The Stolen Valentine (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery #5)

by Emrick, K. J.

  “Sis, I’m a police officer too, remember? And Aaron is still missing. I’m not going to wait here another two hours while Jon drives out to us. Now, come on.”

  Darcy understood her sister’s urgency, but she still knew she’d feel better with Jon by her side. When Grace got out of the car and stalked towards the front door she had no choice but to follow.

  The door creaked open on heavy rusty hinges and then closed with a solid thud behind them. Past that, they were stopped by a gate of wrought iron bars, decorative but locked. Darcy recognized the buzzer mechanism that allowed a store owner to open to customers or not as they pleased. It suddenly hit her what kind of store this was.

  On the other side of the bars were low display counters cased in glass and plastic to show off the merchandise artfully laid out to catch the light. Diamonds and emeralds and other precious stones shone in gold and silver settings. The place was an expensive, appointment-only jewelry shop. She’d only been in one of these places once before in her life. Everything was white and glittering and no doubt too expensive for Darcy to even be looking at.

  A man in an expensive gray silk suit, with an upturned nose and bushy white eyebrows under a bald dome, leaned out over one of the counters to look at them through the bars. “Hello. My name is Richard Bishop, the owner of this fine establishment.” He took another moment to look at them doubtfully. “Do you ladies have an appointment?”

  “No,” Grace explained to him. “We aren’t here to buy anything. We’re looking for my husband. We think he was here yesterday.”

  The man’s eyebrows knitted together. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand.”

  Grace held up her phone again with Aaron’s picture on it. She pushed the phone through the bars as Mister Bishop came closer to look. “This man. He’s, well, we don’t know where he is. We haven’t heard from him since yesterday and your shop was on his calendar yesterday. Can you please just tell me if he was here?”

  Mister Bishop looked up when he caught the tremor in Grace’s voice, then his expression softened and he looked at the photo more closely. “No, my dear, I’m sorry. He doesn’t look at all familiar.”

  Darcy could see the struggle Grace was having with herself not to break down in front of the man. She put a hand on her sister’s shoulder and took over the conversation. “Are you sure? His name is Aaron Wentworth. We know he was in the city visiting the local shops yesterday.”

  At the mention of Aaron’s full name, Mister Bishop’s eyes lit up. “Ah. Now, his picture is definitely not familiar, but I did have an appointment scheduled with a man named Wentworth at four o’clock yesterday afternoon. He never showed up so I just assumed he had changed his mind. A shame, too.”

  “Why do you say that, Mister Bishop?”

  “Well, the man had corresponded with me by e-mail. He had shown me some sample pieces he’d found on the internet, along with some sketches of his own. He had said he wanted something for his wife because she was going to be a first time mother. Well, I told him we handle that sort of thing all the time, but the piece he was asking for would have been quite unique and I’m sure I would have had a great deal of fun creating it for him.”

  Darcy smiled at Grace. She knew it. She knew Aaron would never just cut and run after finding out Grace was having a baby. Here was more proof of it, as if she or Grace needed it. A man wouldn’t ask a specialty jeweler to make something for his wife to celebrate the birth of their child if he didn’t want the baby. Not at the prices this place must ask.

  “Um, Mister Bishop?” Grace said slowly. “May I see the pictures Aaron sent?”

  Mister Bishop pursed his lips. “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Should your husband return and want to commission the piece, I wouldn’t want to spoil his surprise. He might take his business elsewhere.”

  Grace looked angry for a moment before it passed and she nodded. “The appointment he missed was for four, you said?”

  “Correct. I’m so sorry you’re having trouble. Should I hear from him, I’ll be sure to tell him to call home.”

  With that, the man stepped back, and Darcy understood that was all they were going to get from Mister Bishop. Which was fine, because it was obvious he didn’t know anything else.

  “Thank you for your time,” Darcy said to the man as she gently pulled Grace back outside. At least now they had a time frame for when Aaron had gone missing. He had bought a bottle of wine at ten in the morning, and missed an appointment he had scheduled for four o’clock. Six hours.

  What had happened in those six hours?

  Chapter Eight

  Darcy drove them home in thoughtful silence. Full night had come on, and the car’s headlights illuminated the road ahead. Grace looked wiped out. Darcy had never seen her sister like this. Ever. Once or twice she tried making small talk, but Grace just kept staring out the window at the night. Finally they pulled into the parking lot of Grace and Aaron’s apartment building.

  “What are you doing?” Grace nearly snapped at her.

  “Grace, you’re exhausted. You should get some rest.”

  But her sister shook her head. “No. I can’t rest. I want to check in at the police station.”

  “Grace…”

  “Darcy, I’ll walk myself there if I have to.”

  “Okay, okay. Fine, sis, I’ll drive you. Just promise me you’ll get some sleep after that.”

  Grace gave her a non-committal nod that didn’t promise anything. With a heavy sigh, Darcy pulled the car back onto the street and drove over to the police station. The night shift should have been on duty, which meant two patrol cars at most, but the parking lot was full.

  As they entered the office they walked into a buzz of activity. Officers packed the back room, working at their desks or moving back and forth, papers in hand, phones to their ears. They saw Jon at his desk, discussing something with four other officers, all of whom nodded in turn and walked away to different corners of the room.

  The officers around them greeted Grace with short nods or a few words. Now Darcy understood why the parking lot had been full. Every officer in the Misty Hollow Police Department, and some from the Meadowood Police Department that Darcy recognized also, had come into work. Fifteen able bodied men and women and they all wanted to help Grace find Aaron.

  Grace barely spoke to anyone. Darcy could see the tremble in her lip. Her big, tough sister was going to cry if she opened her mouth to speak. Darcy was happy to see how everyone had come together for her.

  When Jon saw them he waved them over. He stood up and hugged Darcy first, and then Grace. “I’ve got news. Aaron’s car was found in a parking lot in Oak Hollow.”

  “That’s the same town that the jewelry store is in,” Darcy said. “We were just there!”

  She quickly filled him in on what they had discovered, the time frame they had pieced together by visiting the shops in Oak Hollow. They’d stopped in to the rest of them after leaving Mister Bishop’s shop. The florist remembered Aaron, sort of, but only that he had been there in the morning. Not what time specifically. No one else could remember him. That left them with knowing for sure he was seen at ten in the morning and was missing by four o’clock.

  “Okay,” Jon said as he raised his voice and turned to the room. “Listen up, everyone. We’ve got a definite time frame now of ten in the morning to four in the afternoon. Work your contacts, contact everyone you know. Davison, how are we with surveillance footage?”

  Davison, a younger officer with unruly red hair and freckles, was sitting at a computer across the room. “It would help if I knew a route of travel. And a lot of the places in Oak Hollow don’t have exterior cameras, just ones inside.”

  “Okay,” Jon nodded. “Darcy, I’ll need you to give Davison a list of the stores from Aaron’s calendar. We’ll have the Oak Hollow Police follow up and get video surveillance from each one. Hopefully we can find Aaron on there in one or more of the stores, and narrow down the time frame more.”

  Darc
y was impressed to see Jon taking control like this. She knew he’d come from a bigger police department before coming here to live in Misty Hollow, and that experience was serving him well now.

  “I’ll give him the names,” Grace said, obviously happy to be able to do something. “You have someone going to check the car?”

  “The Oak Hollow PD already secured it. Their guys will go through it and let us know,” Jon told her.

  With a nod and a determined look in her eyes, Grace took out Aaron’s day planner and went over to Davison.

  “How’s she holding up?” Jon asked Darcy after Grace was out of ear shot.

  Darcy folded herself into his embrace. “About as well as you’d expect. If you ever went missing like this…”

  “I know,” he said. “I’d be the same if it was you.”

  “You think the surveillance footage from the stores will show anything?”

  “I do. Everything gets recorded nowadays. You did good work today, Darcy.”

  His compliment warmed her, even as a growing cold feeling spread in her stomach. It had been a whole day with no word from Aaron. She could almost feel the clock on the wall ticking away the seconds, the minutes, the hours. They had to find Aaron.

  They had to.

  Chapter Nine

  “You should stay in bed, Grace.”

  After spending another hour at the police station, Darcy had finally convinced Grace to go home to get some rest. She would need it if she was going to help Aaron, Darcy told her. Her sister had only agreed to it if Darcy stayed with her again. Jon decided to stay also after going home to get a change of clothes for each of them for the next day.

  This morning, Grace had woken up looking green around her face and had raced for the bathroom. Morning sickness had finally caught up to her. The retching passed in a few minutes, and then her sister had laid back down on the bed, curled up into the fetal position around her belly.

  “I should,” Grace agreed, “but I can’t. He needs me.”

  Darcy didn’t need to ask who “he” was. “I know you want to help, Grace, but Jon and I will go and investigate. You need to take care of yourself and the baby. That’s what you need to do for Aaron.”

  “But…”

  “No Grace, I insist that you get back into that bed. Jon and I will take care of it. We’ll find him for you and bring him home.”

  Grace closed her eyes tightly and whispered, “You promise?”

  Darcy twisted her great aunt’s ring fitfully, knowing her sister couldn’t see her doing it with her eyes closed. “Yes, I promise,” she said, not sure that she’d be able to make that promise come true. She knew she’d do everything in her power to make it happen, though.

  With Grace tucked under the covers again, she went out to wake Jon up. He surprised her by coming out of the bathroom clean and freshly shaved, changed into a light blue dress shirt and a new pair of slacks. “Good morning,” he said quietly to her. “Is your sister coming with us or is she going to stay here?”

  “She’s staying.” Darcy said. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “Not without an argument, though.”

  Jon shook his head. “Grace is one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever worked with.”

  “Runs in the family.”

  “Sure does. But it’s one of the things I love about you.”

  Darcy gave him a wink and then tugged him down the hallway into the kitchen. She had already gotten dressed in jeans and a plain green t-shirt. Not very professional attire, she supposed, especially standing next to Jon’s tall cop figure. She figured there would be a lot of moving around today, though, and she wanted to be comfortable.

  “Did you find out anything?” she asked him. Jon had come home sometime after midnight. She’d heard him come in but hadn’t wanted to wake Grace up by getting out of the bed to go and talk to him.

  “Not yet. I need to talk to the Oak Hollow PD today, find out about the car and if they found any surveillance footage we can use.”

  “Well, we’re heading there anyway,” Darcy said as they both went for their coats. “That can be one of our stops. What did your chief have to say about all this?”

  “Just one thing,” Jon told her. “He said to do whatever it took to find Aaron.”

  Jon had Darcy drive so that he could make phone calls on the way. She hadn’t driven in years, and here she was doing it twice in two days. Too bad she couldn’t enjoy it.

  Jon thanked somebody on the other end of the line then disconnected the call and put the cell phone back in his pants pocket. “That was Sergeant Vasquez, my contact over at Oak Hollow PD. He says they left Aaron’s car where it was after they processed it last night. There’s an officer in a marked unit watching it.”

  “Did they find anything?” Darcy asked.

  “Some fingerprints, but they all seem to be from one person and I’m sure that will turn out to be Aaron. Nothing else out of the ordinary. He gave me the address where they found the car. Let’s go over and look for ourselves.”

  “Sounds good,” Darcy said. “Maybe we’ll see something they missed.”

  The parking lot where Aaron’s old green Nissan was parked was practically empty of other cars. It was a public parking lot, not really next to anything. Darcy spotted the car right away where it sat next to a black and white Oak Hollow Police Department cruiser, a single officer sitting at the wheel looking bored.

  Jon went and spoke to the officer briefly before sending him away, while Darcy went to Aaron’s car with the spare set of keys they’d brought with them from Grace.

  Everything in the car looked completely normal. His accountant’s brief case was on the back seat. Loose change and candy wrappers sat in the center console. Empty trunk. In front of the passenger seat, Darcy found the bag with the bottle of wine in it. Next to it was another bag with an expensive box of chocolate truffles. She put the back of her hand to her mouth and fought back the tears. This was what he had been trying to put together for Grace when something happened.

  There wasn’t any sign of a struggle. Nothing looked wrong. Jon came over, rubbing his hands together. “See?” she said to him. “There’s no bag full of clothes. No bus tickets. Nothing. Aaron wasn’t running from anything.”

  He looked at her funny and then nodded. “I know. I believe you. I mean, I believed you before, but…there’s something else. We need to go down the street to the bank. The officer I was just talking to told me there’s something going on we need to know about.”

  She looked at him, full of questions she didn’t dare ask.

  “I know why Aaron parked his car here,” was all he said to her.

  ***

  The bank was the Three Twigs Federal Credit Union, a low brick building with narrow windows on it that almost made it look like a fort. They could see officers in dark blue uniforms standing inside, and a big burly man with sergeant’s stripes on his jacket’s sleeve standing at the front.

  Jon hadn’t said a word to her for the block and a half they had walked to get here. Darcy had been too afraid to ask. Now that she saw the bank, her hopes lifted a little. “Aaron came in here? Did he need money? Did he make a withdrawal from the ATM? We could get the video surveillance—”

  “Darcy,” Jon interrupted her, “it’s worse than that.”

  The sergeant at the door eyed them seriously. He had a square jaw a severe buzz cut, and Darcy could see he meant business. “Help you folks?”

  Jon took his badge wallet out of his back pocket and showed it to the sergeant. “I’m Jon Tinker, detective with the Misty Hollow Police Department.”

  The sergeant nodded curtly to him. “Heard you were in town, Detective. Afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, though. Had a robbery here two days ago and we’re processing the scene. You understand.”

  It wasn’t a question, and Darcy got the feeling they were being politely asked to get lost without being told anything. She also didn’t miss that the burglary happened the same day that Aaron cam
e up missing. Oh no, she thought. Was this what Jon couldn’t tell her? “Sergeant,” she said quickly, “we’re looking for anyone who might have seen my brother-in-law. Is there any way that we can see the security tapes from two days ago?”

  “We’re going through them now ourselves, Miss,” was the tight reply. Then he turned to Jon. “Didn’t tell her yet, did you?”

  “I was just about to.” Jon’s face was creased with worry when he looked back at Darcy. “There was a customer in the bank when the robbery happened. He matches Aaron’s description. That’s what the officer back in the parking lot was telling me. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Darcy felt like she couldn’t breathe. “What happened?”

  Jon deferred to the sergeant. The man chewed the inside of his lip for a moment then seemed to decide that it would be all right to fill them in. “Can’t tell you much. There were three robbers, all wearing black clothes and masks. Looks like from the video they demanded money, but then they left. With the teller. And the man who matches your brother-in-law’s description.”

  Darcy gasped. This was horrible. What would they tell Grace? “Wait,” she said, “why didn’t you tell us this yesterday? We’ve been going out of our minds!”

  The sergeant held his big hands up, palms out. “We didn’t know, miss. Jon here called my Lieutenant last night, from what I understand, and we didn’t even know we were supposed to be looking until then. We let you know as soon as we knew. Look, this is an active investigation. Without the okay from my higher-ups, that’s all I can tell you on scene.”

  Darcy fisted her hands and started to scream at the man to tell her everything right then and now, but Jon put a hand around her elbow, stopping her. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said to the man. “We’ll leave you guys to it.”

  Darcy was shocked as Jon led her away, back down towards their car. “What are you doing? We need to know what happened!”

  “I know, Darcy, I know. But he literally can’t tell us anything else without someone who outranks him telling him to do it. He put himself out on a limb telling us that much.”