by K. J. Emrick
Darcy leaned up over the top of the adjustable wall. Sergeant Fitzwallis was sitting at the front area, feet up on the dispatch desk, reading the newspaper. He was a frail-looking old man with thick gray hair, but he was always around whenever anyone needed him. He was the only one there. No one else was at the window.
“Come on,” Grace said again. “We’ll go out the back. My car’s out there.”
“What about the other suspects?” Darcy asked her.
“Other who?” Grace stopped at the corner of her desk so quick her shoe squeaked against the floor tiles. “I don’t know anything about any other suspects.”
“Well, there’s more than one now. Jon has a list.”
“Oh? Is he checking it twice?”
Darcy grinned. “Very funny. We’ve got five people to check on, including Mister Tobias Ford himself.”
Grace sighed out a long breath. “It’s never easy, is it?”
“Come on, sis. It’s Christmas. Miracles are bound to happen.”
Chapter 4
There was a lot of new construction on the outskirts of Misty Hollow, on property that had once been nothing but woods and open fields. Coldspring Road had been widened to accommodate the new traffic from the big box store and the houses and the apartment buildings. Past that, it was still a country road with turns and hills and trees that had a habit of falling across a lane of travel when no one was looking. Elizabeth Archer had moved out here a while ago, to a three story apartment complex with inexpensive units and a big parking lot. They weren’t fancy, but for a growing number of people, they were home.
In the stairwell going up to the second floor, Darcy checked her watch. Not quite noon yet.
“We’ll both get home before our kids,” Grace promised her.
“Was I being that obvious?”
“You’re a mother now. Your priorities change when you have children.” Grace shrugged, and then reached for the door on the landing of the second story hallway. “We both care more about our daughters than we do our jobs, but sometimes you have to be in one place when your heart is in another.”
Darcy was a little surprised to hear those words coming from her sister. It was true, what she said, but it wasn’t like her to be so open about her family. Grace had always been all about her job, before she fell in love and married Aaron. Then, when Addison was born, she had found a way to split her attention even further between work and home. She was an amazing mother, and a great wife, but she was hardly the emotional girlie girl that some women were.
“Which apartment is it?” Darcy asked.
“2B, according to our records.”
“Seriously?” Darcy asked. “2B? As in to be or not to be?”
“That’s the question,” Grace answered with a wry twist of her lip. “Here it is. You want to knock, or should I?”
As it turned out, neither of them needed to knock. Elizabeth opened the door while they were still standing in the hallway. She had put away the coat she’d been wearing earlier when Darcy had seen her on the sidewalk, and now she wore a sweater that was two sizes too big for her, with her hands buried up in the sleeves and her arms crossed over her belly like she was cold. Or sick.
“I figured someone from the police would be coming to see me.” She shook her head as she shifted her feet. Her expression was hard and her frown was set in place. “Didn’t figure on you being with them, Darcy.”
Grace answered for them. “Darcy’s here because she believes you’re innocent, Elizabeth. Trust me, she’s on your side. You should want her here.”
Elizabeth’s gaze turned sharply to Grace. “And why are you here?”
“Because there’s been a crime, and we’re supposed to investigate it. That’s what your police department does for you.” Grace shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets. “Can we come in? It’s freezing in this hallway.”
After a moment’s hesitation Elizabeth stepped back into the apartment with the door held open. “It ain’t much warmer in here. I keep the thermostat turned down because it doesn’t cost as much. The heating bill for these apartments is insane.”
They stepped inside. Elizabeth shut the door, and then she reached up and drew a blanket across it hanging from a heavy plastic curtain rod. “Keeps out the cold air,” she explained.
Grace nodded. “So how’d you know we were out there?”
“Because the walls in this place are paper thin,” Elizabeth explained, knocking on the space between the door and the kitchen counter. “I could hear you two talking.”
Darcy looked around them, at the tiny apartment that was made up of this kitchen and dining room area here, where Elizabeth had set up a small dresser with a television on top of it, and a bedroom through that door there. Another door off to the side must lead to the bathroom, she guessed. That was it. The place screamed cheap, and Darcy was suddenly worried for her friend. She hadn’t realized that Elizabeth had fallen on hard times. She must be running low on cash, if this was all she could afford.
“First,” Grace said, “Let me say that I’m sorry about the bakery. Everyone in town is. It was a very important place to us.” She glanced over at the kitchen table with its white laminate top, and its four high-backed vinyl cushioned chairs. Apparently, she decided to stand instead of ask to sit down.
“It was important to all of us,” Elizabeth said sourly. She had no problem sitting at the table while she griped. “Me especially, because it was my only source of income. I always worked hard for Helen. Never said no to any extra shift she needed me to work. I even slept in those rooms above the shop more than once when I was there extra late and had to open up at six in the morning for people going into work to get their coffee and muffins. Those were some of the best years of my life and then she goes and sells the place and this Tobias Ford swoops in and where am I? Out on the street, that’s where.”
She dropped her head into her hands and hunched over in her seat. While her attention was diverted from them, Grace caught Darcy’s eye. Her sister lifted an eyebrow at her, and Darcy was helpless to argue with what amounted to an I-told-you-so. This sounded exactly like the reasons why Jon thought Elizabeth made a good suspect.
“You mean,” Darcy said, “that you’re out of a job because of the fire, don’t you?”
She came over and sat on the side of the table across from Elizabeth. Her friend was obviously upset, and Darcy did not want her to be upset for the reasons that Jon and Grace were thinking of, but she had to ask. She had to know.
Elizabeth lifted her head up again, pushing her long hair back from her face, exposing the burn marks there. After coming to Misty Hollow, it had been a long while before she felt comfortable enough to talk about those scars, and how they had happened. “What I mean,” she said to Darcy, “is that Tobias was going to replace me and Kim and even Cassidy the baker. Helen adored Cassidy. She thought he was the best thing since raisin bread and here Tobias was giving us all pink slips.”
Darcy’s heart sank in her chest. If Elizabeth knew she was being fired, that was a very strong motive to strike back at Tobias. Now she almost wished she hadn’t come along with Grace. She would have been much happier not to hear the things she was hearing.
“Why?” she asked. “Why was Tobias firing you all?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Beats me. Oh, he gave us all some stupid song and dance about bringing in people he knew from one of his other businesses, but he’s owned the bakery for two years. Why would he be doing that now?” She took a breath and then shook her head. “You know what? I really don’t care. In a way I’m glad the place burned down. He deserved to have it go up in smoke.”
Darcy cringed. Elizabeth’s motive was getting deeper. Still, motive didn’t equal guilt. She knew that from years of sticking her nose into places it maybe didn’t belong. So the real question to ask here would be—
“Elizabeth,” Grace asked, before Darcy had the chance to, “where were you yesterday after five o’clock?”
She looked u
p, her mouth dropping open and her eyes popped wide, and then her hands pressed flat against the table as she shoved back in her chair. “I knew it. I knew this was coming. I told Pastor Phin last night that the first person they would suspect would be me! I knew it! This town is full of hypocrites and small-minded little toads!” She made a strangled sound in her throat and jumped up to her feet, stalking the narrow length of the kitchen from wall to television set and back again. “I told him the same thing again this morning. I said, I know they’re going to be coming for me, Pastor Phin. It doesn’t matter if I’m innocent or not they’re going to think I did it!”
“Wait a minute,” Grace insisted, holding a hand out like she could grab hold of Elizabeth’s nervous energy and hold her in place with it. “We’re not here to accuse you of anything.”
“Yes you are!” Elizabeth shouted. She whirled to face them again. “You came here to ask me about the fire, didn’t you?”
It might have been Darcy’s imagination, but it looked like the burn scars on Elizabeth’s face were redder than usual. Or maybe it was just that the color had drained from the rest of her face. “Elizabeth,” she said, “no one is accusing you of anything.”
“She is,” Elizabeth argued, pointing a finger at Grace.
Darcy looked at her sister. Grace shrugged.
“Ignore her,” Darcy said. “Listen, Elizabeth, I know you didn’t do this. Just tell us where you were after five o’clock yesterday.”
She crossed her arms again, and swayed back and forth as she studied the floor. “I left work at five. No customers, so I closed up. Then I left. I heard about the fire and I came back to see my job in flames. That was after seven.”
“The fire started around six-fifteen,” Grace stated. “That’s when the first call came in to the police station from a passing motorist.”
“See? I wasn’t there!” Elizabeth said.
“Maybe.” Grace didn’t sound convinced. “You still haven’t told us where you were from the time the bakery closed at five until when you say you got back to Main Street around seven.”
Darcy felt like she was standing between the proverbial rock and hard place. Her sister and Elizabeth were both strong-willed women, and neither one of them was giving the other an inch. It was a tug of war of egos.
If she had to put money down on one side or the other, she was betting on her sister.
Grace softened the edges of her voice. “Elizabeth, look, I’m just doing my job. I need to know where you were. If you didn’t burn the bakery down, then just tell me where you were and I can cross you off our list and move on to the next name.” Then she spared a sidelong glance for Darcy. “From what I understand, the list is pretty long.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again, and then took a breath, and then let it out again. She went back to the table and sat down heavily in the same chair that she’d been in before. “I don’t want to tell you where I was.”
That surprised even Darcy. “Elizabeth, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” she repeated, her head hanging down low, “that I don’t want to tell you where I was.”
“Why not? Would you rather be accused of arson?”
“No. I didn’t do that.”
“Then, Elizabeth… tell us where you were.”
She didn’t answer. Darcy reached across the table and laid her hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “It’s all right. Please, just tell us.”
“No. You won’t like the answer.”
Darcy didn’t know what to say to that. Why wouldn’t Elizabeth just tell them where she was, for Pete’s Sake? What could possibly be worse than being an arsonist?
“You have to tell us,” Grace said. “I’m not exactly asking for a favor. We need to know where you were if we’re going to believe that you didn’t do this thing.”
“Grace…” Darcy wanted to say something that could cut through the tension in the room but there just wasn’t anything she could think of.
“Quiet, sis,” Grace said. “Let me do my job. Elizabeth, where were you?”
Head still down, Elizabeth gestured helplessly with her hands. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“You have to tell us.”
“Grace,” Darcy tried again.
“Stay out of this, Darcy. Elizabeth, where were you?”
“I said,” she repeated, her voice rising in pitch, “that I don’t want to tell you.”
“You have to. Right now. Where were you?”
“You need to leave.”
“No, you need to answer me.”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said. Now answer my question.”
Darcy stood halfway out of her chair. “Grace, please.”
“You both need to leave,” Elizabeth said, standing up from her chair herself. “Get out!”
“Tell me,” Grace said, not moving an inch. “Tell me where you were.”
“No!”
“Fine.” She stepped around the table, around Darcy, to get to Elizabeth. From a case at the back of her belt she took out a pair of handcuffs. “Then you’re under arrest.”
“What!” Elizabeth’s voice cracked on that one word.
Darcy was shocked. “Grace, what are you doing?”
“I’m arresting an arsonist.” The handcuffs clicked into place around Elizabeth’s wrists. “That’s what I’m doing.”
“But I didn’t do it!” Elizabeth shouted.
“Then tell me where you were.”
“No, I can’t…”
“Then you’re under arrest.”
“No, please!”
“You have the right to remain silent,” Grace started to tell her.
“No!”
“Anything you do say can and will be used in a court of law.”
“No, wait…”
“You have the right to an attorney—”
“I was placing bets with my bookie! I was gambling on a stupid football game!” She trembled in Grace’s grip, tears pouring from her eyes. “There, are you happy now? Are you?”
Darcy sank back down into her chair and tried to understand what she had just heard. “Elizabeth, you were… you were gambling?”
She nodded. Then she lifted her hands up behind her back as best she could. “Grace, can you take these off? Please? I’m not an arsonist. I just… I gamble. That’s where I was. That’s what I was doing.”
Grace hesitated long enough that Darcy knew she was considering arresting Elizabeth anyway, but then she unlocked the cuffs, and put them back on her belt. “Why don’t you take a seat and tell us everything.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Elizabeth said, and then stopped. She stood where she was, not sitting down, and not saying anything else.
“Elizabeth,” Darcy said gently. “We’re all friends here. If you’re in trouble…”
“In trouble.” She laughed at the way Darcy had said that. “I’m in debt, is what I am. Darcy, I owe so much money to these people now that I can’t breathe. I had to sell my house. I have to keep making bets to try and keep up with what I owe. I’m so close to breaking even it hurts and there’s nothing I can do about it except keep going to try to make at least a little bit more.”
“So that’s where you were yesterday?” Grace asked her. “After you closed the shop you went gambling?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have anyone who can vouch for you?”
She sighed. “Pastor Phin was with me at the bakery when I closed up. He’d been there most of the afternoon. Then he was there, at the fire, when I got there. He can tell you.”
“And only your bookie saw you in between?”
“Yes.” Finally, Elizabeth did sit down, slumped in her chair, fiddling with her hands in her lap. “I went to place my bet, and then I came back here to my apartment and watched the game. You want to know the really funny part? I lost. I’m more in the hole now than I was last week.”
Grace took one of the empty c
hairs. “Elizabeth, if you have a gambling problem, there are services that can help. Gamblers Anonymous, and counseling centers, and if you tell us who this guy is that you’ve been placing bets with we can get him arrested.”
She shook her head to that. “I’d still owe him the money. And I don’t have a problem! I have to pay him back, that’s all. I have to earn enough to pay him back. That’s why I needed my job at the bakery so badly.”
“But Tobias fired you,” Grace said. It wasn’t a question.
Elizabeth sighed. “I know. It makes me look guilty, but I’m telling you I didn’t do it. I was going to beg him to let me keep my job, but if that didn’t work I put in my application everywhere I could think of. I need to work. I need to earn my money.”
Grace chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “Well. A good police officer would wonder if maybe somebody paid you to burn the bakery down as part of an insurance scam. Thing is, looking at this place—” She waved a hand at the room around them. “—and hearing how desperate you are for money, I doubt seriously that you’ve taken money for anything like that.”
“Of course not,” Elizabeth snapped. “I’m not that kind of woman. And I loved that bakery.”
That was true, Darcy thought. She looked across the table at Grace. Silently, they agreed that whatever crimes Elizabeth might have committed with her gambling, and however it might have ruined her life, she was not their arsonist. She didn’t have much of an alibi, but Darcy was sure that with a little more time they could get her to give up the name of the bookie. That was a crime, yes, but it wasn’t arson.
Grace shrugged again. This time, she was admitting to Darcy that she was wrong.
As Elizabeth held back her tears, trying to keep her rough-as-sandpaper composure, Darcy and Grace stood up from her kitchen table. From a pocket, somewhere inside her coat, Grace pulled out a little white rectangle and placed it down on the cracked white laminate. “This is my business card. If you want to talk to me about your bookie, I can make him stop, but only you can make yourself stop gambling. If you want help with that, well, you can call me for that too.”