Death at the Wheel

by K. J. Emrick

  Yet—and here was the first odd fact—Alan’s glasses hadn’t received so much as a scratch. They had come through intact even when the people in that car hadn’t.

  Even that wouldn’t be all that suspicious, really, on its own. She’d read news articles of accidents where people were literally knocked out of their shoes, and then she’d read others where people had walked away when the car had been torn in two. So she could have accepted everything on face value if Alan’s glasses had been the only strange fact about the accident.

  There was more, though. She had the images from her vision to fit into this puzzle. In her vision, she had seen through Alan’s eyes how he had walked around the car to where Lindsay sat. Around the front of the car.

  Why?

  If Alan had been a passenger in the same car, wouldn’t he have been able to help Lindsay from inside? Why would he have to get out at all? Unless…

  Unless he had been thrown free of the car. Had the windshield been smashed? She honestly didn’t remember. But in an impact like that, if the backseat passenger didn’t have his seatbelt on, and if he’d been leaning forward when the car had been struck…yes. She supposed it was possible a passenger could be thrown out of the car and then have to go around it to check on his friends.

  Or in this case, to check on his wife.

  What was she thinking, anyway? That Alan was the missing driver from the other car? That was ridiculous. He wouldn’t have stuck around if that was true. He certainly wouldn’t have sat by Lindsay’s bedside until she woke up. What if Lindsay had pointed at him and told everyone Alan was the one who had caused the accident? Not to mention, Alan was wearing his wedding ring. On a chain around his neck, sure, but Darcy had seen the same kind of necklace around Lindsay’s neck. Tradition. It was what brought families together.

  She sighed. Maybes, what-ifs, and a healthy helping of suspicion. It all added up to nothing. Here she sat, ready to accuse an innocent man of the unthinkable. Sometimes, she really wished the visions she got from the other side could be clear. Like, “Here’s the murderer. Arrest him.” That would be great.

  “Do you hear me, Universe?” she whispered to the ceiling as Rosie went up to the front of the room to stare at the purple mountain sunset. “Do you hear me? Messages that make sense. Is that too much to ask?”

  The universe didn’t answer her. Which was okay, really. Darcy was used to finding her own answers.

  What she needed to do right now was go back and talk to Jon again. He must have something on the registration of that car by now. “Rosie? If you’re going to stay here with Lindsay do you mind if I borrow your car? I’d like to go back into Misty Hollow for a while.”

  “Sure, Darcy. You go back. I want to stay with Lindsay and Alan for a while. You’ll come back for me later?”

  “Of course. I won’t be more than an hour or two. I just need to check on a few things. Besides, I thought you might want to make it for book club tonight after all? It would let you take your mind off things.”

  Rosie came back to her and gave Darcy a big hug. “Thank you. That might be just what I need. After all, Lindsay’s in good hands with her husband here.”

  Darcy wasn’t sure she could agree with that. At least, not yet.

  Chapter Five

  It was nearly six o’clock when she got back to Misty Hollow. How had the day gotten away from her so quickly? The book club was supposed to meet at eight tonight to discuss the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. It was a newer series than what they usually read, but Darcy thought it was a good pick for their group. A little fantasy, a little social commentary, and lots of action. Something for everyone.

  She hadn’t even had dinner yet, she realized. There wasn’t time to go home, although her big tomcat Smudge was probably missing her by now. A quick sandwich from Helen’s café would be just the thing.

  While she was in the Bean There Bakery and Café she picked up something for Jon too, knowing that he wouldn’t have stopped work long enough to get a meal for himself. Without her watching over him there were nights that he would starve. Especially when he got caught up in a case. Grace usually took care of him when she was working, but now that her baby was almost due, he and his new partner Wilson Barton were on their own.

  Elizabeth Archer handed Darcy her order, two turkey sandwiches on hoagie rolls with Russian dressing and American cheese. Darcy and Jon always laughed at the way they could get those two great nations together on one sandwich when in real life they hardly ever saw eye to eye on anything. She thanked Elizabeth and paid for the food. While she was waiting for her change she asked if Helen had been in today.

  “Not today,” Elizabeth answered, settling her baseball cap down tighter over her long auburn hair. Wearing it up like that left her face bare and revealed the burn scars she had tried to hide for so long. She’d become less sensitive about her appearance over the months she’d been living in Misty Hollow, once she realized everyone accepted her for who she was, not how she looked. “Why do you ask? You need to talk to her? I can give her a call if you want.”

  “No, nothing like that. I spoke to her earlier, actually, and she seemed stressed. I was just checking on her.”

  Elizabeth nodded, and almost smiled, something else she never used to do. She motioned for the next customer in line to come up and order. “If I see her I’ll tell her you were asking about her, Darcy.”

  Darcy thanked her again and left the café. She had parked Rosie’s car nearby but it would be just as fast to walk to the police station from here. The early evening sky was clear and the breeze felt refreshing on her face. When she saw the spot on Main Street where the accident had happened, she thought again about her vision and what it might mean. She didn’t come up with any new answers.

  Sergeant Fitzwallis was at the front desk of the police station. He was an older man who really didn’t have anything much to do in his life anymore other than his job here. His wife had died last year and his kids were grown up and moved away too, Darcy knew. He smiled at her and buzzed the door open for her to go into the building. She smiled back, noticing that he looked a little more tired than he had the last time she saw him.

  As that thought crossed her mind she yawned, hiding it behind the back of her hand. She laughed at herself. Guess he wasn’t the only tired one.

  Sure enough, Jon was still at his desk. The number of officers in the building had decreased to just a few now. Either everyone had their assignments to work on or the Chief had sent people home now that the excitement had died down. Either way, it meant she could talk to Jon without worrying about being overheard.

  “Hey,” she said to him, leaning down to give him a kiss before sitting in a chair across the desk from him. “I brought us some dinner. Oh, sorry I forgot drinks.”

  “Thanks, Darcy. I don’t really have time to eat right now but I’ll save it for later.” He sat up a little straighter to look past her. “Hey, Wilson. Get Darcy a soda from the back, will you? Bring me one too.”

  Wilson Barton gave Jon a thumbs up and left the room, going toward the back where the small break room was set up near the interview rooms. “He seems to be working out pretty well,” Darcy commented. “Grace better watch out or she won’t have a job to come back to.”

  Jon laughed at the joke, flipping pages in a folder in front of him. “I don’t think Grace has anything to worry about. Half the time I don’t know where the kid is. Like this morning when the call for the accident came in. Think I could find him? Nope. I had to leave a message on his voicemail. Luckily he showed up just after me.”

  “So what have you found out about the registrations?” Darcy unwrapped her sandwich and started eating. No sense in both of them starving.

  He scratched at his cheek. “Not as much as I would have liked to. One car is registered to Jarred Perrigon. That’s the driver of the blue car who died. His car we can account for no problem. Turns out the red car was a rental from out of state. I’ve got a call into the local police agency f
or the rental car company’s area. Hopefully I can get one of their guys over to the rental place before they close so we can get the name off the rental agreement. It’s the only way we’re going to find out who was supposed to have the car.”

  “They won’t give that to you if you ask them yourself?”

  He shook his head. “Not over the phone. Which is good, in a way, because if I had rented a car I wouldn’t want just anyone being able to get my information by saying they were a police officer. It’s bad for me in this situation, is all. I need the information now, and I can’t get it. Kind of frustrating.”

  She could see the lines of stress on his forehead as he pushed a hand back through his dark hair. She wished she could say something to help him, but all she had was her suspicions. Which reminded her.

  “You’ve heard the news, I’m guessing?” she asked him. “Lindsay’s awake?”

  “Yes. Her doctor called me as soon as he could. She’s awake, and has amnesia. So, she can’t tell us anything. No sense in pressing her until she’s had a chance to collect her thoughts, he said. I tend to agree. How’s her mother taking it?”

  “Hard. Very hard. That Alan Harlow stayed by Lindsay’s side the whole time until she woke up, and then Lindsay didn’t even know who Rosie was. I think it made her feel guilty. But then she didn’t remember Alan, either.”

  “Wow,” Jon remarked, setting his pen down. “That’s harsh. He must have been devastated.”

  “I don’t know. He certainly didn’t seem to be. In fact, his reaction to everything was kind of flat. Like, I told him his best friend had died in the accident and he hardly said anything at all.”

  “People can be like that,” Jon said, echoing what she had told herself earlier. “It’s hard to say how someone will react to bad news.”

  “I don’t know. There’s something not right with him, Jon. Rosie is worried about what kind of man married her daughter.”

  He sat back in his chair. “And you? What do you think?”

  She chose her words carefully. “I think there’s more to him than what he’s telling us.” She explained her concern about Alan’s glasses not being broken, and how he was walking around the car in her vision. When she was done, he nodded thoughtfully, agreeing with her that it could mean something or it could mean nothing at all.

  “Well, we know he’s married to her, right? I mean, he has the wedding band on his necklace just like Lindsay had.” Jon took out a small yellow notepad from a drawer in his desk and began writing notes for himself. “So we know that part is true. The rest of his story fits the facts as we know them, but you’re right that it seems a little suspicious. I hadn’t planned on running criminal histories on the victims of a car accident but now maybe I think I will. I’ll also go down to the hospital myself to take his statement.”

  “I could do that for you,” Wilson said, returning at that moment with the sodas. “You’ve got enough to do here. I’d like the chance to talk to Lindsay, too.”

  Darcy and Jon looked at each other. The way Wilson had said that…

  “Did you used to know her, or something?” Darcy asked him.

  He nodded, looking embarrassed. “When we were younger. Before she got into that huge argument with her mom. We, uh, kind of dated. For a couple of years.”

  “Really?” Jon said. “I didn’t know that. Are you too close to this, Will?”

  “No,” he answered immediately. “Not at all. I haven’t spoken with Lindsay since she left town. It’s all professional on my part, I promise.”

  He stood there waiting for Jon’s approval to go, shifting from foot to foot. No matter what he said, it was obvious to Darcy that this was not just professional. There might still be a little bit of an old flame burning in Wilson’s heart.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jon finally said. “That sounds like a good idea. Take down Alan’s statement, lock him into something in writing, even if he doesn’t want to. Get whatever medical reports you can from the doctors, too, and maybe do a quick interview with Lindsay. Just a quick one. We’ll do a follow up when her memory is better.”

  “Thanks, Jon. I’m going to take our unmarked car, all right?” Wilson looked almost relieved that he’d get a chance to go over to the hospital. Darcy might even say he looked eager.

  She stared after him as he grabbed his suit coat and took the keys Jon offered him. Hand on her soda, she flicked the pop top with her fingernail over and over as thoughts rolled through her mind.

  “I know that look,” Jon told her. “That look is never good.”

  “What look?” Darcy blinked at him. “I don’t have a look.”

  “Yes, you do, sweet baby.” He smiled, calling her by the private nickname he’d given her. “You have a look, and it always means that you’ve thought of something that is going to complicate my life. So. Let’s hear it.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I do not have a look.”

  “Have so,” he argued with juvenile humor.

  “Whatever. Just answer me this. You and Wilson share a car when you’re working, right?”

  “Sure. Just like me and Grace used to.”

  “Okay, I know, but just bear with me here. Does Wilson have a car of his own?”

  “Yes. It’s a little two-door. Doesn’t need anything bigger since he’s still single.” He scrunched his eyebrows down. “So?”

  “So, he’s taking your unmarked over to Meadowood. Does he have his own car with him today?”

  Jon thought about it a moment. “I didn’t see it in the parking lot. Maybe not. Easy enough to check. Does it matter?”

  Darcy was beginning to think it did. Wilson knew Lindsay from when they were young. They’d been in love. At least, it was obvious that Wilson had been in love. He still was, if just a little bit, unless her feminine instincts were way off. If he had somehow found out that Lindsay had remarried, and he still loved her enough for it to bother him, then would he do something to try to break Lindsay and her new husband up? Something really, really stupid?

  “Darcy?” Jon asked again. “Does it matter if he doesn’t have his car here?”

  “It might,” she said, “because if he didn’t drive to work today, then what car did he use to get to the accident scene?”

  Chapter Six

  “I can’t believe you suspect Wilson,” Jon said to her in an annoyed voice. “He’s a police officer. We know him. I’ve worked with him since I came to Misty Hollow and now he’s my partner. You can’t honestly believe that he’s involved just because he didn’t have his car with him?”

  They had left the police station to walk around the town center, so they could talk without worrying about anyone—including Chief Daleson—hearing the topic of their conversation.

  “I don’t know, Jon. I mean, it looks suspicious, don’t you think? It’s not like I go around accusing people of things without good reason.”

  “You accused me of murder when we first met,” he grumped.

  “Jon.”

  “Okay, okay, I admit. It looks…odd. I won’t say suspicious. Just, odd. He could have walked to the scene, you know.”

  “Not likely,” Darcy added. “Department policy, remember? Every officer responds in a car.”

  Walking around the gazebo in the middle of the park like this was nice. She and Jon didn’t have enough time to just be by themselves, in Darcy’s opinion. Even if this moment was more business than pleasure she was happy to steal a few minutes of his time away just for her.

  The walkway through the park led past tall lamp posts and trees and park benches. A few people were enjoying the early evening just like they were, but no one paid them any mind. Jon took her by the hand and sat down on one of the wooden benches with her. “Darcy. I am not going to accuse a police officer of causing a major motor vehicle accident. An accident, I’ll remind you, that killed someone.”

  “But, you are going to investigate any connection Will has with Lindsay, right?”

  She smiled at him, and finally he smiled bac
k and shook his head. “All right, yes. You know, you might know me too well.”

  Leaning across the bench she nuzzled her face into his neck, close to his ear. “I can’t ever know you well enough.”

  She kissed the side of his neck and the little shiver that ran through him was amazingly satisfying.

  “Hey,” he said, “isn’t that Smudge?”

  “Hmm? What?”

  A little annoyed that anything could have distracted him from her, she sat up to look where he was pointing. Sure enough, there was her big black and white cat racing across the edge of the park and down the sidewalk on Main Street in the direction of Darcy’s bookstore.

  “How does he keep getting out of the house?” Jon wondered.

  “Maybe he has his own key. He just reminded me of something, though. Let me borrow your cell phone, will you? I have to call Izzy and ask her if she can set up the book club meeting for us tonight. Then I need to get back to Meadowood and pick Rosie up and bring her back here.” She looked at Jon apologetically. “Sorry. I wish we had more time.”

  “We say that a lot, don’t we?”

  “Too much,” she agreed.

  He handed her his cell phone and she made the call to Izzy. Her friend was nervous about getting things set up but Darcy promised to be there in time to host the meeting. “If I’m late for some reason just start off by asking everyone who their favorite character was and why, and then ask them what conspiracies they see in the book.”

  “Are we only doing the first book in the series or all three?”

  “Just the first one for now. Divergent. I want to get everyone’s reaction to it first before we commit to the other two.”

  “Have you read all three of them?” Izzy asked, obviously excited about the series. “The ending will probably make a lot of them feel ripped off.”

  “Well, everyone’s going to have a different opinion, right? That’s what makes a book worth reading.”