Have Yourself a Merry Little Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  Looking up at the flakes of snow spiraling down from the heavens above, Darcy smiled. She loved the wintertime but right now she was really cold. “Cocoa sounds great,” she said.

  Izzy gave her a thumbs up and started off again. Their route was going to take them the long way around the park and then back to Main Street down past the bookstore. Way down from the bookstore, actually. They hadn’t even seen half of the town yet but there really wasn’t any need. It was pretty obvious from what they’d seen already that the power was working just fine. It must simply be that Izzy’s place had a faulty wire or a blown fuse or something. So they could cut their excursion short, which suited Darcy just fine. She wanted to get back to her children.

  “Hey there, ladies!” they heard someone call out to them.

  The snow deadened the sound and made it hard to tell where the voice was coming from at first. Then a shape came gliding out from the white haze of falling flakes. A man, moving like he was floating through the air. Like a ghost.

  But then the man came closer and Darcy saw that he wasn’t floating, he was using skis just like they were. Someone else had the same idea. When he got closer, she saw who it was.

  The newest resident of Misty Hollow was constantly surprising Darcy. Mark Franks turned himself around in a lazy circle that put him right beside Izzy. “Hey. I thought that was you behind that mask, Izzy.”

  “Hey yourself,” Izzy said warmly. “Fancy meeting you out here.”

  “Ha! I know, right? I’ve been all around this morning. All the way down both ends of Main Street. It’s a glorious day for skiing.”

  “I didn’t know you skied, Mark,” Darcy told him.

  “Oh, sure. I come from warmer climates than this, but I used to take ski trips all the time. I just never thought I’d get to do it on the buried streets of Misty Hollow. Are you two out enjoying the weather, same as I am?”

  “Sort of. We were looking to see if everyone still had power. Looks like the snow hasn’t knocked it out yet.”

  “The power? You mean like a blackout?” He blinked his eyes rapidly at the very thought. His high-pitched voice sounded brittle in the cold. “That sounds kind of scary. Especially in this cold weather.”

  Mark probably wasn’t used to being in the cold, Darcy thought to herself. As deeply tanned as his skin was, he was more the sun-worshipping type. Warmer climates, like he’d said. That had been her first thought about him, actually, when the young man with the tight blonde curls had first walked into her bookstore a few months ago. At the time he’d just moved into Misty Hollow. Now he was a regular at her book club meetings and at all the town functions.

  “It can be kind of fun when the power’s out, actually,” Izzy told him, “if you’re with the right person “

  With a wink, Mark switched to a smooth French accent. “That zounds like fun, mon cheri.”

  The two of them shared a look, and Darcy could almost see little crackles of electricity sparking off the snowflakes between them. Mark was quite the character, with his voices and his accents and his way of making you feel like you’ve known him forever, like he was an old familiar friend even though he’d only been in town a few months.

  He was certainly in the bookstore often enough. He was a freelance writer, and he claimed he bought as many books as he did for research on his novels. It seemed kind of an expensive way to get your details straight for a story, especially when anyone with an internet connection could just ask Google for those same facts, but she had begun to suspect recently that it had less to do with the books he was buying and more to do with a budding interest in one of the two women who ran the bookstore itself.

  And since Darcy was very happily married, that left Izzy McIntosh as the one Mark must be crushing on. How interesting.

  “Well,” she said as those two continued to stare into each other’s eyes. “I guess we should keep going. If we’re going to get back to Colby and Zane.” She waited, and then added, “Right, Izzy?’

  “Hmm? What? Oh. Right. I guess we should.”

  Mark took the hint. Duckwalking his skis around, he tapped his finger to his temple. “I guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see you in the bookstore, Izzy. Maybe I’ll send you a text tonight. just to make sure you’ll be there.”

  It wasn’t until he had started skiing off that Izzy remembered to wave and call after him. “I’ll be up late if you want to text me!”

  When she turned Darcy’s way again there was a very goofy grin on her face, framed by the mouth hole in her mask. It took a moment for her to realize Darcy was staring. “What?”

  “Since when does Mark Franks have your phone number?”

  “Um. Since I might have given it to him the last time he came into the bookstore.”

  Darcy swore she was blushing behind that knitted mask. “Izzy! You hardly know the man. Besides, you have a boyfriend, remember? The guy you couldn’t stop talking about all this last year? Kyle? Remember him?”

  Now her smile turned into a frown. “Kyle’s job turned out to be more important than me, sad to say. We’re still on-again off-again but he keeps taking extra shifts and calling to cancel dates and… well. I tell you, Darcy, life gets awful lonely for us girls who don’t have a guy like Jon Tinker in our life.”

  Darcy felt her own cheeks flush at the compliment. Jon was one of the good ones, to be sure. In her eyes he was the best man who ever drew a breath and she counted herself lucky every day she woke up next to him in bed. That didn’t mean he was the last good guy on Earth. There was someone great out there for Izzy, too. She’d find her own ‘Jon Tinker’ one day. Darcy was sure of it.

  Looking back up the street in the direction Mark Franks had disappeared, back into the snowstorm, she wondered… why not? Maybe this was the guy for Izzy, right here. Maybe his showing up in Misty Hollow when he did was for a reason. Love never arrived the way you expected it to. When she’d first met Jon, she wanted to kill him, and just look at them now!

  “Come on,” she said, deciding not to pester her friend any further over her choices in men. “Let’s get back to the house. It is positively freezing out here.”

  “You’re telling me. Brr!” Izzy shot ahead with long, purposeful strides. “Come on! Just around this block and then back up Main Street… hold on. What’s that?”

  Darcy swooshed to a stop next to her, looking down the side street that led back to Main, almost at the outskirts of the village. They were several blocks down from the bookstore now. She couldn’t see it, because the falling snow was hiding it.

  Just like the scene in front of them had been hidden from view, until they got this close.

  Several people stood around a car that had been completely buried under heavy drifts. There weren’t many houses out this way, and without them to block the wind the snow had collected in the middle of the street, seven feet high or more. No wonder the plows had been called off. That two-door hatchback had been completely swallowed up.

  Until someone had taken the time to dig it out.

  This side of the car had been excavated like an archeology site—except with snow instead of sand—and the snow being dumped from the heavens above was trying its darnedest to fill the space back in again. Darcy moved closer. She could see the side of the car, and the open driver’s side door…

  Behind the wheel sat a man in a long brown coat. He was slumped back in the seat, and his arm dangled at his side. His pale face was turned upward. Blood made a dark red stain across his throat.

  He was obviously dead.

  “Is he…?” Izzy started to ask, echoing Darcy’s thoughts.

  “Yes. He is,” she answered. “I think I just figured out why Jon and Grace got called into work today.”

  In fact, there he was. Another few feet closer let her make out the faces of the people huddled around the gruesome scene. Kneeling down next to the car’s front wheel, a flashlight in one hand, Jon was scooping snow away with his other to look at something. He’d forgotten his hat again and
his dark hair was coated in white. Thankfully, he had on his winter jacket and his boots, and he was even wearing a pair of snow pants that hadn’t seen the light of day in years.

  Her sister Grace stood next to him, her arms wrapped around herself in that white coat of hers, the one with faux fur around the collar and cuffs. She stamped her boots into the snow over and over in an unsuccessful attempt to keep warm. She was nodding to whatever Jon had just said, but she didn’t look happy about it. In fact, she looked miserable in the weather.

  A car crash, with the driver dead. That certainly explained Jon’s sudden departure this morning. Darcy squinted against the falling snow. With the distance and the poor visibility she couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think she recognized the dead man. A visitor to town, probably. A tourist caught unawares by the unexpected deluge of snow. Had he died in the crash?

  No, she decided with a frown. In Misty Hollow it was never that simple.

  Now she could see a snowmobile parked on top of the snow not far away. Another officer sat on the sled, in his uniform jacket, blowing hot breaths on his cupped hands. That was Danny Barcum, one of the department’s sergeants.

  “Should we…” Izzy swallowed, and looked away from the scene at the intersection. “Should we go over and see what’s going on?”

  That actually had been exactly what Darcy was going to do. Another death, and another mystery here in her town. A reporter she knew had written several pieces for publication about Misty Hollow becoming the unofficial murder capital of the United States. She never did like that reporter. Brianna Watson. No, there was no love lost there at all. In fact, she’d punched the woman in the face once. It was one of her fondest memories.

  But, as much as she wanted to go see what Jon was doing, she didn’t want to drag Izzy along with her. Seeing dead people was just a part of life when you were Darcy Sweet, but for other people it was still the terrible thing that it should be.

  “Let’s just go back,” she said, mostly keeping the disappointment out of her voice. “I’m sure Jon will tell me all about it when he gets home.”

  Just then Jon stood up, and looked around, and Darcy watched him do a double-take as he saw her and Izzy standing there, on top of the snow. He stared for a long moment, and then he waved for them to come over.

  Izzy slid her skis back and forth nervously. “Um. I’m going to stay back here if that’s okay with you.”

  Darcy nodded, and set off on her own. It really wasn’t all that far to the scene. The snow had made it look further than it was. Perspective was all skewed in her snow globe world. He met her part way, stopping where he sunk into the drifts nearly to his knees.

  “Hey,” he said with a smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  She leaned down on her skis and gave him a quick hug. The fact that he could be happy to see her in the middle of… whatever this was, made her feel very special. “Well, I was in the neighborhood.”

  “So I see. Pretty ingenious, using our skis to get around. Are you out here looking for me?” A sudden look of concern crossed his face as he asked, “Is something wrong with Colby or Zane? Were you trying to reach me? I didn’t get a text.”

  “No, nothing like that. Izzy and I were going around town making sure everyone still had power. It’s out at her house. I told her she could stay over at our place until she gets it back.”

  “Smart.” He hugged her again, and she could feel him trembling a little in the cold. “I won’t be much longer out here. I just need to wait for a second snowmobile to get here with a tow-behind sled so we can move the bodies. We’re going to store them in the town hall’s walk-in freezer for now until the roads clear up. Hopefully the mayor won’t mind. I really don’t have any other choice.”

  Darcy nodded. The current mayor, Andy Blanchard, was still pretty new, and eager to please everyone. A run-off election after the last mayor was murdered, and her opponent implicated in her death, had put Andy in office. Jon wouldn’t have any trouble getting him to agree to his plan.

  She made herself look back to the car. Grace waved, but then quickly went back to rubbing her arms for warmth. “Was this an accident?” she asked Jon. “Did he hit the snowbank too hard, or a tree, or something?”

  Jon shrugged. “We’re not sure yet. Nobody lives this far down the street, so we’ve got no witnesses. One of my guys found it this morning when they were out doing patrol on the sleds.”

  “Pretty smart idea, by the way.”

  “Yeah. Sergeant Barcum brought them in for us to use and he’s definitely getting a letter of commendation for coming up with that idea. Anyway, once they dug down to get at the car this is what they found, and that’s when they called me and Grace in. Best we can figure is they died last night after the storm started. There’s no way they could have gotten this far after the plows were called off.”

  “Good point. Nobody was driving after one o’clock or so.”

  “Right. I’ve got this to deal with and a few other issues at the office, then I’ll get Barcum to drop me off at home again. Don’t hold dinner. Will you guys be okay until I get back?”

  “Oh, sure.” She laughed, although the wind covered the sound of it. “Colby reminded me that she is a young woman now and more than capable of taking care of herself, her brother, and probably me too, if I let her.”

  “Yup. That’s our girl.”

  “Yeah, well, our girl wants a cellphone. She reminded me again this morning.”

  “Good. I think she’s ready for one.”

  “Hmm. And I think we should talk about it more tonight before we decide. Oh, speaking of phones. Tell Grace she forgot hers, it’s at home with Aaron. He wanted her to know.”

  “I will. You better get back to the kids. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She looked back over at the car. Snow had started falling inside, layering the driver with a pale sheet of white. Jon was right. Poor guy…

  Wait.

  “Jon, you keep saying ‘bodies.’ Is there more than one person dead in there?”

  His expression turned grim. “Yeah, there is.” He brushed snow off his hair and stared at nothing. “I hate cases like this. The father was in the front, driving the car. In the back there was a little boy. Both of them are dead. The father’s injuries might be from the car accident but the boy’s… that was murder. Colby’s age, probably. It’s always worse when the victim is a kid.”

  A little boy, Darcy repeated in her mind. A dead little boy.

  “I think…” She swallowed, licking her chapped lips. “Was the family named Harris?”

  He looked at her strangely, and she knew she was right. “Yeah. According to the guy’s driver’s license he’s Brian Harris, from Vermont. How’d you know?”

  “It’s kind of a long story,” she said, giving him the look he knew so well by now.

  “Ah. Ghosts. Okay, well I guess we both have things to tell each other tonight.” He hugged her again. “See you at home.”

  “See you,” she said, although she was still thinking about the ghost boy in her basement, and his little red ball, and how his life had been cut short here on a quiet street, in the snow. His life, and his father’s too.

  A tear froze against her cheek as she turned away.

  Chapter 4

  Usually when a ghost needed her help, Darcy would perform a spirit communication and connect with them in the middle ground between life and death.

  In this case, she didn’t know if it would help. Joel Harris had already come to her, bouncing his rubber ball around her basement, and had literally only said two words to her. If she reached out to him with a spirit communication, would he be any more talkative?

  Jon was right about it being sad when a child died. It always was, no matter what. Child ghosts were hard for Darcy to relate to. Partly because of her own emotions, partly because of theirs.

  At any rate, she wasn’t going to do a communication now. Not when she and Izzy were both curled up on the living room
couch, snuggled under blankets, watching Zane and Colby bragging about which one of them had made the biggest snowman today. The two of them had played outside for over an hour before the cold had gotten the better of them. Now they were back in pajamas, ready to stay inside.

  That was fine with Darcy. She was just as happy to stay on the couch and talk about the weather and book sales and other things to pass the time. Anything at all, except a car buried in snow with a father and son found dead inside.

  A shiver ran up her spine, even though the room was warm enough and the blanket was plenty cozy.

  At any rate, she didn’t know much about the circumstances surrounding the death of Joel Harris and his father. Not anything, really. Murder, Jon had said, but he wasn’t sure what happened. There really wasn’t any point in trying to do a communication without knowing a few of the facts first. She wouldn’t know what to ask, and she couldn’t be sure she could reach Joel even if she tried. Besides, Jon and Grace didn’t always need her help to solve their cases. The police in Misty Hollow were very experienced with solving murders.

  In the corner, the lights on the Christmas tree winked in haphazard patterns. The Santa doll in front of the fireplace was dancing, shaking his hips and swinging his arms, his hinged mouth opening and closing. Thankfully, Darcy had turned off the audio to silence his voice and his music. The first thing Zane had done after coming back inside was switch him on, and Darcy didn’t have the heart to turn him off. But that didn’t mean she had to listen to him for hours on end. Darcy’s son loved Christmas. All the lights and the decorations, singing carols, the presents under the tree. Even going to church was fun for him.

  “What should we do for supper?” she asked the kids when she glanced at the clock and saw what time it was.

  “Pizza!” Zane shouted immediately.

  Flopped down on his side next to him, Cha Cha whuffed his agreement. His tail thumped against the floor. He liked pizza almost as much as Zane did.

  “Ugh,” Colby groaned. She pushed herself up to sit cross-legged and cupped her hands around her mug of cocoa. “We had pizza already this week. And they have pizza in school every Tuesday. I’m all pizza’d out.”