by K. J. Emrick
“Of course I don’t think you did it,” Jon said, raising his hands and trying to settle her down. “I don’t think Phin did it, either. But Darcy, there’s plenty of reasons why Elizabeth might have.”
“There’s other people to consider,” she insisted.
“Like who?”
Darcy was at a loss for an answer. There had to be someone, didn’t there? As much as she was positive that Elizabeth was not the guilty person in this case, she couldn’t come up with any other names to throw into the mix.
Only, then she could.
“The Iroc!” she blurted out.
“What?” Jon looked at her oddly. “The Iraq? You mean, like the country? Or someone from there?”
“No,” Wilson answered him. “She means the Iroc. The car. Izzy McIntosh was coming through town last night with her daughter right after the fire started and she says they saw a blue Iroc parked at the curb just down from the bakery. Seems the car took off when the firetrucks showed up.”
Jon tapped his fingers against his desk in a slow rhythm as he let that sink in. “Well. That’s interesting. You’d think they would want to stay when the trucks showed up.”
“Because that’s the best part,” Wilson pointed out, smiling over at Darcy as he said it. “Or so I hear.”
“Right.” Jon stopped tapping his fingers to reach down to a drawer. From inside he took out a legal-sized yellow notepad. “I tell you what, Darcy. If it will make you feel better, I’ll make a list of all our suspects. Maybe seeing it all written out will convince me that you’re right.”
“All?” she asked him. “I thought Elizabeth was your only suspect.”
“No, unfortunately we have several. And now, I’ve got to add classic 1980s muscle car driver to the list.”
At the top of the page, Darcy watched him write, Iroc muscle car driver.
“I’m guessing Izzy didn’t see the driver?” he asked.
“No,” Wilson said. “I made sure to ask her, but she didn’t see him. Or the license plate, either.”
“Oh well. Too much to ask for, I guess.” He tapped the end of his pen against the page, looking at Darcy from under his brows for a moment. “I’m sorry, Sweet Baby, but I have to put Elizabeth on this list. She fits into the mystery too well not to at least consider her.”
Darcy ground her teeth together and just accepted it as Jon wrote Elizabeth’s name down next. Not even hearing Jon call her by her nickname—Sweet Baby—could make that okay. He was right though, and she knew it, so she stopped arguing about it and let him do his job.
“There’s the owner of the hair salon,” Jon went on, which was news to Darcy.
She watched him write the name down on the list. Bobbi Jo Cameron. “Why her?”
Jon flipped to another page in the open folder. This one was a written statement, a complaint form taken by one of his patrol officers. “Because yesterday she made a complaint to us about Tobias and some rather heavy-handed business practices. She claims he came into her shop offering to give out coupons for her salon, if she would give out flyers for his bakery. You know, it still seems weird calling it his bakery. Even now. It’s always been Helen’s bakery in my mind.”
“I know what you mean,” Wilson agreed. “A place like that, part of our community for years, and then it changes hands, and then it’s just gone.”
Darcy finally uncrossed her arms at the mention of Helen. “Has anyone gone to talk to her?” she asked. “She must have heard the news by now, right?”
“She’s the mayor now,” Jon said by way of an answer. “I would have reported the fire to her even if it didn’t involve her personally, which it does. She was upset, as you can imagine. She started to get a little choked up before she got off the phone with me.”
“Poor Helen,” Darcy said. She would have to stop by the Town Hall after she was done here, she decided, and give Helen some moral support or a shoulder to cry on if she needed it. “But I’m still a little confused. Why is Bobbi Jo Cameron a suspect? Just because of the complaint?”
“Wait,” Wilson said before Jon could answer her. “Let me see that statement form.”
“Sure.”
He picked it up off the desk, and scanned through it, and then handed it to Jon. “See that, right there? Bobbi Jo says there was someone hanging around outside of her shop yesterday and she gave a really good description of the man. Red hair, long red sideburns, red tattoos on the back of both hands in the shape of a star. I’m pretty sure…” He spent a moment going through the rest of the papers in the folder. It didn’t take him long. There wasn’t much in it. “Yup. Right here. Kara was able to take the description and make an identification. He’s on our local watch list the State Police like to send us.”
“That Officer Kara,” Darcy said in a fakely neutral way. “She’s quite the police officer, isn’t she Wilson?”
Wilson winked at her. “She’s more than just a police officer.”
Jon read through Kara’s report, tapping a finger under a photo on the second page. Then he sat back in his chair, and scratched at the pale line of that scar near his hairline. Like he did when he could feel a storm coming, she thought to herself.
“I was hoping,” he said, “to go my whole entire career without seeing those guys again.”
“Jon?” Darcy asked him. “Who do you mean? What guys?”
“The Hand,” Wilson said. “He means The Hand.”
Darcy felt a cold band wrap around her heart at just the mention of that name. The Hand was the criminal organization that had chased Isabelle McIntosh and her daughter into hiding here in Misty Hollow a number of years ago. The same organization that had tried to kill Jon and her sister Grace two years back. Jon had finally succeeded in putting one of their top members, Adolphos Carino, in Federal prison where he was likely going to rot for the remainder of his foul life. Although, any good criminal enterprise has too many members to ever completely go away. It was like the mob. Or those ‘Ndrangheta people that her friend Dell Powers had told her about in Australia.
But The Hand was much closer than that. They were right in their own back yard. And apparently, right on Main Street.
“Edmund Beres,” Jon said, “is not believed to be a member of The Hand, but is tied to several instances of crimes linked to that group. So he’s a freelance thug, and he’s in our town. More than that, he was seen on Main Street just a few hours before one of our businesses was burned to the ground. The crimes Mister Beres is linked to include burglary, trespassing, and oh look at that, arson.”
“He makes the list?” Darcy asked.
“Oh yeah he does.” Jon wrote the name down on the pad. “One, two, three, four.”
“Wait,” Darcy said, “you still haven’t said why Bobbi Jo is a suspect. Just because she made a complaint about Tobias and his veiled threats? He did the same thing to me and you don’t see me burning down his place of business.”
Jon’s head snapped up. “What do you mean, he did the same thing to you? Tobias threatened you?”
“Um. Well, it wasn’t a threat against me, so much, as it was a suggestion that my business would suffer if I didn’t let him sell these absolutely awful t-shirts of his. He wanted to make a mockery of our town. I told him no, and he said… um, you can get on board with my vision, or your business will suffer. Yes. That’s what he said.”
The look on Jon’s face could have broken stone. “When was this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was yesterday,” Darcy said, “and we haven’t exactly had time to sit down and talk about things, now have we?”
He nodded, realizing she was right. “No, I guess not. Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep this morning. I guess I’m a little testy.”
“Right there with you, Chief,” Wilson told him.
Darcy had left Jon sleeping in their bed after getting Colby on the bus this morning. She had no idea when he came into work but she would be willing to bet that it was right after she left. That’s how dedicated he was, an
d how much he cared about their town. Tobias’ little visit to her shop yesterday wasn’t the only thing she hadn’t had time to talk to him about. She would have to sit down with him tonight and discuss Colby’s little stunt in her room. She wasn’t going to mention it here. Not with Wilson in the office with them. No, that was one of those private family things that they just didn’t talk about with anyone else.
“So let me get this straight,” Jon said. “First, Tobias comes into your shop yesterday and practically strongarms you to go into business with him. Then, he storms into your shop today and accuses you of being the one to burn his place down. I don’t think I like the way that sounds. What do you think, Wilson?”
“I think we have a new business owner in town,” Wilson said through another yawn. “I think he’s somebody we don’t know who says he has a lot of money to invest in one of our shops. But, it sounds to me like he’s desperate to find new sources of revenue. To the point he’s willing to threaten people to get what he needs.”
“Might make him do some really bad things.”
“Yup,” Wilson agreed. “Maybe even burn down his own shop.”
Jon rubbed at his scar. “Seems a little farfetched, but people have done worse for less. If I have to put one of our friends on this list, then somebody who threatens my wife’s business gets a place on it, too. If nothing else, that’s a crime in itself. Think I’ll have to have a talk with Mister Ford.”
Maybe Darcy got a little too much satisfaction in seeing Jon put Tobias Ford’s name down on that list, but suddenly the idea that he might have burned down his own place seemed to make perfect sense. If he was strapped for cash then buying a thriving business in a small, out of the way town and destroying it for the insurance money could earn him some quick cash.
“You’re going to check to see if he put any new insurance policies on the bakery,” she asked Jon, “aren’t you?”
He smiled at her. “See how much you’ve learned by being married to me?”
“Oh, you mean like how I’ve learned never to make fun of John Wayne while you’re around?”
“Hey, John Wayne is an icon of American film. The man set the stage for how the modern western movie was made.”
“I have just two words for you.” She tried to keep the smile from her face as she leaned in closer to the desk. “Genghis Khan.”
“Yeah, well, everyone gets to make one bad movie. The Conqueror certainly qualified.”
“I’ve never seen that one,” Wilson said.
“No one has.” Jon picked up the notepad, reading down the list of names. “Howard Hughes spent a good portion of his own money to buy up every copy there was. He didn’t want anyone else to see the flop he’d created.”
“He still loves John Wayne,” Darcy told Wilson, just like she had to almost every single one of their friends and family before. Her mother would never understand Jon’s obsession with the late actor. “Anyway, you still haven’t told me why Bobbi Jo is a suspect.”
Going back a few pages in the folder, Jon took out Bobbi Jo’s statement again. “Read the last line.”
Darcy did. In her own words, signed to at the bottom of the page, Bobbi Jo had said, “If he ever threatens my store again he’ll regret it.”
She handed back the page. “I see.”
“Exactly,” Jon said. Tapping a pen against each name, he counted them down. “One, two, three, four, five. Five suspects. Look at that. We’ve got our very own naughty list.”
Wilson rubbed at his tired eyes. “Wonderful. Just in time for Christmas. Bah, humbug.”
She said goodbye to Jon with a little kiss on his cheek when it became obvious she was going to be in the way more than she was helping. That was fine with her. There was a lot to do now, and Darcy couldn’t exactly help with it. When she left, Jon and Wilson were working up assignments for their officers.
Talk to Bobbi Jo Cameron, get her alibi.
Talk to Elizabeth Archer, get her alibi.
Find this Edmund Beres, and find out what his business was here in Misty Hollow… and ask if that business included committing arson on behalf of The Hand.
Find out who was driving the Iroc that Lilly and Izzy had seen. Thankfully there weren’t all that many Irocs on the road anymore. Not from the 80s. It shouldn’t be too hard for the Department of Motor Vehicles to find out who had one registered to them in this state.
Re-interview Tobias Ford. Jon said that one was for him.
Darcy wanted to be involved in all of it, but she knew she couldn’t be. She might have to let the police officers in her town do the investigation on this mystery. At least for now.
On her way out of the building her sister Grace caught her elbow and steered her away from the front, where the dispatch desk sat right next to the lobby window. She led her straight to her desk, behind the recently added partition screens that served to give the detectives a little bit of privacy since the building had never been big enough to give them offices of their own.
Once they were sitting down and safely invisible from the rest of the room, Grace let go of her sister’s arm and then craned her head to see around the gray plastic edge of the adjustable wall. When Darcy tried to do the same Grace grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back again.
“Don’t do that!”
“Ow. Hey, sis, you know I’m not a ragdoll, right?”
Grace looked like she’d been up for most of the night just like Jon and Wilson had. Her white button up top was wrinkled under her blue blazer, and the same was true of her slacks. Even her short hair could have used a comb.
“Just keep your head down,” she said to Darcy. “Tobias Ford is out in the lobby and he’s after blood. Your blood.”
Darcy slumped down lower in the plastic chair even though she was already too low to be seen. “What is with this guy? I’ve helped catch murderers who weren’t this angry at me!”
Of course, his bluster might be hiding his own guilt. Darcy remembered Jon writing Ford’s name on their list. How far would he go to pin the fire on someone else, if he did it himself?
“He’s really het up about this one,” Grace said. “I don’t know what you said to him in your shop yesterday but you really got under his skin.”
“Grace… did you just use the phrase het up?”
Her sister tossed a pen across her desk. “Not really the point, Darcy. And yes. I said het up. So what? Mom used to use dumb little phrases like that all the time.”
“Yeah, she did. All those proper phrases and rules of etiquette… hard to believe we grew up to be so different than her.”
“I don’t know, sis.” Grace grabbed her pen before it rolled off the edge to the floor. “Ever since Mom came back into our lives I’m starting to think we might be more alike than any of us realized.”
“Bite your tongue,” Darcy said, laughing at the thought. She loved her mother, which was something she would have been hard pressed to say in her younger years. Still, things might be better between the sisters and their mother now, but there was a whole world of difference between them. “Hey, since I’ve got you here, we wanted to have you and Aaron and Addie over for dinner. Are you free at all this week?”
“That sounds great, sis, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. Addie’s class is getting ready for a play so she’s staying after school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then there’s this arson case, and I kind of have a feeling that Jon is going to have us all scurrying around like worker bees until we have someone collared for that.”
“You’re not wrong,” Darcy told her. “He’s in there right now making assignments on who needs to be interviewed. Elizabeth Archer is one of them.”
She was expecting Grace to raise an eyebrow or at least look surprised. She didn’t.
“So you knew about Elizabeth?”
Grace nodded, although she didn’t look happy about it. “Jon walked me through the investigation before you got here. An employee with a history of being involved with fires. Darcy, I admit it
sounds all kinds of wrong but you have to see it through our eyes.”
“You mean ‘police officer’ eyes,” Darcy said flatly.
“Well, yeah.”
“How about seeing it through a neighbor’s eyes? Grace, we know Elizabeth. We’ve lived next to her for years now. Ever since she moved into town. She’s had a hard life and she’s very rough around the edges but she’s not an arsonist. She did not burn down the bakery.”
“Good police work is going to tell us that, sis.”
“No, common sense is going to tell us that.” Darcy loved her sister. They’d been through a lot together, and they’d been at odds with each other more times than she could count. Grace was just so stubborn. So by the book. So unwilling to bend, sometimes. That was one of the reasons why Darcy hadn’t ever told Grace more about her gift than just the basics. The simple stuff that wasn’t likely to freak her out or make her think they should keep Addie away from Colby in case Darcy’s daughter tried doing a spirit communication or something.
If she only knew.
And that was another good reason she had to talk to Colby. What they could do with their gift was not something to talk about with her friends, or at school with her teachers, or any of that. It was a secret that needed to be kept secret.
She’d had the talk about good and bad secrets with Colby already, but it was a life lesson that was worth repeating.
“Tell you what,” Grace said to her. “Why don’t we go to Elizabeth’s place now, and we can talk to her together. You and me.”
“Seriously?” Darcy asked. “Are you sure?”
“I’m the senior detective of the Misty Hollow Police Department,” she said with pride in her voice. “You’re still listed as our consultant. It’s our job to investigate crimes.”
“I prefer the word mystery,” Darcy said.
“Whatever. Look. One of us is wrong, and one of us is right. Why don’t we go find out?” She stood up from her desk, looking across the room to the service window. “Jon was probably going to send me to interview Elizabeth anyway. Your stalker’s gone, for now. Let’s go.”
