21 Death Takes a Letter

by K. J. Emrick

  “I think,” Darcy said, “you might be exaggerating things just a little bit.”

  “Uh-uh. You’ve never met my aunt.”

  “No. You don’t introduce me to a lot of your family.”

  “Exactly. There’s a reason we’ve never been to a Tinker family reunion.”

  “Did you introduce the girl with the lavender lipstick to your family?” she teased.

  He tickled her in the side until she begged him to stop. “You know, if you keep it up I’m going to buy you the same shade of lipstick and make you wear it.”

  “To bed?”

  “Uh, no. When I’m in bed I only want to be with one woman. That’s you. The girls from my past get to stay there. I don’t need their memory getting in the way of what we have. Anyway. Just be glad that I’m the black sheep of the family.”

  Darcy still thought he might be exaggerating a little. Then again, she’d been there when they had to arrest his sister. Maybe he knew exactly what he was talking about. If that was true, then could it be any surprise that Allison Tinker had so many problems in her life? Or that she’d ran away from home? After reading the last two pages in the file again, she closed it up and set it aside on the coffee table.

  “Okay,” Jon asked immediately, “any ideas?”

  “A girl on her own,” Darcy said, thinking out loud, “even a teenager, has to have resources to live. Money. Shelter. That sort of thing.”

  “I agree. When she left home she took a few hundred dollars that my aunt had saved in a jar. That’s not going to last her long.”

  “So she’ll need to find a way to either make more money, or have someone provide for her every need.”

  “Also what we were thinking,” he agreed, “and I don’t like the sort of places that leads us to.”

  Darcy frowned. “Neither do I. Let’s assume that Allison has at least some of your smart genes and she had a plan in place before she left. Something that didn’t involve selling her organs. Or worse.”

  “Yup. We’re still on the same page. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” Jon bent forward to pick up the folder again. “Thanks for calling me smart, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s the truth.”

  “Then why can’t I find one teenage girl… okay, see here? Everything we’ve done so far is right here in the folder. We checked with the local shelters, and the Boys and Girls clubs, and a dozen other aid agencies that a teenager might try to get help from when they’re off on their own. None of them have seen Allison.”

  Darcy glanced over the page as he pointed. She’d seen all of that when she looked through the folder. “All right, but what about groups that aren’t so official? Um. Sororities, maybe? Or high schools with afterschool programs? A friend’s house? Does she have friends out this way?”

  “None that we could find.” He shrugged and closed the folder again. “I’m at a complete loss. We keep monitoring her social media sites to see if she’s messaging with anyone but so far, nothing.”

  Ah. An idea formed in Darcy’s mind. She knew that game from when she was younger. When you didn’t want your mother to see you messaging with a cute boy, you made it look like it wasn’t you doing the talking. “She switched her profile.”

  Jon stared at her blankly. “Huh?”

  Her eyes smiled at him. “See? This is why you always need to let your official police consultant know what’s going on with your most complicated cases. Even the police don’t know everything.”

  “Okay, sure, but can you explain that last part to me again? In English?”

  “Let me show you instead. Hand me my laptop.”

  She didn’t use her computer much anymore, because there just wasn’t time for things like playing Candy Crush when you had a business to run and a seven-year-old daughter to take care of and a baby on the way. Mostly, it stayed in its black nylon bag next to the couch. Now Jon slid it out and passed it over to her.

  While they waited for it to boot up, he played with the hair at the back of her neck. It felt nice, and relaxing, and if there was any justice in the world they would find a time in their lives to just sit like this, on the couch together, while Jon played with her hair.

  That might not be until years from now, she told herself. Life wasn’t going to calm down for either of them anytime soon.

  The computer beeped as the desktop screen came to life.

  “All right,” Darcy said, turning her head to kiss his bare forearm where it rested on her shoulder. With a few keystrokes she navigated to the profile page she’d seen in the case folder. “So, we know that this is her Facebook page here, right?”

  Jon nodded. “Right. The police agency in her hometown has already checked with all the friends on her list who are local and none of them will admit to knowing where Allison is. That kid I told you we had in here the other day, the one who was laughing at us? That was one of the guys on her friends list.”

  “Well, sure. Most people get pretty tight-lipped when they have a police officer show up on their doorstep asking about a missing teenage girl. Look at it from their point of view.”

  “From their point of view,” Jon said, “I would think they’d want to help Allison.”

  “They think they are.” Darcy shrugged. “Sure, it’s stupid, but they think if she wants to run away they need to help her disappear.”

  “I’m not naïve. I know people don’t always like us. So what do you suggest?”

  “Instead of coming at them straight on,” she said, “you come at them…”

  “….sideways,” he finished with her. “I think I know what you’re going for here. No teenage girl is going to be able to live without talking to her online friends, even if she has run away from home. She’s going to stay in contact with them somehow. So if she’s not using this profile, then she has another one somewhere.”

  He tapped the screen and took the computer from her. Darcy couldn’t help but smile at the way they worked together. Her and Jon. Like two halves of the same mind. She loved him so much. When he wasn’t being pigheaded and trying to do it all himself, that is.

  “So,” he was suggesting, “we should do a search for other profiles based on her name. All right. Allison Tinker. Uh, Ali Tinker. Al Tinker, maybe? Tinkerson? Tinkerbell. No, probably not that one.”

  She laughed at him and took the laptop back. “You’re thinking like a cop.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “Usually, yes. But sometimes, you only see things in straight lines.”

  “Ah, so I have to look outside the box, do I?”

  “Yes, but let me do it for you.”

  She went into Allison Tinker’s homepage again. From there, she went to the top two names on her friend’s list, and then into the friends list of those names, and finally she checked all of the names against each other. Jon followed along with everything she was doing, giving suggestions as they went. In only a few minutes, they’d found a single name common to all of Allison’s top friends. A new addition to most of those lists.

  “There,” Darcy said. “Meet the new persona your niece is using. Abraham Thor.”

  “Seriously? What kind of a name is that?” Jon took the computer from her again, looking at the profile page. Created just two weeks ago, it had been very active in the last few hours. “Wow. This is going to let us zero right in on wherever she is. Seriously though, what kind of a name is Abraham Thor?”

  “Would you think of looking for her under that name?” Darcy asked him.

  “Nope. Not in a million years.” He leaned back on the couch. “I’ll have to call the guys down at the police station and let them know about this. Who’s working… right. Okay. I’ll take care of that in a minute. First, tell me about Linda. How’s she doing?”

  “She was very upset when she was here. She tried to hide it, but I could tell. She was on her way to meet with Roland Baskin’s attorney to read the will. I need to give her a call and find out how that went. Apparently, he was very rich
.”

  Jon arched an eyebrow. “Roland?”

  “Yes, can you believe it?”

  He shook his head. “No. Man, you’d never know it just to look at him.”

  “I know. That’s what I said. Anyway. I showed her what I found in the letters from Leighton to her mother, but that still didn’t give her any answers. I think that’s what is bothering her most.”

  “Sure. I can see that. It’s a terrible thing to have questions about your family and not have the answers.”

  She snuggled up to his side, not sure if he was talking about his family, or hers. Maybe he meant both.

  Holding her close, he kissed the top of her head. “So my love, any ideas about who might have actually killed Linda’s mother? You think money was the motive?”

  “I do,” Darcy said, “but at the same time I can’t see how. Roland was the one who had the money. What good would it do anyone to kill his sister?”

  “Who had a motive?” he suggested.

  “Leighton. Plus, he knew about Roland’s money. Plus, he was fooling around on Roland’s sister. If she found out, and broke off the engagement after that argument they had, he wouldn’t have had a chance of marrying into money. Could that be a reason for murder?”

  “Now you’re thinking like a cop.”

  “Hmm? How’s that?”

  “You’re asking all the right questions.”

  He laid his hand down against her belly, and she closed her eyes, feeling completely safe and warm. “I don’t mind asking the right questions. I’d just like some answers to go with them.”

  “We’ll find them,” he promised her. “Just you wait and see.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because you’re who you are, Darcy Sweet.” He started playing with the hair at the back of her neck again. “And I’m Jon Tinker.”

  “Yes,” she said, getting sleepy in his arms. “Yes, you are.”

  7

  Pastor Phin’s church was a modest building, and he kept the inside decorated in a simple way to accommodate people of most every Christian faith. He preferred to focus on teaching his flock to do good works rather than spending money the church didn’t have to dress up the building they worshipped in. Wooden pews were set up in two rows, facing the altar. A bare wooden cross hung on the wall. The fanciest thing to be seen was the stained glass windows crafted into scenes of birds flying against the clouds, and sunsets over mountaintops. It was a humble and modest place.

  As funeral ceremonies went, this one fit in nicely with the setting. Modest, and humble.

  The casket with Roland Baskin resting inside sat up front. Pastor Phin had already read several passages from the Bible, and now he was saying a few words to those people in attendance. All four of them.

  Jon and Darcy had decided to attend because after all, Roland Baskin had been a part of the town even if he’d been a curmudgeon who pushed everyone away. They did it more for Linda, though. This was her uncle, whether she liked to claim the family relationship between them or not. Izzy had come for the same reasons. The fourth person in the pew was Linda herself.

  “Well,” Pastor Phin said, rubbing his hands together before shrugging. “I suppose that’s all I can say. I didn’t know Roland Baskin very well. I’m surprised there’s not more people here.”

  “We’re not,” Jon and Darcy said together.

  Linda laughed. “Wow. Finally, an honest comment at a funeral. Phin, my uncle was a mean old man who made everyone’s life miserable. I think some people plan to meet us at the graveyard, maybe, but we’re not surprised they aren’t here.”

  Phin nodded, although his expression was still confused. “Well. I suppose every man leaves his mark on his community one way or another. Would any of you like to say a few words for him?”

  “I’ll say a few things, I guess,” Linda said. She didn’t stand up, but she did lean forward a little in the pew and fold her hands into her lap. “I know how everyone saw my uncle. He was the man who tried to ruin the Christmas pageant every year because he thought it was too loud. He was the man who yelled at every kid who came within fifty feet of his front lawn. I’m pretty sure he was the reason why there were only two houses on his whole street. No one wanted to build a house anywhere near him.”

  Darcy fidgeted in her seat because she’d actually heard her friend, Mayor Helen Turner, confirm that part about the houses on Roland’s street. The town couldn’t give away the properties on Charles Street, was the way Helen had put it. Maybe now they would, with Roland Baskin moving on.

  “What people didn’t know,” Linda continued, “was that he actually loved this town. In his own way. I went to the reading of his will yesterday. The lawyer informed me that Roland had a provision to give Misty Hollow a hundred thousand dollars to be used however the current mayor sees fit, so long as it gets spent on the town.”

  Darcy still couldn’t believe it. When she’d called Linda last night just before dragging herself up to bed, she’d told Darcy about that particular bombshell. It was so unlike Roland Baskin that Darcy had asked if Linda was kidding. Her friend had told her no, that wasn’t the real joke.

  The real joke was that Roland had also left her five hundred thousand dollars.

  Darcy wasn’t sure what Linda thought was funnier. The fact that an uncle she barely spoke to had left her a fortune, or that the uncle she barely knew was worth half a million dollars to begin with.

  It just proved what Darcy had always said. Things were never quite what they seemed.

  Phin brightened. “I don’t know, Linda. It sounds like maybe your uncle had a bigger heart than he let anyone see.”

  Linda took in a breath, and then let it go. “I remember when I was very, very young, Roland would come over to the house and he would play games with me, or listen to me talk about my dolls, or bring me little gifts like books to read. I think… I think that when Mom died, it took something from him. I think it made him mean. Somehow, I don’t think he ever recovered from it.”

  She looked over at the casket for a long moment, and no one rushed her. Finally, she lifted up one hand, and gave a little wave. “Goodbye, Uncle Roland. You won’t be missed, but you’ll be remembered.”

  Darcy thought that was the finest eulogy that she’d ever heard.

  The same funeral parlor that Roland had paid to take him in last night, and process his body for burial today, was waiting outside with a hearse that would bring him to the graveyard. With nothing left to say, the four of them watched as the casket was loaded from the church to the back of the car. Phin promised to meet them at the cemetery, and they all piled into Jon’s car to follow.

  On the way, Darcy leaned over from the front seat to whisper to Jon, “Did you find anything from that bogus profile account of Allison’s?”

  “Not sure,” Jon told her. “Grace and Wilson are looking into it now. Wilson’s from the younger generation. I figure creeping Facebook is something he’s better suited to than this old cop.” Wilson Barton had been promoted from night shift officer to detective when Grace was on maternity leave with Addison all those years ago and had made himself indispensable. He was a kind of protégé of Jon’s and was a very fine detective. He was also a personal friend of Darcy’s.

  “Did you just call yourself old?” she teased, with an arch of an eyebrow.

  Taking a hand off the wheel, he reached over to feel the curve of her belly where their child was growing. “Everything’s relative.”

  The whole ride there, Linda faced out the window on her side. The cemetery was on Applegate Road, a long and winding road that bordered a river lined with trees. Somehow, Darcy knew that Linda wasn’t looking at the scenery. She was lost in thoughts about death and the evil that people did to each other. Darcy was mulling over some of those same thoughts herself.

  The hearse turned off the road and through the wrought iron gate of the cemetery, into the rows of graves. They drove slowly over the bumpy path to the spot that had been dug out this morning
, in front of a headstone that had been set in place months ago. Roland really had thought of everything ahead of time. Stuff like that made Darcy wonder if maybe she shouldn’t put her own affairs in order.

  She felt like she was still a little young for that yet. There was time. She would be a mother to her new baby, and then when she had watched her children grow up, she would worry about making preparation to move on to the next world.

  “Wow.” Jon slowed the car to a stop behind Pastor Phin’s. “Look at that.”

  Cars were parked up and down the path. Around the open grave, standing and waiting for them to arrive, must have been half the town. Friendly faces, people they’d known most of their life, were all dressed up and ready to see Roland Baskin off to his final rest.

  Darcy saw Linda smiling, touching the edge of a finger to the corner of her eye to catch a tear. This obviously meant a lot to her.

  It meant a lot to Darcy as well. This was what it meant to live in Misty Hollow. People came together for each other, no matter what.

  The cemetery itself was busier than most of the people standing here realized. There were ghosts standing at several of the graves, floating up through the ground to see what all the commotion was about. Ordinarily, Darcy avoided coming here. All of these lost souls were attracted to her like a magnet pulling at iron filings and sometimes, the ghosts were very insistent about talking to her. A few of them had hurt her—without meaning to—in their rage to have someone listen. Some she could help, and she did the best she could for them. Others weren’t ready to be helped. They were still too angry, too volatile, for her to do anything more than give them her pity. Staying away seemed to be the best course of action.

  She’d be okay today. With this many living, breathing friends around her, she wouldn’t have to worry about the dead coming to visit. They would keep themselves well back, and just watch.

  Pastor Phin did a longer turn here at the graveside than he had at the church. With more people to listen, he added a few things about life eternal, and setting your affairs right while you still had the time. He talked about relying on your friends, and your community, and how good it was to see everyone here together. Darcy saw the look on the faces of people like Helen and Bruce Turner, and Sean Fitzwallis, and others. They all agreed with what the Pastor was saying. This was a community of people who cared for each other.