by K. J. Emrick
“Jon!” she laughed. “Stop it! We were talking about Ellen.”
“I don’t love Ellen. I love you.” He stopped spinning her, kissing her instead with his lips sealed over hers. “We can talk about Ellen later. I’m glad she was here with you. It must have been nice to have someone else to talk to about, you know, ghosts and things.”
“Well, she’s not you, but she doesn’t judge me when I start talking about things like being able to see blood on people’s hands, or whatever.”
“Hmm. Had to use that one, did you?”
“Yes.” Jon had seen her use that technique any number of times now, and knew how it worked. “Sarah’s hands were clean when I checked.”
“Good. Not like you could bring that out in a court of law, but it’s good to know.”
“See, that’s what I said. Let’s go get lunch for everyone. Sarah’s at work but I’m sure we’ll see her later.”
“Lunch does sound good. I’ve been wondering all day how good the lunch from Moonie’s Lunch is. The coffee wasn’t bad. Maybe I should try some of Braden’s special blend. That sounded interesting.”
“They have it there at Moonie’s Lunch, actually. It’s pretty good. One of the waitresses gave me a cup of it by mistake. I’m sure they could get you one—”
Oh, no.
“Jon, we have to go to Sarah’s house.”
“What’s wrong?” Jon asked, following on her heels to the car.
“I’m not sure,” she answered truthfully. “I need to go through her trash.”
Chapter Ten
It was the coffee that started her thinking.
Darcy had already gone through the kitchen cabinets, and the bathroom cabinets, and the garbage bin in Sarah’s bedroom and the bathroom. Now she was back in the kitchen, carefully transferring old newspapers and orange peels from the garbage bin here into a fresh bag.
Ellen watched from where she leaned back against the counter, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her jeans. “I have to tell you. This is a strange way to conduct an investigation.”
“You learn to let her do things her own way,” Jon said from his spot next to Ellen. “It usually works out.”
“Usually? Meaning, not always?”
“Sometimes things don’t go according to plan.”
“Hey,” Darcy said, wrinkling her nose at what she pulled out next. “I’m standing right here, you know.”
“We know,” Ellen said. “Didn’t you two say that Terry Taft had already been arrested for Braden’s murder?”
Jon shrugged. “That’s what we said.”
“So, why is Darcy digging through Sarah’s trash if the case is over?”
“Because,” Darcy said with a sigh. “It’s not over. I think I just found the murder weapon.”
She held up the empty foil bag that she’d found, carefully, by one corner. It was small, and gold, with a picture of a white capped peak on the front and the words “Mountain Ground” written in an arch.
“That’s Braden’s special coffee brand?” Jon asked.
“I think so. It’s the brand name the waitress at Moonie’s Lunch used.”
“What makes you think that’s how he was poisoned?”
“Well, for one thing, this isn’t supposed to be here.”
“Come again?”
Darcy brought the ground coffee bag over to the counter and settled it into a plastic container that Ellen got out for her. Then she washed her hands in the sink, just in case she’d gotten anything on her by touching the bag.
Turning back around to Jon, she explained what she meant. “Sarah told me yesterday that Braden doesn’t drink coffee. But then I learn the local restaurant carries his favorite brand. Shai Larson seems to believe he orders it by mail. So you tell me. How is it possible for Sarah to think her husband doesn’t drink coffee, when he obviously did?”
“You think Sarah lied to you again?” Jon wondered. “You said you already caught her in one lie.”
“I don’t think so.” Darcy had thought of that. “I think this is something else. I think someone used Braden’s secret vice against him. I’m guessing a powdered poison mixed into ground coffee wouldn’t even be noticed. So Braden makes his coffee, spoonful by spoonful, gradually introducing a deadly poison into his system. Then yesterday, it got to be too much, and it killed him.”
“So?” Ellen looked between them, shrugging her shoulders. “All this means is we figured out how Terry killed Braden. I’ll bet when the cops fingerprint that bag they’ll find at least some of Terry’s prints.”
Darcy stared at the coffee bag. She should be happy about this. She’d promised Sarah to find her husband’s killer, and she had. She’d even gone a step further and found out how he’d been killed.
So why did she feel like something was still missing?
“Hey,” Jon spoke softly to her. “What’s wrong?”
“Hm? Oh. Nothing, I guess. I think I’m just being ridiculous.”
Jon and Ellen exchanged a look. “Your sixth sense?” Jon asked.
“It’s not like my spider sense is tingling, Jon, but yes. Something doesn’t feel right to me.”
“You could always talk to your little ghost friend again,” Ellen joked.
“Ghost?” Jon raised an eyebrow. “There’s a ghost?”
“Yes.” Darcy reached out with her senses through the house around her, feeling for Felicia. “She’s right…huh. She’s not in the house right now.”
“I thought…” Jon rolled a hand in the air while he tried to decide how to word what he wanted to say. “Aren’t ghosts tied to the places they know?”
“Or the people they know, yes,” Darcy said. “Good, Jon. You really were listening to me all this time.”
“Of course I was. That’s what good boyfriends-slash-fiancés do.”
“You guys make me sick,” Ellen told them, pulling a comical face.
Darcy stuck her tongue out. “Anyway, yes, ghosts tend to haunt, for lack of a better word, the places they knew in life. Where they lived, where they died…oh. Oh! Yes!”
“What?” Ellen asked. “What?”
If Felicia’s spirit wasn’t here, where she’d lived her life, then most likely she was down by where she had died.
Jon caught on quickly. “The river?”
“The river,” Darcy agreed. “Felicia must be down by the river, and if she is, she might be waiting there to tell us something.”
“You’ll need this,” Ellen said, handing over the brochure with its map of trails.
***
As cold as it was up in town, it was that much colder down here by the water.
Little red squares nailed to the towering, bare trees around her carefully marked out the trail she was following. Snow crunched under her boots. Every so often a bird would call out or a squirrel would chatter at nothing in particular.
In the background, over every other sound, was the constant rush of the river.
She hadn’t come in sight of it yet, but the Oragatchie River let her know it was there with a loud murmuring that threatened to drown out her own thoughts the closer she got. The wind cut into her heavy jacket and had already rubbed her cheeks raw.
“Felicia?” she called out a few times, only to have the girl’s name snatched away by the wind.
Finding Hawkins Point on the map was easy. The place Terry Taft had named as the place where Felicia died was clearly marked with a little red star and the number four. Down in the legend, “4” corresponded with a short paragraph that described swimming and a rope swing and fishing, too.
In reality, the place was hidden at a curve in the trail, behind trees that looked like one solid row until she saw a snow-covered sign with an arrow pointing to an opening. A short corridor of tree trunks and gnarled branches led to a wide open area that was probably all sand in the summer’s heat. Now it was ankle deep in fluffy snow that lead down in a gentle slope to the water’s edge. The trees curved around on either side to form the boundary o
f the clearing. Across the expanse of the river, the forest stood impassive right up to the water on that side.
Once here, you were cut off from the rest of the world. All in all, it was a lonely place for anyone to die.
Darcy felt pretty lonely herself. Jon had gone to bring the coffee bag to Shai Larson. It was evidence she needed in her case against Terry. They would have to dust it for prints and do all that other stuff they had talked about. He’d dropped her off at the trailhead, telling her to wait there and he’d be right back. Darcy, impatient and eager to see what Felicia had to tell her, had gone on ahead. It had seemed like a great idea at the time. Now she just felt stupid.
The water had smooth patches of ice on it, extending out from the bank that Darcy knew would be really thin. Pieces of it had already broken off and were floating away on the strong current.
There was no sign of Felicia. Reaching out with her sixth sense, Darcy felt all around her. It was calm here, this deep into the woods, with the strong flow of the river rushing by, and the wind blocked by the trees around her, and no one and no thing making a sound. She held her hand up in front of her, trying to physically sense what only her inherent abilities could feel. Sometimes the hand thing helped her focus. Other times, she just felt foolish.
The second time around she saw Sarah standing between the trees, watching her with a bemused twist to her lips.
Darcy tripped sideways in the snow, her hands flying up to her mouth. “Sarah! You startled me.”
Foolish. Yes. Sometimes it made her feel very foolish.
“What are you doing, Darcy?” Sarah asked.
“I, uh, was looking for…” She swallowed, and sighed, and gave up trying to explain it. “How did you find me?”
“I had a call from Shai Larson. She wanted to apologize for accusing me of killing Braden. She said that Terry was under arrest for it. She said everything was fine now.” Crossing her arms, she leaned her upper body toward Darcy. “Then she told me all about Felicia dying. Here. At the river.”
“Are you all right?” Darcy asked, starting to walk over to her. Why was Sarah acting so strange? “You sound different.”
“I’m just amazed, Darcy. That’s all.” Sarah took one step for every step Darcy took, walking in a circle to keep an equal distance between them. “See, Shai told me that the investigation into my husband’s murder was all wrapped up. All done. Yet, somehow, here you are. Lucky for me I know the trail systems better than you. Or that fiancé of yours that I heard is in town now. I just can’t believe you figured this out.”
She laughed, a throaty and disturbing sound.
“I,” she said again, very slowly, “can not believe you figured this out.”
“Sarah? Are you upset that I’m here? I mean, this has got to be hard for you, I know.”
More laughter. “Hard? Hard for me? Are you kidding? Do you want to know what was hard for me, Darcy? Knowing the man I loved was a cold and heartless idiot. That was hard for me. Knowing I could get more heat out of one night with Terry Taft than I could get out of a lifetime with Braden. That was hard. Knowing I had gotten myself pregnant to another man? That was easy, compared to waking up every day, every single lousy day of my life for the last two years, knowing that my husband had killed my child.”
Cold chills went up Darcy’s spine. That was it. That was the piece she had been missing. Open your eyes, Millie had said. Of course. Felicia had died here, just like Braden had told Terry. Terry had covered it up without ever investigating because Felicia was really his daughter and maybe he didn’t want to see the truth.
Darcy saw it now.
Felicia hadn’t just drowned here. She’d been murdered for being another man’s child.
“Yes, Braden was that cruel,” Sarah answered Darcy’s unspoken thoughts. “He was never the husband he should have been, and once he figured out what had happened between me and Terry it didn’t take him long at all to realize Felicia wasn’t his. Oh, how he resented her. Hated her, even. Then, there was that day when I came home and Terry told me Felicia had drowned in the tub. I knew better. I knew what Braden had done.”
“You killed him.” Darcy heard the words coming out, and knew they were true. She didn’t need Sarah’s mocking smile to confirm it.
Little things came into place in her mind. The lie about Braden not drinking coffee, for one. It hadn’t been Braden’s secret vice, Sarah had known about it. Sarah had only been trying to hide the evidence from everyone. It was more than that, though. Her vision of Sarah finding Braden’s body. What had Sarah been wearing? Jeans. It had bothered her even at the time because Sarah had been out jogging. If she’d come straight home and gone to look for her husband right away—like she said—then she’d still be in that purple jogging outfit Terry Taft had seen her in. Instead she’d come home and changed and waited and probably waited even more to make sure the poison she’d laced into his favorite coffee had finally done the trick.
When Darcy had checked Sarah’s hands for evidence of guilt, for the phantom blood that should have been all over her, there wasn’t any. None. Now she knew why.
Sarah didn’t feel guilty about killing her husband. No guilt, no blood.
Darcy understood now. Sarah had told her she was over Felicia’s death. That she’d put it behind her. But no mother ever got past the death of her daughter. Sarah had nursed that grudge for two years until it had become a cold, murderous rage.
It had all been in front of her the whole time. All she had to do was open her eyes and see it.
Just like Millie had told her to.
Sarah was still talking. “Do you know how much thought I put into this, Darcy dear? I mean, it was easy to get that idiot Hampton to trail along behind me like a wounded puppy. A look here, a kind word there, a few gifts, and he was eating out of my hand. Then I planted Braden’s wallet where I knew crazy old Hampton would find it, figuring hey, who better to take the fall than him? There shouldn’t have even been an autopsy! They weren’t supposed to find the poison! I practically giftwrapped this whole thing for our local keystone cops! You should have heard Braden going on and on and on about how he needed to find his wallet. Needed to find his wallet. He needed to find his stupid wallet. Do you know how hard it was to keep a straight face when I said I’d look for it around the house? And him, getting sicker and sicker and not understanding why. Ha!”
Darcy’s mind worked feverishly. Sarah thought she’d already figured this all out when in reality she had been stupid and clueless, letting her emotions get in her way. There had to be a way out of this. Maybe she could make Sarah think Jon or Shai or someone was out here with her? Or on the way?
Jon really was on his way. She hoped.
A good friend had once died because Darcy hadn’t been there for her. Chloe Marrin. She hadn’t wanted to fail Sarah the same way. Her judgment had been clouded in the worst way, and she was paying the price. Stalling was her only choice. “What about Terry? Were you just going to let Terry take the fall?”
“Terry…well. He’s an unfortunate victim in all of this just like the others, I suppose.”
Darcy gaped at Sarah’s cold, calculating assessment.
Sarah laughed.
“I can’t believe you figured this out!” She began stalking Darcy now, coming closer, step by step, with each word. “I mean, come on! A psychic? You’re a psychic? You talk to ghosts? Give me a break!”
Darcy backtracked. Sarah followed.
“I read all of those e-mails you sent me, Darcy. All about your special abilities. I could hardly keep a straight face! When Braden started feeling sick from the poison in his coffee, like really sick, I knew he’d be dead in a day or two. So I called you. Practically begged you to come over and like a real, true friend, you came running to help. Lucky me, Braden died the next morning. Just before you showed up. It couldn’t have been more perfect.”
“Glad I could help,” Darcy said drily.
“A psychic. You’re practically the punchline of the
whole joke! Tell me, how exactly could you figure your way out of bed each morning, let alone figure out a murder! I thought you’d be the perfect idiot to ask for help. I thought, Darcy will come here and make a lot of noise and muddy the waters up so badly that no one would ever know what happened.”
She looked over at the river when she said it, maybe thinking about muddy water, maybe picturing her little girl lying dead on the riverbank.
Her words had stung more than Darcy cared to admit. When she got right up to Darcy, with the treeline behind them and nowhere else to go, Sarah put her face close and hissed, “You’re pathetic.”
Darcy punched her in the face as hard as she could.
As Sarah staggered Darcy took her chance to run. If she could get to the trail, or hide in the trees somehow, she might be able to escape. At least she could hide until Jon arrived. Sarah was beyond help, obviously broken inside and ready to do anything if it meant protecting her secrets. It was a truth she should have seen for herself right along.
A truth that was probably going to get her killed now.
Sarah tackled Darcy to the snow. The surprise attack knocked the air out of Darcy’s lungs as she hit the decidedly not soft ground face first in a heap, with Sarah’s weight on top of her. Fists pounded the back of Darcy’s head. She felt a knee driven into her side. The assault was vicious, and relentless. There was nothing Darcy could do to stop it.
She was gagging on snow and curled into the fetal position to protect herself when Sarah wrapped an arm around her neck and yanked her whole body backward.
“My baby girl died out here,” she said, her voice a shaky growl. “Died. Right here. You think you’re some kind of ghost whisperer? Do you?”
Darcy wouldn’t have been able to answer even if she’d wanted to. Sarah was crushing her throat.
“You think you can talk to ghosts?” Sarah asked again, and again. “Fine! Then say hello to my little Felicia when you’re dead!”
There was no fight left in her, but Darcy still struggled and kicked and scraped at the ground as Sarah began dragging her to the river. She was barely able to put a coherent thought together.
