Have Yourself a Merry Little Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  Izzy and her daughter were as close as close could be. They’d been through something terrible together when Lilly had been young, and it had sent them into hiding here in Misty Hollow. Izzy would never admit it, but it was killing her to be separated from Lilly now. Darcy knew her friend well enough to recognize the tension around her eyes, or the way her hands fidgeted whenever she mentioned her daughter having her own, separate life.

  Lilly had a new job, and she was sharing an apartment with the love of her life, Connor Gless. She would always be her mother’s daughter, Darcy had no doubt of that, but her life was taking her far away from her hometown.

  Just like Darcy’s own children would do someday.

  “Well, it’s good to see you Izzy, but how’d you even get over here?” Darcy folded her arms and leaned her shoulder against the door. It was cold against her shoulder. “It’s not a fit day out there for woman nor beast.”

  “I skied over,” she said with a grin, holding up one foot to show Darcy that what she had thought was a normal boot was actually a ski boot, with a molded plastic bottom designed to slip into the binding on the skis. “I usually prefer downhill skiing, but cross country is fun too. Especially when it keeps you from sinking into snow that’s up to my hips. I left the skis leaning up against your house out there.”

  “So what brings you over here? If you’ve got a way to get into town wouldn’t you rather be out there checking things out? It must be quite the sight with all the snow covering things.”

  “Um. Well.” She looked at Darcy, a little sheepishly. “Turns out my old house couldn’t take the weather. The power went out sometime this morning. I don’t mind it when it’s cold but dear God… it’s cold over there. You don’t mind if I wait over here for a while, do you? Please?”

  “Oh, Izzy, of course not. Hang out with us as long as you want. Have you tried calling the power company?”

  “Mm-hmm. I was listening to Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto for fifteen minutes on hold before I gave up. I have to believe they’re overwhelmed with calls today. Maybe it’s not just me who lost power.”

  “Well we’ve still got lights and heat here. You can be our guest for the day. I’m afraid you just missed breakfast.”

  “Cereal!” Zane declared, whipping his spoon up in the air and accidentally tossing little circles of brightly colored cereal everywhere. Cha Cha was quick to jump on each one and slurp them down, looking up at the table in case any more were coming his way.

  Tiptoe sniffed at him, finding his lack of manners distasteful. Tail in the air, she sauntered out of the kitchen, off to do whatever cats did on days when they were going to be trapped inside their house.

  That was when a thought occurred to Darcy. Yes, her house still had power, but if Izzy’s didn’t, then what about the rest of the town? Was the snow proving to be too much for the rest of her friends? Or her family, for that matter?

  “Hey, Izzy? Maybe we should take a run into town and see if everyone’s okay. There might be other houses where the power is out, and the people might need help.”

  “Hmm. Good idea,” she said, but then shrugged helplessly. “But how are we going to get there? It would take us all day to walk to Main Street at this point.”

  “We’ll ski,” Darcy said brightly. You’ve got your set and we’ve got a pair tucked away at the back of the closet. Me and Jon haven’t gone up to Bear Ridge Ski Resort in years now but we’ve still got the pairs we used to use. We can just ski our way there and back again. It should only take an hour or so to check all around town and see if lights are on in the houses, right?”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose it would. Sounds good to me. Let’s do it!”

  Misty Hollow was a small town, with everything within walking distance if you didn’t mind taking a little time. A car could go from end to end in ten minutes or less. So, yes, they should be able to ski out to check on everyone no problem, up one street, down the next, up and down, up and down. Anywhere there wasn’t lights on they could stop, and knock, and see if people were just conserving power, or if the power had failed them.

  She found she was actually looking forward to going out in the weather, now that she had a reason to get out there, and now that she was going to be spending time with Izzy. She’d have to bundle herself up good but once they got their blood pumping and their arms moving, she knew they’d heat up quick.

  “Cha Cha and Tiptoe are all fed, Mom,” Colby told her, coming over to stand at her elbow.

  Darcy wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her closer. “Thanks, Starshine. Hey, can you and your brother hang out here for a couple of hours while me and Izzy check on the rest of the town? You guys can watch TV or play some videogames but no going out until I’m back, all right? I don’t need either of you digging a tunnel and getting trapped under the snow until the spring thaw.”

  Colby rolled her eyes. “Aw, Mom. Me and Zane have been home alone before. I know how to watch him. We’d be fine outside.”

  “Uh-huh. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just don’t want to worry about you and Zane turning into popsicles while I’m gone. Okay?”

  “’Kay, Mom. We’ll play hide and seek or something. Inside, I mean. There’s nothing good on Netflix anyway.”

  “And no trying to go over to Audrey’s. If she wants to come over here, you have to ask your dad first. Hear me?”

  “As if I could get there if I wanted to. What am I supposed to do, fly?”

  “I’m still telling you it’s a rule, okay?”

  “Yes, Mom,” she said, in that same way she always did whenever Darcy reminded her of something she’d heard a thousand times before.

  “Good girl. You’re going to have to call your dad if anything goes wrong, okay?”

  “Mm-hmm. You know,” Colby added with a sly grin, “this would be a lot easier if I had a cellphone of my own. I could text you if the snow starts coming through the roof, or if we run out of milk, or…”

  “Okay, okay.” Darcy ruffled her hand through Colby’s long hair. “You’ve made your point, daughter of mine. I’ll talk to your dad about it. I promise.”

  Colby’s face lit up like she could already feel the cellphone in her hand. “Come on, Zane. Let’s go check out the TV just in case they put something good on. Then we can play hide and seek.”

  “Yay!” Zane cheered. He quickly drank down the milk from his cereal bowl and then pushed himself out of his chair to run for the living room. His footie pajamas slapped softly on the floor as he went.

  Colby followed, but at a more mature pace. “You’re such a little brother. I call dibs on the remote!”

  Cha Cha went trotting after them, not knowing why everyone was so excited but definitely wanting to be part of the fun.

  “Give me a minute to get some warmer clothes on, okay Izzy?” Darcy asked her friend. “And make a phone call.”

  “Before we go back out in that cold? No problem. I want to soak in as much of this heat as I possibly can.”

  Darcy was already reaching for the phone on the wall. Her cellphone wouldn’t make calls, so they had to keep the landline hooked up and pay the extra phone bill. Darcy didn’t mind. It was kind of nostalgic. Right now it was necessary, because she needed to make a call before she left.

  She dialed the number by heart and listened to the phone ring until it was answered. Misty Hollow was a small town, sure, but it was home to almost all of her family. Across town, her sister, her sister’s husband, and their two children were riding out the snowstorm same as she was.

  Darcy wanted to make sure they were okay before she left to check on everyone else.

  “Hello?”

  That wasn’t her sister’s voice, that was Grace’s husband. “Hey, Aaron. It’s Darcy.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She heard him laughing softly. “There’s this thing they have nowadays called caller ID. Your name showed up on the screen. You wouldn’t know about that because you won’t get a cellphone that makes calls. You’re
afraid of cellular radiation, or something like that?”

  Darcy was happy to let him think that, if he wanted to. Her sister might know about the family gift—and have a little touch of it herself—but she was keeping those secrets. Aaron didn’t know. The fear of brain cancer was as good an excuse as any. “Um. Sure. But this is Grace’s phone. I was expecting her to answer.”

  “Yeah, she left her phone behind when she went into work today.”

  That caught Darcy by surprise. Her sister was the police department’s senior detective. If both the chief of police and the senior detective got called out, in the middle of a snowstorm, something bad definitely must have happened. “Grace went into work, too? Jon left this morning. Got picked up by a snowmobile of all things.”

  “Yeah, Grace did too. Apparently that’s the new patrol car of choice for snowy days like this. Hey, if you hear from Jon can you have him tell Grace that I’ve got her phone, and our two adorable children are fine? They’re out playing in the snow right now.”

  “Colby and Zane want to get out there too. Remember being that young and actually wanting to be out in the freezing cold?”

  “Oh, yes I do. Hard to imagine. I’m freezing just watching them through the windows. So what’s up?”

  Darcy peeked into the living room, checking on her own kids before going back to Aaron. “I was actually just trying to make sure that you guys still have power. Lights still on over there?”

  “Yeah, we’re still good. Thanks for checking. You guys?”

  “So far, so good. Lights and heat and power. If yours go out you’re welcome to come over here. If you can get here somehow, that is.”

  “Sounds good. Hey, Darcy, have you heard from your mother? Grace has been worrying.”

  “Yeah, me too. I got a few texts last night but nothing this morning. I’m sure she’s just busy trying to get a flight out. Everything’s delayed from what I understand.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m sure everything’s okay. Just the weather.”

  “Yeah,” she said without much conviction. “Thanks, Aaron.”

  Before hanging up Darcy promised again to tell Jon about Grace’s cellphone if she heard from him, although it kind of worried her knowing that Jon and Grace had both been called into work, picked up by whichever member of the force had a snowmobile. Darcy tried to think who that might be. Lots of people in town had them. It was a New England thing.

  Another text to her mother just a bit earlier had gone unanswered. Nothing to worry about, she reminded herself. Just the weather, like Aaron had said. Probably.

  With those worries on her mind she picked up her cellphone from the counter and checked it for messages from Jon. There were two that she’d missed. One, saying he was going to be out for a while, and he loved her. The second one was letting her know the news said the plows were being kept off the roads again today. The state had issued a travel ban for the whole area.

  No doubt that meant school was cancelled for tomorrow, too.

  She sent Jon back a quick text, asking him what was going on and then telling him she was going into town with Izzy, the kids were fine, and she loved him, too. There wasn’t any immediate answer. He must be busy.

  “All right, Izzy. I’ll get a sweater and we’ll get going…”

  But then she stopped as she heard animal claws pitter-patting into the kitchen. Cha Cha was coming back, with something in his mouth.

  A small, red, rubber ball.

  The same one that the ghost of Joel Harris had been playing with last night. The same one she’d left downstairs, on a shelf, where no one could get to it.

  Chapter 3

  It had taken Darcy a long time to be okay with leaving after that. Cha Cha had given up the ball when she asked, but then he’d pranced excitedly around her feet expecting her to toss it for him. Darcy examined it closely in her hand. Just a rubber ball. That was all it was. Just a toy… that belonged to a ghost.

  To Cha Cha’s great disappointment she put the ball up on the shelf above the refrigerator, and then smiled at Izzy as if the little ball wasn’t beginning to terrify her. In the living room she’d pulled Colby aside, over by the Christmas tree, and told her that there was a ghost hanging around. She said she didn’t think she should go after all. Colby had rolled her eyes like she always did and told her mom that they’d be fine. Colby had her own gift, she said, and she knew how to use it.

  “Geez, Mom,” she said in her best grown-up voice. “It’s not like I’ve never seen a ghost before. I know what to do if one starts rattling his chains, or whatever. I can handle it. Especially if this is the ghost of a kid like me. There’s nothing scary about that.”

  Truth be told, Darcy was incredibly proud of her daughter. She was proving that she could be trusted to take care of things herself, at least for a little while. Colby was a lot more secure in who she was than Darcy had ever been at that age. She liked to think that was a testament to her skills as a mother. No sense telling your child that you trusted them unless you were ready to follow through on it.

  Finally, she’d given Colby another hug, and promised to be home soon. When she went upstairs to her bedroom, Tiptoe watched her dig out a heavy sweater and different socks from her dresser.

  “You’re going to keep an eye on things for me, right Tiptoe?”

  The gray cat blinked, and then blinked again. Of course, she was saying. When am I ever not watching?

  Cats tended to get insulted when you asked them to do the obvious.

  Darcy found the skis right where she remembered leaving them, in the back corner of the closet behind the boxes of old VHS movies that they really should give away, if they could find someone with a working VCR. After adding a heavy winter coat, and gloves, and a pink knitted cap, she and Izzy headed out into the snow.

  The wind was crisp. It bit against the exposed skin of Darcy’s face. The snow fell all around them, from a low ceiling of clouds, layering over the already deep drifts so quickly that it almost swallowed up the tracks of their skis and the round impressions from their poles as they slid forward. There was already three or four feet of snow between them and the pavement. Izzy’s front steps had disappeared already. Her mailbox stuck up above it all like a submarine periscope.

  Her house was dark and looked so very cold.

  It felt odd to be moving right down the middle of the street this way. No cars. No people. No bird sounds. Just the snow falling all around, like a moving curtain of white parting in front of them. The swish of their skis was loud in the silence. So was Darcy’s breathing.

  And everywhere, the wind blew up little swirls of snow that hung suspended in the air for brief moments in time, rolling along like mist.

  Her street was not all that long, and soon enough they were moving past Izzy’s house, and then they were coming up to Main Street. They didn’t say a word as they went. Speaking would break the spell the world had fallen under. It was magical. That was the only word Darcy could think of to describe it. This must be what it looked like on the inside of a snow globe when someone shook it all up. Misty Hollow had become a winter wonderland.

  They checked on their bookstore first. Darcy owned it, but she and Izzy were partners in the business. Thick icicles hung from the edges of the roof. Blowing and drifting snow had blocked both the front and the back doors nearly up to the handles but peering in through the windows, they could see that the few lights they always left on inside were still working. The Christmas lights around the windows were still brightly lit with purple and red and green LEDs. They reflected off the strings of silver tinsel and the paper snowflakes hung from the bookshelves and ceiling. There weren’t any watermarks in the ceiling tiles, which probably meant the snow hadn’t gotten in through the roof yet. Darcy took it as a good sign.

  “We’re going to have to shovel all day to get back in,” Izzy pointed out. Her breath plumed in the air as she spoke.

  “True,” Darcy said, “but that can wait until tomorrow. If we do it now, we’ll just h
ave to dig it out again when the plows go by.”

  “Good. I wasn’t looking forward to doing any heavy lifting today. So, which way first?”

  They picked a direction at random and started moving. The lamp posts had large tinsel decorations on them, Santas with red noses and prancing reindeer and geometric snowflakes. Several of the houses had been decorated for the upcoming holiday, too, with lights strung around the trees in their yards and hanging from their eaves. Some of them were still on as the two of them skied up one street and down the other. Some weren’t. Darcy knew several of her neighbors had those massive blow-ups in their yards, too—the ones of Rudolph and his friends or of gingerbread houses or larger-than-life Santa Clauses. They were all buried under the snow now, deflated and waiting to be dug out. The creche scene in front of the Town Hall was interred in snow, with nothing just the tip of the star on top of the manger visible.

  They found a few other people outside, a few trying unsuccessfully to shovel their driveways, kids building snowmen on lawns deep with hard-packed snowfall, groups of teens having snowball fights. Darcy saw a dog at the window of one house, standing up on the back of a couch, wagging his tail and barking at the millions of tiny flakes swirling past. Everyone seemed to be having fun with the weather, making the most of a bad situation. Most of them took the time to wave as Darcy and Izzy slid past on their skis. The storm revealed just a few houses at a time, until they got closer.

  Everywhere they looked, the power was still on.

  “Maybe it’s just my house after all,” Izzy said when they stopped at the intersection of Finster and McLellan Streets for a breather. “It’s an old house. Almost as old as yours. Some of the wiring is still original, I think.”

  “Looks that way.” Darcy wiped away the ice frozen to her eyelashes. She was right about all the physical activity making her warmer, but only by a little. She was still shivering and she’d had enough. “Let’s circle the block and then head back around to Main Street. Then home, I think.”

  “Yup. I need me a cup of hot cocoa.”