Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13

Phantoms Can Be
Murder

Charlie Parker
Mystery #13

Copyright 2012 Connie
Shelton

Chapter 1

The letter arrived on a Tuesday,
a pale purple envelope that smelled like a candle shop and bore a British
postmark. It slid out of the stack of mail that I’d tossed on the dining table
and I debated between ripping it open immediately (curiosity and impatience
being two of my stronger suits), or opening all the bills first and then
savoring this strange new arrival (saving the best for last). Curiosity won
out. The looping backhand script delivered surprising news.

Dearest Charlotte,

I am your aunt Louisa. We have
never met. It’s a long story, one with some regrets. But retelling the tale
isn’t the purpose of my letter today. Life has moved on, beyond the judgments
and hurts of those earlier times, I would hope. I’ve certainly been remiss in
not contacting you sooner, but I hope we can move along past that.

May I phone you? I would be
most interested to know how your life has turned out. I shall attempt a
telephone call within the next week.

Fondly,

Louisa Charlotte Parker

Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk

I have to admit that my first
reaction was to think that Bury Saint Edmunds sounded more like a religious
edict than an actual place. My second reaction was to call my brother Ron and
demand to know why I’d never heard of this aunt.

“You have too heard of her.” His
tone went immediately argumentative on me. “You were named for her.” He didn’t
add
Dweeb
, but I heard it.

My thoughts flew. Mother had told
me that I was named after
two
maiden aunts—I felt sure that was the
story—and I’d always pictured them living about four generations ago, back when
hemlines still touched the ground. Why did no one ever tell me these things?

“Dad’s sister,” Ron continued.
“The one he had the falling out with, the one he never spoke to.”

“Which explains why
I
never
heard of her.” I sulked for another two seconds. “She’s written to me.” I held
up the letter, shaking it, as if he might see it over the phone and understand
everything.

“What does she say?”

“Something about regrets from
years gone by, and that she’s going to call me. Other than that, nothing. The
whole thing is two paragraphs.” I set the page back on the dining table and
paced into the kitchen, tugging open the refrigerator door in search of a
bottle of water. “So,
what
past regrets is she talking about?”

“How should I know? Mom mentioned
Aunt Louise maybe once or twice ever. I was a kid. I never asked. After they
died, I got a couple of letters from her, condolence kind of stuff, but I guess
I never answered.”

That would be
so
like Ron.

“Aunt Louise.” My
birth-certificate name is Charlotte Louise Parker, so okay, I got that. And I
could have been wrong about the story of there being two aunts; I didn’t pay
attention to a lot of what my mother told me. “She signs this letter Louisa.”

I could almost hear Ron’s shrug
over the phone. “Charlie, what can I say? It’s been nearly twenty years since I
heard boo from her.”

Papers shuffled in the
background. “Look, I gotta run. Victoria’s waiting for me to meet her at
Pedro’s for enchiladas.”

His newest girlfriend, this time
fairly serious.

Since he was providing no help
whatsoever, I turned to the better source for family history, my neighbor Elsa
Higgins. Our puppy, Freckles, followed on her gangly four-month-old legs
through the break in the hedge to Elsa’s back porch. The tiny brown and white
fluff-ball that we’d adopted back in June had become my shadow and it was
unthinkable that I would make it the whole twenty yards to the neighbor’s place
without her company.

“Well, look at that little one,”
Elsa exclaimed as the dog bounded into the kitchen and planted herself right in
front of the spot where a jar of treats sat on the countertop. “I swear she’s
three sizes bigger every time I see her.”

A guilty twinge reminded me that
it had been over a week since my last visit. I really should be checking daily
on Elsa. Nearing ninety, still maintaining her lifestyle at home, she’s a
complete wonder. But still, things can happen and I needed to be more diligent.
When I was orphaned at fifteen, she took me in and raised me through surely the
most hellacious years of any teenager’s life, until I was old enough to move
back into the family home next door. As my surrogate grandmother, surely she
would know the whole history behind this surprise aunt in England.

She adjusted her glasses and took
the letter, settling into a chair at her kitchen table. I raided the cookie jar
for myself and the treat jar on behalf of Freckles.

“England . . . well, isn’t that something?”
she said.

“Elsa! This aunt, Louisa. Who is
she?”

“I’d guess she’s your father’s
sister.” She looked up at me blankly. “Well, the last name being Parker and
all.”

“You never heard anyone in my
family mention her?”

“Well, honey, your folks moved in
next door when Ron was a toddler. Paul came along very shortly, then you a few
years later. I never knew much about their lives before that. Your mother was
always busy with you kids, her gardening and the country club set, and your dad
worked such long hours and all.” She rubbed at a place on the back of her neck.
“Louisa . . . let me think . . .”

I knew better than to rush the
process. It was a little like watching grass grow. However, for all her years,
Elsa does not have one single withered brain cell so this wasn’t a matter of
her simply forgetting. She genuinely didn’t know. I sank down into the chair
across the table from her.

“She says she’ll call. When she
does, just ask her.”

Well, that was just way too
simple. I gave Elsa a hug and trekked back to our side of the hedge, putting
the aunt out of my mind as I tried to decide what to make for dinner when Drake
got home.

Of the two of us, my wonderful
hubby is actually the better cook and I often defer to his expertise. While he
takes fresh things from the fridge and chops, dices and tosses them into a pan
to come up with the most wonderful meals, I lean more toward opening a package
of this and a can of that. I
am
quite adept with the buttons on the
microwave. But, in this instance, I’d put in a short day at the office of the
private investigation firm I co-own with my brother, while Drake had been
flying all day, scouting film locations with what had probably been a
pain-in-the-something Hollywood movie producer. I couldn’t very well ask him to
make dinner on top of all that. So I leaned into the freezer and found one of
those fifteen-minutes-in-a-skillet dinners, then set to work making a salad to
go with it.

By the time he walked in the door
I had a good-sized batch of chicken, veggies and pasta bubbling away in a yummy
sauce.

“Something sure smells good in
here,” he said, nuzzling my neck as he slipped his arms around me.

Whether he was referring to the
dinner or to my cologne, either was preferable to the eau de jet fuel that
emanated from his flight suit. I suggested that I could keep the meal warm
while he grabbed a quick shower. Luckily, he took the hint and emerged ten
minutes later from the bathroom in a considerably more desirable state.

Although we will celebrate our
third anniversary in a little over a month, people tease us about acting like
honeymooners. Catching a whiff of Drake’s fresh clean skin and seeing the way
the ends of his damp hair curled around his ears . . . well, I turned off the
burner on the stove and undid the buttons on his shirt way faster than he’d
buttoned them.

The packaged meal wasn’t in great
shape—congealed sauce over limp vegetables—when we emerged from the bedroom an
hour later. I dumped the lumpy mess while Drake adeptly sliced some cheese and
an apple, and we took the impromptu feast with two glasses of wine back to the
bedroom where we leaned against stacks of pillows and put a comedy movie in the
DVD player. Freckles whimpered a little at the smell of the food but soon gave
up and went to her bed in the corner. I felt my eyelids grow heavy and I guess
I blinked out before the movie was even halfway done because the next thing I
knew I was waking to the sound of Drake’s alarm and his groan at having to
report back to another day of flying that movie producer around in his
helicopter.

He was in the shower and I’d just
nestled the comforter around my shoulders when the telephone rang.

“Charlotte? Is that you? I hope
I’ve figured the time correctly and it isn’t the middle of the night there or
anything.”

Not quite. My bedside clock said
6:24. As this could only be Aunt Louisa I took a deep breath, worked up a
chipper tone, and hoped I didn’t sound entirely incoherent as I welcomed this
stranger into my life.

“Oh, lovely. I’m so relieved that
you kept your parents’ phone number. Charlotte, you can’t possibly know how
much I’ve anticipated this day.”

I wished I could say the same,
but I’d had hardly any notice so I focused my efforts on what I do when I find
myself investigating a new situation—paying attention to details. The accent
was interesting, essentially American peppered with English phrases and a hint
of some other Euro-speak. I had a harder time pegging her age. By the time
she’d covered the fact that she was, indeed, my father’s sister, younger by
twenty years, and had lived in England for quite some time, I’d awakened
sufficiently to pose a few questions.

“I spoke with my brother Ron
yesterday after your letter came. He sounded apologetic that he’d never
responded to your earlier correspondence. I hope you won’t think we’re all as
lacking in manners.”

“Not at all, dear. I just wasn’t
sure whether you would welcome my call. Perhaps your father had influenced your
opinions toward me in some way . . .”

“He actually never mentioned you
at all. I’m sorry. I don’t know what the rift was about. I didn’t even know you
existed.”

There was a brief silence on the
line. “I was afraid of that. Bill was so absolutely set in his ways. The kind
of man who, once he’d formed an opinion, would not let go of it. At least as
far as people were concerned. I can only assume he was more open to ideas in
his scientific field.”

I couldn’t answer that question
either. Until recent years I’d known nothing at all of my father’s top secret
work during the cold war years. Even after an investigation three years ago
into his death, precious few details of his actual projects had emerged.

“At any rate, I want to know you
better. I haven’t much money for travel, but would absolutely adore it if I
could host you here sometime.”

Drake walked out of the bathroom,
sending a quizzical look my direction as he proceeded to dress. I made my
excuses to Louisa and promised we would speak again soon.

“What on earth was that about?”
he asked as I slipped into my thick fuzzy robe and headed toward the kitchen to
start the coffee.

I filled him in on the call and
he perused the letter while I buttered bread and stuck it into the toaster
oven.

“Ron remembers her, barely. I’ve
never met her, but now she wants us to come for a visit.”

“Is she for real?” he asked, spreading
strawberry jam on his toast.

“Luckily, I have the means of
finding that out. Background checks are our specialty.”

He left for the final day of his
film recon job, and Freckles and I headed for the offices of RJP Investigations
a little while later. By the end of the day Ron and I had come up with
sufficient background on Louise Charlotte Parker—who had legally changed her
name to Louisa more than thirty years ago—that I felt comfortable in knowing
that I truly did have an aunt who lived in England.

Several more phone calls over the
ensuing days told me a lot more about the who, just not much about the why. Why
had she picked this time to contact me? Why had she and my father not spoken
since I was born?

Ron, with an investigator’s
natural skepticism, cautioned me to watch for ulterior motives. “She may be
looking for someone to pull her out of some financial bind,” he said. I chalked
the attitude up to his own experiences with his ex-wife because we hadn’t found
anything of that nature in the background checks on Louisa.

“She keeps repeating the
invitation to come see her,” I told Drake one evening over green chile chicken
enchiladas at Pedro’s, our favorite little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Louisa
and I had now spoken over the phone a half-dozen times. “What do you think?
Want to go?”

He reached over and took my hand,
giving it a squeeze. “It started out as a pretty rough summer, babe. Maybe a
break would be good for you. Change of scenery couldn’t hurt.”

He referred to the fact that in
June I’d been held hostage for several days by a gang of desperate men. And
even though they’d all been caught, I still woke with nightmares, three months
later, and I hadn’t yet gotten comfortable working late in my office the way I
used to do.

I booked our reservations that
night and found a boarding kennel for Freckles, figuring that a puppy was a bit
much for Elsa to handle, and it looked like we were on our way to London. I’d
decided to break into the bank account and splurge on business class tickets,
in keeping with Drake’s idea that this vacation should be a totally relaxing
experience for me. It would have all been perfect, but for the last-minute
phone call three days before the trip in which one of his steady clients needed
helicopter work done and threatened to take all his business elsewhere if Drake
couldn’t handle the job.

“Hon, I have no choice,” he said.
“I cannot afford to turn this down. You go without me.”

I’d already squeezed the trip in
between two other important commitments and there would be no foreseeable
chance to reschedule for many months. I’d psyched myself up for the trip, based
on Louisa’s descriptions of her charming town, and I’d worked like a demon to
clear my calendar at work.