by K. J. Emrick
“Darcy!” Grace broke out in a wide smile. “That’s great. A little gross, considering he’s my partner, but still it’s great. Uh, it is great, isn’t it?”
“Um…Yes, I guess it is.” Grace gave her a puzzled look. “I mean, sure. I’m just not sure if I’m ready for it, you know?”
Grace pushed Darcy’s sandwich to one side and leaned in to her. “Sis, it’s been a long time since Jeff and you lived together. I get being nervous. But Jon is a great guy. And the two of you are great together. I’ve seen it. Don’t let old ghosts get in the way.”
Darcy had to smile at the way her sister put that. “Old ghosts.” Her life was about old ghosts, it seemed, both the real kind and the ones she carried in her mind. “I understand what you’re saying, Grace. Still…I just need to think about it.”
“You want me to tell him to slow down for you?”
“No, don’t do that,” Darcy was mortified at the idea of her sister getting involved in her private life. “Jon and I will work it out. Really.”
Grace tapped her finger on the table in a mischievous way. “I’ll bet he’s incredible in bed, isn’t he? All those quiet, strong types are. That’s why I married Aaron.”
“Grace!” Darcy’s face was heating up and she hoped no one was close enough to hear. “You’re not wrong,” she admitted.
The two sisters shared a laugh at the expense of their men and the moment helped ease the worry about why their mother would be coming back to Misty Hollow now. Still, Darcy had to wonder.
***
Darcy was back at work in the bookstore that afternoon with Sue. The younger woman was happily chattering away about Misty Hollow's annual harvest festival that was due to begin Monday of next week. She and Sarah had made plans to go together.
Sarah. Darcy had almost forgotten. She had to make that phonecall yet, but she still wasn’t sure what to say.
Sue’s description of the festival distracted her. A lot of the townsfolk would be competing in different recipe categories for all sorts of prizes, including the coveted harvest festival trophy. The trophy was a huge three foot solid silver replica of Misty Hollow’s two hundred year old gazebo in the town square. It was a huge honor to win the trophy. The winner got to keep it for a whole year until the next harvest festival winner claimed it.
“Oh,” Sue went on, “and all the food! I can’t wait to taste Henrietta’s jams again. She only brings them out for the festival. They are to die for.”
Darcy appreciated Sue’s flair for the dramatic. Henrietta was an older woman who lived quite a way outside of town. She was something of a local figure, making these amazing jams that she only sold once a year at the harvest festival.
Darcy knew she couldn’t put off explaining what she had found to Sarah or Linda any longer. Of course, she wanted to have something to tell them, rather than the nothing that she had right at this moment. She left Sue in charge of the bookstore and went back over to the police station. She figured Jon would have found out something by now. She hoped.
There was a different desk sergeant when she came in this time. She could never remember this guy’s name but he smiled and waved and buzzed her through just the same. Obviously, she was getting to be something of a regular around here.
Jon was at his desk, and when he saw her coming he didn’t smile or get up to greet her. She missed half a step, a frown on her face. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
That brought a short laugh from him. “This is our life we’re talking about. Something’s always wrong somewhere.”
She knew he was trying to be funny, but it didn’t strike her that way. Trouble always followed her. Everyone in town thought of her that way. She didn’t want Jon to think of her like that, too.
“I spent all day looking over the files about the fire in Sarah’s parent’s house,” he said to her, obviously missing her reaction to his little joke. “I even called up some of the police officers who worked the case back then.” He looked at her intently as he said, “There was never any body recovered from the fire.”
“What does that mean?” Darcy asked, confused.
“It means,” he said, “that you were right. She could still be alive.”
Chapter Five
Jon opened an old and worn manilla folder lying on his desk. “This is the actual case folder I got out of the archives. The fire was ruled as accidental. Wiring, is what it says. That would make sense. Those old houses usually have bad wiring. Sarah’s father, Louis, grabbed Sarah when he smelled smoke and ran with his four-year-old daughter out of the house.”
“Where was Angelica?” Darcy asked.
“Louis’ statement says he didn’t know. He’d been taking a nap upstairs. His daughter’s room was next door. When he got downstairs, the fire was already spreading and the only thing he could do was get him and Sarah out.” He turned a page. “The fire department arrived ten minutes after the first call went out. By then, it was already too late.”
“And no body was found,” Darcy stated.
“Nope. Louis went on to say that he tried to get back into the house but he couldn’t and he was afraid that his daughter would try to run in after him if he stayed inside too long. Poor guy.”
Darcy had to agree. Only…maybe not. “Why did Angelica get listed as dead if there were no remains found?”
Jon looked at the file in front of him again. “There was one police officer who said he saw Angelica through a window, trapped in the house while it was burning, but he couldn’t get a second look because the fire was too strong. The daughter, Sarah, said she had seen her mommy inside the flames, too. The report assumes her remains were burned up. And since she was never heard from again, it was a safe assumption.”
Darcy thought about it. Angelica, in the window of the burning house. Kind of like what Sarah said she saw. Only Sarah had seen two shapes, or at least her four-year-old mind had seen two. Hm.
“Well,” Darcy said, “we should try to contact the police officer then to find out what he saw.”
“Now you’re thinking like a police officer. Only, I tried to do that already. His name was Grant Peterson, and he died a few years ago. Old age, I think. He was seventy-three.”
Darcy smiled at him warily. “Well, we can still contact him. We just have to do it my way.”
***
Sometime later Darcy headed back to the bookstore. She needed to get things ready for the book club meeting that was being held later that evening. The Sweet Read book club held meetings at Darcy’s bookstore twice a month. She’d been doing the club now for a few years, and they’d gained a number of members. There were now thirteen of them who came on a regular basis. There had been five new members who had joined in the last month just after the tragic deaths of Anna and Jeff.
Setting things up gave her time to think about things. A number of the book club members were older residents of the town, women and men both, and she decided that the book club meeting was a great opportunity to grill some of them about Angelica and the fire.
Darcy sent Sue, also a member of the book club, to the Bean There Bakery and Café, after the bookstore closed, on a coffee and pastry run. Just before six o’clock the members started drifting in. Cora Morton and Evelyn Casey were the first to arrive like they always did. They were a couple of matronly women, always dressed primly with their gray hair pulled up into matching buns and they were also two of the biggest gossips in Misty Hollow.
Beatrice and a few others came in not long after. It looked like it was going to be a good turnout tonight. Even better, Darcy thought.
Darcy greeted them as Sue arrived back from her run to the bakery. They all helped gather up the chairs from the reading nooks in the store. People gathered napkins with pastries and cups of coffee and settled in. Conversation was a low buzz punctuated by laughter.
Dawn Wagner arrived just then. “Oh Darcy, Helen asked me to apologize that she can’t be here today. She’s doing some Mayoral thing or other.” Dawn’s eyes were
wide behind her thick glasses as she spied the pastries on the table. She quickly moved over to grab a choice éclair and a cup of coffee.
The last four members, Isaac Gibbs, Tommie Sullivan, Rosie Weaver and Preston Morgan arrived together.
Darcy wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of Angelica and the manor fire so she let the others talk about the book they had all been reading for the last couple of weeks. “Silver Twilight,” by a relatively new author. A lively discussion ensued and Darcy sat back quietly plotting how she could bring around to where she needed it to go.
It was Cora Morton who gave her the perfect opening. Cora had been telling them how her son was a fireman in Stonehill, a large city about fifty miles away from Misty Hollow, just like the main love interest in the book. She was bragging about it, actually, and the conversation got bogged down around that point.
Darcy took her chance and started asking all sorts of questions about her son’s job and Cora ate up the attention. Casually, Darcy asked, “Has your son ever worked at the fire department here in Misty Hollow?”
“Oh, yes,” Cora said, delighted. “He started his career as a volunteer fireman here in Misty Hollow. Went to the city not long after, though. They pay the firefighters there, you know.” Cora was nodding her head and puffing up in pride.
“Was he here when the Fender’s house burned down? You know, their old manor house?”
“Oh sure. He talked about it for weeks. It was one of his first call outs and he was so excited about it. Sure was a tragedy though, that beautiful young woman cut down in the prime of her life.” Several of the others agreed with her. Some wandered off to refill their coffees but most were paying rapt attention now.
“You knew Angelica Fender, Cora?” Darcy asked.
“Yes I did. Not very well, mind you, but enough to say hello in passing. I think we spoke a few times at the grocery store. She was always baking something, that one.”
“That was big news around here, back then,” Beatrice put in, earning a glare from Cora. “I remember the funeral. Buried her out in the cemetery on Applegate Road. Nice service.”
“Buried her coffin, you mean,” Cora argued, trying to gain control of the conversation back. “Remember? They didn’t have a body to bury. No wonder, either, the way that place burned down.”
Darcy’s heart skipped a beat. So everyone remembered there had been a funeral without a body. No one had wondered, back then, about the reasons for the empty coffin. Now, Darcy had every reason to wonder.
Chapter Six
“I can’t believe that no one in town even wondered a little bit about whether Angelica died in that fire or not.” Darcy was sitting at Jon’s kitchen table after the book club meeting ended. She was looking over the reports that Jon had found and drinking hot cocoa.
He was splitting his attention between her and his case file from work. Whatever this other case was he was working was taking up a lot of his time. She didn’t mind. He was hers, even when he had to pay attention to his cop stuff.
“Did you talk to Sarah’s father?” Darcy asked him suddenly. “I keep wondering what Louis thinks. Does he believe his wife is dead, too?”
“I didn’t even go near him,” he said absently, making a note in his own file. “This was supposed to be a quiet look into the facts, remember? What are you going to tell Sarah and Linda?”
“I’m not sure.” Darcy hadn’t gotten around to calling Sarah like she’d promised. She felt bad doing that but she still didn’t have any answers. “I want to wait and contact Grant’s spirit before I tell them anything. I absolutely don’t want to give them false hope. On the other hand I don’t want to lie to them, either.”
Darcy had convinced Jon to let her contact Grant later that night at the police station. Darcy didn’t have anything that had belonged to Grant, so being in a place where he had worked was the best she could do. They were going to wait until late, another few hours, so that there was no chance of being disturbed.
The ringing of the phone in Jon’s apartment made her startle. He smiled at her reaction and she stuck her tongue out at him as he got up to answer it. “Hello. Yup. She’s here, hold on.” He handed her the receiver without any explanation and then went back to his file.
“I’ve been trying to get you at home all evening,” her sister Grace said to her. “When are you going to move into the twenty-first century and buy a cell phone?”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Oh I don’t know, probably the twelfth of never.” She absolutely loathed the things. She’d had one for all of two days once. Turned out ghosts could make phone calls. She’d smashed it to pieces and never looked back. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Our mother arrived two hours ago.” Darcy could hear the tension in Grace’s voice. Her and Aaron’s apartment was small enough, and with their mom staying there, tensions were sure to flare.
Darcy had thought about offering her house to stay in, but the arrangements had already been made, and she wasn’t all that hot to throw the idea out, anyway. “How many times has she asked you about making grandkids for her?” she asked her sister.
“Too many. She’s asking about you, too. Get your butt over here and take some of the heat off us.”
“I’m busy tonight Grace, but I will come over tomorrow morning first thing.”
“Oh no, uh-uh. You need to come over right now. Mother is insisting.”
Darcy sighed. So much to do, and now this. There was no putting it off. When Eileen Sweet demanded, Eileen Sweet expected people to jump. “Fine. Tell mom I’ll be right over.” She hung up and handed the phone back to Jon.
He gave her a curious look. “Bad news?”
“I have to go and see my mother.”
Looking up from his file, he raised an eyebrow at her. “You know, I had to hear about your mom visiting from Grace.”
“So did I.” Darcy got up and gathered her things together.
“Should I go with you?” Jon asked.
Oh, how she wanted to take him with her. He would be a perfect shield when her mother got too pushy. She sighed and shook her head, though, deciding to take it easy on him. “No. Thank you, but it’s fine. I’ll go over by myself for right now.”
“Are you sure? I could always ask her what she thinks of me moving in with her daughter.”
Darcy was shocked. “Don’t you dare!” She playfully pushed him by his shoulders and it turned into him catching her around her waist and pulling him down into his lap. She sat there, nestled against him and slapping his chest. “You listen to me, Jon Tinker. You are not to mention to my overly stuffy mother anything about you wanting to move into my house, or about you sleeping in her daughter’s bed, or—”
“Or about what we did in the cabin all weekend?” he teased.
“Definitely not that!” She didn’t know whether to hit him again or laugh so she did both. “You promise me right now or you won’t get any more of what we did in the cabin. Ever.”
He laughed with her. “Okay, okay, I promise. But only if you promise to sit down with me and have a real conversation about me moving in with you.”
Darcy realized she’d trapped herself. Somehow, though, she didn’t mind. “I promise,” she told him, leaning up to kiss him tenderly on his lips.
***
On the walk over to Grace and Aaron’s apartment Darcy tried to get her head in the right spot for a visit with her mother. She tried to be happy about her mother being here, tried to muster some enthusiasm. It was her mom, after all. She fiddled with the antique ring on her finger like she always did when she got anxious or nervous about something. It was her Aunt Millie’s ring. All she could think about as she spun it on her finger was how Millie had been more of a mother to her than her real mother.
She had lived with her aunt for years, growing more and more distant from her mother. It wasn’t anybody’s fault really. Her mom just wasn’t ready to accept Darcy for who she was. Millie had been. She’d accepted Darcy without question.
When she reached Grace’s front door she took a deep breath and then raised her hand to knock. Before her hand even made contact with the door it swung open wide with Grace standing on the other side. Her sister grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside.
“What took you so long?” Grace hissed under her breath. She dragged Darcy to the kitchen where Eileen sat, drinking a cup of tea, sitting like the queen of her domain.
Her mother had always been a very proper woman. She looked older than the last time Darcy had seen her, with a few more lines on her face and with her professionally styled short hair completely silver now. She was wearing one of her trademark fashionable outfits. Tonight it was a navy skirt and light blue silk blouse, with a red silk scarf tied around her neck. Darcy always felt like such a scruff standing next to her. The jeans and t-shirt she was wearing today didn’t help her feel any different.
Eileen looked her youngest daughter up and down slowly, and then stood up and awkwardly embraced Darcy. Darcy was surprised by the hug. Her mother had never been a particularly affectionate woman. “It’s been much too long Darcy,” she said, that same haughty ring to her voice.
“Uh, you too, Mom.” Darcy couldn’t keep the question out of her words. This was more attention than her mother had given her in the last sixth months combined.
They all sat down at the kitchen table. Aaron was staring blankly at the floor and Darcy guessed that he had already been harangued by Eileen to the point where he didn’t want to say anything at all.
“Well I can only stay for a minute. I have something I need to do tonight,” Darcy said with a smile, trying to keep the conversation going. They chatted a little about the weather, the upcoming harvest festival and other mundane things. No matter what they said, though, Darcy got the impression that something was about to be brought up that she wouldn’t like. It would be time to make her escape any minute.
Suddenly Eileen speared her with a sharp look. “When am I going to meet this man you’ve hooked up with?”