Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13

by Connie Shelton

  I watched his face for signs of deception, certain that he was still hiding something.

  “There was just the once,” he said. “Down here in the cellar one evening when Dolly went to a card game with her friends. Gabrielle had worked late and she asked me to carry something down for her. When I turned around she was right behind me. Threw herself at me, she did. I . . . well, we ended up on the leather sofa that was here.”

  Gabrielle had given that sofa a loving stroke with her hand as the movers carried it out. Maybe that small motion brought it home to her that Archie would soon be going away. With someone else.

  I glanced around the cellar. The night Louisa and I had stayed here I’d taken a short nap on that same sofa. And I’d had a vivid dream about Drake and myself. I blushed. Maybe suggestive scents on the leather or within the fibers of the woven blanket had exerted an effect on me. Ew. I forced myself to follow a different line of thinking.

  “So, when did Gabrielle reveal this plan to you—the idea of running off together?”

  “I swear, it was never a plan. Not the way you’re thinking. She’s cooked up the whole thing herself.”

  I mulled it over. Archie, for all the deceptions he pulled with his wife, had seemed genuinely concerned when Dolly died. And his surprise at Gabrielle’s recent actions felt authentic to me. Maybe the clues to the younger woman’s state of mind had been there all along.

  “I don’t know . . . I truly don’t know . . .” Archie murmured, his head in his hands.

  Upstairs, the few sounds had stopped I realized with a start. How much time had gone by? Much longer than Gabrielle needed to grab a few clothes for Archie. I gazed again at my watch for several seconds, forgetting that its shattered face wasn’t going to tell me anything.

  “I can’t go with her,” he said. “Do you think she’ll understand that?”

  I didn’t see Gabrielle being very sympathetic toward what she would perceive as a change of heart on his part. The girl was obviously thinking that her romantic crush on Archie was reciprocated. She seemed quite firm in her plans.

  “I don’t hear anything upstairs, do you?” I asked, trying to bring myself back to more practical matters—like how on earth we would get out of here.

  Archie raised his head and cocked an ear toward the door.

  “Can you go up there and check?”

  He came back down in less than a minute. “I don’t hear a thing.”

  “What was it she said before she left—that she had one more small errand to do? Any idea what that might be?”

  He shook his head slowly. He might have been successful in the business world but I swear that I’ve never met a man more clueless about women. I’d felt sorry for him, being pushed around by his wife all those years, but I was beginning to see her side of it. If anything was to happen, someone needed to take charge and Archie was clearly not doing it.

  Edging forward in my chair again, I decided I better test my own limits, find out how much I might be capable of when the moment of truth arrived. I stood and took a few steps. The sharp jabs earlier had eased into a dull overall ache now. Except for my ribs. The first deep breath almost brought me to my knees.

  “I’m going back to the softer chair,” I said. “Tell me if you hear any sounds from the shop. Anything at all. If someone other than Gabrielle should show up we need to bang on the door and shout for help.”

  He dutifully climbed to the small landing and stood there with his ear to the door. I used baby steps and an old-woman’s groan to get me into the depths of the armchair. I tried to calculate how long we’d been down here, but with no idea how long I’d lain unconscious on the floor there wasn’t much way to know.

  Plus, what did it matter? We were here now.

  I rested my head against the back of the chair, trying to focus on plots for escape and rescue. At some point I dozed. I know this because I woke myself with a buzz-saw snore. A trickle of saliva trailed out of the corner of my mouth and I wiped at it with the grimy sleeve of my blazer.

  Archie had given up his post at the door and come back down to find a warmer surface than the stone steps. He sat on the edge of a console table, picking at his cuticles.

  I stood up too fast. My head swam and every single one of my aches and bruises screamed at me. The ibuprofen’s effects had worn off, which meant it had been at least four hours since Gabrielle left. What type of ‘quick’ errand could she possibly be doing? What if she’d had a traffic accident or been picked up by the police, or simply headed off to France without Archie? We might be down here for a hundred years before someone found our skeletons with scary, toothy grins.

  Stop it, Charlie. Right this instant.

  For one thing, at least one person had to be looking for me—Louisa. And Catherine would start wondering where Archie was. She had a key to the building. Surely someone would come along.

  As if by divine response, I heard a small noise upstairs. I sucked in my breath. Ouch. Slowly breathed out again.

  The doorknob rattled, but of course it was Gabrielle.

  “All done,” she announced gaily. She practically skipped down the stairs and put an arm around Archie. “We’re ready to go.”

  “I’m not going with you, Gabrielle,” he said quietly.

  “Of course you are. It’s all planned.”

  He shook his head.

  “Darling, all the obstacles are out of the way now. We’re free. I’ve taken care of all of them.”

  “Them?” I said. “Gabrielle, what have you done?”

  She gave me a glare that made me wish I’d just stayed quietly in my corner until they’d gone.

  She turned back to Archie. “The car is packed, darling. A few hours to the coast, through the Chunnel, and we’ll be ready to start our new life.”

  He shook his head again. She slapped him.

  “We are going! We have plans. We’ll have a life together. With all of Dolly’s money.” Her overly-sweet tone had gone rigid and hard. “You told me I was the love of your life.”

  “I never—” His mouth hung open.

  “I got rid of that possessive wife of yours for you. When we couldn’t scare her off, I gave her the pills. And now I’ve taken care of the other one too.”

  “Catherine? You’ve hurt Catherine?” Pain contorted his face.

  Gabrielle’s eyes sparked with fire. “It’s the two of us now, Archie. You’ll not reject me.”

  She spun toward me. “What trash have you been telling him?” Her words came out through clenched teeth.

  “I’ve not told him anything, Gabrielle. This is crazy. Just let me go and the two of you can do whatever you want.”

  “Oh, and have you running right to the police? No bloody way!”

  What did that mean? Did she plan to get rid of everyone who knew what she’d done?

  “Come, Archie. We’ll go quietly, leave the place locked up. No one will ever know she’s down here.”

  My mind raced through the possibilities but if Catherine truly was gone that didn’t leave anyone who could get into the cellar. I really would become a stack of dried out old bones.

  I tried to send visual signals to Archie—get out, call for help, jam the door so she can’t lock it—anything. But he was speaking quietly, trying to reason with her and make everyone play nice again.

  I pushed past the pain to rush her, thinking maybe I could reach the top of the stairs first. But she elbowed my ribs the moment I got within striking distance, and that took the breath out of me.

  “Get over there,” she said, shoving me backward into the armchair.

  “Gabrielle, listen to me,” Archie said. “Please don’t do it this way. Please listen to reason.”

  But she was way beyond reason. She grabbed up a heavy silver bookend and advanced on me. I wanted to melt into the chair’s depths. I gripped the edges of the seat cushion and my fingers closed around something hard and cold. The scissors.

  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 m
iddle-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.