by K. J. Emrick
She imagined the fog again. Everywhere. Coiling, crawling out through the space between life and death. Darcy was here, in the world of the living, but she was in the other place at the same time.
Into the mist she sent some of her own life energy, calling out to Lindsay Burlick.
Time meant nothing in this space, but Darcy had the feeling that an eternity passed before a form took shape within the mist. Created by the mist, it twisted into sharp focus as a woman, short and slim, with the healthy glow that some girls are blessed with from birth and some work to attain with exercise and healthy diet. Like Lindsay Burlick had.
Her dark blonde hair was the same color as her sister’s. They shared a lot of the same features, too, from her high cheekbones to the purse of her lips. Lindsay was much shorter than her sister, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance.
“Hello,” Darcy said to her, moving closer without moving at all. This was a realm of thought, where things were often created by the mind, and where simple movements could have a thousand different meanings. “My name is Darcy. I want to ask you about, um, what happened to you.”
She was never sure how to approach this. Some spirits knew they were dead. Sometimes they hadn’t accepted that fact yet. Sometimes they didn’t take it very well when you suggested they were nothing more than a ghost of their former selves.
Ha.
Lindsay looked at her, head tilted to one side, an uncertain smile on her face. “I died.”
“Yes. You did. I’m so sorry, Lindsay.”
The spectral image shrugged her slender shoulders, her outline become fuzzy and indistinct. “Flowers won’t grow in a desert.”
“Um. I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”
Looking to her left, smiling, Lindsay waved her hand through the air, and a painted image of a sunflower came into being. Just like that.
“Oh that’s right,” Darcy said, thinking she might understand. “You like to paint sunflowers. I saw some of your paintings in your house, didn’t I?”
Smile sliding away into a frown, Lindsay curled the fingers of her hand into a tight ball. The sunflower painting wilted.
Behind Lindsay’s ethereal shape, two other forms floated into being. They were shadowy and distant, never coming close enough for Darcy to address them directly. More spirits. People who were deceased and attracted to Darcy’s summons. It happened sometimes. She couldn’t worry about them now.
In the painting, the sunflower continued to turn brown and shrivel. “You miss Maureen, don’t you?” Darcy guessed.
Lindsay didn’t answer. She spread her fingers again, bringing the sunflower back to life in its pastel yellows and browns. “They grow where there’s good ground to nourish them. They need water. Good water. They need the right attention.”
She was talking in gibberish, but it was oddly familiar gibberish.
Flowers.
Water.
Then she remembered.
“Bad flowers bring bad rain.” That was what Great Aunt Millie had said.
Lindsay’s face turned sad. “Yes. They do.”
“Can you help me understand that? What does it mean?”
Tears streamed down Lindsay’s face. She turned to Darcy. “I died.”
The other two ghosts shimmered into firmer focus, for just a moment, reaching out to Lindsay, or to Darcy. She wasn’t sure. They were distracting her, whispering now in words that overlapped and garbled together. Darcy wanted to tell them to shut up, to go away, that this wasn’t their time. Before she could do anything Lindsay turned away, floating closer to the heavy fog. Closer to the other ghosts.
“Lindsay, wait, please. Do you know who killed you?”
With a wave of her hand, the sunflower disappeared, and Lindsay began to disappear into the fog.
“I died,” she repeated, her voice hollow, mixing in with the shushed words of the others.
“Do you know who killed you?”
Like the Cheshire Cat, Lindsay faded back into the mist until she was only a faint impression of eyes and a pouting mouth. Her lines blurred and twisted together with the other two, mixing and swirling into a roiling shape that towered over Darcy on the endless plane.
It was Lindsay’s gaze that pierced Darcy as she answered the question.
Do you know who killed you?
“Yes.”
Then she was gone.
Darcy came to herself with a long gasp, sitting cross legged on the floor, her backside throbbing and pinpricks dancing along her legs. Jon was kneeling close by. He reached out to steady her as she worked her legs out straight, trying to get the circulation going again.
“Did you find her?” he asked. “Did she tell you anything?”
“Yes,” Darcy grumped. “She likes flowers.”
With as much detail as she could remember, she told Jon everything she had just seen and heard. Including the odd way Lindsay’s spirit had mixed together with those two others. Very little of it made sense, but there it was. Talking to ghosts meant taking whatever they chose to give you, and being happy about it.
“I don’t know which one of us has it harder. Me, trying to get information out of a suspect I’m interviewing, or you trying to get information out of a ghost.”
Her head was beginning to pound, and her mouth was dry. “I’ll take a living suspect over talking to a ghost any day. Do we have any water left?”
“No, but I can go downstairs and see if Rosie has some bottled water in the kitchen.”
“Thanks, Jon. That would be great.”
The knock on their door was loud, and not gentle.
Jon raised an eyebrow. “Wow. That’s pretty good room service. I didn’t even get the chance to ask for water, and here they are.”
“I don’t think it’s room service,” Darcy guessed.
The knock came again, followed by a man’s voice. “Mister Tinker, it’s Officer Powers. Open up, please.”
“No,” Jon agreed to Darcy. “I don’t think it’s room service either.”
On impulse she folded Lindsay’s letters up and slid them under the bed. The dark stains along the sides of the paper caught her attention before she hid them. Another clue she didn’t understand.
Jon opened the door to the same police officer they had met earlier down at the station. It was easy to see he wasn’t here to be social. His nostrils flared as he huffed in a breath. His eyes were tight. As soon as the door was open, he jabbed his finger in Jon’s face.
“I don’t care if you’re a police chief or an Indian chief in whatever back of Bourke town ya come from,” he snapped. “Here, you’re a guest of my town, not some modern day Sherlock. We do the investigating here. We talk with the victims. Not some tourist cop from America and his wife.”
Jon was staring at the tip of Kevin’s finger. “I’ll thank you,” he said, slowly, “to take that out of my face.”
“Oh? Would ya now?” Kevin said sarcastically. “Anything else ya want to thank me for? Tell ya what, Chief, why don’t you and the missus come down to the station tomorrow and explain to my Senior Sergeant why the two of you was talking to Alec Beaudoin today? Eh? Explain why yer butting into our investigation.”
Darcy watched as Jon stood there, not answering, waiting until Kevin lowered his hand away. Then he smiled a pleasant smile and gave a nod of his head. “Thank you, Officer Powers. I would like to come down to the station tomorrow. I think Chief… er… Senior Sergeant Cutter and I have a lot to talk about. Was there anything else we could help you with?”
That made Kevin blink as he shifted his weight, hooking his thumbs into his belt. He obviously hadn’t expected them to be calm and polite. “Uh, fine. Right. Then I’ll tell the Sarge to expect ya.” He looked over at Darcy sitting on the floor, and for just a moment she was sure he saw the letters shoved away behind her, but then he cleared his throat and went back to talking to Jon. “Don’t know why you’re so interested in a little thing like this. People get poisoned. Happens all the t
ime. A couple of hundred people die every year in Australia from poison. Looked the stats up myself.”
“Two of them right here in Lakeshore,” Jon pointed out. You don’t think that’s strange?”
He shrugged, although he didn’t seem all that sure anymore. “Three of them dead here in Lakeshore ain’t all that strange when ya think on it.”
“Three?” Darcy was shocked. “The third victim died, too?”
Kevin sighed out through his nose, realizing he’d said too much once again. “Speak to the Sarge. Tomorrow. Till then, stay outta our business.”
Leaving their door open he turned and walked away down the hall, his boots thumping a rhythm on the wooden floor.
She looked up at Jon, her mouth open but unable to find the words. Three. That’s why there had been three people in her vision. She hadn’t called up just Lindsay. She’d called all three of the people who had fallen victim to the poison.
“We’d better figure this out soon,” he said to her, closing the door before coming over to reach for her hands and help her stand up. “Alec Beaudoin survived. When whoever did this realizes the attack on Alec failed, they might just try again.”
Darcy knew he was right. Four victims, seemingly without any connection to each other, three of them dead.
If they didn’t do something, soon, there might just be four people showing up in her next communication.
A quiet knock at their door made her jump. She latched on to Jon, then rolled her eyes at herself and sat down on the bed instead. “If that’s Kevin Powers again, tell him the least he can do is bring me some water if he’s going to keep knocking on our door.”
Jon sighed, rolling his head around on his shoulders. She knew he was tense. Maybe later, after they had talked through what they were going to do next about the mystery, she could help him relax with a long back massage. In the tub.
“Who is it?” Jon called out this time, rather than open the door.
“Mister Tinker, it’s me.” Darcy recognized the voice right away. “It’s Ellie Burlick.”
He turned to Darcy, a “what now?” look on his face.
“Don’t look at me,” she told him. “I didn’t invite her.”
Jon let her in, and she insisted that he close the door, and lock it, while she stood in the middle of the room, looking around. “Nice room. Honeymoon suite?”
“Yes,” Jon answered, eyes still full of questions. “Ellie, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s been an impossibly long day. Why are you here?”
For the briefest flicker, Ellie’s stoic expression broke and Darcy saw lines of pain etch across it. Then with a breath she was collected and back to herself again. “I overheard you talking to the officer,” she said. “Heard every word. He’s a good man. We talked, some, when I first got here. Thing is, he’s being hampered by his boss. His hands are tied. Cutter tells his men this is an accident, they follow along. Like good little dingos.”
“That’s not the way police work is supposed to be done,” Jon muttered to himself. “Look, I’m going to talk to Senior Sergeant Cutter myself. Tomorrow. Maybe I can get him on board with the fact this was intentional.”
Ellie was shaking her head. “Cutter’s got rocks for brains. Not quite the full deck, if you know what I mean. Got the job off his father, who got it off his. That’s the way of it sometimes, this far from civilization. Cutter wouldn’t know a fact if it reared up from the bush and bit him on his bum.”
Jon’s face soured. That was going to make getting any kind of cooperation from the Lakeshore PD a problem.
“So where does that leave us?” Darcy asked. “We kind of need the police reports, or at least their help, if we expect to do anything more than ask questions.”
“Constable Powers wasn’t wrong,” Ellie pointed out. “You are tourists. You don’t have to do anything but go scuba diving and hike a mountain. Whatever people do when they come here. Why worry your heads over this?”
Those were all good points, Darcy thought to herself. Still. “Sometimes you have to help the people around you. Even when no one wants your help.”
That was something else her Great Aunt Millie had taught her, once upon a time.
Darcy’s answer must have been the one Ellie was looking for. She nodded to herself, like she’d made a decision. “I came to say you can trust Kevin. If you need help from the police, he’ll do the right thing. Might take him a bit. He doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers.”
“Good to know,” Jon said, “but I don’t know how much help that will be. Honestly I don’t know what we can do here. We don’t know the players. We don’t know the people in town. The killer could be walking around right under our noses and we wouldn’t know it.”
“I’m in the same boat,” Ellie told him, “and I haven’t given up. Thing is, I can’t stay here any longer. I’m going to lose my job if I don’t get back to it. Won’t do my sis any good to stay here and look into her murder if I can’t even take care of myself. I’m heading back tomorrow. Work for a week, then take a few more days and come back. Best I can do,” she added, with a little shrug.
Darcy knew that had to be a hard decision to make. What would she do, if it had been Grace who got murdered, and no one believed her?
Everything she could. That’s what.
Getting up off the bed she stepped close enough to rest her hand on Ellie’s arm, trying to give the other woman as much support as she could in a simple touch. “We’ll keep looking into this,” she promised. “Jon and I will be here for a few more days. We’ll do everything we can.”
Ellie nodded, not quite able to meet Darcy’s eyes. “Thank you. Both of you. You’re right brilliant folks and I thank the Almighty you came here when you did.”
“We seem to have a knack for it,” Jon said.
Ellie laughed, and seemed better for it. “Let me tell you what I’ve found out. Not much, I know. That taxi driver. The one what brought you here to the Inn? There’s something not right about him. Late at night, every night, I see him driving through town. Stops here, stops there, then drives on. Never picks up a fare.” She thought about it, forehead furrowed, then shrugged. “I was going to tell Kevin about it, but I’m out of time. Have to leave for a bit. But I’ll be back.”
She said it with such determination that Darcy could believe Ellie would never give up on proving what happened to her sister until the day she died herself. She also couldn’t help but notice the way she had called Constable Powers by his first name, in a very familiar way. There might be something going on between the two of them. Or at the very least, Ellie might want there to be.
That was something she knew a little about. She’d married a police officer herself, after all.
After they had said their goodbyes and Ellie had given both of them a quick hug, Darcy and Jon stood looking at the door to the room, waiting for someone else to knock on it. For now, at least, there were no more visitors. It was getting late. The sun was setting outside the windows, and their second day in Australia was almost over.
“We’ve got a lot to think about,” Darcy said, feeling a yawn building up inside of her. “What should we do now?”
He took her by her hand and twirled her around until she landed in his arms. “This is our honeymoon, Mrs. Sweet. I think we should get ready for bed. We can sleep, and start with a fresh look at things in the morning.”
***
In their room all the lights were off. Darcy had been trying to get to sleep for an hour now, at least, but it was hard to sleep when Jon was sitting up in bed, dissecting the finer points of Australian Rules football.
“How does this make any sense?” he said, not for the first time. “There’s like, five hundred people on the field. Which is oval, by the way. How does that work? Do they just run around in circles? Wow! Have you seen this thing they do where they hold the ball and then smack it with their fist?”
Darcy sighed. After a quick dinner downstairs, and lots of water for her, they had come back u
p to the room where she had kept her promise to herself and massaged Jon’s back while both of them soaked in a tub full of steamy hot water. They hadn’t gotten to bed for another two hours.
It had been nice to spend time alone with him but now all she wanted to do was sleep.
She rolled over until she was laying with her head across his lap. “Jon. It’s late. Remember we said we were going to get some sleep and start again fresh in the morning? Why don’t we let the Australians have their fun and—”
“I don’t get it. Why is this goal worth one point when the last one was worth six?”
“Ahem.”
“Oh, sorry. Sorry. I know you’re tired.”
She shrugged, bunching a fistful of his pajama bottoms into her hand. She was wearing his other pair, and one of his t-shirts. They were very comfortable. Big, and roomy, and warm. “Turn the game off. I’ll let you watch more tomorrow.”
Snuggling down with her, he turned off the television with the remote and kissed the top of her head. “No. Tomorrow we’ll find more time for us. I promise.”
“Depending on where the mystery takes us,” she added.
“Right.” His voice was already sleepy. “What you said.”
Despite what she had said to him, sleep wouldn’t come. She lay there feeling him drop off in stages, his breathing getting slower and even, his muscles relaxing. It wasn’t fair that guys could do that so easily. Her mind was still in overdrive with everything Ellie had said, and what they had learned from the fourth victim Alec Beaudoin, and with picking apart the communication with Lindsay. Even her brief talk with Dell about the ghosts in the Inn kept creeping into her thoughts.
When the digital clock on the stand next to the bed flashed two-seventeen, she gave up pretending that sleep was right around the corner and slid out of bed. Maybe if she splashed some water on her face and read a little, that would help. She always brought books with her to read on long trips. Sure, this was her honeymoon, and her thoughts had been more on her husband’s finely muscled body than on reading, but there had still been time to fit a couple of books between the clothes she’d packed, just in case. One was a mystery. One was a romance.