Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (9 page)

A short beep-beep grabbed my
attention and I realized I’d stepped off the curb and almost into a tiny car’s
path. I gave an embarrassed wave to the driver as I moved out of his way.

One of my primary tenets of life
is that when things get confusing one should give oneself a treat. I spotted an
ice cream shop near the Angel Hotel and popped right in there. On the wall a
chalkboard menu listed a bunch of items by names I’d never heard of.

“What’s the Knickerbocker Glory?”
I asked the teen girl behind the counter.

She held up a tall sundae glass.
“We put some fresh fruit in the bottom of this—cherries, peaches, strawberries,
kiwi, blackberries and raspberries. Then it’s strawberry, vanilla and chocolate
ice cream, a scoop of each. Then chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, whipped
cream and a cherry on top. Oh, and it’s served with a wafer.” She added the
mention of the wafer as if I might not be quite satisfied by all the rest.

I felt myself salivating but
remembered that Louisa had said to save room for a good dinner. I settled for a
small ice cream bar on a stick, making note that I must come back before the
end of my stay and have that other glorious concoction.

Despite my little snack I found
my energy lagging as I walked up Abbeygate Street. A short rest might help
renew me and put all the information I’d learned in some kind of order. I let
myself into Louisa’s house and settled on my bed with the book of haunted
places she’d given me last night.

I must have dozed off within
minutes of opening the book because the next thing I knew my eyes flew open
when I heard a sound downstairs. Not quite sure whether I’d dreamed it or not,
I got up to check out the noise. There at the foot of the stairs stood a
semi-transparent figure—a young boy in old fashioned clothing.

Chapter
10

“Charlie! Charlie, wake up!”
Louisa shook me gently.

I rolled away from the hand on my
shoulder and felt the firm binding of the book against my ribs. My heart
pounded.

“You must have had quite a bad
dream,” she said. “You gave out a little shriek.”

I shook off the cobwebs of sleep,
working to get my eyes focused and my heart to slow down as I stood.

“I came home about an hour ago,”
she said. “You were sleeping so I tried to be quiet.”

“Too much input,” I joked. I
repeated Dolly’s story of the vision she’d had in the night. “Obviously my brain
incorporated all of it—the stories from this book and pictures I saw at the
museum, along with her mysterious visitor.”

She eyed me skeptically.

“Obviously, Archie’s comment that
Dolly had dreamed the whole thing stuck with me, and I proceeded to dream it
myself.”

She couldn’t very well argue in
favor of there really being a supernatural explanation this time. She’d been
home and knew that I had not started down the stairs nor had I seen any ghostly
person there.

“What time is it?” I asked,
noticing that the room was in deep shadow. “Could we declare it happy hour
yet?”

“Shall we head for the Fox Inn
and have our drinks there?”

I washed my face and brushed my
hair then carried the book down to place it back on the shelf in the parlor.
Enough of the haunted places research for awhile.

“It’s close to a mile each
direction,” she said as we put on our jackets. “We could take the car if you’d
rather not do that much walking.”

“The walk will be good for me.
Have to shake off the weirdness of that dream.”

Softly glowing street lamps gave
the street a peaceful ambiance. We cut through the main shopping district where
all the stores were now closed and the pedestrian walkways deserted and quiet.

“I love this part of town after
dark,” Louisa said. “It’s so much hustle-bustle during the day but I have the
whole place to myself in the evenings.”

I agreed that it felt entirely
different now. Brightly lit restaurants were filled, obviously the places where
many of those pedestrians retired at dinner time. We came to the Fox Inn much
more quickly than I expected and were ushered into a nice dining room with
heavy wood paneling, high ceilings and white tablecloths.

“How was your day, aside from
trying to figure out what disturbed Dolly’s sleep?” she asked, once we’d ordered
glasses of wine. When it arrived we drank a little toast to staying sane.

“Well, I visited the museum and
the newspaper, as you’d suggested. Did you know that the Trahorn Building where
Dolly’s shop stands was once a slaughter house and butcher shop? In later years
it was a bicycle shop.” At her smile, I realized what a silly question that was
for a local person. “Of course you knew it, didn’t you?”

“I’d actually forgotten. My
research focused on the high points that would interest tourists. I could probably
stand to go back to my books for a refresher on a lot of the other history.”

Our server approached to tell us
that the special was a lovely portion of prime rib, served with potatoes and
vegetables. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to have it, still thinking of the
knit shop being haunted by the spirits of all those dead cows. Silly, I know,
but I ordered the chicken instead.

“All right,” Louisa said once
we’d received our starters. “Let’s say Dolly really did dream the vision of the
man in her shop last night. She obviously didn’t dream that her yarns were all
scrambled or that the tea scalded her hand. What do you suppose happened on
those occasions?”

“The thought came to me that
someone is trying to scare her into moving out of the building. But how are
they doing it, and why? I have to figure that out.”

“The thrift shop folks moved
quite suddenly as well. It could be the same thing.”

“I checked on that. The manager
told me that they’d received an offer of free rent in their new location.
That’s the reason they moved, pure and simple.”

She pursed her mouth and pushed
away her plate. I was still working on my mushroom caps but a new idea occurred
to me.

“On the chance that someone may
be coming back to look for something, I explored the cellar of Dolly’s shop
yesterday. I found evidence of digging in the dirt under the stone flooring.
She thought Archie had called a plumber awhile back. But what if he didn’t? She
could be mistaken and someone else left the flooring in a mess.”

“Oh, my! A buried treasure or
something? How exciting!”

“A bricked-up section of wall was
another unusual thing,” I said. “When I asked about that she said there used to
be a series of tunnels under the town. She assumed the doorway was part of
that.”

Our entrées arrived then and I could
tell that Louisa could hardly wait for our server to leave again.

“The part about the tunnels is
true. The river flooded some and the town council voted to fill them in.” Her
eyes grew bright. “But all that happened quite a way from Dolly’s part of town.
I seriously doubt her shop was part of the network.”

“So what would that bricked-up
doorway lead to?”

“What, indeed,” she mused.

I cut into my chicken breast. It
was incredibly tender and the sauce was perfect.

“Charlie, I think we should offer
to stay the night in the shop and see if we can catch the ghost!”

“What?”

“Something or someone is trying
to frighten Dolly away. Maybe we can frighten them away instead. It would save
her business.” With her blond curls and those bright blue eyes she looked like
a kid on Christmas Eve.

“I don’t know . . .”

“If we caught someone in the act
we’d call the police, immediately.”

And if we found something
valuable down there . . . well, I have to admit to being a sucker for a good
treasure hunt. Having devoured all those stories as a kid, a momentary vision
of a chest of gold coins or a big pile of jewelry popped into my head.

“We might at least get a look at
whoever’s coming into the shop and messing things up,” I said, practicality
taking over again. “If we could stop them it would mean peace of mind for
Dolly.”

And I could continue my relaxing
vacation instead of feeling like I was working. I wouldn’t complain about that.

“I’ll call Dolly the minute we
get home tonight,” she said.

We shared a slice of cheesecake
and I picked up the check.

*
* *

Wednesday afternoon found Louisa
and me rummaging through the closet-sized garden shed at the back of her house.
She’d spoken to Dolly and our offer to stay the night in the shop had been
eagerly accepted. I got the feeling that Dolly would love to hand the whole
mess over to anyone, rather than deal with it herself.

“Here’s a decent spade,” Louisa
said, handing the short-handled implement out to me. “Hold on, I think I have
another.”

I took each tool and set it on
the ground. I had my doubts about the whole venture but Louisa had talked a
volunteer into taking half of her shift at the office so she could prepare.

We’d decided that taking a few
tools along would be smart. I wanted to dig around in that loose earth, just to
see if there was more to the story than a simple water leak. And of course
Louisa was convinced that a pry-bar would get us through the brick wall and
into the realm of the unknown parts of Bury St. Edmonds. She handed one over
her shoulder and I took it.

“What about a pail? It could come
in handy.” She backed out of the small doorway and added a plastic bucket to
the growing collection. “There. That should handle things, don’t you think?”

We put the bucket and tools into
the back of her car.

“We’ll park around the corner,”
she explained, “so the ghost won’t see it and realize we’re keeping watch.”

Uh-huh. I kind of didn’t think
that was going to be a consideration, but we could do it that way.

Louisa had her practical side,
too. At her suggestion we closed our bedroom drapes and took long naps to
prepare for staying awake all night. My nap was fitful so I got up and tried
phoning Drake, thinking I might catch him before he left for the airport and
his helicopter job, but there was no answer on the home phone. His cell went
immediately to voicemail, which probably meant he was airborne already and had
it switched off. I left a longing-filled message to let him know how much I
missed him and how frustrating it was to be on separate continents with all
those time zones between us.

Louisa picked up a tote bag and
suggested we stop by the market stalls for food.

Although we’d missed the prime
morning hours, there were still plenty of goodies to be found. While I gawked
at the variety on offer—everything from tulip bulbs to gourmet dog food to
books and winter jackets—Louisa gathered bread, cheese, fruit and cookies to go
along with the tea she’d packed into a thermos. We would have no excuse for
leaving our post.

When The Knit and Purl closed at
five o’clock we were watching from the corner. Gabrielle emerged, swinging her
purse by its strap as her bouncy steps carried her down the block. I wondered
where she lived—was it within walking distance? Or perhaps she rode the bus
from another part of town.

Dolly signaled to us and we
grabbed our tools and ducked inside. She pulled a shade over the door and
locked up. The room went eerily silent when she turned off the background
music.

“Arch and I aren’t planning on
going anywhere tonight but if we change our minds, I’ll be sure we use the
other door, the one directly to the apartment.”

“Is that one locked now?” I
asked. No point in guarding the shop if someone could simply get up to the
apartment by another means.

She assured me that it was.

I glanced toward the shop-front
windows.

“Those remain uncovered at night.
And there’s a small lamp which stays lit.” She indicated the one.

I could see how an intruder
wouldn’t necessarily be afraid of being seen. The light might have been all of
four watts, barely the size of a Christmas bulb, and the lampshade was a dark
parchment color.

“I’m afraid there’s no
comfortable furniture in here, only my desk chair,” Dolly was saying. “But feel
free to borrow others from the cellar. Bring something up if you’d like.”

“We thought we might spend some
time down there anyway,” I said with a nod toward the tools. “Checking out that
freshly dug spot and all.”

She nodded. “Well then, I’ll
leave you to it.”

We were standing in the stockroom
at the back of the shop and she turned to head toward the stairs leading up to
their apartment. “I’ve not told Archie about your being here tonight,” she
said. “Didn’t really seem his concern, you know.”

“Does that mean we have to stay
silent all night?” I asked. “I mean, I wouldn’t want him to hear a sound and
come down with a pistol aimed at me.”

She laughed softly. “That’s not a
problem. For one, he doesn’t own a pistol. And he’s half deaf once he takes off
his hearing aids at night. Once the telly goes on, he’d not hear a bomb down
here.”

That was only faintly reassuring.

We bade her goodnight and heard
her reach the top landing, go into the apartment, and lock the upper door
behind her. The deadbolt had a distinct squeal and I felt sure we would hear
Archie coming well before he heard us.

I turned to Louisa. Her eyes were
eager, her mouth fixed in an impish grin.

“Well then, shall we settle in?”
she asked.

I stood in the doorway between
stockroom and shop for a moment, getting the feel of the after-dark place,
memorizing the shapes of shelving and merchandise, fixing the images in my mind
so I could tell at a glance if anything was later out of place.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said.

Since it was doubtful that the
intruder—human or ghostly—would put in an appearance in the early evening
hours, we’d already decided to spend our time in the cellar first. Plus, as
Dolly had now mentioned, the sounds of the television upstairs would mask any
of our noises as far as Archie was concerned. I still wasn’t clear on exactly
why she wouldn’t simply tell him we were here, but that was her choice.

Louisa took the long-handled
shovel, while I picked up the bucket that held all the smaller tools. The
cellar looked no different at night than it had when I’d seen it midday, but
that was no surprise. I showed Louisa the two odd places I’d discovered.

“I’ll have a go at the brick
wall,” she said, reaching into the bucket for the pry-bar and a hammer.

That left me with that enticing
patch of loose earth so I took up the short garden spade.

A few taps at the wall and Louisa
was already becoming discouraged. “This thing feels solid as a mountain.”

I’d barely turned two shovels of
dirt but I set it aside and walked over to where she stood. Even though I’d
told her that the bricks looked pretty solid, she’d apparently believed that
she would just stick the pry-bar in and start pulling them away.

“Did you knock around on it and
listen for hollow places?” I asked.

She took up the hammer and
proceeded to hit at the bricks, lightly at first then a bit harder. Each tap
brought back only a solid
snick
. No enticing reverberation at all.

“Do you want me to try it, or
just keep going?”

“Oh, I’ll keep going for a bit.
It could be along here somewhere . . .” She kept up the tapping.

For good measure I climbed the
stairs to the shop level and then on to the apartment above. Television music
from some type of action-adventure show blared loudly enough to reassure me
that Archie couldn’t possibly hear the little
tink-tink
of our futile
mining efforts below.