Dream a Little Dream

by K. J. Emrick

“I sure do. We’re all ready.” He motioned for her to come over to him. “I think we’ve got all the proof we need and we’ll lay it all out step by step. All the pieces fit. I’m just sorry we didn’t figure it out in time to save Mason Barnes.”

  She sank down into his lap, gratefully resting herself against his strong chest, one arm wrapped around his shoulders. “Considering what we know now, I think this always would have ended in someone’s death. If not Mason’s…”

  “Then our other suspect’s,” he finished for her. “You’re probably right. So. If we can pry the kids away from the television, I think it’s time we get going. I don’t want to let a murderer run loose in my town any longer than I have to. We’ve already waited a whole night for the mayor’s convenience, let’s not wait anymore.”

  “You had your guys watching our suspect all night, right?”

  “Yup. Just like we planned. We need his confession before we make an arrest and that’s what this meeting is going to do for us.”

  “Are you sure? I can’t say that I’ve got any reason to trust Mayor Andy.”

  “He’s a slippery guy, no doubt, but we’ve got all of our ducks in a row.”

  She looked into his blue eyes, managing a little smile. “Ducks? Seriously?”

  “Hey, it’s a good metaphor. It’s been around forever.”

  “So have you, Mister Tinker.” She caressed his face, amazed that he could make her feel better no matter what circumstances they found themselves in.

  “I’m not that old,” he protested. “Not yet.”

  “And when you are,” she told him, “I will love you just the same. Wrinkles and gray hair and sagging butt cheeks. All of it.”

  “And you, Mrs. Sweet, will always look like you’re just twenty-one.”

  She felt herself blushing. The twenty-one-year-old version of herself, the girl in the tank tops and the chunky belts, had been someone who turned lots of guys’ heads. Now she was only interested in catching the attention of one man. She had Jon’s love for now, and always.

  Sliding off his lap, she leaned in to kiss his forehead. “All right. Let’s go see the mayor.”

  The kids were already psyched to go spend the day with their cousins, Addison and Emily. They were dressed and ready to go with their breakfasts already eaten. Cha Cha came padding out into the kitchen just as they were all getting their coats and boots on, barking something at Zane. He wanted to come along, Zane explained, and after a hasty discussion between Darcy and Jon and then a phone call to Grace, it was decided that this time the little dog could go with everyone.

  “You know that means you’ll be responsible for walking him?” Jon pointed out to their son.

  Zane puffed his chest out, and a very grown-up expression came over his face. “I’ve been walking for years. I’m a good walker.”

  It was the laugh Darcy needed. She hugged him tight, and rocked him in her arms, while Cha Cha pranced around them with his ears getting in his way.

  Darcy didn’t want to tell him that Aaron had already offered to supervise the walking and the feeding and everything else. Aaron had always been a dog person. More than that, he’d always wanted a son. He loved the two daughters Grace had given him, and no one would ever doubt his devotion to Addison and Emily, but Darcy could tell. The way he doted on Zane made it clear he’d been hoping for a boy of his own.

  She wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he and Grace tried one more time, soon, for a son.

  After dropping their children and their dog off at Grace and Aaron’s, their next stop was the Town Hall. Grace wished them well. She knew how hard it was going to be to get any kind of cooperation out of Mayor Andy.

  “Think she’s right?” Darcy asked Jon as they drove back across town.

  “Yeah, I do,” he said without hesitation. “This one isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Funny. I’ve had the same feeling since we left home.”

  Mayor Andy Blanchard was just walking up the front steps of the Town Hall when Jon pulled his car to the curb out front. When he saw them, he stopped and waited for them with a fist on his hip. The scowl on his angular face told Darcy everything. He was not in a good mood.

  Jon spared him a glance through the windshield and gave him a little wave.

  Andy didn’t wave back.

  “Huh.” Jon shrugged. “I don’t think he’s happy to see us.”

  Darcy cast him a sidelong look. “Oh? You think?”

  “Almost makes me think he’s got a guilty conscience. You ready?”

  “Yes. I’ll grab the bag.”

  The blue duffle was all set for them. She picked it up and slung it over her shoulder.

  Stepping out of the car was like stepping into a freezer. The weather report had gone out the window by twenty degrees or more and at this rate, winter was going to last well into March. At least it had stopped snowing, Darcy thought to herself.

  “You two are late,” Andy grumbled at them. He was a slim man, and anger on him wasn’t very intimidating. His insulated winter jacket made him look stockier than he was but even that wasn’t saying much. “I’ve got a town to run, you know, and I don’t have time for delays. I’m really busy. Especially since you arrested my secretary.”

  His blonde hair stuck out in every direction from under his knitted cap. His nose was a skinny line in a face with eyes that were too close together. A scraggly growth of hair on his upper lip was supposed to be a mustache. His appearance was only part of his problem. It was hard for people to take him seriously when he looked like a teenager who’d just been stood up for prom. He’d only won the last election because one candidate was dead and the other had been disqualified, and that had left him. The harder he tried, the less people seemed to respect him. It had gradually given him a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder.

  It was one of many reasons for Darcy to dislike the man. Not the biggest one by far, but still.

  She lifted the blue duffle bag in her hand. “Don’t worry, Andy. This won’t take long.”

  “It’s Mayor Blanchard, actually,” he snapped at her.

  Jon cleared his throat. “Actually, most people just call you Mayor Andy.”

  Andy’s eyes flashed a warning. “Not if they want to keep their jobs with this town, they don’t. Do I need to remind you that I’m your boss, Chief Tinker?”

  “Nope. But this morning, I don’t care. I’m looking for a murderer. I’m going to do what I need to do to bring that person to justice.”

  Andy looked like he wanted to say something more, but he snapped his mouth shut instead and let his glower speak for him. Storming up to the doors he unlocked them and then threw them open, starting down the hall to his office and just expecting them to follow.

  They did follow, of course, because they needed to finish solving this mystery. It was Jon’s job. It might not be Darcy’s, but she wanted to see this through just as much as he did. This interview was going to be the last piece they needed to make the arrest.

  Walking past Tobias’s empty desk, they went into the mayor’s inner office.

  Darcy hadn’t been in this room since Helen had died. Helen had always had it decorated with a homey touch, with plants and bright colors and chairs arranged in a way that made visitors feel welcome. All of that was gone now. It was the same dark wooden desk in front of the window, but the rest of the furniture had been traded out for cold metal chairs with thinly padded, uncomfortable seats. There were no personal photos anywhere. Nothing but file folders and stacks of paper and ledger books. Helen used to have this cute poster on the wall with a furry little orange kitten. It was odd, but more than anything else that used to be in the room, Darcy missed that poster the most.

  Andy took his time taking off his jacket and hanging it up on the coatrack. He sat down behind his desk, and made a show of pulling himself closer, making them wait on him. “All right, you two. Explain yourselves. You’ve got my secretary in your jail cell and you demanded this meeting with me. If I didn’t know any
better, I’d say you had some sort of vendetta against my administration. You want to explain why?”

  Darcy settled the bag carefully on her lap as she and Jon sat in the two inflexible chairs on this side of the desk. “Because,” she said. “We know who stole the SpringFest trophy, and who murdered a man because of it.”

  “You mean the janitor from here in the Town Hall, right? That’s who you’re talking about?”

  Darcy’s indignation bristled. “He had a name.”

  “Sure, sure. Mason Barnes. I’m sure we met once or twice. I didn’t really know him.”

  That was obviously a lie. The mayor and Mason had met a lot more than ‘once or twice.’ Darcy couldn’t believe this was the man who had been running their town for months now. He wasn’t worthy to sit at Helen’s old desk.

  He didn’t seem to be upset by Mason’s death, either.

  Jon could sense Darcy’s rising anger and reached over to lay his hand on her arm. “Why don’t we just show you what we’ve found out so far,” he said tactfully. “You’ll understand it better if we show you.”

  “Fine,” the mayor told him. “If you’re quick.”

  “Well, sure. We know you’re a busy man. We’ll probably get through most of everything before our other guest arrives.”

  Andy’s eyes widened with suspicion. “Other guest? Are you saying you invited someone else to this meeting without telling me?”

  “Yes, we did, but I promise you it was necessary.”

  “Oh, I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all!” Andy was becoming more and more agitated with each word. He began picking up folders and files, seemingly at random, and shoving them into a leather case at the side of his chair. “I think I’m going to leave, right now, before you do to me what you did to my secretary!”

  “You mean,” Jon said, sounding amused, “how we arrested him?”

  “No, I mean how you railroaded him! You couldn’t find the real thief, so you locked up Tobias and tried to say it was him. Now you’ve got a murder on your hands and you’re going to try to pin that one on me! If there’s one good thing that came out of this, it’s that you gave Tobias a great alibi. If he was in your cell, he couldn’t be the one who killed the janitor, and if he didn’t kill the janitor then he didn’t steal the trophy, now did he!” He grabbed up the briefcase and came around the desk. “Well, you can’t prove it was me, either. I’m leaving!”

  Jon got up and stood in his way.

  “Not yet, Mister Mayor. Let us show you a few things first. I think you’re going to find them very interesting.”

  Andy wasn’t a very tall man. He had to look up to meet Jon’s gaze, and when he did, the color drained from his face. Darcy had seen her husband turn on the intimidation before. He was very good at it. He was a handsome man but when he wanted, he could look like a bear about to maul anyone who crossed him.

  Without a single word, Andy backtracked himself into his chair again.

  “Let’s start with this,” Jon said, as if nothing at all had just happened. He sat down again himself but leaned across the desk to show Andy his cellphone, and the image he’d taken yesterday from the security footage. “That’s you, right there. See that? This is from when you put the trophy in the storage room. You remember doing that, Mister Mayor?”

  “Of course I remember that. So what? I put it in that room and then when I went to check on it at the end of the day it was gone, and I called you.”

  “And because of the way the video system is malfunctioning, nobody saw who took it.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And of course, you knew about the video system glitch. It was you who stopped paying the bill for the monitoring company, wasn’t it?”

  “I knew about that decision, sure, but I didn’t think it was going to…”

  “We think you did. We think every employee of the Town Hall knew about that issue.”

  “So what does that prove?” Andy demanded, tapping his fingers against his desk. “What does it matter if I knew that or not?”

  “That’s just the first clue,” Darcy told him. She picked up the duffle bag by both handles and dropped it on his desk. He jumped in his seat when she did. “This was the second.”

  She unzipped the bag and took out a few parts of the disassembled trophy. They’d left Tobias’s clothes in the evidence room, in a sealed plastic bag, because for this demonstration all they needed was the trophy. Even if it was in pieces.

  Andy frowned. “It’s not much good to me all taken apart like that.”

  “See, for us,” Darcy explained, “it’s actually more helpful like this. Take this piece here. This is one of the corner posts. See how it’s empty inside?”

  She turned it so the one end of the tube was facing Andy and held the other up to her eye like a child’s pretend telescope.

  “Yes, fine.” Andy waved his hand at the trophy piece dismissively. “Isn’t that the way they’re made? Hollow and cheap.”

  “Absolutely,” Jon agreed, taking up the explanation again. “This trophy was made from odds and ends that Gilbert Fischer had hanging around his house. Parts from other trophies with wooden levels in between that he carved himself. Carved and sanded and stained. It’s all pretty light stuff. Not much weight to it all.”

  “Practically none,” Darcy added, bouncing the post in the palm of her hand.

  Andy actually began drumming his fingers. “Again I say to you, why does that matter? Ever hold a trophy before, Chief Tinker? You look like the type who would have been a high school jock. Football, maybe?”

  “Baseball, actually.”

  “I should’ve known. Well, then I’m sure you know that as a general rule, trophies aren’t heavy at all.”

  Jon held his phone out again and pushed the play icon on the video, which showed them all Andy putting the trophy into the storage room. “It matters, Mister Mayor, because as you can see, when you put the trophy in the room it apparently weighed a lot more.”

  The image rolled forward, and they could see from the way Andy carried the trophy that it had weighed a lot more than plastic and wood should have, just like Darcy and Jon had noticed yesterday.

  “Er…er, well…that is,” Andy stuttered. “I guess it was. Yes. It actually seemed kind of heavy when I was putting it in the room. I guess…maybe I didn’t notice at the time?”

  Darcy laid the pieces out in a row on his desk. This morning, when Jon had mentioned how all the pieces fit together, this was what he meant. “So the different weight of the trophy was our second clue. Heavy when you put it away, light when we finally found it. Now, to understand the next couple of clues that we found, we really need our other guest.”

  “He should be here any minute,” Jon said.

  Darcy checked the Mickey Mouse watch on her wrist. “He really should have been here already. Did you tell him the right time?”

  “Yup. Let’s give him another few minutes.”

  “It’s just not like him to be late. Is it?”

  “I’m not sure. He knew how important this was.”

  “Should we call him?”

  Jon shook his head. “No, I’m sure he’ll be here. He won’t want to miss this.”

  Mayor Andy looked back and forth between them as they spoke, from one to the other and back again, his jaw hanging open with each new thing they said. “Are you two trying to be cute or something?”

  “Well, that’s kind of rude,” Darcy said to him. “Personally, I think I’m cute all the time.”

  “So do I,” Jon told her.

  “Aw. Thanks, honey.”

  “You’re welcome, Snowflake.”

  He hadn’t used his old nickname for her in a long time. He must really be enjoying himself.

  She certainly was.

  Andy stood up from his chair again, obviously upset. “Will you two knock it off! Either get to the point or get out of my—”

  A knock on the door interrupted him, and then the door opened before he could tell whoever it
was to go away. Gilbert Fischer took a hesitant step inside. He stood there a moment, scratching at his beard.

  “I wasn’t sure where to go,” he said at last, “until I heard the shouting.”

  Jon stood up from his chair, shaking the trophy maker’s hand as if the mayor wasn’t actually standing there glaring daggers at everyone. “I’m really glad you could make it, Gilbert. Here, take my seat. You’re going to help us catch a killer.”

  The older man stopped halfway to the chair Jon had pulled over for him. Whatever he’d been expecting when Jon told him to meet them down here this morning, it certainly wasn’t that.

  His eyes went to the trophy pieces on the table, and with a sigh he dropped the rest of the way onto the uncomfortable faux leather seat cushion. His hand scratched at his beard again.

  “You’re talking about that poor Mason Barnes, I take it? The guy who died?”

  “Murdered, actually,” Darcy corrected him.

  “We’re explaining it all to the mayor,” Jon said. “We were just up to the point where we were connecting the theft of the trophy and the murder.”

  Gilbert, in his dirty jeans and his stained coat, looked like he’d come straight from the workshop in his garage. He also looked extremely skeptical about what Jon had just said. “I don’t think you can make the connection between the two, Chief. I already told you my trophy wasn’t worth anything.”

  “If you must know,” Andy said gruffly, “they’re trying to pin it on me.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Jon said, switching back to their line of reasoning. “We just showed the mayor how heavy the trophy was when you brought it here, Gilbert. The thing had some heft to it. Now, look at this.”

  He picked up several of the disassembled pieces one at a time, flipping a few of the posts with a dramatic flair and putting them down again, to prove his point.

  “Well, sure,” Gilbert said. “Plastic and wood and paint doesn’t weigh very much.”

  “That’s what I told them,” Andy grumbled.

  “It might not weigh anything now,” Darcy said. “But it sure did when Mayor Andy put it in that storage room. Which means, when it went in that room, it had something more in it than plastic and wood.”