by K. J. Emrick
“I’m here to pick up an order for Sarah Wessel,” Darcy whispered.
The waitress’s brown eyes got a little wider, but then she nodded and leaned in closer to Darcy, keeping her voice down low. “I’ve got it ready in the back. Just keeping the pizzas warm. You want drinks with that, too? Some coffee maybe?”
“That would be nice. Three, please. One for Sarah, one for me, one for Ellen,” she counted out loud.
Birkenfalls might not have as much snow as Misty Hollow did but it was still bitterly cold here, more so for being on the river. A nice cup of warm coffee would be perfect. Not that she didn’t appreciate Sarah’s selection of teas, but sometimes nothing beat a good cup of coffee. Connor was a little young for it yet but the adults could have a cup each. “Oh and a soda for Connor… Root beer,” Darcy added quickly.
The waitress, in her black slacks and pink blouse, disappeared through the swinging doors to the kitchen and came back just a few minutes later with two flat pizza boxes and a cardboard cup carrier on top with tall to-go cups that smelled of warm, aromatic coffee and the one bottle of Root beer.
Darcy thanked her but then hesitated as she went to take the food. “Um, excuse me, but there’s four cups here. I only needed three. Did we get someone else’s order?”
Surprised, the woman pushed back long curls of hair the same color as her eyes, and Darcy saw her count each cup like there could have been a mistake. Then she sort of sucked in a short breath and winced. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I’m just so used to putting together dinner orders for…” She dropped her voice again. “For Sarah and Braden. They always wanted coffee. It’s a special blend that Braden was fond of. Midnight Ground, it’s called. I didn’t even think, I just put a cup on for him, too. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I was that careless.”
“Don’t worry about it. I guess it’s going to take everyone a little time to get used to him not being here.” As she got out her wallet to pay for the food, Darcy tried to transition calmly into asking the questions she had brought with her. “You heard about Hampton McGillis being arrested, I suppose?”
“Oh, sure. I wasn’t here when all that happened but I sure did hear about it.” Thankfully the waitress—Jane, according to her nametag—seemed more than willing to gossip about the big doings in town even if she didn’t know who Darcy was. “That McGillis is a menace. The way he lurks around town. Someone should have arrested him a long time ago.”
“Did he know Sarah? Or Braden?”
Jane took Darcy’s debit card and rang up the price of the food with a shrug. “Hard to say. Sarah knew everyone, of course. She was always around town. I guess I’ve even seen her talking to McGillis a few times. That man is hard to get rid of once he latches onto you, I can tell you that.”
“Yes. I saw that. Does he come in here a lot?”
“Too much, if you ask me. He usually hangs out in the alley stealing from our dumpsters. The owner started giving him free food, see? Stupidest thing ever. Now he won’t leave.”
All of that was stuff she already knew. Darcy wasn’t sure what more she could learn here. Not without being completely obvious about it. Once again, she really wished Jon was with her. They worked together so well in situations like this. He’d think of something more to say here. Really, she hadn’t had a long list of things to ask. The only reason she had said she was coming to the restaurant was so she could make an excuse to stay with Sarah tonight, to be there for her friend while she needed the company—
“It’s not like it was between her and Terry, though. I can tell you that.”
Darcy’s mouth went dry and she had to lick her lips before she could ask, “What did you say?”
Jane pulled the receipt tape off the register and then stood there with a blank expression. “Sarah and Terry. You must know, being her friend and all. She and Terry were an item.”
“Oh, right. Back in high school. Yes, Sarah told me about that.”
The expression on Jane’s face didn’t change in the least. “Um. No, I meant five years back. Six? Something. They were a hot item. All the gossip. See, her and Braden were having this problem and she ran right into Terry’s arms. Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Kind of did it again, didn’t I?” Jane handed the receipt to Darcy to sign, apologizing when she saw the look on Darcy’s face. “You don’t need to hear any of this. No reason to talk about it, now that Braden is dead.”
Darcy chewed her lip as she puzzled through what she had just been told. Obviously, it was wrong. It had to be wrong. Sarah had already told her about the trouble in her and Braden’s marriage, and about how Terry had come on to her, and she had shut him down. They hadn’t gotten together as an item.
So the question was, who would have been spreading a rumor about Terry and Sarah being together?
Officer Terry Taft. That’s who.
Darcy was pretty sure the sudden anger she felt was written all over her face. She left a three dollar tip even though she was picking the food up herself, just so Jane wouldn’t think the dark glower was meant for her.
For Pete’s sake. It wasn’t bad enough that Sarah’s husband had been killed. Why should she have to put up with people spreading rumors about her?
She shouldn’t. And she wouldn’t have to, either, if Darcy had anything to say about it.
***
“You want me to talk to him?” Ellen offered. “I’ll need a hammer and a rope and a feather duster. He won’t come within fifty feet of Sarah when I’m done.”
“No, I…a feather duster?” Darcy had a crazy image in her head of Ellen Gless, hitman for hire, killing a man with just a feather duster. The image was gross and ridiculously funny all at the same time. “No, don’t do anything like that. You need to stay away from police officers altogether. Not scare them into acting like grownups.”
Ellen shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“Mom, what are you guys talking about?”
Connor had eaten through two pieces of pizza already in the backseat of the car as Ellen drove them back over to the police station. His little ears heard everything. Darcy had to think fast.
“Your mom was just being funny, Connor. She was telling me a joke.”
“Oh yeah? I don’t remember that joke.”
“It’s a good one,” Darcy promised.
“I’ll be the judge of that. Go ahead. Tell me the joke.”
They had just parked at the curb in front of the Birkenfalls police station. Darcy smiled at Ellen, already opening her door. “Go ahead, Ellen. Tell him the joke.”
She left her friend sitting there, stuttering and glaring daggers, while she went to confront Terry Taft.
The paintings of green forests on the walls along the entryway of the station didn’t seem so peaceful anymore. Darcy imagined predators in the shadows of the trees, danger lurking just out of sight, ready to pounce on anyone who passed by unsuspecting.
Maybe her mood was just that dark.
Twisting the antique ring on the finger of her right hand, she waited at the service window for someone to answer her knocking. What would Great Aunt Millie have done in this situation? Probably exactly the same thing that Ellen had offered to do. Maybe without the feather duster. Millie would have liked Ellen. Darcy was sure of it. Those two would have gotten along like best friends.
When someone did come up to the front, it was Terry Taft himself. With an uncertain smile he came right to the Plexiglas. “Miss Sweet? What can I do for you?”
“You can stay away from my friend,” Darcy said bluntly. “That’s what you can do for me.”
Terry’s thin face hardened. He flushed all the way up to the dark stubble on his scalp. “Excuse me?”
“Sarah just lost her husband. That’s bad enough. It’s worse that someone killed him. She does not need you sniffing around her like a dog for a bone!”
Another officer, one Darcy didn’t recognize, poked his head around the corner over by the filing cabinets behind Terry. Her voice had risen in volume. She could only
imagine every man and woman in the building, upstairs and down, had heard her.
“Everything all right, Terry?”
“Yup. Just fine, Richard.” Terry’s face did not look like everything was fine. It looked like he would rather be anywhere than where he was right now. “We were just discussing something.”
“You sure?” Richard asked, unconvinced.
Terry tapped his fingers against the ledge of the window. “Tell you what, Miss Sweet. Why don’t you come on inside and we can talk about this.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an invitation. One Terry expected her to accept. Fine. She had questions, he had answers, and she was in a police station. What could possibly go…
Wrong, she had been about to say. She’d learned her lesson on that one. Never, ever say nothing can go wrong. Whenever you said that, something always went wrong.
She let Terry hold the door open for her and then she followed him to a small room nearby. For now, she would stay and have her chat with Terry, tell him to lay off Sarah, and see what tidbits of information she could pick up about the investigation so far. Shouldn’t take long at all. She was a big girl. She could handle herself for a few minutes.
This was an office, but not the sergeant’s office she had been in before. Darcy figured this was where the officers went when they had paperwork to do or a statement to take from a victim. It was cramped with a bookcase full of law books and a single filing cabinet and a desk that had seen better days.
“I’m just glad Sergeant Larson isn’t here to hear this. You trying to wreck my career?” Terry angrily pulled out a chair for her on the side of the desk facing the door, and plopped himself down in the chair on the other side. “What do you want?”
“I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s career,” Darcy told him stiffly, refusing the offer to sit. “I just want you to leave Sarah alone.”
“I have been,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. “She asked me to keep my distance and I did, no matter how much I knew I could do better by her than Braden ever did.”
Interesting, Darcy thought to herself. Terry obviously had no love for Braden. “Officer Taft, I’m dating a policeman. A police chief,” she corrected herself, pride in her voice. “I know how policemen think. I know there’s a burning desire in most of you to protect the people you care about. But you have to leave Sarah alone. She’s going through enough right now.”
Terry’s jaw worked as he chewed at the inside of his lip. “So what did Sarah tell you?”
“She told me everything.” Just as she was about to give him the list one by one of everything Sarah had said, from high school crush to spreading rumors, he jumped up out of the chair and flew around the desk to shut the door tight.
Darcy flinched, then realized he wasn’t coming for her. He wasn’t even looking at her.
“Listen,” he said, pacing in the small space, “that was seven years ago. Okay? It was one time and it never should have happened but it did. I don’t regret it. I tried to do the right thing. I tried to tell her she should leave Braden and be with me. We could have been a family. The three of us. She would have been happy with me!”
“What are you…?”
The question turned to ashes on her tongue. The three of them could have been a family, he said. Seven years ago. The three of them. Terry. Sarah.
And the baby.
Felicia.
A bunch of things came together with startling speed. Sarah had a little girl, born seven years ago. Felicia, who died at five, two years back. Terry was saying he had actually been…uh…intimate with Sarah. Just once.
Reading between the lines, that one time had been enough to get Sarah pregnant. Her baby had been Terry’s.
Sarah had lied to her about never being with Terry.
The little ghost in Sarah’s kitchen had looked to be about five years old. Smiling and happy in the way little kids are when they’re still full of life and energy and everything around them is wonderful. She was forever frozen in that moment. Dead, at five years old.
Terry’s daughter. Not Braden’s. Terry’s, and Sarah’s.
Her friend had lied to her, and Darcy would have to get the real story out of her. What else had she lied about? That would have to wait. For now, other questions had to be answered.
“Did Braden know?” A lump had formed in her throat that would not go away. “Did he know that Sarah had the affair with you? That Felicia wasn’t his daughter?”
“No. Of course not. At least, I don’t think so.” He kept up his pacing, four steps up, four steps back. “If he knew it was because Sarah told him. I sure never did. Sarah asked me to keep away after Felicia was born. I wanted to be a father to my daughter. Instead, I had to watch another man raise her. And then I had to hear that she was dead. For almost two years now, I’ve had to live with that.”
He stopped on that last word, perfectly still, staring at the fake wood paneling on the wall. “Felicia. It was my mother’s name, you know? I would have done anything for her. Anything at all.”
Anything at all…
Darcy heard ominous meaning in those three little words. A father, spurned by the woman he loved, not allowed to see his daughter except from a distance. Then to have the little girl die. It must have weighed heavily on Terry. Men had done insane things under lesser circumstances.
Could Terry have held a grudge all these years? What would it have done to him if he had?
Nothing good. That’s what.
“Terry,” she said, her voice stern, “I need you to stay away from Sarah. For your own sake as well as hers. Promise me?”
He waved a hand angrily. “I do stay away from her. I don’t go near her, I don’t call, I don’t even go to Felicia’s grave. Can you believe that? I’m not even allowed to go to my own daughter’s grave. Sarah asked me to stay away, and I’ve honored that request.”
“But you talked to her this morning. When she was out jogging.”
Now his eyes found hers. His brow furrowed. “Well, yeah, but she came up to me. She came over to my patrol car while I was parked in front of the post office. She talked to me. I figured, maybe, that things were different now. I didn’t know that Braden was going to die. I swear I didn’t.”
Lies. Half-truths and lies and mysteries within mysteries. Sarah said Terry had stopped her when she was jogging. Terry said Sarah came up to his patrol car on her own. One of them wasn’t telling the truth. Both of them had been keeping secrets. Sarah had been the one to point out that guys could get hung up on a woman with even a little innocent encouragement. She’d been talking about Hampton at the time, but it seemed like Terry had the same issue.
She wanted to believe Sarah over Terry Taft, but she’d already lied once that Darcy could see. There was going to be a long conversation when she got back with the pizzas. If Connor hadn’t eaten all of it before then.
“What about Hampton?” she asked, reminded of the other suspect in this murder by their conversation. “Is Shai going to charge him with anything?”
“Possession of stolen property for now.” He shrugged and took up pacing again only to stop after two steps. “Did you know he was a veteran? He was in Desert Swarm, or one of those. He came back…messed up. He wasn’t always like that. Used to be a great guy to know, before the war.”
A soldier? Interesting. Everyone had a backstory, she supposed. Now that she had heard a little bit of Hampton’s, it made her curious. “What did he do in the military? Do you know?”
“No. I don’t. No one does. Why does that matter?”
“Maybe nothing,” she said, although her mind was trying to remember the stories of soldiers who came home exposed to all sorts of poisons.
Terry was staring at her. There was nothing more to say. She’d done everything she could here. “Terry, stay away from Sarah. I mean it.”
His back straightened as his gaze went dark. “Don’t order me around, Miss Sweet. I’m a police officer in this town. You’re a tourist.”
She blinked, but wouldn’t back down. “Is that a threat, officer?”
“Hardly. I don’t threaten.” He stepped past her to open the door. “I make promises.”
Darcy had to walk very close to him to get out the door. As she did, chills went up her spine.
Chapter Seven
Connor was still laughing at his mother’s made up joke about the hammer, the rope, and the feather duster when they got back to Sarah’s house. Darcy did her best to laugh at the way Ellen mangled the punchline every time she told it, but her mind was distracted.
“So then the hammer says…no, I mean, the rope says it’s knot my problem, and the hammer says you hit it on the head!”
Connor had turned red from laughing so hard. “And the feather duster said—”
Ellen joined in. “Guys, keep it down! I’m sweeping!”
And that was the way they ended up in Sarah’s driveway, laughing and out of breath. Darcy wished she could enjoy the moment they had found in the middle of this terrible, horrible day.
She couldn’t find it in herself. Not now. Sarah had a lot of explaining to do, if she expected to stay out of prison for a murder she didn’t commit.
The day wasn’t over yet.
Sarah met them at the door. A smile started and ended as she saw the look on Darcy’s face.
“Come on, Connor,” Ellen said, with a nod in Darcy’s direction. “Let’s get dinner set up in the dining room.”
“Good! I’m starving.” Connor balanced both pizza boxes on his head, carefully holding them by both sides. “I want more pizza!”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You’ve already eaten half an entire pizza by yourself.”
Mother and son hip checked each other on their way, giving Sarah and Darcy some space. Darcy gave her a look that was meant as a silent thank you. Then she took Sarah by the hand. “Let’s go into the living room. Okay? We need to talk.”
Sarah let herself be led to the couch. When they sat down, she read it in Darcy’s face. “You talked to Terry, didn’t you?”