Laid to Rest

by K. J. Emrick

  She couldn’t do anything to help Smudge right now except pore through the beehive journal to find clues to catch the people responsible. If they could find a suspect, they could find Smudge.

  Of course, they already had one suspect. Roland Baskin, town grump. Darcy had wanted to go talk to him right now, grill him until he confessed, and then lock him away forever. Preferably in a small room with no windows. But Jon had asked her to wait until the officers were done processing the scene. Which in this case, was their own house. Jon couldn’t be in two places at once. He needed to be here to at least guide Wilson and Grace to the places that had been disturbed so they could look for fingerprints. When that was done, they would go together to talk to Roland Baskin.

  Ellen had offered to get the guy to talk, too, but somehow Darcy knew her methods would be…well, a little less than admissible in a court of law.

  So for now, Darcy did the only thing she could do. She read the words her aunt had so carefully written down before hiding them away between the stones of the basement walls. What secrets did Millie need to hide so badly that she hadn’t wanted Darcy to find them, even after her death?

  She remembered the way her aunt had reacted when Smudge had brought out even one page of this journal. Now, laying across the bed, flipping through the dirty pages and making notes of what she read on a pad of yellow legal paper, Darcy still had no idea why this journal was worth all this trouble.

  A ghost in the cemetery had warned Millie of danger. Ominous, certainly, but her aunt had the same ability to talk to ghosts that Darcy had. Ghosts were constantly bringing warnings and premonitions to Darcy, and she remembered it happening a lot to Millie as well. So, she jotted it down, with as many details as she could gather from the blotchy pages, and moved on.

  There had to be more to it.

  The single page that Smudge had originally brought to her gave her chills, too. Here is the answer I’ve looked for…my home. My home! I can not allow it to be taken away…knew me and called me Millie, but that doesn’t mean…something must be done to stop him.

  Him. Stop him, Millie had said. That was interesting. That must mean the person Millie was so worried about, the person who wanted the journal now, was a man. She growled as she thought of Roland Baskin. She was looking forward to taking a piece out of his hide.

  All of this told her a whole lot of nothing, though. Why had Millie written all this down? What was the danger the child ghost had warned about?

  Where was Smudge?

  Jon was right about one thing, and even that pointed to Baskin. Someone from town had done this. Someone who knew where the hide-a-key was, but more than that. This was someone who was a friend. Smudge was a friendly cat but he wasn’t the kind who let just anyone pick him up. If a stranger had tried to get close enough to him to kidnap him—catnap him—then he would have run away. Someone Smudge knew had done this. That was the only way they could have gotten close enough to do it.

  She hoped Smudge had scratched their eyes out.

  Her mind was running full tilt and she was getting distracted. With an effort she focused back on Millie’s journal.

  “What have you gotten us into?” she asked to the air around her. There was every chance that Millie was there right now, watching her niece read words from the past.

  If she was, she didn’t have anything to say.

  More of the pages in the middle of the beehive journal were difficult to read or obscured altogether by dark stains. She read in bits and pieces about normal days in the life of Misty Hollow, about picnics and parades and conversations with some of Millie’s good friends. And at the bottom of every page was that strange squiggly border pattern. Almost like letters and almost like calligraphy, and completely meaningless.

  The secrets weren’t in those fancy little doodles. The secrets were hidden in the words, but most of the words weren’t there to be seen anymore.

  In the pages of the journal, she found herself. Her arrival, back when she was fifteen years old, to stay here at her aunt’s house on a permanent basis. Her own mother couldn’t handle a girl just on the cusp of becoming an adult and coming into special powers that were both peculiar and scary. Darcy had been shipped off to live with the weird family aunt. Millie was the only one who really understood what was going on with her. Even so, Darcy had felt angry and betrayed and scared and…well, like she’d been thrown away.

  In her aunt’s words, however, she saw those days in a different light. Millie didn’t see Darcy as odd or crazy. She didn’t look at her arrival here as a burden. Instead, she went on and on about how great it was going to be, the two of them living under one roof.

  Finally, Millie wrote, a kindred spirit. Darcy is everything I ever wanted in a daughter. Smart, kind, insightful. I see great things for her. Already she’s made friends here. A local boy, Jeff, has taken quite the shine to her…

  Darcy blushed. That was her first husband. Millie had never liked him, and Darcy wished now that she had listened to her aunt’s not-so-gentle advice to stay away from him. It had ended badly, for lots of reasons.

  Now she was with Jon, in heart and soul. Coming here to Misty Hollow would have been worth it just for that reason alone. Millie had given her other reasons to love it here. Her Great Aunt Millie had brought her out of the dark places of her depression and taught her to love life again.

  And to respect death.

  The writing on the pages faded out again after Millie’s thoughts had wandered off onto another subject. Those few pages, though, lifted Darcy’s heart. “Thanks, Millie, for everything you did for me. I’ll always love you.”

  She was lucky to have had her aunt’s spirit for guidance all this time. Most people either moved on at the point of their death, or else they moved on after resolving whatever issues still tied them to the world of the living. If they stayed around for a long time they became mean and nasty and depressed.

  In other words, evil.

  Millie had never had that problem. It brought up a question that Darcy had asked herself time and time again. After about ten years of floating through the lives of the living, why hadn’t Millie’s spirit moved on?

  Her eyes snagged on something, on a page near the end of the journal that fed fire to that question. Could it be?

  Darcy sat up in the bed. Cross-legged, she ran her finger under the lines of her aunt’s strong handwriting. The words were sloppier here, like Millie had been writing quickly, like her time was running out. There wasn’t much of it that Darcy could make out.

  Just enough to freeze her blood.

  …what he wants doesn’t belong to him, and I see no need to just hand it over. I’ve told him he won’t get it back. Not even if he makes good his threat to kill me.

  Darcy’s next breath caught in her throat and came out in a choking gasp.

  It was Ellen who had brought up the horrible suggestion that maybe her aunt’s death hadn’t been from natural causes like she’d believed it was. Maybe she’d been killed, Ellen had said. Maybe Millie had been murdered and that’s why someone wanted the journal, because it told who done it.

  It was never that easy. This wasn’t a Nancy Drew story. She wasn’t Miss Marple, and this wasn’t some mystery novel where the killer was hiding in the shadows among her neighbors.

  Not that she hadn’t lived through plenty of that right here in Misty Hollow.

  Still, as mad as she was at Ellen right now—rational or not—she couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, her friend was right. Could Millie have been murdered? His threat to kill me, she read again on the page.

  “Who, Millie?” she whispered out loud. “Who threatened you? Why didn’t you ever tell me, for Pete’s sake?”

  She sat staring at those words for a long time, twisting her aunt’s ring around the finger of her right hand. It usually comforted her to feel the etched surface of the heirloom, the cool, hard weight of it. Not today. Not now.

  Not after what she saw next.

  On the next
page, at the end of everything her aunt had written here, was a single paragraph on an otherwise blank page. As far as she could tell, every page that followed was blank. Stained with dirt and time and moisture, and otherwise untouched.

  It was this last paragraph that would haunt her for a long time.

  Darcy, I love you. Please know that I will always cherish the time we’ve had together. I cannot give you this book. Not yet. In time you’ll find it. I have no doubt of that. When you do, pay close attention to the words I’ve written here. They won’t save my life, but they may save yours. You’ll know what to do.

  I will love you always.

  Millie.

  She pushed herself back from the journal, up against the headboard, wanting distance between herself and this, Millie’s last message to her. Her aunt had known her death was coming. Known, and kept it a secret.

  She’d known, and left hints for Darcy to follow.

  Only most of the hints were now lost to time because the journal had stayed buried in the foundation for years! Darcy felt so completely lost. This journal was supposed to be a message to her from Millie. A warning. There were things in it she needed to know. Things that could tell her why all of this was happening.

  Instead, all she had was a small collection of clues and hints and partially legible sentences that meant something very sinister.

  They could mean her aunt was murdered.

  Jon walked in not long after. She’d collected her thoughts by then and had gone back to making her notes in the yellow notepad.

  Him. The person Millie was talking about in her journal, the one threatening her life, was definitely a him.

  The little girl’s ghost had definitely warned Millie that she was in danger.

  Something about the house. My home! I cannot allow it to be taken away. Darcy didn’t understand that part at all.

  The last thing she wrote down, as Jon sat on the bed next to her, was the last thing in the journal. Millie expected Darcy to know what to do next.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Darcy whispered, to Jon.

  He put his arm around her shoulder, and held her while she cried. His strong presence steadied her and she allowed herself a minute or two to just stay there in his protective embrace. While he held her, he picked up her notes and read through them.

  “It seems like there should be more,” he said when he’d read everything for the third time. “You know? For all of this trouble. For Smudge. Do you really think she might have been…?”

  “Killed? No, Jon. Millie dying was tragic and sad. It took me a long time to get over it and I’m not ready to just accept that she was killed by someone. Everyone dies. That doesn’t make it murder. I mean, seriously? Killed by some shadowy guy who’s been reduced to a leftover footnote in a beehive journal that was buried between stones in our foundation for all these years? No. I won’t believe it.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he put the notepad down next to the journal and asked, “Have you ever talked to Millie about it?”

  Darcy didn’t want to talk about this anymore. “I’ve asked her why her spirit is still here, still watching over me. Lots of times. She always avoids the question. I figure it’s her business. She’ll tell me if she wants to.”

  “I don’t know as much about relating to ghosts as you do,” he offered, “but from what you’ve told me spirits don’t hang around unless there’s a reason. What reason would Millie have to still be here, if there wasn’t something wrong?”

  She pushed away from him and stood up, wiping at the moisture in her eyes with the heel of one hand. “Jon, don’t start. Just…don’t start, all right? I am not in the mood to drag up a bunch of old memories and feelings and…ungh!” She grunted in frustration and turned on him as he stood up behind her. “I’m not doing this, all right? All I know is what’s in that book and most of that is gone! I want Smudge back, and I want this over so can we please, please, please just get on with this?”

  His face tightened in surprise, and after a moment he nodded. “Darcy, I’m sorry…”

  “Just, please, don’t.”

  She couldn’t take it if he started being all understanding with her now. She was too angry for that. All she wanted was for him to be the tough, strong cop he had been that first day they’d met. That’s what she needed right now. She’d come back around to needing the comfort and gentle reassurance of her husband later.

  Right now she just wanted him to be a cop.

  “All right,” he said, like he could read her thoughts, “let’s go and talk to Roland Baskin. Then we need to photocopy this journal. If Baskin doesn’t pan out then we’ll still need to use it for bait at the library.”

  Right. That’s right. Tonight, by the deadline at midnight. In the library, next to the book about Deseret in the reference section. A very public place. What good would it do to put the book there? The man involved in this scheme wouldn’t be able to get the journal without being seen.

  Well, that was a worry for later. They had plenty of other worries right now.

  Like finding Roland Baskin.

  ***

  Not that it was that hard. Baskin hardly ever went out of his house. He’d become the old hermit in town, always mad at everyone and everything and complaining how noisy the sleepy little town was.

  “You ever wonder why he turned out this way?” Jon asked on the drive over.

  “No,” was Darcy’s curt reply, “and I don’t care.”

  “I mean his daughter’s a police officer in my department now and she’s not like him. She might be a little more serious about things than most people, but she’s certainly not a…a…”

  “Sour old man who wouldn’t think twice about hurting people to get what he wants?”

  Jon looked at her from the corner of his eye as he took the last turn onto Baskin’s street. “Darcy, we’ll find Smudge. We will. Baskin may or may not be our man. Right now he makes a great suspect but if you don’t think you can be objective in this interview then I’ll understand. You can stay in the car until I’m done.”

  She shook her head, turning the ring on her finger over and over. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

  They drove silently up the short, quiet street in the northernmost tip of Misty Hollow. There were just the two houses here, Roland Baskin’s and another that had been empty for years. The trees were gnarled and untrimmed and the grass hadn’t been mown in a while. Baskin didn’t even come outside to work in his yard much anymore.

  She could tell Jon had more to say but he held his tongue until he parked out in front of Mister Baskin’s house. A little white square of a house with old, brown roofing tiles and painted trim to match. Nothing special. Darcy would have liked it better if it resembled Dracula’s castle or even that motel from Psycho. Then it would be easy to tell if the man inside was as evil as she suspected he was.

  Bad guys were never considerate like that.

  Turning the engine off, Jon turned to her, hooking an elbow over the top of the steering wheel. “Do you think you could do that thing where you hold someone’s hands and see if they’re telling the truth? Would that work with Baskin?”

  “Jon, I’m not a fortune teller. I can’t tell if someone’s lying or not. Besides that technique only tells me if someone has guilt on their hands. We’ve learned that people carry lots of guilt around with them. For lots of different reasons. A guy like Baskin…you don’t think he’ll have a ton of things he feels guilty about?”

  Jon snorted. “I’m not sure that Roland Baskin knows the meaning of the word guilt.”

  “Well, yeah, you could look at it that way, too. No guilty conscience would mean nothing for me to see. Either way, I have to hold someone’s hands and sit with them while I concentrate in order to make that work. You think Mister Baskin’s going to let me hold hands with him for that long?”

  “No, I don’t. It might be nice, though.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “If you could tell when so
meone was lying.” He shrugged. “Sure would make my job easier.”

  “Come on, Jon, be serious. I might be able to touch Baskin’s hand and get a flash of a vision, maybe, but even that’s a long shot. It works sometimes, and not others. I can’t control that part of my ability. I might get a great insight into where Smudge is, or I might get every detail of what he had for breakfast. Or I might get nothing at all. I’ll try, but we might just have to go on what he says.”

  “Then let’s go see what our old friend Roland has to say for himself.”

  He got out of the car and she followed him. It was after seven o’clock now and the sun was already going down below the tops of the trees. True sunset probably wouldn’t happen for another half hour but darkness was already coming. Darcy tried not to find too much literal meaning in that simple event.

  It was Jon who knocked on the door. Darcy waited for the sound of the doorknob turning and the hinges squeaking as the door opened, and then she rushed in past a surprised Roland Baskin and Jon, who was muttering something about Darcy and her impulsive nature.

  “Smudge!” she called out as she went from room to room. “Smudge!”

  “Hey, what are you—”

  Jon cut off Mister Baskin’s objections with a rapid fire string of questions that he stuttered to answer. Darcy opened doors and closed them again and each time she did her heart sank a little more. There wasn’t much to see. The place was neat and orderly, with everything in its place. Furniture just so. Knick knacks on shelves. Magazines piled into a square stack on a coffee table. Even the kitchen was clean and organized.

  “Smudge?” she tried, one last time. There was no answer.

  Except for the panting of a little scruffy dog who came running out of the bedroom when she opened the door, a long red leash trailing behind him as he trotted over to Roland Baskin and then pranced at the old man’s feet to be picked up.

  He bent with some difficulty to cradle the white-haired ankle biter in his arms. Then he stood again, petting the dog between his two alert little ears. A Yorkie, Darcy thought, or maybe a terrier. It was obvious that the dog loved his master, and that his master loved the dog just as much.