by K. J. Emrick
Darcy wished she'd gone with Jon. Apart from spending time with him it would have allowed her to hear what the Handyman Express owners said first hand. Of course, there was someone else right here in Misty Hollow who still needed to be interviewed.
It didn't take her long to decide to go talk to Rita Casey. It was better than sitting here and staring at the ceiling.
"Millie, be good while I'm gone," she whispered. From the corner of her eye, she saw the shadow of her aunt standing and smiling at her. One of the smiles she used to give Darcy when she was a teenager and she wanted her to know everything would be all right.
***
The La Di Da Deli didn't have any other customers when Darcy got there. The Monday morning rush was over and it wasn't time for the lunch crowd yet. Behind the long counter with its glass display case, Clara Barstow cut ham on a meat slicer, working the arm of it back and forth in a measured rhythm. Her brown hair was done up in a hair net and her white apron was smeared and stained. Darcy respected how she worked so hard at her own store. Not unlike herself, or Helen Nelson who owned a bakery and ran the town as its mayor at the same time.
"Good morning Clara." Darcy waited for Clara to finish cutting and weighing out the package of ham she was preparing. "Is Rita working today?"
Clara nodded, although she looked surprised that Darcy had asked. "She's in the kitchen. You can go on back if you want to, Darcy. I've got a special order to do up. Still have three pounds of roast beef to slice!"
Darcy thanked Clara and went around the counter, through the doors to the kitchen, where ovens and gas grills and a brick oven stood ready for the lunch crowd. Rita was sitting at the long, stainless steel table, in her waitress outfit just like she'd been wearing yesterday when Darcy and Jon had been here. She was reading a paperback romance novel, licking a finger every time she turned a page.
When she saw Darcy, Rita looked up with a little smile. "Oh, hey there, honey. What brings you in here?"
"Just out for a walk," Darcy lied. "How's your mother? We haven't had a book club meeting in a while."
Rita nodded. "Oh, she really likes that book club of yours. You have to start that up again. She would love you forever. Is that really why you came here?"
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you," Darcy said. "Do you have a few minutes?"
"Oh, sure. Nobody's come in yet for a meal. Not much for a waitress to do when she doesn't have any customers. Hey, did you tell Belinda I was looking for work if she needed anything?"
Darcy sat down in the chair next to Rita's. "I did mention it. I'm sorry, she still says she doesn't have money to hire anyone right now."
That wasn't really the way the conversation had gone, but she wanted to see just exactly why Rita seemed so eager to go back to work for Belinda. Darcy wasn't convinced yet that her motives were pure.
"Oh, that's too bad." Belinda set her book down on the tabletop, open with the pages facing down, and Darcy winced at the long cracks already in the spine. She hated to see books treated that way. "I really enjoyed working for the old girl," Belinda added.
Soups on slow boil tantalized Darcy with their smell. A ham was cooking in one of the ovens. "It smells great back here," she said. "Did you used to cook for Belinda?"
Rita laughed at that. "Of all the things she ever had me do for her I don't think she ever once asked me to cook. No, half the time we just sat around like two old crows and gossiped. She was a lot of fun for someone her age."
"And all that money she supposedly got from her husband sure would come in handy, wouldn't it?"
Rita's head came up sharply. Her eyes were narrowed and her smile faded. "It sure would. I guess she wants to keep it all to herself. Well. I guess I can't blame her."
Something in the way Rita said that piqued Darcy's suspicions. Someone was getting into Belinda's house and searching for something. Behind books, behind picture frames, and who knew where else. Someone who thought there was something to find. Someone who knew a secret way in.
And Rita had said something yesterday about cleaning Belinda's house upstairs, and downstairs…
"Rita," she asked, "where did you hear about this money of Belinda's?"
"Hmm?" she asked, already picking her book back up. "Oh, I don't remember, really. Does it matter?"
Darcy supposed not. What mattered was who would want the money badly enough to break into Belinda's house.
She thought she might be looking at that person right now.
Chapter Eight
Belinda's fake ghost hadn't done anything to hurt her. Yet. Darcy knew how these things went, though. If Belinda had the bad luck to walk in on whoever was trying to steal from her, she might wind up dead. Darcy had seen people murdered for less.
She had left Izzy to run the shop and gone straight back home. Once there it had taken her two tries to get Jon to answer his cell phone. When she told him what Rita had said, he agreed that it didn't mean she was the person bothering Belinda, but it certainly made her a strong suspect. He was still with Cassidy and Angela Whedon, he'd said, but he'd come straight back after he was done.
Before they hung up, he told her he loved her.
He'd never stopped telling her that, but somehow when he said it now it meant that much more for her.
It was the middle of the afternoon now. Restless energy had her pacing around her living room and picking up odds and ends in the already tidy kitchen that her mother had left spotless. She finally sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of lemonade and found herself twisting and turning the antique silver ring on her finger over and over.
She was just thinking about calling Jon again when the front door to the house opened. Her mother came in, smiling and humming. Not something Darcy was used to seeing.
"Oh, there you are honey." Her mother put down a paper sack of groceries on the countertop. A long crusty loaf of bread rose over the top of the full bag next to a bunch of celery and a package of spaghetti. "I thought I might make dinner."
"I've told you that you don't need to cook for me, mom." Darcy got up from the table and went to help put the groceries away, wanting something to keep herself busy. "I've been making my own meals for years now. Plus, you're my guest."
"I'm your mother, is what I am," she reminded Darcy. Then, in a smaller voice, she added, "Not to mention I invited James over for dinner."
If she didn't know better, Darcy would swear her mother was blushing. "Well, they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach."
"It certainly works for James." Eileen Sweet made sure to keep her back turned, hiding her expression, busying herself with organizing Darcy's pantry cabinet.
"Mom, I know I've told you this before, but I'm glad you found someone to share your life with again." Darcy folded the paper bag and put it in a storage shelf beside the stove. "I can see how happy he's made you."
"Happy?" Now her mother did turn to her, an amused smile on her face. "Well, yes, I suppose I am happy. I mean, I know I'm happy. But can I tell you a secret? I haven't even told your sister Grace this."
She leaned in close to Darcy even though they were the only two people in the house and whispered, "I'm so nervous I think I might burst."
"What?" Darcy was surprised. Her mother was the epitome of poise and reserve, a rock that would stand against time and weather both. Or so it had appeared. "Mom, I had no idea."
"I can't help it." Her mother began fidgeting with her hands, a habit that Darcy had only seen her do a few times, back when she was a young girl still living in the Sweet family home and she had nearly put her mother into hysterics with her talk of seeing ghosts and having visions. "I suppose it's natural. Do you think? For a woman to be nervous about marrying a new man?"
Darcy still found it hard to believe how much things had changed. Once upon a time, her mother had been happy to see her leave and come live with Aunt Millie. Fast forward to the present, and her mother was asking for Darcy's advice and reassurance. This was the sort of mother-daughter bond e
very little girl craved. Darcy included.
"I tell you what, mom," Darcy said, reaching for the copper tea kettle on its burner. "Let's make some coffee. Then you and I can sit and talk. Just us girls."
The relief in her mother's smile was genuine. "That would be nice, Darcy. I can't remember the last time we did that."
"Maybe that's because we never did. Time to start a new tradition."
***
Laughter and honest conversation made the best cure for nerves. That was what Darcy discovered sitting there at the table with her mother.
They sat and drank French roast coffee and talked about how Eileen had met James, and how they had come to fall in love even though Darcy's mother had always been so certain such a thing would never happen for her again. James had made her feel like a woman half her age, and made her feel cherished. That was her mother's word for it. It was an old fashioned idea, perhaps, but Darcy suddenly found herself wanting that for herself. Someone to cherish her.
Even though Darcy was doing her best to ease her mother's fear about a wedding less than two weeks away, the conversation gradually came around to Jon. Darcy saw the knowing looks her mother gave her. Apparently she was wearing her heart a little heavier on her sleeve than she realized. It was a slow process, opening up, but it felt good to finally talk about everything she was feeling concerning the amazing, distant, frustrating Jon Tinker.
He chose that moment to pull his car into Darcy's short driveway. Who says the Universe doesn't have a sense of humor, she thought to herself.
When he came through the door and saw them staring at him, he stopped, looking from Darcy to her mom and back again. "What?" he said.
Darcy's mother stood up and made a show of taking out pots and pans to cook dinner. "Nothing, young man. I think you and my daughter have a lot to talk about. Why don't you take her for a walk? Don't come back for at least an hour. I have a lot of work to do in here."
"Subtle, mom," Darcy muttered. She got up from the table, squeezing her mom's shoulder as she passed. She took Jon by the hand and led him back out through the door again.
"Do I want to know what that was all about?" he asked once they were outside.
"Mom is just being overprotective."
He sighed through his nose. "She hates me?"
Darcy kept them walking towards town. It wasn't far, really, just twenty minutes or so, and the afternoon was still warm and the wind rustled in the trees and she soaked it all in like medicine for her soul. "Actually, no she doesn't hate you. She knows we love each other. She's just not happy that we can't make it work."
He nodded, but didn't offer anything. If he had thought anymore about their situation he didn't say so. Instead, he rubbed his forehead and loosened his tie to undo the top button of his white button up shirt. "I talked to the Whedons."
Darcy held onto her good mood. She would make him talk about them, even if she had to duct tape him to a chair and employ slow water torture. Now wasn't the time, though. "Okay. Did the Whedons have anything important to say?"
"I'll say they did." He took Darcy's hands and gently pulled her to a stop in the middle of the path that ran along the street to town. "We have another suspect to interview."
Chapter Nine
Like any town where people lived and made a home, Misty Hollow employed a code enforcement officer. His job was to make sure people who were putting up buildings or making renovations to ones already in the town didn't build in a reckless or dangerous manner. All structural changes of any significance had to be approved through the code enforcement office.
In Misty Hollow the code enforcement officer was Giattano Franco. When Jon told Darcy what he had learned from the owners of Handyman Express, her jaw dropped.
Giattano was the nephew or cousin of Dominic Franco. Cassidy and Angela Whedon hadn't been clear on the family relationship between the two. What they had said, was that Giattano the code enforcement officer had come around to the Whedon's home just three weeks ago. They ran their business from their house, and Giattano had wanted to see all the information the Whedons had on a certain building project from two years back.
The concealed door in Belinda Franco's living room.
It was the next day, Tuesday, just five minutes before eight in the morning when Jon parked at the curb outside the Misty Hollow Town Hall. It was a two story brick building with ribbed white pillars out front supporting a triangular overhang with a large round clock that hadn't moved a second forward in decades. It was permanently stuck at three minutes before noon. Or midnight. Darcy had never been sure which.
"So the Whedons didn't say why Giattano wanted to know about their door?" she asked Jon. She looked up at the clock and wondered why no one on the town council had ever set aside funds to have it fixed.
"No. They didn't know. I only spoke with Cassidy but I got the impression that he found it really strange for a code enforcement officer to be that concerned over an improvement to the inside of a house."
They sat in silence after that, watching the town come awake. People hurried down the sidewalk and the traffic increased until it became what passed for rush hour in Misty Hollow. Cars rolling slowly down the streets, drivers graciously giving the right of way to everyone else. Just another sleepy morning in a small town.
Another morning with a mystery to solve.
Who was trying to steal from Belinda? The poor old woman didn't even seem to have anything to steal in the first place, but it was obvious that someone thought she did. Darcy was still betting on Rita Casey. Something about that woman just set warning bells ringing in her mind.
That didn't mean she couldn't be wrong, though. She rolled her eyes. Not that she hadn't been wrong more than a few times in the past. They needed to follow up on this new bit of information that Jon had brought them. Which was why they were waiting at the Town Hall for Giattano to come into work.
"Do you know him?" Jon asked Darcy. "Giattano, I mean?"
"Sort of. You know how it is in a town like this. I know who he is. Enough to wave to him, I guess. How about you? Did you ever meet him when you were living here?"
"I don't think so." He watched an old Volkswagon Beetle roll by, then turned his concentration back to the main entrance of the Hall. It was just being opened for the day's business by a woman in white shirt and blue vest. "I, uh, appreciate the loan of your couch last night."
Darcy turned her face away to stare out the passenger side window. Jon and she had talked late into the night, about Belinda, about the two of them, about everything, until it had become obvious there was no sense to his driving all the way back to Oak Hollow just to drive back here this morning. She had quickly offered him the couch and a spare blanket so she wouldn't have to think about how not all that long ago they slept in the same bed…
A cat walked by them on the sidewalk, distracting her. She was a pretty cat, with silky gray fur and a long tail. She turned her blue eyes up to Darcy for just a moment before hurrying on to whatever sort of appointment cats keep in the early morning hours.
At any rate, Jon hadn't said very much last night about the most important subject on Darcy's mind. Even though he'd told her that he still loved her, how were they going to reconstruct their relationship with the distance he had put between them? Every time she tried to pin him down for an answer he got them off topic, onto something else, until finally Darcy had just given up and told him goodnight with a kiss on the cheek.
She'd half expected him to sneak up to their room in the middle of the night. He didn't, no matter how much she would have welcomed it, and eventually she fell into a dreamless sleep that lasted until dawn.
"It's been a while since we were on stakeout together," he said to her now.
That, at least, brought a smile to her face. "It's not much of a stakeout. We're just waiting for someone to come to work—hey, there he is."
Giattano Franco, a flimsy looking man carrying a brown suitcase in one hand, kept his eyes straight ahead as he went up the fr
ont cement steps to the door of the Town Hall. He was tall and thin and the sleeves of his suitcoat hung down past his wrists. Thick glasses and a perfectly round head topped with frizzy brown hair made him look sort of like a bobble head figure, in Darcy's mind.
"Let's go," Jon said, already getting out of the car.
They caught up to Giattano just inside the heavy wooden entrance doors. The hallway inside was dimly lit, dark wood fixtures and trim lending an air of importance, giving the impression of weighty matters being decided here.
Darcy felt cold prickles crawl up the back of her neck as soon as she stepped inside. Almost like she was being watched. She looked up and down the hallway but besides her and Jon, Giattano was the only person in view.
She could feel another presence. One that made her feel uneasy.
"Mister Franco?" Jon called out, stopping the man with his hand on the knob of a door leading to an office on the left, a polished and shiny code enforcement nameplate attached to it. "Can we have a moment of your time, sir?"
"Of course," he answered, his voice remarkably deep and full considering how little there was to the rest of him. "Um, it's Tinker, isn't it? You were a cop here in town, right?"
Jon nodded. "I was. I'm actually looking into something that you might help me with. You're related to Dominic and Belinda Franco, aren't you?"
Giattano's face paled. "I…I was. To Dom, I mean. He, um, he died. Still related to Belinda." He tried for a smile and failed. "Right. Well. Is something wrong?"
Darcy could tell Jon was waiting for her to pick up the conversation but the cold sensation that gripped her was getting stronger, and it was making her uncomfortable. There was definitely something here in the Town Hall, and it's attention was on her. A presence, a ghost…something. She'd been in the Town Hall only a few times before but she'd never felt anything like this. She knew there was a story about it being haunted. It wasn't unusual for an old building to have its share of ghosts.