A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Seven

by K. J. Emrick

  And they were close.

  She spun around. There was no one there.

  Just paranoia, she thought to herself. For Pete’s sake, calm down.

  But then… no. She felt something. She sensed it.

  Akers was turning in a slow circle, looking at the people all lying down on their cots. It was hard to see faces in the gloom, but he must be able to recognize them by the shapes under the blankets, or where they were in the room…

  Someone is coming.

  Darcy turned around again, to the other side of the room. The shadows there jumped about with the movement of the candlelight, but they were just shadows. There was no one here but the four of them, and the people asleep on the cots.

  She reached across herself to touch the antique silver ring on her finger. She turned it around, and around, wondering why she felt like danger was right on her heels.

  Akers spoke suddenly, making Darcy jump. “I don’t know what to tell you, guys. I don’t see him here now. He was here. I know he was.”

  Darcy’s skin was beginning to crawl. There was definitely someone coming. They were close, and they were definitely not friendly.

  But where…?

  “Sorry, Jon,” Phin said. “Who were you looking for, exactly?”

  Darcy rubbed her hands over the gooseflesh on her arms.

  “I’m not sure of the name,” Jon admitted with a sigh. “Like I was telling Akers, we’re looking for someone from Vermont who works construction. They got caught here in town when the storm came down. If they aren’t here, maybe they left during the break in the weather yesterday.”

  “I tried to leave,” someone said from behind them, from up on the stairs.

  Darcy threw up her hands defensively as they all turned to face the man. He’d come down behind them, in the dark when they weren’t paying attention, and his footsteps had been muffled by the carpeting. She hadn’t thought to watch for someone coming from upstairs. She’d been paying attention to the room and the people down here.

  The killer had snuck up on them.

  It was odd, she thought to herself, but he didn’t look… scary. He was just average height. Not tall, not short, not big or small. His face was plain. His hair was light brown and receding in front. His jacket was gray. His pants were brown workman’s pants. There was absolutely nothing descriptive about him. Darcy would have walked right by him on the street if she’d seen him, and not given him another thought. In fact, she probably had. She’d most likely seen him right here when they’d arrested Lana but had overlooked him because he was so… well… average.

  “I tried to leave,” the guy said again. “I was up to my knees in snow, trying to walk out of here. Can’t drive out, can’t walk out, just had to wait it out, you know? But now you guys brought your skis again and I’m thinking, hey, I can just ski out of here. How exactly did you figure out it was me?”

  Darcy was about to say something mildly sarcastic when the guy lifted his hand to tell her not to bother.

  “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. I was upstairs in the bathroom when you came in and I heard what you said so I know I’ve overstayed my welcome. So. You guys are gonna let me get my stuff, and then I’m leaving on your skis. Got it?”

  He jabbed his hand in the air to emphasize his point. In his fist was a long, thin object that caught the candlelight and flashed with deadly intent. A knife, slender and shiny, no doubt taken from the kitchen area right here in the church.

  “Let me go,” the man said, “or I’ll kill you too, and everyone in this room. I mean it.”

  Akers backed away. Phin lifted his hands to show he wasn’t going to interfere.

  Jon didn’t move. Neither did Darcy.

  “Look,” Jon said, “Mister…?”

  The man sneered down at them, keeping the knife pointed. “I’m not giving you my name. I’m going to get out of here, and then I’m going to disappear. You’ll never see me again, if you let me leave now. Got it?”

  Phin moved another step sideways. “We don’t want any trouble. These people are all innocent. I don’t want to see them hurt.”

  “Then let me go, preacher.”

  “Brian Harris found out about the affair, didn’t he?” Jon said. If he was going to get answers, it was going to have to be now. He still kept his voice down, not wanting to wake anyone else up and put them in danger, too. “Is that why you killed him?”

  The man laughed at that. “Brian Harris was a clueless moron. That’s why Lana ended up coming to me for what he couldn’t give her. Love. Understanding. Sex. I was the total package her husband never could be. I gave her everything. Even that son of hers.”

  Darcy blinked. Joel was the son of Lana’s affair? That’s how long her infidelity had been going on? “But… he was your son, and you killed him. You killed your own son.”

  This time the knife wavered, just a little. “It wasn’t my fault. I only wanted to talk to Brian, get this out in the open, make him see he should leave and let Lana be with me. I heard Casey and his brothers talking when I finished up their roof. Heard them say Lana and Brian were coming into town. So when I left Casey’s I waited out there on Main Street and then pulled my car in front of them when they got here. I waited too long, though. The storm had started by then.”

  He took a breath before going on with a story that had obviously been weighing on him. “I tried to reason with Brian. Lana told me not to say anything, but I had to because I loved Lana and I wanted her to be with me. Just me. We started arguing, and then Brian tried to get out of his car and I told him to stay there, just stay there. I had a pipe in my hand from my truck. I didn’t want to hurt him, just scare him, maybe. You know? That was all. I didn’t want to hurt him, but he struggled with me and I put the pipe up across his throat to shut him up and then I heard his neck snap… it was too late. He was dead.”

  “Dude,” Akers said. “That’s cold.”

  “I’m not a bad person. It was… it was just an accident.”

  Not an accident, Joel had said, and now Darcy understood what he’d meant all too well.

  “You killed Joel,” she pointed out to him. “You killed a little kid. Your own child.”

  The man shook his head. “I didn’t mean to. I’m not a bad person, it’s just… He started screaming, and I needed him to stop. That was all. I just wanted him to stop. He screamed, and Lana was screaming, and I swung the bar to shut the kid up and it hit his head. I didn’t realize… I didn’t mean… that was an accident. That’s all. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “No,” Darcy agreed. “It definitely should not have happened. You had no right.”

  With the candles reflecting harshly in his eyes, he turned the knife toward her, and shifted in her direction from the bottom step. “I just wanted Lana to be with me. When it was over, I told her we should leave. I told her we should just go and be by ourselves somewhere. I picked up her purse and dropped the pipe in it so no one would find it, and I was pulling her out of the car but she just went crazy. She started hitting me, she started yelling, she grabbed her purse back and then she was just running down the road, in the snow. She wouldn’t come back. I knew I was in trouble. Nobody would ever believe it wasn’t my fault so I got in my truck, and I drove. I drove out of this blasted town just as fast as I could.”

  “But the storm got you,” Jon guessed.

  “It came down so fast!” he said. “I was driving and I couldn’t see and then the truck slid off the road into this heavy drift and… and… well, for all I know it’s still out there. I had to come back into town. I had to find some place to stay but I couldn’t go back to Casey’s. Not after what I did.”

  “You mean,” Darcy said pointedly, “how you killed a man and a little boy.”

  “Yeah. That.” The confession didn’t even faze him. “So, I was walking down the street here, freezing my toes off, half blind with the snow, and I saw the lights of the church. Here was this shelter, like some sign from God. I came in and I thought, hey, I’
ll just wait it out and no one will be the wiser but then I saw Lana and I figured this was my chance to explain myself, but you guys showed up and took her away. I’ve been trying to leave ever since. I tried to get out during the break in the weather, but I barely got the truck unburied when it started snowing hard again, harder than before, and there I was, stuck again. So, I came right back here. I figured no one would know, but you did.”

  “We’re smart that way,” Darcy told him.

  “Whatever. I don’t care because now, you’re going to let me go. I’m going to get my things, and take your skis, and you’ll never see me again.”

  Jon crossed his arms. “And if we don’t?”

  The man’s face darkened as he stepped into the light from the nearest candle, and the knife came up again. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill any of you who stand in my way. That’s the deal. Got me? I’ll kill you…!”

  In one swift movement, now that the man’s attention was on Jon and Darcy, Pastor Phin reached down and grabbed his tea kettle, swinging it in an upward arc, smashing it into the side of the man’s head. The metal caved in with a hollow clang. The knife dropped to the floor. The man’s eyes fluttered and closed. He dropped to his knees, and then down on one hip, and then fell all the way over onto the floor.

  All of them stood there for a long moment, surprised by what had just happened.

  “Well then,” Phin said finally. “I can’t say I’ve ever done that before.”

  “Don’t worry,” Darcy told him with a tired smile. “You get used to it. Trust me.”

  Chapter 13

  “Tony Alouette. That’s the guy’s name.”

  Darcy had been wondering, but now that Jon had told her that piece of the puzzle, she found that it wasn’t all that important after all.

  Christmas day had dawned early, with a clear blue sky. The clouds were gone. The snow had stopped the day before. The power had been restored a few hours after the harrowing events in Phin’s church. In fact, the last two days had been almost… peaceful.

  Now the living room was littered with torn wrapping paper and open boxes, books that Colby had started to read and put aside, and new clothes that weren’t greeted with nearly as much enthusiasm as the other gifts. That was fine. Darcy knew the clothes would actually get used more than the toys, which would no doubt end up in the corner of their rooms or forgotten on a shelf in a few months.

  Colby had been noticeably disappointed that there wasn’t a cellphone among her presents. Darcy called her over, and hugged her, and let her know that she and Jon had talked about her getting a phone and yes, she could have one. She was just going to have to wait until the roads cleared out for them to go to the store.

  The hug she got in return was the biggest one she’d ever gotten from her daughter.

  From his perch in front of the fireplace, the animatronic Santa danced as he watched the scene with merry glass eyes. His hips swung back and forth as his hands pumped the air. His fake beard wiggled as his mouth moved silently. Darcy had turned off his music and his cheerful Ho Ho Ho again. She much preferred him this way.

  She snuggled up to Jon on the couch, soaking in the heat from the furnace. It was getting close to dinnertime, but there really wasn’t anything left to do. The power being out had done in almost everything in the fridge and their meal was going to be nothing fancy. In an interesting twist, the turkey had nearly thawed out completely in the blackout and so Darcy had just kept it refrigerated until this morning, when she popped it in the oven. There were instant potatoes in the cupboard, and cans of corn and cranberry sauce. Darcy had found a box of stuffing, too, and all of that could be ready to eat in just a few minutes. It wasn’t the meal she had been planning all this time but it would do for them, and Grace and Aaron and their kids.

  There still hadn’t been any word from her mother. Darcy had already decided to make a missing person’s report if she didn’t hear anything by tomorrow. She didn’t care if it did embarrass her mother to be the subject of a manhunt. Nobody disappeared off the face of the Earth for this long, at Christmas, without a good reason. Her sixth sense wasn’t telling her anything was wrong, specifically, but Darcy wasn’t stupid. Something must have happened. Even her mother wasn’t this inconsiderate.

  Putting those concerns aside—again—she tucked her feet up under her and turned back to the conversation with her husband. “So now we know who the killer was, and we know his motive, and we have his confession.”

  “Yes, we do.” He kissed the top of her head, making her feel better while they talked about the conclusion of this horrible, unfortunate incident. “And, Lana Harris is finally talking. Once we told her we caught the man who killed her husband it was like the lights came on behind her eyes again. Kind of brought her back to reality, I guess. Her family is going to be here to pick her up and help her make the arrangements for her husband and her son just as soon as the weather will let them. In the meantime, Akers Pennington agreed to let her stay at his place.”

  “That’s nice of him. I always liked Akers.”

  “Yeah, he’s a good guy.”

  “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom!” they suddenly heard Zane calling from the upstairs hallway. That was followed by the sound of footsteps pounding down the stairs as Colby and Zane came running. “Wanna go outside. Please? Can we go outside in the snows?”

  “Snow,” Jon and Darcy said at the same time.

  He stopped, and looked at them both, the tip of one finger in his mouth. “Um. Yeah. In the snow. That’s what I said.” Then he sang off key, “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”

  “Oh, my ears,” Colby groaned, putting her hands up to the side of her head as she followed him into the living room. “Little brother, you better stick to talking to animals because you aren’t ever going to make it as a singer. Maybe you should become a veterinarian. I’m gonna be a surgeon. We could be a family of doctors.”

  Darcy stretched and sat up. “You could both get rich and support me and your dad when we’re old and we can’t take care of ourselves.”

  Zane shook his head, sucking his finger out between his lips with a pop. “Nope. You and Daddy won’t ever gets old. You’re too young to gets old. You’ll live forever!”

  Jon laughed out loud at that while Darcy rushed over and picked her son up, swinging him around and around until he was giggling so hard he was squealing. Cha Cha came running down the stairs when he heard it and bounced up on his hind legs over and over, barking like he was laughing with everyone else, his floppy ears waving like streamers until one of them wrapped around his face.

  Then he stopped, and made a funny noise of confusion—erf?—and backed up until he bumped into the wall and his ear fell away and he could see again.

  From her perch on the arm of the couch, Tiptoe yawned. She was not amused.

  Zane was. He clapped his hands. “Heh, you’re silly, Cha Cha.”

  “Yeah, he is.” Darcy set Zane down again and took him by the hand. “Let’s get you and your sister dressed to go outside. Does Cha Cha want to come with us?”

  The dog barked twice and lifted up his right front paw.

  “He says, not until the snows go away. I mean, til the snow go away.”

  With one more whuff, Cha Cha sat down, his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth.

  Tiptoe mrowled. Obviously, she agreed with him this time.

  Once the kids were bundled up and out the door Darcy and Jon started setting up for dinner. They pulled the table out a little and added a folding table to it with folding chairs. With the kids eating in the living room this would be plenty of space for the grown-ups even if it did make the kitchen hard to maneuver through. Darcy basted the turkey and added some pepper and lemon juice. Jon started the potatoes and the stuffing. They were going to have to drink water and Kool Aid, considering the milk in the fridge had soured without any power. If they’d been home, she or Jon would have put the food outside in the snow to keep it cold but it had taken them hours at the police station
to straighten everything out. Now the roads would have to be plowed before they could get even basic needs like bread.

  Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that solving a mystery had gotten in the way of their life. They were who they were, and who they would always be. Like Zane said, they would go on forever. Or at least, for as long as they had together on this side of life.

  Izzy came wandering into the kitchen with her cellphone to her ear, and Darcy could tell by the way she was talking that the person on the other end of the line was Mark Franks. Her friend was happy. That was all that mattered to Darcy. Whatever her feelings towards Mark might be, she had to let Izzy move forward with her own life. She was a grown woman, after all.

  “Mm-hmm,” she said into the phone, behind a wide smile. “Me too. Yes, I do. You’re going to help us dig the bookstore out from all of this, right? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Hey, watch that kind of talk, mister. There’s people here listening, you know.”

  Her cheeks had colored red, and Darcy could only imagine the sorts of things Mark was saying to her. If he was anything like Jon, then he was probably very… flirty over the phone.

  While Darcy and Jon got things ready for the dinner, Izzy sat down at the table. “Yes, there are people here,” Darcy heard her say. “Well, I’m still at their house, you know. The power might be on to the rest of the town but I’m going to have to get an electrician to figure out why it’s still out at my place. Maybe it’s just a fuse. I don’t know. No, I don’t know about stuff like that. Hmm?” She paused, and then her gaze swept across the room to Darcy. “Yes, she’s here.”

  Then she held the phone out at arm’s length.

  “He says he wants to talk to you.”

  Izzy was on speaking terms with Darcy again, but she wasn’t exactly being friendly about it. She was still angry about the things that had been said, and the way Darcy had treated both her and Mark, and apparently that wasn’t going away any time soon. Darcy had apologized, a few times, but this was the sort of hurt between friends that didn’t just go away. Not right off. It was going to take time to heal this mistake.