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

It’s quite common, you know, for spirits to
appear to new tenants. They don’t always like us in their space.”
    I could think of possible
explanations for each event. Perhaps Dolly had become so wrapped up in her work
that she’d forgotten she’d already reheated her tea. The inventory of yarn
being completely rearranged during the night was a little more complicated.
Dolly obviously didn’t accidentally do it, which would suggest that someone had
quietly sneaked into her shop. Certainly not impossible, but how likely? More
likely than there being ghosts in the building. Just my opinion.
    Our fish and chips arrived and I
put all other thoughts out of my mind as I ripped into the huge piece of
battered fish that was done to perfection. The fries—I couldn’t quite think of
them as chips yet—were hot and crispy, and we didn’t speak much for about ten
minutes.
    Louisa reached a stopping place
first, wiped her fingers on her napkin and peeked into the yarn sack I’d given
her earlier.
    “Do you mind if we stop by
Dolly’s again so I can pay her for this?” she asked.
    I let out a sigh of contentment.
The traditional lunch had hit just the right spot for me. “You know, I was
wondering . . . do you think the pranks at the shop might have anything to do
with the fact that Halloween is coming up?”
    She sipped from the Coke she’d
ordered and thought about it. “It’s still more than a month away. Someone would
really be getting an early start.”
    “Do people here do all the same
things we used to do?”
    “Pretty much. Mostly harmless and
fun things—costumes, parties and treats, lots of orange and black, carved
pumpkins, scary movies. The wearing of costumes goes back to pagan times when
people believed that troubled spirits moved about at this time of year. They
disguised themselves to avoid being recognized by the undead.”
    I smiled at the memory of the
year I’d dressed up as a witch when I was about eight, thought I was the
meanest thing on the streets until some bigger kid in a space alien costume
practically scared the pants off me and chased me home.
    “So, you probably give a heck of
a haunted sites tour that night,” I teased.
    “You bet! I take along a couple
of assistants who can escort the terminally frightened back to their cars.”
    “Well, even though I won’t be
here next month, I’d love to see the places while I’m here.”
    “I’ll put you on the list for my
Saturday night tour. Meanwhile, there are some good spots on our way back to
Dolly’s.” She slipped her jacket back on and picked up her shopping bag.
    We stepped out to the street
again and Louisa led the way diagonally across the intersection toward St.
Mary’s Church.
    “St. Mary’s was completed in 1427
and is the burial place of Mary Tudor, daughter of King Henry the Eighth. This
area is famous for sightings of two ghosts, the Grey Lady and the Brown Monk.
I’ll cover more about them on my tour.”
    Beside the brown stone church a
pathway led into a graveyard where long grass grew over and among the graves.
Tilted headstones dotted the uneven ground, not a place where you could safely
assume you weren’t walking over someone’s grave. A small stone building
sat in the midst of them, surrounded by a high iron fence painted black. I
wandered over to take a look at the many plaques attached to it.
    “This is the Charnel House,”
Louisa said, “built in the 13th century to store the bones of some of the
graveyard’s inhabitants.”
    I read some fascinating
inscriptions, including one about a nine-year-old girl killed by a flash of
lightning as she prayed. So, church might not necessarily be the safest place
to hang out, I decided.
    Louisa told more stories and
pointed out that some of the graves had both head and foot markers at either
end of their stone sarcophagi. “I can go on with minutiae for two whole hours,
but you’d probably rather cover a little more ground than this single square
block.”
    I