Ghost of a Chance

In 1935, it's simply not ladylike for young women to involve themselves in macabre matters such as murder. But fiercely independent mystery writer Marjorie McClelland, a.k.a. Miss Never-Say-Die, can't resist when another killing strikes their small Connecticut town. No one sees the poison dart hit a man riding the Ferris wheel at the church festival. Much to the annoyance of her fiancé, police detective Robert Jameson, Marjorie manoeuvres her way into the investigation. And soon Creighton Ashcroft-a wealthy Englishman hopelessly smitten with the beautiful writer-is helping out, too. Together, the unusual trio piece together the life of the victim who left behind two wives and a huge gambling debt. While the case unfolds, Marjorie faces another dilemma that sends her heart into a tailspin. Should she marry the reliable, if dull, police detective . . . or is she ready to risk security for passion?

o n e

"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 dumb¬waiter 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 proven– that 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.