Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 by Connie Shelton Page B

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