Til Death Do Us Part

by K. J. Emrick

  “Or a diamond ring.”

  “She could have started conversations with relatives who told her about great-great-grandpa being buried with his gold watch,” she said, holding his face in her hands, feeling his breath on her cheek.

  “I knew there was a reason I wanted to marry you,” he told her in a whisper.

  “Because I’m so smart?”

  “That’s one reason.”

  It was a long while before they actually got to sleep. When they finally both drifted off, it was with a plan set in place for tomorrow.

  They needed to find Phoebe Stewart.

  Chapter Eight

  Rob Thomas was singing “Street Corner Symphony” in her head when Darcy woke up. The sunlight through the window told her she had slept in later than she wanted to, but she just felt so relaxed and comfortable, it was hard to care about things like work.

  Of course, her brain didn’t realize all she wanted to do was sleep. The music from her dream faded away and was replaced by facts and theories and clues that she learned so far about the graves that had been robbed. They had a solid theory about why the graves had been desecrated. They knew the caskets had been opened with a pry bar. They knew the bodies had been removed, stripped of their valuables, and then dumped in the woods, which also helped explain why they were nothing but bones.

  They knew Maven Sirles had found the bodies by accident when she was in the woods looking for flat river stones. They knew she had organized the skeletons and boxed them up, and then died before she could do anything about them.

  They knew everything, except who had done this unspeakable crime.

  Right now their only suspect was Phoebe Stewart. Today they would be able to interview her, provided she came back to the town park again. Darcy had no doubt that she would. Whatever she had been looking for on that bench yesterday, she hadn’t found it.

  She sat up in bed, stretching her arms out wide, the shoulder of her oversized pajamas sliding down her arm. The rest of the bed was empty, she realized. Where had Jon wandered off to?

  “He’ll be back,” Smudge told her. “Ready for some breakfast?”

  Her big black and white cat was walking into the bedroom, carrying a silver tray with a plate of eggs and bacon on it, as well as a tall glass of orange juice and a blueberry muffin. He smiled at her with a wise cat-grin as he set the tray down next to her on the bed.

  “Oh,” she said. “So it’s going to be one of those dreams, is it?”

  His tail swished. “It’s getting hard to fool you anymore.”

  “Smudge, you can’t really talk. You’re a cat. If you don’t want me to know it’s a dream, maybe you shouldn’t talk.”

  “Hmm. Fair point.” He hopped up onto the bed with her, sitting on his hind legs, his tail curling around his toes. “So. Big day coming up.”

  “My wedding? Yeah, sure is.” She took a piece of the bacon off the plate and munched into it. It was crisp and perfect. “Wow. This is really good.”

  “Thank you,” Smudge said with a little bow. “I made it myself.”

  “In that case I’m surprised there’s any left.”

  “Well, I might have eaten one or two pieces. Or three.” He winked at her, perfectly content with how he had snuck part of her breakfast for himself.

  Sipping at her orange juice, Darcy reached over to scratch between his ears. “You’re a good cat, Smudge. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Is this just a random dream or did you bring me breakfast in bed for a reason?”

  “I need a reason to visit my favorite person in the whole wide world?”

  She bit off the end of another bacon strip and chewed it thoughtfully. “You never need a reason, but you usually have one.”

  “You know me so well.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He cleared his throat and shifted his front paws. “It occurred to me,” he said, “that I haven’t given you a wedding present yet.”

  “Oh, Smudge. You don’t have to do that.”

  He shrugged one furry shoulder. “I want to. I wasn’t exactly nice to Jon when he first got here. But, you know, he kind of grows on you. He’s a good guy, Darcy. I wanted to let you know I approve.”

  “Smudge…” Darcy was touched. Dream or not, she knew that this was how Smudge really felt, and it meant a lot to her. These were the two most important men in her life. She wanted them to like each other.

  “So, yeah,” he said, clearing his throat, not quite meeting her eyes. “There’s an envelope there on the tray. Your gift is inside.”

  Darcy looked down at her breakfast. Sure enough, a long white envelope sat next to her breakfast plate. It hadn’t been there before but that was the nature of dreams. They shifted and morphed when you weren’t looking.

  The envelope had her name on it in a fancy script that ended with a black-inked cat’s paw. Smudge’s handwriting. Carefully setting the tray aside she slid the envelope open and took out an old, yellowing piece of paper. A page from a book, she thought, based on the ragged left edge.

  She’d seen this before. Smudge had brought it to her one day when she was in the kitchen and she had put it in her drawer under a protective layer of shirts and tanktops. She’d forgotten all about it.

  This page, this version of it in her dream, was a lot easier to read than the real thing had been. The one Smudge had brought her was so old and worn that she could only make out a few words. Even now, in her dream, she couldn’t see all of the faded, looping handwritten script.

  But she could make out a lot more of it.

  “…here is the answer I’ve looked for…my home. My home! I cannot allow it to be taken away…knew me and called me Millie, but that doesn’t mean…something must be done to stop him. I must tell someone the truth. I only hope I have time…”

  Darcy’s fingers started to tremble. The handwriting had always been too faded to be sure, but here in the dream it was all too clear. She had suspected this page had been written by her Great Aunt Millie. Now she knew for sure. She still had Millie’s private journal, full of observations on Misty Hollow and the people who lived here and life in general, as well as pages and pages of information on how to use the special gift they both shared.

  Talking to ghosts, as it turned out, was a hereditary thing on the women’s side of their family. It had been passed down to Millie, to Darcy, and to one other little girl in the family that Darcy knew of.

  The words on the page swam and tried to shift like writing always did in a dream. Darcy forced them to hold still so she could read them again. Without being able to read the entire page Darcy couldn’t know exactly what Millie was talking about, but one thing was very, very clear.

  Millie had been in trouble when she wrote this.

  “Smudge, where did you get this?”

  Her cat curled up into a ball next to her. Flicking one ear, swishing his tail, he regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Meow?”

  “Oh, don’t start being a cat now! I need to know, Smudge. Where did you get this?”

  He rolled over onto his back with his paws in the air. “Hey. You’re the one who said I shouldn’t talk.”

  “That is not what I said! You came to me, remember? You came to me with this. What is it you need me to know? What happened to Millie when she wrote this?”

  He was purring now, sleepy and content. “I came to bring you breakfast,” he said, “and to tell you I’m happy about you and Jon. The rest is all people problems.”

  “Smudge!”

  “Darcy?”

  His voice changed, getting deeper and louder and, well, more human.

  “Darcy. Wake up.”

  She did. Sitting bolt upright in bed she felt Jon’s arm around her waist and his face close to hers in the dark. Dark? Hadn’t it just been light out and late and there had been breakfast…hadn’t there?

  No. That was the dream. Smudge had come to her in her dream with that page from the book…

  Jon. Jon had woken her up. The rest of it had been a d
ream. Right. The page from Millie’s journal. She remembered what she had read. She remembered being worried for Millie, and worried about what the words on that page meant. She remembered all of it.

  So when Jon asked her what she had been dreaming about, she told him.

  “Smudge came to tell me I’m a lucky woman for marrying you.”

  She couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she knew he didn’t believe her. “You were rolling around and mumbling in your sleep.”

  “Well, he made me bacon, too.”

  That made him laugh, and they hugged, and soon after they were both asleep again. Or at least, he was. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to tell him about the page of Aunt Millie’s writing. Maybe she just wanted a chance to look into it herself first.

  Or maybe it was because the whole thing gave her a bad feeling. Like there were deeper, darker mysteries on the horizon.

  ***

  This time when she woke up, she knew it was for real. The alarm clock blaring on her side table made sure she knew it.

  At breakfast, Connor agreed to be part of their wedding. Jon and Darcy had asked Ellen about having him in it last night, after they had sent the boy to bed. They wanted to talk in private about it first, to see if Ellen would be all right with it. Hard to stay in hiding if you’re front and center at a wedding ceremony. Ellen pointed out that it wasn’t her in the wedding, it was Connor, and that very few if any of her contacts from her previous life would recognize him. It was the same thing that Jon and Darcy had already reasoned, but it was nice to hear her say it too, and when they told Connor about it this morning he was all for it.

  Possibly because they told him he would be walking down the aisle with Lilly from next door. Connor had gotten to a point where he would do just about anything to spend time with Lilly. Even wear a tux.

  Darcy let Jon drive her into work this morning. She told him she had to open the shop up with Izzy and take care of a few things first, but then she would head over to Beatrice Miller’s house and ask if she knew whether her grandfather had been buried with anything. After all, in spite of Pastor Hillier’s assurances, it was possible the church records were wrong.

  “Wouldn’t a communication with old man Miller be quicker?” Jon asked her as he pulled up in front of her bookstore.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” she told him truthfully. “I’d still like to start with talking to a living person.”

  “Fair enough. If that doesn’t work…?”

  She sighed. “Then I’ll try reaching out to the other side for him. I swear, Jon Tinker, sometimes I think you’re only into me for the weird stuff I can do.”

  He leaned across the car seat and kissed her tenderly, and slowly. “That’s not the only reason, Darcy Tinker.”

  “Uhn-uhn. Darcy Sweet, remember? We agreed I could keep my last name.”

  “Oh, the sacrifices I make,” he complained all dramatically as he kissed her again.

  She smiled her way through the morning, the sensation of his lips on hers a pleasant memory.

  As they set up the bookstore for the morning she told Izzy about how excited Connor had been to be a part of the wedding, and they both agreed it probably had more to do with Lilly than anything else. Izzy was in favor of whatever might be starting between the two of them. She was grateful that Lilly had a good friend at last. Her daughter was never as happy as she was around Connor.

  Once there was nothing left for her to do Darcy left Izzy in charge of the store and headed out. There were already several people in the bookstore, locals and tourists alike. Darcy hated to admit how the desecration at the graveyard had been good for business, but there it was. Sales were up. People loved a good mystery.

  After all, like it said on the t-shirts and mugs she sold in the store, the mysterious is all around us.

  Beatrice Miller was someone Darcy had known for years. She’d been one of Aunt Millie’s friends, actually, and a member of the book club at the Sweet Read bookstore forever. It was too bad she hadn’t come to many of the book club meetings of late. From what Darcy could gather from some of the other members, Beatrice’s mind was starting to slip. Not quite dementia, but enough that she didn’t like to be around a lot of people where she might say something that didn’t make sense.

  Darcy had come to visit her several times, so she knew exactly which house was hers on a street of nearly identical one story bungalows. The front porch was painted pink, to match the shutters, and the sloping roof had recently been redone with blue architectural shingles. It was kind of cute.

  She knocked and waited, and then rang the bell. She was just about to give up and maybe leave Beatrice a note when she heard the locks twisting. The door opened just to the end of the chain latch. “Hello?” said a shaky voice. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Beatrice. Darcy Sweet.”

  “Oh! Darcy! You dear person you. Come to check on me again?”

  Beatrice slammed the door shut before Darcy could answer. For a moment, she wondered if maybe Beatrice was going to leave her out here, but then she heard the chain being slid off and the door opened wide this time.

  “Come in, dear!” Beatrice exclaimed. “Come in!”

  Darcy blinked and stared. Beatrice was wearing a purple one-piece bathing suit with a frilly skirt. Her gray hair was loosely tucked up into a plastic swim cap. It was still warmer today than was seasonable, but even Darcy had put on her spring coat before leaving the house. It really wasn’t nice enough to go swimming.

  Not to mention Beatrice didn’t have a pool.

  “Uh, I was wondering,” Darcy said to her, “if I could talk to you about your grandfather.”

  “Eh? My grandfather?” Beatrice was probably all of four feet tall. She placed her fists on her wide hips now and peered up at Darcy. “Did you know Grandpa Emile?”

  “No, I didn’t. Um. This is kind of hard to say, but I was wondering if you were there when your grandfather was buried?”

  “Grandpa Emile,” Beatrice said, her eyes far away. “Grandpa Emile.”

  Then she turned, and wandered into the house.

  “Uh, Beatrice?” Darcy followed, not sure where they were going, or why.

  Past the little entryway, there was a living room that was only slightly bigger. Darcy found Beatrice standing there amid the floral print furniture and the bookcase crammed and overflowing with paperback novels. She had taken down a single picture from among others on a shelf over the television, cradling it in her hands while she stared at it.

  “This is Grandpa Emile,” she said, turning the photo so Darcy could see it. “He and I used to have so much fun together. We would play cards and tell stories and have tea parties together. He taught me to play baseball and ride a bike. Such a nice man.”

  Darcy sat down on one of the couches, letting Beatrice have her memories. The room they were in was full of pictures, hanging from the walls, set up on shelves, even jostling with the paperback novels for space on the bookcase. Beatrice was trying to hold onto her memories just as hard as she could.

  After a moment Darcy cleared her throat, gently, bringing Beatrice’s attention back to the present. “Do you remember when your grandfather died?” she asked.

  “Of course.” Beatrice set the photo back onto its shelf and sighed heavily. “It was a Tuesday. I remember how hard it rained that day. Like the angels themselves were crying for him. We laid him to rest in the cemetery up on Applegate Road. Oh. Oh, dear.”

  She bundled herself over to the couch to sit down next to Darcy. “His grave? Was that one of the ones that got robbed?”

  Darcy knew all of the relatives of the victims had been notified. Obviously, Beatrice had forgotten. “Yes. I’m sorry. I talked to Jon about it, and as soon as the investigation is over they’re going to put him back in the ground, right back where he was.”

  Tears brimmed in Beatrice’s eyes to run over her cheeks. She reached up and pulled off the swim cap, staring at it as if she couldn’t remember why she’d ever
put it on her head. Darcy put a hand on the woman’s arm, hoping this wouldn’t be too hard on her.

  “Beatrice, can you answer a question for me?”

  “I…I don’t know,” she sniffed. “Ask me. I’ll tell you anything I can. My mind…it sort of wanders nowadays. My daughter has been looking in on me. Every Monday. She said, um. Hm. I’ve forgotten what she said. Strange. What was your question dear?”

  Darcy hoped this wasn’t going to turn out to be a waste of her time, or too much of a strain on her friend. “Do you remember, when your grandfather died, did he have anything with him?”

  “Anything with him? My, what a strange question.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just…did he ask for anything to be buried with him? A ring, maybe? Or a favorite watch?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Beatrice told her.

  Darcy sighed as she nodded and slumped back against the couch. So, the records had been right and Emile Miller didn’t have anything with him when he was buried. Maybe the grave robber had dug Emile up by mistake? Maybe—

  “Of course, he would never ask me to put in his favorite baseball card,” Beatrice added, fussing with the skirt of her bathing suit. “I just did that as a favor to him.”

  Lost in her own thoughts, Darcy had almost missed that. “A baseball card? You buried him with a baseball card?”

  “Oh, certainly. Grandpa loved baseball. He had quite the collection. My daddy kept most of it himself, but Grandpa had always wanted me to have his Willie Mays rookie card. A card from 1951, still in its plastic sleeve, still perfect condition.” She wiped at the tears that were falling slowly down her face. “I loved him, but what do I know about baseball cards? That card belonged with him. So at the wake, I slipped it into his casket. No one saw. It’s better off with him, don’t you think?”

  No wonder the church didn’t have a record of it. Beatrice had slipped it in at the last possible moment. A baseball card.

  Darcy wondered. Could that be worth digging up someone’s grave for?