Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13

by Connie Shelton

  Poor, passive Archie. I’d often wondered how a man so dynamic in the workplace, with his winning sales team and all the business perks had become so dominated by his wife. The money was probably the answer.

  But even a docile pet will strike out eventually. And perhaps Archie had reached the breaking point. In love with another woman, knowing that in a few months Dolly had the power to cut him off financially, living with the knowledge of the severe penalty for divorcing her. The only solution, it seemed, was to get rid of her.

  I stared back at the box of papers. Afternoon sun came through the room’s one window, the square of brilliance hitting the brown envelope. I could say that I saw the light but that would be way too corny. I only knew I had to get this information to someone in authority. The sensible, legal thing would be to copy down the name of the law firm in London and put them in touch with the police. But sometimes sensible and legal are a little too iffy and way too slow for me.

  Archie wasn’t going to look through every item in the house—he was moving, things would be in a mess for awhile. I grabbed the trust documents out of the brown envelope, folded and stuffed them into the inside pocket of my jacket.

  The apartment door opened. Yikes!

  I pulled some random papers from one of the other files and stuffed them in the envelope as replacements, jammed the packet back where I’d found it and used the roll of packing tape I’d brought with me to seal both boxes shut.

  By the time Archie entered the bedroom I’d stacked the two boxes by the wall, making a show of brushing dust from my hands.

  “These look like memorabilia so I just taped them up,” I said. I stared into the open closet. “I was wondering if you had plans for Dolly’s clothing or if I should just bag it up for charity.”

  He gave me a firm stare and I hoped my guilt, or the bulge in my jacket, didn’t show.

  “Ah. Sure. Charity is fine.”

  “Do you want to go through the items yourself?” I asked, adding as much sympathy to my tone of voice as I could muster.

  “No, it’s all right. I wouldn’t know what to do with them.” He walked over to the nightstand where he’d left his wallet. He gave me one glance, thumbed through the cash, and apparently satisfied that all was intact, started for the door. “Need to reimburse Gabrielle for the lunch she brought me.”

  I transferred the legal papers and Dolly’s journal to my purse and looked around the room for any other evidence of my intrusion.

  Although my inclination was to run and run fast, some sense of obligation told me that having promised Archie I would bag up Dolly’s clothing I should stick with the job. I found plastic trash bags in the broom closet and hastily emptied drawers of lingerie and sweaters, then pulled the hanging garments from the closet and bagged those as well. I didn’t touch the collection of costume jewelry, but I did put the cosmetics and creams from the bathroom into the trash. Duty completed, and having a reasonable amount of work to show for the time I’d spent in the apartment, I went back down to the shop.

  The stock room looked like a tornado had passed through. The large worktable in the middle was littered with boxes, mostly empty, and the shelves contained only the ragged remnants of unsold merchandise, things Gabrielle must have taken from the displays and stashed here for lack of anything better to do with them. The tea kettle sat, cold and unplugged, on the short counter where Dolly always kept it along with several utilitarian mugs. She’d apparently learned to leave the good china upstairs.

  Voices came up the stairwell from the cellar, the one-word commands of the moving boss and the responding grunts of his helpers. I could hear Archie’s voice, nearer, and Gabrielle responded from somewhere farther away down there.

  I wandered into the sales room. Outside, the lane was filled with pedestrians, people getting their shopping done before end of day. A normal day in a normal enough setting. The moving van sat at the curb, partially filled.

  Catherine Devon passed the window and came inside, wearing a rich bronze-tone dress that set off her blond hair amazingly, with a long coat in geometric print, heavy gold jewelry and pumps that had to be dyed to match. Her smile perked up when she saw me—or was she merely flashing that confident look of a woman who knows she has out-dressed you by miles? I knew my jeans and jacket must be dusty but I refused to look.

  Archie walked into the shop, over to the register.

  I busied myself restacking the boxes I’d earlier placed at the edge of the room, pretending to make space for more. I’d not seen the two lovers interact all that much so it was interesting to blatantly spy a little bit.

  From the cellar below, the workingman voices grew louder as the movers apparently wrestled with those large pieces. Catherine walked straight to Archie and as she spoke quietly to him, I saw her run her long fingers down the sleeve of his plaid shirt. Their eyes met but he quickly averted his, instinctively checking the rest of the room. He spotted me and went back to bagging up the money from the till. Gabrielle came in from the stockroom, made an impatient sound and I saw that she was wrestling with a large garbage bag. She got it tied shut and dragged it toward the door.

  “Looks like everything will soon be gone,” I said, realizing that Archie had looked up with a what-can-I-do-for-you stare.

  He put on his grief face again. Even with what I knew of Dolly’s inheritance, I couldn’t be sure of his emotional state. I’d seen cases where a spouse who seemingly couldn’t stand the other—brink of divorce and all that—suddenly went into deep anguish upon the death of the partner. Belated remorse? Guilt? Maybe that’s what was happening here. Of course it was entirely possible that Archie was doing a great job of selling the act. He’d been a salesman for a lot of years.

  Catherine had stepped back a little, maintaining a proper distance, but her eyes went often to Archie’s face and I realized that she genuinely cared for him. My thoughts vacillated back and forth. Cold blooded killers, or star-crossed lovers?

  “Comin’ through, please,” a burly man’s voice called out.

  Two men appeared at the stockroom door awkwardly balancing the big leather sofa, the one I’d napped on during that very long night when Louisa and I had stayed here on our ghost hunt. I tucked myself against the wall. Gabrielle was at the door, returning from taking the trash bag somewhere, and she held it open for them using one hand to dampen the sound of the little bells. As the sofa passed through she gave the back of it a stroke with one hand, admiring the soft leather.

  “Well, I’d best be off,” Catherine said. Her tone was bright but her eyes were on the dust motes floating in the air in the wake of the sofa. I imagined that she didn’t want her expensive clothing to get dirty.

  She tapped her index finger twice on the counter near Archie’s arm, a private little goodbye. There wasn’t much point in staying subtle now—the wife was gone and everyone in the room quite easily picked up on the nuances. I returned the pleasant smile she sent my direction as she walked out the door.

  “You’re about finished, then, Gabrielle?” Archie asked. “Thompson’s should be by soon to take the fixtures. That’s about all for the shop. I’ll need to turn your key back.”

  The younger woman looked around but it seemed her duties were done. She reached into her jeans pocket and extracted a key ring, from which she worked one key loose. She stepped behind the sales counter and placed it there, then she reached out to give Archie a hug.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said with a glance toward me, “and the shop and the customers, of course.”

  He patted her back, tried to extricate himself, succumbed to a longer hug. About the time he was going to physically pry her arms off him, she broke away.

  “Well, then,” he said.

  “Stay in touch,” she told him. “I’ll make you dinner anytime, you know.”

  I caught the wistfulness in her voice. When he rounded the counter, creating a barrier between them, she didn’t have much choice but to leave.

  The moving men clumped back i
nto the shop. “It’ll require two days, sir,” said the senior guy. “That cellar’s plumb full, heavy stuff, the stairs.”

  Archie didn’t look happy with the verdict but didn’t have much choice about accepting it. The day was getting late. I realized Louisa would probably be off work soon. I made a token gesture to help some more but he wished me goodbye and I headed toward The Nutshell Pub to meet my aunt. We had agreed we should have a drink there on this, my final evening in Bury.

  The lights were still on in that electronics store where I’d listened to Archie’s message tape and a neon sign in the window said “Copies.” Without thinking twice I ducked in and used the self-service machine to copy all the documents I’d taken from the Jones apartment. Depending on my next conversation with Archie, I better be ready to turn these over to the police in the morning.

  Stuffing all the pages into my purse I set out once more and came to the tiny pub where I spotted Louisa standing outside.

  We squeezed onto one of the two built-in corner benches in the cramped area, which surely couldn’t be more than a hundred square feet total, with close to twenty people filling the space and spilling out the open door. Once I got past the mummified cat that hung from the ceiling and the various other heads of dead creatures adorning the walls, the place did hold a certain charm. Louisa caught me eyeing the cat.

  “I was just remembering what you told us about the cats being entombed in the walls. I wonder if a mummified cat would only catch mummified mice.” I glanced up at the stiff carcass again and found myself casually draping my hand over the top of my wine glass, just in case of drifting skin cells or something.

  She chuckled. “The collection in here was once far more extensive. The health department made them clear out a lot of it.”

  Reassuring.

  Two young guys in black T-shirts manned the bar and the crowd was a lively one. With no possible way to have a private conversation, the banter merely bounced around the narrow room and anyone who wanted to could join in. A girl who barely made the legal drinking age flirted outrageously with a slick guy in a leather jacket. He dropped F-bombs liberally as he regaled the crowd with a tale of how he’d managed to elude the police on his motorcycle after a little altercation at an intersection in Stowmarket. Between his exaggerated accent and the hip slang, I probably got only half of that right.

  We finished our wine, set the glasses on the bar, and edged through the crowd and out to the sidewalk. The close little neighborhood hid any true view of sunset as I’m accustomed to it in the wide-open spaces of New Mexico; this was more like a gradual dimming of the light.

  “I know a charming, very out of the way place where they serve a hearty dinner, if you’d like,” Louisa said. “We’ll go past St. Mary’s, then it’s just a short way.”

  After my investigative afternoon, my head becoming crowded with way too much information followed by the noise inside The Nutshell, the quiet street provided a nice respite. I gave myself over to simply enjoying the historic buildings, the hanging flower baskets under soft street lamps, and the relative silence now that workers were closing up shop and heading home for the night.

  Over a nice cut of beef with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables I told Louisa about my findings, from my visit to the news office to the subtle glances I’d caught between Archie and Catherine.

  “I’m afraid to admit that I did a little pilfering too.” I held up Dolly’s journal and told her about the trust fund. “I keep going back and forth, wondering if Dolly’s over-possessiveness is all that’s behind her writings and the things that were happening in her shop.”

  “Or, did she genuinely have something to worry about? With an inheritance of over two million pounds coming to her, maybe she really did have reason to be worried.” Louisa sipped at her wine.

  “I also have to admit to making copies of the documents. In case the police need the evidence. But they don’t even believe there was a crime. I don’t know what to think.”

  Louisa’s blue eyes looked sad. “And now you’re leaving tomorrow. I wish you could stay longer.”

  I had the feeling that she’d come to enjoy having someone else around the house, a pal to do things with. I felt a little sadness too.

  “Well, I will just have to come back. Or you’ll have to come to Albuquerque. The house is certainly big enough to accommodate a guest for awhile.”

  “Yes, without your father it would—” She gave a tight little smile.

  I felt a lump rise in my throat, a type of regret for events past, even though I’d not even been born when it all happened. There seemed to be so much still unsaid. My mouth opened, then shut again.

  Louisa drained the last of her wine and put on a bright smile. “Let’s don’t allow your final evening to be a downer in any way, okay?”

  I nodded.

  Our server came up behind me and before I quite knew what was happening had delivered the check into Louisa’s graspy hand. We did a little haggle over who should pay; I still felt that she had saved me a fortune in hotel costs. But she had her money out and I acquiesced. Treating me to the nice dinner seemed like something she genuinely wanted to do.

  “Come on, then. Let’s get on home. I’ve bought another of those Battenberg cakes you loved so much. We’ll make a cup of tea.”

  We walked out into the quiet evening. A lone bird called out somewhere, and in the far distance the sound of traffic drifted over from the A14. But the neighborhood streets were nearly silent now at the dinner hour.

  “I have to admit that I’m feeling a bit guilty now about taking Dolly’s papers, particularly the journal,” I said as we crossed the street. “Even though Archie might not want to know what she wrote in there, the book itself belongs among her things.”

  “Truly? Even if he might have been behind her death?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Well, I did make those copies.”

  She chuckled.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and start the tea,” I suggested. “I’ll pop over to the shop. Archie will either be upstairs or he’ll still be working at packing up. If I don’t see him I’ll just drop this through the mail slot. That way you and I have all day tomorrow to have fun and make the drive to London.”

  “It’s quicker if you cut along the path beside the church,” she said. “If you aren’t afraid of the graveyard’s residents.” Her lopsided grin made the suggestion into a dare.

  “Me? I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” I turned right, humming the Ghostbusters theme song while she continued to the left and home.

  Chapter 25

  The path beside the heavy old Gothic church was quiet and deserted. Ahead, a lone streetlamp glowed but it seemed far in the distance. I pulled my blazer tightly against the damp and picked up my stride.

  To either side of me drops of dampness hung on the thick grass. The old grave stones were black chunks rising from silvered lawns. That theme song wouldn’t leave me alone, even though I made a conscious effort to switch to something less vivid, a classic waltz perhaps. Ahead, mist swirled around that distant streetlamp.

  Okay, Charlie, this is just way too movie-set freaky. I tried humming an old Creedence Clearwater tune but the notes came out reedy and the weak sound just bounced off the stone walls around me, making it seem that voices were coming from all sides. I quickened my pace again but refused to break into an all-out run.

  Finally, it felt like four hours later, I passed under the street lamp and the cross street was visible on the other side. I knew where I was—one block over and three up, and I would be at the shop.

  At the next intersection cars were driving along in perfectly normal fashion and laughter from a pub came out along with a bright square of light that hit the sidewalk. See, silly, there was nothing to worry about.

  Without the carved wood sign above the door, I didn’t immediately spot The Knit and Purl. But then I realized the moving van still sat there, all closed up and dark. The men must have quit for the day but left the truck rath
er than taking a chance that their prime parking spot would be gone in the morning.

  The shop itself was dark except for a light coming from the stock room. A shadow crossed the rectangular doorway. Archie must be working in there. I glanced toward the mail slot in the other door, the one that led up to the apartment.

  It would be simple enough to drop the diary and the legal papers through the slot and not have to admit that I’d taken them. But what if Archie were not the one to find them? What if he didn’t check there before completely vacating the premises and someone else came across them? They contained information far too sensitive and personal to leave to chance like that.

  I tried the door to the shop but it was locked. I tapped at the front window. Twice. Finally, Archie peered from the stock room, a silhouette against the golden light. I pressed my face near the glass so he could see who was there.

  “Charlie? What is it?” he said when he opened the shop door to me. He’d forgotten to remove the dangling string of bells and they tinkled just as happily as in the days when customers came in.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  The store’s fixtures were gone, leaving the small room feeling cavernous and hollow. Without the sales counter or display shelves the only signs of the former shop were dustballs and a few random bits of trash. The boxed files and office supplies sat near the door to the stock room.

  He ushered me forward. “I’ve been clearing up the last of the things in there. Once the buyer came and took the fixtures away it seems quite barren in here, doesn’t it?”

  I followed him to the back room, where it appeared he’d made quite a bit of progress. A few boxes were stacked against the wall and the metal shelving was dismantled now. The large work table in the middle of the room still held a ton of clutter.