Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (15 page)

“I’ll present my findings to, uh,
the right people and we’ll do our best to get you a check.” Somehow, some way I
would talk Archie Jones into covering this. It was only right.

Joshua nodded and turned back to
the lengths of pipe and I walked slowly on. How could Dolly be so vindictive
toward a guy who’d shown up to fix a water leak for her? And then to claim that
some unknown entity had made the tracks on the floor . . . maybe the woman
really did have a screw loose.

With a glance at the thickening
clouds, I pulled my jacket a little closer and quickened my pace toward the
Angel. Louisa came in just minutes behind me and we took a corner table where
an impossibly-thin girl in black greeted us and took our orders for glasses of
water.

“This is harder than I thought it
would be,” Louisa said, shrugging out of her bulky tweed coat. “Certainly
doesn’t take them this long to narrow down the suspects when it’s on the
telly.”

I laughed. “No, it’s nothing like
that, is it?”

We placed our orders for
sandwiches. The place was filling up quickly and the cacophony of voices
ricocheted off the hardwood floors, mirrored walls, and wood chairs and tables.
Fairly confident we wouldn’t be overheard, I asked Louisa if she’d learned
anything of interest this morning.

“Not a single thing,” she said.
“Some of the people on my list just said ‘Dolly who?’ when I mentioned her
name. It’s no wonder the police don’t pursue these types of complaints. A few
weeks go by and no one really cares.”

I felt badly that I’d given her
the oldest parts of the list. But not that badly—my own inquiries hadn’t
exactly brought forth any hot suspects either. When our food arrived we put our
lists aside.

“I’ve got four more names,”
Louisa told me as we stood outside on the steps after lunch. “I’ll give them a
go and see what happens.”

“So I’ll see you back at the
house when we finish, whatever time that might be?”

She gave my arm a squeeze, her
energy revitalized after lunch. I saw a patch of sun on the parking lot and
noticed that the clouds were breaking up. The sunshine bolstered my own mood
and I consulted my portion of the printout.

The next name on my list was the
restaurant owner who’d had a run-in with Dolly over a dog. Funny, I’d never
seen a dog at the knit shop or apartment and it never occurred to me that Dolly
owned one. I found James Gilcrist at The Bowl and Platter, a vegetarian pub,
directing his wait staff in the cleanup after the lunch crowd had left. He
seemed like a precise little penguin of a man with a fringe of brown hair
surrounding a bald dome, dressed in black slacks, white shirt and black vest.

“Oh, I remember the instance
very
well,” he said, with a raised eyebrow.

Chapter
18

Gilcrist lowered his voice and
stepped out of the path of the bustling waiters.

“It involved a dog?” I asked. I’d
led him to believe I was following up on his police complaint, without actually
saying that I represented the department.

“Don’t get me wrong. We all love
our pets. I can’t allow them inside the restaurant, of course, but at the
outdoor tables if the dog is kept on leash and minds its manners, that’s fine.”

“But Mrs. Jones’s pet didn’t
quite do that?”

He rolled his eyes. “First, she
wanted to bring the animal inside. One of those little fluffy things, very
small. Well, I could envision hair everywhere. I told her it would have to be
outside. But it was a rainy day and she didn’t want to sit out there. Got very
indignant with me, informing me that
this
was the mayor’s wife’s dog and
that it had the
highest
of pedigrees. The mayor himself would be very
upset, she said, if he learned how rudely my establishment had treated his
wife’s very dear friend.”

His face grew livid as he went
on. “
Then
she set the dog down on the floor and it proceeded to lift its
leg on the podium. I stood right there and watched it. The woman didn’t even
have the good grace to be embarrassed. She merely ordered one of my servers to
wipe it up. She proceeded to take a seat at a table and call the creature up
onto her lap where he began licking at the salt shaker. I had to call the
police before she would leave. It was humiliating—but apparently not for her.
She caused an even greater scene by shouting at me as she made her exit. I
could have wrung her neck.”

“Really?” Maybe this was my
suspect.

“Well, you know. It took all
afternoon for my pulse to settle to a normal level. My god, the woman truly
believed she walked on water.” He tugged downward at his short vest,
straightening it.

“Did you ever mention the
incident to the dog’s owner? Undoubtedly the mayor’s wife would have heard
about this. I’m curious how she took the news.”

He drew himself up taller. “I
never said a thing. However, I’ve heard things . . . she did somehow get the
word and I heard that she was furious with Mrs. Jones afterward. Two of my
customers were speaking of it one day, how Dolly Jones would never be invited
to another society luncheon in
this
town.” He seemed to have forgotten that
I might be making note of his comments, but I didn’t want to stop his gossipy
train of thought.

With Dolly’s love of being
connected, this would have been a serious blow to her esteem. Maybe she’d had
words with someone important and things had gone a bit too far. I thanked
Gilcrist for the information and left.

So far, my inquiries relating to
the police reports weren’t netting me any solid suspects. But the more I
thought about it, the more sensible that seemed. A person would have to be
pretty dim to call in a complaint against Dolly and then proceed to torment her
to death. It was far more likely that whoever was behind the pranks would have
stayed very quiet about it. Shop owners and businessmen would simply brush her
off. This was personal.

Louisa might be able to tell me
who Dolly’s friends were—if she actually had any. I headed toward her house,
ready to settle in for tea or drinks or something, but I passed Lilac Lane and
decided to stop in and say hello to Archie.

“I’m doing all right,” he said
when I asked. That thousand-yard stare was gone, although his face remained
long and grayish.

“I see you are packing up the
shop.” A lot of the merchandise was gone—only some of the bottled oils, a few
candles, and the less-desirable colors of yarns remained. Gabrielle stood in
the far corner, wrapping each small bottle in paper and placing them into a
carton.

“I’ll move back to the house near
Fornham. I’ve given the tenant notice.”

I’d been under the impression
that they needed the rental income and that the apartment in town was much less
expensive than their large home, but I supposed with the shop closed there was
no real reason he would want to be there. Plus, the apartment must hold painful
memories of Dolly’s death.

I remembered that I’d made a semi-promise
to Joshua Raintree so I mentioned the plumbing bill to Archie. He obviously had
not been told about the altercation but he pulled open a file drawer and came
up with the invoice.

“Sure, I’ll take care of it,” he
said, placing it near the cash register.

“Louisa was hoping to stay in
touch with the ladies from the knitting group,” I said, the lie slipping out
before I could catch it. “Would you happen to have a list of them? So she could
get their phone numbers?”

He gave me a blank look, but
Gabrielle bustled over to the counter. She sent her pretty smile my way. After
a minute of rummaging through some loose scraps of paper near the register, she
came up with one.

“There you go,” she said, handing
me a pale green sheet of notepaper. “Don’t suppose we’ll be needing it
anymore.”

I thanked her and told Archie to
let us know if he needed any help. I couldn’t fathom what that might entail,
other than moving all that heavy furniture up from the cellar and I instantly
began to regret the offer. I scooted out of there before he could think of it.

Down the block I unfolded the
page Gabrielle had handed me. There were about a dozen names on it with phone
numbers beside them, each in different handwriting, the kind of list people
pass around at a meeting to take attendance. Some only gave first names, but
Louisa could probably fill me in.

When I reached the house I
discovered she’d arrived before me and was in the process of uncorking a wine
bottle.

“I’d no idea how exhausting this
is, asking questions of people,” she said. She’d shed the tweeds in favor of a
soft track suit and fuzzy slippers. “Is this what you do all the time at home?”

“And then some,” I said with a
laugh. All the accounting duties for our small business, the occasional
investigation that I personally get wrapped up in, plus keeping up my piloting
skills so I can help Drake with his business as well. The thought of Drake made
me realize this might be the right time of day to catch him before he started
work. I asked if it would be all right to use the phone upstairs.

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten
about the additional two hour time difference so I woke him at an ungodly hour
in Alaska. He must have been in the middle of a vivid dream that involved me
and something lacy because he didn’t seem to mind talking—a lot. I closed my
bedroom door and somehow twenty minutes went by pretty quickly. When we said a
breathless goodbye, I realized that my face was a bit flushed. I ducked into
the bathroom and splashed some cold water on it before I rejoined Louisa in the
kitchen.

“So—” I said with a too-bright
smile as I sat across the table from her. “Did you learn anything from your
interviews?”

She gave me a knowing glance and
pushed a full wine glass toward me. “Nothing of substance.” Her smile drooped a
little. “Like I said at lunch, a lot of the people hardly remember what
happened. I guess Dolly wasn’t nearly as important as she wanted to think.”

She made this last comment with
just enough hint of humor that I knew she hadn’t taken Dolly all that seriously
either.

“Well, someone spent a lot of
time coming up with those pranks at the shop,” I said. “There had to be a
reason for that. Someone wanted to harm her and that takes a fair amount of
pent-up anger.”

She nodded thoughtfully and
reached for a bowl of little crunchy snacks that she’d come up with from
somewhere.

“Oh, hey,” I said, “I’ve got
another list of names we can check.”

Her face did a couple of little
moves that let me know doing more interviews wasn’t going to be tops on her
list. I pulled the note page from my pocket.

“I’ll do the actual
interviews—that’s no problem,” I said. “But I could use your help with names
and background info. They’re the members of Dolly’s knitting group.”

I handed her the sheet.

Her forehead wrinkled a little.
“I’ve never seen a lot of these women at the meetings. Well, guess I can’t
really call them meetings—we just got together and worked on our projects.
Dolly would offer help if someone was having trouble with a pattern or
something.”

“Do you know them?”

“Most. Some have only given first
names but I think I can piece it together.” She picked up a pen and began to
fill in the blanks.

“Tell me a little about each
one,” I said when she handed the sheet back to me. I made notes as she glanced
at the names again.

“Well, I introduced you to Hazel
Blaine at the tourism office,” she said. “We work together there, discovered we
both love needlework, and she introduced me to Dolly and the shop.”

“Does Hazel still, or
did
she still, go to the group?”

“She cut back, said she couldn’t
spare so many evenings away from home. Has a young child.”

“But she didn’t quit in anger
with Dolly or anything like that?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Hazel is
so polite. She might not say anything, even if that were the real reason.”

“See if you can find out.” It was
a stretch—a huge stretch—I knew. Someone polite enough to make up an excuse for
not attending would almost certainly not be vindictive enough to go back and
torment the hostess. I put a small X beside Hazel’s name.

Three other names were of women
Louisa knew fairly well and none of them seemed likely candidates either.
Again, the tiny X’s. If I couldn’t come up with absolutely any other clues I
might contact them but they weren’t on my A list.

By seven o’clock we were getting
very hungry and a little tipsy so I suggested that we just pop out to the
nearest pub and get something quick to eat. While Louisa changed her shoes I
reviewed the list and found that I had four people to definitely contact—the
ones Louisa didn’t know at all—and four others with ‘maybe’ beside their names,
women she only knew slightly. The calls could certainly wait until tomorrow.

We placed orders at the bar and
walked into the larger of the two rooms, looking for an empty table. There, at
the first table on the right, sat Archie Jones and Gabrielle. She was feeding
him something and smiling widely. Archie spotted me, quickly swallowed and
scooted his chair a few inches farther away from hers.

“Hello there,” I said.

Gabrielle looked up at me. “Oh,
hello.” She giggled and I noticed that a tall beer glass at her place was
nearly empty. “You should try the sweet potato chips. Yummy, aren’t they,
Archie?”

“We were just getting a bite to
eat after working on the stock all day,” he said, clearing his throat.

“How is it going?” Louisa asked.

“Pretty well. We’ve sold a lot of
the inventory and bagged up quite a lot of trash. I’ve got a mover coming
Thursday for our personal things, the furniture and such. It’s just very
difficult.” He draped his napkin over his nearly-empty plate.

Maybe they
were
merely
having some dinner and Gabrielle had a little too much beer.

“Well, I need to be off,” he
said. He turned to Gabrielle. “You’ve got your car?”

She nodded a little stiffly and I
wondered whether she should be driving, but he didn’t seem concerned about it.

“I’ll come in again tomorrow
then?” she asked.

He gave a quick nod to each of us
and made his way out the door. Gabrielle watched him go as she stuffed a few
more of the potatoes into her mouth. Louisa, meantime, had spotted a table for us
and we took it, just as our plates came out of the kitchen.

“That was odd, didn’t you think?”
I murmured to Louisa. “Archie and Gabrielle were pretty cozy there.”

“Surely it’s nothing. He just
bought her dinner after a day’s work.” She unwrapped her silverware from the
napkin and started poking at her fish with the fork.

“Probably so.” They seemed to
work in the shop like a father-daughter team. I decided to let it drop.
Suddenly I was starving.

*
* *

The next morning I started out
fresh and early to go through the list of Dolly’s friends, in one final attempt
to figure out what had happened to her. At this point Louisa seemed to be the
only one who felt terribly concerned about it, and if I couldn’t find some
answers pretty quickly I was going to have to talk her into accepting the
coroner’s report.

Before she left for the office,
Louisa had looked up the addresses of my targets and had marked them on my
little map, which was by this time becoming rather covered in scratchings and
notes.

I’d laid the groundwork for my
visiting each of the women by phoning to say that Archie had wanted each member
of Dolly’s group to have some of the wools left in the shop. The women all
seemed flattered by the gift, and no one questioned too deeply as to why an
unfamiliar American would personally be delivering them. Now I just had to get
Archie to give me the leftover yarns. Sheesh—the things I get myself into.

Forty-five minutes later I left
his shop with four separate bags containing a hodge-podge of yarn, but Gabrielle
had assured me that each contained enough for the recipient to make a nice
scarf. That seemed a good enough parting gift from Dolly to get me into each
house.

Mary Ellis greeted me at the door
with such a bright smile that I couldn’t turn down her offer of cinnamon cake
and tea, despite the fact that she was barely over four feet tall, at least
ninety-eight years old, and could hardly make it across the room, even using
her walker. There was no way this woman had sneaked around Dolly’s shop,
setting up the pranks against her, much less entered the upstairs apartment to
administer an overdose. I knew this within the first two minutes I spent with
her but I stayed for cake anyway. What can I say—it smelled delicious.