by K. J. Emrick
“Is that all? Well, that’s simple enough. Here I thought you were going to ask me about the problem Jon’s on about.”
“Problem? Wait, what problem?”
“The case he went on in Meadowood, dear.”
That certainly caught Darcy’s attention. “Is there something wrong there? He hasn’t come home yet. He promised to message me but I think I fell asleep before he could. What’s going on over in Oakwood?”
“Oops. I suppose I said too much on that. Getting ahead of myself, I’m afraid.” She came around the couch, scratching Tiptoe under her chin and patting Cha Cha on his head before sitting down with Darcy. “Ask me about that later, after Jon gets home, if you need to. I’ll still be around. Now. What do you need to know about that box?”
Darcy didn’t like how Millie was suddenly changing the subject, but she knew her Great Aunt well enough to know that later meant exactly that. So she went back to the matter at hand. “Where did that jewelry box come from? I mean, I know the story my mom told me, how it was created by some master silversmith back in the twelfth century, or whatever, but I’ve always felt that there was more to it than that. I’ve always felt drawn to it, like it was special in a way I couldn’t explain.”
“Hmm,” Millie mused. “And with your sixth sense, you know to pay attention to such things.”
“You and me both, yes. I’ve thought about it ever since I was a little girl. It’s a beautiful work of art but I hardly know anything at all about it. Who made it? Why did my mom put her name on top of the box? What happened to it after my dad took it from me?”
Millie chuckled pleasantly. “Oh, my, but you do have some questions there, don’t you? That’s a lot of thinking over such a small thing.”
“So there’s nothing special about it?”
“Well, now I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Aunt Millie.” Darcy threw herself back into the couch. “Are you going to get all cryptic on me now? Really? When I was younger you were the one I always came to when I had questions about anything. Even my family. You knew everything. You must know about that box.”
“I know enough,” she said, still smiling. “Probably about as much as your new puppy dog does.”
Cha Cha was sitting at Millie’s feet, panting up at her with his pink tongue lolling out from the side of a big smile. “I know lotsa things, nice lady. I know how to get up the stairs and where the best digging spots are in the yard and where my boy Zane likes to get licked on his face. Yup. Lotsa stuff.”
“Mrrowrr,” Tiptoe sneered from her perch on the arm of the couch. Her tail swished back and forth, back and forth. “I think,” she said, “that dogs should be seen and not heard.”
Cha Cha was watching her tail swing like he was hypnotized by it. “You got a pretty tail, pretty cat.”
She twitched her whiskers and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Maybe,” she purred, “you’re not so dumb after all, dog.”
Darcy closed her eyes. This dream was getting way out of control. She’d just hoped to get some answers from Millie. The jewelry box was a family heirloom and Millie didn’t seem to want to say much more than that, but she knew it was important somehow. For more than just its weight in silver, too. She took a deep breath, and let it out again, settling her head back against the cushions. She was starting to get a headache.
Millie shook her by the hand, getting her attention back. “Don’t worry, dear. Truth comes from the most unlikely of places. Thankfully, you have a house full of smart people to help you think things through. And me, of course. And, let’s not forget your wonderful cat and smart little doggie.”
Tiptoe rolled pulled her cap down low over her eyes. “Smart dog. As if.”
“Oh, bam-bow-wow!” she heard Cha Cha exclaim. “I’m a smart dog. Yup. Smart, smart, smart. I know how to bury things where people can’t find them, too. Gotta look under the top. Yup. I hide all my best stuff under the top.”
“See? Your puppy knows as much about the box as I do.”
Darcy wanted to open her eyes and argue with Millie that what Cha Cha had just said made absolutely no sense, but the couch was just so comfortable. She laid her head back, her eyes still closed, and crossed her arms in a huff. “Millie, this is my dream. If you’re going to show up the least you can do is answer my questions, don’t you think?”
“Oh, but I did, dear.” She laughed softly, and patted Darcy’s hand. “You just need to listen to your dog.”
She gave Darcy’s hand one last squeeze. Darcy felt her getting up from the couch. She must be getting ready to leave and go back to wherever it was ghosts went when they weren’t haunting the living.
“Oh, and Darcy?” she said, sounding like she was a million miles away. “That’s not your mother’s name on the box.”
“Then who…?” Darcy felt herself drifting, her mind losing focus, falling asleep in spite of herself. “Who…?”
Millie’s answer was a distant whisper in her ear. “Our family came from somewhere else.”
Then she was gone, and the room was quiet. Darcy thought she might really fall asleep.
Until something went crash out in the kitchen.
Darcy jumped up from the couch, on her feet and breathing hard, instantly awake but confused about where she was in the dark. The living room. In her house. Right. It was late, and she’d fallen asleep waiting for Jon, and then she’d had a dream…
Ooh, the dream. Millie had told her something, but it was kind of escaping her right now in that way that stuff from dreams sometimes will. It was there, and she knew it was still there, but she couldn’t recall what it was.
She was going to have to think about it later because right now something had gone crash. The light was off in here so she could rest her eyes, but she’d kept one on in the kitchen for when Jon got back. She didn’t want him coming home to a dark house.
And just like that, she thought she knew what the noise in the kitchen was.
Jon was by the sink, carefully stacking the dirty pots and pans from dinner back into place. His smile was sheepish when he saw her standing there watching. “Er… sorry. I was trying to be quiet, but my sleeve snagged the handle on that pan and then the whole pile just went crashing down. Did I wake the kids?”
“No,” she said, helping him balance one last dish, “just me.”
“Well, so much for sneaking in. I guess I need to work on that, huh? Smudge always made it look so easy. Weird to think I’ll never be as stealthy as a cat.”
“I like you better as a man, anyway.” She snuggled herself up against his chest. “Welcome home. What time is it, even?”
“After midnight. I didn’t expect this thing in Meadowood to take so long.”
“You didn’t text me like you promised, either,” she reminded him.
“Sorry again. I was so busy I didn’t have time, and then when I did have time I was already headed home, and I knew you might be sleeping. Looks like I was right. How is Colby’s headache?”
“Better. She went to sleep like her old self. I guess we’ll see how she is for school tomorrow.”
“You take such good care of them,” he told her, his voice tender and sincere. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too.”
He gently combed her hair back into place with his fingers, smoothing out the bedhead that the couch cushions had given her. She loved him for little things like that, and for how he could look at her with her hair all a mess and bags under her eyes and still be in love with her, rather than wanting to run screaming for the hills.
“It’s okay that you woke me up,” she told him. “I was having a weird dream. Besides, I wanted to ask you about this big case you got called in for. What was so important that it couldn’t wait until their own chief got back in town?”
His lips twisted up at the corners. “It’s actually really interesting. It’s a murder case.”
Darcy grimaced. “Yeah, you said that before you left, and I don’t know if �
�interesting’ is the word I’d use to describe a murder. We’ve had enough of that here in Misty Hollow.”
He folded her back into his arms. “I’m sorry about Helen. You know that, right?’
She did, and he was right. She’d been thinking about the death of their mayor and friend again and even without saying anything, he knew. Helen Turner had been just the latest person to lose their life to hatred, jealousy, and all the other evil things that can reside within a man’s heart, or woman’s heart for that matter. She wouldn’t be the last. This was Misty Hollow, after all.
Jon had let her talk about the loss of their good friend as often as she needed, until the tears were done, and until the hurt had gotten small enough that she could tuck it away at the back of her mind. She would never get over it, but at least she knew that Jon would always be there for her whenever she felt sad.
“All right,” she said, breathing in his scent with her head lying against his shoulder. “So tell me what was so interesting about this particular murder.”
“It’s not the murder itself, actually. That part’s pretty straightforward. The victim was shot to death.” He shrugged, and then adjusted his arms around her. “You know I can’t tell you too much about the case.”
She was used to that by now. She didn’t even get upset with him anymore when he said that. Well. Not that much, anyway. “So what can you tell me? You know I’m dying with curiosity.”
“I know. I also know you would have made a great police officer.”
“Uh-uh. Not me. I’m too cute.”
“Hey,” he laughed softly. She could feel the gentle rumble of it in his chest. “I’m cute, too.”
“You are devastatingly handsome for a man your age, but I’m the cute one in this relationship. Don’t you forget it.”
“Okay, you win.” He kissed the top of her head. “But you can be the cute one for today. I’m the handsome, smart, confused cop.”
“Confused, huh? This new case has you confused?”
“It sure does. It’s nice to be home, I can tell you that, but I’m going to be dividing my time between Misty Hollow and Meadowood for a few days, at least.”
Darcy was even more curious now. Jon was one of the smartest people she knew. Maybe not rocket-scientist-smart, but as far as life in general and the ways of criminals there was no one smarter than her husband. There must really be something going on if this new case had him stumped.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go up to bed. I’m seriously tired. And if I’m going to be working double duty with both my people and the guys in Meadowood, Jon Tinker needs his beauty sleep.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” she protested. “Don’t leave me hanging. What is it about this case that has you all confused?”
“I can’t give you all the details,” he sighed, and rubbed at his forehead. “Well, I can’t tell you much. But I can tell you this. Our victim was killed inside a locked room.”
Darcy wasn’t sure she understood. “You mean, someone killed him and then locked his body inside of a room?”
He shook his head. “No. I mean he died inside of a locked room. Shot to death, alone in a room, that was locked from the inside. Not just locked, either. The security latch was in place. You know, one of those swing bars that fits over a metal knob inside of a hotel room? It can only be locked from the inside.”
A hotel room, he said. “So there was no one else with him, and the door was locked, but he was shot to death?”
“From inside the room, yes.” He smiled down at her, seeing that she was catching on to the heart of the problem now. “It’s an honest-to-God locked room mystery.”
Darcy owned a bookstore, so of course she’d heard of a locked room mystery. It was a favorite device of all the great mystery writers. Ellery Queen’s The King is Dead, or Cover Her Face by P.D. James. Those books always had some clever solution to them which really should have been obvious from the start…
“Did he shoot himself?” she asked, supposing that would be the easiest answer.
But Jon shook his head again. “Nope. There was no gun in the room. No gunshot residue on the victim’s hands. The shot to the head was at close range but not point blank. Someone killed him, and then managed to get themselves and the murder weapon out of a room that could only be locked from inside.”
Darcy’s jaw dropped. That was a mystery without an answer. No wonder Jon was stumped!
They weren’t going to find any answers standing here, she told herself as she stifled a yawn behind a hand. Tomorrow was a new day, and new days usually brought answers to tough problems. That had always been her experience, anyway.
“Let’s go to bed,” she said. “I’ll rub your shoulders and get you all sleepy.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, while his fingers tickled along her spine. “I can think of a few other things that will make us both sleepy.”
Darcy caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She liked that idea. A lot. “Come on then,” she said in a whisper. “Be quiet, so we don’t wake the kids.”
“Hey, you know me. Stealthy like a ninja.”
“Uh-huh. Come on, Mister Police Man.”
He kissed her, warm and strong, and Darcy melted in his arms just like she always did.
When he led her by the hand from the kitchen, her eyes fell on the jewelry box still sitting on the kitchen table. “Hold on. I want to bring this up with us.”
Some of the things Great Aunt Millie had told her in her dream were starting to come back to her. Cha Cha had kept interrupting with his rambling puppy dog thoughts, and Millie hadn’t been as insightful as Darcy had hoped, but it had been enough to let her know that the box was special. She was going to keep it safe up in their bedroom until she could unravel its secrets.
Jon wasn’t the only one in the family with a mystery to solve.
Chapter 4
“How come Colby goes school?” Zane asked Darcy with a sulkiness only a three-year-old could master. They were walking from her parked car to the back entrance of the bookstore, but Zane would much rather be on the yellow bus that had taken Colby away this morning.
“She goes to school,” Darcy corrected him.
“I don’t go to school,” he said, using the same inflection that his mother had.
She had to laugh. She couldn’t help it. He was trying to be so serious, so grown up, but in his puffy red and black Spiderman coat and his heavy wool hat, he looked like he belonged in one of his cartoon shows.
“You,” she told him, “will get to go to school in less than two years. Then you’ll get to do all the things that your big sister is doing. You’ll find out really quick that it’s not as much fun as you think it is.”
“I like fun.” He looked up at her with a big grin. In his eyes she could see an optimism for the future that no amount of grown-up talk would ever squash.
Darcy couldn’t remember ever being that young. Zane would have the opportunity to become anything. To do anything. Go anywhere. She was full of hopes and dreams for him, and a little bit of fear. There was so much that could go wrong. If anyone understood that, it was her. Her gift had brought her into very dangerous situations, with ghosts and living people alike. To know that the big bad world was out there waiting for Zane, too, made her want to roll him up in bubble wrap and not let him outside again until he turned twenty-five.
She was almost relieved to know the family gift couldn’t pass down to her son. It only manifested in the girls. Boys were somehow immune. Or rather, incapable of having it. That was both a blessing and a curse, as they said.
Beside them, Cha Cha padded along at the end of his leash, looking all around at everything like the world was brand new. Come to think of it, Zane and his puppy had sort of the same outlook toward life. They were quite the pair.
Inside, the bookstore was quiet. They weren’t supposed to open for another half hour, but usually Izzy was here by now, moving things around and sorting books and getting the coffee ready. Odd, Darcy thought. Of th
e two of them, Darcy’s business partner was by far the more dependable. Darcy just had too much going on in her life to be on time more than once or twice a week.
“Mommy,” Zane asked her, “can me and Cha Cha get a book?”
“Uh, sure honey,” she said, distracted with her own thoughts. She would have to start getting the store ready by herself until she found out where Izzy was. The list of things to do was running through her mind. Coffee, get the register set up, make sure the books in the sales display were all facing the right way… “What kind of book do you think Cha Cha would like to read?”
Zane looked down at his dog. The puppy sat with one ear cocked and his eyes scrunched up. Then he snuffed.
“Horses,” Zane told his mother. “Cha Cha likes horses. He thinks they funny.”
“Thinks they are funny,” Darcy corrected him. “That’s fine. Go ahead. Remember the rules, right?”
“Don’t leave the store. Don’t break stuff. Books are friends.”
“That’s right. Good job,” she said as she helped him take off his coat. “Now go have fun.”
She unhooked Cha Cha’s leash and ruffled Zane’s hair and then went to start booting up the store’s computer. Zane had free run of the bookstore, as long as he didn’t go near the coffee maker and a few other places that three-year-old’s should stay away from. He was a good kid, and the fact that he loved books as much as she did was definitely something she wanted to encourage. Taking off her coat she tossed it over the sales counter and turned on the computer’s screen to get the day started.
While she was waiting for the program to start, she heard her cellphone buzzing from her inner coat pocket. Jon had bought this one for her as a gift, even though she had sworn to never carry one ever again. Ghosts had a way of calling from the other side. Her phone would ring in the middle of the night, and it would be some long dead spirit begging for her help, or crying hysterically, or screaming at her for reasons that weren’t always clear. For a while, she’d stopped carrying a phone altogether.