Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (The Charlie Parker Mystery Series)

  Phantoms Can Be Murder

  Charlie Parker Mystery #13

  Copyright 2012 Connie Shelton

  Chapter 1

  The letter arrived on a Tuesday, a pale purple envelope that smelled like a candle shop and bore a British postmark. It slid out of the stack of mail that I’d tossed on the dining table and I debated between ripping it open immediately (curiosity and impatience being two of my stronger suits), or opening all the bills first and then savoring this strange new arrival (saving the best for last). Curiosity won out. The looping backhand script delivered surprising news.

  Dearest Charlotte,

  I am your aunt Louisa. We have never met. It’s a long story, one with some regrets. But retelling the tale isn’t the purpose of my letter today. Life has moved on, beyond the judgments and hurts of those earlier times, I would hope. I’ve certainly been remiss in not contacting you sooner, but I hope we can move along past that.

  May I phone you? I would be most interested to know how your life has turned out. I shall attempt a telephone call within the next week.

  Fondly,

  Louisa Charlotte Parker

  Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk

  I have to admit that my first reaction was to think that Bury Saint Edmunds sounded more like a religious edict than an actual place. My second reaction was to call my brother Ron and demand to know why I’d never heard of this aunt.

  “You have too heard of her.” His tone went immediately argumentative on me. “You were named for her.” He didn’t add Dweeb, but I heard it.

  My thoughts flew. Mother had told me that I was named after two maiden aunts—I felt sure that was the story—and I’d always pictured them living about four generations ago, back when hemlines still touched the ground. Why did no one ever tell me these things?

  “Dad’s sister,” Ron continued. “The one he had the falling out with, the one he never spoke to.”

  “Which explains why I never heard of her.” I sulked for another two seconds. “She’s written to me.” I held up the letter, shaking it, as if he might see it over the phone and understand everything.

  “What does she say?”

  “Something about regrets from years gone by, and that she’s going to call me. Other than that, nothing. The whole thing is two paragraphs.” I set the page back on the dining table and paced into the kitchen, tugging open the refrigerator door in search of a bottle of water. “So, what past regrets is she talking about?”

  “How should I know? Mom mentioned Aunt Louise maybe once or twice ever. I was a kid. I never asked. After they died, I got a couple of letters from her, condolence kind of stuff, but I guess I never answered.”

  That would be so like Ron.

  “Aunt Louise.” My birth-certificate name is Charlotte Louise Parker, so okay, I got that. And I could have been wrong about the story of there being two aunts; I didn’t pay attention to a lot of what my mother told me. “She signs this letter Louisa.”

  I could almost hear Ron’s shrug over the phone. “Charlie, what can I say? It’s been nearly twenty years since I heard boo from her.”

  Papers shuffled in the background. “Look, I gotta run. Victoria’s waiting for me to meet her at Pedro’s for enchiladas.”

  His newest girlfriend, this time fairly serious.

  Since he was providing no help whatsoever, I turned to the better source for family history, my neighbor Elsa Higgins. Our puppy, Freckles, followed on her gangly four-month-old legs through the break in the hedge to Elsa’s back porch. The tiny brown and white fluff-ball that we’d adopted back in June had become my shadow and it was unthinkable that I would make it the whole twenty yards to the neighbor’s place without her company.

  “Well, look at that little one,” Elsa exclaimed as the dog bounded into the kitchen and planted herself right in front of the spot where a jar of treats sat on the countertop. “I swear she’s three sizes bigger every time I see her.”

  A guilty twinge reminded me that it had been over a week since my last visit. I really should be checking daily on Elsa. Nearing ninety, still maintaining her lifestyle at home, she’s a complete wonder. But still, things can happen and I needed to be more diligent. When I was orphaned at fifteen, she took me in and raised me through surely the most hellacious years of any teenager’s life, until I was old enough to move back into the family home next door. As my surrogate grandmother, surely she would know the whole history behind this surprise aunt in England.

  She adjusted her glasses and took the letter, settling into a chair at her kitchen table. I raided the cookie jar for myself and the treat jar on behalf of Freckles.

  “England . . . well, isn’t that something?” she said.

  “Elsa! This aunt, Louisa. Who is she?”

  “I’d guess she’s your father’s sister.” She looked up at me blankly. “Well, the last name being Parker and all.”

  “You never heard anyone in my family mention her?”

  “Well, honey, your folks moved in next door when Ron was a toddler. Paul came along very shortly, then you a few years later. I never knew much about their lives before that. Your mother was always busy with you kids, her gardening and the country club set, and your dad worked such long hours and all.” She rubbed at a place on the back of her neck. “Louisa . . . let me think . . .”

  I knew better than to rush the process. It was a little like watching grass grow. However, for all her years, Elsa does not have one single withered brain cell so this wasn’t a matter of her simply forgetting. She genuinely didn’t know. I sank down into the chair across the table from her.

  “She says she’ll call. When she does, just ask her.”

  Well, that was just way too simple. I gave Elsa a hug and trekked back to our side of the hedge, putting the aunt out of my mind as I tried to decide what to make for dinner when Drake got home.

  Of the two of us, my wonderful hubby is actually the better cook and I often defer to his expertise. While he takes fresh things from the fridge and chops, dices and tosses them into a pan to come up with the most wonderful meals, I lean more toward opening a package of this and a can of that. I am quite adept with the buttons on the microwave. But, in this instance, I’d put in a short day at the office of the private investigation firm I co-own with my brother, while Drake had been flying all day, scouting film locations with what had probably been a pain-in-the-something Hollywood movie producer. I couldn’t very well ask him to make dinner on top of all that. So I leaned into the freezer and found one of those fifteen-minutes-in-a-skillet dinners, then set to work making a salad to go with it.

  By the time he walked in the door I had a good-sized batch of chicken, veggies and pasta bubbling away in a yummy sauce.

  “Something sure smells good in here,” he said, nuzzling my neck as he slipped his arms around me.

  Whether he was referring to the dinner or to my cologne, either was preferable to the eau de jet fuel that emanated from his flight suit. I suggested that I could keep the meal warm while he grabbed a quick shower. Luckily, he took the hint and emerged ten minutes later from the bathroom in a considerably more desirable state.

  Although we will celebrate our third anniversary in a little over a month, people tease us about acting like honeymooners. Catching a whiff of Drake’s fresh clean skin and seeing the way the ends of his damp hair curled around his ears . . . well, I turned off the burner on the stove and undid the buttons on his shirt way faster than he’d buttoned them.

  The packaged meal wasn’t in g
reat shape—congealed sauce over limp vegetables—when we emerged from the bedroom an hour later. I dumped the lumpy mess while Drake adeptly sliced some cheese and an apple, and we took the impromptu feast with two glasses of wine back to the bedroom where we leaned against stacks of pillows and put a comedy movie in the DVD player. Freckles whimpered a little at the smell of the food but soon gave up and went to her bed in the corner. I felt my eyelids grow heavy and I guess I blinked out before the movie was even halfway done because the next thing I knew I was waking to the sound of Drake’s alarm and his groan at having to report back to another day of flying that movie producer around in his helicopter.

  He was in the shower and I’d just nestled the comforter around my shoulders when the telephone rang.

  “Charlotte? Is that you? I hope I’ve figured the time correctly and it isn’t the middle of the night there or anything.”

  Not quite. My bedside clock said 6:24. As this could only be Aunt Louisa I took a deep breath, worked up a chipper tone, and hoped I didn’t sound entirely incoherent as I welcomed this stranger into my life.

  “Oh, lovely. I’m so relieved that you kept your parents’ phone number. Charlotte, you can’t possibly know how much I’ve anticipated this day.”

  I wished I could say the same, but I’d had hardly any notice so I focused my efforts on what I do when I find myself investigating a new situation—paying attention to details. The accent was interesting, essentially American peppered with English phrases and a hint of some other Euro-speak. I had a harder time pegging her age. By the time she’d covered the fact that she was, indeed, my father’s sister, younger by twenty years, and had lived in England for quite some time, I’d awakened sufficiently to pose a few questions.

  “I spoke with my brother Ron yesterday after your letter came. He sounded apologetic that he’d never responded to your earlier correspondence. I hope you won’t think we’re all as lacking in manners.”

  “Not at all, dear. I just wasn’t sure whether you would welcome my call. Perhaps your father had influenced your opinions toward me in some way . . .”

  “He actually never mentioned you at all. I’m sorry. I don’t know what the rift was about. I didn’t even know you existed.”

  There was a brief silence on the line. “I was afraid of that. Bill was so absolutely set in his ways. The kind of man who, once he’d formed an opinion, would not let go of it. At least as far as people were concerned. I can only assume he was more open to ideas in his scientific field.”

  I couldn’t answer that question either. Until recent years I’d known nothing at all of my father’s top secret work during the cold war years. Even after an investigation three years ago into his death, precious few details of his actual projects had emerged.

  “At any rate, I want to know you better. I haven’t much money for travel, but would absolutely adore it if I could host you here sometime.”

  Drake walked out of the bathroom, sending a quizzical look my direction as he proceeded to dress. I made my excuses to Louisa and promised we would speak again soon.

  “What on earth was that about?” he asked as I slipped into my thick fuzzy robe and headed toward the kitchen to start the coffee.

  I filled him in on the call and he perused the letter while I buttered bread and stuck it into the toaster oven.

  “Ron remembers her, barely. I’ve never met her, but now she wants us to come for a visit.”

  “Is she for real?” he asked, spreading strawberry jam on his toast.

  “Luckily, I have the means of finding that out. Background checks are our specialty.”

  He left for the final day of his film recon job, and Freckles and I headed for the offices of RJP Investigations a little while later. By the end of the day Ron and I had come up with sufficient background on Louise Charlotte Parker—who had legally changed her name to Louisa more than thirty years ago—that I felt comfortable in knowing that I truly did have an aunt who lived in England.

  Several more phone calls over the ensuing days told me a lot more about the who, just not much about the why. Why had she picked this time to contact me? Why had she and my father not spoken since I was born?

  Ron, with an investigator’s natural skepticism, cautioned me to watch for ulterior motives. “She may be looking for someone to pull her out of some financial bind,” he said. I chalked the attitude up to his own experiences with his ex-wife because we hadn’t found anything of that nature in the background checks on Louisa.

  “She keeps repeating the invitation to come see her,” I told Drake one evening over green chile chicken enchiladas at Pedro’s, our favorite little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Louisa and I had now spoken over the phone a half-dozen times. “What do you think? Want to go?”

  He reached over and took my hand, giving it a squeeze. “It started out as a pretty rough summer, babe. Maybe a break would be good for you. Change of scenery couldn’t hurt.”

  He referred to the fact that in June I’d been held hostage for several days by a gang of desperate men. And even though they’d all been caught, I still woke with nightmares, three months later, and I hadn’t yet gotten comfortable working late in my office the way I used to do.

  I booked our reservations that night and found a boarding kennel for Freckles, figuring that a puppy was a bit much for Elsa to handle, and it looked like we were on our way to London. I’d decided to break into the bank account and splurge on business class tickets, in keeping with Drake’s idea that this vacation should be a totally relaxing experience for me. It would have all been perfect, but for the last-minute phone call three days before the trip in which one of his steady clients needed helicopter work done and threatened to take all his business elsewhere if Drake couldn’t handle the job.

  “Hon, I have no choice,” he said. “I cannot afford to turn this down. You go without me.”

  I’d already squeezed the trip in between two other important commitments and there would be no foreseeable chance to reschedule for many months. I’d psyched myself up for the trip, based on Louisa’s descriptions of her charming town, and I’d worked like a demon to clear my calendar at work.

  Drake watched the conflicting emotions flicker across my face. “Do it. You girls will have a much better time without me anyway.”

  I doubted that, but since his work frequently took him away for days, sometimes weeks, at a time I didn’t feel entirely guilty about taking this little jaunt purely for myself. And so that’s how I found myself in a jumbo jet over England, hearing the pilot’s announcement that we would soon be landing at Heathrow.

  Chapter 2

  Louisa had insisted on picking me up at the airport and driving me to Bury St. Edmunds herself. As she explained it, the trains could get a little tricky if you’d never been there before. I appreciated that plus I thought the two hour car ride would give us the chance to get to know each other better.

  Clearing customs and toting my awkwardly weighty bag behind me, I spotted her amid the ranks of drivers holding up corporate placards for my fellow passengers. I recognized her face from photos she’d emailed me. In return I’d emailed her a few shots of Drake and myself but forewarned her that I would be traveling alone. She spotted me in the crowd and we edged toward each other.

  “You’re tall like your dad,” she said as we broke from a quick embrace.

  At five-seven I’m not exactly towering, but my aunt was several inches shorter, with wispy shoulder-length blond hair, a pear-shaped body, dressed in layers of floaty fabrics in shades of purple and turquoise. Her smile was bright and genuine and her blue eyes sparkled happily when she spoke.

  “We’re over here,” Louisa said, gesturing toward a parking area across a few lanes of traffic. She insisted upon taking the handle of my suitcase. The bag and I trailed along in her wake at a quick pace.

  Through my fog from a long plane trip with little sleep, despite the stretch-out accommodations in business class, I followed her to the parking garage looking for any rese
mblance between her and my father. Dad had been tall, straight and serious, with the receding hairline that Ron inherited and the almost-formal demeanor that he’d acquired as a doctor of science. His genetics were nowhere to be seen in Louisa. The closest I could compare was to my brother Paul, who has the same coloring and is slighter in build than Dad or Ron.

  Louisa moved like a small sprite, turning her head to check the traffic, heading into the crosswalk with her swift steps, glancing over her shoulder to be sure I was with her. By the time I’d figured out that she was aiming for a small blue Ford and I’d incorrectly headed for the wrong side of it, she’d popped open the trunk and hefted the suitcase into it as if it were nothing.

  “There now,” she said with a laugh. “I think we’re good to go.”

  I settled into the left-hand front seat as she backed out and negotiated a completely confusing maze of lanes and corners to take us out of the airport. The tires chirped as she reached the on-ramp of some major thoroughfare.

  “Have you visited the UK before?” she asked, once we’d joined the flow of traffic.

  I reoriented myself to the fact that cars coming at us on the right was an okay thing, and told her a little about the helicopter job Drake and I had taken in Scotland a couple years ago. Aside from a quick pass through London on our way to Inverness, this was my first time in England.

  By the time we reached the outskirts of St. Edmundsbury township I’d learned that the town was named for King Edmund, martyred in 869 AD, and that it had been a thriving marketplace well before then. That Louisa was younger than my father by twenty years, that she’d legally changed the spelling of her first name after a trip to Italy and a romance with a charmer, and that the rolling fields we passed contained maize and sugar beets. Her narrative was as erratic as her driving, but at least it was informative. I still didn’t quite find out what had caused the rift between the siblings but I was determined to learn that soon.