The Naughty List (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 20)

by K. J. Emrick

  Grace was huddled into her own coat, white like her daughter Addison’s was. She was standing close by her mother and father and looking impatient to leave. Aaron was wearing a bulky ski jacket, already done up to his chin. He had pale as milk skin and brown hair, and he was just as unsuited to the cold as Darcy was. He was talking to Pastor Phin about something, Darcy saw, and whatever it was Grace didn’t seem to like what was said. She was staring hard at the pastor, her face darkening.

  Then she turned to look back at Darcy.

  Huh. Darcy wondered what that was all about. She’d catch up with Grace later, or maybe tomorrow, and ask then.

  Addison saw them at that moment too and waved to Colby. She was so energetic about it that her whole body swayed. Colby waved back, her gaze still focused on the ghost even if Addison didn’t notice. They hadn’t gotten together in a few days now and Colby had already been asking when Addison could come to hang out. Those two cousins were as close as sisters. Closer, even, than Darcy and Grace.

  By the time they made it up to the doors most of the church had emptied out but Phin still had enough energy to smile and shake Jon’s hand warmly. Over Phin’s shoulder, the ghost floated closer.

  “Jon Tinker!” Phin greeted him. “How is our police chief doing today?”

  “We’re fine, Pastor.” Jon took his hand back, and Darcy noticed how he flexed his fingers. Phin had quite the grip. “I appreciate the mention of the Policeman’s Winter Fund, by the way.”

  “Anything to help. You know that.” He clapped Jon on the shoulder and smiled down at Colby before reaching out to hold Darcy’s hand, too. “And Darcy. Always good to see you. Your store going to be open later?”

  “Sure is,” Darcy said as she shook Phin’s hand—

  In her mind’s eye a fire blazed, burning up a large two-story house with gabled windows and two brick chimneys.

  —and then let go. The vision faded away. “Um. Sorry, Pastor. I had something on my mind. Yes, the bookstore will be open. I’ll be there.”

  “So will I,” Colby said abruptly, which Darcy supposed settled that.

  Behind Phin, the ghost raised a hand, and reached out for Colby. Her lips were moving, rapidly, trying desperately to say something that wasn’t penetrating through the void between the world of the living and the next plane of existence.

  Her pale fingers were bare centimeters from Colby’s face.

  “Well we should go,” she said to Jon, pulling Colby with her to the door, away from the ghost, disguising the frantic movement with a tight hug that she hoped looked natural. “We’ll see you next week, Phin.”

  “Uh, sure,” he called after her. “See you then!”

  The rain and snowy mix drummed down on the top of Darcy’s head, freezing cold where it stung her face, wet where it soaked into her hair. This wasn’t a fit day to be outside for man nor beast, as the saying went. She hoped Smudge and his daughter Tiptoe had the good sense to stay inside, curled up nice and warm on the living room rug. That’s where Darcy would like to be, actually. Curled up in her bed at home, maybe with a good book on her tablet, and a steaming cup of hot cocoa.

  “She wasn’t going to hurt me,” Colby said when they were almost back to Jon’s car. It had been lined up along the side of the street with all the others from today’s service and now it was one of the last ones here. “She only wanted me to hear her.”

  Jon looked over at Darcy, over the top of Colby’s head, his deep blue eyes reflecting the same question that Darcy had been hearing from him a lot recently.

  Is this one of those things?

  Jon knew about their daughter’s abilities. He’d known about Darcy’s gifts for years now, or at least most of what they involved, and now his daughter had inherited the same gifts. There were still a few darker bits of what Darcy could do that she had kept from both of them. She had started teaching Colby the basic techniques of what she’d been blessed with, but the more advanced stuff was, well, just that. Advanced. Stuff that only people skilled in their gifts should try.

  The day that Darcy had told Jon that the gift had been passed down to their daughter they had been alone in bed after a very nice, very private moment together. A very long moment that had seemed far too short when it was over for them both. Lying together, catching their breath, Darcy had told him that Colby was just as gifted as she herself was. Maybe more.

  He'd squeezed her tight to his chest, and sighed, and told her that this was what he had signed up for when he married her. He would never love their daughter less, and he would never be afraid of her, but he would always be afraid for her, because he knew the trouble that he and Darcy had gotten in and out of over the years. Trouble that often revolved around Darcy’s gifts. Then he had kissed Darcy full on the mouth, and they fell asleep.

  Ever since, Jon had let Darcy take the lead whenever it came to matters of the ghostly sort with Colby. Like now. So, he was asking her silently, was this one of those things?

  Yes, she answered him with a look of her own and a tilt of her head, this is one of those things.

  He nodded, and said absolutely nothing as he got in behind the wheel of the car and started the engine.

  Darcy stood out with Colby for another moment in the sleet and wind so they could talk privately. “I know you think she wasn’t going to hurt you,” she said, meaning the ghost, “but you never know. Sometimes spirits become confused, or angry, or they try so hard to get a message across that they cause you pain without realizing what they’re doing. Until you can get the ghost one on one with you on your own terms, it’s best to keep your distance.”

  Colby thought that over, chewing on the inside of her lip. “Okay, Mom,” she said at last. “I think I understand.”

  “Good girl. Let’s go home and dry off. After lunch we’ll go over to the bookstore for a few hours. Feel like helping me hang up some paper snowflakes? We can hang them upside down and see who notices.”

  Colby giggled at that as she closed the back door of Jon’s sedan and pulled her seatbelt on. Then she looked back over her shoulder, through the rear window.

  Darcy followed her gaze. The ghost was still standing there, at the corner of the church building, watching them go. One hand reached up to touch the burns on her face as if she was trying to remember how they happened.

  In her mind, Darcy saw the image of the burning house again, the same one she’d seen when she touched Pastor Phin’s hand. It happened like that, sometimes, where she would see into a person’s past or see their intentions from a single touch. Sometimes she even knew what the visions meant.

  This time, she had no idea.

  ***

  Lunch was a frozen pizza. Appropriate, Darcy thought, considering how the weather was turning colder. Just last week, the daytime highs had been up in the sixties. Now there wasn’t a day in the next five forecasted to be over forty. The nights were all going to be below freezing. After a late start, winter had finally come to Misty Hollow.

  Smudge had been right where she expected him to be, right there on the living room floor, curled up in front of the heating vent. His old bones definitely did not like the cold anymore. Tiptoe, on the other hand, had been up in the window, her gray tail whipping back and forth as she meowed, begging to be let outside to play. “Not today,” Darcy had told her, with a scratch between her ears.

  The young cat had stretched out like it didn’t concern her one way or the other, and then cast one more longing glance at the outdoor world she couldn’t have before jumping down to pretend to nap with Smudge.

  After kissing Jon goodbye and promising to be home for dinner, Darcy had bundled herself and Colby up again and headed downtown. He didn’t mind. For him it meant an afternoon without any girls around where he could lie down on the couch and watch television. Something he rarely got to do.

  Their house was one of only two on their little street, and it was a straight shot right down to Main from here. On nice days, they always walked everywhere, or rode their bikes. Jon
had driven them to church this morning because of the weather and Darcy was grateful for it but truthfully, she would have preferred to walk to the bookstore even now, when the sleet was quickly turning to heavy snow. If she was by herself, she would have. The last thing she wanted to do was give Colby a cold, though, so they borrowed Jon’s car. The tires hummed through the snow and slipped a little as she came up to the stop sign to turn onto Main Street.

  “You should slow down,” Colby suggested with a smile as they parked between two other cars at the curb just down from the bookstore.

  “Hey,” Darcy joked, “don’t be such a back seat driver. I know what I’m doing.”

  “No, Mom. I mean, you should slow down.”

  Looking her daughter in the eyes, Darcy studied the mysterious blue-green color of them. A mix of Jon’s blue and her hazel, they were deep and focused. Darcy knew there was more to what Colby was saying than just a simple caution about winter driving. She did this sometimes. She would say something that was seemingly so innocent but would have profound meaning later on, and Darcy had learned to pay attention in these moments. She doubted that even Colby knew what she was talking about. It was just the gift, manifesting itself in its own enigmatic ways.

  Tucking Colby’s words into the back of her mind she followed her daughter out of the car and raced to get the shop door open so they could get out of the weather. The storefront greeted them, looking the same as always, with “Sweet Read Bookstore” spelled out in gold stick-on letters across the wide front windowpane, with their slogan under that: “The Mysterious Is All Around Us.”

  She fumbled the keys in her fingers and dropped them to the sidewalk. When she did, the giggles infected Colby, and then Darcy caught them, and the two of them were laughing hysterically and brushing snow off their jackets and hats by the time they actually got inside.

  She wrapped her arms around her daughter from behind and tugged her in close. “You always did like winter. Your father used to chase you through the snowbanks around the house when you were younger.”

  “We still build snowmen together,” Colby said. She had already turned on the lights and set her jacket carefully over the back of a chair at one of the reading tables. “You know how Dad loves to build the snowmen too big and then he has to lift me up so we can get the head on.”

  “Oh, like you don’t encourage him.” Darcy tossed her jacket down on top of Colby’s. They should hang them up to let them dry, but she needed to find something first. At the back was the little office where she and Izzy McIntosh sorted their bills and did all their online sales purchases, and stored the stuff they had nowhere else to put. That’s where the box of Christmas decorations was. Or at least, that’s where it should be. It was one of those things that you saw every day of your life but never paid any mind to unless you actually needed it.

  “I want to look through the books until you find the stuff,” Colby told her. “Is that all right?”

  “Sure, sweetheart. We have the newest Institute of Magic book on the shelf now, if you want something to read.”

  “Maybe,” Colby called back to her, already somewhere in the stacks between romance and reference. “I was going to try to find Aunt Millie first.”

  Darcy smiled at that. Her Great Aunt Millie would have loved Colby. The two of them were so much alike. It was sad, in every way, that Millie was dead now. She had passed away long before Colby was born, but that didn’t keep her spirit from popping by from time to time to check up on things. She wasn’t around that much, not like she used to be, but whenever she was…

  From somewhere in the floor to ceiling stacks of books, a hardback novel flew from a shelf and spun to a stop on the floor.

  That was Millie. Always precocious, even for an old woman’s ghost.

  “Have fun,” Darcy whispered to the two of them, feeling bittersweet over a life that was so full, and so strange, and so wonderful.

  While Colby happily put books back in their places as they continued to drop to the floor one at a time, talking almost nonstop in a one-sided conversation with Millie, Darcy found the box of decorations. Bringing it out to the sales counter she opened the top flaps and inspected the contents just to be sure it had what she remembered. Folding paper snowflakes, cellophane glass stickers of snowmen and angels and the Christmas star, Merry Christmas cardboard letters. It seemed like it was all here. Now it was just a matter of putting it up to make the shop look more festive.

  When the shopkeepers bell above the front door rang, Darcy was partway through hanging a string of tinsel along the middle shelf of the autobiography section. Most of these books sat right here for a year or more before any of them got bought. She had tried reducing the selection gradually, but now she was just considering dumping… er, donating most of them to the library or whoever would take them.

  The bell announced someone coming in the store. The person shaking wet snow from their shoulders onto the rubber mats was a tall man with a wide span of shoulders to clean off. Darcy had heard through the gossip mill that he’d once been a football player in the minors—or whatever the term was for the NFL—and he certainly had the physique for it. Apparently, his career had never taken off on the field but even Darcy remembered him from his television commercials. Everyone traded on fame a little differently, she supposed.

  For the tall, dark, and handsome Tobias Ford that meant investing money in a growing economy like Misty Hollow by buying the well-established bakery business in the heart of town.

  He took off the fedora from his bald head, wiping one large hand over his shaved scalp while he slapped the hat against the side of his long, brown leather coat. His skin was shades darker, nearly the color of that black silk shirt with the square white buttons poking up over the top of his coat lapels. Everything about Tobias spoke of money, and Darcy had never been able to understand why he didn’t just open his own line of shops in a big city somewhere like New York or Boston.

  “Hello, Darcy,” he said with a warm smile. Then, like he always did when he came into her shop, he took in a deep breath through his nose, his nostrils flaring wide. “Ah. I do love the smell of books.”

  “So do I,” she agreed, tucking the end of the tinsel under a heavy tome on the life and times of Harry S. Truman while she got a piece of scotch tape ready. “I didn’t expect to see you in here today. Did you close the bakery up early?”

  “No, no,” he said. “I’ve got people for that. Heh. That bakery’s a real money maker. Hard to believe Helen sold it to me.”

  “Well, it was time for Helen to move on. She’s really busy as mayor.” Darcy tossed the scotch tape roll back into the half-empty box of decorations. The snowflakes still had to be hung from the ceiling but the foam snowmen were up on the sales counter and the sleigh and reindeer cellophane cling were on one side of the window with the Christmas star on the other. “So what can I help you find today?”

  “Actually, I saw your lights on, and I was hoping I could pick your brain about a little business proposition.”

  Okay, that was definitely not what she was expecting him to say. “Sure, I guess. You mean your business, or mine?”

  “Both, actually,” he chuckled, rubbing at an earlobe. “See, I was thinking about the merchandise that you sell in your shop. The sweaters and the mugs and what-nots that all have that cute little saying on them.”

  Darcy’s smile turned a little colder when he called her store slogan “cute,” but she didn’t say anything.

  “Every time I come in here,” he went on, “I see all of this stuff for sale. It does a pretty good turn with the tourists, right?”

  “It does,” Darcy admitted. “Especially the ceramic coffee cups and the travel mugs—”

  “Right, right.” He waved off the rest of what she was saying. Apparently, that had been a rhetorical question. “So I got to thinking, why not let me help expand your business, and then you can do the same for me. This town runs on tourism dollars, and let’s face it. Nobody’s more famous in ou
r little town than you are. All those news reports about you and your police chief hubby? Absolute gold.”

  Darcy held her smile in place while she bent to pick up the box of stuff to bring back to the office. Tobias Ford had only been a part of this town since he’d bought Helen’s bakery. Darcy knew him from around town, and from his weekly visits here to the bookstore where he always bought at least one book. While she appreciated the business, she was starting to see it as part of a bigger ploy. He wanted something. Those news stories he referred to as “absolute gold” all involved bad memories for her. Memories of people getting hurt, or moments like when her brother-in-law had been kidnapped, or when Jon had nearly died. He was looking to cash in on her notoriety. It was just a matter of business for him.

  On the other hand, Darcy knew that she was the closest thing their town had to a celebrity. At least, to the outside world. Here she was just a neighbor and a friend and someone to wave at on morning walks. The rest of the world only knew her as that woman who had been in the news so much. Reporters like Brianna Watson had made sure of that. The publicity was good for the town. It brought in money to the local businesses, her bookstore included. And, she supposed, the same would be true for Helen’s Bean There Bakery and Café.

  Only, it wasn’t Helen’s anymore. It belonged to the big-time sports figure and well established businessman, Tobias Ford. If he had a business proposal, it would most likely be a money maker. She might as well hear him out. What could it hurt?

  “All right,” she said, dropping the box of decorations in front of the door to the office. “So, you want to sell some of my merchandise in your store. We could do that. You’d take a cut of the profits for yourself, I assume?”

  “Well, of course,” he said, spreading his hands wide with his hat still dripping wet in one of them. “Standard business model. That way, you get increased sales, I get tourists coming in not just for sweet treats but for the chance to buy shirts and, uh, mugs and stuff with funny sayings on them.”