K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 11 - Resorting to Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  “Only, he doesn’t do that with you.” JoEllen drew one knee up to her chest in the chair where she sat. “With you, he’s different. He relaxes completely when he’s with you. You guys are perfect for each other.”

  Darcy considered that. Did Jon really do that with her? She thought about how he was now, compared to how he had been when they first met. Stiff. Professional and distant. In the time that she had known him and loved him, she’d seen a tender side that she knew he kept from most people. He had told her things that no one else knew. They were good together, in a way that apparently showed, if JoEllen had picked up on it after just one day.

  “Audie and I used to have that,” JoEllen said, her pale blue eyes tearing up again. “He made me want to be better. His love made me want to give up my old life and become someone he could be proud of. He was my whole entire world. We were going to get married, even. And now he’s out there in that cold, dark grave like he doesn’t even matter…”

  She choked up, the words stuck in her throat.

  Darcy reached across to take JoEllen’s hand, the table an easy reach from the bed. “You understand why we had to leave him there, right? We couldn’t go to the Sheriff. Not yet.”

  JoEllen held tightly to Darcy, wiping angrily at her tears with her free hand. “Yes. Sure. Whatever. We can’t have the guy who’s blackmailing me know we’re on to him. I can’t go shoot him because if I do we won’t find Connor. It’s all so completely logical and sensible. And my fiancé is still lying in a shallow grave in the woods!”

  “For now, yes. But when this is all over, we’ll make sure that Audie gets the burial he deserves, with a headstone that tells the world he was loved.”

  Silence fell heavily over them like a shroud. Darcy didn’t know how to make things better for JoEllen. All she could do was hold JoEllen’s hand and let her cry without judging her for being caught in this situation. Everything else aside, JoEllen needed their help, and Darcy and Jon were going to give it to her.

  Into the heavy silence, Darcy’s stomach growled.

  JoEllen looked up at her. Darcy couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. JoEllen started laughing with her and for a moment she seemed less like a dangerous killer and more like a friend.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Darcy mumbled, still laughing. “I suppose we should order something for dinner. We need to eat, right? Starving ourselves won’t help anyone. Hey, I know. Why don’t you call that pizza place you were calling yesterday and order us something?”

  JoEllen turned her eyes away. “Well, actually, I wasn’t calling for pizza when I came over here yesterday. I just wanted to check you and Jon out. I was so sure you two were the ones who had taken Connor. Especially after seeing Jon. He has this way of carrying himself that lets you know he’s more than just a common, everyday kind of guy.”

  “Right,” Darcy said, smiling mischievously. “Because he has a stick up his butt.”

  They laughed together again until Darcy’s stomach growled a second time, and then they laughed some more. It felt good to Darcy, letting her forget how worried she was for Jon and for little Connor and even for JoEllen. “So what do you feel like eating?” she asked.

  “To tell you the truth, I do feel like pizza. It’s Connor’s favorite food. I’ll have a couple of slices, I think. For him.”

  They used the phone book tucked into the top dresser drawer in the cabin to find a place that delivered, and they ordered from there. Delivery took just twenty minutes from town, and they had eaten their meal and drank canned soda and cleaned up by the time the sun was going down.

  Just like they had needed to eat, they needed to sleep. They agreed that they should at least try to get a few hours of rest in case Jon came back with news and they needed to move quickly. Once they found Connor, getting him back and making sure he was safe could take the rest of the night. The room’s only bed was momentarily a problem until Darcy offered to sleep on the floor with the comforter and a pillow. JoEllen started to argue, but Darcy insisted. With a yawn and a full body stretch JoEllen nodded, and it was settled.

  They had wanted to stay in the same cabin in case Jon did come back before morning. That was fine with Darcy. Not that she was worried about JoEllen running away. Right now Darcy and Jon were her best chance to get Connor back. She wasn’t going anywhere until they found her son. The truth of the matter, really, was that Darcy wanted the company.

  The floor was layered with a thick brown rug that was a lot more comfortable than Darcy had imagined it would be. She lay there, curled up with the quilted blanket tucked under her chin, and listened to JoEllen’s breathing slow to an even rhythm. Darcy couldn’t blame her. She must be exhausted after everything she’d gone through in the past few days.

  Not long after that, with her thoughts wrapped around images of Jon, Darcy fell asleep as well.

  Chapter Nine

  Darcy always had trouble knowing if she was in a dream brought to her by her special gifts. They seemed so completely real, usually, except for some small things here or there like a puzzle putting itself together or people who were dead sitting down to have meaningful conversations with her.

  This time, she didn’t have any trouble at all. This was a dream. No doubt about it.

  At the long, rectangular table placed outside in a wide meadow, Darcy’s cat Smudge sat cross-legged in a padded chair with a high back. He was pouring tea for someone Darcy couldn’t quite see, hidden in shadows under a big floppy hat.

  Floppy hat. Carson wore a floppy hat…

  “No,” her cat said. “She only comes here for the tea.”

  His black and white fur was being ruffled by the slow, warm breeze. In the dream here, Smudge was her size, stirring sugar cubes into the steaming cup in front of him. He smiled now at Darcy like having tea together in an endless sea of freshly mown grass was something they did all the time.

  The shadowy form next to Smudge shifted just enough so that Darcy could see who it was. She was an older woman with steel gray hair done up in a tight bun under the hat. Her long black dress faded into the shadows cast by towering, menacing trees on her side of the table, making her appear to fade away like a ghost and then reappear whenever she turned to Darcy.

  She knew those kind eyes and the smile that set wrinkles in fine lines across a gentle face.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Aunt Millie said in the same voice Darcy remembered from when she was a young woman coming to live with her aunt, before Millie had died. “Got yourself into a bit of trouble again, haven’t you?”

  Darcy sat down on the side of the table across from her aunt. She was amazed by the vividness of the dream, the way colors stood out sharply where the warm sun reached over the tops of the trees, and how she could feel the breeze tug gently at her hair. The shadows from the forest drew a straight line down the center of the table. Darcy sat on the side bathed in sunlight. Millie and Smudge sat on the other side, in the shadows. Her cat poured her a cup of tea, humming a song to himself. When she looked up at him to say thank you, he winked at her.

  “Now then, Darcy,” Aunt Millie said. “I see that you and Jon are getting along wonderfully again.”

  Darcy nearly choked on the sip of tea she had just taken. Had Millie been watching her? Last night, when she and Jon had been making up, had Millie…?

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” her aunt said to her, as if she could read Darcy’s thoughts. “I always give you two your privacy. But I’ve seen the way you and Jon are working together to help that poor JoEllen. Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Not to mention how both of you helped my good friend Belinda. You needed Jon then, and he was there for you.”

  Just last month, Darcy and Jon had come back together, reunited over a mystery involving Belinda Franco, one of Millie’s old friends. That had been the start of them finding their way back to each other. Now, this current mystery was bringing them even closer, just like Millie said.

  “Is this the way it’s always going to be with us? With me and Jon?” sh
e asked Millie. It was a question that had weighed on her for a while now, and every time she thought she had the answer the question would just come back up again. Was their relationship built on danger and intrigue and mystery?

  She hadn’t really expected an answer from her Great Aunt, but Millie had one anyway.

  “Would that be so bad if it was?”

  Darcy had to think about that. She sipped her tea, enjoying the sweetness of cinnamon laced through a citrus tang, and wondered. People found their soulmates for lots of different reasons. Could she ever be happy with a man who didn’t bring a little mystery into her life?

  She may not know the answer to the bigger question, but she knew the answer to that one. No. Without mystery, there would be no romance. Not for her.

  “You’re a different kind of girl,” Millie told her. It wasn’t criticism. It was a simple fact. “You can do things most people never even dream of. The women in our family have always had this gift. Well. Some of us,” she added with a wink.

  Smudge added words to the song he’d been humming. Darcy found it hard to concentrate on what Millie was saying with him singing.

  “You would never be happy with an ordinary man,” Millie was saying. “I tried to tell you that when you took up with Jeff, if you’ll remember. Jon, now he’s special. Look at how quickly he accepted you for who you are. Sixth sense and all. Oh, he’s the one for you, sweetheart. I can feel it.”

  Darcy knew that for her, dreams like this were much more than just dreams. She knew that this was really Millie, her departed spirit, and that her aunt was really talking to her. This was advice she needed to hear from exactly the person she needed to hear it from.

  But what was that song her cat kept singing?

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,” Smudge purred. “How I wonder where you’re at. Up above the world so high, like a tea tray in the sky.”

  Oh. Of course. That was the poem the dormouse had sang at the Mad Hatter’s teaparty in Alice in Wonderland. Here they were at a teaparty. So what else would a person-sized white and black tomcat sing?

  She smiled at Smudge. He smiled back. “I like the other version better,” he said in a voice that Darcy couldn’t quite picture as his. Not that Smudge the cat really had a voice, but if he did, this wouldn’t be it. This was someone else’s voice. She knew it, she just couldn’t place it.

  Reaching up, she scratched Smudge’s chin. She missed her cat. For the longest time it had been just her and Smudge. Before Jon came along, anyway. It had taken a long time for Smudge to accept Jon as part of their family. Now that he had, she wondered if he felt jealous at all.

  On her hand, as she continued to rub Smudge vigorously on the mottled fur of his neck, her ring sparkled in the sunlight. It was practically glowing here in this twilight world split between light and dark. She had always wanted to ask Millie about it, about the odd geometrical design of angles and curves carved into its silver surface. On one side a rose had been created in such detail that it almost looked like a real flower trapped in a thin layer of metal rather than the work of an incredibly skilled artisan. Millie had left the ring in her will to Darcy but hadn’t talked much about it while she was alive. It was old, Darcy knew that. Older than Millie by a few generations.

  She blinked, and then yawned. Her mind was beginning to wander. Real sleep was trying to claim her and she still had so many questions. She tried to focus on the things that were most important. When had the shadows moved so far forward? Everything was growing dim.

  What was she supposed to ask? Oh. Right.

  “Millie, please, I need to ask you about Connor. About JoEllen’s son.”

  “Poor boy,” Millie said sympathetically. “Lost his father. Might lose his mother, too, if you don’t help her.”

  “I’m trying to help her. Me and Jon both.” She could hardly see her aunt now, or Smudge either, for the darkness from the trees. “Where should I look for him? Where is Connor?”

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,” Smudge began singing again.

  “Smudge, shush,” Darcy said frantically, sensing this was her only chance to get any more answers in this dream before it slipped away from her.

  His smile gleamed like the Cheshire Cat’s as the rest of him began to fade into the dark. He repeated the poem one more time, then even his smile disappeared.

  “I still prefer the other version,” he said, his deep voice echoing into silence.

  ***

  How long she slept after that last image of Smudge grinning at her, Darcy wasn’t sure. It was still dark outside when someone shook her awake. Her foggy brain knew that much. So, not dawn yet.

  “Wha?” she mumbled. Then, sitting up quickly and forcing her eyes fully open, she tried again. “What? What is it?”

  Jon crouched over her. Darcy and JoEllen had left a single lamp lit on the side table next to the bed and now she could see how worried he was by the way the shadows fell across his face. “I think we have a problem,” he said to her in a hushed whisper. “I can’t find Carson Middlemiss anywhere.”

  “You don’t have to be so quiet,” JoEllen said, stirring on the bed. “I’m awake. What do you mean you can’t find him?”

  “I mean just that.” Jon sat down on the bed spread next to Darcy and folded his legs, resting his elbows on his knees. “Not at his shop, not at his house, not anywhere. Found his car. It’s parked behind the bookstore.”

  “How do you know it’s his?” Darcy asked.

  “He’s a book lover like you are,” Jon explained, his expression momentarily amused. “His license plate reads BKS4LIFE. I’ve been looking all around town for him for hours now. So. The question is. Where is he?”

  “He ran away.” JoEllen clenched her teeth and beat her fist against the bed. “I told you we should have gone after him right away! I knew I should have gone over there and made him talk to me at the point of a gun and—”

  “He’s missing,” Darcy interrupted pointedly. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you went looking for him with a gun, he still would have been gone. If I didn’t think he was guilty before, I certainly do now.”

  “Then where’s my son?” JoEllen demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Darcy had to admit.

  JoEllen’s mouth clamped shut. Her anger still smoldered but she kept a silent rein on her tears. Her hands twitched like she longed to have a gun in each one, shooting something dead. Her problem, Darcy knew, was that this wasn’t a problem that could be solved by killing. Without something to shoot, she didn’t know what to do.

  “Jon, we have to go to the Sheriff now,” Darcy said. “We don’t have to tell him everything. We can keep some of it to ourselves. All he really needs to know is that JoEllen’s son was kidnapped by Carson. The police will have resources and manpower and we’re going to need all of that to find Connor now.”

  “Yes. I agree.” He looked at Darcy, holding her gaze with his, and she could read the rest of what he wasn’t saying as clearly as if he’d said the words out loud.

  If Carson really had left town, there was a very good chance he took Connor with him.

  They took just a few minutes to change and drink some water from the bottles Darcy and Jon had stored in the little fridge in the closet. It was all they felt they had time for. Then they were all getting into Jon’s car and heading back into town.

  Bear Ridge was a different world at night. Darcy had always said that Misty Hollow shut down after dark, a sleepy town that went nearly comatose when the sun set. Here in Bear Ridge they practically rolled the sidewalks up at night. Maybe it was different during the height of ski season, but right now there was no one around anywhere. Shops were closed up. Houses were dark and silent. No traffic moved on the streets. The one and only traffic light blinked a constant yellow. If a leaf had fallen from any of the trees that lined the streets, they would have heard it crashing into the ground.

  They took a quick side trip into the parking lot behind the Golden Bear Bookstore. Carson’s car,
a yellow hatchback with rust slowly eating the driver’s door, was still there. BKS4LIFE read the license plate, just like Jon had said. Darcy had to admit it wasn’t likely that he’d left town on foot. If his car was still here, what had he used to leave town?

  Of course, there was another possibility she hadn’t considered. If Carson’s car was still here, he might still be here, too. It didn’t mean he was alive, though. Jon had looked everywhere for him, and Darcy knew that Jon was good at that sort of thing. If Carson had been anywhere to be found, Jon would have found him. All those people disappearing on the mountain. Maybe they hadn’t just disappeared. Maybe they had all died, just like Audie Berkstone had. Could Carson have fallen victim to the same fate?

  But then, who would have killed JoEllen’s blackmailer?

  Oh, no.

  “Jon, I just had a really horrible thought.” She leaned forward from the back seat to look at him. This was not good.

  “Does your thought involve the mayor killing Carson Middlemiss?” he asked her.

  In the rearview mirror she could see how surprised she looked. Jon could, too. “Hey, great minds think alike.”

  “Donnie did say how worried he was for his wife and son,” Darcy said.

  “And how he wasn’t going to let anyone bully him into stepping down from the mayor’s position.”

  “Men have been known to kill to protect their family.”

  “And their job.”

  JoEllen watched them talking back and forth. “You guys are cute and all, the way you share one brain or whatever, but can we just get to the part where we find my son? Where is he?”

  Darcy didn’t have an answer for her. She and Jon had followed the clues as far as they could. The rest of it was still a mystery. More and more, Darcy was certain they needed the Sheriff’s help.

  The Sheriff’s Office was one of the few points of light on the otherwise dark street. The light over the front glass doors flickered erratically. Floodlights lit up the Sheriff’s star and the front of the building. The lights from inside were inviting, like a lighthouse in a sea of darkness.