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

it.”
    Louisa nodded knowingly. “The
spirits are often associated with cold drafts.”
    Archie clearly would rather get
back to his nap. He seemed torn between comforting his wife and getting out of
the roomful of women. Eventually he just patted her shoulder and edged his way
out of the room.
    Louisa speculated about the rash
of unexplained incidents, while Dolly insisted she’d only been startled, that
she hadn’t sustained another injury. I walked around the kitchen looking for
real clues as to what might have happened. I have to admit, nothing seemed out
of place.
    Dolly had regained her composure
and now she squared her thin shoulders. “Well. This is becoming ridiculous. I
have a shop to run. I’d best get back to it.”
    We trooped down the stairs single
file and I wandered over to the display of herbs and essential oils while
Louisa completed the mission that had brought us here, paying for her yarn
order. Gabrielle had finished dusting the candles and was now rearranging the
display.
    “Everything all right up there?”
she asked, obviously not so worried about her employer that she felt the
necessity of interrupting her work.
    I gave a quick explanation of
what had happened.
    “Did Mr. Jones see it too, then?”
    “Only after the fact, like we
did. Mainly, we just interrupted his nap.”
    She nodded, a soft smile on her face.
    “Ready to move onward, Charlie?”
Louisa stood near the door, and it appeared that Dolly was once more in full
control behind the register.
    I said quick goodbyes to the two
women and joined Louisa on the sidewalk.
    “I want to pop over to Marks and
Spencer for a couple of grocery items,” she said. “Thought maybe we’d just do a
light dinner at home tonight.”
    That sounded appealing. My jeans
weren’t going to take kindly to a lot more of those fish-and-chips meals.
    “What’s the story with Archie
Jones?” I asked as we walked along. “He seems young to be retired, home napping
in the middle of the day.”
    “Ah. It’s a little bit of a sore
point with Dolly. He used to be a manager at the sugar factory. Got laid off
more than a year ago and hasn’t found anything else. They lived on the
outskirts of town, nice modern house. Had to rent it out and move to the empty
apartment above the shop.”
    “That probably didn’t set too
well with him, either.”
    “Not at all well. First, he
wanted Dolly to sell the shop. Fumed over how much she’d spent to set it up in
the first place. But she did that with her own money, something she came into
when her father died. Dolly just put her foot down, said she was at least
bringing in some money and if Archie couldn’t go out and get himself another
job then he’d best start helping out around the shop.”
    I could imagine that conversation hitting the fan.
    “So, I suppose that’s what he
does now. Unpacks cartons of inventory, washes the windows, that sort of
thing.”
    I pictured the soft-spoken man
with his slumped shoulders. I could more easily see him washing windows than in
a management role with a big company.
    As if she’d read my mind, Louisa
continued. “You’d hardly have recognized Archie two years ago. Top of the
world, suit and tie every day, business lunches at the best restaurants and
trips all over the country. Kind of sad, really, how his self esteem was so
closely tied to that job. The longer he’s away from it the more stooped he
becomes. Lucky for them, really, that they had Dolly’s shop.”
    She pointed at an entry on our
right. “Here we are.”
    I followed her around the food
market section of the store, eyeing the bakery items that would be new to my
palate, thinking this would be a good place to stop by on my own, pick up a few
things to take home. She chose fresh lettuce and tomatoes, along with some
veggies.
    “I should have thought of this
Saturday,” she remarked. “Market day on the square, and things would have been
bargain priced. Plus, you would have had a taste of a tradition