by K. J. Emrick
What better way to celebrate everyone being back together again, Darcy thought, than having a party?
Her house was alive with music and the sound of people talking and laughing. Colby and Lilly had helped her hastily tape paper streamers around the entryways and along bookshelves and up the staircase. Helen had spent the day whipping things up in her bakery for tonight. Hard to believe she was going to be selling the Bean There Bakery and Café after all these years, but Darcy could understand. Helen had finally married a good man last year and between wanting to spend time with him, and being the mayor of one of the fastest growing small communities around, she didn’t have time to devote to the business anymore.
The fact that her new husband was rich certainly didn’t hurt, either.
It was another two weeks before Jon felt well enough to get back to work. Grace had already been back for two days, griping that Darcy had stolen her casefiles and messed up her organizational system. Darcy had snorted a laugh at that and reminded her sister that she had solved the Ferguson Gorsky fraud case, thank you very much, and hinted casually that maybe she should steal files from the police station more often.
It was the day that Jon went back to work that Darcy set up for the party. She’d been planning this ever since Grace and Jon had been released from the hospital with doctor’s orders to take it easy, which they both ignored. Thankfully Jon chose to go back on a Sunday to give himself a day to catch up before the real work week began, so Connor and Lilly and Izzy were able to help decorate and their friends all had the day off to show up and surprise Jon when he got home.
The shouted cheer of Surprise came from dozens of voices as people crowded the kitchen and the living room to lift plastic cups of juice and soda to welcome Jon home.
Darcy hadn’t seen him that speechless since the day Colby was born.
Music played, and people wandered from group to group telling stories and just sharing each other’s company. Music played in the background from an easy listening station on the television. In one corner of the living room, Helen danced with her new husband. Shane Wagner had even gotten up the nerve to dance with Kara in front of everyone.
Next to them, dancing slowly to a song with a slow, sultry beat, Connor and Lilly held each other close. Darcy saw the red flush across both their faces. She saw the way their eyes never quite connected. Lilly was saying something to him, and Darcy wished that her gift allowed her to hear her.
And she saw the moment when their lips brushed together in a quick, secretive first kiss.
“My Connor,” Ellen said, standing at Darcy’s side. “He’s growing up so fast.”
Darcy swirled the ginger ale in her red plastic cup. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up tomorrow and my Colby will be that age. Thinking about boys for the first time. Wondering what she’s going to do with her life.”
“Believe me, it happens quick.” Ellen waved at Connor as he noticed his mom watching, and his face turned redder still while Lilly whispered in his ear. “You know, Darcy, you and Jon had a hand in that.”
“What?” Darcy laughed. “Ellen, you deserve all the credit for Connor being who he is.”
“Well, I am his mother. But think about it. What you and Jon did for me and him… I don’t have the words to thank you. And if you hadn’t helped Lilly and her mom, God knows what would have become of them. If my Connor finds love with Lilly…”
“You’re blaming me?” Darcy joked.
“I’m thanking you,” Ellen said in all seriousness. “My son. All grown up.”
Darcy heard the quiver in her voice. She knew how much Connor meant to Ellen. Her son was the whole world to her. He was definitely growing into someone to be proud of. Lilly too, with the pink streak in her hair and her dare-all attitude. Yes. Those two would be good for each other.
She felt a tug at the leg of her jeans and looked down to find Colby in her purple dress, smiling up at her with her hair all wild and flyaway like usual. When she had Darcy’s attention, she raised her arms. “Up, please.”
Hard to deny a request like that.
When she had Colby settled on her hip, Ellen poked the little girl’s side, making her laugh. Then she walked off into the crowd with a mumbled excuse of finding more to drink.
“Hey, Sweetie,” Darcy said to Colby. “What’s up? You enjoying the party?”
The little girl nodded, and Darcy tried her best to tame the tangles in her dark auburn hair. There had been a question at the back of Darcy’s mind for the last few days, and she figured now was as good a time as any to ask it. “Hey, Colby? Do you remember when you picked out that one special folder for me from all the others?”
“Uh-huh,” her daughter nodded.
“Well, do you remember saying it was the one that Daddy wanted us to look at?”
Colby stuck her tongue between her teeth and looked up at the ceiling trying to remember. “Oh. Yes, I do. That was the right one, wasn’t it, Mommy?”
“It sure was. It was the exact one I needed. But… let me think how to put this. That folder was a police case about stolen money.” It didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Jon, was what she was trying to say. Gorsky’s case was completely unrelated to Adolphos Carino’s attempts to kill Jon and Grace and Izzy. “Colby, why did you pick that folder?”
“Because,” she answered in that way that five-year-old children have when everything should be obvious to grown-ups but it’s not. “That was the one that was going to lead us to Daddy.”
Darcy blinked. “But how did you know that?”
Eyes that were nearly the same color as her own peered up at Darcy. “Because we know things, Mommy. You and me and Aunt Millie. Oh. Aunt Grace’s daughter, too. But she can only do it a little. Addison isn’t as good at stuff like that yet.”
Hearing those words come out of Colby’s lips stunned Darcy. Was her daughter really that in tune with the world of ghosts and spirits? Darcy’s sixth sense told her things when she needed to know them… but she’d never had to learn how to use it at the age of five!
What was going to happen next for little Colby?
“I’ll be fine, Mommy,” Colby told her, putting her little hands to either side of Darcy’s face. “We all will. Oh. I see Addison. Addie!”
Wriggling out of Darcy’s arms, Colby skipped off to play with her cousin, who was busy trying to act all grown up. That ended as soon as Colby tagged her with a quick pat of her hand and then ran off squealing between the people standing around them.
Addison had no choice but to give chase. She was smiling as the two of them ran up the stairs together.
Smudge, sitting high up the steps and staring down at Darcy, was not smiling. Tiptoe was right beside him, watching the commotion below with bright eyes and a twitching tail.
Darcy had always been able to read Smudge’s expressions. It was almost like they could talk without ever having to say a word. Now, as always, she heard him clear as day.
Is this really what our lives have come to? People everywhere?
She looked around her living room, smiling back at people as they smiled at her. Friends. Family. All of them safe. All of them happy. Across the room, talking with Grace, Jon raised his cup of soda to her, and blew her a kiss.
Tomorrow, the mists might roll into town again but for now, the danger was past.
So she smiled up at her old cat, and whispered, “Yes. This is exactly how I want my life to be.”
He turned his head, looking down at Tiptoe, who looked up at him until he blinked and returned his cat stare to Darcy.
Well, she heard him saying, it’s a pretty good life. I guess.
Darcy laughed out loud, and went to ask Jon for a dance.
The Naughty List
A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 20
First published in Australia by South Coast Publishing, December 2016. Copyright K.J. Emrick (2012-2019)
Chapter 1
Church had never been a big priority for Darcy Sweet. She attended ser
vices on special occasions and holidays and the occasional Sunday, like most grownups, and other than that her relationship with God was her own business. It wasn’t that she felt uncomfortable sitting on the hard wooden pew with her neighbors and friends, her daughter Colby sitting on one side and her husband Jon Tinker on the other. It was kind of a relaxing way to spend a Sunday morning, actually.
The reason she wasn’t here much was actually very simple. It was just hard for her to be anywhere that had such a strong connection to the afterlife, when she could see and talk to ghosts. Sometimes she wanted to stand up and argue with the pastor giving the sermons here in the Misty Hollow Community Church. At the same time, she couldn’t exactly tell Pastor Phineas McCord about the first-hand knowledge she got from talking to the spirits of the dearly departed. She was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be welcomed back if she said anything at all like that.
Of course, Phin had only been taking care of the church’s flock for a couple of years now, and she didn’t know him all that well. She shouldn’t assume how he might react. He might just surprise her. Jon certainly had.
Holding his hand balanced on her thigh, Darcy smiled up at the simple wooden cross hanging above the altar at the front of the church’s meeting hall. All the decoration here was plain and simple, meant to appeal to people of several different Christian faiths. The windows were stained glass but they were crafted to resemble sunsets and mountains and birds flying in the clouds rather than saints or Biblical scenes. The songs in the hymnals tucked into the backs of the pews were nondenominational. Unfortunately, that meant that most of the songs were all very bland, but Darcy supposed that was the tradeoff when the town’s church was meant for everyone, instead of one particular faith.
Darcy pulled back a few strands of her long dark hair that had fallen in front of her heart shaped face, using the motion to cover a yawn. Coming to Sunday service meant waking up early. She should remember that the next time she wanted to stay up late watching Netflix.
“Mom,” Colby whispered, careful to hold her hand down below the level of the pew as she pointed. “Look.”
While Pastor Phin was finishing up today’s sermon on the virtues of helping your neighbor whenever you see them in need, Darcy followed the direction of her daughter’s attention. At seven years of age, Colby didn’t often show a lot of interest in these services so Darcy wasn’t surprised that she had been people watching again. Jon worried sometimes that he and Darcy had downplayed the importance of church a little too much, but then one day they found out that Colby could repeat every word of the sermons Pastor Phin had given.
Their daughter was a smart girl, Darcy had reminded her husband. Jon had shrugged and let it go. Obviously, Colby was listening a whole lot better than some people who claimed to be good Christians. There was definitely something to be said for that.
Darcy looked over to the pew that Colby was pointing at. Two ahead of them, on the other side of the aisle. A young girl sat there, by herself, next to the Barse family. A teenager. Darcy didn’t recognize her. She was slender and tall in a gray dress that probably would have been better suited to a funeral than a Sunday service. Her black, frizzy hair curled around a cheek the color of hot chocolate, and fell down the gentle slope of her graceful neck.
As if she could feel them staring at her, the girl twisted around toward them. Her smile pulled up the corner of her mouth and brought out a dimple in her left cheek. One deep brown eye winked at them.
Red and black scar tissue puckered around her other eye and all across the right side of her face, from the collar of her dress all the way up to her forehead. The hair on that side had been burned away.
This girl was dead.
Darcy had seen ghosts in any number of places. In cemeteries. In her home. Walking down sidewalks. Once, a ghost had appeared in a movie she was watching. Usually she saw one or two of them a week, just passing through this mortal coil. There were a lot more of them around than people realized. Seeing ghosts didn’t surprise her anymore.
Still, for all of her experience with ghosts, she had never once seen one appear in church, just sitting there listening to a sermon.
“What are you two looking at?” Jon whispered. “The service is about to end.”
“Sorry,” Darcy whispered back. “We were just…”
…looking at that pretty ghost over there with the burn marks on the side of her face. That was what she had been about to say. It was the truth but sometimes, the truth didn’t need to be said. Jon was used to his wife seeing ghosts. But, this time it wasn’t just her.
Colby saw the ghost, too.
Rather than try to explain that here, in church, Darcy shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
Raising a dark eyebrow, Jon shrugged, and let it go. She studied the strong profile of his handsome face for a moment. There was gray in the temples of his hair now. Rather than make him look old, it made him impossibly attractive. At least in her opinion.
She settled back in the pew, stroking Colby’s long, dark hair before resting a hand on her shoulder. Her daughter might still be a little young for her age, but in other ways she was more grown up than her years. The ability to see spirits and feel things before they happened and all of that was passed down through the female side of her family. It usually skipped around from generation to generation, and as near as Darcy could figure out it wasn’t always passed down from mother to daughter. It showed up where it wanted, with no explanation, and it was stronger for some than for others. Colby was going to be very gifted, without doubt. Maybe even stronger in her abilities than Darcy was.
Any question of whether Colby was going to inherit the gift had been dispelled two years ago when Colby had seen Jon’s ghost. Darcy’s husband had died—very briefly—during a case that had shook the entire town of Misty Hollow. He managed to come back to Darcy and his daughter alive and more or less in one piece, but for the few seconds that his heart had stopped beating his spirit was able to reach out for help. Darcy had seen him. So had Colby.
Since then, however, Colby’s gift had seemed to go dormant. She hadn’t spoken about seeing things, or hearing things, or talked about having any kind of premonition. Not even about the weather.
Now, Colby was seeing that ghost sitting right there, watching Pastor Phin finish up his sermon with a few announcements.
“It’s getting colder out, as I’m sure most of you noticed on your way in,” he said in that clear, bold voice of his. He wore simple clothes like always, a tan high-necked sweater that was a few shades lighter than his dark skin, and black slacks. The simple clothes of a pastor. His curly hair was neatly trimmed and his face was clean shaven. Darcy had always thought he had such an honest face. “Apparently,” he went on, “God wants us to have snow for Christmas after all so let’s make sure we’re ready. The church has a donation box for new or gently used winter coats of all sizes near the front entrance. Donations for all ages are always welcome. Our storage unit is getting full, but there will always be a need. Jesus spent forty days in the desert, remember, but we’ve got to help our neighbors through a New England winter. There’s some years I wonder which of those would be worse!”
Laughter rippled through the pews, and Phin let it play out before he went on. “Speaking of donations, let’s not forget about the Policeman’s Winter Fund. There’s a fifty-fifty raffle, for anyone who wants to buy a ticket instead of giving a donation, and all proceeds go toward purchasing heating fuel for those in our community who can’t afford it this year. Well, I guess that about does it for another week. Thank you all for coming. God bless, and stay warm.”
People stirred around Darcy, talking and standing and gathering their belongings, but she was still watching the ghost of the girl with the burn marks. She was about fifteen or sixteen, just sitting there in the pew without anyone even noticing, and it still bothered Darcy that she didn’t recognize who she was. She knew just about everyone in Misty Hollow, if not personally then by name or face because the t
own was just small enough to encourage good friendships and strong community ties. It was hard to believe that she wouldn’t have seen this girl around town before she died, or heard about a fire that took the life of someone so young.
“I wonder why she’s here,” Colby mentioned quietly, standing up on her tiptoes to try and see around the milling crowds.
“Sometimes,” Darcy told her, “we don’t ever know.”
Her daughter stared at the pretty ghost with the burn scars, and summed it up as only a seven-year-old could. “Weird.”
Darcy hugged her tight. This was her little girl, through and through.
They picked up their coats from the pew and snuggled into the puffy warmth, getting ready to brave the cold outside again. Darcy’s was a purple ski jacket bought on a trip with Jon a year ago in Bear Ridge. Colby’s had long strings hanging down from the corners of the hood that ended in white pompoms and it was not pink, as her daughter had explained several times, just a very light red. She was a girl, but that didn’t mean she had to like pink. Jon still wore that hip-length parka that was starting to get a little threadbare. Practical man, Darcy thought with a secret smile.
Darcy saw several of her neighbors as they folded themselves into the line heading out of church through the double doors at the side of the building. A few of them waved to her, or exchanged little greetings, while they waited for their turn to step back into the wintry mix of snow and rain that Misty Hollow had been getting all week.
On warmer days Pastor Phin stood outside to shake everyone’s hands and say goodbye and, Darcy suspected, to make sure no one tried to sneak back into the church. In her younger years she had discovered that hiding behind the pews at the far back until the doors of a church were closed could get you a wonderful place to just sit and think in absolute quiet. Once or twice, she’d been known to commit that mild act of trespass with a friend. Usually a boy.
