Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (3 page)

“So, I’m sure you’d like a bit of
a rest this afternoon,” she was saying. “If you don’t mind my popping by the
knit shop on the way back, I’ll pick up a little more wool for a project I’m
working on. I belong to a little weekly knitting group there. Then later, we
can have dinner at my house.”

“I’m getting my strength back
now, I think. Whatever you’ve planned sounds good to me.” There were at least a
dozen questions on my mind, mainly about family and why her relationship with
my father had gone so far south. We’d barely touched on the past yet, focusing
mainly on our present-day lives during our few brief phone conversations, but I
didn’t intend to leave England before I knew more about this mysterious new
relative of mine.

“Explore around here anytime
during your stay,” Louisa was saying. “The Abbey grounds are extensive, farther
in you’ll find the ruins of the oldest sections that date back to the Middle
Ages. I’ve also requested a flexible work schedule this week so we can spend
more time together, and it would be a joy to show you all around.”

We’d finished our pasties by this
time and tossed the wrappers into a discreet trash barrel on the way back out
to the street. Heading west on Abbeygate Street, I followed Louisa’s lead
through several turns into progressively narrower lanes until she abruptly
stopped on a picturesque street called Lilac Lane and opened the door to a tiny
shop.

“The Knit & Purl” was painted
in gold on a carved wooden sign depicting a set of knitting needles thrust
through a ball of purple yarn, which hung above the doorway at a ninety-degree
angle to the sidewalk. Tiny bells tinkled as the door closed behind us.

A thin woman with angular
features and steel-gray hair in a straight page cut looked up from the sales
counter. Her body seemed all planes and angles, from the minimal chest to her
sharp shoulders and spider-like fingers. She wore navy trousers and a print
blouse with a cardigan of blue wool that looked like her own creation. Her face
softened when she saw my aunt.

“Ah, Louisa, there you are! I’m
so glad you’ve come.”

“Well, I said I’d be by today for
the blue heather. Did it come in?” Louisa stopped in mid-stride. “Oh, where are
my manners? I want you to meet my niece from the States.” She reached out to
shuffle me to the forefront.

“Charlie, this is my dear friend,
Dolly Jones. She owns this lovely shop. It’s only been here a year or so, right
Dolly? But hasn’t she done a beautiful job with it?”

Dolly regarded me with suspicion
for a moment, her light blue eyes squinted nearly shut. “Charlie? Unusual
name.”

Louisa went into the whole
explanation of how I’d been named for her and I added that my brothers had
shortened Charlotte to Charlie when we were kids. Dolly’s smile brightened, as
if now that she knew something about me I had passed muster.

I returned the smile and began to
browse the shop when their conversation turned back to the subject of Louisa’s
blue heather yarn which, it so happened, had not yet arrived. In addition to
two walls full of specially constructed bins filled with precise balls of yarn
arranged by color, the shop sold candles, cards, and some handmade cloth purses
and bags. A shelf near the register held small bottles of essential oils and
herbs. One of the cloth purses caught my eye as a possible gift to take home
for Elsa and I’d walked over to get a closer look, half listening to the scraps
of their conversation I could catch above the soft classical music that played
in the background.

“And what about that incident
last week? Did you ever find out what was behind that?” Louisa was asking.

“No. And now there’s been
another.” Dolly’s voice seemed strained as she straightened some cards in their
display rack.

“You know,” Louisa said, “people
say many buildings in this part of town are haunted.”

I moved from the purses to the
candles, eavesdropping shamelessly now.

“It was
not
the work of a
ghost,” Dolly declared in a tone that permitted no argument. “No offense,
Louisa, but you know that I don’t believe in those things.”

Louisa only looked momentarily
chastened.

“I spent the entire morning
putting the wools back in order. You know how I keep my shop, neat as a pin.
The yarns are always arranged by color—the reds, the oranges, the yellows, and
so forth.” She waved a hand toward the bins of perfectly stacked skeins.

“Oh, I know you do,” Louisa
murmured. “Neat as a pin, Charlie.”

I nodded and stepped over to the
sales counter.

Dolly kept talking. “This morning
I came down to find everything a complete hodgepodge. All the colors mixed
together, the dye lots intermingled, the
merino
was in with the
cashmere
for god’s sake!”

Her face had grown very pink. She
blew out a breath and turned toward me. “It took Gabrielle and me the entire
morning to sort it all out. Gabrielle Tukson is my shop assistant.”

“Dolly and Archie live right above,”
Louisa said, pointing toward the ceiling.

“A small apartment comes with the
lease,” Dolly added. “Not my husband’s first choice but—” She waved the rest of
the thought away vaguely.

“So someone came in during the
night, while you were right upstairs?” I asked.

Dolly shook her head. “I simply
don’t see how. I am not a heavy sleeper. And Archie was right in bed beside me
the whole night. We never heard a sound. The door bells alone would have
wakened me, to say nothing of someone moving about throughout the place.”

Louisa raised an eyebrow toward
me. “And there was the incident last week . . .”

“Muddy footprints across my
shining wood floor. This room was spotless when we turned in the night before.
I come down to open shop in the morning and there are large boot prints from
the front door, over to the register. But, they didn’t lead back outside. Just
stopped. Practically right on this spot.” She pointed toward the floor at her
feet.

“Sounds like a poltergeist to
me,” Louisa said knowledgeably. “They tend to play tricks, move things around
but not do real harm.”

Dolly squirmed to remain quiet. I
got the feeling that she didn’t want to alienate a good customer and friend but
she didn’t for a minute believe that there was a supernatural cause to the
mischief in her shop. She brought the subject back around to Louisa’s yarn
order and assured her that it should arrive in the Tuesday shipment.

We’d turned to leave and were met
at the door by a man.

“Archie,” Louisa greeted. “Good
to see you again.” She performed a quick introduction to Dolly’s husband.

I registered a man in his sixties
who’d once been tall and slender. Now his shoulders were hunched and he
decidedly favored his left hip when he walked. His long, thin face was
smooth-shaven with crevices along both sides of his mouth. He raised his cap,
revealing a head of thick gray hair, and gave a pleasant smile and fluttered
his long fingers toward us as we said goodbye.

Chapter
3

The scattered clouds earlier in
the day had thickened and lowered, giving the streets a shadowy feel and the
possibility of rain seemed very real now. We hurried past shops that were
clearing—a bookstore, a clothing store featuring woolens from Scotland, a
coffee shop, a newsstand—as shoppers picked up the pace, finishing their
purchases and heading toward home. In minutes we found ourselves at the front
steps of the Angel Hotel again.

My jet-lag was catching up to me.
I made a halfhearted offer to have Louisa come up to my room for tea and wasn’t
terribly disappointed when she suggested that I take a little rest and then
come to her house for drinks and dinner. She sketched me a little map on the
back of an envelope, assuring me that it was a ten minute walk if it wasn’t
raining. And if it was, I was to give her a call and she would pick me up.

The phone rang on the nightstand
as I entered my room.

“Hi, hon.” Drake’s voice came
over the trans-Atlantic miles as if he were in the next room. I wished that he
were.

I filled him in on the flight and
the ride to Bury and the day’s events.

“Sounds like you could use a
nap,” he said after the third time I yawned. He assured me that all was going
well with his job. I tried to get it straight that he’d flown for the customer
while I was on the plane then slept while I was walking around town with
Louisa. It was early morning at home and he was ready to head for his
helicopter once again. Freckles was doing fine. We were training her to stay in
her crate whenever she was home alone, and that seemed to be going well. By the
time he got through all the details I’d peeled off my jeans and crawled under
the duvet on the bed. My eyes slammed shut at approximately the same time I set
the phone receiver back in its cradle.

Thank goodness I’d stopped at the
front desk and asked them to give a wake-up call at five o’clock or I would
have probably slept the entire night away. When the bedside phone chirped its
strange foreign tone I jolted awake, heart pounding, head disoriented.

I took a few minutes to really
unpack my bag and hang things in the wardrobe, choosing a fresh pair of jeans
and a sweater that wasn’t terribly wrinkled. A glance out the window showed the
courtyard below to be thoroughly damp but no raindrops dotted the few puddles.
The sky seemed to be clearing in the early twilight. I set my seldom-used
umbrella beside my purse.

The hot shower and shampoo felt
wonderful and I gave myself over to the whole routine. Even though it would be
useless to hope my hair wouldn’t fluff uncontrollably in this humidity, I spent
time with the curling iron and some kind of styling gunk that was supposed to
tame frizz. We would see about that.

Forty-five minutes later,
standing on the steps of the Angel, I studied Louisa’s map. She’d used street
names but two blocks into the stroll, I was still having a hard time spotting
them, so I relied mostly on her notes about landmarks. Turn right at the
pharmacy and go until you get to the theatre. From there two blocks to the
right and the fourth door on the left would be a red one, number 15. I used the
brass knocker, mainly because one never got to do that at home.

Louisa answered, wearing a
flowered silk dress in shades of blue with a white apron over it and turquoise
ballet flats. Her hair touched her shoulders in soft curls of the wash and wear
variety. I could imagine her as a teenager with a daisy tucked behind one ear.

“Come in, darling.” She’d stowed
my umbrella and wool blazer before I knew it. A waft of incense reminded me of
the letter I’d received at home.

“Wine?” she offered.

From the brightness in her eyes I
guessed that she might have already started. The first floor of the row house
seemed to consist of a living room and kitchen. Stairs rose to the left of the
front door. I followed her into the kitchen and accepted the glass of cabernet
that she poured.

“Afraid I don’t do fancy when it
comes to food,” she said. “It’s going to be a simple chicken and veggie
casserole and a light salad.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“While it bakes, let me show you
around.” She stood in place and spread her hands. “Kitchen. Very simple.”

It wasn’t a large room but seemed
equipped with the necessities—smaller versions of stove and fridge than would
be typical in America, but certainly adequate. A countertop in green linoleum,
the ubiquitous electric kettle, a table set for two.

We walked through the doorway
back to the living room—which Louisa called the parlor—where I’d barely
registered the décor as dating back to the 1950s with sturdy upholstered sofa
and armchair, a piecrust-style coffee table and matching end table. A small
lamp there, a floor lamp at the opposite end of the sofa. A quality rug, a bit
worn at the edges, on the polished wood floor. If I’d guessed at Louisa’s
choice in furnishings based on her dress and manner, this would not have been
it, but when she explained that she’d been hired as caregiver to an elderly
woman when she first moved to Bury and that the lady had later willed the home
to her it all made perfect sense.

I noticed her own touches. An
arrangement of candles on the coffee table, photos in silver frames. Two of
them showed Louisa—fresh-faced, young, with a group of friends in backpacking
gear.

“Just never bothered to shop for
new furniture,” she said. “This is comfortable. Why throw it out?”

She led the way up the stairs and
pointed out the two bedrooms separated by a small bathroom, all facing a tiny
landing. Again, the ’50s styling, although she’d obviously upgraded the
mattresses and bedding, opting for thick comforters and piles of pillows to
snuggle into.

“If you should change your mind
about the hotel, dear, this one would be yours,” she said as we left the guest
room with its yellow floral wallpaper and bright royal blue accents.

The timer on the oven saved me
from having to answer at that moment as Louisa rushed downstairs. I followed a
little behind her, loving the charm of the old house but wanting a few more
answers before committing. I still didn’t know the full story of why Louisa and
my father had not spoken for the last twenty years of his life.

The rich scent of chicken in a
creamy sauce filled the kitchen. We took seats at the table and served
ourselves from the casserole and the bowl of bright green salad.

Conversation soon turned back to
the knit shop and Louisa’s friend Dolly.

“I’ve known her for a few years
now. We met through a knitting club here in town. Back when I was the live-in
for Mrs. Whitmere I needed something to occupy me during the long hours she
slept so I took up needlework. When Dolly opened her own shop, she started a
small knitting group there.”

“I noticed the beautiful afghans
in the bedrooms.”

“Dolly and I, we’re about the
same age, had those types of lives that are so similar in ways and so very
different in others. She married, was a homemaker for years, successful
husband. I never married, couple of close calls on that, but it always seemed
more fun to explore the world. While Dolly found a home career, knitting
sweaters for the Scottish wool companies, I zipped around Europe with a rail
pass and backpack. No children to raise, for either of us, so we had the free
time to pursue hobbies. That shared interest formed the basis for our
friendship. She can be a prickly person, though, and I suppose she doesn’t have
a lot of friends.”

She wouldn’t be easy as an
employer either. I remembered how worked up she’d become over her yarn stock
being out of place. I thought of Louisa’s ideas about the unexplained incidents
in Dolly’s shop.

“You seem to have a difference of
opinion about the supernatural,” I said as we cleared the table.

Louisa set the dishes into the
sink, ran some water over them and poured us each another glass of wine. “Let’s
relax in the parlor. I guess you could say that I’ve seen enough not to be a
disbeliever, while Dolly has never seen enough to be a believer.” She laughed
heartily, a sound that filled the small room where we settled at opposite ends
of the sofa.

“Let me show you something,” she
said, setting her wine glass aside and rising to cross to the bookshelves. She
pulled out a book with an ethereal pattern of gray smoke on its cover and blew
a whiff of dust off the top.

I caught sight of the title—
The
World’s Top Ten Haunted Sites
.

“This isn’t an authority on the
subject,” she said. “More of a starter volume. I’ve actually visited all ten of
them.”

She tucked a wisp of hair behind
her ear and opened the book as she settled back onto the sofa.

“In fact, here’s one that’s very
close to home.”

I immediately thought of New
Mexico, but saw that the heading on the page said
England—Suffolk
. Silly
me. The photo at the center of the spread looked a little familiar.

“It’s our Abbey,” Louisa said.
“Right here in Bury.”

Now I knew where I’d seen those
spires.

“Of course, many of what they
consider the ‘most haunted’ sites in the world center around battlefields and
such, places where hundreds or thousands of people have died. What makes our
Abbey unique is that it’s been inhabited for well over a thousand years and
there have been consistent sightings of those from the spirit world during all
that time.”

I stared at the images, taken in
foggy light—the lumpy ruins of the ancient structures alongside the more modern
Gothic styled ones that looked like something right out of a 1930s movie set.
Or maybe it was the shots of the gravestones tilted at odd angles in the nearby
churchyard which gave that impression. Being a sucker for old Hitchcock films
and remembering gripping my brother’s arm in the theater when he dragged me to
a slasher movie without my mother’s knowledge, I felt a stirring of interest.
Sometime while I was here I would have to visit those old ruins and see if I
picked up my aunt’s enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, I caught myself
stifling a huge yawn. Louisa noticed too.

“It’s been a long day for you,”
she said. “Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind and stay here?”

For about half a second I was
torn. Her guest room was lovely. But then, my room at the Angel was also
lovely. And it would feel good to have a night completely to myself. I made
polite noises about the kindness of her offer as I carried my wine glass to the
kitchen and looked around for my blazer and umbrella. We parted with a hug.

A light drizzle had begun
sometime during the evening but at the moment it had subsided into an
atmosphere of dense, cool moisture that didn’t actually include any real
raindrops. I kept my umbrella folded and let my skin soak it in, understanding
how English women got their dewy complexions.

The night streets lay in quiet
shadows before me, the residents of the tiny neighborhood tucked in behind
softly glowing windows. Victorian styled street lamps gave just enough light to
keep me from becoming completed spooked as my footsteps echoed on the
sidewalks. Following Louisa’s directions in reverse got me back to the Angel, a
little chilled but unharmed by anything of a phantom nature and more than ready
to heat the kettle and have a relaxing cup of tea.

Snuggled into my flannel jammies,
I only made it halfway through the tea before my eyelids refused to stay open.
The thick duvet felt so good as I pulled it up to my chin and I’m pretty sure I
was unconscious moments after the lamp went out.