by K. J. Emrick
"Is that why she was in town?" Brianna asked.
"Wait, I haven't asked my question yet."
The reporter snorted, a very unlady-like sound. "True. Fine. Ask away."
"Did you find anything else in the house besides that wallet?"
Brianna chewed on her lip. "You get right to it, don't you? Yes. I found a letter that the Widow Chartrand had started writing. In her bedroom. It isn't addressed to anyone but whoever it's for, it says she can't give them any more money. I'm guessing it was written to this Aimee woman. I figure she was freeloading in the house and mooching off the old lady. When things came to a head, Aimee killed her."
Brianna looked back at the house, like she was picturing the scene as it unfolded. "Maybe it was an argument, maybe Aimee thought she'd just kill her and steal whatever cash was lying around and then run away, but she got caught before she could leave. I'm not sure. Would you care to comment on that?"
There was a lot of things wrong with that theory, as far as Darcy could see. "Aimee was arrested in her pajamas. Not exactly what a girl dresses in if she's planning on killing someone and running."
"Hm. Good point. Didn't know that, about the pajamas." Brianna pulled a small spiral bound notebook and a pen out of an inside pocket of her long coat. "That will make a good detail for the story. Thanks."
"Sure," Darcy grumped. She looked around them, noticing something for the first time. Trees. The dirt road. "Where's your car?"
"Oh. I parked it down the road that way. Didn't want anyone to see it. That counts as your question, you know." She smiled triumphantly at Darcy. "So tell me. Was Aimee in town because her brother is a police officer here?"
Darcy weighed her answer a couple of different ways and then chose her words carefully. "She knew Jon was an officer here. She hadn't had any contact with him."
That answer made Brianna's eyes practically sparkle. "Oh. Jon. Excellent. Now I have a name to go with the story."
"But he didn't do anything," Darcy protested.
Brianna looked up sharply. "You know him? You act like you know him."
"Uh," Darcy cursed herself. "That's an extra question. Can't answer it. It's my turn. How did you find a note that Vivica Chartrand was writing when the police had already searched the house?"
She shrugged. It seemed like she did that a lot. "Police are human, too. They miss things. The note was all crumpled up in the waste basket. No one ever thinks to look through the trash. I mean, those bank statements on the table? Everyone must have seen those and the police left them, so obviously they aren't important."
Darcy felt her face fall a little. She really, really hoped Brianna was wrong about that.
"But stuff in the trash? That's always important. It must have been a first draft that the victim was writing and then tossed away." Brianna was proud of herself, and didn't mind showing it. "Now. My turn."
Darcy made a show of looking at her watch. She'd definitely told Brianna enough as it was, and she was giving away a lot more than she was getting. Time to end this. "I have to go, actually. Maybe we could meet some other time? The coffee shop in town, maybe?"
Brianna agreed quickly. She didn't want to lose a potential source of information, one that had let on how she knew the lead detective in the case, and Darcy didn't want to shut off that flow of information either. Having a newspaper reporter as a friend—or at least, a contact—might come in very handy.
They exchanged phone numbers, using Brianna's notebook paper. "Here's my e-mail address, too," Brianna told her. "What's yours?"
"It's darcy at sweetreadbookstore dot com. All lower case."
"Okay, got it." She put the notebook back into its pocket, patting it like it was worth its weight in gold.
"Isn't the trench coat a little cliché?" Darcy asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
Brianna smiled and waggled a finger. "No more questions, remember?" She flipped the lapel of her coat up and turned away. "Catch you later, Darcy Sweet."
Darcy watched her go, walking slowly down the dirt road like she belonged there, not acting the least bit in a hurry. Interesting woman, Darcy thought to herself. She didn't know what to make of Brianna Watson.
Looking back toward the house, Darcy was surprised to see Vivica's ghost had followed them out of the house. The translucent image of the old woman stared directly at Darcy, then crooked a finger before turning and walking around the side of the house. She slipped down below ground level a few times as she went but stayed mostly on her feet. Although, there was more than once she forgot to take a step, just moving ahead in the direction of the back yard.
"Wait!" Darcy called out, then stifled a hand over her mouth. Checking down the road, she didn't see Brianna. The trees were already hiding her from view. Relieved that she wouldn't have to explain who she was talking to, Darcy ran to keep up with Vivica's ghost as it disappeared around the corner.
The backyard was a big, open expanse of thick grass that obviously hadn't been cut before the snows set in this past winter. A back door to the house sat facing the yard, closed at the top of a wooden set of porch stairs. Darcy knew from being inside that it led into the living room. Pieces of paper and dead leaves were caught in the long grass, fluttering gently in a breeze.
Wispy tendrils of fog hung thickly across the top of the lawn. Darcy felt them coil around the legs of her jeans, a slithering weight like living things. Self-consciously she shook her feet, making the fog stir and scatter, parting from around her.
It wasn't surprising to her that Vivica Chartrand's house was being enveloped by this eerie fog now. It always spread out through the town when evil things were happening.
Darcy looked around for Vivica, but she had disappeared again, leaving no clue as to why she would have wanted Darcy to come back here. There was nothing out here except a garden patch that had weeded over, sticks poking up out of the ground with dirty pieces of string hanging from them. An old tire hung from the branch of a heavy tree near the end of the yard. Years ago it had been some child's swing.
Richard's swing, probably. Vivica's son would have spent many happy hours playing out here when he was younger. Now, he would always attach the sad memory of his mother's death to this place.
The Widow Chartrand's ghost suddenly materialized in front of Darcy's face, screaming angrily, trying so hard to be heard through the veil that separated life and death that Darcy was knocked a few steps backward by a force that was neither physical nor tangible.
She put her hands up in front of her face to protect herself. Not that she thought Vivica Chartrand could hurt her, but it wouldn't be the first time she'd been wrong about that.
Silence rang in her ears. The absence of the ghostly wail was so sudden that Darcy's head spun and she blinked her eyes in surprise. Vivica was gone again.
Kicking her feet at the mists some more, she decided it was time to go. "Thanks for leading me to nothing," she said to the air around her, not even sure if Vivica was still around. "Thanks for leading me to a yard full of weeds and dead leaves and old newspapers and…"
She trailed off. The ground fog parting at her feet showed her something she had missed before. A rag. A piece of cloth.
As she picked it up she saw it had dark reddish brown stains on it.
Chapter Ten
Darcy returned home to find that Jon had left already. No doubt he had a lot of things to take care of at the police station. His sister was still there, and the paperwork for her arrest still needed to be completed.
Hopefully Darcy could piece this together before Aimee got sent too far down the criminal justice system.
The silence in the house wasn't comforting like it usually was. It felt empty, now that she and Jon had argued last night. Now that she'd found out about all the secrets he'd been keeping. The ones about his family really didn't bother her, she supposed. It made no difference to her at all who his father was. It didn't mean Jon was now a different person just because Darcy suddenly knew about his dad being i
n prison. He was still the man she loved.
The secret that hurt her was the one about him looking into a job in another town. He just expected her to move with him if he went? How could he not have mentioned any of this to her?
Sighing, she sat down at her kitchen table and put the scrap of cloth she had found next to the folded financial documents from Vivica Chartrand's house. She smoothed the pages out, ready for her to pore through them. Speaking of secrets.
She had a feeling she knew exactly who this stained cloth belonged to. The question was, did it mean what she thought it meant. Setting it aside for the moment she turned to the paper statements. Vivica's ghost had been very insistent that they were important. Time to find out.
The first few pages were bank statements of Vivica's. Her bank account had drained slowly and steadily over the last few months, large withdrawals at a time, until there was almost nothing left. Less than two hundred dollars in the savings account, nothing in the checking. Interesting, but not unusual for someone of Vivica's advanced age who was living on a fixed income.
The next page was a separate bank statement that didn't seem to match up with the others. Darcy set it aside.
The bottom two pages were an unfinished application for a remortgage of Vivica's home. She'd never filed them. The pages were typed and not in anyone's handwriting. Vivica had never struck Darcy as the type of person to type out anything. Brianna the rabid reporter lady had found a letter in the trash bin of Vivica's room, and that had been handwritten, not typed. It didn't seem to Darcy that Vivica had filled out this paperwork. It hadn't been Vivica who wanted to get a loan from the bank.
More likely, whoever killed Vivica had been the one who filled these papers out trying to pressure her into getting another mortgage from the bank. Whoever she had been giving money to had wanted even more from her. But Vivica had already decided she couldn't give any more money to that person. That's what the letter in the trash had said. Her bank account was almost empty as it was. It made sense that she would finally say "no more."
And cutting this person off, whoever it was, had gotten her killed. Darcy could picture the scene now. In her kitchen, this person had brought Vivica the mortgage application paperwork to sign. She refused, but being the meticulous woman she was, she filed the papers neatly on the dining room table with her other financial documents. Vivica tells this person she's cutting them off, that there's no more money to give. Maybe she even shows them the bank statements.
Then in a rage, that person stabs her in the back and kills her.
That didn't eliminate Aimee as a suspect, though. In spite of her suspicions, Darcy had to admit that a freeloading wanted fugitive living in Vivica's home made a very good murder suspect. She needed more proof that Aimee wasn't the killer if she was going to be able to prove her hunch to Jon.
Darcy felt a frown come over her face as she leafed through the papers again. What was she going to do about Jon and their relationship? She turned the pages over in front of her, one at a time, as she weighed the pros and cons of him taking this job in Oak Hollow, trying to be fair minded—
Wait a minute.
She turned the page she had just read over again, and read it more slowly. Yes. It was exactly what she thought it was. A page from a bank account that wasn't Vivica's. This bank account had over five thousand dollars in it. It was an offshore account, untraceable except by the account number listed on the page next to the account holder's name. The person this account belonged to had no need to beg or borrow money from anyone. They already had more than enough.
The name at the top of the statement wasn't Vivica's. It was Aimee Tinker.
So there it was. Darcy leaned back in her chair, feeling the kink in her neck from sitting hunched over the table so long. It had been worth it. Here was the proof she had needed. The motive for Vivica's death had been money. Aimee didn't need money, because Aimee already had money.
Aimee wasn't the killer.
Chapter Eleven
After bicycling back into town, Darcy stopped in quickly at the Sweet Read bookstore. She'd been ignoring her business all week, first for the conference over in Ryansburg that she had to drop out of, and now for the sake of Jon's sister being arrested for a murder Darcy knew she hadn't committed. Leaving her bicycle outside, leaning up against the wall, Darcy walked in to see Izzy ringing up a couple of customers who were both renting copies of different electronic books. Small sales, but all of the small sales she'd been doing of that type were adding up quickly. She was very glad she'd had the idea to add electronic readers to her stock.
Izzy assured Darcy that everything was all right at the store. "I hadn't expected you back until Saturday anyway," she said to Darcy, her blonde hair recently cut short. "Let me handle it for a few more days. Use up the rest of the week. I'll take care of everything."
Darcy thanked her and quickly left to head over to the police station. Izzy had been a real godsend, more or less landing here in town right at a time when Darcy needed her. Thank heaven for little favors, she supposed, and even more so for the big ones.
At the police station she settled her bike into the rack outside the front doors and got herself buzzed through by the desk sergeant. Grace and Jon were both at their desks, talking about something that they cut off abruptly as they saw Darcy coming over.
She didn't waste time. "I know who the killer is, Jon."
He raised an eyebrow at her, his expression unamused. "So do I. My sister."
"No. It isn't Aimee. It's Richard."
At her desk Grace paused in writing something on a report. "Richard? Vivica Chartrand's son? Darcy you can't be serious."
"I'm with Grace on this one," Jon said. "You've been wrong before when you've gone off and done your own investigating, Darcy. I think you're doing the same thing here. Aimee killed a woman. I can't give her any excuses by even hoping someone else might be responsible."
Darcy tried not to be annoyed by what he had said to her. It was true that she had been wrong in the past and accused people of things they didn't do. She'd learned her lesson, though. Now she made sure before she pointed fingers.
And she was sure.
"Aimee didn't do this," she said, looking Jon directly in the eyes. "But I know who did."
She put a paper bag down on Jon's desk. She'd used it to carry the things she'd found at Vivica's house. Jon took them out now, the piece of fabric in one hand, papers in the other.
"What are these?" he asked her.
"Those," Darcy said, pointing to the papers, "are bank statements and a second mortgage application that Vivica didn't fill out herself. Her bank statements are very interesting. She was giving out large sums of money to someone. The trouble came when she ran out of money to give. When she did, the person she'd been supporting came and asked her to mortgage her home to get more money for them. She refused, and when she did, that person killed her."
Grace came to look over Jon's shoulder. "Those statements were on the inventory list the guys did when they went through Vivica's home, Jon. They jotted the information down but left the sheets behind. No one thought we needed them after we arrested Aimee."
Jon slowly nodded, reading the statements carefully. "My sister could still be the one who needed money from Vivica," he pointed out. "She was on the run and hiding out."
"I thought of that, but look at this," Darcy said to him. She showed him the single sheet of Aimee's bank statement, with her name and social security number on it. "See? Your sister didn't need money. Her account shows withdrawals, and no deposits. Plus she had thousands of dollars. She didn't need Vivica's money."
"Well look at you, little sister," Grace said to her with a proud smile. "We'll make a police officer out of you yet."
Darcy shook her head. "You guys can have it." Lowering her voice, she added, "I see enough dead people as it is, thanks."
"And how does that add up to Richard being the killer?" Jon asked, a little annoyed. He tossed the papers down on his desk and
then waved the scrap of fabric Darcy had brought him. "And what is this?"
"That," Darcy answered, "is a tie. Richard's tie. I'm certain of it. I'm guessing those are Vivica Chartrand's bloodstains. Which means he was wearing it when he killed Vivica."
Jon sighed heavily and dropped the tie on his desk. He kept hold of the papers in one hand and took Darcy by the other. "Come with me," he said. He led them down to the interview rooms. He didn't seem happy with what she had brought him.
When he closed the door to the interview room behind them, he immediately turned on Darcy. "What do you think you're doing?"
She didn't have to guess what he was talking about. "I went there on a hunch. I know I probably shouldn't have been in the house but Vivica didn't object to me being there so it's not like I was trespassing."
"Vivica didn't object…?" Understanding dawned in his eyes. "You're saying you saw her ghost there. What, did she tell you Richard killed her?"
"No, not exactly," Darcy had to admit. "She just got really mad any time I mentioned Richard's name, and she showed me these pages, and led me out back to where I found the tie. It all adds up."
"Well, that's great," he told her sarcastically, "except for one thing. When Vivica died, the house got left to Richard. I think he might object a little bit to your being there, no matter what his mom says, seeing that you want to accuse him of murder."
"I'm not accusing anyone. He did it! Wait a minute. How do you know the house went to Richard?"
He sat down in one of the chairs at the interview table. "Because I can do police work without talking to ghosts. I looked into Vivica's will this morning, along with her bank statements, while you were off breaking and entering people's homes."
"I didn't have to break in," she said defensively, crossing her arms over her belly. His words had stung her more than he probably realized. He could do real police work without having to talk to ghosts. Whether the insult had been intended or not, she had felt it.
"Darcy, I let you help me interview Aimee because I know what you can do. Not just with your abilities. You know how to read people, too. I needed that right then. And, truth be told, I wanted you with me because it was hard on me to see my sister like that. That doesn't mean you're a police office or that you get to contaminate crime scenes on a hunch!"