Amy Patricia Meade - Marjorie McClelland 02 - Ghost of a Chance (2 page)

-Ernest Dowson

“A KNIFE? WHY WOULD you use a knife to kill someone? I’d think
you’d be a bit smarter than that.”

Marjorie McClelland folded her arms across her chest and sighed
noisily. For a man who sold books as his livelihood, Walter Schutt
had the foresight and creativity of a Brussels sprout. “Why not? It’s
something different. A completely spontaneous murder without a
trace of premeditation. It will throw my readers completely off the
track.”

Mr. Schutt pursed his wizened lips in disapproval. “Too messy. I
like the last one you wrote. Murder made to look like suicide. Now
that was clever.”

“If, by my `last one,’ you mean the Van Allen case-” Marjorie
began.

He continued, unheeding. “Except that part about the girl in
the dumbwaiter. That was a bit hard to swallow.”

“The girl was in the dumbwaiter, Mr. Schutt. It actually happened-I didn’t make it up. The Van Allen murder occurred right
here, in Ridgebury! Don’t you remember?”

“Of course I remember! I’m not gone in the head, missy. I was
thinking of your audience. When you finally turn it into a true
crime novel, I don’t think they’re going to buy that whole dumbwaiter idea.”

Marjorie contemplated leaving Schutt’s Book Nook, but soon
remembered her reason for being there. Medieval English Daggers
and You-An Introduction, a special order, had finally arrived after
weeks of anticipation and was now clutched in the storekeeper’s
knobby fingers.

Marjorie fixed her gaze on the long-awaited tome. It was a widely
known fact that although Mr. Schutt’s primary occupation was town
bookseller, his primary source of income emanated from the change,
merchandise, purses, and wallets that dazed and beleaguered customers left behind in their haste to escape the elderly man’s infamous
tongue lashings. It was even rumored-although never proventhat Schutt had once sold a mother back her own baby after she, in a
highly flustered state, had left the child sleeping in his carriage outside the shop door.

“Still, it was a halfway decent story,” he wheezed on, mindless of
his audience’s silence. “You should try to write more of those.”

Marjorie offered a silent appeal to the heavens. One lightning
bolt. One lightning bolt right here in the bookstore. No injuries. No
fire. Just enough of a jolt to knock that book out of his hand…

“Although I don’t imagine you have a ghost of a chance of encountering a murder again. Not in a town like ours. Not with a Depression going on.

“Why not?” she asked, glad for the change of subject.

“Simple. Folks around here don’t have anything worth killing
for.”

“Mr. Ashcroft does.” Marjorie felt the color rise in her cheeks as
she spoke the name.

“True,” he allowed, “but I can’t imagine anyone killing him. He’s
been courting our Sharon for a few months now and he’s a likeable
sort. For a foreigner.”

Foreigner. The word conveyed the notion of a short, swarthy
greenhorn rather than the tall, handsome, and elegantly English figure of Creighton Ashcroft. What the man saw in the Schutts’ pudgy,
arrogant, and socially inept daughter defied explanation.

“Still, there are crimes of passion,” Marjorie argued.

“Passion. Bah! I don’t believe in it.”

She thought of the large, intimidating, and decidedly masculine form of Mrs. Schutt. “No, you probably don’t.”

“That’s why your books don’t sell as well as they could, Miss
McClelland. The average person doesn’t lose their head so easily.
They may lose their patience with people, but they don’t envision
murdering them. And your victims! Why, your victims are always
these misanthropic curmudgeons with absolutely no redeeming
social value. People like that simply don’t exist in real life.”

Marjorie narrowed her eyes and glared. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“No,” the bookseller shook his graying head, undeterred. “I think
it’s high time you hung up your typewriter-”

“How does one `hang up’ a typewriter?” she interjected.

“Get down to the business of living. Settle down with that detective of yours-”

“He did ask me to marry him last night.”

“And start a family. You’re getting too old for this-”

“It’s this shop. I age ten years every time I walk in the door.”

Schutt raised the reference book about daggers and waved it.
“Wasting your time with murder and poisons and knives. What way
is that to live your life? You should know better!”

“Yes, I should purchase books via mail order.”

“But you’ll do what you want to do. I suppose you’re even running the kissing booth at the fair today-”

“Law of supply and demand dictates I should, but I’m not.”

“Well, I’m not going to waste my breath. You can’t argue with
an idiot!”

“That’s precisely why I wasn’t arguing.” Marjorie reached over
the counter, snatched the book from his hand, and happily waltzed
out the door.

CREIGHTON ASHCROFT WAS A man on a mission. He strode across
the freshly mowed grass of the fairgrounds, all the while anxiously fingering the dollar bill in his jacket pocket. It was a lovely
late morning in June, 1935. An ideal day for the First Presbyterian
Church of Ridgebury to hold its annual carnival and, Creighton
decided in a rare moment of bravado, the perfect day to make his
move on Marjorie McClelland.

Walking purposefully past the Ferris wheel, he made his way to a
booth, above which hung the sign: Kisses. 5 cents. There, behind the
counter, he spotted the young blonde woman counting money into
a till, her back turned to him. “Good morning,” he chimed. “I hope
you gave your lips a rest last night because you’re going to need all
your strength. I’ve brought with me a one-dollar bill, which, if my
arithmetic is correct, entitles me to twenty kisses. Twenty. So;’ he
leaned his elbows on the counter and pursed his lips together, “as
you Americans say, pucker up.”

The girl turned around to reveal an unfamiliar face. Creighton
nearly jumped out of his skin. “Who are you?”

“Susie. I’m in charge of the kissing booth.”

“You’re in charge of the kissing booth? What happened to Marjorie?”

“She backed out at the last minute.”

“Why? Is she ill?”

“How am I supposed to know? Who do I look like, Walter Winchell?” Her eyes widened in recognition. “Say, you’re that fella who
lives outside of town. That big place-what’s its name?”

“Kensington House.”

“Yeah, you and Marjorie were in that trouble there a few months
back. You’re that rich guy.”

Creighton had always hated that description. He ran a nervous
hand through his chestnut hair. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
“

I never kissed a rich guy before. Are you ready for your twenty
kisses?”

“No, thank you. Not that you aren’t perfectly lovely,” he quickly
added. “But my main purpose for coming here was to see Marjorie
and since… ” his voice trailed off.

“Yeah, I know, I’m not Marjorie. Tell me,” she challenged, “what
does she have that I don’t?”

“Well, nothing, I suppose. It’s just-”

“You’re darn right,” she averred. “I’m just as good a kisser as she
is. Probably better.”
“

I don’t doubt that you are, but-” he blustered.

“Why, I bet if you were to close your eyes, you’d never know the
difference.”

“I don’t know about that. I-” Before he could protest, Susie
grabbed him by the arm, yanked him across the counter, and planted
her lips on his.

Despite his initial reluctance and surprise, the experience was
not entirely unpleasant. Susie was, as claimed, a competent kisser.
It would be a shame not to enjoy her God-given talent to the fullest. After all, if she wanted to kiss him, who was he to deny her? He
closed his eyes and joined in, but his pleasure was soon interrupted
by the sound of someone clearing her throat.

He pulled away from Susie to find a radiant young woman in a
gauzy, pale green dress and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. “Marjorie!”

“Good morning, Creighton.” Her emerald eyes were twinkling
in amusement.

Her beau, police detective Robert Jameson, appeared beside her
and placed a protective arm around her shoulders. “Hi, Creighton.”
He gestured to his own mouth with a tanned finger. “You have some,
um, stuff right there.”

Creighton pulled his handkerchief from his jacket pocket and
wiped the lipstick from his face.

“I’d introduce you to Susie,” Marjorie stated with a grin, “but I
can see you already know each other … in a fairly Biblical sense.”

“Why not? This is a church fair, isn’t it?” He pushed the dollar
bill toward Susie and whispered, aside, to keep the change. “Actually, I was looking for you, Marjorie, and figured, while I was here,
I might as well do my share to help a worthy cause.”

“You were looking for me?” Marjorie repeated skeptically.

“I came by to say hello, but when I saw you weren’t here I was
concerned you might be ill.”

“I see,” she teased, “so you decided to examine Susie to make sure
she wasn’t coming down with something as well.”

“She kissed me!”

“You don’t have to make excuses with us, Creighton,” Jameson
said. “We won’t tell Sharon.”

Marjorie nodded in agreement. “Our lips are sealed. Although
the next time you have the urge to `sacrifice’ yourself to a worthy
cause, I suggest you do it in private. If Sharon or her parents had
caught you, it would have been the Great War all over again.”

Creighton sighed in exasperation; he didn’t give a hang about
the Schutts. The only reason he courted Sharon was to make Marjorie jealous: a plan that had, thus far, fallen short of its mark. “Thank
you. I’ll keep it in mind. So, why did you rescind your offer to run
the kissing booth? I thought you did it every year”

“I do, but Robert and I discussed it and we concluded I should
give this year a miss.” She grabbed her escort’s arm and beamed at
him.

“Robert and I discussed it?” Why was she permitting that presumptuous little toady to influence her decisions? “Why in heaven’s name
not?” the Englishman demanded as he glared at the detective.

Jameson flashed a luminously white smile. Everything about
the man’s appearance was irritatingly perfect. He was the Hartford
County Police’s answer to Errol Flynn-minus the comedic wit.

“Because,” Marjorie replied between giggles, “we didn’t think it
was a suitable job for the future wife of a policeman.”

“Future wife?” Creighton managed to utter.

“That’s right,” Jameson affirmed. “Marjorie and I are engaged
to be married.”

Marjorie held out her left hand to display a golden ring into which
had been set a diamond slightly larger than a chip. “Isn’t it beautiful?
Robert gave it to me last night. It was all very romantic. He even got
down on one knee when he proposed.”

Creighton struggled to find the appropriate response to this bit
of news, but he could find none. His thoughts were concentrated
only on the injustice of the situation. Surely, this wasn’t happening. Today he was to tell Marjorie he loved her. It was to be his day,
not Jameson’s. His day! There was a sudden pain in his abdomen,
as though someone had just kicked him in the stomach, and it was
becoming increasingly difficult to breathe.