A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Seven

by K. J. Emrick

  “I know that, Jon, but that doesn’t mean she’s alive.”

  “Exactly what I told Maxwell,” Jon said. “I trust your gift, my beautiful wife, and if you’re telling me she’s dead then I’ve only got one conclusion I can think of.”

  Darcy was having the same thought. It could only be Charlie who was using Annie’s card. He must be using her bank account to supplement whatever meager earnings he made working at the pizza parlor. If she’d been ninety percent sure Annie was dead before, now she was ninety-five.

  “All right, so are you going to pick him up and question him?”

  “Oh, I’m going to do better than that,” he said. He had that boyish grin in his voice that he always did when he was enjoying his job. “I’m going to catch Charlie Huntsman in the act. Using another person’s debit card without their consent is a crime. And if Annie’s dead, then she certainly can’t be giving him permission. So we’ll arrest him on the smaller crime, get him to confess to that, and use that as a stepping stone to get him to admit to Annie’s death. With any luck we’ll get him to confess to his brother’s murder, too.”

  Samuel Huntsman, the brother with the missing hand. “You think he killed them both?”

  “I think it’s a very strong possibility, yeah. My working theory is that Charlie kills his brother in Boston to get the girlfriend, hides the body somehow and then moves here with Annie where no one knows them. Except then he finds out Annie still has feelings for Samuel—don’t forget she was the one who called in the missing person report on him—so they have a fight, something happens, and now Annie’s dead, too. Bam. Just like that he’s a double murderer. He’s been trying to hide the facts ever since.”

  “Like how he won’t even talk about Annie?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, that’s a good theory. Except… how did Samuel’s hand wind up in Misty Hollow if he’s dead and buried in Boston?”

  “That is a very good question. One of several I plan on asking Charlie when he’s sitting in my interview room, charged with stealing from his dead girlfriend.”

  “I don’t know, Jon. There’s some things about this case that just don’t make sense.”

  “Right. Thus the questions I’m going to ask. So, you want to hear what I need from you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I need you to tail our favorite pizza delivery guy and tell me when he buys anything.” He paused for a minute when someone came into his office. Darcy could hear the door open, and the phone muffled as he put it against his chest. Papers shuffled. Then he was back on the line. “Sorry. Just got a report in. So anyway. You up for this, Mrs. Police Consultant?”

  “Shouldn’t you have one of your officers do this?” She wanted to be involved in the case, sure, but… “I’m not a police officer, after all.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m asking you to do it,” he told her. “I need someone to follow him who doesn’t look and act like a cop. Someone he won’t notice until it’s too late. You tail him, you see him use that debit card, you text me. We immediately send someone in who looks exactly like a cop, uniform and all, and we arrest him. Easy enough, right?”

  “Yeah, but you know what they say about things that sound too easy, right?”

  “That they’re just as easy as they sound?”

  “Uh, no. Just the opposite.”

  “Well,” he said, “if things were easy, they wouldn’t be any fun.”

  “You and I have a very different definition of fun.”

  Papers rustled on his end. “Is that a yes? I think that’s a yes.”

  “Fine, you got me.” She was smiling, and he had to know he had her from you want to hear what I need from you? “Do you know where Charlie is now?”

  “I figure he’s at home. The pizza parlor opens up in an hour for lunch, so he won’t be there until then.” There was more rustling of papers on his end, and he seemed distracted when he added, “I’ve got his address right here…”

  She waited, and when he didn’t give her that essential bit of information right away, she cleared her throat. “I’m a lot of things, Jon, but a mind reader isn’t one of them.”

  “What? Oh. Oh, yeah. Sorry,” he said, although he was still distracted. She could hear it in his voice. “The house where Charlie is living is 11 Cedar Street. Same address Maxwell had for Annie Pellegrino. This is… this is interesting.”

  “Cedar Street is interesting? It’s just a short little stretch of pavement on the backside of town. Nothing really interesting about it.”

  “No. Not that. One of my guys just handed me a report that Maxwell faxed to us. You know the state police were looking into both of our missing people. Annie and Samuel Huntsman both.”

  “Well, you said they were investigating Annie. You didn’t mention Samuel.”

  “Sorry, must have slipped my mind. Maxwell is being really thorough. They were doing background checks on our two possible victims.”

  “So glad that Maxwell is catching up,” Darcy said sarcastically.

  “I told you he was a good cop. He’s just rubbing you the wrong way.”

  “He’s not rubbing me anywhere. I just don’t like him.” Darcy noticed Izzy’s eyebrows shoot up. Now that the words were out of her mouth, she realized how that sounded. She held up a finger to tell her she’d explain everything in a minute. “Did they find something interesting about Samuel?”

  “Yeah, you could say that. According to this… no, this has to be a mistake.”

  “Jon, you’re talking,” she pointed out to him, “but you aren’t saying anything.”

  “Hmm? Oh, sorry. Again. It’s just… there’s just part of this report that doesn’t make sense. According to this, Samuel Huntsman had a brother by the name of Charles.”

  She didn’t see his confusion. “Yes, we knew that. They’re twins. That’s why they look so much alike. Twin brothers.”

  “Exactly. And we’ve been talking to Charlie Huntsman, suspecting him of killing his brother Samuel.”

  “Yes, and…?”

  “Well, that’s the part that doesn’t make sense. According to this report, Samuel Huntsman is dead.”

  “Jon, we know he’s dead. Samuel Huntsman is dead.”

  “You don’t understand. According to this report, Samuel’s been dead for a long time. In fact according to this, he died at birth. He never made it out of the hospital. There’s a cause of death and everything. Severe birth defects. This has got to be a mistake.”

  Darcy stared blankly at the wall in front of her. They’d been talking to Charlie Huntsman all this time, and he’d been telling them about his brother Samuel and the love triangle between those two and Annie Pellegrino, and how his brother Samuel had disappeared two years ago. Darcy had done her casting technique and reached out through Charlie to find Samuel’s angry, rotting ghost. Not an infant’s ghost. That ghost had belonged to a grown man. Even the hand they’d found. That certainly wasn’t a baby’s hand! No. That had belonged to an adult as well. Everything they knew pointed to the fact that Samuel, although certainly dead, could not possibly have died at birth.

  Jon was right. That had to be a mistake.

  “I’ll have Maxwell recheck this,” Jon finally said. “It’s his screw up, he can fix it.”

  “So you’re saying,” Darcy said, connecting dots in her mind, “that once again, Maxwell has thrown up a roadblock to this investigation.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly…”

  “Maybe he didn’t invent that report from the hospital, Jon, but he found a reason to stop investigating this mystery and gave it to you on a silver platter. I’m telling you, he doesn’t want us looking into this.”

  After a few seconds, where Darcy could just feel him carefully choosing his words, he said, “Maxwell Dillon is not involved in this murder.”

  “I didn’t say he was,” Darcy said defensively. Even though, part of her was beginning to wonder.

  “But you’re thinking it. This is just a
mistake. Not even Maxwell’s mistake, really, just the hospital making a clerical error. But…” He sighed. “Yeah. Maxwell knew we were looking for an adult victim same as we did and for him to send this over to me like this… I’ll talk to him. I’ll make sure he digs deeper on this.”

  Darcy shook her head. Was this just incompetence on Maxwell’s part? Or did he actually have something to do with this. Not wanting to search the woods properly, and now this? “Well either way, good luck getting him to do his job. You might better have one of your own people recheck it. Like Wilson, or Grace.”

  “You’re not wrong. Anyway, let’s set that aside for the time being. You ready to shadow Charlie Huntsman and catch him in the act?”

  Darcy was certainly willing to try. One thing she did know for sure, was this mystery was getting deeper by the moment, and she was about to wade into the thick of it.

  She left Jon to figure out the confusion of the paperwork faxed to him by Maxwell Dillon. She wanted to believe him when he said it was likely just a filing error by whatever hospital in Boston the Huntsman twins had been born at. Darcy knew what governmental bureaucracy was like. Well-meaning people often made the stupidest mistakes on documents that were then filed as part of a permanent record that became fact, no matter how ridiculous it seemed to a sane person.

  Bob Hope had been declared dead once when a pre-written obituary got printed by mistake, for example, and he lived another five years after that mistake. So things like that did happen. Mark Twain had that famous line about the reports of his death being greatly exaggerated.

  Then again, Maxwell Dillon seemed only too happy to use that error as an excuse not to look into this mystery too deeply.

  Whatever the reason, a death certificate for a baby who had grown up to be a man who died again… that was just eerie.

  And that wasn’t a word Darcy Sweet used lightly.

  Izzy had listened to the highlights of the news Jon had given her, tapped a finger against her mouth, and then shrugged. “Beats me,” was her very insightful comment.

  Not helpful, but Darcy didn’t have a better explanation, either. So, she’d given Izzy a quick hug as thanks for watching the store—again—and driven over to Cedar Street. Her plan was to do a drive by of number 11 and see if Charlie’s car was still in the driveway…

  Yes. There it was. She remembered it from when he delivered the pizzas. That meant he was still there and hadn’t gone to work yet. Good. That was step one of her plan. Not that it was a very detailed plan. Find his car was step one. Find Charlie and follow him around was step two.

  Sometimes the simplest plans were the best. She’d read that somewhere.

  Hopefully he would make a stop or two while she was following him, before going to work at Chef Marios, to buy… something. A pack of gum, maybe. Or a soda. Or a pack of toothpicks.

  She knew she couldn’t park right out in front of the house. That would be too obvious. All it would take is Charlie looking out the window to see her parked there and her whole plan would be ruined. He’d know he was being watched. Instead she went a few houses down the street and parked at the curb down there and watched Charlie’s driveway from her rearview mirror.

  The car didn’t move. Fifteen minutes later, it was still there. Twenty minutes later, it was still there. At this point, Charlie was only going to have half an hour to get to work. Some people did that, she reminded herself. Some people waited until the last minute to do anything. It was going to decrease his chances of stopping somewhere first to buy anything, and Darcy felt her careful plan unravelling again.

  While she waited, she tapped out another text message to Colby. Hey daughter of mine. How’s things going?

  The three little dots appeared to tell her Colby was answering before her message came through. Same as when you asked me the last time, Mom. Same as when Dad asked me. Everything’s fine.

  She followed it by a smiley face and a thumb’s up emoji.

  Funny, Darcy thought to herself, how you could pick up on someone’s tone in a text message. Colby was getting annoyed at her parents checking in on her. Well. She was just going to have to get used to it. She might be growing up, but she wasn’t there yet and mom and dad were going to worry about her until the growing up had stopped. And even after that.

  Darcy was proud of her, though. She was taking care of herself and her little brother and the whole house for the day. That was a pretty big step for anyone at that age.

  Charlie’s car still hadn’t moved.

  At this point there was no way he would make it to work on time. Maybe he walked to work? He could already be there, and here she was waiting for him at the wrong place. Everything in Misty Hollow was within walking distance of everything else. It might wear down the soles of your shoes but then again, it sure saved on gas. Maybe he had a bicycle, same as Darcy.

  Then again, he’d need his car if he was going to deliver pizzas, wouldn’t he?

  Hmm.

  Darcy tapped a finger against the steering wheel. She couldn’t sit here all day long hoping that Charlie would come out and drive somewhere. She couldn’t even be sure he was in the house.

  Unless…

  Oh, Jon was not going to like what she had in mind very much. It seemed like her only choice, because if her plan was going to work, she needed to complete step one. She needed to locate Charlie. She needed to make sure he was here, and not somewhere else.

  To do that, she was going to have to knock on his front door.

  That was the part Jon was not going to like.

  Darcy promised herself she would be careful. She would just go up to the front door and if Charlie answered she could say… what? That she found a wallet at her house and she wondered if it was his? Sure. That might work. The worst that could happen was she got a door slammed in her face. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  With a deep breath, she touched her great aunt’s ring on her right finger for luck. Hopefully, this wouldn’t be the worst idea of her life. She almost laughed out loud as those words crossed her mind. She’d had lots of other bad ideas worse than this one. Her first marriage, for instance.

  On that cheerful note, she got out and started walking up the sidewalk toward the blue one-story house with the number 11 painted on the mailbox. There were cracked flagstones leading up the lawn to a set of steps and a door that was dented and scuffed. The windows had the curtains drawn. The front yard was meticulously mown from one end to the other. The whole scene was an odd mix of well cared for and neglected. Almost like someone was trying to maintain appearances but didn’t have enough time to put into the effort.

  She tried to catch a glimpse inside the windows as she went up to the door, but the curtains were closed too tightly. There was nothing else to do but knock and take her chances.

  So. New plan. Step one, knock on the door.

  There was no answer.

  She knocked again. Still no answer.

  Maybe he did walk to work, she decided. Her best bet would be to go to the pizza parlor and see if he was there so she could at least know where to start tailing him…

  From somewhere inside the house came the muffled sound of a crash.

  Darcy jumped back off the steps. What was that? If Charlie wasn’t here, then who was inside?

  She looked to her left, and then to her right, at the houses to either side. There were trees all around the property that blocked most of the view. From where she’d parked up the street, she had only been able to see the end of the driveway and the back of Charlie’s car. No one was going to see her if she did something… well, a little foolish.

  She made her decision quickly, knowing that it was probably not a smart one. Going back up to the door, she reached out, and turned the handle.

  It was unlocked.

  She let the door swing open. Inside, the lights were off. With the curtains drawn it was darker than night in there. She could make out the outline of a couch and a bookshelf and other blocky shapes that she assumed was more furn
iture. Nothing else besides that.

  Darcy stood there, listening.

  After a moment she figured this was pointless. There was nobody here, and whatever that sound had been it wasn’t repeating itself. She should go swing past Chef Marios and see if Charlie was there, and then let Jon know they would have to think of something else—

  The crash happened again. With the door open it was less muffled but still unclear. It was a metallic sound, Darcy thought. Something heavy. It was a familiar sort of noise, but she couldn’t quite place it.

  Something was wrong here. A sensation like icy fingers crawling up and down her skin made the hair at the back of her neck raise. She held out a hand, hoping her sixth sense would tell her something more but all she got was that sense of something being… wrong. She couldn’t just leave. Not now. She needed to get Jon here for help but in the meantime, she wasn’t going to just wait on the steps, safe and sound, knowing that something bad might be happening inside.

  Taking out her cellphone she sent Jon a text. Come here. Now.

  There was so much more to explain but she suddenly had the feeling that there wasn’t time. She needed to get inside this house and find out what was wrong.

  The phone in her hand buzzed as Jon’s text came back to her.

  On my way.

  He didn’t bother telling her to be careful, not to be stupid, wait for him. Nothing like that. He knew her too well.

  One of the neat tricks her cellphone could do was turning on flashlight mode just by shaking it twice. Jon had set it up for her and while she’d always thought it was cute before, now it seemed like the most important thing in the world. It was bright enough to show her the rest of the front room. Not all at once. Just within the circle of its light. She panned it right to left, slowly revealing everything. It was empty. The bookshelves were empty. The fish tank at the back of the room was empty. This space felt… unused.

  There were two doors leading out of the room. Both of them were dark. Her flashlight showed her the one on the left was a kitchen. The one on the right led to a staircase going down, into a lower level. A basement, probably.