by K. J. Emrick
He gestured helplessly with his hands. He’d been her husband long enough now that he knew when she was upset with him, and he knew when there was nothing he could do about it but tell her the truth. “I didn’t want you to stress. It’s not good for the baby.”
“Jon!” she exclaimed. “We went over this. Last night! You don’t think it stresses me out more to know there’s something going on with you that you won’t tell me about?”
“Darcy…” Rubbing his tired eyes, he got up out of his seat and came around to her. He knelt by her side. He took her hands in his. “Just let this be my problem, okay? My sister’s kid is missing. There, I’ve said it. She went missing with her boyfriend and we assumed that because I’m her uncle, she might come here. Her mother came here when she was in trouble.”
“Yeah, sure,” Darcy pointed out, “and she ended up going to prison. You really think Allison is going to come here knowing that?”
Years ago now, back before Jon and Darcy had gotten married, Jon’s sister Aimee had come to Misty Hollow, running away from an arrest warrant. Most people knew that story, and they didn’t hold it against him. It hadn’t kept Jon from taking over from Joe Daleson as police chief. What most people didn’t know was that Aimee had already had a child. A little girl. That girl had to grow up without a mother thanks to Aimee’s selfish actions. Now, as a teenager, she was out of control.
It was true that Jon had never met Allison, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t come seeking out her uncle the police officer for advice. Just because he didn’t know her didn’t mean Jon wasn’t upset about his sister’s kid being out there somewhere, twisting in the wind.
“Every lead we run down comes up empty.” Jon shrugged. “Allison has been living with my aunt ever since I put her mom in prison. Sorry, ever since I put my sister in prison, I should say. Allison has been in and out of trouble for years. I hate to say this was inevitable but here we are. She’s nowhere to be found and I can’t figure out what to do. The next move is going to have to be hers.”
“Or,” Darcy suggested, “you could let your amazingly talented wife give it a try.”
He was already shaking his head. “I understand what you’re saying Darcy, but really, we can handle this.”
“Really? How’s that going so far?” She pulled her hands back from his. “I’m your partner, Jon, not your china doll wife! I’m not going to break every time you say two words to me.”
“Darcy—”
“No, seriously Jon. Tell me you think I can’t handle it. Go on. Tell me.”
He opened his mouth to argue with her, but then he abruptly started laughing. “Yeah, I know better than to even suggest that.”
She couldn’t help but smile along with him. “I’m emotional, you know. Don’t mess with me.”
He raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Look, you’re right about everything you said. I’m sorry if I upset you. I didn’t mean to.”
“Jon…” She took a moment to order her thoughts. Yes, she was emotional, but that didn’t make what she was feeling any less important. “Just let me be who I am, okay? You’ve always been proud of who I am. I have ways of finding things out that you and your officers don’t. You know that.”
“I still am proud of you,” he promised her. “But seriously, Darcy, what makes you think you can help find her when we haven’t been able to?”
“Of the people in this room,” she asked, “which one of us has been a teenage girl? Raise your hands.”
She raised hers. Jon, for obvious reasons, did not.
“Okay, I see your point. I tell you what. I’ve got a few more things to do here at the office. I’ll bring the folder home tonight and maybe we can go through it together.” He stood up, and offered her his hand. “How does that sound?”
“It sounds like something a partner would say.” That was better. He was not going to push her out just because she was pregnant. Although, she knew he wasn’t really doing that. He cared about her. That was all. He shouldn’t have kept her in the dark about this, and she wasn’t going to let him forget it. They were partners.
And she loved him.
“Am I being silly?” she asked him.
“No,” he said, “you’re being beautiful.”
That was, without a doubt, the right thing to say.
She let him help her up because truthfully, no matter how much she protested that she could do everything by herself, it was always nice to have a man help her out of a chair once in a while. Especially when her belly was too big and her feet were sore and she just wanted to crawl into bed and stay there for the next ten hours.
“You want me to drive you back to the bookstore?” he offered, almost as if he could read her mind.
“Oh, yes I would. I think the baby’s had enough exercise today.”
“The baby?” he asked. “Or his mommy?”
“Um. Both.” She smiled sweetly. “Actually, if you could drive me back home that would be better. Izzy and I decided to close up early today so we could look into things. Thanks, Jon.”
“Sure. I think I’d better go stop over to Roland Baskin’s house too, now that you mention it, and make sure Izzy hasn’t upset him too much.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Darcy said. “He actually likes Izzy.”
“Seriously? I didn’t think Roland liked anyone. Including himself.”
“Well, he likes his dog.”
“True. I was referring to people, however.”
He led them out the back door this time, to where he had his car parked. The drive homewould have only taken a few minutes. Roland Baskin’s house was in a different part of town entirely, so the ride gave them time to talk.
“Too bad about Leighton,” Jon said as they pulled out onto the street. “If I could have kept him on the phone just a few more minutes I’m sure I could have gotten something useful from him.”
Darcy had always appreciated his confidence. “You think the old Jon Tinker charm works from all the way across the country like this?”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “Yes I do.”
“Mm-hmm. I love you, Jon, but I don’t think he hung up because he was scared to match wits with you. I think there might be another reason why Mister Leighton Reeves didn’t want to come back to our fair town.”
“Is that right?” He turned to her as he braked for a stop sign. “Something the spirits told you?”
“Something a gossipy old lady told me,” she countered. “Sometimes the living give up more than the dead, you know.”
“Very true. Otherwise, I’d be out of a job.” He turned right at the sign, and they were almost there. “So what is this damning revelation that you got from the living?”
“Turns out, most of my book club members either knew Erika and Leighton, or knew their story. Just before I came over to see you I had a visit from Damita Marino. She told me that Erika and Leighton were engaged when he left town, but at the same time, Leighton was stringing along several girls besides Erika. Including her and Rosie Weaver. Apparently he was quite the stud.”
The car actually swerved.
“Are you serious?” Jon said. “Wow. Hard to imagine old folks like that, you know, playing the field. I mean, Rosie uses a walker to get around!”
“They weren’t old when this happened, Jon. They were… how did Damita put it? Oh, right. Young and beautiful.”
“More like the Young and the Restless, sounds like.”
“True, but I’m starting to be convinced Leighton really is involved. If he was dating that many women at once, and if Erika found out, or if he flat out told her that he didn’t want to see her anymore because he had someone else, or, or, or. I can think of a hundred different scenarios where he might have killed her, you know?”
“So how are you going to prove it?”
Darcy honestly didn’t know. “This is what makes it so hard to investigate a mystery this old, I suppose. You’re left to guess at all the finer de
tails.”
“Sure. Especially when your main suspect refuses to talk to you. Let’s give Leighton a day or two and then I’ll call him again. Maybe he’ll be more agreeable to talking to me then.”
“Maybe,” Darcy said. She wasn’t convinced, but she was willing to let Jon’s super cop skills work their magic.
Roland Baskin’s house came into view and Jon signaled to turn into his driveway. It was a little white square of a house with old brown roofing tiles. The yard was better taken care of now that old Roland was confined to his bed and volunteers from the church were mowing his grass and raking his leaves. Roland had never found the time. Even with those improvements it was still a depressing house. Probably, Darcy thought, from soaking up years of Roland’s negative energy.
“You know,” Jon mused, “it’s too bad you can’t reach out to Erika Becht’s ghost. Not doing your spirit communications because of your pregnancy must suck.”
“Yeah,” she said, trying to laugh that off. “Sure does.”The image of Erika’s spirit in flames came and went in her mind. That was not something she was anxious to see again
What was that all about, anyway?
“Sure are a lot of cars here.”
Darcy had been caught up in her own thoughts but now that Jon mentioned it, she saw that he was right. Roland’s driveway wasn’t very big and the three cars already here were taking up almost every bit of space from end to end. One of them, she saw, was Izzy’s.
Jon sat behind the wheel for a moment after they parked, drumming his thumbs against the steering wheel. “I don’t think I like the way this looks. Roland isn’t the kind of person to have company.”
Darcy knew he was right. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”
They got out of the car just as Izzy was coming out the front door of the house. Her arms were folded over her midsection, one hand lifted up over her mouth, her eyes distant and unfocused. It wasn’t until Darcy was standing right in front of her that she even noticed she wasn’t alone.
“Darcy?” She shook her head, and looked back toward the house. “Oh, Darcy it’s terrible. I can’t even… it’s just terrible.”
“What is it? Izzy, what happened?”
“It’s Roland,” she answered. “Roland passed away. He’s dead.”
6
Jon dropped Darcy off before going back to the station so she would be there when Colby got home from school. In the driveway, he leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I can’t believe Roland Baskin is gone. I thought the man was too mean to ever die.”
“Hey, be nice,” Darcy scolded him.
“Why? He was never nice to anyone else.”
“Well, that may be true, but it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead.”
He kissed her cheek again. “Well, you would be the expert when it comes to stuff like that. No angering Roland Baskin’s ghost. Got it. The last thing I want is for him to haunt me for the rest of my life. Like I didn’t get enough of the man when he was alive. I promise I’ll be a good boy.”
“Hmm. I’d much rather you be a good man.” Darcy ran a finger down his cheek. “Will you have to be at the office late tonight?”
“I shouldn’t be. You’ll have me all to yourself tonight.”
“You, and the folder for your missing niece, right?”
He chuckled. “Yes, my beautiful wife. I won’t make the mistake of shutting you out of my life ever again.”
“Oh, a good man and a smart man, too. See you tonight.”
She gave him a little wave as he drove away. That gave her a couple of hours to make herself a late lunch and maybe even go through Erika Becht’s letters one more time. For whatever good that would do her.
Darcy sighed as she closed the door behind her. Offering to help Linda Becht with the mystery of her mother’s death may have been a mistake. She had taken the letters back from Jon, and once inside her house she placed them on the table again, side by side. Carefully, she took them out of their envelopes and smoothed them out. Then she lowered herself into one of the chairs. She read each one, carefully examining them for something she might have missed. There just wasn’t anything.
So what was she supposed to do now? Roland Baskin had gone off to his final rest, so she wouldn’t be able to ask him anything about Leighton and Erika. Not unless his ghost came walking through her front door. As crotchety as he’d been in life she doubted that he was going to be more helpful in death. Leighton himself was refusing to come to town or even talk to Jon about any of this. She couldn’t do a spirit communication to talk to Erika because she was pregnant and worried about her unborn child. On top of all of that, the letters had obviously given her every bit of information they were going to.
As dead ends went, this one was actually dead.
“Well. I suppose I should get some lunch, then. At least I can do that much.”
She felt pretty useless having nothing to do but make herself some soup and a grilled cheese sandwich but really, what else was there to do for now? She set a pan down on one of the burners and turned the heat to medium high to warm up while she got out butter and bread and sliced cheese. She set all that on the counter, then went to the tall cupboard for a can of tomato soup. Comfort food. Just what the baby needed.
“Well, me too,” she admitted to herself, starting to hum a little song. A good lunch would help her think.
When she turned back around, Smudge was up on the counter, holding one of Erika’s letters in his teeth over the frying pan.
“Smudge, no!” Frantically, she swiped for the letter.
As she did, she dropped the can of soup.
It landed on its bottom edge and bounced. The impact popped off the pull-tab top, and soup exploded all over the linoleum floor.
Smudge, for a very old cat, could still move like a jackrabbit when he wanted to. He jumped down from the countertop beside the stove, to the floor, trailing the letter behind him.
Darcy jumped around the lines of spilled red soup and grabbed for her cat. Smudge jumped out of her grasp, and made straight for one of the chairs around the kitchen table.
“Smudge, get back here!”
That was where his burst of youth failed him, however. He meant to jump up onto the chair, and then put the letter back down on the kitchen table for all Darcy knew, but he faltered partway through. He couldn’t quite make it. Dropping his front paws to the floor again he stood there on trembling legs, head drooping, breathing heavily. Darcy knelt down beside him with her palm stretched out.
“Give it.”
With apologetic eyes, he dropped the letter into her hand.
He mewed at her, but Darcy wasn’t having any of that. “You could have really damaged this, Smudge. If it had caught fire where would we be then? I mean, sure, there’s nothing important on this thing, but still. It doesn’t belong to us and it’s part of the mystery, so…”
Her voice trailed off as she looked down at the letter.
It was different.
In between the lines of words that had been there before, those oddly double-spaced lines, fainter words had somehow appeared. She stared at them. They were an odd brown color and barely visible. Almost like they’d been burned onto the paper.
Darcy gasped.
Burned onto the paper.
Suddenly, she understood why Smudge had put the letter practically into the frying pan. Why Colby had tried to hold a lighter up to the paper’s edge. Why Erika’s ghost had appeared in flames. It all meant the same thing.
Darcy jumped up, excited at this new development. She put the letter Smudge had taken to the stove back onto the table. What she was thinking was crazy, but not so crazy that it was impossible.
Picking up a different one of the three letters from the kitchen table she brought it over to the stove. Carefully holding it by two opposite edges, she held it right over the hot frying pan. Heat. What she needed was heat. She got as close as she could without touching the paper to the pan, feeling the warmth of it against her skin. Wou
ld it be enough?
She kept at it for a few seconds, which became a minute, and then longer.
Then sure enough, words began to come through, appearing in brown letters.
“A secret message!” Darcy exclaimed. She couldn’t believe this. Here was the clue she had missed, right under her nose. The smell of the paper! Now she understood. She had thought that the faint smell of citrus was from the paper being so old. That hadn’t been it at all.
When she was a little girl her and her friends would send secret messages to each other in invisible ink made from freshly squeezed lemon juice. It was a fun game, and all that was needed to reveal what they had written was a little heat. A match, or a hand iron… or a burner on the stove.
She knelt down with Smudge again, and gently rubbed the fur around his neck. He leaned into her attention with a loud purring. “Good cat,” she told him. “Guess I should have trusted you all along. Haven’t lost a step in your old age, have you?”
He pushed his head into her hand, luxuriating in her touch. Then he turned away with a little hop, and looked back at her. His eyes closed, and they opened, and that was his way of saying next time, just listen to the cat.
Tiptoe was waiting for him in the living room, and Darcy watched the two of them bump shoulders as they made their way over to the stairs. Smudge was probably looking to take a nap in one of the bedrooms. Well. He’d earned it, Darcy decided.
She brought each letter to the stove in turn, holding them over the heat from the frying pan. It took some time, because she had to be careful not to let the old paper get too hot, but eventually all of the hidden words were revealed. When she was done, she turned the stove off. Lunch could wait.
Now she sat down and read what she had been missing. The secret writing on the first two letters was just lovey-dovey stuff. How Leighton thought Erika was beautiful, and how he adored her more than the stars themselves, and all that stuff that men think women like to hear. Which, of course, they do. Darcy smiled at the flowery expressions of Leighton’s love.
At the same time, she tried to fit these words into the picture of Leighton that Damita had painted for them this morning at the bookstore. The man was supposed to be stringing several women along, all at the same time. Was he writing letters like this to all of them? Words hidden in lemon juice that only his, um, girlfriends were supposed to see? That didn’t sound right to her. The kind of love she was reading here seemed to be a singular kind of love, meant just for the two people on either end of the letters.