Dream a Little Dream

by K. J. Emrick

  The images on the screen kept moving and Darcy focused on them again. “Where’s the room where they had the trophy stored?” she asked Jon.

  He pointed to the square in the upper right corner of the screen, making the chair squeak with every move. “Right there, in this side hallway. Now, I’ve got two hours of footage in the morning, from just after seven until just after nine o’clock. You can just see the mayor locking the room after putting the trophy in there. He jiggles the handle and everything to make sure it’s locked. Thing must’ve been really heavy, judging by the way he was hefting it.”

  Darcy checked the counter on the screen. It was past eight-thirty now, according to the numbers. There wasn’t going to be much more to see.

  Sure enough, they got to see the mayor come into the image, holding the trophy in both hands, and walk up to the door. Jon slowed it down so Darcy could see it better. Jon hadn’t been kidding about how tall the trophy was. Andy was holding it in both hands, supporting it against his hip. When he opened the door, he had to set it down. From the way he picked it back up to put it inside, Darcy could see what Jon meant. There was no doubt there was some weight to it.

  Then he closed the room, testing the lock just like Jon said, and walked out of the frame. Two minutes later the recording stopped. So. They knew where the trophy had been. They just couldn’t see who went in to steal it.

  “Wait,” Darcy said. “Didn’t you say you had two hours of security footage from the end of the day as well?”

  He nodded and picked up his keyboard to settle it into his lap so he could work with it more easily. His chair sounded like it was playing electronic dance music.

  The image on the screen changed, still displaying the four different camera angles from around the Town Hall, but this time with a time stamp that indicated three-thirty-eight in the afternoon. The hallways were mostly empty, she saw. Even on fast forward, there wasn’t a lot here to see.

  Looking at all four monitors she saw Blythe Abernathy coming in to pay his water bill—which reminded her she still needed to do that herself. She saw Mason Barnes pushing his janitor cart down the hall near the back of the building where the town’s meeting room was. She saw a couple of the town councilmen walking the halls, talking to each other as they wandered from one room to the other.

  She saw that weaselly little secretary of the mayor’s too. She picked her brain for a moment before coming up with his name. Tobias Hart. He was there, walking the halls with a duffle bag over one shoulder.

  Huh.

  Darcy looked at the tiny image more closely. The bag was blue, with white nylon handles and a longer carrying strap, just like a high school athlete would have. Tobias was carrying this one thrown casually over one shoulder. There was something in it, judging by the way the sides bulged, but there was no way to tell what it might be.

  “Why does he have that, do you suppose?”

  “Have what?” Jon asked her, leaning forward amid a chorus of squeaks and squeals.

  “This bag…”

  She pointed to the little image of Tobias on the lower left screen, just as he fast-walked himself around a corner and disappeared from view. He must have gone into a place where there weren’t any cameras to follow him.

  A place where no one could see what he was doing!

  “Jon, rewind it.”

  “Um. You know this isn’t the 1980s, right? We don’t actually ‘rewind’ videos anymore because we don’t use actual recording tape anymore.”

  “You know what I mean,” she told him insistently. “Make it go backward.”

  “Well, it’s easy to see why you never got a job in the IT field,” he joked, working the keyboard controls to make the footage go back.

  “Ha, ha, very funny…right there. Stop it right there.”

  He did as she asked, and then leaned forward—squeeeeeak—to look more closely at the screen. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

  “Him,” Darcy said, pointing at the back of Tobias Hart’s head. “That’s the mayor’s personal secretary. Some guy that he brought in from out of town. Look at what he’s carrying.”

  Jon did, and nodded as he caught on. “That would be big enough to carry the trophy. Maybe. Hard to tell in this picture.”

  “Right, but think about it. Who would know when the cameras are working, and when they aren’t? Who would have access to a locked storage room in the Town Hall? Who was there the day the theft happened?”

  He kept nodding along with each point she made. “That’s true. Someone who works at the Town Hall would check off each of those boxes. I guess it’s worth asking him what was in the bag, at least.”

  “Do you have footage of him leaving? Does he have the bag with him when he goes?”

  “Honestly, I wasn’t looking for him. I was watching the hallway with the storage room. In a little bit you see…yeah, right there. The mayor comes back to the door…”

  They could see Andy Blanchard speed-walking to the door, pulling out his key and opening the lock. He went inside, out of camera range, and then several seconds sped past on the counter before he came out again, looking up and down the hall, obviously upset. Then he was off again, in and out of the cameras before they stopped at the end of this two-hour block of recording.

  Jon moved it backward until quarter to four, and the four screens came alive with activity again.

  This time he moved everything forward at a slower pace, one frame a second, and they had the chance to really look at things and search for Tobias. Darcy found him, just after four o’clock, heading out the front doors of the Town Hall. He stood on the top step outside for a moment, looking up at the sun with an arm raised to shield his eyes, and then he stepped off and kept going.

  He was not carrying the blue duffle bag.

  “There you go!” Darcy said excitedly. “Ha. Got him.”

  Jon cast her a sideways glance. “You seem like you’re very interested in proving Tobias is our guy.”

  “I do not like this man, Jon. I talked to him earlier today and he is just the worst.”

  “Doesn’t make him a thief.”

  “Doesn’t make him not one, either.”

  “Hmm. Touché. Well, like I said I don’t really know him myself but all things being equal, he does make a pretty good suspect.”

  “Better than that.”

  “Better than good? What’s better than good?”

  “Jon, don’t you see? If he took the trophy, then it’s still there in that building!” When he continued to look at her with a blank expression, she explained, “It’s like that old Hercule Poirot mystery where the stolen gloves were there the whole time.”

  “I’m sorry…what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I keep telling you to read more.”

  “Um. I watch television sometimes. Doesn’t that count?”

  “Not even close.” She crouched down with her elbows on the edge of his desk and pointed to several things on the still image of the security footage. “If Tobias has this duffle bag of his here, when he’s in the hallway, but not here, when he’s leaving…”

  “Oh!” Jon said, light dawning in his eyes. “So he put it somewhere in the building, and left it there. You think maybe he’s planning on going back for it at some point?”

  “Sure. Maybe even today. He’s at work and for all I know he plans on just walking out of the building with it when no one is looking for it.” Which meant, of course, that they were going to have to find it before that happened.

  Now that Jon had caught on to what she was saying, he got the urgency as well. Shutting down his computer, he got up from the chair—squeeeeeeallll—and kissed her cheek. “You’re a genius, you know that?”

  “I do,” she said with a sweet smile, “but it helps to hear you say it. Now, can we get away from that chair before it gives me a headache?”

  He scrunched his brow up, putting a hand almost protectively on the back of the chair. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Um. It�
�s a little noisy.”

  “It just has character, is all.”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want to tell yourself.”

  “It’s a classic. They don’t make them like this anymore.”

  “Yeah, I think there’s a reason for that, Jon.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed his chin playfully. “We can discuss your odd obsession with keeping your old office furniture later. Right now, we need to go catch a thief.”

  “Still wish I knew why anyone would want to steal a homemade, plastic-and-wood trophy.”

  “Maybe Tobias isn’t as happy at his job as Mayor Andy thinks he is. Maybe he wants something to go wrong so the mayor gets blamed.” Darcy was just listing possibilities off the top of her head, but it made as much sense to her as the idea Gilbert Fischer had mentioned. “If the mayor gets fired, then Tobias gets to find another job without listing ‘quitter’ on his resumé.”

  “I don’t know, Darcy. Tobias is one of Mayor Andy’s handpicked hires. Those two are close. Almost more like friends than co-workers.”

  “Sure, but maybe—”

  There was a knock on the office door, and Jon called out, “Come in!”

  Darcy’s sister Grace poked her head and shoulders in. Finding the two of them in each other’s arms, she nodded as if that was what she had expected. “I should’ve known. Wilson said you were in here, Chief, and when I heard Darcy’s voice, I figured I should knock first.” She gave them both a wink. “Sister’s intuition.”

  “Oh, stop,” Darcy told her. “Jon and I were working on the case of the stolen trophy.”

  Grace opened the door the rest of the way, leaning up against the frame. “Is that what you call it? I think maybe you’re overworking yourselves. You should take a break.”

  “Funny,” Jon told her, hugging Darcy closer just for spite. “Did you need something, Detective?”

  She crossed her arms over the front of her white dress shirt. Her compact little revolver rode in its holster at her hip, snuggled tight against the waistline of her black slacks. “Personally, I think any work you do on a theft like this is too much work. That trophy was worth, what, thirty bucks, if that?”

  “Something like that. Maybe even less from what Darcy and me just found out, but the value isn’t the point. We treat every crime the same, no matter how small.”

  “Sure, Chief. I’ll remember that when I take over as the head of this department someday and I’m sitting behind that desk. Hopefully,” she added, “with a chair that doesn’t squeak.”

  “I know, right?” Darcy agreed.

  Jon looked at them both. “What?”

  “Your chair,” they both said at once.

  Jon tried to act offended. “Nobody understands the classics. Besides, it’s not like you have any say in it. You’re going to have to wait to take my chair until after I retire, Grace.”

  “You can keep it, if it means investigating stolen trophies.” She shook her head. “Just kind of a let down after investigating everything from murder to kidnapping and, you know, ghosts and stuff.”

  Darcy rolled her head in her sister’s direction. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, don’t give me that,” Grace told her, with a toss of her short black hair. She had a little bit of the abilities that had made Darcy’s life so crazy in her too, but only a little. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The family gift keeps this place hopping and I just think maybe the superteam of Jon Tinker and Darcy Sweet might be wasted on a trophy theft.”

  “I could have you do it instead,” Jon offered.

  “Uh, no thanks, Chief. I can find my own work to do. I’m still looking into that missing dog complaint. You know, because we treat every crime the same, no matter how small.”

  Darcy laughed as her sister turned Jon’s words around on him, but it was true. Whenever someone in town needed help, they knew they could call on their local police and the officers of the Misty Hollow Police Department would treat their problem like it was the most important one in the world. For the person making the call for help, it really was.

  “Anyway,” Grace said, “I just came in to see if you knew anything about a prowler complaint on Sparrow Street.”

  Jon raised an eyebrow. “So, petty theft and missing dogs and now a peeping Tom complaint? What exactly is happening to this sleepy little town of ours?”

  “Well, it’s probably nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take one of the uniform patrols over there with me and check it out.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything to it. Me and Darcy are going to go see if we can find the trophy. You know. Important investigations.”

  “Every single one is,” Grace said, winking at Darcy.

  “Okay, okay, none of that,” Jon said, taking Darcy by the hand. “She’s my wife, Grace. Get your own.”

  “I’ve got all I can handle with Aaron and my two kids, thanks. Besides. My sister is a handful. You can have her.”

  “Hey,” Darcy joked. “I am a wonderful person, and you know it.”

  “Uh-huh. What I know, is Jon better take good care of you on Valentine’s Day. I wouldn’t want to be standing in his shoes if he forgets the flowers and chocolates.”

  Jon gave Darcy a comically puzzled look. “Am I supposed to buy you chocolates?”

  “Men,” Grace grumbled under her breath.

  “Can’t live with them,” Darcy said with a grin.

  “And,” her sister added, “can’t trade them in for a new car.”

  This time it was Jon who rolled his eyes, while Grace and Darcy shared a laugh at his expense.

  Jon drove them back to the Town Hall. She thought maybe he would go through the door to the right to confront Tobias Hart. That was what she had been hoping for. Instead, they walked right past the door to the mayor’s office and kept going.

  “Don’t we want to ask him where his bag is?” Darcy said in a whisper.

  “No. I mean, that might work, but chances are better that he’d lie to me if I just come right out and ask him about his bag. He’ll say it’s not here, or tell me I need a warrant, or something like that. It will just waste our time. Plus, if there’s nothing in the bag when he brings it to us, what then? I want to get a look in it first.”

  They didn’t see anyone else as they stopped at an intersection of hallways, but that didn’t mean there weren’t people around to listen. Darcy made sure to keep her voice down. “Do you need a warrant to do this?”

  “Um. Technically, maybe.” He shrugged, looking up and down the halls. “If I was searching in private places like desk drawers or somebody’s car, then yeah. The Town Hall is a public place, though, and I’m a member of the public.”

  “Today, you’re a member of the police.”

  “I can wear more than one hat at a time. So. If I remember the surveillance video correctly, we saw Tobias taking that blue duffle bag down…there.”

  He pointed to the hall on their left.

  Darcy remembered the video, and Jon was right. That way led to the back of the building, away from the storage room where the trophy had been locked up by Mayor Andy. There weren’t many rooms down that way. It led to the large community room though, and in there would be plenty of places to hide a bag. The Town Hall might not be that big but that didn’t mean there weren’t lots of nooks and crannies and the like. If they started now, they might have the whole place searched by dinner. Maybe.

  “This is going to take a while,” Jon said, echoing her own thoughts. “We should’ve brought Grace after all. Maybe a couple of the other guys.”

  “We’d lose the element of stealth if we did that.”

  “True. Guess it’s just you and me.”

  “Then I guess we’d better get started.” Darcy planted her hands on her hips. “You take the rooms on the left, I’ll take the ones on the right?”

  “You mean, the ones that aren’t locked,” Jon said, defeat creeping into his voice. “That might be a problem. Maybe I didn’t think this one through…
”

  A rattling sound drew their attention behind them. A plastic cart with noisy wheels was being pushed their way, a middle compartment holding a large garbage bag, brooms and mops slotted into holes at the sides, spray bottles and cleaning supplies tucked into place up by the push handle. Mason Barnes, the Town Hall’s janitor, stopped humming to himself when he saw them standing there.

  “Oh. Hey, Chief. Hey, Darcy.” He lifted one beefy hand up to wave at them. “If you guys need the mayor, I think he’s out on an errand.”

  “Actually we’re here for something else,” Jon told him. “You might be able to help us, Mason. You’ve got keys to the rooms down here, right?”

  Mason scratched the side of his round face where three days of stubble dotted his cheeks. “Uh, yeah I’ve got the keys, but I can’t let you into some of these rooms, Chief. Not without Mayor Andy giving me permission.”

  “Sure, sure.” Jon patted the air with his hand as if he hadn’t been suggesting anything of the sort. “Say, you’re starting kind of late yourself, aren’t you? It’s getting pretty close to noon and you’re just starting your rounds?”

  “Well, yeah, I mean…” Mason puffed out his lips. Then lines around his eyes crinkled as he tried to think of an explanation for his tardiness. “Well, sometimes they let me start late. I don’t have a whole lot to do here.”

  “Hmm. Well, I wonder if your time sheets show you coming in this late, or if maybe the times are a little bit off? Maybe you put yourself down as starting work at nine o’clock when you’re really coming in around eleven-thirty?”

  That obviously struck a chord. Jon had guessed right, and now Mason was caught. The man had been padding his timesheets to get paid for hours he wasn’t actually working. He was a heavyset man, easily weighing a hundred and fifty pounds more than Jon, but right now he looked like a frightened child.

  “Chief, if they find out about that, I’ll be fired. I don’t do it every time. Maybe two or three times a week. That’s all. It’s just to cover my expenses. Mayor Helen, back when she was mayor, she didn’t mind if I did it. Mayor Andy isn’t so understanding, though. He’ll have me fired, I know he will.”