by K. J. Emrick
“Wait, Wilson?” Darcy sat down at the closest of the reading tables, opening up her jacket to let the warmth of the heaters in. “Was this just a simple fire? Was it something besides an accident?”
The pause in the air was enough of an answer, but Darcy was on pins and needles waiting as Wilson took a slow breath.
Before he said anything the door to the shop swung open hard, sending the shopkeeper’s bell jangling. Tobias Ford filled the doorway with his wide shoulders and a cloud of emotions that swept in before him like pressure building in front of a storm.
His face was tight with fury. Darcy really couldn’t blame him. He did just lose a business and if she was reading Wilson’s silence properly he lost it because of a fire that had been set intentionally. She really couldn’t blame him if—
“You!” he snarled as soon as he saw Darcy. One big finger jabbed in her direction. “You did this! It was you!”
Darcy was speechless, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming freight truck. She shrank back in her chair in the face of the angry onslaught of Tobias Ford.
“All I did was offer you a business deal!” Tobias was yelling at her. “I just wanted to make a little money together. But you couldn’t just let it be about business, could you? You went and burnt my business down! You’re insane! You’re crazy! How could you do this?”
Wilson stepped in front of him and put a hand up against his chest pushing with all his might to keep Tobias from getting too close to Darcy. “Tobias, hold on now. You can’t just come in here and accuse someone of—”
“Not someone, Officer Barton, this woman!” If anything, Tobias sounded angrier. “This woman right here. Darcy Sweet burnt down my shop, and I want her arrested. Do you hear me? I want you to arrest her right now!”
Izzy was at Darcy’s side, putting a hand on her shoulder in quiet solidarity. Darcy didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say. This didn’t make any sense at all. Why would Tobias be accusing her?
Well. She did get pretty upset yesterday when he made his veiled threats about how her business would suffer if she didn’t do things his way, and she had practically thrown him out of her shop, and she had been sort of offended with the way he wanted to turn Misty Hollow into a joke. Sure, all that was true, but that didn’t mean she would go and commit arson! Especially to a store that had once belonged to one of her best friends.
Of course, the fact that Tobias owned the bakery now and was most certainly going to run it straight into the ground might give her a reason to do something about it. But not arson. She would never do that. Even if she had plenty of motivation.
Wilson had to see that.
Right?
When Tobias had finally calmed down enough that Wilson was fairly certain the ex-linebacker wasn’t going to barge right over him and Darcy both, he dropped his hands to his sides.
Then he turned to look at Darcy.
Then he took another deep breath.
“Come on, Darcy. Let’s you and me go down to the police station.”
“Ha!” Tobias gloated. “That’s what I’m talking about! Small town justice. You bring her down there, Officer, and I’ll be along in a little while to sign whatever you need me to sign.”
“It’s detective,” Wilson corrected Tobias. “My rank is detective, not officer.”
“Whatever.” Tobias shook his finger at Darcy one last time. Then he smiled at her as he held the door open with a wave of his arm. “Meet you down at the police station, Mrs. Sweet.”
Chapter Three
Darcy could not believe this.
This wasn’t the first time that she had been accused of a crime she didn’t commit. In fact, that was partly how she and Jon had gotten together in the first place. But still, Wilson knew her well enough to know there was no way she was involved in this. She even had an alibi, for Pete’s sake! Being at home where she just happened to be kissing the chief of police at the time the fires started had to be the absolute best alibi in the history of the whole entire world!
When they got to the police station, Wilson led Darcy through the lobby and through the locked door into the inner rooms, where several uniformed officers watched them head down the hallway that went to the interview rooms and the holding cells and closer to the front of the building, the chief’s office. Jon’s office.
Darcy knew most of those officers out there by name. She could only imagine what they were thinking to see her being escorted in like a common criminal. At least Wilson hadn’t used handcuffs. Her cheeks burned as she fumed over the whole situation. This was not fair!
Wilson knocked twice on Jon’s office and waited for him to say come in. Darcy glared at him when he opened the door for her, and sweeping into the room she found Jon sitting behind his desk, typing away on his computer. Three stacks of folders waited for his attention on the other side. That was too bad, Darcy thought to herself, because he was going to give his full attention to her first.
“Jon, you can’t possibly believe—”
“Of course not,” he said without looking up from his screen. “How could you even think we’d believe something this idiotic?”
That took all the wind out of her sails, but kind of in a good way. Dropping into one of the two padded chairs on this side of his desk, all she could think to say was, “Oh. But Wilson…”
“Sorry about that, Darcy,” Wilson said to her, standing with his shoulder up against the bookshelf on the one wall. “I thought you understood. I wasn’t arresting you. I just wanted to get you away from that blowhard before you smacked him upside his head.”
“Good call,” Jon told him.
Darcy sat back in her chair. She had to admit, that was exactly what she wanted to do to the high and mighty Tobias Ford, even more so today than yesterday. That didn’t mean that Wilson had to pull her out of her own bookstore, though. She would have restrained herself.
Well. Probably she would have.
“I just figured you knew,” Wilson said again. “I guess that explains why you were so quiet on the ride over here.”
“Of course it does.” Darcy had regained her voice now that she could relax, knowing she wasn’t going to be interrogated as the prime suspect in an arson. “Why did you think I wasn’t saying anything?”
He shrugged. “I figured you were just deep in thought. You’re as much of a mystery solver as any police officer I know. Better than some, in fact.”
“That’s why I asked her to marry me,” Jon said with pride in his voice. “Well, that and how absolutely beautiful she is.”
“Plus I already had my own place,” Darcy grumbled. “Ha, ha. So tell me what’s going on, will you? Wilson was just about to explain how the fire at Helen’s bakery was arson before Tobias started yelling at me. How could anyone do that? Do you have any suspects?”
Wilson pretended to study his fingernails. There were rules to police work and one of the big ones, as everyone knew, was that you did not discuss the details of ongoing investigations with civilians. That included the wife of the chief of police. At the same time, everyone on the police force knew that Darcy had helped them solve dozens of cases in the past, including some crimes that the police hadn’t even been aware of before she got involved. In the past, Jon had listed Darcy as a “consultant” which was just a fancy way of saying it was better to have her involved then out there investigating mysteries on her own.
Taking a manila folder off the top of one of the three stacks Jon opened it to the top page. It was a computer printed report. He read the highlights rather than show it to her. “The fire investigator found obvious accelerator trails leading from one hot spot to the next. Probably gasoline but the lab tests are pending. I’m really certain that the bakery didn’t store large quantities of gasoline, so that means the fire was intentionally set. So, arson.”
“Okay.” Darcy could understand that easily enough. “So do you have any suspects?”
Jon exchanged a look with Wilson. From the corner
of her eye Darcy saw him shrug.
“What?” she asked. “Who’s the suspect?”
Turning the top page over to the left side of the folder, Jon spun the next page around and slid it across the desk to Darcy. It was a scanned enlargement of a photograph. A close-up of a woman’s face.
Elizabeth Archer.
“What?” Darcy was shocked. “Jon, you can’t be serious. There’s no way that Elizabeth did this. She worked in that bakery for years. She wouldn’t burn it down!”
“Darcy, I didn’t just pick her name out of a hat.”
“Then how did you decide on her, Jon? Because there’s no way she did this.”
Lips pressed together, eyebrows scrunched into a frown, Jon leaned back in his chair. Darcy followed his gaze over to Wilson. He was studying his fingernails again, looking very uncomfortable.
“What?” Darcy asked them both. “What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Are you going to let me tell you?” Jon asked her.
She bristled at the way he said it, but she made herself sit very still with her arms folded across her chest, and nodded.
“Good. First, let’s start with the fact that yes, Elizabeth has worked at that bakery for years. She owed a lot to Helen from what I understand because Helen gave her a job when no one else would. Only, Helen isn’t the owner of the bakery anymore. Tobias Ford is. We think it’s possible that Elizabeth held a grudge against Helen for that, or against Tobias, or maybe even both of them, for feeling like she was abandoned.”
“Not to mention,” Wilson added, “she had every reason to be mad at Tobias. From what we’ve learned he lowered the salary of every bakery employee. He promised to raise them again if the profits increased, but for the last year or so everyone there, including Elizabeth, have been doing more for less. Sounds like motive to us.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.” Darcy tried to argue. “There’s other employees at the bakery who must have felt the same way.”
“True,” Jon agreed. “Four of them, to be exact, and we’ll interview them all, but for now Elizabeth is still our best suspect.”
“Why? You still haven’t convinced me.”
“You remember the burns on Elizabeth’s face? You remember how she got them?”
Darcy was appalled that Jon would bring that up. That a really low blow. “Of course I do. The one has nothing to do with the other. Elizabeth isn’t crazy, and she doesn’t go around setting fires just to watch things burn. We’ve known her for years, Jon!”
“That didn’t keep you from accusing her of helping to kidnap Smudge a few years ago.”
“That was… different,” Darcy decided to say. “I was ready to bring everyone into this station, one by one, and waterboard a confession out of them if it meant getting Smudge back. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind. She didn’t do this.”
“And I’d love to say that counts for something,” he told her, “but how many of our friends and neighbors have actually turned out to be thieves or liars once we got to know them? Or murderers, for that matter.”
Unfortunately, she couldn’t argue that point.
“There’s something else, though.” Jon took the close-up of Elizabeth back again and put it in place behind the top sheet. Then he took out the next three sheets and laid them out in front of Darcy in a row. They were copies of pictures, all of them taken of a crowd standing together.
Darcy recognized the group of people that had been standing on the sidewalk earlier across from the burnt-out bakery. Well. Now she knew why Wilson had his cellphone out while he was there. He’d been taking pictures.
“In policing,” Jon said, “the prevailing theory on arson is that more often than not, a person who sets an intentional fire will return to the scene afterward to watch. They like to see how people react to what they’ve done. It’s part of the thrill for them. Or, part of their guilt.”
“So?” Darcy actually did know that. She couldn’t remember if she’d learned it from Jon or from watching police shows, but right now that didn’t matter. “What’s that prove in this case?”
Pointing to the first photo, Jon tapped his finger against a familiar face. “There’s Elizabeth. And here she is again in this other photo. And in this one, too.”
“So she was there at the scene this morning. So what?” She was starting to sound like a broken record, but she didn’t care. “I’m in those photos too, you know. See? Right there. So’s Pastor Phin. Do you think Pastor Phin did this? I mean, Tobias really seems to think I did it, and I’m in those photos, so maybe that proves I did it after all, don’t you think?”
“Of course I don’t think you did it,” Jon said, raising his hands and trying to settle her down. “I don’t think Phin did it, either. But Darcy, there’s plenty of reasons why Elizabeth might have.”
“There’s other people to consider,” she insisted.
“Like who?”
Darcy was at a loss for an answer. There had to be someone, didn’t there? As much as she was positive that Elizabeth was not the guilty person in this case, she couldn’t come up with any other names to throw into the mix.
Only, then she could.
“The Iroc!” she blurted out.
“What?” Jon looked at her oddly. “The Iraq? You mean, like the country? Or someone from there?”
“No,” Wilson answered him. “She means the Iroc. The car. Izzy McIntosh was coming through town last night with her daughter right after the fire started and she says they saw a blue Iroc parked at the curb just down from the bakery. Seems the car took off when the firetrucks showed up.”
Jon tapped his fingers against his desk in a slow rhythm as he let that sink in. “Well. That’s interesting. You’d think they would want to stay when the trucks showed up.”
“Because that’s the best part,” Wilson pointed out, smiling over at Darcy as he said it. “Or so I hear.”
“Right.” Jon stopped tapping his fingers to reach down to a drawer. From inside he took out a legal-sized yellow notepad. “I tell you what, Darcy. If it will make you feel better, I’ll make a list of all our suspects. Maybe seeing it all written out will convince me that you’re right.”
“All?” she asked him. “I thought Elizabeth was your only suspect.”
“No, unfortunately we have several. And now, I’ve got to add classic 1980s muscle car driver to the list.”
At the top of the page, Darcy watched him write, Iroc muscle car driver.
“I’m guessing Izzy didn’t see the driver?” he asked.
“No,” Wilson said. “I made sure to ask her, but she didn’t see him. Or the license plate, either.”
“Oh well. Too much to ask for, I guess.” He tapped the end of his pen against the page, looking at Darcy from under his brows for a moment. “I’m sorry, Sweet Baby, but I have to put Elizabeth on this list. She fits into the mystery too well not to at least consider her.”
Darcy ground her teeth together and just accepted it as Jon wrote Elizabeth’s name down next. Not even hearing Jon call her by her nickname—Sweet Baby—could make that okay. He was right though, and she knew it, so she stopped arguing about it and let him do his job.
“There’s the owner of the hair salon,” Jon went on, which was news to Darcy.
She watched him write the name down on the list. Bobbi Jo Cameron. “Why her?”
Jon flipped to another page in the open folder. This one was a written statement, a complaint form taken by one of his patrol officers. “Because yesterday she made a complaint to us about Tobias and some rather heavy-handed business practices. She claims he came into her shop offering to give out coupons for her salon, if she would give out flyers for his bakery. You know, it still seems weird calling it his bakery. Even now. It’s always been Helen’s bakery in my mind.”
“I know what you mean,” Wilson agreed. “A place like that, part of our community for years, and then it changes hands, and then it’s just gone.”
Darcy finally uncrossed
her arms at the mention of Helen. “Has anyone gone to talk to her?” she asked. “She must have heard the news by now, right?”
“She’s the mayor now,” Jon said by way of an answer. “I would have reported the fire to her even if it didn’t involve her personally, which it does. She was upset, as you can imagine. She started to get a little choked up before she got off the phone with me.”
“Poor Helen,” Darcy said. She would have to stop by the Town Hall after she was done here, she decided, and give Helen some moral support or a shoulder to cry on if she needed it. “But I’m still a little confused. Why is Bobbi Jo Cameron a suspect? Just because of the complaint?”
“Wait,” Wilson said before Jon could answer her. “Let me see that statement form.”
“Sure.”
He picked it up off the desk, and scanned through it, and then handed it to Jon. “See that, right there? Bobbi Jo says there was someone hanging around outside of her shop yesterday and she gave a really good description of the man. Red hair, long red sideburns, red tattoos on the back of both hands in the shape of a star. I’m pretty sure…” He spent a moment going through the rest of the papers in the folder. It didn’t take him long. There wasn’t much in it. “Yup. Right here. Kara was able to take the description and make an identification. He’s on our local watch list the State Police like to send us.”
“That Officer Kara,” Darcy said in a fakely neutral way. “She’s quite the police officer, isn’t she Wilson?”
Wilson winked at her. “She’s more than just a police officer.”
Jon read through Kara’s report, tapping a finger under a photo on the second page. Then he sat back in his chair, and scratched at the pale line of that scar near his hairline. Like he did when he could feel a storm coming, she thought to herself.
“I was hoping,” he said, “to go my whole entire career without seeing those guys again.”
“Jon?” Darcy asked him. “Who do you mean? What guys?”