Til Death Do Us Part

by K. J. Emrick

“Jayne has her hands full with that son of hers.”

  “I don’t get it,” Darcy had to admit. “She just lets him spend through her money? Why doesn’t she take his name off their bank account and make him get a job?”

  They were back on the county road now, headed toward Misty Hollow. “I’m not going to guess at how they do things in her family,” Jon said, “but some parents have a hard time pushing their kids out of the nest.”

  “I wonder what we’d do.”

  “Hmm?”

  “If we had a son, and he was acting like that,” Darcy clarified. “What would we do?”

  “Give him a quick kick in the seat of his pants?” Jon suggested.

  Darcy smiled. Just what she’d been thinking.

  His hand reached over and held hers. “We would figure it out. That’s what we would do. That’s what we will do, I mean. When we have kids. After we’re married.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Darcy exclaimed. “The wedding. We have so much left to do! We have to get everyone fitted for the tuxes and the dresses, we have to get the wedding license signed…Jon, we haven’t even ordered the cake yet!”

  He was laughing at her, and she pouted at him even though she wanted to laugh, too. “What’s so funny?” she asked. “You know I’m right.”

  “Sure I know. But we’ll get it done. Grace is helping, and your mom will be here in a few days, right?”

  Family and friends. They had a lot to be grateful for. Here they were, planning their wedding and talking about someday having kids of their own. Life couldn’t be much better, she thought. This was everything she had wanted for so long.

  She was happy.

  With her thoughts wrapped up so warm and fuzzy she nearly missed it when Jon turned left instead of continuing straight. “Hey, where are we going?”

  “We have a stop to make before we can go home.”

  “What, you mean the cemetery? That’s back in town…”

  “No, not the cemetery.”

  Not that far ahead of them, Darcy could see a run down, one story house with an attached garage. Yellow tape crisscrossed the doors and the windows.

  “We’re going to make another stop first,” he told her. “We need to look around Maven Sirles’ house.”

  Chapter Three

  Darcy had seen pictures of hoarders, of their houses full of everything that people usually threw away or recycled. There was even that television show about how hoarders became buried alive in their own belongings.

  The pictures didn’t even come close to what it felt like being inside the real thing.

  It was the smell that she noticed most. It permeated everything. It was an old, musty, cloying smell that mixed together decay and filth with the surprising smell of lemons. She had gagged a couple of times already. Jon had shown her how to cover her nose with the end of her sleeve. It helped. A little.

  The barrier tape outside had been from the public health department. They had also tacked a notice to the door condemning the property. She could see why.

  Every room was packed full of…everything. Newspapers towered against the wall in stacks that must have dated back years. They swayed dangerously as Darcy walked by, threatening to topple if the Earth rotated on its axis just one more time. Clothes were gathered in neatly folded piles separated into shirts, pants, and dresses around the living room floor. She couldn’t understand why the clothes weren’t put away at first, until they looked through the bedroom dresser and found it was full of jars containing dryer lint.

  Lint.

  Maven Sirles was a very disturbed woman. Darcy couldn’t think of any other way to put it.

  In the kitchen, empty cans of tomato soup had been arranged in pyramid shapes. Two of them had toppled over. Mouse droppings littered the floor around the chaos.

  When Jon opened the refrigerator Darcy saw the streaks of black mold climbing up jars of pickles and mayonnaise and even the white plastic on the inside of the door.

  She gagged again and made her way outside as fast as she could while side-stepping bulging black garbage bags and boxes of broken lightbulbs.

  The air outside was fresh and clean and Darcy sucked it in and out of her lungs to try and clean out the smell that had become a taste in her mouth. Working up saliva in her mouth, she spit, then spit again, feeling very unladylike. Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth she was glad no one was there to see her.

  “Kind of hard to take,” Jon said to her, closing the door behind him as he joined her outside. “Isn’t it?”

  Darcy crossed her arms and shifted from foot to foot, looking past him at the house with its missing roof tiles and sagging board siding. “How could she live like that? She was a coroner. She had a very public job. Didn’t anyone know? Couldn’t they…smell it on her, for Pete’s sake?”

  Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. I worked with Maven several times at different scenes where people had died. Accidents, old age, whatever. I know she wore a ton of perfume but I was never close friends with her.” With another shrug, he added, “I guess no one was. It’s really sad.”

  “I’ll say. You didn’t find anything inside?”

  “You missed the collection of toenail clippings. Is that what you meant?”

  “I meant like something that would explain the box of bones.” Gah. Toenails. She put her hand back up to her mouth. This just kept going better and better.

  “No. Nothing helpful. No paperwork. No files, nothing. I didn’t even see a computer in there. She must have done all of her work at her office.”

  “Did she maybe keep a journal?” Darcy asked. “Don’t hoarders keep a journal or a diary of their stuff? You know, like ten jars of toenail clippings, thirty cans of used Q-tips?”

  “I think you’re thinking of people with OCD.” Jon suddenly turned his head and spit on the lawn, which made Darcy feel better about having done it herself. “This might all be pointless, but let’s check the garage over real quick before we head home. It’s almost noon.”

  “I think I’ll skip lunch,” Darcy said, frowning. “After being in her house I’ve kind of lost my appetite.”

  “Me too,” he agreed. “Come on. Let’s be quick about it.”

  “Wouldn’t the health department have already looked through her stuff?”

  “No. Their job is to declare a home fit for living in or not. I don’t think they had to look very far into things before they condemned this place. Ready for this?”

  “No,” she said, then followed him anyway.

  The garage wasn’t accessible from the inside of the house. The overhead door looked like it hadn’t been moved in more than a decade. A regular door with a grimy square window in it squealed in protest but at least it opened. A light switch just inside turned on two bare bulbs overhead. They illuminated a tightly packed space with a cement floor and rows of metal shelving units packed tightly with boxes and bags and all manner of things. Lamps. Figurines. Books. Jars of stuff that Darcy didn’t want to look at too closely.

  “You want to look at the books?” Jon asked.

  “I’d rather not look at anything in here at all.” She sighed, knowing that she would have to help Jon even if she didn’t want to touch anything, if they were going to get out of here anytime today. “I’ll start at that end if you want to start at the other.”

  “Sounds good.”

  For the next half hour they walked through the garage checking anything that might give them a clue about the bones in the box. Darcy found that the inside of Maven’s house didn’t begin to tell the whole story of her sickness. Out here in the garage were the things that the house had rejected.

  She really wished she had worn gloves.

  Some of the books did look interesting. Especially one that was a history of Meadowood. She didn’t dare open them up to look closer, though, and there weren’t any diaries or journals or logbooks. So she moved on.

  There were boxes on every shelf, big ones, small ones, different sizes and shapes. Reluctantly, she looked
into each one.

  Snow globes.

  Broken glass. Seriously.

  Years of electric bills. All for this house.

  Shoes. Only the left ones.

  Dog collars. Had Maven even owned a dog?

  And…

  She got to a row of three banker’s boxes, white cardboard boxes with hand slots on either end and tight fitting cardboard tops. She hesitated, not wanting to look inside for fear of what she might see. It had been a box just like these where the skeletons of the Salvatore’s had been found.

  Maybe she should call Jon over before looking inside. On the other hand, it wasn’t like she was looking for boxes of live snakes. They were looking for files. A box full of files wasn’t going to hurt her.

  But what else had Maven been storing away in this garage?

  Feeling foolish, but at the same time feeling like she had a right to be a little foolish in this nightmare collection of castoffs, Darcy slid the box forward on the shelf.

  It was heavy, and whatever was inside shifted, rattling drily.

  Darcy hesitated. What if…? No. She swallowed back her fear and opened the lid, tensing up, preparing herself to see…

  Stones.

  “Huh,” she said, relaxing, even managing a quiet laugh at her own expense.

  Just stones. Flat, irregular shaped, smooth stones. Like from a riverbed. Darcy had seen these used in gardens and decorative walkways. There were some nice ones here, too. Black ones. Brown ones streaked with white or gold veins. That had been the sound she heard when she moved the box. Stones shifting on stones. That was all. Nothing to be afraid of.

  Okay, then, she thought to herself. She put that box back in place and looked into the second one. It was the same with this one. A dry rasping sound, a shifting of weight, and open the lid to see a collection of mismatched river stones. For Pete’s sake. What had she been worried about? On to the third box. A dry rasping sound, a shifting of weight, and open the lid to see—

  Darcy jumped back from the box she had just opened, dropping the cardboard lid to the floor, knocking up against the shelving unit behind her, toppling over what had been neat rows of empty plastic water bottles.

  “Jon?” she called, her voice shaking. “Jon, you won’t believe this. I found—”

  “More bones,” he finished for her.

  He was walking toward her with a box in his hands. It was just like the one she had found. The lid was already off and he tilted it down for her to see.

  It was full of bones that had browned with age. A skull sat on top, staring at Darcy with empty eye sockets.

  Like the box she had just looked into.

  Skeletons, sorted and stored as part of a hoarder’s collection.

  How many boxes did Maven Sirles have in here, full of bones?

  ***

  Six.

  The State Police sergeant that was overseeing the removal of the boxes of bones mopped at his forehead with a folded handkerchief. The man was so nondescript that he practically blended into the background of everything going on. If it hadn’t been for the gold stripes stitched to the arms of his dark uniform, Darcy might not have paid him any attention at all. The sergeant’s skin had been pale before he saw the six boxes with their skeletal remains. Now he looked downright ghostly.

  Kind of fitting, she thought.

  Six. Darcy and Jon had found six boxes with dry remains inside the garage. Add that to the one already found by Baxter Sams, and the total was seven. Each one had names printed in sloppy handwriting on the side. This mystery had gone from curious to morbid, just like that.

  Each of the boxes from the garage had been brought out and placed on a black tarp, their lids taken off to expose their grisly contents. The bones had been laid out in proper order, from feet to head, so they could be photographed and catalogued. Some had complete skeletons. Some had most of the parts. One box was nearly empty, just a few bones and a skull.

  Officers in special blue blazers with CSU written in big gold letters across the back were making records of each box and each name and a description of what lay inside. They talked back and forth as they worked with pen and paper or computer tablets or cameras.

  “Ever see anything like this?”

  “Never. Not in eighteen years on this job.”

  “Boxes full of bones. Like something out of a murder mystery.”

  Darcy listened to them while she watched them work. There was no way all of those persons had been murdered. Even if Maven Sirles had turned out to be the worst serial killer in the history of the world, the remains spanned decades. The Salvatore’s had died in 1947 according to the town record. Maven would have been pretty young back then. The rest of the bones could have belonged to people who died before or after. No way could Maven have killed them all.

  “We’ll need to check the town records against these names. Again.” Jon tapped a finger against his notepad where he had written down all the names from the boxes before Sergeant Vic Dunson had arrived on the scene to get things started. “There aren’t any dates, but it shouldn’t take long. I’ll get Fitzwallis to do a computer check before we head back.”

  “Do you think they all came from the Misty Hollow cemetery?” Darcy asked.

  “I think it’s a safe bet. Especially when you consider our luck. Fitzwallis will find out for us.”

  “Didn’t he go on vacation?”

  Jon raised both eyebrows at the thought. “Fitzwallis? Go on vacation? No way. I’m surprised he hasn’t moved in to live at his desk.”

  Darcy knew what he meant. Sean Fitzwallis, the Misty Hollow Police Department’s desk sergeant, did spend most of his time at work now that his wife had passed on. He was there more than Jon. Darcy had always meant to ask Sean if he had retirement plans but she never seemed to get around to it. The town must have some sort of mandatory age for retirement. Curious, she thought. She didn’t even know how old Fitzwallis was.

  “This is just incredible,” Sergeant Vic Dunson said to them now, watching the other State Police officers work. “What in the world is going on here?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know, too,” Jon answered him. “Sergeant, I know this isn’t exactly my jurisdiction but I want you to know my department will give you whatever assistance you need.”

  “Sure, sure,” Vic said with a wave of his hand. “If we need anything from your people we’ll let you know, Chief.”

  Darcy could tell from his tone that Vic had no plans to ask for help. He didn’t seem to have much time for a small town chief like Jon. Anyone else but Darcy probably would have missed the way Jon’s smile tightened around the corners, or how he folded his hands into his pants pockets. He was keeping his temper in check.

  “The first bodies recovered came from the cemetery in Misty Hollow,” he reminded Vic. “Kind of makes it my case, too.”

  That brought Vic’s head swinging around to look down at Jon. There weren’t many people who stood that much taller than Jon did. On someone else, someone not so skinny and not so nervous, it might have looked intimidating. “Look, Chief. We’ve got the ball. If we need someone else to quarterback for us we’ll be sure to call you up to the pros. Otherwise, thanks for stumbling across something that’s going to be my major headache for the next month or so, and I’m sure you know the way back to that little town of yours.”

  He pointed up the road, just in case Jon didn’t know the way. Then he walked stiffly over to the CSU officers and the bones they were cataloguing.

  “Something tells me he won’t be asking for our help,” Jon said sarcastically, echoing Darcy’s thoughts. “He was probably one of those kids who didn’t like to share his toys.”

  Darcy giggled when he leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “Plus I hate sports metaphors.”

  “You can be my quarterback,” she whispered back, “if it makes you feel better.”

  “Why, Miss Sweet. Are you flirting with me?”

  “Uh-uh,” she said, holding his eyes with hers. “I’
m already engaged.”

  The kiss Jon was about to share with her was interrupted by the sound of a car skidding to a stop at the side of the road close behind the patrol cars, not far from the driveway. This wasn’t a police car. In fact, it had a different logo on the side altogether.

  The logo for EZTV, local channel eight, was a bright blue circle with an old style radio tower sitting on a tiny globe. A rainbow arced around the globe getting wider as it got closer to the edge of the logo. Jon and Darcy both knew who would be in the car. The camera jockey didn’t look familiar, in his beige vest and khakis and red shirt, but the woman who got out of the driver’s seat one leg at a time was someone they both knew very well.

  Brianna Watson had started as a newspaper reporter on the local stage before making it into prime time on EZTV. She was good at her job. She had uncovered any number of stories that other people had missed. Several of them involved Jon and Darcy and the bizarre things that had happened in Misty Hollow. It was a good thing that she had a wider area to report on now, considering there was a fugitive from justice living in Darcy’s house.

  Jon wouldn’t say so, but Darcy knew he was on edge about Ellen living with them. He was trying to help her, putting himself out on a limb to do it, and that was just one of the many reasons why Darcy loved him.

  “It figures Brianna would find a way around the roadblocks,” Jon said. “You think maybe she won’t notice we’re here?”

  Over at the roadside, Brianna lifted her arm up in the air and waved in their direction, looking right at Jon and Darcy. “I think she’s noticed,” Darcy said.

  Brianna was a pretty woman, in the way that most female television reporters were pretty, and a few years older than Darcy. Her dark hair hung down to her shoulders in tight curls. Her mouth was turned up in that same perpetual smirk Darcy had always seen her with, part amusement, part criticism of everyone and everything around her. Some people found her hard to take.

  Darcy liked her, but in small doses.

  The beige trench coat was her signature look. It fluttered in the early spring breeze, as did the blue dress she wore underneath.