A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Seven

by K. J. Emrick

  When the ball didn’t come back, Jon stood up.

  “Well, on that note,” he said. He leaned over and gave Darcy a kiss on the top of her hair. “I’m borrowing your skis to get in to work. Will you guys be okay here until I get back?”

  “Of course,” she assured him. “I’m going to try getting ahold of my mother again, and then we’ll watch the kids play outside or whatever.”

  “Right,” Izzy said with a false smile. “Or, you know. Whatever.”

  Darcy watched her friend closely while Jon got his coat and hat and gloves on. What was going on with Izzy? She’d been standoffish at best this morning, like something was seriously bothering her. Cabin fever, maybe. Or maybe she was still upset about all this talk of murder, and what she’d seen in the Harris’s car.

  When the door closed, and Jon was gone, Izzy snorted. “I can’t believe you did this, Darcy Sweet. You have a lot of nerve, you know that?”

  “Whoa, where did that come from?” Darcy could clearly hear the anger in Izzy’s voice. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you, Darcy? I thought we were friends.”

  “Of course we’re friends. Why would you even ask me that?”

  “Because if you were my friend you wouldn’t have gone off half-cocked to interrogate the guy I’m crushing on, that’s why!”

  She kept her voice low, because Colby and Zane were upstairs at the moment but voices tended to carry in this old house. Both of the kids had proven over and over that they could hear everything the grownups didn’t want them to hear, even if they never seemed to hear it when anyone told them to pick up their rooms.

  As weird as it was to be arguing with her best friend, it was weirder still to basically be whisper-shouting at each other. Darcy didn’t know whether to scream or cry or laugh.

  “Izzy, I went to talk to Mark Franks because it seemed like he might have seen something while he was out last night. Something to do with that accident we saw. That’s all it was.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t you try to play me. I’ve known you too long. We’re supposed to be friends, and partners, and watch out for each other, and you went behind my back and did all this but that’s not even really the point! You’ve never really liked Mark Franks. Not from the moment he came to town.”

  “That’s not true,” Darcy said, trying to defend herself.

  “Yes it is! Yes it is,” Izzy repeated. “You thought he was a killer the first second he dropped into this town. You know you did!”

  “Well, yeah, that’s true, but still… Izzy, look at everything I found out while I was there. He’s not a writer. He’s got part of an already published book on his laptop to make people think he’s working on a novel of his own. He’s a liar. He’s probably lying about not seeing the accident, too. Maybe even about being involved.”

  “Oh, yeah? Did you do one of your special techniques on him to make him reveal himself as a killer? Huh?”

  That remark stung, and Darcy had a hard time hiding it.

  This is why she didn’t share this part of her life with a lot of people. Izzy knew a little bit of what Darcy could do. They were good friends, and Darcy had chosen to open up to her, and now it was being thrown back in her face like an insult. Yes, she knew some techniques that could have let her know things about Mark Franks. She could find out if there was blood on his hands—literally—but she didn’t like to do it without telling the person what she was doing. It was an incredible invasion of someone’s privacy to reach into their soul like that.

  There were other things she could have tried, she supposed. Most of them required her to at least be holding Mark Franks’ hand, and all of them would have required her to stay there in his house after he was getting suspicious of her. Staying there by herself would not have been a wise choice.

  All her life she’d felt like she had to hide who she was from the people who knew her best. With Izzy she’d taken a chance, and opened up a little, and now she wished she’d never said anything at all.

  She looked into Izzy’s eyes, and she saw tears forming there. Darcy wasn’t the only one whose feelings were being hurt here.

  There had been good reason to go confront Mark, and she had good reason to do it by herself too, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d gone behind Izzy’s back to do it. The end might justify the means, but it didn’t justify violating a friend’s trust.

  So she put her own hurt aside, and tried one more time to explain. “Izzy, look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you first, but we need to focus on the fact that Mark might be involved in this. At the very least, he isn’t what he claims to be.”

  “Since when are you some kind of expert on being a writer?” She snorted. “Besides, you don’t get to call someone a liar without letting them defend themselves first. You had no right to do this to Mark. No right to cut me out, either, but you were afraid I’d defend him against these stupid allegations, right? Yeah. That’s what I thought. Face it, Darcy, you could have trusted me and told me what you were doing but instead you did what you always do. You just went off to solve the whole thing yourself and didn’t even bother thinking about me, or my feelings.”

  She wasn’t trying to keep her voice down anymore. Darcy winced at the intensity of those words. She’d really touched a raw nerve and it seemed like no matter what she said it only made things worse. Had Izzy and Mark gotten that close? This quickly? Darcy had watched Izzy text with Mark for nearly an hour last night, wondering what they could possibly be saying to each other.

  That’s probably when she should have told Izzy she was planning to come see Mark…

  “I had to do this,” she tried to explain again. “You heard what I said. Mark is lying to us. About being a writer, and about what he saw on that street. He was out in the snow on his skis. He had to see the car in the snow. Why would he say he didn’t?”

  Izzy snorted. “We were out in the snow, too, remember?”

  “And we saw the car. We saw it plain as day. So how come Mark says he didn’t?”

  Crossing her arms, Izzy glared at her. “I don’t know. I would have asked him, but you went off and accused him of being involved in a murder without telling me what you were up to. Maybe if you let me talk to him, we would have all the answers to these wonderful questions you keep asking. He talks to me. He likes talking to me. But, oh no! You couldn’t possibly do that. You had to do it your way. You always have to do it your way, don’t you?”

  Darcy searched for the words to make things better with her friend, but she wasn’t sure those words existed. Maybe if she was a writer, then the words would come to her easier. In a novel, the character always knew what to say, and just when to say it. This wasn’t a novel, she reminded herself. This was real life, and in real life people got angry, and feelings got hurt, and there was often no way to fix things.

  “Izzy, let me explain.”

  “Just save it, Darcy. I’m going to call Mark right now and I’m going to let him know what this crazy theory of yours is.”

  She got up from the table and started for the living room. Darcy reached out for her, wanting to keep her here so they could talk this through. She couldn’t alert Mark to this. If she did, it would interfere with the investigation. It might ruin everything. Her feelings for Izzy mixed with her anxious concern to find the murderer and churned all together in her stomach. She reached for Izzy…

  And both of them stopped as they saw Zane standing just inside the entryway from the living room, watching them closely.

  Darcy had figured out very quickly after having children that adults often said things to each other that they would never say in front of children. Especially things they didn’t want to explain later. Arguing with another adult always led to awkward explanations, one way or another. Izzy—as a mother herself—understood that, too.

  Both of them stood there, with Zane staring back, all of them waiting for someone to be the first one to speak.

  Cha Cha came pa
dding up next to Zane, panting happily, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, until he saw the standoff in the kitchen. His mouth closed, and his ears drooped, and he backed up until he was safely behind the legs of his boy.

  “Hey, buddy,” Darcy said, putting a smile on for her son. “What’s up?”

  “How come you’re arguing, Mommy?”

  He was in fuzzy pajamas again today, the Star Wars ones with that stupid round robot, because it was going to be another day to stay inside. The look of intense worry on his face made him look so small and vulnerable. The lights on the Christmas tree blinked behind him, reflecting red and blue off his hair. Christmas was supposed to be a happy time of laughter and singing and being with family. The snowstorm trapping them in their little town was giving them all a bad case of cabin fever. Here she was, fighting with her best friend!

  Darcy wanted to protect him from any kind of trouble in his life, ever, but that just wasn’t the way life worked. White lies had their place, but she had always made it a point to tell her children the truth when they asked her a question.

  So what was she supposed to tell Zane now?

  Izzy was quicker than she was. “Sometimes grownups do stupid things,” she said, looking over at Darcy, “and then other grownups need to tell them it was dumb.”

  The subtle jab in those words would have been hard to miss. Darcy’s smile went crooked. Izzy turned away again.

  Zane wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. “Okay, but how come you were yelling?”

  “Because,” Darcy told him, “sometimes grownups don’t hear very well.”

  Izzy folded her arms again.

  Cha Cha snuffled the air, sniffing out the mood in the room. Then he sneezed.

  After a moment, Zane shrugged. “Okay. I’ll ‘member to talk louder when I has something to say.”

  Darcy hoped that would be the end of it, but Zane still looked worried. She could see something was wrong. “Zane? What is it?”

  “Um. Colby won’t let me and Cha Cha play with her.”

  Ah, the problems of youth, Darcy said to herself. At least he wasn’t upset about her and Izzy arguing anymore. “Sometimes your sister likes to be by herself, buddy. Us girls are like that sometimes. We like our privacy.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Izzy mumbled.

  Zane pursed his lips, thinking about it, and then he shook his head. “No, ‘cause she’s not alone.”

  Cha Cha huffed. It was a very ominous sound.

  Not alone…? Darcy stood up from her chair. There wasn’t anyone else in the house. What did Zane mean, not alone?

  She was already moving, suddenly worried that Zane had been down here with them for five minutes listening to the two of them not-lie about why they were fighting, while maybe someone was upstairs with Colby. Her friend Audrey, maybe? They both knew she wasn’t supposed to visit without Darcy or Jon knowing about it but kids that age found ways to do things they weren’t supposed to.

  Whatever it was, Darcy felt the sudden need to be upstairs, right now.

  Izzy caught her eye on the way by. She was just as worried as Darcy felt. No matter how mad she was at Darcy, they were still friends. She was still Zane and Colby’s unofficial aunt. If something was wrong upstairs with Colby, then she wasn’t going to just sit here. She was two steps behind Darcy as they ran to the stairs. It meant the world to Darcy.

  At the top of the stairs, down the hall toward her daughter’s room, Darcy could hear voices. One of them was Colby’s.

  The other wasn’t.

  “What’s going on?” Izzy asked her.

  “I don’t know,” was what Darcy said to her, but at the same time she had a suspicion.

  Colby was stronger in the family gift than Darcy was. She could reach out to ghosts, even at her age. She could talk to them, and a ghost wouldn’t need to use the front door to get in.

  She strained her ears for a moment. Colby didn’t sound upset. She didn’t sound scared. It was like she was just having a normal conversation.

  The other voice sounded like a boy. A young boy.

  And there was another sound.

  Thump.

  Thump, thump.

  Darcy ran to her daughter’s door. She twisted the handle and pushed it open. The only bedroom up here with a lock was the master bedroom, for when she and Jon wanted to be alone without the children accidentally walking in on them. Colby and Zane didn’t have locks.

  The room was dark. Colby was sitting up on her bed. She snapped her head around and looked up at her mother with surprise. The light from the hallway spilled in across her face, showing off the highlights in her hair. Sitting very close to her, Tiptoe was a darker shape with luminescent eyes. Their devoted cat wasn’t going to let anything happen to Colby.

  At the foot of her bed was a luminescence, a pale light mist hanging there in the form of a small boy. The mist shifted, and the boy’s face was clearly outlined, and she recognized Joel Harris. In his hand, was the red rubber ball.

  Then the mist faded and disappeared. The ghost was gone.

  With a final thump, the ball came rolling Darcy’s way. It came to rest innocently against the toe of her sock. She’d forgotten about it once Izzy had started snapping at her. It was impossible for it to be here, she said to herself. No way had it rolled across the living room and bounced upstairs and found its way into this room.

  Not unless it was being carried by the hand of a ghost.

  “Mom, what are you doing?” Colby blurted out. She reached over for the lamp on her bedside table and turned it on. “You scared me.”

  “I scared you?” Darcy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Colby had just been talking to the ghost of the Harris boy, and she was acting like it was just an after-school hangout with a friend.

  “What’s wrong?” Izzy asked. She was pressing in close beside Darcy, trying to look over her shoulder. She hadn’t seen the ghost disappear or the ball come rolling over, either. It was probably just as well. If the scene in the car down at the end of Main Street had upset Izzy as much as it had, Darcy could only imagine what seeing the dead boy’s ghost would do to her.

  “It’s nothing, I guess.” Darcy knew she was lying to her friend, again, but she felt this time she was doing it for the right reasons. Telling Izzy that there were ghosts in the house would only end up making things worse between them. Izzy would probably accuse her of making things up to embarrass her. For the moment, lying seemed the best thing she could do.

  From the bed, Tiptoe mewled softly, telling Izzy not to worry about it.

  Izzy gave Darcy another glare and turned on her heel to leave. She stomped down to the spare bedroom and didn’t quite slam the door when she shut it. Their momentary truce was over, apparently. Izzy was back to being mad at her.

  There was no doubt now that she was going to call Mark Franks. Hopefully Jon and his officers would get to him first before Izzy could warn him. Darcy was sure Mark was up to something. She felt it. She was sure of it. Just like she had before, when he first came to town.

  Of course, that time she’d been wrong…

  That wasn’t something she could worry about now. Not with Colby still watching her, and the memory of that ghost standing at the foot of her daughter’s bed.

  “Is she gone?” Colby asked.

  She meant Izzy, of course. Darcy had drilled a healthy caution into both of her children when it came to talking about their special gifts in front of other people. Even good friends. Unless you knew you could trust them completely, it was better to keep some secrets hidden.

  “She’s down in the spare room,” Darcy told her. “It’s okay, we can talk now. That was Joel Harris, wasn’t it? That was his ghost?”

  Colby nodded.

  Bending down, Darcy picked up the rubber ball. “This is his. We saw it in a picture in his mother’s wallet. He’s been here, in the house, ever since the accident. I think he’s looking for help but I couldn’t get him to talk to me. Did he say anything to you?”
r />   Colby cocked her head to one side, stroking Tiptoe’s back. “But that’s wrong.”

  “Wrong? What do you mean?”

  The cat looked up at her, eyes narrowed like the question was just plain silly.

  “You said, ‘ever since the accident,’” Colby explained. “That’s wrong.”

  Darcy was beginning to wonder if they were having the same conversation. “Honey, their car plowed into a snowbank, or something. Your father’s trying to figure out why but there was definitely some kind of accident. Why else would the car be stopped there?”

  Tiptoe shook her head hard enough to make her ears flap.

  “You shush,” Darcy told her gently. “You weren’t there.”

  Colby tucked her feet under her. “No, Mom. Tiptoe’s right. Joel Harris told us so, and you know he was there.”

  That was true. Ghosts were the best eyewitnesses to their own murder… or they would be, if they were in the habit of saying exactly what happened to them. In Darcy’s experience the dead were only interested in talking about their unfinished business. Oh, a ghost would go on and on about needing to tell a loved one goodbye, or about how they wished they could pass on the secret family recipe for apple pie, but getting them to tell you what happened in the last moments of their life was like pulling teeth. For the dead, those sorts of details just weren’t that important.

  It was downright annoying.

  “Did Joel say anything else to you, honey?” Darcy figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. Ghosts didn’t like to give the specifics of their death, but they loved to give clues.

  Also annoying.

  Colby’s little face pinched up in thought. “Um. He told us the car stopped in the street. Not an accident, he said. Uh. Then he said there was shouting. Lots and lots of shouting.”

  “Shouting? Was the shouting in the car or outside?”

  “Mom,” Colby said, rolling her eyes. “How would I know?”

  “I thought Joel’s ghost would have told you.”

  “I didn’t think to ask him. Why would I ask that? He just said there was shouting.” Colby looked up at her mother. Her mouth formed into a little circle. “Should I have asked? Is it important?”