“You know how he gets most of his news?” said Sadie. “Busybodies leaving messages on his phone machine!”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It’s in print!” cried Marjorie.
“I can understand your concern,” I said quickly, trying to defuse the argument. “But even Brennan’s own daughter Deirdre can verify he ate nothing. In fact, Brennan told me he never eats at author appearances—he probably had a nervous stomach or something.”
“Well, if he didn’t choke on a doughnut, what did he die of, then?” asked Marjorie.
“His daughter mentioned in passing that he had a weak heart.” I was reaching—my nervous shrug making that patently obvious. “But I’m sure the state medical examiner’s autopsy results will be made public.”
Then I thought about all those fans dressed as Jack Shield and the terrified look on Brennan’s pale face before he died. My stomach nearly lost its contents. Of course, I kept as brave a face as possible in front of the councilwoman. My bright idea may have inadvertently helped along Brennan’s heart attack, but Buy the Book certainly hadn’t done anything criminal.
“Well, I’m warning you both right now that I’ve already made a few phone calls to the proper authorities,” said the councilwoman, turning her pink leather pumps toward the door. “And no matter what the outcome of their investigation, it’s more than apparent you’ve brought bad luck to this town—and most likely busted our budget, too. I shudder to think of the municipal overtime costs incurred from last night’s . . . mishap.”
After a martyr’s sigh, she continued, “I tell you, I’ve been working for years to bring business back to Quindicott, and this botched event is sure to set the economic clock backward. I swear, if you’ve ruined this town’s chances for a recovery, I’ll come after your license to operate a business at all!”
Marjorie opened her mouth, about to continue, when she stopped abruptly, her eyes taking in my disheveled appearance, from my shredded hosiery to my copper tangles. “Penelope Thornton-McClure, what in the world happened to you? You look as though you’ve been out partying all night! What sort of life have you got your son involved in? I just spoke to your sister-in-law, and I’m sure the McClures would not approve.”
Here we go, I thought.
After Calvin’s leap, the McClures—led primarily by Calvin’s older sister, Ashley McClure-Sutherland—never came right out and said they blamed me for Calvin’s suicide; that maybe I was the crazy one; and that my son would be better off with them than me. But I knew very well they were constantly looking for an excuse to take my boy away.
“Aw, get lost, already,” Sadie told Marjorie.
“Fine,” she said, “I’m going. But I must remind Penelope that the McClures are expecting to see her and Spencer at Gardener’s big birthday party tomorrow. The precious boy is turning nine. It’s a very big day, you know. I’m invited as well, of course.”
“Marjorie, I’m sorry, but I told my sister-in-law already, Spence and I can’t make it. Sadie and I just reopened the store a week ago, and I need to be here to work.”
“Yes, well, Ashley said you might be too busy, with this store and all. That’s why she told me to tell you she’s going to have her chauffeur pick up Spencer and drive him to the Newport estate. Spencer has a right to see his cousin, you must admit.”
“I don’t think Spence should go without me—” I began, but Marjorie cut me off.
“Nonsense!” said Marjorie. With one more snide look, she added, “You don’t want me to suggest to them that I found you looking as though you’d been out partying all night . . . do you?”
Tell her to go to hell, the ghost voice said in my head.
I gritted my teeth and ignored it.
“The car will be here at nine o’clock sharp. Make sure he’s ready. Ta!” With a wave of her hand and a tinkling of the door’s little bell, Marjorie was gone. Sadie looked mad enough to spit. But she didn’t have time.
The door’s Tinkerbell impersonation started up again, followed by a loud “Hi-yooooooo!”
Vinny Nardini, our Dependable Delivery Service man, strode in with clipboard in hand and the old Tonight Show Ed McMahon greeting. A gentle guy with bark-colored hair and a full beard, Vinny had been on the Quindicott High School football team with my late older brother, Pete, who’d died at age twenty while drag racing his souped-up GTO to impress MaryJo Lerrotta. Whenever I saw Vinny’s large frame sporting the universally recognized DDS brown uniform, I couldn’t help thinking of Peter.
If my brother had lived, I was certain he would have made close to the same choices as Vinny, who had taken a job in Quindicott, married a girl from Quindicott, and quickly begun to raise three children in Quindicott. Vin was pretty typical of most of the people with whom my brother and I had gone to school. He was also one of the happiest guys I knew.
“Hi-yo, yourself,” said Sadie. “What are you doing here? We’re not even open yet.” My aunt was as surprised as I was to see a DDS man on a Saturday.
“I’m collecting names. A petition to save the town square squirrels,” he said, presenting his electronic clipboard to Sadie. “Sign here, young woman, to stock the city hall with nuts.”
“I hope I’m not signing for a shipment of narcotics,” said Sadie.
“I only deliver heroin on Thursdays,” said Vinny.
Ha! Hahahahahaha!
The ghost voice. Again.
As Vinny went back out to his boxy brown DDS truck, the door tinkled yet again.
“Good morning, all,” said Professor Brainert Parker. He was such an old friend, and good customer, ignoring the CLOSED sign had become routine.
On teaching days, Brainert always wore a three-piece suit and tie. Today, however, was “casual” weekend wear, which for Brainert expressed itself in a wrinkle-free yellow cotton buttoned-down tucked into pressed J. Crew khakis with a knife-sharp crease.
“Have you seen the Bulletin?” he asked.
Sadie rolled her eyes. I held up the offending front page.
“Elmer Crabtree strikes again,” said Brainert.
The door swung wide once more, with Vinny pulling a handcart filled with cardboard boxes. He unloaded twenty in all. Five at a time. Each held twenty-five hardcover books. Sadie read the words stamped on the side of each box: “Shield of Justice.”
“This must be a mistake,” I said in shock. “We already received this order!”
“No mistake,” said Vinny, piling the last of the boxes up by the checkout counter. “And Sadie’s signed, so it’s off my hands—and my truck. Toodles.”
“Oh, my goodness,” I told Sadie. “I remember now. That Shelby woman from Salient House, the publicist, she cornered me right before Brennan spoke. She said she’d convinced Brennan to stay over a few days and come back to our shop to sign all weekend. She said she had the warehouse on her cell phone and needed the store’s account number to approve an order of ‘a few’ more books. I agreed to ‘a few,’ not five hundred!”
“Hen’s teeth,” said Sadie.
“What do we do?” I said. “Brennan isn’t about to rise from the dead to sign these now—”
I wouldn’t make book on that.
Ohmygod.
“You’re right. We’ll never move this many copies,” said Sadie. “After last night’s run, I think we already must have sold a Shield of Justice book to every Jack Shield fan in a fifty-mile radius.”
“Can’t you just send back the unopened boxes to the publisher on Monday for credit? No harm done?” asked Brainert.