by K. J. Emrick
“Hello?” Jon said. He must have recognized the number because he didn’t bother to identify himself. “Uh-huh. Yeah, we’re up in Oak Hollow. Me and Darcy and the kids. We went sledding. Uh-huh. Seriously? No, I know you wouldn’t have called me if you weren’t serious, but…yeah. Fine. I understand. Start the investigation and we’ll be back in two hours, tops. Because I promised my kids we’d have dinner together. You can handle it until I get there. Okay. Call me if anything turns up. Okay. Bye.”
He hung up and sighed out a breath that plumed in front of his face.
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Who died this time?”
To her surprise, he actually laughed out loud. “No, sorry, sorry,” he said, when he saw the flash of irritation cross Darcy’s face. “I know our usual mysteries are all about death and mayhem but, believe it or not, it’s not a murder this time. Just a theft.”
“Oh.” Darcy was surprised. She wasn’t sure what it said about her that she automatically jumped to thoughts of murder whenever Jon’s phone rang. “So…somebody stole something? That’s all?”
“Yup. Believe it or not, we have smaller crimes in Misty Hollow, too. Well. Sometimes.”
She gave him a look that said ‘I know that, Dummy’ while he put his phone away. “That wasn’t my point. I meant, why did they call you about a simple theft when they know you’re not working? You have investigators to handle this stuff for a reason. Wilson, or my sister Grace, even. Is the Secret Service back, or something?”
He opened his mouth to answer her just as a soft swoo-oo-oosh sound became loud enough to pull their attention to the hillside. The kids came racing at them in the sled, snow flying, Zane with his hands up in the air and Colby with her mittens held tight around the sled’s reins. Closer and closer they came, and Zane gave out a wild holler of delight and Darcy was suddenly very aware that she and Jon were right in their path…
And then Colby stuck one leg out to the side at just the right moment to drag the sled around in a tight curve that threw up a wide spray of snow as her bootheel dug in and brought them to a teetering halt.
The snow, of course, sprayed all across Jon and Darcy, just like Colby had planned.
Darcy closed her eyes and threw up her hands and laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more. Jon wasn’t quite so happy about it, as he wrung out his gloves and wiped the snow away from the front of his coat, but he was smiling too. Part of winter fun was getting wet and snowy. Even when you were just the parent, watching safely from the sidelines.
“Oh, you’ve done it now!” Darcy said theatrically. “You’ve awakened the dreaded snowmonster of Oak Hollow! You shall pay for your insolence!”
Darcy lifted her hands up into claws and growled maniacally.
“Um,” Zane said uncertainly. “What’s insulins?”
“I’ll tell you later,” his sister whispered loudly to him. “Get ready to run.”
“Why?”
Darcy took a lunging step forward and roared, “Because the snowmonster is coming! Rawrrr!”
She dropped down and scooped up a huge pile of snow, packing it hastily into a ball, lifting it up over her head, yodeling loudly like she was some modern-day Yeti, trying her best not to laugh out loud as the kids squeaked and screamed and began racing up the hill again, pulling the sled with them.
“Come on, Zane! Run for your life!”
“Ahhhh! The snows-monster is gonna get us! The snows-monster is gonna get us!”
Darcy couldn’t keep the laughter inside anymore. She completely broke character as she threw the massive snowball, letting it crash far wide of the kids as they pumped their legs up the slope. She heard a few families, further down the hill, laughing along with her antics. She’d been told more than once, by strangers and friends alike, that their family was fun to watch when they were out together. Darcy liked hearing that.
She posed with her hands up, clawing at the air, making goofy monster noises. “Rawr! Howl! Grumble!” Colby and Zane were too far away to hear her now, still running, but she didn’t care. By the time they left here they were both going to be exhausted, but it would be a memory that would last forever.
Jon put his hands on her shoulders, smiling down at her. “That was awesome.”
“Yeah, I’m a pretty cool mom. So. You were about to tell me why your incredibly skilled officers can’t handle a simple theft without calling you?”
“Because my guys know to call me when a theft involves something major.”
That piqued Darcy’s curiosity. “Something major? You mean like a diamonds, jewels, vintage automobiles, that sort of thing?”
He blinked at her. “Vintage automobiles? That’s where your mind went?”
“What? It happens. People pay big money for classic cars in good condition. The Mustang from that Steve McQueen movie just sold for three million dollars not too long ago.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
Darcy shrugged her shoulders inside her coat. “I know stuff.”
“You mean, you read stuff in the news.”
“Hey, smart people still read the news. Besides,” she added, “if you remember correctly, Ellen Gless owns a Mustang and she likes to talk about cars when she comes over for coffee. So? Was it a classic car that got stolen?”
“No. Sadly, I don’t get to investigate the theft of the car from Bullitt. That would be so cool.”
Darcy flicked her gloves at him, flinging bits of snow in his face. “No, that’s cool.”
“Ha, ha. Don’t make me throw you in a snowbank.”
“All right, all right, I’ll behave. So it wasn’t jewels and it wasn’t classic cars. What got stolen? What was so important?”
“A trophy.”
She blinked at that. “There’s got to be more to it. They called the chief of police about a trophy? Seriously? What trophy?”
“The trophy for the SpringFest games.”
“Oh.” Now she got it. Jon had said it was the theft of something major, he never said it was something overly valuable. “For Pete’s sake, somebody stole the town’s trophy? You’ve got to be kidding me. Everybody loves that stupid thing, year after year. SpringFest has become part of the town’s culture. A new trophy every year for someone to take home bragging rights. Who would want to steal it?”
“I don’t know, but that’s why they called me. A theft like that will affect the whole town. The mayor’s going to be all over this. I’m going to have to supervise the whole thing so that it gets done to his satisfaction or I’ll never hear the end of it. You know how our mayor is.”
“Andy Blanchard is still new at this. Are you telling me he’s out of that stage where he wants to make everyone happy?”
“Oh, yeah. The honeymoon’s over. That lasted for about a week and now he’s more worried about his image than making things right for the town.” He swatted a random patch of snow off the front of his coat. “I tell you, Darcy, the man’s turned into a real son of a—”
The swoosh of the sled came racing at them again and he wisely cut off the end of that thought before the kids could hear him using words they weren’t allowed to say. The last thing he or Darcy needed was for either of their children to repeat something they shouldn’t at school.
He didn’t need to finish it. Darcy knew where that was going.
“Mommy, did you see?” Zane asked, all excited. “We did a jump! We did a jump!”
Colby waited for her brother to get off the sled before she got up herself. “We hit the pile of snow just right and it lifted us way up off the ground. It was pretty cool.”
“Really?” Darcy didn’t know how she felt about that, but she supposed both of the kids were still in one piece. They certainly looked like they enjoyed it. “Sorry, guys, I was busy talking with Daddy. I didn’t see it. Can you do it again?”
Zane clapped his mittens together. “Yes we can! C’mon, Colby. We gotta hit the snow just right.”
“Yup. You drive, I’ll steer.”
“I wanna pull the sled this time.”
Colby looked at her brother like he was crazy, but then handed the rope over. “Here you go. Knock yourself out.”
“Yay!” He beamed with a goofy grin, as if she’d just given him a late Christmas gift, and started back up the hill as fast as his little legs would go. The front of the sled kept bumping into the backs of his Spiderman boots, but he didn’t seem to care.
“Um. Mom?” Colby asked. “I know you guys said just three more times down the hill, but can we maybe do a couple more? This is pretty awesome.”
Darcy turned to Jon. She pursed her lips like she was giving that request some serious thought. “I don’t know… What do you think, Jon?”
“Hmm. Well, they have been really good today. I suppose we can wait a little longer to have dinner.”
“Hmm. I suppose we could. Maybe let them have five more runs?”
“Yeah. I think that works for my schedule.”
Colby’s smile puffed out her wind-red cheeks. Darcy wasn’t prepared for the bear hug her daughter threw around her waist. Just a quick squeeze, and then she went and gave one to Jon as well.
“Thank you, guys. Love you.”
She ran after her brother up the hill, taking his free hand, letting him pull the sled all by himself like he wanted to. Even if it was getting them to the top only half as fast as last time.
Darcy reached out for Jon’s hand. “You’re a good dad.”
“If I was a good dad,” he joked, “I’d offer to pull the sled up for them.”
“You’re letting them play out here longer even though you have work to do back in town. You could have told them to pack up and get in the car.”
“I could have, but that wouldn’t be fair. They’re having fun. The theft is important, yeah, but I can wait another two hours to see where my officers are with the investigation. My family comes first.”
She kissed him, feeling his cold lips on hers. “I love you, Jon.”
“I love you, too, Darcy.”
As much fun as the day had been, Darcy was very glad to get back home again to a warm house. The furnace was pumping heat through the registers and she kicked her boots off as soon as she was inside. She pulled off her wet socks, too, and wiggled her toes in the warmth. How hard was it to design a boot that could keep out snow?
Of course, the snowball fight they’d gotten into just before packing up the car certainly hadn’t helped her keep dry.
The kid’s coats and hats and boots came off just inside the door too, because that was the rule. No tracking wet clothes through the house. She had a bundle of clothes in her arms by the time Colby and Zane were racing off to their rooms to play, scarves and icy mittens included. They tromped up the stairs like a herd of elephants running a marathon. So much for them being tired out by all the physical outdoor activity.
She heard Cha Cha barking enthusiastically to see everyone home again. He wasn’t much more than a puppy, and according to Zane he still worried when everyone left all at once that they might not come home again. Zane had tried to explain it to him, that people had things to do in other places, but for the dog, the whole world was wherever he was. Or at least, that was how Zane explained it. Darcy had the feeling it was going to take them leaving and coming back a few times before Cha Cha was comfortable with it.
Tiptoe, on the other hand, came sauntering lazily through, as if she would have been just fine all by herself.
That didn’t stop her from rubbing up against Darcy’s leg on her way to the kitchen.
“Glad to see you too, kitten. Get up to anything while I was gone?”
“Mrrrow,” was the answer.
Darcy wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded important. “As long as you weren’t shredding the toilet paper, then that’s fine.”
Tiptoe gave her a narrow glare, and then kept walking. Obviously she didn’t think Darcy was all that funny.
“What? Your father did that to me once, you know. I was cleaning little bits of paper out of the bathroom for weeks. I’ll come back up to get you some more food as soon as I put all this in the laundry, okay?”
She brought her bundle of clothes to the cellar door, to take them down to the washing machine. Might as well do it now rather than leave all these wet things to sit in a heap. It was a little tricky negotiating the narrow stairs when she had to keep shuffling the jackets and other things around so she could see past them. She took her time. She had the rest of the evening ahead of her, what with Jon at work and the kids off doing their own thing in their rooms. There was no need to rush.
It was damp down here, and chilly. The furnace hunkered in the corner, churning out heat, but most of that was directed upstairs. The house was old enough that the cellar had actual stone walls that soaked in the frigid cold from outside and radiated it inward. The concrete floor was icy on the bare soles of her feet. Darcy felt a shiver work its way up her spine. It was almost the same as being back outside again. She was just going to stuff the clothes into the washer and set the dials and go.
The illumination from the fluorescent bulbs left a lot of shadowy spots. In the corners. Behind storage racks. Under the stairs. Darcy was used to it. The dark didn’t scare her much. Not after a lifetime of seeing ghosts pop out of closets or Christmas trees or television sets. Knowing that ghosts were real meant knowing that one could show up almost anywhere. There were things that hid in shadows, but they’d show themselves to her or not, whenever they were ready.
Her bookstore’s motto was ‘The mysterious is all around us.’ She sold t-shirts with that slogan, and coffee cups, and other souvenirs for the tourists. But it was also a truth she lived in her daily life.
She was humming a song to herself, arranging the clothes in the washer, when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
Even living in a world of ghosts and specters, she knew better than to ignore things that like that. Even if it wasn’t a ghost over there in the corner, it could be a mouse coming inside to find a warm place to sleep. Soon enough it would be in the cabinets upstairs raiding the boxed crackers and the Pop Tarts. She couldn’t remember the last time there was a mouse in the house. Smudge, her beloved cat who had passed away, had kept the house blessedly clear of mice. Tiptoe was Smudge’s daughter and she seemed to have the same sense for mousing that her daddy had. The mice knew enough to stay clear of this house.
So maybe it wasn’t a mouse, but she had seen something moving over there in the corner.
Which meant she knew what it had to be.
With a sigh, Darcy closed the lid on the washing machine and set it to run a heavy load. In a world dominated by ghosts, she still had to do the laundry.
“You might as well come out,” she said to the shadows in the corner. “No sense lurking about like that. You’re not some monster in a horror movie. Come on out and talk to me like a human being, and I’ll see if I can help you.”
“Aw,” a familiar voice said. “You’re sweet.”
Darcy rolled her eyes as the ghost separated from the shadows. She should have known. Maybe she’d been too quick to say this particular ghost wasn’t a monster… “Willa, why are you in my basement?”
Stepping out of the darkness one lithe leg at a time, in a dress that was old fashioned but still managed to hug the curves of her translucent body, Willamena Duell smirked. She was shimmering against the backdrop of the stone wall, with her narrow but pretty face and washed out hazel eyes staring right at Darcy.
She stood with one hand on her hip, the other at her throat playing with the heavy silver links of her necklace. She gave Darcy an amused chortle. “I am here in your basement, because this is where you are. It is not easy to speak to someone who won’t listen. I was forced to track you down for un petit chit-chat.”
Her smooth French accent attributed a soft but sinister meaning to those words. “You know where I sleep, Willa. It’s not like you can’t ever find me. Especially since you’ve pretty much inserted yo
urself in my life whether I want you here or not.”
“Ah, but you need me, my darling Darcy. I have the knowledge of the ages, remember? I was a witch before you were even a twinkling thought in the amorous minds of your parents. My teachings will make you a better witch.”
“First of all, not a witch.” Darcy was tired of this argument. She had a gift, one that she had been born with, and she couldn’t deny that it had a certain element of magic to it. Certainly it was beyond what science understood. It wasn’t witchcraft, though. “Secondly, your little box is right upstairs in my bedroom. If you wanted to talk you can find me up there while I’m sleeping like you usually do.”
“I tried to talk with you earlier. I practically made my box jump off the shelf and you just walked away to go play out in the snow with your…children.”
The twist to that word made it sound offensive. Darcy didn’t know much about the life of Willamena Duell, but she knew the woman had to have given birth at least once, or the family line would have ended back with her. It was hard to imagine the Sweets having descended from this vile woman anyway, but facts were facts. Her Great Aunt Millie had told Darcy to trust Willamena, and although Darcy still had her reservations, she accepted the woman as family.
She trusted Millie, even if she didn’t trust this woman.
“All right, Willa. I’m planning on spending some quality time with my kids and a board game tonight before losing myself in a good book. So, if you have something you need to tell me so badly, why don’t you get on with it?”
The witch’s ghost frowned. For just a moment, she seemed more solid. “I wish to talk to you about your dream.”
Of course she did. Darcy knew exactly which dream she meant. There was only one dream that she’d been having over and over again, just the one dream that Willamena seemed fixated on. A dream that was really a nightmare, and one that she didn’t like to think about.
She didn’t want to talk about it, either. The dream put Darcy face-to-face with herself in the blank space between life and death, a space usually reserved for the spirits of the dead. She kept seeing herself reaching out from the dream, calling for help the way so many ghosts had reached out to her in the past.