had gone cold, and the case would likely close that way.
Next, I tried to contact Brainert—three texts and two voice mails, all of which he ignored.
Eddie Franzetti was at the courthouse for hours, testifying on two cases of drunk driving. So I spent the afternoon waiting on bookshop customers, and (in between) calling animal shelters in the area, looking for Emma’s missing Yorkshire terrier. (Jack’s first dream, of that missing Manhattan dog, still resonated, too.) If a shelter could remember who brought the dog in, we’d have a lead. But none had a Yorkie in their care. No luck there.
When Eddie finally called back, I asked for a progress report on Emma Hudson’s mystery friend, the one Mr. Brink mentioned.
“Sorry, Pen, nothing to tell. I talked to her building’s landlord again, and he didn’t know a thing about the woman. Neither did the meth heads or any other neighbors. Except for Mr. Brink, no one else knew about her.”
When Spencer got home from school, I put him to work in the store beside Amy, which made them both deliriously happy. After supper and homework, I thought they’d earned some fun, and allowed them to play Avenging Angel until bedtime.
When my own bedtime came, Jack was still missing, but I didn’t mind. After that nightmare, I was looking forward to sleeping like the dead.
THE NEXT DAY, I finally heard from my ghost.
Amy was spending time with Sadie, learning how we processed online orders; Bonnie was taking care of customers; and I took charge of the Community Events space, making sure it was ready for our sold-out signing with the Bentley Prize winner taking place this very evening.
I had just finished stocking our displays with copies of Dr. Leeds’s acclaimed work, Fiction Enslaved: Literature and Colonialism, when a familiar cold breeze washed over me.
We should be making tracks, doll, not stacking books.
“Oh, so now you’re back and giving orders? You know you’ve been gone for twenty-four hours—and after giving me that terrible nightmare, too!”
But I steered you in the right direction with that careening car, pardon the pun.
“If you mean you got me to thinking about Kevin Ridgeway’s accident as not being so accidental, you’re right.”
So, what did you do about it?
I gave Jack the rundown (pun intended) of the previous day’s activities, including calling shelters about Emma’s missing Yorkie.
My gumshoe ghost was not impressed.
You’re barking up the wrong tree. If you’re looking for answers, you’ve got to cage your cagey friend, and give him the third degree!
“I’ve been trying! But Brainert’s been ghosting me—”
He’s dead, too?
“No, Jack—don’t even joke about that! It would kill me if anything happened to him. ‘Ghosting’ just means he’s been ignoring my texts and voice mails.”
The way I ghost you, sweetheart, is a lot more fun.
“I’ve noticed. As far as Brainert is concerned, I’m done putting up with his pouting. Tonight, after Dr. Leeds’s lecture, I plan to camp out on his doorstep. He’ll have to talk to me.”
Why wait? Call your pal and invite him to listen to his colleague gas on, gratis.
“He won’t come. You saw how Brainert reacted when he saw our promotional materials for Leeds. My friend has a bad case of professional jealousy. And, I’m sorry to say, after the awful way he left the Quibblers meeting, he’s been avoiding the bookshop completely—”
Just then, Bonnie Franzetti crashed through the front door, her short black curls bouncing around her head. Like her tall, darkly handsome older brother, she had long-lashed brown eyes, and they were as wide as I’d ever seen them. She was panting, she could barely speak, and her olive skin was flushed.
“Bonnie! What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Pen! It’s your friend, Professor Parker. Just now, he was hit by a truck speeding down Cranberry Street! There’s blood everywhere!”
I raced by Bonnie and out the door.
Morning rush was over, and the streets were quiet. But at the crosswalk just past Koh’s market, a knot of fifteen or twenty people gathered in a tight circle. More emerged from the surrounding businesses and rushed to the scene.
There was no truck in sight, no cars on Cranberry—nothing that wasn’t parked, anyway. But there were splashes of crimson. Lots of them. An almost impossible amount of red stained the pavement, the sidewalk, and even a storefront or two.
“It was a hit-and-run!” Bonnie’s heart-shaped face was twisted with anguish as she caught up to me. “The van just kept going, until it accelerated around the corner.”
I was accelerating, too. Though I dreaded the horror I was about to encounter, I had to know the fate of my lifelong friend.
“Oh God,” I prayed. “Oh God, please, no . . .”
As I approached, I could hear people tittering nervously—not everybody, mind you, but more than a few. Then someone actually laughed out loud!
Suddenly, I heard Jack in my head. He was appalled by the laughter.
Mother Machree! I thought the boys at Murder, Inc., were soulless. But these rural rubes chuckling over a fresh stiff really burns my bacon!
I pushed through the giggling gaggle to find a moaning Brainert flat on his back. Like some deranged Red Sox fan on game day, he was stained from head to toe in crimson.
As he began to stagger to his feet like a zombie in a horror movie, I realized my friend had not been resurrected from the dead. He was simply covered in red paint! A battered can lay in the roadway, while a dazed Brainert still clutched its metal handle.
Because of the toxic mess, people were reluctant to get too close. I didn’t care! I rushed right up to him.
“Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
Staring straight ahead, Brainert blinked and shook his head. Then his near-vacant eyes met mine. “Oh, hi, Pen. I’ll have to purchase another gallon of Sherwin-Williams Heartthrob. The lobby needs a new coat. There’s such wear and tear . . .”
He spoke in a shell-shocked monotone that made me fear he had actually been zombie-ized. Then his head lolled back as he fainted dead away.
Fortunately, Bonnie helped me keep him upright, though we both became sticky with red goo in the process.
“Hey, lady! That guy spilled paint all over my car!”
Nearby, Fred Kelly clutched his bald head. “Look at my Laundromat. The windows are ruined!”
Move it, doll. You better get Professor Paint-Can out of here before this hayseed mob grows ugly.
“I’ll call Bud Napp for an emergency turpentine delivery,” I told Bonnie.
Then we walked my semiconscious friend back to my bookshop.