by K. J. Emrick
“You don’t think now’s a good time?” Smudge interrupted.
“You shush,” Millie told him. “I’m still mad at you for bringing Darcy that page from the book.”
The book! Darcy had left it back home rather than bring it with her on her honeymoon, but she knew it was possibly the single most important book she had ever laid hands on. In its pages, she was sure, were secrets about her Great Aunt Millie that she needed to know. Secrets that had been kept from her for some reason. “Millie—”
“Not now, dear,” Millie said with finality. “And you keep that tongue of yours in your mouth, cat. We have more important things to talk about here. Darcy needs to get back to her Jon.”
“Wait, where is Jon?” Darcy asked, only now realizing she was standing in the bedroom of the suite and her sleeping husband wasn’t in the bed.
“You’ll be back with him in a moment,” Millie promised. “First, I need to tell you something important.”
“You should tell me about the book,” Darcy pressed. Smudge meowed in agreement.
“The book will still be there when you get back home. For now, you’re here, in a place that has a bad flower problem.”
Darcy moved the towel away from her ear. She couldn’t have heard that right. “A bad…what?”
“Have you seen any flowers since you’ve been here?” Smudge asked her.
Well, no, she hadn’t. Grass. Trees. No flowers. “I haven’t really been looking. What’s that got to do with, well, anything?”
“Bad flowers bring bad rains,” Smudge murmured with a sleepy yawn, his tongue curling inside of his mouth.
“No,” Darcy corrected him, “April showers bring May flowers. Only, this is Australia and we’re moving into autumn, so maybe they bring May snowstorms. I don’t know.”
Millie shook her head, the brim of the hat flopping up and down. “Smudge had it right, dear. He’s a good cat. When he wants to be.”
“Darcy needed to know,” Smudge mewled.
“Shush.” Millie scratched under his chin. “I would have told her. Eventually.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Well. Perhaps you’re right.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Darcy exploded. “Would you two tell me what’s going on?”
“Bad flowers bring bad rains,” they both repeated to her.
And then she jumped awake, water up to her neck, splashing wildly until she remembered she was in a bathtub and had fallen asleep while relaxing and she wasn’t going to drown if she just kept her wits about her and sat up!
There. Half of her bath was now on the floor, but she had her bearings again. The shower curtain was pulled back, like she’d done in her dream, and she could see herself in the tall mirror standing over against the wall. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wide, the words from the dream still echoing in her mind. Millie had a habit of showing up in her dreams when she needed to talk, and dragging Smudge along with her, but she hadn’t expected it to happen here, in Australia.
How far away could spirits communicate with people, anyway? Not that there was any real distance in the next world. People simply were there. They didn’t have to move feet, or miles, or even as much as an inch to be somewhere else. Hmm. She’d never thought of that before—
“Darcy?”
This time it was Jon’s voice at the door, and she put a hand to her throat to catch her heart as it threatened to leap out of her chest. The white paneling on the walls all around her echoed with her embarrassed laugh. “I’m here, Jon.”
‘Are you okay? I heard a lot of splashing in there.”
“I’m fine. You could come in, you know.”
“Are you decent?” he teased.
“Jon. It’s not like you haven’t seen me in my birthday suit before.”
“Well,” he said as he opened the door enough to peek around at her, “we are married now.”
“Get in here,” she told him, holding out one dripping wet arm. “Want to join me?”
“Yes,” was his immediate response. Then he shrugged, reaching down to stroke her damp, dark hair. “Later, though. I’m hungry. Want to see what we can find in this town for dinner?”
Her tummy growled at the very thought. “Oh, yes, please. Just not kangaroo steaks.”
He kissed her forehead. “Pretty sure they don’t actually eat kangaroo here. Or anywhere. Aren’t they just big rats?”
“Rats that can box.” She caught the neckline of his shirt and pulled him closer to give him a proper kiss on the mouth. “Let me get dressed. Maybe Dell can recommend someplace.”
“Sure, but I doubt there’s a lot to choose from here in Lakeshore.”
“Come on. Misty Hollow has a bakery, a deli, and there’s that new restaurant that’s going to open next month.”
“True. Our little town isn’t going to be so little for very long. Ever since the Town Hall burned down and got rebuilt it’s like everyone wants to come there.”
Darcy bit her lip, keeping her thoughts to herself. The evil spirit that had infested the town had been purged with the burning of the Town Hall. With the malevolence gone, what Jon said was true. Misty Hollow had always been a nice place to live, excepting the bad times and bad things that happened. Now it was positively thriving.
No one else remembered the spirit of Nathaniel Williams, Pilgrim Ghost. It was probably better that way.
Jon’s hand smoothed its way down the curve of her side, under the water, to her hip, soaking his sleeve. His eyes held hers. Her breath came quicker.
His lips were smooth against hers.
“I could eat later,” she heard herself say.
It was all the invitation he needed to join her.
Chapter Three
“Well, Lakeshore’s got a few places to catch a good meal,” Dell said to them when they came back down to the front desk. “But you know, we’ve got us a full kitchen right here at the Inn. My partner does all the cooking. Having beef tips tonight. She’d love to fix two more plates.”
“Your partner?” Darcy asked. “So you’re married, Dell?”
The woman’s face turned sad, and her right hand felt over to the bare fingers of her left. There wasn’t a wedding ring there.
“No,” she answered after a moment, and then added a laugh. “I was married to Mister Powers. Before we split ways, that is. I was talking about Rosie. She’s my partner in the business sense, not my life-partner. She owns half of the Pine Lake Inn.”
Darcy felt foolish, but figured it was an honest mistake. Dell didn’t seem upset about it. It was more like the thought of her ex-husband had brought up some painful memories, was all.
“So, two for dinner?” Dell asked them.
“Yes,” Jon answered for them both. “That would be great.”
The dining area was a room decorated with flower print wallpaper and hanging light fixtures shaped like leaves. The purple tablecloths had flowers embroidered on the edges. As they sat down at a table set for two with a single long candle lit in the center, Darcy couldn’t help but remember the riddle Great Aunt Millie had passed along in her dream. Bad flowers bring bad rains.
There were a lot of flowers in this room. Darcy hoped there wasn’t some kind of meaning here that she was missing. All the same, she set her glass of water aside when the server filled it.
There wasn’t anyone else sitting down to dinner with them. The room took on an almost eerie quality, with four other tables set up and waiting, a candle lit at each. A cuckoo clock on the wall ticked loudly into the silence.
“So where do you think everyone is?” Jon asked. They hadn’t seen any other guests in the hallways. Aside from Dell and George the handyman, and their server who had filled their wineglasses and left them their menus, they hadn’t seen anyone at all.
“Maybe we missed the dinner rush,” Darcy suggested.
They read the menus as they thought about that. Beef tips was the Monday special, but there was also a small assortment of sandwiches and steaks
listed. Salmon and abalone, too.
“Hi, there!” a cheerful voice said to them. “Aren’t you two a cute couple?”
Wiping her hands on a white apron tied around the girth of her round waist, a woman came into the dining room through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. She had on one of those short white coats that professional cooks wore. Her brown eyes reflected her smile. Strands of her chestnut hair had escaped a white chef’s cap, although she didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m so glad you’re dining with us tonight!” she said to them. “I’m Rosie Ryan. Dell mentioned me, I reckon?”
Darcy set her menu aside. “Yes she did. You’re the other owner of the Inn, right?”
“Yup. That’s me. I thought for sure we weren’t going to have anyone here for dinner tonight. This is just marvelous. Tell you what. Let me make something special for you. All right? You’re going to love it. I promise!”
Still smiling, she backed her way toward the kitchen again.
She bumped into a chair, knocking it sideways.
“Oops. Clumsy.” She waved and turned around.
Bumping into a table hard enough to knock its candle over.
She grabbed the candle up before the flame could spread, and carried it with her as she quickly disappeared through the swinging door.
Jon leaned back in his chair, watching her go. “Well. She’s certainly a character.”
“Shush,” Darcy told him, although she couldn’t help but agree. “She’s fun. I wonder what she’s going to make us?”
“Whatever it is, we’re going to love it. She promised.”
Darcy rolled her eyes at him. “So what do you want to do after dinner?”
“We’ve still got some time. Why don’t we explore the town a little bit? I know you want to check out the bookstore.”
“Definitely. A bookstore in Australia? I want to see that for sure. It can wait until tomorrow, though. Let’s just see what’s here, and then we can decide what we want to do.”
“I’d like to take some time to visit the police department,” he told her.
“I figured. You want to do that first thing tomorrow? I can check out the bookstore and you can introduce yourself to the Chief, no not Chief. Roy said it was a Senior Sergeant didn’t he? Or you could just introduce yourself to whoever is there at the station.”
He raised his glass of water in a toast. “Sounds good.”
Darcy clinked her glass against his, then set it aside again. Water that was surrounded by this many flowers was not to be trusted. At least until she knew what her aunt had been trying to tell her.
The meal was just as good as Rosie had promised. Better, even. Tender slices of brisket in a gravy with mashed sweet potatoes and crispy, steamed vegetables. They selected a red wine to go with it that was described as coming from a local winery. Very good.
Still, the fact that they hadn’t seen any other guests bothered Darcy. Where was everyone? This town was off the beaten track, sure, but it was a tourist destination. The Inn was nestled at the shore of one lake that fed into two others nearby, and it offered hiking trails and scenery and restful days away from everything. The way the websites told it, the town of Lakeshore was always bustling with tourists.
So where were they?
“Stop that,” Jon told her.
“I’m not doing anything,” she told him, but she knew she’d been caught. Jon would have read her thoughts all over her face. They knew each other so well. Right now, her sixth sense was tickling her mind and telling her there was more going on here than just a lull in the tourist season. She always listened to her intuition, that extra sense of things that she and some other women in her family had been born with.
“Don’t go looking for trouble,” he told her, reading her thoughts once more.
“I promise, Jon, I won’t. We’re here on vacation. Our honeymoon. All I want to do is spend time with you away from a house full of people and a town full of mysteries that always pop up at the worst time.”
“Like at our wedding?” he said.
“Or when Grace was about to have her baby,” she added.
“Christmas.”
He smiled at her. Now it was a game.
“Halloween,” she said for her turn, shivering at the memory.
They went through several others, managing to laugh at their bad luck and good fortune. Darcy promised him again that she wasn’t going to look for trouble.
What she didn’t bother to say was that trouble always had a way of finding her.
Rosie swept back into the room. “How was it? Be honest, now.”
“That was absolutely fabulous,” Jon told her. “Compliments to the chef.”
Rosie beamed under his praise, clasping her hands together up near her chin. “Bonza. We like to make our guests happy. I think you both need dessert. Chocolate truffle raspberry soufflé. Compliments of the Inn.”
“Wow. Thank you.” Darcy’s mouth was watering just thinking about it. “Are the other guests coming down soon?”
Jon shot her a meaningful look. She couldn’t help herself. The question had grown so big in her head she had to let it out.
Rosie’s face froze. “Um. No. There’s just two other guests right now. The lady got done her meal a few hours ago. Just a simple sandwich for her. Not even an appetizer.” She sounded disappointed, or annoyed maybe, that her skills hadn’t been put to use. “The other guest, the gentleman, uh, doesn’t come out of his room much. So. Right. Dessert. Let me just go prepare it for you folks.”
“Is it the time of year?” Darcy asked, ignoring the light tap of Jon’s foot against her shin.
“Er, no. Usually? No. Usually booked up this time of year.” Rosie sighed, and then wrung her hands in her apron again. “See, there’s a…reason we don’t have so many guests just now. Nothing to worry about, mind you. Nothing like that. No. So. Dessert will be right out! Heh.”
Jon tried to hide a frown as he gave Darcy another look. “What’s keeping people away from the Inn, Rosie?” he asked. When Darcy looked surprised, he shrugged, as if to say he couldn’t stop her so he might as well join her.
Rosie looked miserable, but she relented. “It’s just a rumor, mind you. Nothing more than that. Some people are saying things. That’s all.”
Darcy sat up straighter. “What sort of things?”
With another sigh, Rosie finally let her secret go. “There’s been a few poisonings here in town. People getting sick for no reason. People are nervous. That’s all. They’re saying…well, they’re saying that the town is cursed.”
Jon closed his eyes, but she could see the way the corner of his lips twitched. Another mystery, and the two of them right in the middle of it.
She could read his face like a book. She knew exactly what he was going to say.
***
“No.”
“We don’t have to do anything, I just want to ask.” Darcy held Jon’s arm close to her side as they walked slowly past a line of shops on Main Street. The sun was going to set soon. It was already an orange ball just kissing the irregular horizon of mountaintops to the west. “You aren’t just a little bit curious?”
“Of course I’m curious. People getting poisoned. For no reason? A cursed town? Sure. There’s definitely a mystery there. I’m more worried about whether we should be buying a plane ticket home. Or, at least to some other part of the country.”
“Dell and Rosie live here,” Darcy pointed out. “They eat at the Pine Lake Inn. They haven’t been poisoned.”
“That we know of,” he grumped, although she saw him nod when he conceded her point. “Okay. We’re already here. We can stay. We’ll just be careful and eat only at the hotel. Besides, I can’t really afford another set of plane tickets for us.”
She hugged him, hearing more in his words than he was willing to admit. He knew if they stayed here that she would get involved in the mystery somehow. By saying they could stay, he was giving her permission to be who she was.
It was somewhere around seven o’clock. After business hours for most of the shops they saw. They found a tea shop still open, aromatic with the blended smells of fruits and spices. Darcy bought a few exotic sounding mixes. Bayberry orange and Kangaroo Breakfast blend among them. Next door, a candleworks was shut up for the night. So was the bookstore when they came to it.
“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Jon promised, checking his watch. “Let’s head back to the Inn. I’ll borrow a movie for us to watch in our room. Tomorrow we’ll do more sightseeing, stop here at the bookstore, maybe even go for a hike. Whatever we want.”
She was disappointed that the Eye of the Beholder bookstore was closed, but she understood. She would have closed up the Sweet Read Bookstore by now, too. Jon was right, they would have all day tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after. That brought a smile to her face as they turned back in the direction of the Inn.
A stout woman wearing a long dress of conflicting colors and patterned lines nearly bumped into them as she reached for the door of the bookstore. She blinked large, milky blue eyes behind thick glasses in rainbow colored frames. Her halo of frizzy brown hair was the least unusual part of her.
“Aha!” she declared, raising a finger in the air. “I knew I was needed back at my bookstore. The spirits told me so.”
Jon stepped back, instantly on guard. Darcy just stared. Did she say...the spirits told her?
“Oh, that’s right, my friends,” the woman said in a clipped, rigid Australian accent. “The spirits speak to Mabel Quinn. They know me, and I know them. And they told me I would meet two, uh, Americans?”
Funny, Darcy thought. Somehow Mabel didn’t sound sure. Maybe the spirits needed to speak more clearly when they spoke to Mabel Quinn. “Yes. We’re Americans. You’re the owner of the bookstore?”
“That I am,” Mabel said with a wink. “Fancy a look round? The spirits must have brought me back here for a reason. Maybe there’s a book inside that you need to find. Come. Come!”
