Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13

by Connie Shelton

  She’d paused near the fireplace and I stood.

  “I’m sorry to hear how it ended,” I said. “So hard to lose a friendship like that.”

  She apparently thought I was referring to Dolly’s death. “Oh, the friendship was long gone before this past week. You can’t classify a tormentor as a friend. Keep the yarn—I wouldn’t want the reminder.”

  With that, we had subtly moved toward the door and I found myself outside. The story ran through my mind as I walked the two blocks to Louisa’s house. Here was certainly someone with a real reason to be rid of Dolly. Maybe the pressure had simply become too much for Joanna to handle and she’d broken, dishing out little helpings of passive-aggressive paybacks. It wasn’t much of a stretch for me to imagine her donning a pair of work boots and grinning as she made muddy tracks across Dolly’s clean floors.

  This just might be my best suspect—but drugging Dolly? Giving her enough to kill her? I couldn’t be sure about that, not yet anyway.

  After cake at Mary Ellis’s house and that completely indulgent cupcake I’d bought for myself, I needed protein. I made a hefty roast beef sandwich in Louisa’s kitchen and pondered what to do next. I wanted to call Drake and just hear his voice, but midday here was completely the wrong time to call Alaska. He’d said the job was going well and that he might be home within two weeks. I hated the fact that he and I and Freckles were so spread out in different places. I wanted our little family back together again. Soon.

  I set my plate in the sink and tried to decide on a course of action. I wasn’t going to get back to Albuquerque any sooner by sitting here doing nothing. I at least owed my aunt the effort of following these few leads. If nothing turned up by the end of the week, I would have to call it quits.

  The fourth woman whom I’d planned to take a yarn gift to had told me that she worked in a nearby town all day, but I was welcome to leave the gift at her home. Since my true purpose was to question her, I needed to wait until she got home in the evening. So, with a few hours to spare I decided to drop by the yarn shop again. I’d thought of a few questions I could ask Archie, in my attempt to piece everything together.

  A blur of pale blue passed me as I reached the front door to The Knit and Purl.

  “Joanna?” She must have dashed right over here after I left her house.

  “Oh, Charlie. Hello. I was just—well, it seemed only right to pay a condolence visit to Archie.”

  I nodded mutely.

  “Well, many things to accomplish,” she said, hurrying away.

  Okay. After what she’d told me earlier, I would have thought Dolly’s home and shop would be her last choice of places to visit. And if she’d come to pay a social call, it kind of shot my theory about her being the one to slip Dolly the overdose of pills. I grabbed for the knob, only to have the door swing rapidly inward.

  “Arch, dear, don’t forget, if you need anything just pop over,” a woman was saying. I’d never seen her in the shop before, a lady in her fifties with beautiful skin and chin-length blond hair, recently styled. She wore a tailored dress and coat that looked as if she were on her way out to Ascot or someplace equally high-class.

  “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” she said to me, her tone as modulated as the queen’s.

  I stepped back to let her pass, and she went into the dress shop immediately next door.

  A glass bottle hit the floor and the scent of geranium filled the air as I entered the shop.

  “Bloody hell,” Gabrielle cursed. “I’ll sweep it up.”

  Archie stood near the register, leaning a hip on the counter, the telephone receiver in hand, a slightly dreamy look on his face.

  Was it just my imagination or were there far too many women calling on Archie Jones these days?

  Chapter 20

  Archie put the phone down and gave me a quizzical look. I noticed that his shirt had some kind of food stain on the front and his cardigan sweater hung a little off-kilter, as if he’d not looked in the mirror when dressing this morning. The lack of a woman’s influence was beginning to show. Maybe that’s why they had all begun showing up, to mother him.

  “Do you have a spare minute?” I asked.

  The half-smile vanished. I gave myself a kick—of course, he had all the minutes in the world, now that his life had been turned upside down. No job, no wife, no reason to put on clean clothes in the morning.

  “I’m sorry, Archie. I—”

  “It’s fine, Charlie. I’ve got the time.” He ushered me toward the stock room.

  I pulled out my notepad. “I’m trying to piece together a few details about those incidents that frightened Dolly so badly. I would appreciate anything you can remember about each of them.”

  He stood very still.

  “Louisa studies the paranormal, you know.” Technically, the truth. I pushed on with my questions. “For instance, the time that the tea in her cup went from cold to scalding hot. It happened here, in the back room of the shop, correct?”

  He nodded.

  “Was there anyone else present in the shop at the time?”

  “You’ll have to ask Gabrielle. I believe she was working that morning.”

  He was right, of course. I’d come in a few minutes after it happened and but I’d only seen Gabrielle and Dolly at work. He called the younger woman into the room and I asked the question.

  She stared at the ceiling for a full minute or two, trying to remember. “I can’t be positive,” she said, “but that was the day you came in for Louisa’s blue heather, wasn’t it? I’m fairly certain that the customer right before you was Mrs. Ellis. The order was a yellow cashmere. I tend to remember people sort of more by what they buy than by their names.”

  I pictured the ninety-something with the walker and I couldn’t envision any possibility that she’d tippy-toed into the back room and messed with the teacups without anyone seeing her do it.

  “There might have been someone with her,” Gabrielle said. “Mrs. Ellis often gets a ride with a friend from the knitting group. But I don’t remember which lady it was. Only Mrs. Ellis bought anything that day.”

  I made notes. I could go back to Mary Ellis and see if she could tell me who had brought her shopping that day. If I could remember for sure which day it was . . . and if she happened to remember . . . This was already getting complicated.

  “What about the other time, when the hot tea turned cold, upstairs in the apartment, and Dolly swore it happened in an instant? Do either of you remember being there, seeing it happen?”

  Gabrielle gave a completely blank look. Archie seemed to think he was home at the time but he couldn’t call up any details. I had come along later, once again, but I sure didn’t remember anyone else being around.

  “Okay. What about any of the other incidents? I’m trying to figure out who might have been near enough that they could have set the scene to scare Dolly. The muddy footprints? The yarns all being rearranged? The candles all being lit?”

  They both shook their heads slowly and I realized I wasn’t coming away with any usable information.

  The door bells chimed and Gabrielle hurried back into the shop. I heard female voices.

  “Not to rush you, but I have some calls to make,” Archie said. “Arrangements for the movers and all that.”

  Despite his grief he sure seemed to be conducting business efficiently. I couldn’t come up with any other viable questions so I left when he started up the stairs.

  In the shop, two women were browsing the remaining skeins of yarn. Of the hundreds that had originally stocked the shop, only a few dozen were left. The woman in black turned away from the yarn and faced the bottles of essential oils. I saw that it was Elizabeth Scott.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurted out.

  She spun around and stared at me.

  “Sorry.” Belatedly, I realized how rude my tone had been. “I’m just surprised.”

  She stared around the shop. “I guess I needed to see for myself. She’s really
gone.”

  With that, she spun on her heel and sent the small bells crashing into the glass as she whipped open the door. She headed in the direction of the fitness center without a backward glance at the yarn shop.

  I looked around. The other customer’s eyes were wide. Gabrielle stared at the swaying strands of bells with an enigmatic look on her face. We must have all been thinking how weird Elizabeth’s comment was.

  A shape passed the front window and the door opened to admit the expensively-dressed woman who had just left a few minutes earlier.

  “Mrs. Devon.” Gabrielle said somewhat stiffly. “Back already?”

  She had shed the coat but her tailored dress was still impeccable and every hair of her blond coif stood perfectly in place. She carried a small white paper sack.

  “Just brought a little something for Arch. I’ll just pop up to deliver it,” she said with a tilt of her head toward the upstairs apartment.

  “He’s rather busy—” But Gabrielle’s words were cut short as the visitor disappeared through the stockroom doorway.

  I sent a puzzled look toward Gabrielle but she was too busy staring daggers toward the back of Mrs. Devon to notice. Well, there’s more than one way to get information. I walked outside, stepped over to the dress shop next door and went inside.

  Two employees were present. A young one was in the process of hanging dresses on a rack. The other—a classy dresser of about thirty-five—was going through some papers at the register. I approached her.

  “Excuse me, is Mrs. Devon here?”

  “I’m Diana Devon.”

  I was momentarily baffled. “A blond woman—”

  “Oh yes, my sister-in-law, Catherine. She’ll be back in a moment. Would you care to wait or shall I leave a message?”

  I noticed a small stack of business cards on the counter and picked up one that said, Diana Devon, Proprietress.

  I put on my best I’m-new-in-town face. “Is she the same Catherine Devon whose husband owns the Big D ranch in Arizona?”

  She laughed politely, as only the English can at a completely stupid question. “No, I’m afraid not. Catherine is a widow. Her husband was one of the owners of the sugar factory here in Bury.”

  I pretended to be a little embarrassed at the mix up. “Sorry. I thought I’d heard . . . Well, no matter. You have some lovely things in the shop.”

  She offered to show me the new autumn line but I begged off, saying I was in a hurry today. I’d glimpsed a price tag hanging at the neck of a summer dress, and even at a half-off reduction it was way beyond me.

  The sugar mill. So it was quite likely that the Devons had been acquainted with Archie Jones for a long time. Some instinctual thing told me that Archie had known Catherine a bit better since her husband’s passing. I wondered whether she’d had anything to do with the knit shop occupying its current location. And I wondered if Dolly had any clue. Somehow, I thought there would have been war on the block if she did.

  I pondered all this as I meandered along the streets, finding my way back to that ice cream shop and ordering their monster sundae, the Knickerbocker Glory. I ate the whole thing—the fruit, the ice cream, all the sauces and all the whipped cream—even the wafer. No sense trying to cover up the fact. I knew the minute I finished it that I’d spoiled my dinner in a big way and hoped Louisa hadn’t planned anything special, because I would have to disappoint her.

  I deliberately waited until I’d finished my ice cream before giving serious consideration to the whole Archie Jones/Catherine Devon question. On the one hand I could see how such a thing might happen—someone had a little too much to drink at the office Christmas party one year or something like that . . . On the other hand, Classy Catherine and Archie? I pictured Catherine in the outfit I’d seen her wearing this morning, then Archie in his stained shirt and lopsided cardigan—the image just did not make sense.

  I couldn’t see her sticking with an affair like that, especially once Archie had lost his prestigious job. With his days pretty well controlled by Dolly the logistics would become very difficult.

  Anyway, Charlie, I told myself, you have to have a few more facts before jumping to a conclusion like this one. I waddled out of the ice cream shop, knowing I better walk off some of that dessert. Found myself again in the Abbey Gardens, where the hard rain a couple of days ago had taken a toll on the flowers. They were starting to show a little autumn fading.

  I sat on a bench and reviewed my notes but no new insights leaped out at me. Before I could come to any conclusions, I needed to piece together a sequence of events and see whose face showed up as the puzzle pieces began to fit into place. I put my notes away then circled the gardens twice before heading to Louisa’s, where I promptly stretched out on the sofa.

  By the time Louisa came home from work, I’d roused myself from my somnolent coma. She offered to make sandwiches for both of us for a light supper, but I couldn’t manage even that little.

  While she ate hers, I posed the idea I’d had earlier. “Help me make a list of each incident at Dolly’s shop and let’s see if we can put the clues together.”

  “The first one I remember was when Dolly burned her hand with the hot tea,” I said, starting off the list.

  “Yes, but she said she’d just finished straightening all the yarns which had been disorganized when she arrived that morning.”

  “Right.” I jotted down the two events. “We can’t possibly know who messed up the yarn display since that happened during the night. We have to assume that the perpetrator was alone. So let’s start with the hot tea. When we walked in, I seem to remember a couple of other women being there.”

  I’d not actually met anyone in town at that point, so I was no help with names.

  Louisa closed her eyes in a squint. “This helps me to see my visions,” she whispered.

  I gave her a minute, feeling a sense of anticipation.

  “I believe they were Mindy Hart and Elizabeth Scott,” she said. “They weren’t together. That’s the impression I’m getting. Mindy was browsing the yarns and Elizabeth stood near the candles.”

  “Did either woman seem like she might have been . . . I don’t know . . . admiring her own handiwork or plotting something?” Maybe this Mindy person had somehow messed up the yarns and came back to see if she’d left Dolly flustered. “Were either of them near enough to the stockroom door that they might have sneaked in and microwaved the tea to make it boiling hot?”

  “Your American-ness is showing. Dolly didn’t even keep a microwave in the shop. She always used the kettle and brewed a cup or a whole pot fresh.”

  Hmm. I had noticed the kettle on other visits, but that particular time I hadn’t thought to check to see if it had recently been used. By the time we got there Dolly was already holding ice to her burned hand and bemoaning the fact that she’d broken a good cup.

  “Elizabeth Scott always admired Dolly’s Spode. She might have done something spiteful, just to watch Dolly cringe, although I doubt she would have deliberately wanted a cup to get broken.”

  Elizabeth had told me she’d confronted Dolly two or three months ago—no mention of having been in the shop recently. The omission moved her up a notch on my list of suspects.

  “What about the first time the muddy footprints appeared?”

  “That was before the hot tea incident, too. Remember, Dolly said she’d come downstairs in the morning and the floor was dirty?”

  “Ah, yes. I suspected that Archie had come in late and either didn’t realize his feet were muddy or didn’t ’fess up to it.”

  Again, she closed her eyes. “Archie normally wears leather shoes with smooth soles. I’m picturing him on that day and I would swear that’s what he had on.”

  “But if the prints were made the night before . . .”

  “Quite right.”

  “I wish there were a way to get into his closet and see if he owns some boots with treads.” Even if we could, though, it was doubtful we’d find anything of use. Arch
ie was in the process of packing up to move. And surely by now he’d cleaned the boots anyway.

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to pin down either of those incidents with the muddy footprints, Charlie. Both times the prints appeared at night and had been cleaned up before anyone else saw them. Dolly was like that, wouldn’t want a customer walking in to see anything out of place.”

  “What about the other time with the tea, the time Dolly swore she’d made a fresh hot cup and then it went ice cold? I had walked up to the apartment and I felt the side of the cup. That tea wasn’t just lukewarm, it was downright cold.”

  “And it was only you and Dolly there?” she asked.

  “Archie came out of the bedroom. Her scream awakened him from a nap. Otherwise, no one was around.”

  “But I doubt Dolly locked the apartment door during the day. She would have buzzed in and out several times a day, likely, so anyone in the shop who went into the back room could have climbed the stairs and gone in there.”

  She was right, of course. At least she wasn’t suggesting that a ghost had turned the tea cold. The only reasonable thing I could think of was that someone had poured out the hot tea and replaced the cup with an identical cup of cold tea. And the only real purpose I could see in that was to make Dolly believe she was going crazy. And if she truly began to doubt herself, maybe she really did swallow all those pills on purpose.

  Chapter 21

  My head was beginning to hurt and I was out of ideas to write down so I doodled randomly on the notepad.

  “Louisa? Something else came to my attention today,” I said. “The woman who owns the clothing shop next to The Knit and Purl, her sister is Catherine Devon. I learned that Catherine’s late husband was an owner of the sugar factory. That made him Archie’s boss. And now Catherine is buzzing in and out of the knit shop a lot, making solicitous little gestures toward Archie. I only met her today, but she doesn’t exactly seem the type to be interested in his sort, does she?”

  Her brow wrinkled. “I wouldn’t think so. But, you know, the Archie we see today isn’t the way he used to be. He was quite tall and handsome in his business suit every day. And something of a charmer.”