Laid to Rest (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 18) (4 page)

Ellen came walking back down the stairs, slowly, and sat on one of the risers halfway down.  “Am I allowed to join the conversation again?”

Jon shot her a look.  Darcy just nodded.  It was all she could manage for now.

“Anyway,” Jon continued, “it was like they didn’t even know about the journal until today.  That’s something.  That’s something right there.”

“Why?” Darcy asked.

“It means something happened today to let our kidnapper know the journal was here.  That you had it.”

“What’s that mean as far as suspects?” Ellen asked.

“Hey, as far as I’m concerned,” Jon said, “everyone in town is a suspect until we prove otherwise.  Everyone except me and Darcy and Izzy, and only because she was with you when this happened, Darcy.”

“Hey,” Ellen protested from the stairs.  “What about me, Mister Police Man?”

“Fine, and you too, Ellen,” he closed his eyes for a moment and kissed Darcy’s forehead gently.  “I know you didn’t do this, Ellen.  You’d never do anything like that to Darcy.”

“Thanks,” she said, simply, even though there was a world of meaning behind that one word.  Jon and she had been a long time coming to a mutual ground.  The police chief and the ex-hitman.  This was what life in Misty Hollow could do for someone, Darcy reflected.  Every newcomer had the chance to become a friend.

That didn’t mean she was ready to forgive Ellen.  Not yet.

Jon held her closer.  “So, let’s figure this out.  Who even knew you had that book?”

“Nobody!”  All the frustration came back to her all at once and she felt like she was drowning.  “I haven’t told anyone about it at all.  Except you, and Ellen.”

Ellen looked at both of them with one dark eyebrow quirked.  “Don’t look at me.  I don’t do stuff like that anymore.  Well.  Not that I ever kidnapped cats in the first place…”

“Not helping,” Jon barked.

“Wait,” Darcy said, cutting off whatever sharp-tongued retort Ellen was about to snipe back with.  “I was talking about the journal.  In the café.  Helen’s café.  I was talking to Helen about it.”

Jon stared at her.  “You don’t think Helen…?”

“No, but there was someone else there when I mentioned the journal.” Darcy scrunched her brows together, thinking back.  “Blake Underwood!”

“Our mailman?” Jon asked, his eyes looking off into the distance, trying to make that fit.

“No, wait.”  Darcy remembered now.  “Blake left before I started talking to Helen.  He didn’t hear any of that.  Someone else…Roland Baskin!  He was there.  He heard the whole thing!”

“That grump?”  Ellen pulled a sour face.  “But why?  What could he possibly want with your aunt’s journal?  Especially bad enough to…do this.”

Darcy didn’t know the answer to that either.  Roland was older than her aunt would have been.  They must have known each other, back in the day.

What did it mean?

“All right.”  Jon nodded, his eyes more focused.  “We have a suspect.  That’s a place to start.”

“What about Smudge?” Darcy asked, feeling herself start to shake again.  “I don’t want to just leave him out there somewhere.”

“We won’t.  Darcy, I promise you we’ll find him.  We’ll get Smudge back.  I’m going to put the department on this full time.  Breaking and entering, theft, those are serious crimes and I don’t know what someone like that will do next.  Especially with what’s in that note.”

“Are we going to turn over the journal?” Ellen asked, voicing the words all of them had avoided saying out loud.

“I…think we should,” Darcy said, even though the words tasted like ashes in her mouth.

It was their only bargaining chip.  Their only leverage.  If they gave it away, then where would they be?

“Darcy?”  Jon left it at that, making it her decision.

“I want Smudge back,” she answered.  “And we don’t know what else this person will do if he doesn’t get the journal.”

“We don’t know why he wants it, either,” he pointed out.  “Or even if it is a him.  Might be a woman.”

“Must be a pretty big secret,” Ellen offered.  “Darcy, think.  We don’t know if he, she, whatever, will let Smudge go even if they do get the journal.  They might take the book and come after you next.”

“Of course you would know about stuff like that, wouldn’t you?” Darcy snapped at her.  “From your vast experience in kidnappings and murder, right?”

Ellen looked away, biting her lower lip.  That had been her life, once.  Darcy’s words had struck home.

“Darcy,” Jon said her name gently.  “Ellen isn’t the enemy.  We’ll find the people responsible.  All right?  We will.  For right now, for tonight, you need to read through as much of the journal as you can.  See if you can find out why someone wants it so badly.  Did your aunt know something that would be worth committing these kinds of acts?  Did she have those kinds of a secrets?”

“Not that I know of.”  She and Millie had shared all of their secrets.  Only, no, they hadn’t.  It was only a few months back when she found out that Millie had authored books that would have helped her understand her abilities better.  She’d written books to help people who could see ghosts, like Darcy could.  Only she never mentioned it to Darcy.  She had to find out about it after the fact.

That wasn’t a big secret.  It hadn’t changed what she thought of her aunt, for instance, but at the same time it meant there might have been other, bigger secrets that Millie had kept hidden, too.

Every woman had a few secrets.  Some secrets she kept out of pride.  Some she kept for vanity.  Sometimes to save the feelings of her friends and family.

Some secrets were kept secret because they were dangerous.

What secrets had her aunt kept from Darcy, she had to wonder?

“How did she die?” Ellen asked, just like that.

“What?”  Darcy raised a hand to her temple, thinking back.  “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, come on.” From the stairs, Ellen looked from Jon to Darcy.  “You guys didn’t think of that first?  Your aunt died suddenly, right?  Unexpectedly?  You don’t think maybe there’s a mystery there?”

“She died in her bed,” Darcy grated out between her clenched teeth.  Why wouldn’t Ellen just shut up?  It was bad enough that someone had taken Smudge to hold for ransom.  She didn’t need Ellen trying to dig up her aunt’s death all over again and make it into something obscene.  “It was terrible, and it was horrible, but it was just her time to go.”

Ellen settled back a little further until her shoulders were against the wall and settled her hands in her lap as she looked away from Darcy’s rising anger.  “I was just asking.”

“Well, don’t!  You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jon folded her back into his arms, tucking her head into his shoulder.  “Neither do we,” he reminded her.  “But we need to find out.  You need to read as much of that journal tonight as you can.  Learn everything you can from it.  Then we’ll make photocopies to keep here.”

“Jon that book is brittle and falling apart as it is,” Darcy reminded him.  “I don’t know if the pages will survive exposure to that kind of bright light.  It might fade the ink away altogether.  Or worse.”

“It’s a chance we’ll have to take.”  He said it with such finality that she knew what he was planning.

“You are going to give the kidnapper the journal.  That’s the plan now?”

He nodded, stroking her long dark hair.  “I agree with you.  We need to catch this guy.  What better way to do it than to use his own ploy against him.  We’ll bait him with the book, then catch him when he steps out to get it.”

“You think that will work?”

“Hey, when have my plans ever failed?”

Darcy laughed at that, and she hated him for making her feel better, because she felt like she was betraying Smudge with her smile.

“There,” he said, lifting her chin up to smile back at her.  “It will be all right.”

“Because you’re promising me?”

“Because it’s true,” he told her.  “That’s why.”

There was the sound of a car braking hard out front, and then a hard knock on the door was followed by Grace sweeping into the house.  Darcy’s sister wasn’t wearing her work clothes.  She had on a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt.  She’d already been home from work, apparently, with her husband and their toddler.  Darcy didn’t know what they’d pulled Grace away from, but her short dark hair had been hastily brushed out and her socks were two different colors.  Details only another woman would pick out.

Grace took Darcy by her hands and led her over to the couch.  Hazel eyes a few shades darker than Darcy’s own were intense as she said, “We’ll get him back, sis.  Don’t worry.”

Darcy still wasn’t sure what order the stages of grief went through, but she very suddenly stepped from grief, to anger.

She was angry.  Whoever had done this was going to answer for it.

To her.

Jon took charge of the officers that arrived right after Grace.  A couple of the regular nightshift officers in their dark blue uniforms along with Detective Wilson Barton.  Wilson had been made junior detective when Grace had gone off on maternity leave, and then Jon had been promoted to police chief leaving a position open for Wilson to move into.  He was a smart guy, and he’d taken more than his fair share of injuries protecting and serving the people of Misty Hollow.  With Grace as his supervising detective Wilson had proven himself more than once.

Darcy liked him, and trusted him, and she knew he’d do everything he could to solve this crime just like Grace and Jon were doing.  Dust for fingerprints.  Check for shoe impressions.  Talk to the businesses in town to see if any of them had surveillance cameras facing the street that might help.  Darcy listened to all of it with half an ear as she went upstairs to the bedroom she shared with her husband, her aunt’s journal in hand.

She couldn’t do anything to help Smudge right now except pore through the beehive journal to find clues to catch the people responsible.  If they could find a suspect, they could find Smudge.

Of course, they already had one suspect.  Roland Baskin, town grump.  Darcy had wanted to go talk to him right now, grill him until he confessed, and then lock him away forever.  Preferably in a small room with no windows.  But Jon had asked her to wait until the officers were done processing the scene.  Which in this case, was their own house.  Jon couldn’t be in two places at once.  He needed to be here to at least guide Wilson and Grace to the places that had been disturbed so they could look for fingerprints.  When that was done, they would go together to talk to Roland Baskin.

Ellen had offered to get the guy to talk, too, but somehow Darcy knew her methods would be…well, a little less than admissible in a court of law.

So for now, Darcy did the only thing she could do.  She read the words her aunt had so carefully written down before hiding them away between the stones of the basement walls.  What secrets did Millie need to hide so badly that she hadn’t wanted Darcy to find them, even after her death?

She remembered the way her aunt had reacted when Smudge had brought out even one page of this journal.  Now, laying across the bed, flipping through the dirty pages and making notes of what she read on a pad of yellow legal paper, Darcy still had no idea why this journal was worth all this trouble.

A ghost in the cemetery had warned Millie of danger.  Ominous, certainly, but her aunt had the same ability to talk to ghosts that Darcy had.  Ghosts were constantly bringing warnings and premonitions to Darcy, and she remembered it happening a lot to Millie as well.  So, she jotted it down, with as many details as she could gather from the blotchy pages, and moved on.

There had to be more to it.

The single page that Smudge had originally brought to her gave her chills, too. 
Here is the answer I’ve looked for…my home.  My home!  I can not allow it to be taken away…knew me and called me Millie, but that doesn’t mean…something must be done to stop him.

Him.  Stop him, Millie had said.  That was interesting.  That must mean the person Millie was so worried about, the person who wanted the journal now, was a man.  She growled as she thought of Roland Baskin.  She was looking forward to taking a piece out of his hide.

All of this told her a whole lot of nothing, though.  Why had Millie written all this down?  What was the danger the child ghost had warned about?

Where was Smudge?

Jon was right about one thing, and even that pointed to Baskin.  Someone from town had done this.  Someone who knew where the hide-a-key was, but more than that.  This was someone who was a friend.  Smudge was a friendly cat but he wasn’t the kind who let just anyone pick him up.  If a stranger had tried to get close enough to him to kidnap him—
catnap
him—then he would have run away.  Someone Smudge knew had done this.  That was the only way they could have gotten close enough to do it.

She hoped Smudge had scratched their eyes out.

Her mind was running full tilt and she was getting distracted.  With an effort she focused back on Millie’s journal.

“What have you gotten us into?” she asked to the air around her.  There was every chance that Millie was there right now, watching her niece read words from the past.

If she was, she didn’t have anything to say.

More of the pages in the middle of the beehive journal were difficult to read or obscured altogether by dark stains.  She read in bits and pieces about normal days in the life of Misty Hollow, about picnics and parades and conversations with some of Millie’s good friends.  And at the bottom of every page was that strange squiggly border pattern.  Almost like letters and almost like calligraphy, and completely meaningless.

The secrets weren’t in those fancy little doodles.  The secrets were hidden in the words, but most of the words weren’t there to be seen anymore.

In the pages of the journal, she found herself.  Her arrival, back when she was fifteen years old, to stay here at her aunt’s house on a permanent basis.  Her own mother couldn’t handle a girl just on the cusp of becoming an adult and coming into special powers that were both peculiar and scary.  Darcy had been shipped off to live with the weird family aunt.  Millie was the only one who really understood what was going on with her.  Even so, Darcy had felt angry and betrayed and scared and…well, like she’d been thrown away.

In her aunt’s words, however, she saw those days in a different light.  Millie didn’t see Darcy as odd or crazy.  She didn’t look at her arrival here as a burden.  Instead, she went on and on about how great it was going to be, the two of them living under one roof. 

Finally,
Millie wrote,
a kindred spirit.  Darcy is everything I ever wanted in a daughter.  Smart, kind, insightful.  I see great things for her.  Already she’s made friends here.  A local boy, Jeff, has taken quite the shine to her…

Darcy blushed.  That was her first husband.  Millie had never liked him, and Darcy wished now that she had listened to her aunt’s not-so-gentle advice to stay away from him.  It had ended badly, for lots of reasons.

Now she was with Jon, in heart and soul.  Coming here to Misty Hollow would have been worth it just for that reason alone.  Millie had given her other reasons to love it here.  Her Great Aunt Millie had brought her out of the dark places of her depression and taught her to love life again.

And to respect death.

The writing on the pages faded out again after Millie’s thoughts had wandered off onto another subject.  Those few pages, though, lifted Darcy’s heart.  “Thanks, Millie, for everything you did for me.  I’ll always love you.”

She was lucky to have had her aunt’s spirit for guidance all this time.  Most people either moved on at the point of their death, or else they moved on after resolving whatever issues still tied them to the world of the living.  If they stayed around for a long time they became mean and nasty and depressed.

In other words, evil.

Millie had never had that problem.  It brought up a question that Darcy had asked herself time and time again.  After about ten years of floating through the lives of the living, why hadn’t Millie’s spirit moved on?

Her eyes snagged on something, on a page near the end of the journal that fed fire to that question.  Could it be?

Darcy sat up in the bed.  Cross-legged, she ran her finger under the lines of her aunt’s strong handwriting.  The words were sloppier here, like Millie had been writing quickly, like her time was running out.  There wasn’t much of it that Darcy could make out.

Just enough to freeze her blood.

…what he wants doesn’t belong to him, and I see no need to just hand it over.  I’ve told him he won’t get it back.  Not even if he makes good his threat to kill me.

Darcy’s next breath caught in her throat and came out in a choking gasp.

It was Ellen who had brought up the horrible suggestion that maybe her aunt’s death hadn’t been from natural causes like she’d believed it was.  Maybe she’d been killed, Ellen had said.  Maybe Millie had been murdered and that’s why someone wanted the journal, because it told who done it.

It was never that easy.  This wasn’t a Nancy Drew story.  She wasn’t Miss Marple, and this wasn’t some mystery novel where the killer was hiding in the shadows among her neighbors.

Not that she hadn’t lived through plenty of that right here in Misty Hollow.

Still, as mad as she was at Ellen right now—rational or not—she couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, her friend was right.  Could Millie have been murdered? 
His threat to kill me,
she read again on the page.

“Who, Millie?” she whispered out loud.  “Who threatened you?  Why didn’t you ever tell me, for Pete’s sake?”

She sat staring at those words for a long time, twisting her aunt’s ring around the finger of her right hand.  It usually comforted her to feel the etched surface of the heirloom, the cool, hard weight of it.  Not today.  Not now.

Not after what she saw next.

On the next page, at the end of everything her aunt had written here, was a single paragraph on an otherwise blank page.  As far as she could tell, every page that followed was blank.  Stained with dirt and time and moisture, and otherwise untouched.

It was this last paragraph that would haunt her for a long time.

Darcy, I love you.  Please know that I will always cherish the time we’ve had together.  I cannot give you this book.  Not yet.  In time you’ll find it.  I have no doubt of that.  When you do, pay close attention to the words I’ve written here.  They won’t save my life, but they may save yours.  You’ll know what to do.

I will love you always.

Millie.

She pushed herself back from the journal, up against the headboard, wanting distance between herself and this, Millie’s last message to her.  Her aunt had known her death was coming.  Known, and kept it a secret.

She’d known, and left hints for Darcy to follow.

Only most of the hints were now lost to time because the journal had stayed buried in the foundation for years!  Darcy felt so completely lost.  This journal was supposed to be a message to her from Millie.  A warning.  There were things in it she needed to know.  Things that could tell her why all of this was happening.

Instead, all she had was a small collection of clues and hints and partially legible sentences that meant something very sinister.

They could mean her aunt was murdered.

Jon walked in not long after.  She’d collected her thoughts by then and had gone back to making her notes in the yellow notepad. 

Him.
  The person Millie was talking about in her journal, the one threatening her life, was definitely a him.

The little girl’s ghost had definitely warned Millie that she was in danger.

Something about the house
.
My home!  I cannot allow it to be taken away. 
Darcy didn’t understand that part at all.

The last thing she wrote down, as Jon sat on the bed next to her, was the last thing in the journal.  Millie expected Darcy to know what to do next.

“I don’t know what to do,” Darcy whispered, to Jon.

He put his arm around her shoulder, and held her while she cried.  His strong presence steadied her and she allowed herself a minute or two to just stay there in his protective embrace.  While he held her, he picked up her notes and read through them.

“It seems like there should be more,” he said when he’d read everything for the third time.  “You know?  For all of this trouble.  For Smudge.  Do you really think she might have been…?”

“Killed?  No, Jon.  Millie dying was tragic and sad.  It took me a long time to get over it and I’m not ready to just accept that she was killed by someone.  Everyone dies.  That doesn’t make it murder.  I mean, seriously?  Killed by some shadowy guy who’s been reduced to a leftover footnote in a beehive journal that was buried between stones in our foundation for all these years?  No.  I won’t believe it.”

He was silent for a moment.  Then he put the notepad down next to the journal and asked, “Have you ever talked to Millie about it?”

Darcy didn’t want to talk about this anymore.  “I’ve asked her why her spirit is still here, still watching over me.  Lots of times.  She always avoids the question.  I figure it’s her business.  She’ll tell me if she wants to.”