The Ghost and Mrs. McClure Read Online Free

all been secure.
    “No more ghost talk,” I’d told her when she gave me an annoyingly knowing look. “There is no ghost here. Some hand turned those chairs. Some human hand.”
    But whose? I still wondered.
    Could Spencer really have been so disturbed and angry that he’d managed to pull off a nearly impossible prank for a boy of his size and age—turning them first upside down, then, in mere minutes, right side up again?
    “That’s right!” a loud voice suddenly boomed from the new events space. “Let’s get this crap out of the way.”
    I told Spence to help Aunt Sadie at the register. Then I rushed over to the adjoining storefront in time to see a padded folding chair clatter to the wood plank floor.
    “Good lord,” I muttered, “not my chairs again!”
    My gaze lifted to the center of the events room. There, shouting commands to a trio of well-dressed people, stood a man in his seventies: Timothy Brennan.
    I hadn’t recognized him at first because he looked at least twenty-five years older than the photos on his book jacket, floor display, and life-size standee. His hair was gray and thin; his bushy brows crowned bloodshot eyes; and his ruddy, jowl-framed face reflected the hundred additional pounds he was now carrying.
    Two young men in baggy jeans and flapping flannel suddenly barreled into the room, carrying a video camera, tripod, and heavy silver cases. Mr. Brennan waved his pudgy finger under their noses.
    “The camera goes on my right,” Brennan garbled to them around a foul-smelling cigar. “I want those lucky C-SPAN book TV viewers to see my best side.” Then he glanced at the well-dressed couple moving my meticulously arranged refreshment table. “Come on, Ken, move that thing already! We haven’t got all night!”
    The staccato thumping of a dozen plastic water bottles came next. I had personally set them on the goodies table near the room’s entrance to make our guests feel welcome. Juices, sodas, and plastic bottles of Sutter Spring water now tumbled to the floor as the man named Ken, and a well-dressed woman about his age, jostled the table toward the back of the room.
    Ken was fiftyish with salt-and-pepper hair and silver temples, model-perfect features, and a well-tailored camel-haired jacket that flattered his strong physique. The middle-aged woman, holding the other end, was a slender redhead whose impeccably tailored burgundy suit and matching scarf helped take the bite out of her otherwise very plain face.
    Another woman, much younger, wearing a chic black pantsuit with a very pretty face in contrast, and short, shiny, raven hair, was pushing the neatly arranged chairs in haphazard directions. I winced at the scraping sound the chairs made as they were dragged across the newly polished floorboards.
    “Excuse me,” I said, approaching the pretty young woman in the chic black pantsuit, who was sliding the chairs around. “I’m Mrs. Penelope Thornton-McClure, the co-owner of this store.”
    The young woman stopped pushing and smiled at me. Well, at least her mouth did. As far as I could tell, no other discernible facial tendon had been enlisted for the exercise.
    “Hello, there,” she said, “I’m Shelby Cabot from Salient House.”
    I had lived and worked in New York long enough to spot—from at least five paces—that plastic, time-to-handle-the- non -New-Yorker (i.e., simpleton) expression.
    I extended my hand.
    “Get those chairs rearranged, Shelby!” Brennan shouted. “These idiots gave me nothing but a blank wall and a rest room exit for a backdrop!”
    Shelby shrugged, then turned away from me without a backward glance.
    “Mr. Brennan,” I said, dropping my unshaken hand, “perhaps I can help. I’m the co-owner of Buy the Book.”
    “Oh, yeah? So you’re the one to blame, then? Didn’t you even take the trouble to learn anything about how I like my appearances set up? We’ve got to turn this whole room forty-five degrees to the right. Get my back to those