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

by K. J. Emrick

  ***

  “You’re sure you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong?” Jon asked Darcy for the third time.

  “I just want to get inside and talk to Phin,” she told him. “You’re sure this is all right?”

  Jon shrugged as he finally shut the car engine off. “It isn’t not all right, if you can follow that. Phin hasn’t asked for a lawyer. He just won’t talk to us. So, for right now, I’m just the chief of police bringing in one of his consultants to talk to a suspect.”

  “Nice to know I’m good for something.” She grumbled some other choice comments about her sister and her whole entire family and what they could all give themselves for Christmas—anatomically impossible as it might be—while she got out of Jon’s car.

  Thursday morning had dawned bright and early after Darcy had gotten maybe two whole hours’ worth of sleep. She had debated the idea of calling her mother more than once, arguing it over with herself after Jon had fallen asleep. She wanted to hear directly from their mother whether she’d known about Grace having the inherited the family gift. She also wanted to yell and scream and throw a very grown up tantrum at her mother until she felt better.

  Only, she knew that wouldn’t have made her feel any better at all. Things were finally good between her and her mom. Rehashing old wounds would only serve to tear down the bridges they’d built. Grace’s words were still fresh. The wounds they’d left behind still hurt, and they would for a long time yet. She might find it in herself to forgive her sister’s fear and anger and selfish lies, especially now in the season of giving, but then again she might not. She just didn’t know.

  The only thing she did know was that she needed answers to this mystery, and the only way she was going to get them was from the man responsible: Pastor Phineas McCord.

  So Jon had driven her to the station this morning after Colby was gone to school. Their little daughter had held onto Darcy for a long time in the warmth of their kitchen, her My Little Pony backpack with the red—not pink—straps dangling off one shoulder. She could tell her mother was upset. Darcy didn’t want her to worry that any of this was her fault so she started trying to explain it in grownup doublespeak that kept any mention of Addison and the family gift and Grace out of it. Her words tangled and she started talking so fast she would have given herself whiplash if she’d kept going.

  She stopped when Colby gave her another hug. “Mom, you’re going too fast. Just slow down.”

  There were those words again. Slow down. Kissing her daughter’s forehead, she thanked her for the advice and sent her off to school.

  Now, as she stalked toward the police station with Jon right behind her, Darcy didn’t want to slow down. She wanted to get this over with so she could go back to hating her sister.

  Jon had implemented new security devices for the police station after he’d taken over as police chief from Joe Daleson. Now the back door needed more than a simple key to open. It needed a microwave sensitive passcard. Every member of the Misty Hollow police force carried one of the blank, white plastic cards and in theory, there was no way to fool the electronic lock into opening without one. Jon carried his in his wallet. It had only desensitized his debit card twice. So far.

  With a beep the lock disengaged and Jon led her into the back hallways. Around the corner was the holding cells. From there the hallway would lead up to the front of the building where all of the officers would be working but Jon had wanted to bring them in this way. With Brianna Watson and her cameraman parked out front doing a monologue piece with the police department as her backdrop, this would be easier than going in the front and having to answer a bunch of questions about what exactly Darcy was consulting on in the case of Pastor Phin McCord. Especially since Jon didn’t really understand what she planned on asking.

  Neither did Darcy, really. She knew something was wrong, and she knew Phin would have the answers she needed. She just wasn’t sure what the questions should be. For that, she was going to depend on her sixth sense. The gift that apparently wasn’t as rare in her family as she had been led to believe.

  She had to push thoughts of her sister’s betrayal out of her mind and focus. There were two holding cells back here, set side by side with a cinderblock wall in between them. Thick metal bars ran vertically and horizontally, painted black over flakes of rust, forming a criss-cross pattern only big enough for someone’s arm to slip through. No way to escape there. A metal doorframe in each cell had their own squares of metal bars and a heavy square lock that still operated with a thick metal key no matter what sort of updates Jon had made to the rest of the building. Sometimes the old ways were the best ways.

  In the cell on the left, Bobbi Jo Cameron sat on the narrow shelf cot bolted to the wall, hugging a thin pillow to her chest. She looked up when the shadows of Jon and Darcy fell across her face, and her eyes narrowed with hatred. “You can’t keep me in here forever, you know. I want my day in court.”

  “The judge held you on bail,” Jon explained in a voice that wasn’t so much patient as it was tired. This wasn’t the first time he’d told Bobbi Jo this, apparently. “We’re transferring you to the county jail today. Don’t worry. You’ll be out of our hair soon enough. For now, we’ve got some more paperwork to do. Come on.”

  The cells were watched by a camera mounted to the ceiling that transmitted images to the monitors up front. A half-wall of more cinderblocks provided a little bit of privacy for the toilet, and other than that Bobbi Jo would be watched like a hawk by whoever was out at the front desk. Probably, Darcy thought, Sergeant Fitzwallis. All things considered, Darcy understood why Bobbi Jo wanted to leave. She’d rather be anywhere but here, too. Then again she wasn’t the one selling drugs from her shop.

  There weren’t any officers stationed down here at the moment. That was only for problem prisoners. For these two, the monitors would suffice. Bobbi Jo was just mouthy. The other prisoner, in the next cell, had barely said two words. Pastor Phin had been a model prisoner, but silent as a tomb. Darcy was hoping she could get him to talk to her.

  Using one of the keys on his car ring, Jon unlocked the metal box mounted on the wall, and took out the key to the cell doors. When he had Bobbi Jo’s side opened, he motioned her out, and then down the hallway. Over his shoulder, he winked at Darcy.

  She smiled after him. She really loved this man. Just the fact that he trusted her to do things like this with him meant the world to her. He was her partner in life, and she was his.

  In her winter coat and the heavy knit sweater underneath it, she knew she was much warmer than Phin must be. He was only wearing an orange jumpsuit, a white undershirt peeking out at the top against his dark skin where the last few buttons weren’t done up. Laying on the cot in his cell, hands folded over on his chest, he rolled his head toward her as she stood there. “They took my clothes,” he explained, guessing at her thoughts. “A subpoena would allow them to do that, right? I imagine they took all of my clothes looking for traces of accelerant and smoke and ash. After all, they need to prove I started the fire.”

  “Phin…” He sounded defeated. Like he’d given up. He sounded guilty. “I want to ask you about something.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.” He sat up, though, and pushed his hands into the tangle of his curly hair to hold his head like it might fall apart if he let go. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want this to be over.”

  “You want… what to be over?”

  He took a deep, steadying breath, before letting go of his skull and waving his hands around like he was the conductor of his life’s symphony. “This. All of this. I want to be found guilty and sent to prison for what I’ve done.”

  Darcy heard something in those words. Something… meaningful. “Phin, you’ve been the pastor in our town for a few years now. I’ve seen you do good works for our community. I’ve seen you help people. Can you tell me what would make a man like that suddenly burn down one of the most important businesses in town?”

  Aft
er a long moment where he just breathed and concentrated on the flat cement floor, Phin managed an answer for her. “Maybe it wasn’t all that suddenly, Darcy Sweet. Maybe this all started years and years ago.”

  “With your sister,” she said.

  He looked up at her then, a sad smile tugging at his lips. “Yes. With Genevieve.”

  “Genevieve Anderson.”

  “Yes. How did you… did I tell you her full name?”

  “The detectives here found it out in their investigation.” Here was the thing that was bothering her. “Your sister died very young, right? When she was a teenager?”

  “My poor sister. She was an amazing girl. Smart and funny. She played the flute at our school. I’ll bet the detectives didn’t find that out in their investigation, did they? She played the flute, and she loved to dance.”

  Darcy took that as a yes. “So, she died young. Too young to be married, right?”

  Now he stood, and on unsteady feet, he stepped closer. “Yes. Of course. Why do you care?”

  “Because she has a different last name than you do.” Did it mean anything? Was there anything to this at all, or did her sixth sense have her picking at straws?

  Phin scrubbed at his cheek as he walked his mind back through his memories. “Yes. She had a different name. Mom… she was a good woman, Darcy, but she had a lot of male friends. Each of us kids got the name of our father. Mine was McCord. Genevieve’s was Anderson. You didn’t answer my question. I just want to go to court and be punished. Why does that concern you?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I think… I think your sister’s been trying to tell us something. I think I may have misunderstood what she said. Would you mind—”

  He interrupted her. “My sister’s been…?” His voice finally had some life in it, his eyes focusing on Darcy at last. “What do you mean by that, Darcy? My sister is dead.”

  Moment of truth time, Darcy thought. “Phin, you’re a pastor. You believe that we all have a soul, right?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “And the soul continues on after death, right?”

  He came closer, right up to the bars of his cell. “Are you saying that you talked to my sister? That Genevieve is trying to speak to you?”

  “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  He reached out through the bars unexpectedly, his hands pleading, his eyes wide. “Darcy, please, tell me what she said. Tell me what my sister said to you.”

  “You believe me?” She couldn’t help but be surprised. “You believe that your sister’s ghost is still here?”

  With a slow nod, his smile became sincere. “I feel her, sometimes. She’s always been here with me, ever since… she died. She tries to make me a better person, you know? She tries to tell me the right thing to do and I’m so sad when she’s around but I’m even sadder when she’s not. Can you possibly understand what I’m saying?”

  Darcy looked down at the pastor’s hands, remembering the blood she’d seen there just two days ago. The guilt this man carried with him was intense. Sometimes, in circumstances like that, a person could actually feel the dead, maybe even hear them whispering in their mind, even if they couldn’t actually talk to them directly.

  Her brother killed her. That’s what Genevieve had said. Had she been haunting her brother all this time, trying to make him pay for what he did? Had she been watching over his shoulder all these years? It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. She’d seen it happen before.

  “Phin… would you let me try something?”

  He pulled back, just a little. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s easier if I show you.”

  She held her hands out to him, palms up.

  He tipped his head up to look at the camera on the ceiling. Or maybe, Darcy thought, he was praying. Then he looked back at her with his teeth clenched together tightly, making the muscles in his jaw pop. After another moment, he reached out to her, and their fingers touched.

  Instantly, Darcy was transported back in time to a moment in Phin’s past. It was quick, and intense. Maybe, she thought, because this was the event that was foremost on his mind. The time from his younger days that he couldn’t ever forget and couldn’t move past, no matter how hard he tried. This was the moment that had made him the man he was today, for good or bad.

  His house was on fire.

  She looked out through the eyes of a boy just ten years old, staring all around as red and yellow and orange fingers of flame crawled up the walls and pooled together on the ceiling. Phin stared at it, transfixed. He didn’t know fire could do that. It was like the opposite of water, running up instead of down, blazing hot instead of cool…

  “What are you doing?” a girl’s voice said to him, stressed in frantic tones of panic. She was a dark beauty, with her skin the color of milk chocolate and her long dark hair all tangled from sleep. She was still in her tanktop and her sleep shorts. Genevieve was going to get in trouble, he thought stupidly. They weren’t supposed to be out of bed. They were all supposed to be asleep.

  “Phin, come on!” Genevieve screamed at him over the roar of flames greedily eating up the bare floorboards and the wallpaper and the doorframes. “We’ve got to get out of here. What did you do? How did this all start? Phin, what did you do!”

  Phin stammered something, but he couldn’t make her understand. He didn’t want to tell. He didn’t want anyone to know.

  “Nevermind. Just stay with me, okay?” She grabbed his hand and pulled him one way, down the hallway that took them to mom’s bedroom. She’d know what to do. She’d help them put the fire out, wouldn’t she?

  Further in the house, something crashed. Black smoke came billowing after them, and they ran, until the ceiling collapsed in front of them in burning chunks of plaster and wood and mess.

  The fire was at their heels. Mom’s bedroom was on the other side of the collapsed ceiling. They couldn’t go forward. They couldn’t go back. They were trapped.

  Young Phin began coughing. He couldn’t stop. The air hurt his lungs and stung his eyes. In his pajamas, he could feel the hot air pressing against his skin.

  “Here,” Genevieve said abruptly, yanking him sideways hard enough that his shoulder twisted the wrong way. “In here!”

  It was the downstairs bathroom that she brought him into and for a minute he thought maybe she wanted him to go pee before they escaped. They didn’t have time for that, he wanted to tell her. The flames can walk on the ceiling.

  “Get in the tub,” she instructed him. “Turn the water on, and stay in there. I’m going to get the window open and then we’re going to get out of here, got me? Seriously, Phin, what did you do?”

  The tub still had his plastic toys in it from when he’d taken his bath earlier. He stepped on the toy boat, and squeaked in pain, but he was a tough kid. His sister had always said he was a tough kid. He wouldn’t let her down. Taking hold of the knobs he twisted them both on full.

  The pipes groaned and screed and shook, but nothing came out of them.

  “Great,” Genevieve said when she heard it. “Just stay there, Phin. I’ve almost got this… there. It’s open. Come on.”

  He reached for her hand.

  Flames rushed in along the ceiling with a deafening whoosh, right through the wall, and they rushed along the edges of the floor like a flash flood. Phin curled up into a ball in the bottom of the tub. Maybe the fire wouldn’t see him if he stayed down. Maybe it wouldn’t find him. Oh, please God, don’t let the fire find him!

  “Phin, come on!” His sister’s voice was hysterical now. “We have to go! Phin!”

  He couldn’t move. The flames could walk on the ceiling.

  Then she was there, his loving sister, pulling him out of the tub even though he was too scared to move on his own, making him pull himself up onto the window ledge and then pushing him out when his legs were trembling too bad to go any further. He landed with a thud on the soft, cool grass, unable to understand why
it was so bright out here in the middle of the night until he remembered why. His house was on fire. It was so bright. They could probably see this from the moon, it was so bright!

  He crawled on his hands and knees until he was far enough away that he couldn’t feel the heat trying to roast his bare toes. Then he knelt there, and he looked back, watching his sister lift herself up into the window.

  She smiled at him.

  A wave of fire and pieces of the house cascaded down, and took her away.

  It was forever before what had just happened registered on young Phin’s mind. Darcy could feel his pain, feel his tears, feel everything that he felt when he realized that Genevieve was dead. She was dead because of him. If she hadn’t stopped to save him, she would be the one out here watching their house crash down on itself in a blaze of crackling, laughing flame. She would have lived.

  Instead she was dead, and it was all his fault.

  After another eternity, someone came to stand next to him. The boy was just a year older than Phin was, younger than Genevieve, but he always acted like he was the one in charge. Whenever Mom said don’t do something, he would do it anyway just to prove he could.

  Like when she said don’t use the stove without her there to watch.

  “That’s pretty bad,” Phin’s brother said to him. “Guess you shoulda never asked for that snack, huh? It’s your fault, you know.”

  Phin looked up at the older boy, his white skin so different from his own. That didn’t matter in their family. They were still brothers, and when Phin had woken up hungry during the night it had made sense to go to his older brother and say he needed a snack. He didn’t know that meant using the stove to cook something. Mom had said never use the stove. Never turn the burners on.

  Phin looked up at his brother. Through the smoke and the haze and the weird shifting light of the fire he couldn’t see that face he knew so well, but he didn’t have to. He knew what his brother looked like.

  “It’s your fault, Phin. You did this.”

  Darcy snapped out of her vision with a sudden gasp for breath that startled Phin. He stumbled back from her, into the cell, until his legs caught the edge of the cot and sent him dropping down on his backside. He stared at her, his mouth open, his eyes dilated and wide as the memories left him.