A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Seven

by K. J. Emrick

  “Right. The guy who played God in Bruce Almighty. He did that one voice in The Lego Movie, too. The wizard guy.”

  “Okay, what about him?”

  “He’s missing a hand.”

  Darcy’s frown deepened. “No, he’s not.”

  “Sure he is.” He tasted the sauce, and then added a shake of garlic powder from the spice rack. “He wears a prosthetic, and he’s very much still alive.”

  “So you think someone lost a hand in an accident out in the woods, like with a chainsaw or something, and then dropped it in the woods and forgot to pick it up?”

  “Or couldn’t find it when they went looking for it. Sure. Tell me that’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard?”

  She had to laugh at that. “No. That’s not the weirdest. Not by a longshot.”

  “Exactly. So. I don’t think we can rule out a guy with one hand still being very much alive out there. My point is, there might not be a murder this time. Who knows? If we get usable fingerprints, then we can stop guessing. This is ready. Do you want to call the kids down?”

  Nice to see all of this gruesome talk wasn’t ruining his appetite. Darcy was pretty sure she only wanted a piece of bread, even though the hour was getting late and she’d skipped lunch after giving Sergeant Dillon her statement about finding the hand. Twice.

  As she was getting up from her chair a streak of gray flashed from floor to countertop and settled itself into a beautiful gray feline with one black-tipped ear. Tiptoe’s unblinking pearl-green eyes settled on Darcy for just a minute before turning toward the pasta and the sauce. Her tail curled around her feet, and she yawned, as if she wasn’t at all interested in the wonderful smells of people food filling up her kitchen.

  “Cats don’t sit on the counter,” Darcy told her, even though she knew it wouldn’t matter. Tiptoe had pretty much decided that she could sit where she felt like it so long as she didn’t make a mess and didn’t scratch the laminate on the countertops. Darcy had pretty much relented on this point. Tiptoe was a good cat. She was smart and funny, just like her dad had been, and she kept the house miraculously mouse free. She had graciously accepted a dog living with her too… after a few months of Cha Cha being here, at least. So she’d earned a little bit of leeway.

  Especially on a day when a new mystery had arrived on the outskirts of Misty Hollow. Jon might think they were going to be able to sit this one out, but Darcy had a feeling they were going to get caught up in it anyway, just like always.

  Her feelings about things like that were usually right. It was part of her gift.

  So for tonight, Tiptoe could sit up on the countertops if she wanted to. She was not, however, getting any of the spaghetti.

  Gliding her hand down the cat’s back, she poked her head through the doorway from the kitchen into the living room. Just as she was about to call up to the kids that dinner was ready, Colby called down to her instead.

  “We’re coming, Mom!”

  Darcy wasn’t the only one with the family gift. Colby was always catching glimpses of things that were going to happen before they actually did. Like when supper was ready.

  Just a second later Colby’s little brother echoed, “Coming, Mom!”

  She smiled. Zane had taken to copying most of the things that Colby did, because he wanted to be all grown up like his big sister… except when it came to things like wearing dresses and looking at pictures of jewelry in magazines. Zane considered that to be “girly stuff.”

  Until just recently, they had kept safety gates at the top and bottom of the stairs, and in this entryway to the living room as well. Zane was old enough now to walk around the house without them, but just barely in Darcy’s mind. She cringed as first Colby came racing down the steps, and then Zane right after.

  Her little boy was going to be four years old soon. He was pudgy and rosy-cheeked, and maybe his little legs weren’t breaking any speed records as he carefully put one foot down each stair, holding fast to the railing, but to Darcy’s eyes he was Sonic the Hedgehog about to take a tumble and go spinning off headfirst. He would fall, and his beautiful blonde head would end up in a cast that made him look like a mummy.

  That didn’t happen, of course. Colby kept pace with him, just like she always did, and she made sure her brother had a good grip on the railing and never went too fast. She was starting to get her first real growth spurt and where Zane’s pajamas were overlong at his feet and wrists, Colby’s pinky pony set was too short for her now. She didn’t care. She loved them, and it didn’t matter what anyone else thought.

  “There we go,” Colby told her brother as they got down to the first step and started marching hand in hand for the kitchen. “You’re getting to be an old pro at going up and down stairs, aren’t you? That’s what Dad calls someone who’s good at something. An old pro.”

  Zane screwed his face up at her. “I not old.”

  “No, that’s not what it means,” Colby tried to explain, but then she just sighed dramatically. “Boys. Sometimes you don’t understand anything.”

  “Girls neither!” he told her with all the confidence that an almost-four-year-old could muster. “Boys is smart.”

  Colby lifted her chin in the air. “Says you.”

  “Yeah,” he smiled, settling the argument. “Says me!”

  Darcy laughed. She would have to give that point to her little boy. She ruffled Colby’s long hair as she went past, making the auburn highlights dance between the dark brown strands. “It’s all right. Someday you’ll understand boys.”

  “Maybe,” she muttered. “But never brothers!”

  The spaghetti smelled so good that Darcy decided maybe her stomach wasn’t all that upset after all. She made herself a small bowl to eat, along with two slices of white bread. Tiptoe finally jumped down off the counter and sauntered out of the kitchen into the living room. With a small smile dancing around her lips, Darcy watched the cat leave. Tiptoe must have realised, at last, that she wasn’t going to get any of the human food and decided that maybe a nap was in order.

  Colby was on her second helping by then, and Zane had finished most of a huge bowl himself. Cha Cha was sitting in the corner by his heaping food dish, focused on the four of them at the table, licking his lips, head cocked to one side, just hoping something would fall to the floor.

  Darcy gave him a look. There weren’t going to be any scraps. “This is really good, Jon. Thanks for cooking. I know we were both tired.”

  “You make dinner for us often enough,” he said with a lopsided grin. “I figure it’s only fair if I do my part on my day off.”

  “Hmph,” she snorted. “Some day off. You’re going to need to take another vacation sometime soon if you ever want to get any real rest.”

  He bounced his fork in her direction. “That is not a bad idea. How long has it been since we had a vacation?”

  “A long time, actually. What were you thinking?”

  “Well, anything except a cabin in the woods.”

  “Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one.” She remembered how that had gone, last time they tried. That hadn’t been any kind of vacation, either. “Besides, we’d need to do something the kids could enjoy.”

  “Disney!” Colby suggested with a loud squeal. “We could go to Disney. Could we? Huh? Could we?”

  Jon grimaced, and Darcy knew exactly what he was thinking. The money involved in a trip like that would be too much of a strain on their account right now. The problem was that there were all those flashy commercials out there advertising the most fun place on Earth, and no commercials at all saying how much the fun cost. Not that a girl Colby’s age should have to worry about those things. That was a parent’s job.

  Which sometimes meant saying no.

  “Maybe someday,” Jon told her. “Um. Zane would need to be a few years older before we could really enjoy it, you know?”

  “Hmm,” she said, very seriously. “You’re right. We should put that on our calendar for two years from today. Right?
He should be big enough for the rides then.”

  “Right,” her father said with a nod of agreement. “Smart girl. You remind me, okay?”

  “’Kay,” was Colby’s reply, a phrase picked up from one of their good family friends.

  Darcy appreciated how Jon never talked down to Colby, or Zane either. He gave them every reason to believe their ideas were being taken seriously, because they were. Maybe they wouldn’t end up going to Disney, but Jon wasn’t going to just dismiss the idea out of hand either. Between now and then other things would probably catch Colby’s fancy, and if not, well they could probably save up the money to really enjoy the trip by then.

  “What’s Dizanee?” Zane asked.

  Jon laughed. Darcy hid a smile behind her glass of milk. Colby was a little more vocal about the whole thing.

  “Zane! Seriously?” She blew out a very dramatic breath as she rolled her eyes. “You have to know what Disney is. It’s where they have Mickey Mouse and all those Toy Story people and lots of rides and games and stuff to watch.”

  Her brother’s eyes got bigger with every word, his spaghetti-smeared mouth forming into a perfect “O” as his brain went into hyperdrive.

  “Wow,” he breathed.

  Colby wasn’t done yet. “Yeah, and they have all the Disney princesses there and there’s lions and elephants and penguins and stuff like that, too. They got a giant tree and a waterpark and everything.”

  Zane’s fork dropped onto his plate. “Wow,” he said again.

  “Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.” Colby looked very pleased with her brother’s reaction.

  Darcy smiled at her. “How did you learn so much about Disney?”

  “Geez, Mom. I’m not a little kid anymore. Everybody knows about—”

  A knocking sound, one hard tunk like a metal rod slapping against a hollow block of wood, drew everyone’s attention to the end of the kitchen, to the shelf above the refrigerator.

  On the shelf was a low silver box with a hinged lid and stubby curving legs at its four corners. The artistic etching set into the edge caught the light. It had been sitting there for months now, all but forgotten, except for rare moments when Darcy would wonder what other mysteries it was going to reveal. The box had belonged to an ancestor of hers. A woman who fled Europe ahead of charges of practicing witchcraft. A woman Darcy hated with a fiery passion.

  She had considered getting rid of it, more than once, but it connected her to a part of her past. She just hadn’t ever found the time to do the research on it like she wanted. Or rather, she kept putting it off because she was afraid of what she’d find. For now, it sat up there like some sort of knick-knack. Out of sight, out of mind.

  It should have been set square to the edge of that shelf just like Darcy had left it. Now it was pushed cockeyed, one corner about to fall right off the shelf.

  “Mom?” Colby asked uncertainly.

  She was obviously unsettled, and Darcy didn’t blame her. She found herself touching the ring on her right finger, pressing her fingers against its design, and she knew she was maybe just as worried as her daughter. Neither of them gave that box even a single glance anymore. Except now it was apparently moving around on its own, and that was a different matter entirely.

  “It’s okay,” Darcy told her, even though a cold tickle had started at the back of her neck. “It’s just… um…”

  Jon cleared his throat. “Mice?”

  The idea that a mouse could have gotten into the house, into their kitchen and up onto that shelf to push things around was almost comforting. Sure. It could have been that.

  Tiptoe mewled softly. At some point she’d come back into the room to lay down next to Cha Cha. No one had noticed her there, not until now, when the gray cat shook her head with a sneeze.

  “I guess,” Darcy told her, “we named you Tiptoe for good reason.”

  The feline closed her eyes in a little cat smile.

  “Tiptoe says it not a mouse,” Zane said, leaning over in his booster seat to see past his mom, over to where both of the pets were sitting. Cha Cha looked up at him, and whuffed. “Yup. Cha Cha says it not a mouse, too.”

  “It’s not a mouse,” Darcy corrected him. He was still working on the right way to conjugate and verbalize his thoughts, even if his gift definitely gave him a lot to say.

  Nobody at the table questioned him when he translated or the furry members of their family. If Tiptoe was telling him there were no mice in the house, Darcy was inclined to believe the two of them. Tiptoe was just as good at mousing as her daddy Smudge had been. Anytime a little rodent did make its way into this old house, Tiptoe was on top of them almost immediately.

  But if there was no mouse… what had made that noise?

  What had moved the box?

  Maybe it was Great Aunt Millie, Darcy told herself. She liked to move things in the house sometimes. Just to remind everyone she was still around, and that this had been her house first. Except, Millie had never bothered that box. She preferred to drop the books off the shelves in the living room. She also showed herself, if Darcy was looking for her.

  No. This was something else. Something she didn’t like.

  Jon swallowed back a last gulp of his milk before setting his glass aside. “Maybe,” he suggested, “it would be better if that family heirloom of yours went back up to our room.”

  The way he said it made it sound like he wouldn’t much care if it found its way to the bottom of the ocean, either. There were several items in the house that held a sort of power all their own. Darcy’s spirit communication kit, for one. A crystal that she kept upstairs in her sock drawer, for another. Her Great Aunt Millie’s ring, even. Jon lived with a family that could sense the mysterious all around them, and who could interact with a world unseen by most. Objects that were other-than-normal were a part of that life.

  This jewelry box, however, freaked him out.

  Frankly Darcy didn’t blame him. The owner of the box was dead, but maybe not completely gone. And certainly, not forgotten.

  “I think you’re right,” she told him, making sure to keep her voice cheerful as she stood up and went over to the high shelf. “We’ll just put that up in our closet for now. In a cardboard box. Sealed with tape,” she added in a mumble. “Maybe wrapped in a couple of chains for good measure.”

  Looking up at Darcy, Tiptoe flicked her ear. She obviously agreed.

  That night Darcy fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. That had been a very long Sunday, and tomorrow there were going to be all the typical Monday things to worry about. For now, it was just sleep. A deep, deep sleep.

  Then a noise woke her up.

  She sat straight up in bed, turning to look for the digital clock in the dark. The familiar red numbers weren’t there. Power failure, she wondered? Maybe. The electrical grid in Misty Hollow was usually pretty dependable but that didn’t mean it never went out. Mmph. Great. Now she was going to have to set the alarm on her cellphone and crank the volume up.

  “Jon?” she said sleepily. “Hey, Jon. Any idea what time it is?”

  “Well,” a voice—not Jon’s—said to her, “as I understand it, it’s always five o’clock somewhere, no?”

  Darcy’s head whipped around so fast that her hair got into her eyes. She pushed it away furiously in the gloomy light of the bedroom and jumped out of bed. That’s when she noticed she was still fully dressed. Jean shorts. T-shirt. Even her socks. Had she fallen into bed like that?

  No, she remembered changing into her pajamas.

  She remembered falling asleep with Jon lying next to her.

  And, she did not remember leaving the jewelry box out on the bed like that.

  Sitting on top of the comforter Darcy had carelessly tossed aside just now, it shimmered in the darkness like it had somehow been imbued with an inner light. Darcy had made good on her threat at dinner of sealing it away in a conveniently sized shoe box, wrapped with a couple layers of duct tape. She figured someday, when she felt like it, s
he could take it out again and dive back into the mystery of her ancestor and the cryptic note they had found hidden inside. For now it was better kept somewhere that nobody had to think about it.

  Only, here it was out in her bedroom when she knew it was supposed to be in a box in the closet…

  Oh.

  Darcy sighed, but she didn’t relax. She knew what was going on here. This was a dream. One of her special dreams. The ones that always meant something more than they seemed to, even if she couldn’t always figure out what the something was.

  Usually, Great Aunt Millie’s ghost appeared to her in these dreams. Sometimes, her favorite cat Smudge was here, too.

  The person on her bed wasn’t either of them.

  Wearing a gray dress that had been out of fashion more than a hundred years ago, and a necklace of heavy silver links around a slender, graceful neck, the woman was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. She was pretty, even though her hatchet face was long and her features were all pinched together. Her deep red hair was done up in a bun on top of her head. Hazel eyes, so much like Darcy’s own, caught the light from the jewelry box with a spark.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Darcy said to her.

  The woman rolled a slender shoulder, and in that voice with its French accent, she replied, “A matter of opinion, perhaps.”

  The last time Darcy had seen Willamena Duell, it was at the hospital in Oakwood where she and Jon were pushing the woman’s ghost out of their little girl. Colby had been possessed, or more to the point infected, by this woman. She was the original owner of that jewelry box, and she had hurt Darcy’s little girl.

  Darcy didn’t let anyone hurt her children.

  Putting a fist on one hip, she glared at Willamena. “I’m pretty sure that I told you never to darken my doorstep again. In fact I’m pretty sure my exact words were something like, if I ever saw you again I’d see you burn in every level of Hell there is, one level at a time.”

  Willamena smiled, showing off crooked teeth. Then she threw her head back, and her hair fell away from her face as she laughed out loud. “Oh, sweet Darcy, you do not understand. I am tied to this box. You still have it, so you still have me.”