by K. J. Emrick
Darcy thought about the vision that had jumped into her head just now. Yeah, you just never knew.
Later, after she and Izzy had made sandwiches for everyone, with potato chips on the side, Darcy excused herself from the table to send a text message to Jon. After the vision had taken hold, she’d nearly forgotten that he was trying to find Mark Franks to talk to him and here he was, sitting at their kitchen table, eating tuna fish.
Izzy hadn’t said more than two words to her after coming downstairs again. Darcy had apologized and promised to make it up to both of them, and it didn’t seem to matter. The blossoming feelings between the two of them must be stronger than she realized. Without meaning to, she’d put a crack in her friendship with Izzy that was going to take a while to fix.
Darcy could wait. Izzy was one of those rare people who were worth the effort.
Picking up her cellphone she leaned into the entryway to the living room, checking on Colby and Zane eating off plates on the floor in front of the television. The snowstorm was giving them lots of screen time, that was for sure. It reminded Darcy that they had promised to discuss getting Colby a phone of her own. She couldn’t forget to do that. No matter what else was going on in Misty Hollow, Darcy’s children came first. She never wanted them to think otherwise.
Her thumbs tapped a message to her husband.
Mark Franks is here. Not involved. Complicated. Short version is the deaths happened before the snow got too deep. Nothing to do with Mark.
The explanation for the bruise and the plagiarized novel on his laptop, could wait until later. Jon didn’t need to know all the details right now. He just needed to know he could stop looking for Mark.
She was just about to put her phone down and go back to eating when it buzzed in her hand. Jon was messaging her back.
Glad to hear that we can cross him off the list. Right now I’m up to my eyeballs in suspects.
Darcy stared at her phone. Now what did that mean? There had only been a few suspects this morning, including Mark Franks. Now that Mark was in the clear, who was left besides Lana herself?
Do you mean the family that the Harris’s were coming to see?
There was a long pause before there was an answer, while the three dots that indicated Jon was typing back to her danced up and down. He must have considered and reconsidered what he was saying because when it finally came through, it didn’t say much at all.
Easier if I show you. Can you come down to the station?
Darcy’s mouth turned down in a frown. Her kids were in the living room, trapped inside all day. This was supposed to be a day for them to spend together, watching Christmas shows on TV and looking out at snowbanks stacked right up to the windows. It was supposed to be a time for family. This mystery kept stealing her away from what should have been little moments with her children.
Such was life, she decided. You never got it all. There was what you wanted from the world, and what the world needed from you. What was it that Colby had said to her earlier? I’m a Sweet. My mother is Darcy Sweet… we don’t choose who we are when we’re born.
Her daughter never ceased to amaze her. Her kids would understand if she had to go and help Jon solve the latest murder in Misty Hollow.
It just sucked.
“Hey Izzy?” she said.
“Yeah, sure. Go help Jon,” she said, without Darcy having to say it. “I’ll be fine here with the kids. Again.”
She was still offended by what Darcy had done to her. Mark might have forgiven her, but Izzy hadn’t. Not yet.
Speaking of Mark…
He crammed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and then waved an understanding hand in the air. “Don’t worry about me, Darcy. I appreciate the lunch, but I should be getting back home. I can understand if you would be nervous about me being here with your kids, when you aren’t. I’m not a killer, but they don’t really know me.”
Darcy was immensely grateful for him saying that. She might not suspect him anymore, but she felt it would be irresponsible to leave him here with her two kids. Izzy was one thing, she was practically family. Mark wasn’t.
Izzy glared at her, and glared at Mark, and then concentrated hard on her food. Obviously, she’d been looking forward to spending time with him and here Darcy had gone and ruined that, too. Everything she did was turning out wrong. Well. Nothing she could do about it now. That would have to wait. For now, there was a mystery to solve.
Be right there, Darcy texted back to Jon. Just as fast as my skis can carry me.
Chapter 9
The weather outside was turning cold again. Not that it had gotten exceptionally warm, but the thermometer had risen enough that the snow had started to melt and birds had started to sing. Water dripped off the tips of icicles. The surface of the snow took on a glossy, shiny appearance and things that had been buried were starting to resurface. Darcy could even see the heads of the three shepherds in the Town Hall’s creche scene. Not the baby Jesus or his mother. Just the shepherds from the neck up.
But now, the clouds were beginning to roll back in and the cold was coming back. Darcy shivered as she unstrapped her skis and carried them into the police department. It wouldn’t be long before this temporary calm in the storm was over and the snow was flying again. She still hadn’t seen a single snowplow go by. The people in town were just going to have to hang on a little bit longer.
And at this rate, her mother might never be able to fly in for Christmas. She didn’t know for sure, because there hadn’t been so much as a text from her. Maybe that was her answer. No news meant no chance of it happening.
She scowled as she put her skis in the corner and got the desk officer to let her in the back so she could go find Jon.
The scene that met her was a surprise, to say the least.
Every officer in town must be here and on duty at the moment. She counted eight of them in this room alone, in their blue uniforms and black winter jackets. She saw Grace at her desk, next to the other senior detective, Wilson Barton. They were both busy at their computers, taking statements from two separate people.
In fact, every officer in the room was taking statements from different people, and there were still five others lined up against the wall, waiting to be seen. She had never wondered before if the police department had a maximum occupancy but if it did, they had to be over it now.
“Crazy times, aren’t they, Darcy?”
She wasn’t surprised to find it was Sergeant Sean Fitzwallis standing at her shoulder. He always knew when she was around. Sean had been with the police department for as long as anyone could remember. Long enough that he’d known her Great Aunt Millie personally. He always seemed to be in the police station, too. At least, whenever Darcy was here.
“Hello, Sean. What’s going on here?”
“Behold,” he said with a wave of his hand, “the many suspects in the murder of Brian and Joel Harris.”
His uniform shirt was baggy and hung off his arm. Sean was tall and lanky, almost frail, and even though Darcy knew he was a lot stronger than he looked, his weathered face and his steel-gray hair showed he was an old man. Even so, nobody would ever guess his real age.
Darcy looked all around the room again. So many people… “All these people are suspects in the murders?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call them suspects. I think the correct term is ‘persons of interest.’ Nobody really suspicious yet.” He scratched at the side of his nose with a finger. “Turns out, all these people are from the Levison family, which is the people our victims were coming to see. They live in two houses, side by side, and they have for generations. Three brothers, and their wives, four grown children home for the holidays and their spouses. All of them knew the Harris’s were coming. So we have to get statements from all of them.”
Darcy quietly shook her head. Now she understood what Jon meant when he said he was buried in suspects. Did any of these people realize that Lana Harris was in the back, in a hold
ing cell, still not talking to anyone, still in some sort of shock? How well did they know each other, these two families? She tried to read their expressions as they spoke with the officers. Most of their faces were blank. Maybe they were having a hard time accepting this tragedy, on the eve of the holiest day of the year.
Maybe, one of them already knew about the murders, because the killer was in this room.
If that was true, she certainly didn’t envy Jon the task of narrowing the list of who-done-it down to just a few, and then down to one. Either someone in this room, or the woman in the back of the station. Somewhere here there was a killer.
“Where is he?” Darcy asked Sean without looking at him. She didn’t have to say who she meant, they both knew she was talking about Jon.
“Back in his office. Got one of the Levison brothers in there taking his statement.”
“Okay. So tell me, Sean.” She lowered her voice so no one but the two of them could hear. “Do you see a killer in this room?”
She wasn’t just asking him to make conversation. Sean could see things in a way that most people missed. He had a unique experience with the human condition. Sometimes when you asked people the right questions, and really listened, you were entertaining angels without realizing it.
“Does a killer look any different than anyone else?” Sean asked her in return. “It’s not as easy as looking for a scarlet letter ‘K’ on someone’s forehead. If it was, then we wouldn’t need people like your husband to find the bad guys. Or people like you, either.”
He meant it as a compliment. Darcy gave him a smile and decided to take it that way.
“Tell Grace I’ll come back to see her in a minute, will you? I want to see if Jon needs me.”
“Sure thing.” He tipped his policeman’s cap to her. “Merry Christmas, Darcy.”
“Same to you, Sean.”
It was kind of odd that he didn’t have some words of insight to give her. She’d kind of grown accustomed over the years to him having more to say than just a simple hello and goodbye. Was it possible that he’d run out of pithy nuggets of wisdom to pass on to her? That happened sometimes, when you knew someone long enough. Although, there was always wisdom in silence, wasn’t there? Listening was sometimes more informative than a thousand words could ever be.
Now where had she heard that recently…?
Down the hall, she knocked on Jon’s office door. She could hear voices inside, and Sean had already told her that he was doing an interview, so she didn’t want to just walk right in and interrupt anything.
It turned out she shouldn’t have worried. She heard Jon say, “Come in,” even before her knuckle hit the door a third time. It was like he knew it was her out here.
Jon was behind his desk, an open folder in front of him and a pen caught between his two hands. He was twisting it between his fingers over several pages of notes. On this side of the desk, a man in a fur-lined leather jacket sat with his head hung low. His light brown hair was a mess from the ski cap he’d been wearing. The same one he was wringing in his hands now.
“Anyway, like I said,” the man was telling Jon, “I had my roof fixed up just in the nick of time. With family coming over I wanted to get that leak fixed but the guy no sooner hammered in the last nail and the snows started to set in, and we couldn’t go nowhere, and we just figured Brian and his family weren’t able to get in like we planned, either. This was supposed to be a fun vacation for all of us. All the brothers home for the first time in years, our kids too, and my good friend Brian, his wife Lana, and his son Joel. This was going to be the best Christmas ever…”
They hadn’t been able to get in, because Brian and Joel were dead.
He trailed off, and Darcy could hear the sadness in his voice. It was obvious that whoever Brian Harris had been to his family, he’d been more than just a good friend.
Jon looked up at Darcy, one eyebrow raised, silently conveying to her that he didn’t really have anything to tell her about. Just lots and lots of people to interview.
“Excuse me,” Darcy said to the man. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. My name is Darcy Sweet.”
“She’s a consultant for our agency,” Jon pointed out. “And my wife, too.”
The man looked up over his shoulder and gave Darcy a nod. “I know who you are, Darcy. You can’t live in this town and not know one of its most famous residents.”
That surprised Darcy. “So, we have met before?”
He chuckled softly. “I wouldn’t think so. One of my brothers lives out of town, and Lloyd—that’s my other brother—lives next to me here in Misty Hollow but we both work up north in Vermont. We’re hardly ever here. I think we’ve passed each other in the deli a few times. Not surprised you didn’t recognize me.”
Well, that explained that at least. Darcy had been surprised when she hadn’t known either the victims, or the family they were coming to see. “I’m sorry for your loss… um… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Casey,” he told her. “Casey Levison. It’s a terrible thing, Darcy. I’m real appreciative of the way Jon has been treating our family. This is going to be a sad Christmas for all of us.”
Darcy could certainly understand that. Losing someone you cared about was terrible at any time of year. Losing them at Christmas was twice as hard on everyone.
She came around the desk to stand next to Jon, giving the pathetic little plastic Christmas tree on the filing cabinet a pat on her way by. This way, Casey didn’t have to crane his neck to look at her. “Had Brian and Lana ever come to visit with your family before? Maybe with Joel?”
A frown deepened on Casey’s face. “Yes. I knew Brian from college. He came to see us several times in the past. Less often after he married Lana. She… changed Brian.”
Jon didn’t look up at Darcy, but she could sense him shift in his chair. This was information he didn’t have from Casey’s official statement. Sometimes it took someone who wasn’t a police officer to ask the right questions, the ones no one else would ever think to ask. Casey had just alluded to problems in Lana and Brian’s marriage. Trouble in a marriage was often a root cause of murder. Money, love, and anger. Those were the causes of most murders. Bad money, bad love, and bad anger…
She took a chance at which one it might be this time. “You know Lana is okay, right? Jon told you she’s here, at the station? I’m sure if you wanted to talk to her he could arrange it for you.”
There was that frown again. “I’d just as soon not, if you don’t mind. I loved Brian like a brother… well, like a fourth brother, I guess you’d say. All of us brothers did. His son Joel was a great kid, always joking, always smiling, bouncing that ball of his. He loved that ball. They were great to be around. His wife, Lana… well, I’d just as soon never see her again in my life.”
Now Jon sat up straighter. “Casey, I want you to be very careful about what you’re saying. I don’t want to cause trouble for you, but it sounds like you’re saying there was bad blood between your family and Lana Harris?”
Casey shifted in his seat. He slapped his ski cap against his thigh. “Yeah, you could say that. Listen, this is my good friend who died and I’m not going to pull any punches. You know Lana was running around on Brian, right?”
Jon stopped twisting the pen in his hands. Darcy felt just as surprised. “No,” she told him, “we didn’t know that. We didn’t know much about Brian and Lana at all, really.”
She knew a little about Joel, actually, but only what she’d heard from his ghost so far, and even that wasn’t much.
Jon pointed his pen off in the direction of the other room, where they all knew his officers were still busy taking statements. “Was the affair with someone in your family? One of your brothers, maybe?”
Casey sneered. “No way. None of us wanted anything to do with Lana once we heard about the affair. We’re family men, Jon. None of us would risk what we have with our wives for a one-night stand. We’re just not cut that way.”
“No, sir,” Casey insisted strongly, shaking his head as Jon started asking the question. “It’s not any of us three, I can tell you that. From what I could gather it was some guy from up in Vermont where we’re all from. I don’t want anything to do with that, myself. I’m not saying Lana isn’t pretty, because she is, it’s just that she rubs me the wrong way… although I guess, under the circumstances, that’s the wrong turn of phrase.”
Darcy tried not to smile at that, but she couldn’t help it. He really did not like Lana at all. His view of the woman sitting back in the holding cell really painted a different picture of the whole Harris family.
“Any idea who it was, then?” Jon asked him. “Someone the family knew? I think it’s pretty odd that all of you have ties to Vermont, but nobody knew who Lana was fooling around with outside of her marriage.”
Casey shrugged. “Honestly I have no idea. Brian told me he was starting to suspect someone, but he wouldn’t tell me who. He’s known about the affair for years, but he wouldn’t leave Lana. I tried to tell him it would be for the best, but he was dedicated to his family, even if that evil wife of his wasn’t. And yes, me and Lloyd work in Vermont, not far from where Brian and Lana lived. There’s a whole group of us who go back and forth for the work from this area to that one. It’s just the nature of the economy. You know, they talk about how the jobless rate is at an all-time low but what they don’t tell you is you gotta go where the jobs are. It’s not like you can just roll out of bed and get a job in your own neighborhood. You ask me, there’s not so many jobs out there as they want you to think.”