by K. J. Emrick
“Oh. Right.”
Darcy spotted a restaurant down the block. It was a blue and white sided building with a hanging wooden sign in the shape of a soup bowl facing the street. “Moonie’s Lunch,” the sign read. The frosted windows displayed the hours of operation. The clock on the dash said it was already after eleven-thirty. Perfect.
“How about there?” she asked Ellen.
From the back seat, Connor’s stomach growled right on cue. “I’m getting hungry,” he said.
“So I hear.” Ellen rolled her eyes in a motherly way. “So am I, actually. Guess you’re just like me, buddy.”
“’Course I am,” the boy agreed. “I’m going to grow up to be just like you.”
Ellen didn’t say anything, and Darcy knew that from where he was sitting Connor wouldn’t be able to see the way his mother’s hands tightened around the wheel, but Darcy saw it. The thought of Connor growing up to be “just like her” was a troubling one for Ellen Gless, formerly JoEllen Meyers, contract killer.
Darcy put her hand on Ellen’s shoulder as she said to Connor, “Your mom is one of the coolest women alive, isn’t she?”
“Yup!” he chimed in without hesitation. “Love you mom.”
“I love you, too, my big Connor Bear.”
If there were tears in Ellen’s eyes as she said those words, she blinked them away quickly.
They found a single parking space on the street nearby to Moonie’s Lunch and headed up the sidewalk. The snow must not have fallen as hard here as it had in Misty Hollow. There were small piles of it up against the buildings, but the sidewalk itself was cleared. Even so, most everyone in town must have hunkered down for the day. The restaurant was empty except for a sour man in a heavy brown coat nursing a bowl of soup at a table in the far corner.
Darcy looked around. She hadn’t expected this sort of charm. Someplace called Moonie’s Lunch shouldn’t have clean white walls with cute framed pictures of kittens and puppies playing together, or electric candle sconces, or tablecloths that were blue over white to match the outside colors. A swinging wooden half-door that led from the kitchen thumped aside as a waitress in a blue and white uniform came out to greet them.
“Hi,” she said with a smile. “Sit anywhere. I’ll bring you some menus.”
They chose a table closer to the door, away from the grouch and his soup. Whatever kind of bad day that man was having Darcy didn’t want to be anywhere near.
The menus the waitress handed them were laminated, one side for breakfast and the other side for lunch and dinner. “Can I start you folks with some drinks?”
Ellen and Darcy both asked for colas. Connor asked if they had root beer and practically beamed when he was told they served that particular soda in the bottles. Promising to come right back with the drinks, the waitress left them alone to read the menus.
“Nice place,” Darcy commented.
“A little too Mayberry for me,” Ellen said.
“Careful, you’re starting to be grumpy like that guy over there.”
“What’s Mayberry?” Connor asked.
“Before your time,” was his mother’s answer. “Hey, they have chicken strips here. Want to try those, Connor?”
“Yes, please.”
Chicken strips and root beer, Darcy thought to herself. Connor would be in heaven. She was going to try a cheeseburger, something simple and quick. Maybe with steak fries…
The guy over in his corner muttered something loudly enough for her to hear, drawing her attention. He had his black knitted hat pulled down over the tips of his ears, scraggly gray hair poking out from all around in random places. He was a big man. Bulky. Not fat, just big. His boots under the table looked like they could be worn by a sasquatch. His grizzled face was peppered with beard growth. Scruffy was the best way to describe him, she decided.
When she looked again, the man was staring at her, as if he had sensed her attention on him. She looked back down at her menu and made sure not to look his way again.
The waitress took their orders and they waited for the meal to come out. Ellen suggested they call Sarah and let her know they were in town, at least, and maybe get some decent directions. She handed Darcy her cell phone but when Darcy called the house it rang busy.
“She didn’t give you her cell number?” Ellen asked as she took the phone back.
“No. Just the landline. Maybe she doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“Like you?” Ellen teased. “Not likely. Not many people left in the world who don’t own a cell phone.”
“I don’t own one,” Connor pointed out.
“When you’re twenty you can have one,” Ellen said.
“Aw, mom. That’s what you always say. When I’m that old I can buy my own.”
“Exactly.”
Darcy shared a smile with Ellen, touched once more by the interaction between mother and son. It got her to thinking about the few times she and Jon had talked about starting a family, after they got married, and wondering what kind of mom she might turn out to be.
Heh. Someday she’d find out. Maybe. Her sister had already taken that plunge and created an amazing little girl to add to their family. If Grace, full time police officer and career woman, could find the time to make and care for a baby, Darcy felt confident that she could do it too.
The food came after a few rounds of tic tac toe played between Darcy and Connor on the back of the paper placemats. She let him win a few, and then started adding stars to the X’s and O’s of the normal game just to spice things up. Neither of them were really sure what the stars did, but Darcy won every game when she used them.
As the waitress set down the plates one after another, Darcy took the opportunity to ask for directions. “Excuse me, but do you know Sarah Wessel?”
THUNK.
The sound had come from the table where the grumpy Sasquatch sat. Darcy, Ellen, and even Connor looked over to find the man had driven a knife into the table point first, his hand still gripping it tightly, his mouth set in a sneer.
“Hampton!” the waitress scolded in an exasperated tone. “That’s the fourth time this week. I’m telling you, Billy isn’t going to let you eat here anymore if you don’t stop doing that.”
She turned back to them with an apologetic smile. “That’s just Hampton McGillis. He’s a local. Harmless, really, except to our tables.” She tried for a laugh and failed. “Anyway, enjoy the food. I’ll be back to check on you a little—”
“What do you want with Sarah Wessel?” Hampton McGillis asked in a loud, booming voice.
Ellen shifted in her seat, in a way that made Darcy think she was getting ready to defend herself. Her hand strayed closer to her knife and fork. She set her feet flat on the floor. Her eyes narrowed. She was a tigress ready to spring.
Old habits die hard, Darcy supposed.
Turning in her seat so that she was facing Hampton, Darcy put on her best smile and pretended Ellen wasn’t ready to kill the man if it came to it. “I’m a friend of Sarah’s. We came to visit her but I’m not sure where Huxley Street is.”
Hampton narrowed his eyes. He plucked the knife out of the table. It hovered in his hand over the tabletop for a good many seconds.
Then he drove it down into the wood again, deeper this time.
“That’s it, Hampton!” the waitress yelled at him even as she nervously backed toward the kitchen. “I won’t let you get away with this! Not this time! Billy! Call the police!”
The half door to the kitchen swung wildly back and forth in her wake.
That left them alone with the big, burly Hampton and his knife. Darcy did not like where this was going. Not at all.
“Darcy, Connor,” Ellen hissed. “Get behind me.”
She started to stand up but Darcy caught her wrist and urged her back into her seat. “This hasn’t become an altercation yet. Let’s see if we can keep it that way, all right?”
“No, not all right! That man is threatening us and my son. No one threatens my son!�
�
“Mom?” Connor said in a wavering voice.
Over in the corner, Hampton had stood up. He plucked the knife from the table and held it firmly in his hand. He did not make a move toward them. Darcy knew in that instant that if he did, she would be more than willing to step aside and let Ellen do her thing.
Until that happened, she was going to keep talking to him.
“Mister McGillis, I promise you,” she said, “Sarah is a friend of mine. We’re just looking for something to eat and directions to her house.”
She had managed to keep her voice firm and even, but her fingers had found the antique silver ring on her right finger and she was twisting it back and forth frantically, like she always did when she was nervous. Great Aunt Millie’s ring had long been a soothing talisman for Darcy. She definitely needed something to keep her calm now.
Hampton huffed out a breath. “You need to stay away from my Sarah.”
“Oh, for the love of God,” Ellen growled. Darcy understood what she meant. This man, this Hampton McGillis, obviously had a weak grasp on reality. If it hadn’t been clear from his actions then it certainly was clear from the way he claimed Sarah, a married woman, as his and no one else’s.
Fantastic.
“Mister McGillis,” Darcy tried again. “Maybe you could show us the way to Sarah’s house? If you came with us so we could show you we really are friends, would that help?”
“What are you doing?” Ellen asked her in a strained whisper.
“Trying to keep him talking until the police show up,” she whispered back. She had seen a man in a white cook’s apron in the kitchen poke his head out, a portable phone at his ear. Hopefully that was Billy calling the Birkenfalls Police Department.
“No one goes to Sarah’s house!” the man bellowed. “No one but me!”
“Perfect,” Darcy said, like that was just the answer she wanted. “Then you’re just the man we needed to see. I’m so glad we met you.”
Furrows spread across Hampton’s brow as he tried to wrap his mind around what Darcy was saying. “What?”
“Aren’t you the only one who can go to Sarah’s house?”
“Yes! Just me.” He started to waver back and forth, his eyes unfocused, the knife shaking in his fist. “Just…wait. What?”
When the front door flew in it was with enough force to bang against the inside wall. Two officers stood there. In their light blue uniforms with dark blue stripes down the pants and black leather duty belts, they were just about the best looking thing Darcy had seen in a long time.
Ellen took her hand away from her silverware and bent her face down low. There was no way the police here could know who she had been in a previous life, but there were still outstanding warrants for her arrest, and it was better to be safe than sorry.
The officers, a man and a woman, advanced into the restaurant quickly. The woman was a full foot and a half shorter than the other officer but she took the lead. There were sergeant’s stripes on her uniform coat and steel in her brown eyes. Her black hair in its tight braid was just a shade darker than her skin.
“Problems today, Hampton?” she said without any hint of fear in her voice. “I thought we talked about bothering the good folks of our town.”
“Ain’t from our town,” Hampton felt the need to point out, jabbing his knife at them for emphasis.
“Now, you know what I mean,” the sergeant continued. “I warned you what would happen next time, right?”
Hampton hesitated, and the knife lowered.
That was when the other officer tazed him.
The little tazer gun was black with yellow stripes and the lead wires shot out from the end so quickly that Darcy couldn’t follow them with her eyes. They were just suddenly sticking into Hampton’s chest, expertly aimed for the opening of his overcoat. The crackling of electricity accompanied his violent shaking before he fell to the floor.
When the officer released the trigger of the stun gun, he looked over at Darcy and smiled. His pale cheeks were flushed from the cold outside and, Darcy suspected, from the excitement of what had just happened. “Works every time,” he said with a wink.
They had Hampton turned over on his stomach and secured with handcuffs quickly, and although the big man continued to rant and rail about how no one got near his Sarah but him, all of the fight had gone out of him with the massive electric shock he had just received.
“Now then,” the sergeant said, “let’s see what you’ve got on you today. Last time it was a throwing star you’d picked up somewhere.”
She carefully went through Hampton’s pockets, coming up with nothing more menacing than loose change and candy wrappers and a wallet. She handed each item to her partner as she took them out. When he opened the wallet up, his jaw dropped.
“Uh, Sergeant Larson? I think you should see this.”
Darcy and Ellen and Connor watched as the sergeant was handed what looked like a driver’s license. Hampton here really didn’t look like the type who would own a license. Not to Darcy, anyway.
“Mmm-hmm.” Sergeant Larson tapped the license with her finger. “I was wondering how you could afford to pay for lunch today. Looks like you’ve been taking people’s wallets again. Not good, Hampton.”
“You saw whose license it was, right?” her partner asked, scrubbing a hand over the closely buzzed hair on his head.
“Yes. Now, Hampton. How exactly did you get Braden Wessel’s wallet?”
“Found it!” Hampton cried out miserably. “I found it!”
Darcy’s heart froze in her chest. Ellen leaned close to whisper, “Wessel. Isn’t that your friend’s name?”
Yes, it was. Sarah Wessel. Braden was her husband. This maniac who had threatened them with a knife for just mentioning Sarah’s name had Braden Wessel’s wallet. There was no way that could be good.
“We better get the other guys over to the Wessel house,” Larson said. “Right now.”
Darcy knew she couldn’t just ask to tag along, but she needed to get to Sarah’s house. Now. She stepped back away from the police, and Hampton moaning on his stomach, to quietly ask the waitress, “Which way is Huxley Street?”
Chapter Three
Once they knew how to get to Huxley it wasn’t hard to find Sarah’s house. It was the one with the two police cars parked in front of it.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Ellen said to Darcy for the third time since they left the restaurant. “The town hobo stole your friend’s wallet. That’s all.”
Connor snickered around a mouthful of chicken in the backseat. “Hobo,” he laughed at the word. They had let him bring his lunch in a takeout box. Neither of them felt like eating.
Sarah’s house was a small doublewide modular. It was a cute, green house that still had Christmas lights strung along the edges of the roof. Two cars sat side by side in the short driveway. It looked just like any other house on the block.
“There’s no police guarding the front door,” Ellen pointed out.
“That just means they’re inside.” Darcy wasn’t sure what to make of this. She knew she was worried to go in. Worried what she would find. Worried that trouble had found her once again, just like it always did. “Can you stay out here with Connor? Just for now?”
“Sure. He can share some of his chicken strips with the mother he loves so much.”
Ellen made a grab for his lunch but Connor pulled it away and crammed half a breaded strip into his mouth to bite down on it.
“Careful!” Ellen said with a smile. “You’ll choke to death.”
Darcy cringed at that word. Death. What would she find if she went inside Sarah’s house? What had Hampton McGillis done?
She left them in the car and went up the front steps, knocking before she lost her nerve. With a deep breath, she held out her hand flat against the door, trying to feel inside for the energies that might tell her what was happening within the home—
The door opened and she nearly fell forward into a Birkenfalls pol
ice officer, in the same uniform as the two in the restaurant had been wearing. He was tall and thin and somehow deeply tanned in the middle of winter. He blinked at Darcy in confusion. “Well. You aren’t my sergeant. What brings you here, Ma’am?”
“Um. My friend lives here,” Darcy managed. “Sarah Wessel? She called me yesterday and asked me to come over.”
“Darcy?”
Sarah’s voice came from a room further inside the house. She sounded scared, and tense, and when she came out to the entryway and pushed past the officer she threw herself into Darcy’s arms, sobbing, wet tears making trails down both cheeks.
“Sarah, what is it? What happened?” The officer had the good grace to step away to give them their privacy. Darcy held Sarah tightly, wishing this hadn’t been the first real contact she’d had with Sarah in years.
“You’re here now,” Sarah said in a choked voice. “That’s all that matters.”
It was like her friend could hear Darcy’s thoughts and was speaking directly to them. Sarah had grown up since they’d last seen each other so long ago. She was athletically strong and taller than Darcy, and her hair was the kind of blonde that only came from a careful coloring and her blue jeans looked expensive and her makeup was running and…and…and…
The vision overtook her quicker than most. One moment she was trying to comfort her friend and find out what had happened and in the next moment, she was seeing the world through Sarah’s eyes.
She was in this house. Darcy had never been in this house before in her life and she had no reason to know that the bathroom was in the middle of the hallway that led to the bedrooms or that she had always wanted Braden to change the wallpaper from that stupid seashell design to something that didn’t embarrass her whenever they had friends over, but looking out through Sarah’s eyes she knew this was her bathroom. Sarah’s. In this house.
Just like she knew that the man lying on the floor in front of her on the bathroom floor, twisted up in an agonizing fetal position, was Braden.
He was dead. His lips were blue and his eyes had rolled back until all that was visible was the whites. His bathrobe had fallen open to show his one hand clutched at his bare chest. Her Braden. Dead.