Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (12 page)

“I’m visiting my aunt, actually.
She gives tours of the haunted sites in town and has promised to take me along
on her next one.”

“Ah, you’ll enjoy it. I’ve never
seen one myself, but my late wife—she was a great believer. Swore that The Grey
Lady used to help with little chores around the house. I have my doubts about
that part of it. But it seemed to make her happy that she had company whilst
she did her work.”

I could tell that he was a little
eager for company. But when he launched into the third tale of the Abbey’s more
ethereal inhabitants I knew I would have to say goodbye or I’d never get out of
there. I used the excuse that I was meeting someone and would be late.

It was nearly true. After my
visit to the police station I’d decided that I should just tell Dolly that I
couldn’t be of help in her search for the poltergeist in her shop. There were
just too many people in town who might have reason to get back at her. How was
I going to narrow it down? And what would she do anyway—retaliate by filing a
complaint against the perpetrator? I could see the whole spiraling into a
quagmire.

I left the Abbey grounds, crossed
in front of the Angel Hotel and started up the street toward The Knit and Purl.

The small bells at the door
tinkled softly, but Dolly spun around as if she’d been shot. Her eyes were wild
and her normally precise hair looked as if she’d been trying to yank it out.

“Charlie!” My name came out in a
whoosh. “Look at this! It’s happened again!”

I followed her pointing finger to
the spot where I stood. There on the floor were large muddy boot prints.

“When—?”

“Just now! I’d taken a moment to
visit the ladies room, walked back in here, and
this
!”

Chapter
13

I knelt down. The prints were,
indeed, still a bit damp. They appeared to have been made by large feet, with
the kind of treads common to hiking boots. They led from the front door to the
sales counter. I followed the trail and saw that the prints circled the desk
and ended in front of the register.

The cash drawer was standing
open. I pointed at it. “They may have taken your money.”

She rushed to the spot, her eyes
darting back and forth, her hands reaching for the contents. “No, it seems the
notes are all here, and the coins . . . But the mess! Look!”

I didn’t immediately see what she
was getting at.

“Everything’s in a jumble,” she
said. “Look, all the coins are mixed together every which way, pounds and pence
together, and the notes look as if they’ve been shuffled.” She picked up a
handful.

Sure enough, the multi-colored
bills were combined in a bright bunch.

“This drawer was in absolute
order not five minutes ago.” Her eyes were wide, her voice shaky. “How can this
be happening to me?”

Karma? I didn’t know what to say.

Her hands shook as she sorted the
money back into the proper denominations. One by one she placed the paper money
back into the long slots. Then she began on the coins.

I didn’t have the heart to tell
her my original reason for coming in, to quit investigating her case. While she
concentrated on getting the drawer back in order I looked around the room.

Then it hit me. The boot prints
went from the front door to the register . . . but they never left. There was
no trail back to the door, to the stockroom, or anywhere.

 
“No one else was in the shop at the time?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Gabrielle comes
in at noon on Thursdays. Archie went out early. I was here entirely alone.” Her
voice shook a little. The idea of being by herself and an intruder showing up
clearly had her rattled.

I tried to bring her back to the
facts. “Are these prints the same as the ones you mentioned before? Do they
look like they were made by the same boots?”

She looked up from her stacks of
coins and stared at the prints. “Definitely not. The others were smooth, these
have a pattern.”

That was at least a firm clue.
Either two different people had made the tracks or the prankster was smart
enough to wear different footwear each time. Perhaps it was his way of making
Dolly believe she had more than one ghost.

“Okay. Take me through it again.
You were here by yourself.”

She nodded.

“You went into the bathroom.”

Another nod.

“You never heard a sound out
here? Not the front door bells, not the cash drawer opening, nothing?”

“Not a thing. I couldn’t have
been in there more than two or three minutes.”

“Of course there is the music,” I
said. “Maybe it drowned out any sounds?”

“I’m very accustomed to the
background music,” she insisted. “I hear any little noise, even with it
playing.”

I let it go. Clearly, there was
no point in arguing. I was beginning to see her stubborn side. I turned my
attention to the physical evidence instead.

The door chime consisted of four
small brass bells hanging by a cord from the wooden bar that bisected the door.
Motion caused them to clink against the glass inset on the door. I supposed
that someone who noticed the bells hanging there could open it cautiously
enough that they wouldn’t ring.

A low spot on the sidewalk
outside tended to hold water—I’d noticed that before and usually just stepped
around it. But someone not paying attention or anyone who wanted to leave
prints on purpose could step into it and, if their boots already held some
dirt, the tracks were easily explained. But how did they get away without
leaving a single print in the opposite direction?

That was the question I could not
answer.

Dolly, meantime, had arranged the
cash drawer to her liking and appeared from the stock room with a sponge mop in
hand.

“I’d better get this cleaned up
before a customer sees it,” she said.

I glanced at my watch, hoping for
an excuse to leave. I didn’t have any easy answers for Dolly, but thought I
would ask Louisa for ideas. I have to admit that I probably scurried away from
the knit shop a little abruptly.

Back at Louisa’s house I
calculated the time difference and decided I might be able to reach Drake at
home. He answered on the second ring and we followed our prearranged plan—he
called back immediately so we wouldn’t run up Louisa’s phone bill.

“I contacted that boarding place
for Freckles, the one we’d planned to use before,” he said. “I’ll take her by
there this afternoon and make sure everyone gets along fine.”

“Should I come home? I feel like
I’m not exactly there to help you with all this.”

“We talked about that when we
first got the puppy, hon. We’re on the go a lot. When she can travel along, she
will. When it’s not feasible she’ll learn to stay in a doggy hotel. She’ll
adapt easily if we start her out young.”

He was right of course.

“I did a little research on the
company I’ll be working for. Good outfit, and my knowing the chief pilot from
years ago in Hawaii is a plus. He knows my work and gave a high recommendation
to the owner. If I jump through a few hoops now, they’ll hire me again next
summer and the money for that will be very good. And, you can come along if you
want.”

A little mental yippee went
through me. Missing out on Alaska was the main reason I’d felt the tug to catch
up with him this time.

“I can get home early next week
and rescue Freckles,” I said. “Louisa and I haven’t gotten a lot of time
together, but there’s a weekend coming up for that.” I filled him in on how I
was spending my days and he chuckled over the fact that I’d latched on to a
mystery to solve.

“I’m not a bit surprised,” he
said. “Things seem to happen wherever you go, my little detective.”

We ended the call with a plan to
touch base again before he left Albuquerque and a promise that he would keep me
posted on his trip.

The front doorknob rattled and
Louisa came in, carrying a plastic handled bag.

“Dinner in tonight?” she said,
holding it up. “Home cooked, almost.”

She carried the bag into the
kitchen and pulled out a jar of marinara sauce and the ingredients for salad.
From a cupboard came a packet of long spaghetti. She started to apologize but I
just laughed.

“You have no idea how close this
is to my way of doing things at home,” I said. “I would have no clue how to
make this from scratch. Drake is a far better cook and actually makes an
excellent sauce.”

“I had a man like that once.
Luigi.” She made the name sound almost musical. “He owned a vineyard in Tuscany
and his linguine was as luscious as his—” She stopped and cleared her throat.
“Too bad I let him go.”

I grinned at her but she didn’t
seem inclined to give more details.

“I can open a bottle of wine,” I
told her. “If you’ll point me toward the corkscrew.”

I poured two glasses while she
filled a pot with water and turned on a flame under it.

“Dolly had another scare at the
shop today” I said, once we’d settled into our comfy corners on the old sofa in
the parlor. I filled her in on the details.

“What on earth could be causing
all this?” she mused. “And right after we were there last night.”

I let a moment go by. “Have you
known Dolly very long?”

She sipped from her glass. “A few
years, mainly through the knitting group. Outside of there, I’ve only run into
her a few times around town. It’s a small place, but we don’t actually see
everyone every single day.”

“I just wondered whether she has
a lot of friends.” I told her a little about the reports I’d seen at the police
station.

“My, you have been thorough,” she
said, heading toward the kitchen when the timer on the pasta went off. “She’s
always been friendly enough with me but I’ve heard a few things . . . people
who don’t seem to care much for her, a couple of women who refuse to patronize
her store. I’d no idea some had actually made official complaints.”

I trailed her into the kitchen
where she was in the process of mixing the greens and shaking a vinaigrette
dressing onto them. She carried the salad bowl to the table.

“I wonder if her behavior
accounts for business at the shop being so slow. Once I thought about it I
realized I’ve rarely seen another customer in there.”

“The size of the knitting group
certainly dwindled over the summer.” Louisa handed me a plate. We dished up the
pasta and sauce and took our seats.

“I wonder whether she’s made
someone mad enough to go to these lengths to scare her. Maybe the idea that
someone is trying to frighten her out of her shop isn’t so far off. It could
just be for other reasons than we’d ever guessed.”

We ran the subject around in
circles and finally decided we were merely blathering, exhaustion from our
sleepless night having taken over our brains. When I noticed Louisa’s eyelids
drooping I suggested that we call it a night. It was seven o’clock.

I brushed my teeth and thought I
would peruse the book of haunted places once more, but even that didn’t last
very long. I switched out the light within fifteen minutes and fell into a deep
sleep.

My next conscious thought came
when I began to smell coffee. Slipping on a pair of jeans with my sleep-shirt I
padded down the stairs barefoot to find Louisa in the kitchen.

“Sorry. I tried to be quiet,” she
said. “Lucky thing I’d set my alarm or I would still be off in dreamland
somewhere.”

When she asked about my plan for
the day I had to admit I didn’t really have one. It seemed pointless to keep
searching out ghosts on behalf of Dolly, even though she’d begged me to keep
working on it. I really didn’t have any fresh ideas whatsoever.

“I’ll be giving my Haunted Bury
tour tomorrow night,” she reminded me. “If you want to come along I’ll put your
name on the list. It takes a couple of hours but the total distance to walk is
less than a mile.”

Why not, I decided. Some fact
that she’d forgotten to tell me might come out in the talk.

“Use your time today to rest up,”
she warned as she was walking out the door. “The tour lasts until midnight.”
With a spooky little eh-eh-eh she left.

Spending the day lounging around
and resting sounded really good but I found myself too keyed up to sit still.
Of course the early bedtime and two cups of coffee might explain it. I read the
first couple of chapters in one of the books I’d bought at the thrift shop, a
mystery in which the psycho killer is the good guy and everyone else in the
story is even more messed up.

As the sun warmed the house and
it began to creak I decided I’d be better off taking a long walk, and that’s
when I found myself on Lilac Lane, and
that’s
when I realized an
ambulance with brightly flashing lights was sitting right in front of The Knit
and Purl.

Chapter
14

I froze in place for a full
minute. The whole scene felt surreal. From the front door of the knit shop,
technicians wheeled a stretcher covered in a white drape. The uneven shape of a
body meant this wasn’t good news. My feet took off running.

The ambulance’s strobes went
still and the vehicle pulled away from the curb. A man in a dark suit picked up
a black valise from the sidewalk and headed toward a car that I hadn’t noticed
before. On the side of it, a sign said Coroner.

Archie Jones stood in the shop’s
doorway, his face white and slack with disbelief. His eyes were dead orbs.

“What happened?” I said, rushing
up to him.

His mouth opened, closed, opened
again but no sound came out. I stood right in front of him, trying to get his
attention.

“Archie! Look at me!”

Gradually, his gaze homed in on
my face.

I made my voice slow and gentle.
“Archie, what happened?”

“Dolly. They’ve taken her.” His
dead-looking eyes began to leak slow trails of tears.

“Let’s go inside,” I said,
stepping forward to steer him into the shop.

Inside, things seemed to be in
order. The bins of expensive yarns sat in organized rainbow arrays. The oils
and herbs in their tiny bottles rested on the glass shelves, none out of place.
The scent of candle wax hung heavy in the air. I led Archie to Dolly’s chair
behind the sales counter and asked if I could bring him some water. He shook
his head.

“Can you tell me what happened?”
I asked, kneeling to be at eye level with him.

“That man,” he said. “He said
there would be an inquest.”

“Was there an accident? Did she
become ill during the night?”

He shook his head again. “I woke
up this morning. She was lying beside me. Cold.”

How awful. No wonder the man was
in shock. I paced to the front of the shop, unable to stay still. At this point
it wasn’t really my business, but I couldn’t simply walk out and leave the poor
man there alone. The couple had no children, I remembered Louisa telling me.

“Is there someone I can call for
you?” Surely he had friends, former colleagues.

He continued to stare at a spot
in the middle of space.

Okay, now what? I automatically
touched the side pocket of my purse where I normally kept my cell phone but of
course it wasn’t there. My reflex in times of trouble is usually to call either
Drake or Ron, but that option wouldn’t accomplish anything here and now. What
was the official name of Louisa’s workplace? I should phone her.

“She was so upset last night,”
Archie said in a flat voice. “The candles.”

What on earth was he talking
about? I glanced around and my gaze fell on the shelves of candles on display.
Something didn’t look right. I stepped closer and saw that they’d been lit.
Every one of them.

“Archie? These candles?” I
pointed. “Who lit all these candles?” I pictured Dolly trying some sort of massive
exorcism to rid the shop of her ghostly fears.

He shrugged. “We didn’t know. We
were watching the telly, same as always. Dolly smells the candles. Comments on
it a couple of times. I didn’t think it was anything. She insists on
it—something’s wrong, Arch, she said to me.”

He’d stood up and walked over to
stand near me. “So she comes down from the apartment. They’re all lit.” He
pointed to the candles. “She screams and I come down, and she’s got a little
tamper thing and she’s putting them out. She’s screamin’ out some choice words,
I’ll tell you, mad as a hornet that her stock’s all ruined.”

At least she’d gotten all the
flames out before anything else in the store was damaged. I could imagine how
upset she’d be, having to order all new stock and then practically give these
away since they weren’t pristine and new anymore. Maybe the loss would be too
much for the small shop that wasn’t exactly thriving anyway.

The chimes at the door sounded
and Gabrielle popped in, looking perky in a pink sweater that set off her
flawless complexion. Her smile faded when she caught sight of Archie’s face.

“I’m afraid I’ve some bad news,”
he said.

I gave him a light pat on the
shoulder and left so he could explain the situation privately. I wondered how
Gabrielle would take the news of her sudden unemployment. I’d gotten the
impression that working in the yarn shop was more a pastime than a passion for
her anyway. She would probably find another job fairly soon.

Meanwhile, speaking of being
unemployed, I supposed I was officially off ghost-buster duty for good. I
couldn’t say I was all that unhappy about it, but the image of the ambulance
taking Dolly away from her shop continued to haunt me.

My steps carried me toward the
tourism office where Louisa would be on duty this morning. I needed to tell her
about Dolly’s death before she heard it elsewhere. Undoubtedly eyes all up and
down the block had seen the sheeted body and the fact that the coroner’s car
had been there. I couldn’t imagine that the small-town gossip mill wouldn’t
operate all that differently from what it would in America.

I held back while Louisa finished
ringing up a gift shop purchase—three postcards and a mug imprinted with the
image of the Abbey. When the patron left I tilted my head toward a closed door.

“Are we alone?” I asked.

Her eyebrows went into a puzzled
curve. “Yes, why? What’s happened?”

“It’s Dolly.” I told her what I’d
seen and about the subsequent conversation with Archie. “He’s absolutely in
shock.”

Her face paled and her gaze
drifted to a spot far away. “Those burning candles. Another unexplained event.
Do you think it sent her over the edge?”

“There’s no way of knowing. Can a
person literally die of fright?” But even as I asked the question I
reconsidered. Archie had said Dolly was angry over the candles, not scared.
Maybe she’d gotten so worked up that she’d burst a vessel or something. “I
guess only the inquest will tell.”

*
* *

I itched to be doing something
all day Friday and Saturday. Louisa called another tourism office volunteer to
take her shifts and the two of us basically wasted time shopping and sitting
around the house. Drake checked in with me Friday night from a hotel in
Anchorage. He would be out at a line camp starting Monday morning. I told him I
should at least stay with Louisa until after Dolly’s funeral.

The service was set for Monday
afternoon, and I could do nothing more than wait around to ask about the
results of the inquest.

“Come along on my tour,” Louisa
insisted on Saturday night. “It’s been on the schedule a long time so I have to
do it. And it will help take our minds off this other subject.”

So, we bundled up in sweaters and
scarves. Louisa picked up a roomy shoulder bag and we headed out to meet the
tourists at the Abbey Gate at ten p.m. In the glow of lamplight, two teen boys
waited. They called out, greeting Louisa by name.

“Groupies,” she whispered. “They
fancy themselves ghost hunters, but since the Abbey Gardens are closed at night
except to us, this is the only way they can hope to come across some of the
better-known ethereal residents. Plus, Tim’s mother is a friend of mine. She
knows she can trust me to keep an eye on the boys so they don’t go wandering
off or sneaking into someone’s home because they think it’s okay to wait around
for the spirits to show up.”

“Mr. Partridge isn’t here yet,”
the taller of the two boys said.

“That’s all right. We have six
others joining us yet. We’ll wait awhile.” She introduced the boys to me as
Sean and Tim, and the basic difference I could see in them was that Tim was the
tall one. Otherwise, they were clones in nearly identical black jeans and
T-shirts, with dark knit caps over brown collar-length hair. Their trendy coats
looked like Abercrombie to me.

A uniformed man showed up on the
other side of the gate and he also greeted Louisa familiarly. This must be Mr.
Partridge, the guardian of the gate at night. Sean and Tim both said hello to
him.

About that time two couples came
walking from the front of the Angel Hotel, just across the road. Obviously
American in dress and voice, I learned that they came from Indiana and it was
their first trip to England. One of the women seemed to be a fan of television
shows about haunted sites and she’d heard of this tour and dragged her husband
and friends along.

Louisa consulted a sheet of paper
she’d pulled from her pocket and checked off the four names. She glanced up and
down the sidewalk, then pulled her sleeve back to check her watch. She seemed
satisfied with whatever it told her.

No more than two minutes passed
before another couple came hurrying up, a tense conversation in brusque tones
taking place between them. They were well bundled in woolens and sturdy shoes
and the woman’s blond hair was done in a long braid down her back. Louisa
looked at her list again. The man looked apologetic. “
Wir sind spät.
Traurig.
”

“
Guten Abend
,” she said. “
Verstehen
Sie Englisch?
”

I stared at my aunt. Where had
she learned this?

“
Ja
, pretty well,” the man
answered.

“No problem. If you have any
questions you may ask me,” Louisa said. “Now, group, I think we are all here.
Shall we enter the gates?”

I noticed that her voice changed
timbre at that phrase ‘enter the gates’ setting the mood and preparing us for
the idea that we were about to get very spooked. Partridge took hold of a chain
that ran over a pulley system and pulled. The heavy iron gate began to rise. He
paused it about six feet off the ground, a fraction of its total height, and we
walked under. Once everyone had cleared the entry, he let it lower with a
clang. Wide eyes all around told me that everyone had that same
point-of-no-return feeling.