by K. J. Emrick
Stranger things had happened.
“If you’re looking for the journal it’s still on the backseat,” Jon told her. They hadn’t wanted to leave it out of their sight anymore. It was just luck that Darcy had brought it with her to the bookstore this morning instead of leaving it at home.
Of course, she’d read the whole thing now and it wasn’t like the blotchy pages had offered up any big secrets. Too bad her aunt wasn’t being much help. She’d already told Darcy? Told her what? What was that supposed to mean? The only thing her aunt had done so far was nearly drop a book on her head…
Back at the Sweet Read Bookstore. In the office.
The book on the history of Misty Hollow. The list of family names.
Of course.
At the time it hadn’t seemed important. Obviously Millie had wanted her to see it for some reason but family names from 1913 hadn’t felt like a very helpful clue.
Unless the name of the kidnapper was on those pages.
“Jon, we need to go back to the bookstore. Right now.”
“Um. Why? It’s getting later, and we’re home. You should try to get some real rest. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“I do. Truthfully Jon I don’t know if I can get back to sleep and I can’t just sit here. There’s something I need to see back at the store. Another clue. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I’m just so…ungh!”
Jon nodded, taking her hand in his. He didn’t need her to translate that. He usually understood what she meant, no matter what she actually said. Like now, when he understood that no matter what time it was, or what else they might need to do, she wouldn’t have asked to go back into town if it wasn’t important.
Millie had told her that she wasn’t alone. She had her friends to support her. She had Millie, still, at least in spirit. And, maybe most importantly, she had Jon.
She loved her husband.
“I’m sorry that I yelled at you earlier,” she said in a quiet voice.
He didn’t say anything. He just leaned over and kissed her cheek.
Then he pulled back out of the driveway and turned toward town.
***
Main Street was peaceful at this time of day. Misty Hollow generally rolled its streets up early and went to bed long before the sun went down. The people who lived here might stay up a bit later, on occasion, to take an evening stroll in the moonlight or sit on their front porches to talk about their day. Even the police force only had two officers on the nightshift.
No one was around tonight. They passed a single patrol car cruising down the street, and Jon exchanged the typical “flashing headlights” greeting with his officer, but that was all there was for traffic.
“I rearranged the schedule, put some extra patrols on during the night shift,” Jon explained. “The library’s already being watched by officers in civilian clothes. Grace is out there, too. Linda agreed to come in and open the building for us soon, so we can put the journal there like the note instructed. If we need to.”
That was good, Darcy thought, but she doubted they would find their man that easily. Linda Becht was a good friend, and a smart woman, and being the town’s librarian meant she would know the building inside and out, but even that might not be enough to get this guy. He had something planned, or else he wouldn’t have told them to put the book in the library. Maybe they could catch him when he went for the journal.
Then again, maybe not.
She needed to see what Aunt Millie had wanted to show her. Picking up the journal from the back seat, she got out of the car with Jon.
Inside her bookstore she snapped on the lights and then stood there, for just a moment, extending her senses outward. She was hoping for some indication that Millie was here. That she was waiting here to explain the importance of that book dropping on her desk. Holding her hand out, she reached with everything she had, extending herself out…
“Is she here?” Jon asked.
Darcy tried again. “I don’t feel her.”
It wasn’t a no. It just wasn’t a yes.
Jon had come a long way from being a staunch disbeliever in ghosts when they first met. Saying he was comfortable around them would be a stretch, but he had accepted them as a part of her life and, by extension, part of his.
“Come on,” she said to him. “The book is in the office. With everything that happened I forgot all about it.”
“I don’t suppose it’s underlined or highlighted or something? Are we going to have to look through the entire book?”
She almost smiled at the way he echoed her own complaints. “No. Millie dropped it open to a specific section on purpose.”
“Well that narrows it down, I guess. I just wish that one day I could get a ghost to walk up to me and say, hey, that guy over there murdered me.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
Inside the office her desk was exactly how she’d left it this afternoon. The Misty Hollow census was there, lists of names and families photocopied from the original handwritten source. The writing was blocky and thick, definitely a man’s hand. Which made sense, because nearly everything of consequence in those days was done by men.
Darcy was glad she hadn’t lived back then. No way would she let a man do all the hard work for her. Just some of it. When she wanted him to.
She sat down, and began looking over the long list.
“Hey look,” Jon pointed to the pages from over her shoulder. “There’s a couple of Sweets listed here.”
“My family goes way back in Misty Hollow. There’s always been Sweets here.”
“Well, you’re actually a Tinker now,” he pointed out.
Which was true, Darcy had to admit, at least on their marriage certificate. In her heart, she’d always be Darcy Sweet.
Jon opened one of the side drawers on the desk and took out a pen and a little notepad with butterflies on it. He’d been in this office enough times to know where she kept everything. “The names really don’t change much, do they? Look, there’s the Nelson family name. Chamberlain. Underwood. Becht. Fitzwallis. LaCroix. That’s Benson’s family name. What do we write down? What are we looking for?”
“I wish I knew. I want to believe the name of Smudge’s kidnapper is right here in this book.” She thought back to her dream. “Millie kept saying that she’d already told me.”
“Told you what.”
“The name of the killer, I hope.”
“And she showed you this book?”
“Yes. This particular page.”
He nodded, starting to write names down. “Then let’s see what we can find in here. When you get to one marked ‘killer,’ let me know.”
Darcy read along with him, making sure he wrote down every one, and pointing out names that she didn’t recognize. Farrell. Morvan. Taylor. Those all got a little asterisk written next to them. They’d start with the names of families still living in town, they decided, because those were the most likely suspects. The others could wait until they’d exhausted the list of their current friends and neighbors.
Since whoever had done this was a friend of theirs.
The list wasn’t a long one. The population of the town hadn’t been nearly as big back then as it was now. There were current family names that weren’t in the book, families who had moved into town after this census, but for each name that was here she could picture friends and acquaintances. Dianne Chamberlain. Blake and Pete Underwood. Sean Fitzwallis…
Wait.
Other parts of her dream came back to her. Millie had said a lot of things that hadn’t seemed important. Darcy had been concentrating on trying to get the answers she needed for her own questions and the rest of it hadn’t registered with her.
Or maybe she’d just been too angry to pay attention.
She remembered something important now.
Sean Fitzwallis. Night sergeant at the police department. Millie had mentioned something about him. Something about how Darcy didn’t really understand
him.
Now, here was his family name on this list that Millie had wanted her to see. The only Fitzwallis family in town these days had been Sean, and his wife, and his children.
Come to think of it, she’d never known his children. Someone had told her they moved away but Darcy had never met them.
“Did you ever meet Mrs. Fitzwallis?” Darcy asked Jon.
“Hmm? Well, no. Before my time.” He stopped writing, and knelt down next to her in the chair. “Why? What are you thinking?”
She told him about what Millie had said. “I think we need to go talk with Sean.”
“Why? You can’t possibly think he had something to do with any of this.”
Darcy thought back over the many times she’d seen Sean Fitzwallis at the police department. He always had a smile for her, always had a kind word. She’d brought him donuts and other treats any number of times when she’d gone there. Did she believe he would violate her home, threaten her, kidnap her cat? No.
Not really.
At the same time, Millie had made sure to mention him specifically.
“There has to be a reason,” she decided, standing up, making sure to grab the beehive journal with her. “Come on. He’s working tonight, right?”
“He’s almost always at work. He doesn’t have anything to keep him at home now that—”
“His wife has passed away and his children have left town?” Darcy finished for him. “Did you ever met his kids?”
Jon thought about it, and she could see the unspoken answer in his eyes. “All right. Let’s go see him.” He picked up the notepad he’d been writing on, and scanned the list they’d made. Neighbors, and friends, every single one. He shook his head as he tore the page off the pad and folded it into his pocket. “It’s going to be a long night, isn’t it?”
“We have to keep working at this,” Darcy said, fisting her hands in front of her. “I just feel like time is running out. For Smudge. We’ve only got until midnight, Jon, and here we are running all around town chasing our tails. What if we can’t find him before…before the deadline?”
She hated that word. She hated any word that started with ‘dead.’
Gently, he took the book from her fist. “Then we put that journal of your aunt’s on the shelf in the library like we were told to do. We catch the guy, and we make sure he gets sent away to prison for a long time. I just wish I knew what made this book so important. For now, let’s make photocopies while we’re here in the store. Then we’ll go down to the station and talk to Fitzwallis. Let’s hope he’s got something important to say.”
Darcy turned away from him when he tried to put his arms around her, and walked out of the office instead.
In the main area of the bookstore, with its shelves and display racks and reading tables, she stopped. They weren’t alone.
Helen Nelson stood just inside the front door, a surprised look on her face, eyes wide, mouth open, like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
She’d changed out of the clothes Darcy had seen her in at the café earlier. Now she had on a pair of old khaki pants and a green top with white embroidery around the shoulders. Her hair was out of its pony tail and fell loosely around her shoulders in curly waves. She looked less like the town’s mayor, or one of its leading businessmen even, and more like someone just out for a stroll.
After dark. Into a store she knew was closed.
“Hi Helen,” Jon greeted her. “I figured you’d be home at this hour.”
“Well, I was,” she admitted, “but then—”
“Why are you here?” Darcy interrupted, her voice holding an edge to it.
Helen blinked at her. “I saw the light on. I wanted to make sure you were all right. That terrible business with Smudge. Oh, Darcy. Everyone loves your cat. I can’t imagine why anyone would do this to him.”
Darcy nearly flew across the bookshop, right up close to Helen, her face tight as she tried to keep her emotions in check. “How do you know about that? Tell me how you know about what happened to Smudge!”
“Darcy, calm down,” Jon said from behind her.
She didn’t want to calm down. She wanted Smudge to be safe, wanted him to be home, wanted there to be no secrets between her and her aunt. She wanted everything to go back to the wonderful sort of normal it was when they had come back from Australia just a few short days ago…
Helen raised a hand up to Jon, telling him to wait, her expression so full of understanding that Darcy wanted to scream again. “It’s all right. I’m sure she’s upset. If someone had done this to me… Well. I know how I felt when my husband betrayed this town, and me, behind my back. It’s not the same thing, Darcy, I know, but please know that I’m here for you if there’s anything I can do. We all are.”
You have your friends with you, Millie had said. Helen was one of those friends. At least, she would be if Darcy didn’t drive her away with accusations inspired by crazy, frantic worry.
That still didn’t explain why Helen had come sneaking into the bookstore just now.
“Tell me how you know about Smudge,” Darcy asked again, forcing herself to be a little more patient.
“I got a call,” Helen explained. “From our favorite television reporter. Brianna Watson certainly does like to keep tabs on this town, doesn’t she? Oh, Darcy, everyone in town knows about it by now. The police officers, the people they talked to, the people those people talked to, and that’s just the way it goes. Of course I would have heard about it, being the mayor. What else could I do but come and see if you needed my help? It’s a terrible, terrible thing.”
Jon was suddenly behind her and his hands on her shoulders held Darcy together. News always travelled fast in a small town. Bad news travelled even faster.
And now they had another visit from Brianna Watson to look forward to. That woman never let a story slip through her hands. She was like a dog with a bone. No doubt tomorrow she’d show up on her and Jon’s doorstep, microphone in hand, cameraman in tow, wearing that annoying little smirk of hers like an eager shark spotting its next meal.
One more worry to throw on top of the pile. That was for tomorrow. For today—tonight, considering what time it was—they needed to go see Sean Fitzwallis.
“Helen…” Darcy searched for the words. “I’m sorry. I’m on edge. Thank you for coming to find me. Jon and I have some people to talk to and we’re going to take care of this. We’ll find Smudge. If I need you I’ll be sure to call.”
Helen hugged her, and it made it just that much harder to keep from crying. She didn’t need everyone’s sympathy. She needed answers.
“Helen,” Jon was asking, “you were Millie’s friend, right?”
“You mean Darcy’s aunt? Well, yes, of course. Everyone liked your aunt, Darcy. It was a terrible thing when she died.”
Jon nodded. “So I’ve heard. Can I ask you, confidentially, was there anything going on with her just before she, you know, passed on?”
“Strange? Why, not any more so than usual with her.” She gave Darcy an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t put it that way. You know what I mean, though? It's the same way that you find all this trouble for yourself, Darcy. You and Millie are a lot alike. Your aunt knew things that she couldn’t actually know. She was always in the middle of things with no real explanation. Just, poof, there she was.”
Darcy felt a little smile tug at the corners of her lips. Yes. That was Millie. It was her, too.
“So was she…involved in anything before she died?” Jon asked.
Darcy looked over at him. Smart man. She never would have thought to ask that.
“Well, let me think.” Helen crossed her arms and bent her head, chewing on the inside of her cheek. After a moment, she shrugged. “I mean, she put your name on the deed to her house. This shop, too. I always thought that was a little odd. Afterwards, I mean. It was like she knew what was coming.”
Darcy could only stare. She’d just assumed Millie had always intended the hous
e and shop to come to her. In the future. Many years from now, after Millie had lived to be about a hundred and fifteen. Now all the pieces seemed to point to Millie’s death being something more than the peaceful tragedy she had been told it was.
Thinking about it that way, hearing that Millie seemed to know her death was coming…it was just creepy.
In the back of the bookstore, several books fell off their shelf to the floor. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Helen jumped. Darcy knew what it was. Or rather, who it was. Millie had finally decided to show up, and she wasn’t happy that this secret had come to light. Darcy was two steps away from screaming at her aunt’s spirit that this was something she needed to know. No more secrets!
“Well, I should go…” Helen said, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking. Some people weren’t as comfortable around ghosts as Darcy and Jon were.
“Was there anything else?” Jon asked before Helen could bolt out the door. “Anything else from that time that struck you as odd?”
“Why?” Helen wanted to know. “What’s all this got to do with Millie?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” he answered, evasively. “Was there anything you can remember?”
Helen went through her memories while her eyes kept darting to the back of the store. “Um. Well. There was one time that she saw a man in my deli. She asked me if I knew who it was but when I looked, there was no one there. I just assumed it was one of her, um, visions. I guess that’s what you call it. But she insisted there was someone following her. I asked her if she wanted me to call Joe Daleson, but she told me no. She said she knew who it was and she could take care of it.”
Now Darcy did turn around to glare at the back of the store. “Handle it, Aunt Millie? Really?”
Another book fell, but that was the only answer.
“Darcy, um, I’m going to go home.” Helen’s voice was less than steady. It was easy to tell she had no interest in being here if her dead friend was about to make an appearance. “Please, call me if there’s anything I can do.”