The Naughty List

by K. J. Emrick

  “The Hand,” Wilson said. “He means The Hand.”

  Darcy felt a cold band wrap around her heart at just the mention of that name. The Hand was the criminal organization that had chased Isabelle McIntosh and her daughter into hiding here in Misty Hollow a number of years ago. The same organization that had tried to kill Jon and her sister Grace two years back. Jon had finally succeeded in putting one of their top members, Adolphos Carino, in Federal prison where he was likely going to rot for the remainder of his foul life. Although, any good criminal enterprise has too many members to ever completely go away. It was like the mob. Or those ‘Ndrangheta people that her friend Dell Powers had told her about in Australia.

  But The Hand was much closer than that. They were right in their own back yard. And apparently, right on Main Street.

  “Edmund Beres,” Jon said, “is not believed to be a member of The Hand, but is tied to several instances of crimes linked to that group. So he’s a freelance thug, and he’s in our town. More than that, he was seen on Main Street just a few hours before one of our businesses was burned to the ground. The crimes Mister Beres is linked to include burglary, trespassing, and oh look at that, arson.”

  “He makes the list?” Darcy asked.

  “Oh yeah he does.” Jon wrote the name down on the pad. “One, two, three, four.”

  “Wait,” Darcy said, “you still haven’t said why Bobbi Jo is a suspect. Just because she made a complaint about Tobias and his veiled threats? He did the same thing to me and you don’t see me burning down his place of business.”

  Jon’s head snapped up. “What do you mean, he did the same thing to you? Tobias threatened you?”

  “Um. Well, it wasn’t a threat against me, so much, as it was a suggestion that my business would suffer if I didn’t let him sell these absolutely awful t-shirts of his. He wanted to make a mockery of our town. I told him no, and he said… um, you can get on board with my vision, or your business will suffer. Yes. That’s what he said.”

  The look on Jon’s face could have broken stone. “When was this? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was yesterday,” Darcy said, “and we haven’t exactly had time to sit down and talk about things, now have we?”

  He nodded, realizing she was right. “No, I guess not. Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep this morning. I guess I’m a little testy.”

  “Right there with you, Chief,” Wilson told him.

  Darcy had left Jon sleeping in their bed after getting Colby on the bus this morning. She had no idea when he came into work but she would be willing to bet that it was right after she left. That’s how dedicated he was, and how much he cared about their town. Tobias’ little visit to her shop yesterday wasn’t the only thing she hadn’t had time to talk to him about. She would have to sit down with him tonight and discuss Colby’s little stunt in her room. She wasn’t going to mention it here. Not with Wilson in the office with them. No, that was one of those private family things that they just didn’t talk about with anyone else.

  “So let me get this straight,” Jon said. “First, Tobias comes into your shop yesterday and practically strongarms you to go into business with him. Then, he storms into your shop today and accuses you of being the one to burn his place down. I don’t think I like the way that sounds. What do you think, Wilson?”

  “I think we have a new business owner in town,” Wilson said through another yawn. “I think he’s somebody we don’t know who says he has a lot of money to invest in one of our shops. But, it sounds to me like he’s desperate to find new sources of revenue. To the point he’s willing to threaten people to get what he needs.”

  “Might make him do some really bad things.”

  “Yup,” Wilson agreed. “Maybe even burn down his own shop.”

  Jon rubbed at his scar. “Seems a little farfetched, but people have done worse for less. If I have to put one of our friends on this list, then somebody who threatens my wife’s business gets a place on it, too. If nothing else, that’s a crime in itself. Think I’ll have to have a talk with Mister Ford.”

  Maybe Darcy got a little too much satisfaction in seeing Jon put Tobias Ford’s name down on that list, but suddenly the idea that he might have burned down his own place seemed to make perfect sense. If he was strapped for cash then buying a thriving business in a small, out of the way town and destroying it for the insurance money could earn him some quick cash.

  “You’re going to check to see if he put any new insurance policies on the bakery,” she asked Jon, “aren’t you?”

  He smiled at her. “See how much you’ve learned by being married to me?”

  “Oh, you mean like how I’ve learned never to make fun of John Wayne while you’re around?”

  “Hey, John Wayne is an icon of American film. The man set the stage for how the modern western movie was made.”

  “I have just two words for you.” She tried to keep the smile from her face as she leaned in closer to the desk. “Genghis Khan.”

  “Yeah, well, everyone gets to make one bad movie. The Conqueror certainly qualified.”

  “I’ve never seen that one,” Wilson said.

  “No one has.” Jon picked up the notepad, reading down the list of names. “Howard Hughes spent a good portion of his own money to buy up every copy there was. He didn’t want anyone else to see the flop he’d created.”

  “He still loves John Wayne,” Darcy told Wilson, just like she had to almost every single one of their friends and family before. Her mother would never understand Jon’s obsession with the late actor. “Anyway, you still haven’t told me why Bobbi Jo is a suspect.”

  Going back a few pages in the folder, Jon took out Bobbi Jo’s statement again. “Read the last line.”

  Darcy did. In her own words, signed to at the bottom of the page, Bobbi Jo had said, “If he ever threatens my store again he’ll regret it.”

  She handed back the page. “I see.”

  “Exactly,” Jon said. Tapping a pen against each name, he counted them down. “One, two, three, four, five. Five suspects. Look at that. We’ve got our very own naughty list.”

  Wilson rubbed at his tired eyes. “Wonderful. Just in time for Christmas. Bah, humbug.”

  ***

  She said goodbye to Jon with a little kiss on his cheek when it became obvious she was going to be in the way more than she was helping. That was fine with her. There was a lot to do now, and Darcy couldn’t exactly help with it. When she left, Jon and Wilson were working up assignments for their officers.

  Talk to Bobbi Jo Cameron, get her alibi.

  Talk to Elizabeth Archer, get her alibi.

  Find this Edmund Beres, and find out what his business was here in Misty Hollow… and ask if that business included committing arson on behalf of The Hand.

  Find out who was driving the Iroc that Lilly and Izzy had seen. Thankfully there weren’t all that many Irocs on the road anymore. Not from the 80s. It shouldn’t be too hard for the Department of Motor Vehicles to find out who had one registered to them in this state.

  Re-interview Tobias Ford. Jon said that one was for him.

  Darcy wanted to be involved in all of it, but she knew she couldn’t be. She might have to let the police officers in her town do the investigation on this mystery. At least for now.

  On her way out of the building her sister Grace caught her elbow and steered her away from the front, where the dispatch desk sat right next to the lobby window. She led her straight to her desk, behind the recently added partition screens that served to give the detectives a little bit of privacy since the building had never been big enough to give them offices of their own.

  Once they were sitting down and safely invisible from the rest of the room, Grace let go of her sister’s arm and then craned her head to see around the gray plastic edge of the adjustable wall. When Darcy tried to do the same Grace grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back again.

  “Don’t do that!”

  “Ow. Hey, sis, you kn
ow I’m not a ragdoll, right?”

  Grace looked like she’d been up for most of the night just like Jon and Wilson had. Her white button up top was wrinkled under her blue blazer, and the same was true of her slacks. Even her short hair could have used a comb.

  “Just keep your head down,” she said to Darcy. “Tobias Ford is out in the lobby and he’s after blood. Your blood.”

  Darcy slumped down lower in the plastic chair even though she was already too low to be seen. “What is with this guy? I’ve helped catch murderers who weren’t this angry at me!”

  Of course, his bluster might be hiding his own guilt. Darcy remembered Jon writing Ford’s name on their list. How far would he go to pin the fire on someone else, if he did it himself?

  “He’s really het up about this one,” Grace said. “I don’t know what you said to him in your shop yesterday but you really got under his skin.”

  “Grace… did you just use the phrase het up?”

  Her sister tossed a pen across her desk. “Not really the point, Darcy. And yes. I said het up. So what? Mom used to use dumb little phrases like that all the time.”

  “Yeah, she did. All those proper phrases and rules of etiquette… hard to believe we grew up to be so different than her.”

  “I don’t know, sis.” Grace grabbed her pen before it rolled off the edge to the floor. “Ever since Mom came back into our lives I’m starting to think we might be more alike than any of us realized.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Darcy said, laughing at the thought. She loved her mother, which was something she would have been hard pressed to say in her younger years. Still, things might be better between the sisters and their mother now, but there was a whole world of difference between them. “Hey, since I’ve got you here, we wanted to have you and Aaron and Addie over for dinner. Are you free at all this week?”

  “That sounds great, sis, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. Addie’s class is getting ready for a play so she’s staying after school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then there’s this arson case, and I kind of have a feeling that Jon is going to have us all scurrying around like worker bees until we have someone collared for that.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Darcy told her. “He’s in there right now making assignments on who needs to be interviewed. Elizabeth Archer is one of them.”

  She was expecting Grace to raise an eyebrow or at least look surprised. She didn’t.

  “So you knew about Elizabeth?”

  Grace nodded, although she didn’t look happy about it. “Jon walked me through the investigation before you got here. An employee with a history of being involved with fires. Darcy, I admit it sounds all kinds of wrong but you have to see it through our eyes.”

  “You mean ‘police officer’ eyes,” Darcy said flatly.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “How about seeing it through a neighbor’s eyes? Grace, we know Elizabeth. We’ve lived next to her for years now. Ever since she moved into town. She’s had a hard life and she’s very rough around the edges but she’s not an arsonist. She did not burn down the bakery.”

  “Good police work is going to tell us that, sis.”

  “No, common sense is going to tell us that.” Darcy loved her sister. They’d been through a lot together, and they’d been at odds with each other more times than she could count. Grace was just so stubborn. So by the book. So unwilling to bend, sometimes. That was one of the reasons why Darcy hadn’t ever told Grace more about her gift than just the basics. The simple stuff that wasn’t likely to freak her out or make her think they should keep Addie away from Colby in case Darcy’s daughter tried doing a spirit communication or something.

  If she only knew.

  And that was another good reason she had to talk to Colby. What they could do with their gift was not something to talk about with her friends, or at school with her teachers, or any of that. It was a secret that needed to be kept secret.

  She’d had the talk about good and bad secrets with Colby already, but it was a life lesson that was worth repeating.

  “Tell you what,” Grace said to her. “Why don’t we go to Elizabeth’s place now, and we can talk to her together. You and me.”

  “Seriously?” Darcy asked. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m the senior detective of the Misty Hollow Police Department,” she said with pride in her voice. “You’re still listed as our consultant. It’s our job to investigate crimes.”

  “I prefer the word mystery,” Darcy said.

  “Whatever. Look. One of us is wrong, and one of us is right. Why don’t we go find out?” She stood up from her desk, looking across the room to the service window. “Jon was probably going to send me to interview Elizabeth anyway. Your stalker’s gone, for now. Let’s go.”

  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 Four

  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 som
eone 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.