Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 Read Free Page B

myself at the moment. I straightened my jeans
and put a wool jacket on over my wrinkled T-shirt and hoped we weren’t going anyplace
dressy.
    Louisa sat tucked into a corner
of one of the deep sofas in the lobby when I descended the stairs, miraculously
having found my way back along the convoluted tangle of hallways and steps. She
tapped a few buttons on her phone and dropped it into her purse.
    “There now. Texted my supervisor
and I’ve got the whole afternoon free,” she said, practically bouncing up from
the couch. “Would you like a sit-down pub lunch or something we can carry to
the gardens while we walk around?”
    Walking, definitely. She led me
out the front of the hotel and we strolled past a dress shop and a place called
the Really Rather Good Coffee House. Seriously. I looked twice and smiled at
the sign.
    The September air felt crisp with
a chill on this half-cloudy day. Abbeygate Street was closed to car traffic but
the pedestrians were out in force—young mothers pushing strollers, sturdy older
women with mesh shopping bags, businessmen who looked barely out of high school
striding between the slower groups.
    “I grab lunch at this shop at
least twice a week,” Louisa said, steering me toward a brick building where
large windows showed rows of baked items. “Cornish pasties. Like pie crust
wrapped around various meats, potatoes, veggies, warm gravy.”
    The scent coming from the shop was
pure meaty, saucy heaven and I felt myself practically begin to drool as I
stared at the rows of pastry packets on display. Louisa turned to me from the
doorway with a question in her eyes.
    “Whatever you normally have,” I
said, still processing the sights and smells, never mind deciphering whatever
quick question the man behind the counter had posed to us.
    “Two, traditional, take away,
please,” Louisa said. She thrust forward a bill with red printing on it and got
some coins back in change.
    The warm paper envelope with its
treasure of hot meat pie felt good in my hands. If I hadn’t been a little faint
from hunger I could have held it in my chilly fingers and taken pleasure from
that simple act. As it was, by the time we hit the street again we were both unfolding
the paper and picking off bits of the flaky pastry and sneaking them into our
mouths. The steam that emerged brought back memories of Sunday roast
beef-and-potato dinners at Elsa’s. I think I moaned at my first real bite of
it.
    “Yummy, isn’t it?” Louisa said.
“The chicken and mushroom one is another of my favorites.” She had folded her
paper packet closed, saving the treat until we could settle somewhere.
    We strolled back the way we’d
come, emerging from Abbeygate Street and crossing the parking area in front of
the hotel. Two-way traffic on Angel Hill Road gave us a moment to pause and
stare up at the elaborate stone gate leading to the Abbey grounds. Louisa gave
some details of the history of the ancient abbey and the current, more modern
one which had received its finishing touches in very recent times. At a glance,
I would have never guessed the construction of the elaborate building was
completed over more than a thousand years; it all blended seamlessly.
    “I’ll tell you more of it, if
you’re interested, another day. You seem to be a little overwhelmed at the
moment.” She smiled at me with a cheerful sparkle in her eye.
    I nodded. “Long trip. By tomorrow
I’ll be as energetic as ever.”
    We’d crossed the road and walked
under the high arch of the stone gate and the gardens spread out before us.
Coming from a high-desert region where cactus are considered ornamental plants
and lush greenery is a city park that actually has both grass and trees, I’d
had few experiences to compare with a formal English garden. Walkways quartered
the open space and in each quadrant closely clipped lawns formed the backdrop
for precise plantings of bright flowers in patterns of purple, yellow, pink and
red. Benches lined the walks