Hiding From Death

by K. J. Emrick

  “I know she is, Jon,” Darcy said firmly. “I know she’s hiding from something, too.”

  “You know because of a face in a vision. That’s not anything I can take to court.” He brushed his hands together to clean off some crumbs from his fingers and then sat back. “Now, if I go to Laura’s house with this photo and find out for myself that it’s her, I won’t have a choice but to arrest her. So, it’s a good thing that I haven’t had the time to go check on this yet, don’t you think?”

  Darcy nodded, knowing what Jon was saying. He was putting himself in a tricky spot and he was doing it for her. She had never loved him more than she did in that moment.

  “Plus, there’s the whole question about Izzy’s daughter. Laura has a son, right? Alex?”

  Darcy had a few thoughts on that, but she nodded her head. What else could she say?

  “So there you go. Reasonable doubt. At least for me. There’s obviously a lot more to find out before we do anything. You should eat your sandwich,” he said to her. “Then maybe you have some errands to do? Like just outside of town?”

  Darcy pushed the sandwich aside and got up from her chair. Sitting down on Jon’s lap, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she flipped her hair back over a shoulder and locked her eyes on his. “I do have several errands to run. Starting with kissing you.”

  “Well,” he said with a happy grin. “You’d better get started, then.”

  ***

  Darcy hoped no one came to the bookstore while she was gone. She really would have to hire someone when Sue left. She couldn’t keep putting up the be-right-back sign and then leaving, even for something this important.

  Rushing down the path that led to her house and the one Laura had moved into, Darcy made quick time. She rushed up the steps of the porch and knocked on the door before she could lose her nerve. There was no answer. She knocked again with the same result.

  Finding a window on the front that didn’t have the curtain pulled completely closed, Darcy peeked inside. She couldn’t see anyone. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. Should she try going in? Logic told her no. It was dangerous. It was illegal. It was wrong.

  And she was going to do it anyway.

  After Anna’s death, Darcy had found the house key that Anna had given her. As neighbors, they had checked on each other’s houses any number of times. Darcy had put the key on her ring and kept it there, partly for the sake of having something of Anna’s to hang onto, partly because she had thought it might come in handy someday. It looked like today was that day.

  She fit the key to the front door lock, hoping Laura or the realtor for the house hadn’t ever changed the locks. It fit, and the handle turned quietly, and the door swung open without any alarm. Darcy breathed a sigh of relief.

  She stepped inside quickly and then shut the door behind her. Around her, the house was silent and still. She remembered the whole layout, downstairs and upstairs, every room, every door. The furniture, even, was still Anna’s. She took a moment to remember her dear friend, then got started on what she was here for. There was no way of knowing where Laura was or when she’d be back.

  Darcy didn’t know what she was even looking for. She just started looking. Papers on the kitchen table were all about the sale of the house, and all of it was in the name of Laura Lannis. There was nothing in any of the kitchen drawers but some silverware. There weren’t any photos or pictures stuck to the refrigerator. All in all, there was hardly anything in the house at all to show people lived here.

  Laura, or rather Izzy, was travelling light.

  The living room was the same, without even a photograph on the wall. The downstairs bathroom had two toothbrushes and a tube of paste and handsoap and other things, but no personal items. In the garbage, she found a discarded box of hair dye, dark black like Laura’s was now.

  Frowning, feeling like a thief, Darcy went upstairs to the bedrooms.

  The first one she went into looked like it was being used by both Laura and her son. A second bed had been set up, crammed in where there really wasn’t space for it. That was odd, she thought. It was like Laura didn’t want to let Alex out of her sight even when he was sleeping.

  There weren’t many clothes hanging in Laura’s closet. A few jeans, some shirts, and that was it. Darcy bit her lip, embarrassed, but went through the dresser drawers anyway, telling herself she was trying to help Laura and she needed to be sure. In the top drawer there was an opened pack of underwear, some socks, and a couple of bras. Nothing else. The other drawers were empty.

  As she was about to shut the dresser up again she stopped. The open pack of underwear was a plastic set of six like you might find from a department store. There were two or three pair taken out, but the others were still there. They caught her eye. They were covered in cartoon fish.

  Not really something a grown woman would wear, Darcy thought to herself. She picked the package up to look closer at it. They were cotton panties and the picture on the front showed a smiling little girl. They were sized for a child.

  Alex. Laura’s little boy was really Izzy’s little girl. What had Jon said her name was? Lilly. Lilly McIntosh.

  Darcy put the panties back. There was no doubt in her mind anymore but she couldn’t very well bring a pack of opened underwear to Jon and call it proof. Especially since she wasn’t supposed to be in their house in the first place.

  Even more so because she wasn’t trying to get Laura arrested. She was trying to find something that would let her help.

  Putting everything back where she’d found it, Darcy tried to decide what she should do next. It was obvious that Laura hadn’t left a note lying around that said, “My name is Izzy McIntosh and I need help.” There had to be some other way to find out what was really going on with her. Izzy McIntosh was supposed to have killed her husband. Darcy didn’t believe it. It didn’t fit what she had seen in her vision. Not to her mind, anyway, but Jon was right. She needed some way to prove it.

  “Oh,” she said, as a thought suddenly occurred to her. If Izzy’s husband was dead, Darcy could probably reach out to him on the other side and ask him how he died. All she would need was something personal of his to guide her through the murky pathways of the afterlife.

  Maybe there would be something downstairs, something she missed. Izzy must have kept some personal items from her past. Even someone on the run must have something that reminded them of who they used to be.

  She started back down the hallway to the stairs. That’s when she heard a woman scream.

  It was followed by the sound of the front door swinging wide and slamming into the wall, and the muffled voice of a man swearing. “Stop it, you’re hurting me!” she heard Laura yelling. Alex—Lilly—was screaming, too. “Don’t hurt my mommy! Don’t hurt my mommy!”

  Darcy didn’t think. She ran down the stairs as quietly as she could and then snuck along the wall until she could see into the kitchen where Izzy had been thrown to the floor. Two plastic bags of groceries had spilled around her, oranges and boxes of kids’ cereal and a broken jar of spaghetti sauce. A man stood over her, tall and dark, wearing a long dark coat and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.

  Darcy knew him. The man from her vision. She was sure of it.

  Lilly threw her eight year old body over her mother, crying hysterically and still pleading for the man not to hurt her mommy.

  The man raised a gun.

  “Everyone, he’s in here!” Darcy shouted as loud as she could, making sure to bang into the wall and push an end table over and make as much racket as possible. “Call the police!”

  It was probably one of the stupidest things she had ever done in her life, she thought to herself. Even so, it worked. The man’s head jerked up at the commotion and then he spun around and raced out the front door. He was gone.

  Darcy rushed into the kitchen. “Izzy, are you all right?” she asked.

  Izzy’s eyes grew wider. “What did you call me?”

  “It’s all right,” Da
rcy said to her. “Yes, I know who you are. I’m not going to tell anyone. Um. Well. Other than my boyfriend. He knows.” She turned to the little girl disguised as a boy, still hugging tightly to her mother. “Hello, Lilly.”

  Lilly didn’t smile, but she sniffed her tears away a little and whispered, “H-hello.”

  Izzy stood up, picking Lilly up with her. “I can’t believe this. Oh, I can’t believe this. First he finds me, then you! We’re not safe here. We’re not safe anywhere!”

  Darcy went to the phone hanging on the wall. When she picked it up and started dialing, Izzy rounded on her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “We need to call the police. That guy might not be fooled by my trick for very long.”

  “Trick? What trick? Where are the other people you were talking to?”

  Darcy listened to the phone ring on the other end. “That was the trick. There’s nobody here but me.”

  “You can’t call the police!” Izzy insisted. “I can’t let them know who I am!”

  “Don’t worry,” Darcy said. “This one already does. He’s my boyfriend.”

  Chapter Six

  Darcy and Izzy and Lilly sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea that Izzy had freshly brewed. Darcy had helped them clean up the ruined groceries, after making sure the doors were all securely locked, and in the mess of things Izzy had bought was a box of green tea bags. When Darcy had said she’d love a cup of tea, Izzy had looked almost grateful to have something to do that would keep her mind off, well, everything else.

  Now, they sat and waited for Jon. He had been out on another stolen car case. This time, the car had been stolen from someone living in Misty Hollow. He promised to be there as soon as he could. “You know what this means, right Darcy?” he had asked.

  She did. There was a very good chance that Jon would have to arrest Izzy. Unless he had a very good reason not to.

  “I’m still not sure I should talk to you,” Izzy said to her, turning her tea cup around and around. The ceramic mug was actually meant for coffee, but they were the only cups she had in the house.

  Darcy tried to look Izzy in the eye but the other woman kept looking away. “It’s all right,” Darcy said. “I promise, I’m here to help you. I know I may not look like much, but I actually help people all the time. I have this gift that allows me to see things that other people can’t. That’s what happened to me yesterday on your porch. I had a vision. A vision of you running away from a man.”

  Darcy went on to describe the whole scene perfectly to Izzy. Her mouth fell open when Darcy was done. “How can you know that?”

  “I told you,” Darcy insisted. “I had a vision.”

  Ordinarily, Darcy would never tell anyone about her gift. People either thought she was crazy or they laughed at her or they tried to get Darcy to contact long dead relatives who hadn’t wanted anything to do with the people when they’d been alive, much less now when they were dead. She had to convince Izzy that she could help, though, and the truth seemed to be the only way to do it.

  “Mommy?” Lilly said slowly. She sat in a chair pulled right up next to her mother and did her best to attach herself to Izzy’s side. Lilly stretched up to whisper in Izzy’s ear, “I think we can trust her.”

  Darcy smiled at Lilly. “Thank you, Lilly.”

  Lilly’s face turned pink and she went silent again. What she had said seemed to tip the scales for Izzy, and she visibly relaxed, like a weight had just been taken off her shoulders. “All right, Darcy. I’ll tell you the story.”

  “I know some of it.” The clock on the wall chimed the hour. Darcy looked at it, surprised to find it was only two in the afternoon. “You went on the run with your daughter and went into hiding, right? That’s why you’ve kept yourself shut up in this house.”

  Izzy nodded, staring down into her tea. “I couldn’t let them take Lilly away. If I’d turned myself in…”

  Darcy knew the part that Izzy was leaving unsaid. She was wanted for the murder of her husband. Lilly’s father. If she’d been arrested, then her daughter would have been taken away and put in state custody or something. No mother would want that.

  Looking down at her daughter with a sad smile, Izzy ruffled Lilly’s short hair. “I had to make Lilly dress like a boy and call herself Alex. I figured we’d be harder to find if we were travelling as a mother and her son.”

  Lilly stuck her lower lip out. “I didn’t like it. Boys have stupid clothes.”

  “Yes,” Darcy said with a laugh. “They really do.”

  “My brave little girl,” Izzy said. “Her daddy and I were having a fight. Mommy saw him with another woman and it started a fight.”

  Darcy nodded, understanding that Izzy didn’t want to say too much in front of Lilly. The girl was too young to hear that her father had been cheating on her mother, or that Izzy had caught him doing it.

  “So her daddy and I went away for a weekend,” Izzy continued. “We were supposed to fix what was wrong, have time to talk and just figure things out. There’s a nice motel just outside of Cider Hill, where we lived. Private cabins set back in the woods. It was very nice. The first night we stayed there, well, Chip and I argued a little but we talked it out and things seemed to be going good. We went to bed, and I felt better.”

  A single tear fell down Izzy’s cheek and she wiped it away quickly before Lilly could see. “The next morning I woke up, and Chip was gone. I don’t remember what happened. I slept like a rock, and when I woke up he was gone and there was all this…all this…”

  Blood, Darcy knew she meant. There was all this blood. It had been enough for the police to assume Chip was dead, and that Izzy had killed him. Poor woman, Darcy thought.

  Unless, of course, she really did kill her husband.

  “So I ran,” Izzy said with a shrug. “I went back for Lilly and grabbed a few of our things and we haven’t stopped running since last year. I thought I could buy this house and hide out here.”

  “You paid in cash?” Darcy asked. “That must have been a lot of money.”

  “It was the only way I wouldn’t have to prove who I was,” Izzy explained. “Things had been bad between me and Chip for a long time. I had put a lot of money aside, just in case, and I managed to cash in my savings bonds before everyone in Cider Hill knew I was a fugitive. We’ve had enough to live on, but my money’s just about run out. The trip to the grocery store we just took almost broke me.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” Darcy said to Izzy. She had begun twisting the ring on her finger, wondering how deep this mystery ran. “I want to help you, if I can.”

  “How can you help?” Izzy was obviously frustrated. “I tried to hide us, keep us safe. I changed our looks and moved us here to the middle of nowhere and it didn’t do any good. He still found us.”

  The man who had attacked them here in the house, Darcy realized. “Who was he, Izzy? Who was that man?”

  Izzy froze, her hands tightening around her mug of tea. “I don’t know.”

  Darcy waited for her to say more, but Izzy sat quietly and very still. There was a lot more being left unsaid but Darcy decided it wouldn’t do her any good to press the matter. No doubt that the man she had seen here in the house with the gun was the same dark man from her vision. There had to be a connection to what had happened to Izzy and who this man was. Maybe if she showed Izzy she really could help then she’d feel safe enough to—

  A loud knocking on the door made all three of them jump. Lilly clung to her mother’s side. Darcy stood up from the table, ready to reach for the phone again or run them all upstairs or maybe even grab the nearest heavy object to defend them. The teakettle looked promising.

  “Darcy?” a voice said through the door. “It’s me.”

  Jon. It was Jon. Darcy felt a wave of relief wash over her. Izzy hugged Lilly to her still and glared daggers at the door. “It’s all right,” Darcy said to her. It’s my boyfriend. Remember I told you about him? He can help us.”

>   “He’s the police,” Izzy said, unconvinced. “He’ll turn me in.”

  Darcy knew the spot she had put everyone in when she’d called Jon but she really hadn’t had any other choice. “I’ll tell him what you told me,” she said to Izzy. “Jon is a good man. He won’t let anything happen to you or your daughter.”

  Izzy still looked unconvinced but she allowed Darcy to go and open the door. Jon rushed through, pulling Darcy into a tight embrace. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Jon. Thanks for getting here.”

  “I would have been quicker but this case with the stolen cars has us all running in circles.” He looked past her then and saw Izzy sitting at the kitchen table with her little daughter. “Isabelle McIntosh, I presume?”

  The woman frowned at him. “I suppose you should just call me Izzy, now that you know. Everyone else calls me that.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence then, and in that silence Darcy could almost hear the gears turning in Jon’s head. He closed the door behind him, careful to lock it again, and whispered to Darcy. “Can I talk to you in the living room?”

  She told Izzy they would be right back. Izzy didn’t look happy about it, and Darcy worried that the woman would bolt with her daughter through the front door as soon as she and Jon stepped around the corner. On second thought, she realized that probably wouldn’t happen. Izzy had told Darcy about how she was almost out of money. Not to mention that she had changed her name and her looks and moved several towns over and none of it had kept her out of danger. Right now, this was the safest place for Izzy and Lilly. Darcy hoped the woman could see that.

  In the living room, Jon folded his arms across his chest and made sure to keep his voice down low. “Darcy, you know I have to turn her in. I can’t hide this anymore.”

  “Jon,” Darcy said in a whisper that matched his, “I think there’s more going on here than what it looks like.”

  “What are you saying? You don’t think she killed her husband?”