Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (2 page)

Drake watched the conflicting
emotions flicker across my face. “Do it. You girls will have a much better time
without me anyway.”

I doubted that, but since his
work frequently took him away for days, sometimes weeks, at a time I didn’t
feel entirely guilty about taking this little jaunt purely for myself. And so that’s
how I found myself in a jumbo jet over England, hearing the pilot’s
announcement that we would soon be landing at Heathrow.

Chapter
2

Louisa had insisted on picking me
up at the airport and driving me to Bury St. Edmunds herself. As she explained
it, the trains could get a little tricky if you’d never been there before. I
appreciated that plus I thought the two hour car ride would give us the chance
to get to know each other better.

Clearing customs and toting my
awkwardly weighty bag behind me, I spotted her amid the ranks of drivers
holding up corporate placards for my fellow passengers. I recognized her face
from photos she’d emailed me. In return I’d emailed her a few shots of Drake
and myself but forewarned her that I would be traveling alone. She spotted me
in the crowd and we edged toward each other.

“You’re tall like your dad,” she
said as we broke from a quick embrace.

At five-seven I’m not exactly
towering, but my aunt was several inches shorter, with wispy shoulder-length
blond hair, a pear-shaped body, dressed in layers of floaty fabrics in shades
of purple and turquoise. Her smile was bright and genuine and her blue eyes
sparkled happily when she spoke.

“We’re over here,” Louisa said,
gesturing toward a parking area across a few lanes of traffic. She insisted
upon taking the handle of my suitcase. The bag and I trailed along in her wake
at a quick pace.

Through my fog from a long plane
trip with little sleep, despite the stretch-out accommodations in business
class, I followed her to the parking garage looking for any resemblance between
her and my father. Dad had been tall, straight and serious, with the receding
hairline that Ron inherited and the almost-formal demeanor that he’d acquired
as a doctor of science. His genetics were nowhere to be seen in Louisa. The
closest I could compare was to my brother Paul, who has the same coloring and
is slighter in build than Dad or Ron.

Louisa moved like a small sprite,
turning her head to check the traffic, heading into the crosswalk with her swift
steps, glancing over her shoulder to be sure I was with her. By the time I’d
figured out that she was aiming for a small blue Ford and I’d incorrectly
headed for the wrong side of it, she’d popped open the trunk and hefted the
suitcase into it as if it were nothing.

“There now,” she said with a
laugh. “I think we’re good to go.”

I settled into the left-hand
front seat as she backed out and negotiated a completely confusing maze of
lanes and corners to take us out of the airport. The tires chirped as she reached
the on-ramp of some major thoroughfare.

“Have you visited the UK before?”
she asked, once we’d joined the flow of traffic.

I reoriented myself to the fact
that cars coming at us on the right was an okay thing, and told her a little
about the helicopter job Drake and I had taken in Scotland a couple years ago.
Aside from a quick pass through London on our way to Inverness, this was my
first time in England.

By the time we reached the
outskirts of St. Edmundsbury township I’d learned that the town was named for
King Edmund, martyred in 869 AD, and that it had been a thriving marketplace
well before then. That Louisa was younger than my father by twenty years, that
she’d legally changed the spelling of her first name after a trip to Italy and
a romance with a charmer, and that the rolling fields we passed contained maize
and sugar beets. Her narrative was as erratic as her driving, but at least it
was informative. I still didn’t quite find out what had caused the rift between
the siblings but I was determined to learn that soon.

We passed the sugar factory,
which I recognized immediately by the sticky-sweet smell that I remembered from
similar facilities in Hawaii where I’d met Drake. The streets narrowed as we
reached the older section of town, with an eclectic mixture of stone and brick
buildings whose doorways opened directly onto the narrow sidewalks. A medieval
arch appeared on our left.

“The Abbey Gate,” Louisa
explained. “This part of the town has been inhabited since the Middle Ages.
We’ll take a walk through the Abbey Gardens in a bit, if you’re up to it.”

A walk sounded like the perfect
antidote to the long hours confined in airplane and car, and I readily agreed
to the plan.

“This is the Angel, here on the
right,” she said. “Are you sure you won’t change your mind and stay at my
house?”

The Angel Hotel, where I’d made
reservations, had operated in its present location since 1452, an imposing
three stories of gray-brown stone completely covered in ivy with lush purple
petunias sprouting from planters beneath each window. When the plan was for
Drake to travel with me, it only seemed sensible to stay in a hotel rather than
impose on my aunt’s hospitality. Her offer was tempting but seeing the historic
building kind of took my breath away. I needed to experience this at least
once.

Louisa sensed my hesitation and
pulled into the parking area in front of the hotel. “Here we are, then.”

“I really appreciate your offer,”
I said. “They would have charged my account for at least one night anyway—”

“Charlie, it’s absolutely not a
problem,” she said, switching off the ignition and turning toward me. “You will
love this place. And if you spend a night or two and want to switch, I’m sure
they can accommodate the change. My home is only about a ten minute walk from
here, and I work at the tourism office just that way—” She waved vaguely toward
the next block. “You can find me whenever you want.”

We stepped out of the car and met
at the back where she reached for my bag in ‘the boot.’ “Besides,” she said
with a twinkle in her eye, “if you’re here at the Angel you might get a chance
to see one of the ghosts.”

Ghosts? Sure.

I might as well admit right now
that I’m a supreme cynic about that stuff. Not one supposedly haunted old house
or hotel or graveyard that I’ve ever visited has shown me any evidence
whatsoever of the famed supernatural residents. Louisa, on the other hand, had
told me during the long drive that she studied astrology and ancient folk
legends in college—hinting that this curriculum may have led, in part, to the
rift with my ultra scientific father. I could vouch for his distrust of the
unproven—every childhood alibi I tried to construct met with the strictest of
testing before he accepted it.

She registered the skepticism on
my face. “The Angel Hotel,” she said, adopting an official tone, “is reputed to
be home of not one, but two, ghosts. One is said to be the fiddler who was sent
into the tunnel connecting Angel Hill to a pub in Eastgate Street. The man
entered, playing his fiddle so onlookers could track his progress, but he never
came out. Modern day spirit activity still seems to center around the cellars
of the hotel near the now-bricked up entrance to the tunnel.”

She grinned at me. “My job these
days is to give tours of ‘Haunted Bury St. Edmunds’ through the tourism
office.” She switched back to her tour-guide voice. “Of course, those fortunate
enough to stay in the Charles Dickens Room often report odd noises in the night
and strange little episodes where items go missing from the room.”

“Well, I don’t think I’m in the
Dickens room,” I assured her. “But I’ll try not to disturb any of the old
residents.”

A uniformed bellman appeared just
then, rushing down the front steps of the hotel and approaching the car to ask
if I was checking in. He hefted my suitcase and headed indoors with it.

“Take a moment to settle in,”
Louisa suggested. “I’ll check in at my office and come back for you. Then we
can find some lunch and take that walk around the gardens.”

We parted with a quick hug and a
plan to meet in thirty minutes. I trailed the bellman into the lobby which
consisted of a series of cozy, low-ceilinged rooms, the central one featuring a
wide rock fireplace flanked by large overstuffed couches. I completed the
check-in paperwork at a reception desk of dark wood and was directed to follow
the bellman—a lengthy trek up a flight of stairs, around a series of sharp
turns, along a squeaky corridor which included two steps up and two steps down
for no readily apparent reason, a few more turns until we came to a hallway
with numbered rooms on the right hand side only. He cheerfully unlocked the
door for me and placed my baggage on the floor.

I’d reached for my wallet in
hopes of figuring out the strange bills I’d exchanged at the airport when the
man cheerfully bade me goodbye and disappeared out the door. No hand fidgeting
for a tip? Now that was something you never saw in the States.

It was a good-sized room with a
desk in one corner, an antique wooden wardrobe offset by the modern touch of a
flat-screen television mounted on the wall beside it, a small round table with
full tea service that included electric kettle, a choice of black tea or Earl
Grey or coffee, along with every desired sweetener and creamer, plus two
packets of cookies. I was loving England already!

The large bed was made up for
two—a twinge—how nice it would have been for Drake to be here with me. It was
pre-dawn back home so I called Drake’s cell, left him a quick message that all
was well and suggested that he give me a call once he woke up. A quick brush
through my hair and a retouch of lipstick. Short of a six hour nap there wasn’t
much else I could think to do to myself at the moment. I straightened my jeans
and put a wool jacket on over my wrinkled T-shirt and hoped we weren’t going anyplace
dressy.

Louisa sat tucked into a corner
of one of the deep sofas in the lobby when I descended the stairs, miraculously
having found my way back along the convoluted tangle of hallways and steps. She
tapped a few buttons on her phone and dropped it into her purse.

“There now. Texted my supervisor
and I’ve got the whole afternoon free,” she said, practically bouncing up from
the couch. “Would you like a sit-down pub lunch or something we can carry to
the gardens while we walk around?”

Walking, definitely. She led me
out the front of the hotel and we strolled past a dress shop and a place called
the Really Rather Good Coffee House. Seriously. I looked twice and smiled at
the sign.

The September air felt crisp with
a chill on this half-cloudy day. Abbeygate Street was closed to car traffic but
the pedestrians were out in force—young mothers pushing strollers, sturdy older
women with mesh shopping bags, businessmen who looked barely out of high school
striding between the slower groups.

“I grab lunch at this shop at
least twice a week,” Louisa said, steering me toward a brick building where
large windows showed rows of baked items. “Cornish pasties. Like pie crust
wrapped around various meats, potatoes, veggies, warm gravy.”

The scent coming from the shop was
pure meaty, saucy heaven and I felt myself practically begin to drool as I
stared at the rows of pastry packets on display. Louisa turned to me from the
doorway with a question in her eyes.

“Whatever you normally have,” I
said, still processing the sights and smells, never mind deciphering whatever
quick question the man behind the counter had posed to us.

“Two, traditional, take away,
please,” Louisa said. She thrust forward a bill with red printing on it and got
some coins back in change.

The warm paper envelope with its
treasure of hot meat pie felt good in my hands. If I hadn’t been a little faint
from hunger I could have held it in my chilly fingers and taken pleasure from
that simple act. As it was, by the time we hit the street again we were both unfolding
the paper and picking off bits of the flaky pastry and sneaking them into our
mouths. The steam that emerged brought back memories of Sunday roast
beef-and-potato dinners at Elsa’s. I think I moaned at my first real bite of
it.

“Yummy, isn’t it?” Louisa said.
“The chicken and mushroom one is another of my favorites.” She had folded her
paper packet closed, saving the treat until we could settle somewhere.

We strolled back the way we’d
come, emerging from Abbeygate Street and crossing the parking area in front of
the hotel. Two-way traffic on Angel Hill Road gave us a moment to pause and
stare up at the elaborate stone gate leading to the Abbey grounds. Louisa gave
some details of the history of the ancient abbey and the current, more modern
one which had received its finishing touches in very recent times. At a glance,
I would have never guessed the construction of the elaborate building was
completed over more than a thousand years; it all blended seamlessly.

“I’ll tell you more of it, if
you’re interested, another day. You seem to be a little overwhelmed at the
moment.” She smiled at me with a cheerful sparkle in her eye.

I nodded. “Long trip. By tomorrow
I’ll be as energetic as ever.”

We’d crossed the road and walked
under the high arch of the stone gate and the gardens spread out before us.
Coming from a high-desert region where cactus are considered ornamental plants
and lush greenery is a city park that actually has both grass and trees, I’d
had few experiences to compare with a formal English garden. Walkways quartered
the open space and in each quadrant closely clipped lawns formed the backdrop
for precise plantings of bright flowers in patterns of purple, yellow, pink and
red. Benches lined the walks and we found an empty one.

Unwrapping our portable lunch
again we savored the scrumptious meat and potato combination. A white-haired
gentleman in a three-piece suit gave a sidelong glance. Americans and their
informality, his expression seemed to say. About three minutes later, two ducks
found us. They each accepted a crumb of our crusts before they politely moved
on to solicit the charity of someone else.

“I don’t want to tire you too
much on your first day,” Louisa said, “but there’s so much I want to show you.
I’m sad that you could only be here for a week.”

With no idea what I was getting
into I hadn’t wanted to commit too much. Now, without Drake’s schedule pressing
us, I probably could manage to stay longer if things worked out. For now, we
would just see how the visit went.