Til Death Do Us Part (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 16)

by K. J. Emrick

  “What’s up mom?” Leo asked into the heavy silence.

  Jayne reached up and grabbed the necklace from under his shirt. “Where did you get this? Hm? Tell me. Right now.”

  Leo’s face froze like a deer caught in headlights. His mouth opened and closed and he cleared his throat before very deliberately pulling the necklace back. “This is mine.”

  “Don’t talk back to me! Where did you get it?”

  He clamped his mouth shut, and crossed his arms.

  “It’s stolen, isn’t it? Did you steal this? Did you steal it from those graves? Tell me!”

  In a flash, Leo brought his arm up at his mother, screaming “No!” at the top of his lungs.

  The slap was loud. Darcy shrank back reflexively even as Jon was rushing forward, catching Leo’s arm and twisting it behind his back and holding him down on the floor.

  Jayne held her face in her hands. It was obvious she was hurt. Probably more on the inside than anywhere else.

  Everything had happened so fast, and then it was over.

  “Take him away,” Jayne told Jon miserably. “Get him and that tramp girlfriend of his out of my home.”

  Jon always carried a handcuff case on his belt, next to the holster with his little automatic. With practiced moves he took the cuffs out and settled them around Leo’s wrists, binding his arms behind him. “Leo Phillips, you’re under arrest for assault.”

  He pulled Leo closer. “That, and for the desecration of the Misty Hollow cemetery.”

  Leo struggled, and swore, but Jon moved him steadily out the door and down to their car. “I’ll sit with him in the back,” he said to Darcy. “You drive us back to town, all right?”

  Darcy nodded, looking back over her shoulder at Jayne, standing there in her doorway, watching her son being dragged away in handcuffs. There was no expression on her face. None at all. It was almost like she’d expected something like this to happen.

  As Jon was reading Leo his Miranda warnings in preparation for asking him more questions, Darcy went back to the front porch of the mansion that Judge Phillips called her home. A lot of wealth was on display here. It occurred to Darcy that having money was no assurance that bad things wouldn’t happen in your family.

  “Jayne, I’m so sorry,” she said. It sounded so inadequate. The clues had led them here, and now they had the person responsible for desecrating all of those graves under arrest. No words could change that.

  “He wasn’t always like this, you know.” Jayne shook her head, her fingertips touching the red mark on her cheek where she’d been slapped. “Not this bad. Not until he took up with that girl. I’ve managed to keep him out of jail all this time. Gotten him community service and probation and such whenever he did something stupid. Hmph. That’s where he met Stephanie in the first place, you know. His community service. Her, and those other hooligan friends of his. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t do him any favors by helping him avoid responsibility. Maybe a few days in jail will be just what he needs.”

  She looked at Darcy now, her eyes watery. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe my son did this terrible thing. Why? For what? It’s not like he needed money! Oh, and the funniest part? That community service I got him? Fifty hours. He was doing them in the cemetery. He was helping the church take care of the graves. Isn’t that just the funniest thing…you’ve ever…”

  She turned and fled back into the house before Darcy could see her break down.

  Over in the driveway, Leo’s blonde girlfriend stood nervously watching her boyfriend being arrested. She was talking into her cellphone as she shifted from foot to foot. Darcy wished she could hear the conversation, but it really didn’t matter.

  They had their man.

  Chapter Eleven

  “At least life with you is never boring,”

  Darcy leaned into his side as she said it, feeling his quiet laughter. They were back at the police station again, this time with Leo handcuffed to the interview room table.

  “That’s funny,” Jon said to her, “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  Brianna Watson had been camped out at the front door of the station again, so Darcy got to keep her promise to let her in on every step of the investigation. Jon had made an impromptu statement to the reporters assembled there, Brianna included, which basically only said that they were following another lead and hoped to have the matter resolved with an arrest soon.

  In answer to whether the suspect Jon was bringing into the building in handcuffs was the grave robber, Jon told them no. He was under arrest for a domestic situation.

  Which was true, so far as it went, but every reporter there knew who Leo was. That was a story in itself.

  The necklace Leo had been wearing was in evidence now. They would have to do some more research to prove it was the necklace listed in the church records, but him refusing to say where the necklace had come from was proof enough for Darcy. Leo had been caught red handed. Now all that was left to do was find the rest of the things taken from the cemetery.

  There were four Misty Hollow police officers back at Jayne’s house right now, searching the whole place with her consent. They’d find the rest of the items soon enough.

  “How long are you going to let him stew?” Darcy asked, meaning Leo, sitting there on the other side of the one-way mirror.

  “That’s probably long enough. Mind coming in with me?”

  “Jon, I’m not a police officer. I’m just—”

  “A consultant. I know.” He hugged her closer. “The prettiest consultant I’ve ever known. Besides, it’s never stopped you before.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. Are you asking me to come in there so I can listen in on the interview or so I can use my sixth sense to find out what he’s not saying?”

  “Why, Darcy Sweet, would I ever use you in such a way?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said, nudging him in his side. “Fine. Isn’t there some legal issue with a psychic getting information from a suspect when he says he doesn’t want to talk?”

  “Hmm,” he said, as if he hadn’t already thought of that. “I’m pretty sure there’s no law against it. The people who wrote the law books didn’t have people like you in mind when they did.”

  She let him kiss her, and then they went in to the interview together.

  “I’m not talking to you without my lawyer,” were the first words out of Leo’s mouth.

  Jon had barely sat down. He made a show of closing up his notebook and setting his pen down beside it. “Well. That was certainly the shortest interview in history.”

  “I know my rights, cop,” Leo said, jerking his hands against their restraints. “There’s nothing you can pin on me because I didn’t do anything.”

  “How about hitting your mother?” Darcy asked from where she stood against the wall. “Or did you not do that, either?”

  He shrugged, but he looked away from her at the same time. “Me and mom have our problems. We always work them out.”

  Jon picked up his pen again, holding it by both ends in his hands. “I hope you aren’t saying you hit your mom all the time.”

  “No, that’s not…I mean, I’m not saying anything to you.”

  “That’s fine. You don’t have to say anything to me. We’ll charge you for hitting your mom. We’ll charge you for possessing the stolen necklace. Then, when my officers come back from your house with the other stolen items from the cemetery, we’ll charge you with digging up the graves.”

  “Ha. See, that’s going to be a problem for you, cop. There isn’t any stolen stuff in my house.”

  “So you’re keeping it somewhere else?” Jon asked, keeping Leo talking, keeping him on the defensive.

  “What? No! I didn’t steal anything. There’s nothing for you to find because I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Except the necklace.”

  “I didn’t steal that.”

  “You had it on your neck, Leo.”

  “It was a gift! I mean
, I…I don’t…I didn’t steal anything.”

  Jon raised an eyebrow. “So you had people helping you?”

  “I didn’t do anything! That’s it. I’m done. I want my lawyer. I’m not talking to you.”

  He pressed his lips tightly together and sat as far back as he could with his hands held in place like that.

  They waited for more, but Leo meant it this time. He wasn’t giving them anything else.

  Sliding his eyes toward Darcy without turning his head, Jon circled one index finger in the air, motioning for her to do her thing.

  Two steps brought her close enough to put a hand on Leo’s shoulder.

  Nothing came to her. No vision, no flash of insight. Nothing.

  He jerked his head up and around, pulling away from her. “Um,” she said, “I just wanted to let you know you can talk to us if you want.”

  “I’ve already said I’m not talking.”

  Hunching down lower in his seat, he swallowed, cracks forming in his tough guy routine. Darcy thought that if she could only talk to him a little bit longer that she would be able to break through to him, to get over whatever walls he’d built up around his heart and soul.

  He’d asked for a lawyer, though. That was the end of it.

  “Did you see anything?” Jon asked her as soon as they were back in the hallway with the door closed.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry Jon. I don’t always see things when I touch people. That’s not how my gift works.”

  He scrunched up his face in disappointment. “I understand. I do, really. I was just hoping you could find something to point us in the right direction again.”

  “Sorry,” she repeated. “Some consultant I turned out to be.”

  “Are you kidding? Without you I wouldn’t have figured out the bodies were being dug up for their valuables. We wouldn’t have even known about Phoebe Stewart, so we wouldn’t have known that Maven Sirles stumbled onto a murder mystery.”

  “Yes you would have,” she grumped. “It just would have taken you longer.”

  “Darcy, seriously, you’ve been an important part of this investigation, as usual. So, you didn’t get a psychic vision from Leo,” he dropped his voice to a whisper as an officer walked down through the hall. “I’m telling you, when Shane Wagner and Will get back from searching Jayne’s house, we’ll have the evidence we need.”

  As if on cue, Will turned the corner down the hall. His face was grim, and Darcy could tell by his expression that there was something wrong.

  “What is it?” Jon asked him.

  “We didn’t find anything,” Will said, almost apologetically. “We went through their home with a fine-toothed comb. The judge didn’t hold anything back from us. There was just nothing there to find.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean anything, necessarily,” Jon said, thinking it through. “He had to have an accomplice. At least one, maybe more.”

  “You asked him that in the interview,” Darcy mentioned. “He denied working with anyone.”

  “He also said he didn’t do this. He gave us a partial admission on the necklace, but he wasn’t exactly in a giving mood.”

  “Lawyered up?” Wilson asked.

  “Yes. It’s not surprising. We’ll start the paperwork and maybe when his lawyer actually gets here we can work something out.”

  “Maybe. Oh, hey.” Wilson hooked a thumb back toward the front of the building. “I came in through a crowd of reporters itching for a quote. Don’t worry, I gave them the cold shoulder.”

  “Thanks Will.”

  “Well, I learned everything I know from you. There’s another group of people in the lobby you should know about, though. Friends of Leo’s. They wanted to know what’s going on. I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to tell them.”

  “Nothing, same as the reporters,” Jon said, but then changed his mind. “No, wait. I’ll talk to them. Maybe one of them knows something.”

  Darcy followed him. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Sergeant Fitzwallis nodded to them when they made it out front. “You sure you want to go out there, Chief? Not such a friendly group.”

  “I’ll be fine, Sean. Go home, will you?”

  “When it’s time, Chief. I’ll stick around for a while.”

  In the lobby, six people waited for them, guys and girls both. All of them were in their early twenties, about the same age as Leo. Darcy recognized a few of them from around town, including that kid who had been working at the cemetery, and Duncan Dane’s son, and Leo’s girlfriend in her baseball cap. Stephanie.

  “What’s going on with my boyfriend?” Stephanie demanded. She had her arms crossed over her chest and an expression that dared them to deny her.

  “Listen to me, little girl,” Jon said, speaking directly to her, “you do not make demands here. Your boyfriend is in serious trouble. If you want to help him, then you can tell me what you know about how he got that necklace.”

  Everybody turned to stare at Stephanie, and she shrank back from Jon, suddenly very interested in staring at the walls. “Fine. You just better hope you’re treating him good. He might be a grave robber but that doesn’t mean you can, like, beat him up or anything.”

  “So you don’t know anything about the necklace your boyfriend is wearing?”

  She kept her face turned away, her jaw set. “No. Why would I?”

  “Uh-huh.” Jon didn’t sound convinced.

  Neither was Darcy.

  “Come on guys,” Stephanie said to her group, turning and heading straight for the door. “Let’s go.”

  She took her hat off as she went and leaned over to whisper in the ear of one of the guys. Darcy saw the way he perked up at how close she was, at how she touched his shoulder. Apparently Stephanie was already moving on to someone else now that her boyfriend was in police custody.

  The guy was Franklin Hobart, the same one from the cemetery that day. He took Stephanie’s hat from her and…

  Her hat.

  A woman in a hat.

  Lots of things came together in Darcy’s mind. As the door closed behind the group of Leo’s friends and the reporters outside descended on them like a pack of ravenous wolves, she pulled Jon aside.

  “We need to get a search warrant,” she whispered, even though the only one left who might hear her was Sean Fitzwallis.

  “What?” Jon asked her. “We don’t need a search warrant. We already searched through Jayne’s whole house, including Leo’s room. Remember? There was nothing there.”

  “No, not for Leo’s house. We need to search someone else’s house.” The clues were still falling into place. It all began to make sense. “We need to make another stop first. I need to ask Pastor Hillier about something he said to us. It might be the last clue we need.”

  “The pastor?” Jon racked his brain. “What did he tell us?”

  “He can explain it to us when we get there. Then, we’ll have what we need for the search warrant.”

  “I’m afraid you lost me.”

  “Believe me, Jon,” Darcy promised. “I’m sure Judge Jayne Phillips will have no problem signing this warrant.”

  ***

  In the dimly lit room, Darcy waited with Jon. The house was a small one. To call it simple would be way too gracious. It was just a dump. The furniture was all mismatched and ratty. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls. As far as Darcy could tell, the whole place had a layer of grime on it.

  “Do we have to wait in here?” Darcy asked Jon in a low voice.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t want anyone to hear us.”

  “There’s no one here.”

  The search warrant had been just as easy to get as Darcy had figured it would be. When she and Jon, Wilson, and Grace had come to execute it, the house had been empty. They searched all five rooms in the place quickly.

  They’d found exactly what Darcy knew would be here. Now, all they could do was wait.


  “But,” she said again in a more normal voice, “do we have to wait in here?”

  “This was your idea,” he reminded her.

  “Sure, but that was before I saw how disgusting this place is.”

  “It’s better than Maven’s house.”

  She had to agree with that. “But, are we allowed to wait in here?”

  Jon nodded. They only had the one lamp on, and it cast a low orange light over everything, including his face. “Yes, we’re allowed to wait in here. We’re executing the warrant.”

  There was a long moment of silence before Darcy shifted to keep the broken spring from jabbing her…where it was jabbing her. “How long do you think we’ll have to wait?”

  “Not long.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The sound of the key in the front door seemed unnaturally loud to Darcy.

  “I’m sure,” Jon said with a smile.

  He pulled his gun.

  They stood up as the door opened.

  Darcy held her breath.

  In the dark, an arm reached in to turn on the light switch. Garish white light flooded the room.

  Jon held the gun at low ready but made sure it was clearly visible. “Welcome home, Franklin.”

  The scrawny teen went to bolt back outside, only to be stopped by Wilson and Grace. The kid had nowhere to go. He was trapped, and he knew it.

  “What’s this all about?” Franklin grumped, trying to look tough, just as Jon was putting his gun back in its holster.

  Jon held up a card that he took from the pocket of his suitcoat. A baseball card in a protective plastic sleeve. A Willie Mays rookie card, from 1951.

  Franklin sagged back into Grace’s grip as she handcuffed him. “You’re under arrest,” she told him. “Although I probably didn’t have to say it, did I?”

  ***

  Sergeant Vic Dunson wasn’t happy.

  “I do not understand,” he said, thumping a finger down on Jon’s desk, “any of this.”

  Darcy managed not to smile. It wasn’t easy. Jon and she had been in his office explaining their investigation to Vic for the last twenty minutes. He was a smart man, and she knew he understood everything that had happened. He was just mad that he’d been left out of the final loop that had closed the case for good.