by K. J. Emrick
“More than once,” Jon said. “We’ve seen your record. All right. You tell us what happened, you sign off on it, and agree to testify against your partners. That’s the deal.”
“And I get what?” Manning asked gruffly.
Darcy saw Jon’s fist clench and then relax. Anyone else probably would have missed it. Jon was holding back a lot of anger right now. “What you get, Mister Manning,” he said, “is us talking to the District Attorney on your behalf. Don’t forget that we found a man bound and gagged in your apartment. Don’t forget you tried to run from us when we executed our arrest warrant. Don’t forget that you’ve been seen spending money from the bank heist. It’s not like you’re going to skate on this.”
“All right, all right,” Manning said, obviously understanding how bad his position was. “What d’you want to know?”
“These other men,” the Meadowood detective said, referring to his notes, “Harry Floson and Douglas Merceaux. They were your accomplices?”
“Yeah, yeah. You know that already. We went into that bank, held the teller at gun point and made him give us the money. He wasn’t gonna do it at first. Can you believe that? I remember a time when bank tellers was eager to give up the cash so they wouldn’t get hurt.”
Darcy shook her head. She understood the dead a lot better than she would ever understand some of the living.
“So why take the two men?” Jon asked. “You had the money. What good were they to you?”
Manning sat back and folded his arms. “Simple. That teller man was trying to run. Couldn’t have that. We needed to get away first. So we took both of them. Hadn’t planned on hostages, but we figured we needed to keep them quiet until we got away.”
Jon waited for the other detective to get all that down before he continued his questions. “But then you let Ray Stephenson go.”
“That a question?” Manning asked.
Jon’s hand clenched again. “The question is this. You let one guy go, you held the other man. Why?”
Manning shrugged. “Two hostages was too much trouble. We’d already gotten away by then. Or so we thought,” he grumbled. “Anyway. We could only keep one of them, so we tossed the little redheaded teller out of the car and left him. The other guy turned out to be some kind of accountant or something. Thought maybe we could get a ransom for him. Never got around to that, though, before you guys found us. How’d you do that, anyway?”
Jon pointed to his own eye, then to Manning’s. “You should maybe get an eye that matches your color, if you want to keep committing crimes.”
Manning grimaced. “Knew it. Had to get it cheap, though, ‘cause I didn’t have money. Was going to order me a real nice one with the take from the bank.”
Darcy blinked away tears as she listened to the man prattle on about what he would have done with all that money. Dumb luck. It had just been dumb luck that the robbers kept Aaron and not Ray. If they’d tossed Aaron out first, then it would have been Ray they would have kept in Manning’s apartment. Darcy and Grace and Jon never would have gotten involved. Manning might never have gotten caught. Things would have turned out very differently.
Not that she would ever want Aaron to go through what he had, but she was happy with the results. Ray Stephenson was safe and sound. Aaron, too. Manning and his buddies were going to prison. It made her smile to think about.
Her life always took her in strange directions, but she’d learned to accept that she often ended up where she needed to be, whether she wanted to be there or not.
“You know,” Manning was saying, “that guy was getting way annoying. Wouldn’t stop going on about how he had to get home to his wife. She was having a baby, he said. She needed him, he said. Gah. Good thing I kept that gag on him. I couldn’t stand it.”
Jon stood up, and for just a moment Darcy was sure he was going to punch Manning in the face. She leaned forward, willing him to do it. Instead, he just turned to the Meadowood detective. “You can take it from here?”
When the other officer nodded to him, Jon quietly left the room.
Jon and Darcy slept through the rest of the day after they got home. Going straight up to their bed, They managed to kick off shoes and socks and coats and then fell down on top of the covers in each other’s arms. They didn’t wake up until noon the next day, both of them starving. They fixed huge sandwiches and hot bowls of soup and ate in silence. They were sitting next to each other at the table, and somehow her hand touched his. Then his fingers caught hers, and then his bare foot rubbed over hers, and the next thing they knew they were headed back up to bed, most of their meal forgotten.
Darcy didn’t remember falling asleep again. She just knew it was dark when they woke up. They didn’t wake up again until the next morning. Valentine’s Day, Darcy realized. And close to time for the dance.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said to Jon, curling into him tightly, kissing his lips. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Darcy Sweet. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Smudge pounced on both of them and meowed loudly. Laughing, Darcy reached over and scratched his neck vigorously. “Happy Valentine’s Day to you too, Smudge.”
“We should get changed for the dance, don’t you think?” Jon asked her.
Showering and dressing, they talked to each other about Grace and Aaron and what might happen to the three thugs who had caused so much grief to so many people. Darcy was feeling better than she had in a long time, and she smiled and hummed happily on their drive back into town.
The mists had receded, as they always did after a crisis passed by Misty Hollow. Most of the snow had managed to melt as well, and the decorated square was alive with lights and music. Stars shined brightly in a clear sky. “Look!” Darcy said. “There’s my cousin’s band. Oh, don’t they sound wonderful?”
“I agree. Care to dance?”
Darcy was mildly surprised. “Dancing in public? Well, I never thought I’d hear those words coming from Jon Tinker’s mouth. Yes, I’d love to!”
Darcy was very relaxed as she swayed to the music. Her head was resting on Jon’s chest as they danced a slow dance around the makeshift dance area in the town square. Several other couples were doing the same thing.
“I’m so happy that everything worked out,” Jon said to her. “You know in all of this craziness I didn’t have time to wrap your gift.” He stopped dancing and pulled a book out of his coat pocket.
“You know, I felt that there,” she said to him coyly.
He laughed with her and handed her the book. Her eyes got a little wider. It was a rare edition of the Canterbury Tales, one of Darcy’s favorite reads.
“Oh, Jon. This is wonderful. Thank you, I love it.” She wrapped her arms around him and leaned up to give him a quick kiss. “I have something for you, too. It took me forever to figure out what to get you I hope you like it.” She pulled a card from her own coat pocket and handed it to him.
He looked at her with a smile in his eyes and then quickly ripped the envelope open to pull out the card. Opening it up he read the words inside. She was worried until the smile touched his lips as well. “Darcy. Perfect. Just what we needed. A long weekend away together at our favorite cabin.”
“I figured, you know, with everything that just happened, we could use some alone time together.”
“Just what I wanted,” he told her, drawing her into his arms. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said as they both began to move to the music again.
The dance continued on through the night, and Darcy had never felt more happy, or more loved.
-The End-
Volume Six
BOOK SIX – Hiding from Death
First published in Australia by South Coast Publishing, March 2014. Copyright K.J. Emrick (2012-2017)
Description
When Darcy Sweet returned home from a short vacation with her boyfriend she found, much to her dismay, that her deceased neighbor's house had been sold.
; The new owner, a mysterious dark haired woman, set tongues wagging around Misty Hollow for being very aloof and unlikeable. The only thing the woman had going in her favor was her young son whom she was very protective of.
Darcy became intrigued with her new neighbor and even though the woman demanded that Darcy leave them alone, she couldn't. Darcy felt that there was more to it, that the woman had a secret. Especially after having a vision that reveals the danger that the woman is in.
Will Darcy be able to help the woman before her past catches up with her and someone gets hurt or worse...?
Chapter 1
Darcy Sweet smiled as her boyfriend Jon drove them, finally, back home. It had been a good weekend for the two of them, away from everything, just enjoying each other’s company. She had gotten the getaway at their favorite cabin for Jon as a Valentine’s Day gift. He’d gotten her a rare copy of The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. It was one of her favorite books of all time, just the way the prose was written and the fact that it had such an influence on the way books had been written ever since.
She leaned across the center console of Jon’s car and rested her head against his shoulder. When he put his arm around her, she smiled. She loved books, but she’d brought the edition of Canterbury Tales with her on their weekend away and never opened it up once. That was how much attention they had paid to each other. It felt good, to finally spend that kind of time on each other.
As they entered the town limits of Misty Hollow, every building, every sight brought back memories. Their little sleepy town had been host to secrets and murders that had kept Jon, and Darcy, too busy to slow down. Then there was her sister’s husband, Aaron, who had been kidnapped during a bank robbery over in Oak Hollow. It seemed like everyone she cared about was getting caught up in some trouble.
It was the middle of February now but already the snows had melted away from the lawns and streets of Misty Hollow. Winter never really lingered here. Not like it did in the mountains up north. It would be chilly still well into March, of course, and she was grateful for the warmth of the car’s heater and her snugly zipped jacket.
“What time is it?” she asked Jon. The clock on his dash had been wrong for months and she could never remember if it was too fast or too slow.
“Just after one o’clock in the afternoon,” Jon told her, consulting his wrist watch. “We made good time.”
“You didn’t have any trouble getting today off?” Today was Monday, and both of them should have been at work. Jon as a Detective with the Misty Hollow police force, and her at the Sweet Read bookstore here in town.
Jon winked at her. “Nope. I told them there was some very pressing, very urgent business I had to attend to out of town.”
Darcy felt herself blush. She knew what they had done all weekend. There had been a certain urgency to it, she supposed. She looked up at him now, with his short dark hair and stunning blue eyes, and that face that she had memorized so well. “I love you,” she whispered to him, twining a finger into her own long dark tresses.
He held her closer, steering expertly with one hand, and whispered back, “I love you, too.”
They turned out of town again on the road that led to her house. It had been her Aunt Millie’s house, actually, but just like the bookstore it had become hers when her aunt passed away. It was a big house sitting among tall pine trees, two stories, with white painted siding that was going to need some serious attention come spring. She was glad she had Jon to share it with her now. Her black and white cat, Smudge, didn’t quite feel the same way.
Darcy smiled. Smudge would warm up to Jon. Eventually.
On their way to her house they passed by where her friend Anna Louis had lived. Until she had been murdered. Darcy shivered to remember it and was rewarded by a squeeze from Jon. The house was smaller than Darcy’s, just a bottom floor and an overglorified attic that passed as a second story. The bank had done some renovations to the place since Anna’s death in an attempt to sell it, but a legacy like that was hard for a house to overcome. No one had lived in it since.
Until now, apparently.
“Jon, look at that.”
“Hmm?” He turned to look at Anna’s house. “Hey, look at that. The lights are on. I guess they finally sold it.”
“That can’t be true,” Darcy said, her mind immediately thinking of trespassers and worse.
“No, really,” Jon said. “Look at the sign.”
Darcy did. The sign he meant was the For Sale sign out front. On top of it had been placed a little red rectangle that exclaimed “Sold!” Darcy slumped back in her seat. Somehow, the idea that someone had been illegally trespassing had sat better with her than knowing that someone had bought Anna’s house and was now living in it.
“Are you okay?” Jon asked, picking up on her mood immediately. “You miss Anna, don’t you?”
“Every day,” she admitted, as they pulled into the driveway of their home.
As they walked inside the house, Jon grabbed her by her hand and twirled her into a spin. He caught her again as she laughed, and began swaying with her back and forth, their luggage forgotten.
“Jon, what are you doing?”
“I’m dancing with you, Darcy Sweet.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. There’s no music.”
He smiled at her as they danced their way into the kitchen. “I don’t need music when I’m dancing with you.”
They laughed together at his corny remark, and everything was right with the world again.
Just past the dining room table he stumbled and fell backward into the wall. Smudge scooted out from under his feet, a streak of black and white fur. He zipped to the nearest doorway and then sat there looking at Darcy. She could almost read his thoughts in those feline eyes. “You brought him here,” he was saying. “He’s your problem.”
“Are you all right?” she asked him, still smiling, offering a hand that he gladly took. “Did Smudge do that to you?”
“No, no it wasn’t him,” Jon said, a little embarrassed. “I tripped over these boxes. Why do we have these boxes here?”
Darcy looked down at the two cardboard boxes piled one on the other. On the side in black marker was written, “Kitchen.”
Darcy put a hand on her hip and teasingly screwed her face up at him. “Because, Mister Tinker, you moved into my house but have yet to put all of your stuff away.”
“Oh. Is that it?” He bent to his knees and opened the top box. “Oh, hey, this is my good cooking stuff. No problem, we’ll just replace all of your older stuff.”
“What!” Darcy knelt next to him and began closing the box again. He would open it, she would close it, and it became a game that had Darcy in tears she was laughing so hard. “You will not replace my stuff with these cheap knock offs!”
“Cheap!” Jon laughed with her. “I’ll have you know I spent almost twenty dollars on all five of those frying pans! Your stuff is old. Let’s keep mine.”
“It might be old but at least I know it won’t burn up the first time I try to fry bacon!”
“Mmm,” he said, rubbing his stomach, still holding the frying pan in his hand. “Sounds good. Here. Use this pan and go make us some.”
“Jon!” she exclaimed, tackling him from behind and trying to tickle him, the one weakness she knew he had. Somehow, he turned it back into their dance and soon they were turning circles around the kitchen, Jon holding her in his arm and the frying pan in his hand.
When he stopped, he grabbed her frying pan from its hook over the stove. She had to admit it was older, with the scorch marks on the bottom to prove it, but it was obviously sturdier as he held them up side by side and made a show of comparing them critically, one eye scrunched up.
Her stomach hurt at this point, she was laughing so much. “You know what?” she finally said to him. “Let’s just keep both. The more food, the better.”
“Deal!” he said at once, hooking both pans above the stove this time. “I’ll even share the responsibility of
washing the dishes.”
She leaned up against his chest, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. “Sounds good to me. You’re a great guy, you know that?”
“I do. It’s on my business cards, actually.”
She slapped his arm lightly. “You know what I mean. You make me happy.”
Tilting her chin up he kissed her lips. It was a long, slow kiss. When he pulled back from her he looked her deep in her green eyes. “If I make you happy, then I’m doing something right. Come on, let’s finish unpacking those boxes before I trip and kill myself.”
They put pots and pans and cooking utensils away, sometimes cramming them in where there wasn’t any space for them. When they were done, Jon threw the boxes out the back door ceremoniously. “There,” he proclaimed. “I am officially moved in.”
From his doorway, Smudge mewled and Darcy would have sworn he rolled his eyes.
Jon looked at the cat skeptically. “Do you think he’ll ever accept me taking up so much of your life?”
“Give him time,” she told him. “Smudge is used to being the only man in my life.”
The next morning, Darcy woke up to the sunlight slanting into their bedroom window. Smudge stirred and stretched between her legs, comfortably curled up on the blankets. Jon’s arm was across her belly. The clock told her it was still an hour before she actually had to get up, but she decided to make an early day of it.
After a shower with the water turned up really hot Darcy went downstairs to make herself some eggs. Smiling, she plucked down Jon’s cheap frying pan and mixed scrambled eggs with milk and chopped green pepper and a few other ingredients. The fragrant smell of cooking filled the air.
Jon came down just as she was dividing the eggs onto two plates. She had planned on keeping his wrapped in the microwave but she smiled as she saw him. This was much better.
