by K. J. Emrick
“I wasn’t here,” Bobbi Jo told Jon. Her voice was almost humble. “I promise you Chief, I wasn’t here. I closed up the shop just like I said. Then I went…”
“Where?” Jon pushed. “Where did you go?”
Throwing her comb across the room as if it was some sort of dagger, Bobbi Jo growled in frustration. “Fine! I went to see my dealer, all right? I used up the last of my, um, supply and I needed to get more for my customers. That’s where I was. I was not here, and I did not set fire to the bakery. It’s right next door to my shop, for crying out loud! If that fire had spread I would have lost my business too!”
That was a good point, Darcy had to admit. The reasons they had put her on their list of suspects had been thin to begin with, and if she really was with a drug dealer when the fire started… well, it was a really bad alibi, but it was an alibi just the same.
Apparently, Jon agreed.
Brushing a hand through both sides of his hair, he checked himself out in the mirror and smiled. “That’s absolutely perfect. You do really good work, I have to say. Well. I guess we’re done here. Tell you what. I’m going to send one of my officers down here later and you can give him all the information on your dealer. We’ll go have a chat with him to verify your alibi. It is a him, right? Or is it a she? You know, this is such a progressive world and I forget sometimes. Even a woman can be a criminal.”
He got up, untying the apron from his neck and putting it neatly across the arm of the chair. “So. You’re going to cooperate with us, and tell us everything you know about this drug operation you’ve got going on. Then we’re going to arrest your dealer, and we’re going to arrest you too. But, since you’re going to be so cooperative we’ll go easy on you. You might not even go to jail. Stay here until you speak with my officer, Bobbi Jo, and then close up and go home. I think your days of being a member of the Misty Hollow Chamber of Commerce are behind you.”
His voice had turned to steel by the end, and all Bobbi Jo could do was nod her head, and agree that she would wait right here.
Outside, it was starting to snow again. Tiny white flakes were drifting out of the sky and floating on the crisp air as they walked. It was getting colder. The breeze also carried the faint odor of smoke from the ruins of the bakery next door. Darcy watched as the snowfall drifted in swirls around the corners of the building, like little tendrils of mist and fog, bad omens of things to come.
The weather was also getting inside the broken windows and doors, ruining everything further. Why hadn’t Tobias put any effort into saving what he could?
“Don’t you just love this time of year?” Jon asked her abruptly.
“Are you serious?” That was the exact opposite of what she’d been thinking. Darcy huddled into her coat as the swirls of snow coiled around her feet. “So far we’ve interviewed two of our neighbors and found out that both of them are involved in criminal activity. Wilson was right. It’s our very own naughty list.”
“Well it is almost Christmas.” He opened his car door for her, like a real gentleman. “Which reminds me. What would you like this year?”
She trailed her fingertips over his hand as she sat down. “I have everything I want, Jon. You, and Colby. Seriously what more could I want?”
“Um, maybe a car of your own?”
“Well, if you really wanted to.” She had to laugh at the suggestion. A car? That was way too much, even for a Christmas gift! “Maybe after new year’s you and I could go looking for one together.”
“We’ll see,” he said, and it sounded to her like he’d already made up his mind.
She shook her head in disbelief at the amazing man she had married while he got in behind the wheel and started the engine. Christmas was coming up fast, that was for sure, but for now they had more immediate things to think about.
Drugs being sold in Misty Hollow. In a way, she had always known drugs were in their community. Drugs were everywhere. All across America, all across the world. In several states in the country marijuana use was becoming legal, at least for medical reasons or for casual use. People said it was just like drinking a beer after work. Darcy had her doubts about that but either way it was still illegal in this state, which meant Bobbi Jo was committing a crime and using her shop as a cover for her illegal activity. It was bound to catch up to her someday, and now that it had, her quick way of earning extra money was going to put her out of business.
“I didn’t see Bobbi Jo pass anything to that Mister Bonn fellow,” Darcy confessed. “You must have been paying more attention than I was.”
“Actually, no. I was bluffing.”
She stared at him as he pulled away from the curb and headed up Main Street. “You were bluffing? You lied to her?”
He shrugged. “Well, sort of. I saw the money in the envelope, and that’s not how anyone ever pays for a haircut. Plus, it was pretty thick. Even if it had been all ones that was a pretty hefty tip he was leaving her. Not to mention the guy didn’t need a haircut. He hardly had any hair.”
“You faked her out,” she said, surprised but also impressed. “You sly dog, you.”
“Woof,” he answered her with a smirk. “It was a shot in the dark, but it paid off. Guess some of your intuition is rubbing off on me. Now we can cross one more name off our list. Know who I’m not crossing off our list?”
“Edmund Beres?” she guessed.
“Exactly. I don’t care if he did tell you he didn’t do it. I’m not trusting anything that someone associated with The Hand says. I don’t care if he’s telling me water is wet, I’m still dipping my foot in to find out for myself. Plus, it turns out he really does have warrants for his arrest. I haven’t made up my mind about Tobias Ford yet, either. He seems to have left town for the day. No one knows where he is. Then there’s that Iroc we have to track down. Grace is working on that.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “So, anyway. Let’s get you home before Colby gets off the bus.”
They were already on their street. This whole day had been one long sequence of rushing right from one thing to the next. Darcy wondered if they would ever be a normal couple who only had to worry about being home in time to meet the school bus. Most likely, no. When she married Jon, she didn’t sign up for normal. She was marrying a police officer. He was marrying a woman who could talk to ghosts and had a permanent habit of getting involved with other people’s problems. Normal wasn’t good enough for either of them.
“You know,” she said to Jon, “I told you what I want for Christmas. It’s only fair that you tell me, too.”
“Oh, I don’t want much,” he said. “Maybe just a new watch. And a set of golf clubs because I’ve really been wanting to try golf. And the complete set of Columbo on DVD. And a couple of pairs of slacks because I’ve got a few wearing out. Oh, and there’s this really cool hovering skateboard that I saw in the mall a few months back…”
She shook her head as he kept going down an impossibly long list, realizing that he was teasing her and enjoying every second of it.
What he didn’t know was the joke was on him, because she already had his gift.
And it was perfect.
Chapter Six
They decided to wait until after dinner to talk to Colby about her spirit communication. That way both of them could be home and everyone would have eaten and that might make their questions and concerns seem a little less adversarial. That was a big word that their young daughter might not understand, but she would certainly know the feeling of being ganged up on. Doing it this way would keep them from being the bad guys.
“We’re just concerned about you,” Jon said, leaning back in his chair at the kitchen table.
His plate was empty except for a few kernels of corn. The meal had been delicious, pork chops and parmesan pasta and a veggie side. They’d laughed at Colby’s funny stories about things that happened at school, and now there was ice cream waiting for them in the freezer.
This talk had to come first.
“You understand,
right?” Darcy turned her drink glass in her fingers, around and around. “We’re worried you could have been seriously hurt. Or, if that candle had caught something on fire we might not have a house to be eating chocolate fudge ice cream in.”
“I know, Mom.” Colby squirmed a little in the third chair at the table. There was a leaf that could be put in to make it seat up to six, but for just them they liked to keep things simple. “I understand. I’m sorry. I said that yesterday, remember? But nothing happened. I was fine. There wasn’t any fire. Plus, I had Smudge and Tiptoe with me. They were watching out for me just like I’ve seen Smudge do with you. Tiptoe came and got you when the candle fell over, didn’t she?”
“Yes, honey, she did, but what if I hadn’t been close by? What if your door hadn’t been open?”
Colby pushed the bone from her pork chop around on her plate with her fork. “Mom. I know all this. I said I was sorry. I promise I won’t do it again until you teach me how. I promise.”
Jon caught Darcy’s eye, and with his head he motioned toward the living room. Colby was pouting down at her plate and didn’t see him but Darcy got the message. With a little nod of her own, she told him to go ahead.
Standing up, Jon picked up his plate and Darcy’s, and then stacked Colby’s on top of it, pretending the plates were leaning too far this way, and then too far that way…
Colby picked her head up, giggling at her father’s antics.
“Whoa… whoa…” He staggered to one side, and then the other, spinning around in a full circle with the plates high above his head and then dropping them—gently—into the sink while he held onto the edge of the countertop. “Wow, did you see that? It was like the leaning tower of dishes! That was absolutely crazy! I could have died!”
“Oh, Dad,” Colby laughed as she bounced in her chair. “You’re so silly.”
Jon staggered in his tracks again, “accidentally” falling into Colby and sending her into squeals of thrilled delight as her father kept pretending to get up and fall again. When she was breathlessly asking him to stop he ruffled her hair and kissed her face all over and then dashed away into the living room. Darcy heard him taking the stairs up to their room two at a time. True to his word he was giving her the space she needed to talk to Colby alone.
“So,” she said, getting up from the table. “Who wants ice cream?”
“Me!” Colby shouted, waving one hand above her head while she tried to comb back the tangles her father had left in her hair with the other. “Me, me, me please!”
Dishing out scoops of soft chocolatey dessert for each of them, setting the bowls on the table, Darcy hummed a little tune while she composed the best way to ask Colby about her communication. Her daughter was so smart for her age, but so inexperienced in life. Half the time Darcy wanted to hold her tight and tell her bedtime stories while she rocked her to sleep, and then there were other times when she worried that Colby had forgotten how to be a kid.
So. The direct approach it was, then.
“Colby, I need to ask you… when you were doing your spirit communication, did you actually talk to the ghost?”
“Uh-huh,” she answered. There was already chocolate all around her lips, and her mouth was full of another bite. “Mmm. This is really good. We should have ice cream for dinner every night.”
“Well. Maybe once or twice. Too many sweets are bad for you.” She hadn’t really eaten much of her own ice cream. She was too worried about Colby. “You talked to the ghost? Was it hard to find her?”
“No. It was kind of easy. I did the breathing techniques like I’ve seen you do, and then I sort of… slipped into this place that was all gray and dark. That’s the in between place you told me about, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I think everyone sees it a little differently, but the way you described it is pretty good. A big, empty gray space. So then you called for the ghost?”
“No,” Colby said, “that’s not how it went at all. I pictured myself standing there, and I was just about to try, I don’t know, shouting at the ghosts or something when there she was. So I said hi.”
Darcy was so surprised she couldn’t speak. The ghost appeared without being called for and then… Colby just said hi, like she was meeting a best friend for a playdate? She made it sound so easy. Darcy had been in communications before that had taken hours and some others where the ghost absolutely refused to come out at all. And here Colby sits down for her first time ever to call across to the other side and the ghost just pops right up like she’d been waiting there the whole time…
Like she’d been waiting.
When a ghost did that, it usually meant it had something important to tell.
On quiet cat feet, Smudge came walking in slowly from the living room. He flicked one black and white ear up at Darcy, and blinked his eyes, and then walked over to his food dish to have his own supper. There was a lot more gray in that hair of his than there used to be. He was old, but he wanted Darcy to know he was still around when she needed him.
A moment later Tiptoe came bounding in with the same energy that her father used to have. She was always imitating Smudge, doing the things he did, trying to be grown up like her dad. This time, instead of going over to the food like Smudge had, she bounced onto Colby’s lap and curled herself up with a stretch and a yawn.
Darcy was glad Tiptoe was always there for her daughter. Especially if she was going to be this strong in her powers. “Colby, this is important. Tell me what the ghost said.”
Her daughter had been licking the chocolate off the side of her mouth and now the tip of her tongue stuck out of her lips as she scrunched up her eyes in thought. “Well, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean, I could hear her fine and everything. It was just a little hard to understand her because she has those burns and they make her mouth go funny when she talks, but I heard all the words.”
“It’s okay, Colby.” Time for a teachable moment she supposed, Darcy Sweet style. “Ghosts don’t always talk in ways that make sense. They talk in circles, sometimes, or else they tell you things they think you need to know even if it doesn’t really answer your question. Can you tell me what this ghost said?”
“Uh-huh. Yes I can. She said that her brother killed her with fire. That’s what she said.”
Colby said it so matter-of-factly. Like it wasn’t anything as terrible as it sounded. Hearing those words spoken so coldly by her daughter had her stomach in knots. Maybe it was a good thing, she thought to herself. If Colby was going to be exposed to the same things that Darcy had been exposed to in her life it might just be easier if she could be this detached from the bad things that happen to people. Or more to the point, the bad things that people did to each other.
Her brother killed her. In a fire.
The fire she had seen when she touched Pastor Phin’s hand. She remembered the sight of it so vividly. This girl had died in that fire. Killed by her brother.
So… who was her brother?
“Mom?” Colby said. Darcy had the impression it wasn’t the first time, either. “Are you okay?”
Smudge meowed to get her attention. Blinking, she realized that her daughter had finished her bowl of ice cream while hers was still untouched. “Oh, sorry honey. I was thinking. Um. Did the ghost say anything else?”
“Nope. That’s when you pulled me out of the trance. You’re going to show me how to do that too, right?”
“Yes, I will. Just not right now. Um. How about you head on up to your room for now. You still have homework to finish, right?”
“Aw, do I have to? I was going to watch some TV.”
Darcy smiled, although her thoughts were still on what Colby had said about the ghost. “Yes, you have to go do your homework. We can watch some television after you’re done. How about some My Little Pony tonight?”
“Okay. Two episodes?”
“Three, if you get your work done quick. Okay?”
“No problem. It’s just writing in the names of the states and their ca
pitals. I’m half done already.”
“Really?” Darcy asked her, not exactly convinced.
“Uh, well… I have it started.” She swung her feet over and slipped down off the chair. “I’ll go do the rest of it right now. Come on, Tiptoe!”
Two cats followed Colby out of the room. Tiptoe raced along at her feet. Smudge took his time, waiting at the doorway to look back at Darcy. His eyes told her he was okay with watching over Colby for now, but there was going to need to be a lot more naps in his future. A flick of his tail, and he was gone.
Darcy cleared the rest of the dishes off the table and put them in the sink with the others. She’d have to wash them later but right now her mind was working overtime. Maybe… just maybe…
Could it be that Jon had been right to put Pastor Phin’s name on the suspect list after all?
“I just got word,” Jon told her from the doorway between the living room and kitchen. “Wilson Barton arrested Bobbi Jo Cameron on drug possession charges. We’ve got the name of her dealer but that’s going to be a problem for tomorrow. So how’d it go with Colby?”
“Hmm?” Darcy stopped fiddling with her aunt’s ring on her finger and started pacing instead. “With Colby? Fine. She won’t do anything like that again. Not until I’ve told her she’s ready. I’m not worried about that.”
“Really? Because I sort of am,” he admitted. “I guess it’s the same as when we worry about her being away at school all day and what’s happening to her while we’re not around.”
“Right. Just like… wait.” She blinked up at him. “You worry about that too?”
“Of course I do, Darcy. I’m a guy, but I’m still a father.” He came closer, putting his arms around her waist. “Good parents always worry. I’ve just got a few more things to worry about with our daughter than most fathers. I mean, what’s her first date going to be like? Is she going to graduate college, get a good job, move away or stay here in town? There’s all that normal stuff, and then with Colby we also have to worry if she’ll plunge herself into a spirit communication and never come out of it. Or if she’ll have her very own avenging spirit that wants to kill her by burning a building down around her ears.”