Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (22 page)

Chapter
27

Her face contorted in anger, her
eyes went wild. I kept my eyes on the hand with the bookend while I tightened
my grip on the scissors and tried to think what to do with them. Stab or slice?
I didn’t want to do either but I wasn’t about to let her clock me in the head
with that thing.

Movement behind Gabrielle caught
my eye. She swung the bookend at me just as Archie reached around her from
behind. He tried to pin her arms at her sides, but she saw him at the last
millisecond and turned on him. The momentum sent the heavy silver object right
toward his face.

I jumped up, stumbling when the
hip pain hit me, my scissor-weapon still in hand. Archie had wrestled Gabrielle
to the floor and she’d dropped the silver bookend, just beyond his grasp. I
didn’t wait to find out how it would all end. I scrambled for the stairs,
wincing with each footfall, holding my breath tightly against the pain in my
ribs.

At the top I dared a glance back.
Archie had kicked the bookend farther beyond the fray. Gabrielle was trying to
punch at him with her fists but he’d grabbed both her wrists. I leaned against
the door, half tempted to lock them both inside, but afraid of how that might
end up. At the moment, my bigger concern was getting air into my lungs.

I managed two shallow breaths
before I realized that I was hearing a noise from the front of the shop.
Someone was pounding on the window. I hobbled to the doorway and almost cried
out in relief.

It was Louisa. And at the shop’s
door, two policemen in nice solid black uniforms stood with nightsticks in
hand. I limped toward the door and let them in.

“The cellar—” My breath caught.
The ribs were killing me. “Gabrielle—the woman down there. She’s murdered—”

Luckily, they didn’t want more
from me at that moment. They headed toward the dim light showing from the
stairwell.

Louisa rushed toward me.

“Don’t hug—” I pointed to my
ribs.

“Oh, baby. You’re a mess.”

I nodded.

She whipped out her cell phone
and called for an ambulance.

“I was so worried,” she said.
“You didn’t come after an hour, then it was two hours. I called the police but
they tried to convince me you’d just gone out for some fun. It took me forever
to persuade them that wasn’t the case.”

I looked around for a place to
sit but the empty shop offered nothing. I leaned against the wall. Voices came
from the cellar—shouts, followed by a shriek and noises of a struggle.

“They searched the park and the
graveyard. I tried calling the shop, since you’d told me you were coming here,
but the phone’s disconnected. I came by but everything was dark.”

I nodded. “I had a feeling . . .”

“Don’t try to talk. They’ll be
here soon.”

“It’s morning!” I’d only now
realized that the street outside was in daylight and a few cars had passed in
front of the shop.

Louisa nodded. The unusual sound
of a foreign ambulance siren came closer.

From below, the male voices grew
louder as they approached the top of the steps. One of the police officers had
a grip on Gabrielle’s elbow. Her hands were in cuffs behind her back. Her perky
hair clip was askew and blond chunks spiked out at all angles. The pale pink
sweater and print skirt she’d worn for her going-away trip with Archie were
dingy with floor grime, the skirt hanging lopsidedly from a rip near the
waistband. She sent me a hard stare before lowering her gaze to the ground as
the officer led her outside.

Archie’s clothing was equally
grimy and he was holding a handkerchief to a scrape near his hairline. The
second officer followed. I wondered what was going through his mind.

“Sorry about all this,” Archie
said to me. “Quite the—”

“What about Catherine?” I
interrupted.

“Oh lord.” Archie turned to the
policeman behind him and started to explain.

The ambulance dodged its way
around the moving van that still sat there, found a spot in front of it, almost
at the curb. Two uniformed EMTs jumped out and dashed to the back for a
stretcher.

“I’m all right,” I tried to
insist. But it became clear that I really should have everything checked out
when I tried to walk across the room and nearly fell. Louisa and the policeman
each took an elbow and the paramedics insisted that I sit on the edge of the
stretcher while they did quick checks of my blood pressure and heart rate and
took a peek at the wound on my temple.

I wanted to argue that I could
easily ride to the hospital sitting up, but suddenly the soft cushion on the
gurney looked really good. I laid down and just gave control over to everyone
else, for once.

*
* *

It was mid-afternoon when Louisa
took me back to her house. By this time of day we were supposed to have been
arriving in London, settling into our hotel and dressing for dinner and a play.
A bunch of strapping around my ribs and a sizeable dosing of pain killers had
me feeling good enough that I was actually up for it, but Louisa’s more sensible
argument prevailed and I was put to bed with chicken soup and a pile of thick
blankets.

The very proper British doctor
had suggested, in his
very
polite way, that I not travel for a week or
so. I had no intention of minding that order.

“If we go to sleep now, we can
set our alarms for two a.m.,” I told Louisa. “I’ll easily make my flight and
you’ll have me out of your hair.”

“I don’t want you out of my hair,
darling,” she said as she tucked the covers around me. “Stay as long as you
like.”

But I could tell that the past
day’s adventure had worn on her a bit too much as well. When I reached for my
bedside clock and set it, she shook her head good-naturedly and went to do the
same.

My body nestled into the cushiony
surface of the mattress and I must have been asleep within minutes. At some
point in my sleep I heard the distant sound of a telephone ringing but it could
have been a dream. I shifted my position slightly, without ever opening my
eyes.

Light tapping, a swish of door
against carpet, and Louisa’s voice whispered, “Charlie?”

I smiled under painkiller
influence and opened one eye.

“Are you awake? Telephone for
you.”

Drake. I’d intended to let him
know that everything was on schedule for my flight. But it wasn’t my hubby.
Archie Jones greeted me.

“Charlie, I wanted to say how
sorry I am about your injuries. I’d no idea that Gabrielle would take this
thing so far.”

“What’s happened? Is she being
held by the police?” A scary flash went through my head, of Gabrielle on the
loose and trying to finish what she’d started.

“Oh, yes. She’ll not be out for a
long time,” he said. “Mainly I wanted to thank you for your efforts, and to say
that Catherine is all right.”

While I’d been babying my scrapes
and cracked ribs, I’d completely forgotten that Gabrielle had gone after
Catherine with the intention of ‘fixing’ her.

“Gabrielle apparently went to
Catherine’s home but was refused entry by a maid. The police said she then
broke into the garages and tampered with something on Catherine’s car, but she
left enough traces of the handiwork that Catherine became suspicious and had
the vehicle towed and checked before getting behind the wheel. The police took
some prints or swabs or whatever it is they do.”

“I’m glad. Hopefully they got
enough evidence to make a strong case.”

“Well, that’s the other thing.
Now it seems that Gabrielle has recanted the confessions she made to us and the
case will definitely go to trial.”

“Will I need to come back to
testify?” At this very moment the prospect didn’t sound at all appealing.

“My solicitor believes that my
testimony will be sufficient,” he said. “I’m sure they will let you know.”

I nodded and mumbled something.
He thanked me again for helping to solve the mystery of the phantom pranks and
for getting Gabrielle out of his life. I was dimly aware that Louisa plucked
the portable phone from my fingers, but sleep rapidly overtook me.

Bless her heart, my aunt
continued to watch out for me—packing my bag and carrying it downstairs, making
the middle-of-night drive without a blink while I filled her in on the
strangeness of the previous night. A gingerly hug in consideration of my tender
ribs, and an invitation to come back, with the sincere desire that we never let
go of our newfound relationship.

“I’ll miss you, darling girl,”
she said. “I hope this whole escapade hasn’t put you off England forever.”

“Absolutely not. I loved Bury and
I will definitely find a chance to come back.” I noticed that her blue eyes
seemed a little moist. “Louisa, it’s been a wonderful adventure and I wouldn’t
have given up the time with you for anything.”

She gave my hand a squeeze and
then saw me through airport check-in and made sure an attendant with a
wheelchair would take me to the plane. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever
boarded a plane in wounded condition, but I chafed a little at all the fuss.

More of the pain pills, my
business class seat fully reclined, and I have to admit that Dallas came along
more quickly than I would have imagined. During the layover for the quick hop
to Albuquerque I called Drake. Hearing that I was now west of the Mississippi
gave both of us a sense of reassurance. I guess you have to live in the West to
really know the feeling.

“My job is ending tonight,” he
said. “I’ll be home tomorrow.” He sounded excited that more Alaska work for the
summer looked like a sure bet. “I left the business card for the boarding
kennel on the dining table. I hate to admit how much I’ve missed that little
pup. Have Freckles home with you when I get there?”

I agreed. I also didn’t go into
detail about my last twenty-four hours; there would be time enough for him to
learn about it once we were all home. Safe and sound.

Author’s
Notes

The first seed of the idea for
this book came during a trip to Bury St. Edmunds, where the people are so
friendly and the history just a little mind-boggling to an American like me.
The Angel Hotel is an amazing place to stay. I have my daughter to thank for
letting me tag along and for introducing me to the lovely people she works with
in Bury.

Readers familiar with the location
will recognize some real sites: The Angel Hotel, the sugar factory, Abbeygate
Street and of course the Abbey ruins, gardens and cathedral. Certain actual
businesses are used, but the ones central to the story—the Trahorn Building,
The Knit and Purl, and several others—are purely fictional. The police station,
newspaper office, museum and other real places have been altered by my pen to
serve the purposes of this fictional story. I do not know if Louisa’s haunted
sites tours exist—if so, they probably do not resemble the one I made up for
this story—but the ghosts mentioned by name do come from local lore and most
certainly do exist, for those who believe.

As always I am thankful for my
husband Dan who has stuck with all the ups and downs of my writing career,
through eighteen books over the last twenty-two years. My longtime friend and
editor, Susan Slater, is there for my impossible deadlines and always comes
through in a pinch. My dear friend Margaret Norrie was very kind in reading the
early manuscript and giving me the British perspective on the characters and
story. My everlasting thanks to her for pointing out the things that an English
person would never do—I saved those bits for my uncouth American characters.

And of course there are my readers,
many of whom take the time to send me encouraging notes and to so considerately
spread the word by recommending my books to their friends. My heartfelt thanks
to all of you!

Connie
Shelton

May,
2012

Books

by
Connie Shelton

The Charlie Parker Series

Deadly
Gamble

Vacations
Can Be Murder

Partnerships
Can Be Murder

Small
Towns Can Be Murder

Memories
Can Be Murder

Honeymoons
Can Be Murder

Reunions
Can Be Murder

Competition
Can Be Murder

Balloons
Can Be Murder

Obsessions
Can Be Murder

Gossip
Can Be Murder

Stardom
Can Be Murder

Phantoms
Can Be Murder

Holidays
Can Be Murder - a Christmas novella

The Samantha Sweet Series

Sweet
Masterpiece

Sweet’s
Sweets

Sweet
Holidays

Sweet
Hearts

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