by K. J. Emrick
“He’s around somewhere,” Wilson said cryptically. “I’ve got everything I need from here for now. I should be getting back to the station.”
“Everything you need?” Darcy repeated. “So you had to come back out this morning.”
“Uh-huh. I don’t know if you’ve ever met your husband, but our police chief is very thorough. He doesn’t miss many details.”
“Well, he’s never forgotten one of our anniversaries.”
“Sounds about right.” Wilson put his cellphone away in the inside pocket of his winter jacket, a very professional looking duffle coat with a hood. He was ready to leave, Darcy knew, but he hadn’t answered her question yet.
“Wilson, what do you and Jon think happened here at the bakery?”
Without turning his head, his eyes scanned the crowd around them. Darcy could feel everyone’s gazes, and knew every ear around them was straining to hear their conversation. Of course. He couldn’t talk about it here, so Darcy figured that would be the end of it.
“Can we go down to your shop for a minute?” he surprised her by asking.
“Uh, sure. I was just about to go there to open up with Izzy.”
“Good. I was hoping you had some coffee to offer me. You know. Now that the nearest place to get a cup is gone.”
She managed a smile, but it was a little too soon to be making jokes about the demise of the bakery. “I think Izzy probably has the coffee pot on by now. It won’t be as good as what we could have gotten here, of course.”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “Everyone is going to miss this place.”
In the middle of the crowd, Elizabeth Archer crossed her arms and let her head drop down to her chest. She was the picture of absolute sadness. Her long auburn hair fell forward to cover her face and hide the pale burn scars on her face. She’d lived through a fire once before. Now, the place where she worked had been lost to a fire. There was another coincidence to add to the pile.
If this was how the winter was going to start in Misty Hollow, then it was going to be a long three months until Spring came in March.
Together, she and Wilson separated from the group to head to the bookstore. Everyone else was starting to leave anyway, except for Elizabeth, and Pastor Phin. He went over to Elizabeth and put an arm around her shoulder to comfort her. Darcy was glad he was part of their town now.
It took a few minutes to get back to the bookstore, sloshing through a full inch of slush leftover from the overnight storm. It was cloudy today, but warmer, and there was even a chance of rain according to the weatherman. For now, inside the bookstore, the heater was pumping warm air through the vents.
Izzy waved to them as they came in. In her jeans and overlong blue t-shirt, she was already working on hanging the rest of the decorations. Precariously balanced on the sales counter, she was hanging a string of hinged cardboard letters to the ceiling tiles with thumbtacks. “MERRY CHRISTMAS” was spelled out now in red and green and gold letters for everyone to see.
“Hi Izzy,” Wilson said. “It’s not even eight-thirty yet and here you are hard at work.”
“You’re one to talk,” she answered back, wobbling to keep her balance on the narrow counter. “You kind of look like you never went to sleep.”
“That’s only because,” he said, yawning into his hand, “I haven’t been to sleep yet.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Izzy crouched down to lower herself to the floor. “The big fire. That was just awful.”
“Did you see it?” Darcy asked. “The fire, I mean?”
“Yes. I drove right by it when I was bringing Lilly home. I had to pick her up from Ellen and Connor’s house over in Meadowood, remember?”
“Oh right,” Darcy said. “Your errand yesterday.”
“Yup. I think my next errand is going to be getting Lilly a car of her own. No more taxi service for this mother!”
“Izzy,” Wilson said, talking over her in a rush. “If you were driving by the fire last night, did you maybe see something? See anybody near the bakery? On the street? Anything like that?”
Izzy leaned back against the counter, rubbing a hand over her forehead as she tried to remember. “Look, Wilson, I know this is important but you’re asking a lot from… oh! Yeah, I do remember something. There was this car. Well, I wasn’t the one who noticed it. Lilly was. She’s into cars now because her boyfriend Connor is. She told me what it was. Um. One of those goofy looking cars from the 1980s. The Iraq? No. The… Iroc. Right. It was a blue Camaro Iroc.”
Wilson had taken out a notebook from another of his inside pockets and was writing notes for himself. “Okay. So, you saw a blue Iroc in front of the bakery while it was on fire?”
“No. Not in front of it. The car was down the street. It was just weird to me because whoever was driving left when the firetrucks showed up to fight the fire.”
Wilson stared at her blankly, his pen hovering over the pages of his notebook.
Darcy caught on immediately. “She means that anyone who was interested in watching the fire would have wanted to watch the firetrucks, too. That’s the best part of the show. So why…?”
“So why,” Wilson finished for her, “did this guy leave just as the best part of the show was about to start. I get it now. Don’t suppose you caught the license plate?”
Shaking her head, Izzy shrugged. “No. I was, uh, kind of in the middle of a discussion with Lilly. Mother daughter stuff. Plus, I don’t make a habit of memorizing license plates.”
“Heh. Right. That’s our job.” Wilson closed his notebook. “A blue Iroc pulling away from the curb just as the firetrucks show up. Well. It’s more than we had before. So. How about that coffee?”
“Wait, Wilson?” Darcy sat down at the closest of the reading tables, opening up her jacket to let the warmth of the heaters in. “Was this just a simple fire? Was it something besides an accident?”
The pause in the air was enough of an answer, but Darcy was on pins and needles waiting as Wilson took a slow breath.
Before he said anything the door to the shop swung open hard, sending the shopkeeper’s bell jangling. Tobias Ford filled the doorway with his wide shoulders and a cloud of emotions that swept in before him like pressure building in front of a storm.
His face was tight with fury. Darcy really couldn’t blame him. He did just lose a business and if she was reading Wilson’s silence properly he lost it because of a fire that had been set intentionally. She really couldn’t blame him if—
“You!” he snarled as soon as he saw Darcy. One big finger jabbed in her direction. “You did this! It was you!”
Darcy was speechless, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming freight truck. She shrank back in her chair in the face of the angry onslaught of Tobias Ford.
“All I did was offer you a business deal!” Tobias was yelling at her. “I just wanted to make a little money together. But you couldn’t just let it be about business, could you? You went and burnt my business down! You’re insane! You’re crazy! How could you do this?”
Wilson stepped in front of him and put a hand up against his chest pushing with all his might to keep Tobias from getting too close to Darcy. “Tobias, hold on now. You can’t just come in here and accuse someone of—”
“Not someone, Officer Barton, this woman!” If anything, Tobias sounded angrier. “This woman right here. Darcy Sweet burnt down my shop, and I want her arrested. Do you hear me? I want you to arrest her right now!”
Izzy was at Darcy’s side, putting a hand on her shoulder in quiet solidarity. Darcy didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say. This didn’t make any sense at all. Why would Tobias be accusing her?
Well. She did get pretty upset yesterday when he made his veiled threats about how her business would suffer if she didn’t do things his way, and she had practically thrown him out of her shop, and she had been sort of offended with the way he wanted to turn Misty Hollow into a joke. Sure, all that was true, but that didn’t mea
n she would go and commit arson! Especially to a store that had once belonged to one of her best friends.
Of course, the fact that Tobias owned the bakery now and was most certainly going to run it straight into the ground might give her a reason to do something about it. But not arson. She would never do that. Even if she had plenty of motivation.
Wilson had to see that.
Right?
When Tobias had finally calmed down enough that Wilson was fairly certain the ex-linebacker wasn’t going to barge right over him and Darcy both, he dropped his hands to his sides.
Then he turned to look at Darcy.
Then he took another deep breath.
“Come on, Darcy. Let’s you and me go down to the police station.”
“Ha!” Tobias gloated. “That’s what I’m talking about! Small town justice. You bring her down there, Officer, and I’ll be along in a little while to sign whatever you need me to sign.”
“It’s detective,” Wilson corrected Tobias. “My rank is detective, not officer.”
“Whatever.” Tobias shook his finger at Darcy one last time. Then he smiled at her as he held the door open with a wave of his arm. “Meet you down at the police station, Mrs. Sweet.”
Chapter 3
Darcy could not believe this.
This wasn’t the first time that she had been accused of a crime she didn’t commit. In fact, that was partly how she and Jon had gotten together in the first place. But still, Wilson knew her well enough to know there was no way she was involved in this. She even had an alibi, for Pete’s sake! Being at home where she just happened to be kissing the chief of police at the time the fires started had to be the absolute best alibi in the history of the whole entire world!
When they got to the police station, Wilson led Darcy through the lobby and through the locked door into the inner rooms, where several uniformed officers watched them head down the hallway that went to the interview rooms and the holding cells and closer to the front of the building, the chief’s office. Jon’s office.
Darcy knew most of those officers out there by name. She could only imagine what they were thinking to see her being escorted in like a common criminal. At least Wilson hadn’t used handcuffs. Her cheeks burned as she fumed over the whole situation. This was not fair!
Wilson knocked twice on Jon’s office and waited for him to say come in. Darcy glared at him when he opened the door for her, and sweeping into the room she found Jon sitting behind his desk, typing away on his computer. Three stacks of folders waited for his attention on the other side. That was too bad, Darcy thought to herself, because he was going to give his full attention to her first.
“Jon, you can’t possibly believe—”
“Of course not,” he said without looking up from his screen. “How could you even think we’d believe something this idiotic?”
That took all the wind out of her sails, but kind of in a good way. Dropping into one of the two padded chairs on this side of his desk, all she could think to say was, “Oh. But Wilson…”
“Sorry about that, Darcy,” Wilson said to her, standing with his shoulder up against the bookshelf on the one wall. “I thought you understood. I wasn’t arresting you. I just wanted to get you away from that blowhard before you smacked him upside his head.”
“Good call,” Jon told him.
Darcy sat back in her chair. She had to admit, that was exactly what she wanted to do to the high and mighty Tobias Ford, even more so today than yesterday. That didn’t mean that Wilson had to pull her out of her own bookstore, though. She would have restrained herself.
Well. Probably she would have.
“I just figured you knew,” Wilson said again. “I guess that explains why you were so quiet on the ride over here.”
“Of course it does.” Darcy had regained her voice now that she could relax, knowing she wasn’t going to be interrogated as the prime suspect in an arson. “Why did you think I wasn’t saying anything?”
He shrugged. “I figured you were just deep in thought. You’re as much of a mystery solver as any police officer I know. Better than some, in fact.”
“That’s why I asked her to marry me,” Jon said with pride in his voice. “Well, that and how absolutely beautiful she is.”
“Plus I already had my own place,” Darcy grumbled. “Ha, ha. So tell me what’s going on, will you? Wilson was just about to explain how the fire at Helen’s bakery was arson before Tobias started yelling at me. How could anyone do that? Do you have any suspects?”
Wilson pretended to study his fingernails. There were rules to police work and one of the big ones, as everyone knew, was that you did not discuss the details of ongoing investigations with civilians. That included the wife of the chief of police. At the same time, everyone on the police force knew that Darcy had helped them solve dozens of cases in the past, including some crimes that the police hadn’t even been aware of before she got involved. In the past, Jon had listed Darcy as a “consultant” which was just a fancy way of saying it was better to have her involved than out there investigating mysteries on her own.
Taking a manila folder off the top of one of the three stacks Jon opened it to the top page. It was a computer printed report. He read the highlights rather than show it to her. “The fire investigator found obvious accelerator trails leading from one hot spot to the next. Probably gasoline but the lab tests are pending. I’m really certain that the bakery didn’t store large quantities of gasoline, so that means the fire was intentionally set. So, arson.”
“Okay.” Darcy could understand that easily enough. “So do you have any suspects?”
Jon exchanged a look with Wilson. From the corner of her eye Darcy saw him shrug.
“What?” she asked. “Who’s the suspect?”
Turning the top page over to the left side of the folder, Jon spun the next page around and slid it across the desk to Darcy. It was a scanned enlargement of a photograph. A close-up of a woman’s face.
Elizabeth Archer.
“What?” Darcy was shocked. “Jon, you can’t be serious. There’s no way that Elizabeth did this. She worked in that bakery for years. She wouldn’t burn it down!”
“Darcy, I didn’t just pick her name out of a hat.”
“Then how did you decide on her, Jon? Because there’s no way she did this.”
Lips pressed together, eyebrows scrunched into a frown, Jon leaned back in his chair. Darcy followed his gaze over to Wilson. He was studying his fingernails again, looking very uncomfortable.
“What?” Darcy asked them both. “What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Are you going to let me tell you?” Jon asked her.
She bristled at the way he said it, but she made herself sit very still with her arms folded across her chest, and nodded.
“Good. First, let’s start with the fact that yes, Elizabeth has worked at that bakery for years. She owed a lot to Helen from what I understand because Helen gave her a job when no one else would. Only, Helen isn’t the owner of the bakery anymore. Tobias Ford is. We think it’s possible that Elizabeth held a grudge against Helen for that, or against Tobias, or maybe even both of them, for feeling like she was abandoned.”
“Not to mention,” Wilson added, “she had every reason to be mad at Tobias. From what we’ve learned he lowered the salary of every bakery employee. He promised to raise them again if the profits increased, but for the last year or so everyone there, including Elizabeth, have been doing more for less. Sounds like motive to us.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.” Darcy tried to argue. “There’s other employees at the bakery who must have felt the same way.”
“True,” Jon agreed. “Four of them, to be exact, and we’ll interview them all, but for now Elizabeth is still our best suspect.”
“Why? You still haven’t convinced me.”
“You remember the burns on Elizabeth’s face? You remember how she got them?”
Darcy was appalled that Jon
would bring that up. That a really low blow. “Of course I do. The one has nothing to do with the other. Elizabeth isn’t crazy, and she doesn’t go around setting fires just to watch things burn. We’ve known her for years, Jon!”
“That didn’t keep you from accusing her of helping to kidnap Smudge a few years ago.”
“That was… different,” Darcy decided to say. “I was ready to bring everyone into this station, one by one, and waterboard a confession out of them if it meant getting Smudge back. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind. She didn’t do this.”
“And I’d love to say that counts for something,” he told her, “but how many of our friends and neighbors have actually turned out to be thieves or liars once we got to know them? Or murderers, for that matter.”
Unfortunately, she couldn’t argue that point.
“There’s something else, though.” Jon took the close-up of Elizabeth back again and put it in place behind the top sheet. Then he took out the next three sheets and laid them out in front of Darcy in a row. They were copies of pictures, all of them taken of a crowd standing together.
Darcy recognized the group of people that had been standing on the sidewalk earlier across from the burnt-out bakery. Well. Now she knew why Wilson had his cellphone out while he was there. He’d been taking pictures.
“In policing,” Jon said, “the prevailing theory on arson is that more often than not, a person who sets an intentional fire will return to the scene afterward to watch. They like to see how people react to what they’ve done. It’s part of the thrill for them. Or, part of their guilt.”
“So?” Darcy actually did know that. She couldn’t remember if she’d learned it from Jon or from watching police shows, but right now that didn’t matter. “What’s that prove in this case?”
Pointing to the first photo, Jon tapped his finger against a familiar face. “There’s Elizabeth. And here she is again in this other photo. And in this one, too.”
“So she was there at the scene this morning. So what?” She was starting to sound like a broken record, but she didn’t care. “I’m in those photos too, you know. See? Right there. So’s Pastor Phin. Do you think Pastor Phin did this? I mean, Tobias really seems to think I did it, and I’m in those photos, so maybe that proves I did it after all, don’t you think?”
