by K. J. Emrick
“Huh,” she said, looking around. “Smudge isn’t in here. Usually when he wants to hide he curls up on the bed.”
“He’ll turn up,” Jon told her. “I’ve been trying to find the right time to talk to you for a couple of weeks now, Darcy, and I figure now’s as good a time… Well. Actually, I guess the best time would have been when the idea first popped into my head. Now it’s like I’ve been hiding stuff from you and you know I would never do that, right?”
She was trying to follow what he was saying but it was like he was talking in circles. “Jon, what’s going on?”
“Remember the day we released Matt Courson from the station, and we were in my office, and I said there was something I wanted to talk to you about?”
“I remember, sure. You never got around to telling me what it was.” She leaned back on her hands, letting her cast dangle as she bounced her foot. “You keep saying you want to talk to me and then you don’t do it. I haven’t seen you this nervous since Zane was born. Are you pregnant?”
“What?”
She burst out laughing. “Oh, Jon, if you could only see your face right now. I’m kidding! Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
“Darcy, I’m trying to be serious. Do you know how many times that me being a police officer has put you in danger?”
“Whoa now, what? Jon, is that what this is about? This mess with Anthony Faber had nothing to do with you being a police officer. That trouble came to our front door because of who I am. I told you this.”
“And if you weren’t married to a police officer we could have handed the investigation off to someone else and then we wouldn’t have been right in the middle of it all.”
Darcy pushed herself off the bed, with a lot of difficulty, and used the dresser to support herself so she could stand up and face him. “Jon. We were in the middle of it because of me. That wouldn’t change even if you weren’t the police chief. Ghosts find me. They come to me for help. Other people are drawn to me, too, and I help them and that’s not your fault, either.”
“But I don’t need to add to that by bringing danger home from work.” He took a deep breath, and let it go again. “I think… I think it might be time for me to retire.”
That caught her so completely off guard that she nearly fell over on her face. She had to grab the dresser again and even then Jon had to rescue her by throwing his arms around her waist.
“Wow,” he said. “Usually when I sweep you off your feet it’s for something better than this.”
“Are you… are you serious?” She couldn’t help it. Jon not being a police chief was something she couldn’t even imagine. He’d been a cop for as long as she’d known him. Longer, even. Her mind wouldn’t wrap itself around the idea. “Jon, you love what you do.”
“Yes. I mean, I do, but there comes a point where you’ve had enough. Where you realize the demands on you from the job are taking away from the demands of your family. I want to be here more, for you, and for the kids, and I just feel like the job is getting in the way of everything.”
“So all that stuff about you putting me in danger…?”
“Let’s just agree that we both put each other in danger.”
“Agreed. Now. How long have you been thinking about this?”
He blew out a breath through pressed lips. “For a while now. I wouldn’t do anything without talking to you first, that’s why I’ve been trying to find a moment alone with you.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “And you thought the best time to do that was when we had our family over for Thanksgiving dinner?”
He cupped her face in his hand. “I just couldn’t keep it in any longer.”
Darcy pressed her cheek into his palm. “Retired. Really?”
“I think… maybe. Yeah.”
“You know I’ll support you no matter what.”
“I know. I still want to hear what you think about it.”
“Then we’ll sit down and talk about it, together.” She kissed his fingertips. “Later. For right now, let’s have a great Thanksgiving with everyone. They’ll be waiting for us downstairs.”
The light in his eyes changed. “You sure we don’t have just a few more minutes that we can steal for ourselves?”
Melting against him, she kissed his strong jaw. “Later, Tiger. Dinner first, fun later. Help me downstairs, okay?”
Once everyone was seated at the tables, Jon and Aaron brought the food out, and then there was conversation and food and giggles of laughter from Addison and Colby. Zane was in his highchair, squishing mashed sweet potatoes between his fingers and then shoving his hands into his mouth. He had a few pieces of turkey to try as well, white meat in gravy. The first time he put one in his mouth he spit it out, but that didn’t stop him from trying it again.
Connor sat very close to Lilly, and Darcy remembered the days when she and Jon had been practically joined at the hip, too. She wished, for a moment, that she could recapture that feeling of young love.
Then she looked at Jon, sitting beside her at the head of the table, and she knew she would never want to go back. What they had was absolutely perfect. She didn’t need it to be anything other than what it was.
“Darcy,” James asked from a few seats away. “What is this wonderful bread? It’s like a coffee cake but different. I taste cinnamon and some other flavors and it’s just incredible.”
She’d been waiting for someone to say something about her extra special contribution to the meal so that she could give the little speech she had prepared. She went to stand up but her leg got in the way—again—and Jon whispered that maybe she should just stay sitting down.
“Uh, yeah. Maybe that’s a good idea.” She picked up a slice of the bread, frosted with white icing and swirled with cinnamon and brown sugar. “Everyone, this is Amish Friendship Bread. It’s a very complicated bread to make. You have to feed the dough for days before you can use the batter, and then when you do, there are portions left over. Those portions are meant to be shared with the people you love. That way, they can make the recipe too, and while they’re using what you gave them, they’re also creating new batches to give to the people they love, and so on and so on.”
She smiled at everyone around her. This was her family. The people she loved the most.
“So,” she said, tearing the bread into pieces. “When you leave here today you’ll each have a bag of friendship bread mix to take with you, along with instructions on how to make it. That way you can keep the cycle going. It’s just like with our own lives. We take what our parents give us.”
She held a hand out to Eileen, and James as well.
“We take what our friends give us.”
She smiled at Izzy and Connor and Lilly at the other end of the table.
“And we mix it all together, and pass it out again to the people we love.”
She bopped her finger to Zane’s nose, and blew a kiss to Colby for the little girl to catch.
Around the table, everyone raised their glasses, and toasted to friendship and family, and love. There was a lot to be thankful for this year. A lot of blessings in their house.
Jon’s hand found hers on the table. She held onto him tightly, thankful most of all to be exactly who she was.
Darcy Sweet.
Epilogue
“Why do you have to go?”
Twitching his whiskers, Smudge wrapped his tail around his paws, trying to keep them warm. His paws were always cold these days. Cold, and sore.
His daughter looked up at him with those big, expressive eyes of hers. Sometimes she looked so much like her mother that it made his heart ache.
“I have things to take care of,” he told her. “Things that need my attention in other places. This is the way of the world, Tiptoe. We grow old, we move on.”
“It’s not fair,” she declared, turning her face away. “I don’t want you to go.”
Smudge sighed, because he understood his daughter’s emotions all too well. He didn’t want to go,
either.
He especially didn’t want to leave knowing she was angry with him.
It felt like every bone in his body creaked as he stood up and padded over to her. Once upon a time he’d been able to climb and jump along the branches of the highest trees. Now even the stairs here in his own house gave him trouble.
Old happens to all of us.
That bit of cat wisdom came to him again, just like it had every morning when he woke up with his muscles stiff all the way to the tip of his tail. Smudge the Cat, the great Misty Hollow Detective, had become old.
Old happens to all of us.
He ran his cheek along his daughter’s, and after a moment she pushed into him as well. It eased some of the burden on his heart when she did. “It will be all right, Tiptoe. I’ve had my time here. Now, it’s your turn to watch out for the family, and protect them.” He laughed softly. “You know how much work that is. They’re going to need you.”
“But I still need you,” she said obstinately.
He looked directly into her eyes once more. “No, you don’t. You’ve grown so much, little kitten. I couldn’t be prouder to call you my daughter, and to see how you’ve become this brave, strong cat standing here in front of me. I’ve had my time. Now, it’s your time.”
She blinked, and blinked again, and then she touched her nose to his.
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, too, Tiptoe.”
“Is it okay if we don’t say goodbye?”
His whiskers trailed along hers as he started to walk away across the front lawn. All around him, the first snowflakes of the season drifted down in lazy spirals. “We’re cats,” he said to her. “We never say goodbye.”
Before he was too far away, Tiptoe called out to him. “What do you want me to tell Darcy?”
Smudge hesitated. He’d struggled with that very question for days now, without finding a good answer. Now, he just said what was in his heart.
“Tell her… I’ll be around, whenever she needs me.”
“For me, too?” she asked.
“Yes,” he promised. “Always.”
The Ghost of Murders Past
A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 23
First published in Australia by South Coast Publishing, June 2018. Copyright K.J. Emrick (2012-19)
Chapter 1
Fourth of July was kind of a big deal in Misty Hollow.
When your town depended on tourism dollars, you made sure that every holiday was an event, not just a day on the calendar. The streets had been adorned with red, white, and blue banners hanging from every utility pole. Flags hung in the storefront windows. The speaker system at the top of the Town Hall was playing patriotic marches twelve hours a day. The mood was festive, and people were happy. Even the weather was cooperating. A warm breeze blew through the trees. Fluffy white clouds made their way gently along a deep blue sky. Birds chirped as they soared overhead. Everywhere, people were smiling.
Personally, Darcy could have done without the music from the Town Hall. From inside her bookstore it was only muted background noise, but every time a customer opened the door to go in or out, it got louder again. As much as she appreciated the music of John Philip Sousa and Glenn Miller’s orchestra, there was only so many times in one day that a person could hear The Stars and Stripes Forever and still be expected to stay sane.
She was definitely going to talk to the mayor about the song list. There were plenty of other songs they could add for variety. Neil Diamond’s America, for instance. Or Lee Greenwood’s Proud to Be an American. Yes. A little Country music to celebrate the birth of their country. That had a nice sort of symmetry to it.
As annoyed as she was with the music, she couldn’t argue with the results. The Sweet Read Bookstore was having a great week. She and her business partner Izzy had restocked the romance novels twice now. The books about the local towns and points of interest had also been selling really well. Especially, she noticed, the ones about the supposedly haunted places in and around Misty Hollow.
There was a special kind of irony in that. Darcy knew all about the ghosts of Misty Hollow. She knew that most of the stories in those books were bogus, or at the very least based on a few shreds of truth that had been blown out of proportion. She knew, because she could see ghosts.
Next to her, where she was organizing the self-help section, three heavy books on the topic of Mindfulness slid their way off and fell to the floor, thud, thud, thud.
Speaking of ghosts…
“I agree, Aunt Millie. I never cared for those either.” She picked them up and put them back, because it wasn’t for her to judge how other people lived their lives. “We’re just going to leave these right here this time, okay?”
One of the books slid forward an inch.
“Millie…” Darcy warned.
The book slid back.
“Thank you.” She looked around, but no one was close enough to hear her. “Listen, I don’t mind you watching over me, but remember this is my bookstore now. You weren’t thrilled about me adding audiobooks to our inventory either but those have been a big hit. Right?”
There was no answer from her dearly departed Great Aunt Millie this time. Millie’s ghost had been with her ever since she had died when Darcy was just twenty-one years old. She’d had chances to move on and leave the world of the living behind, but she had chosen to stay and watch Darcy’s family grow instead. Sometimes she was here, and sometimes she wasn’t. Darcy had learned to cherish the time they had.
Oh. Speaking of time.
She checked her My Little Pony wristwatch and saw that yes, it was just a little after three o’clock. She’d promised to pick up the milk and bread for dinner tonight. Her husband Jon had a day off and so he was making the meal, but as usual he needed his wife to save him. She smirked at that thought. She and Jon had saved each other, a dozen times over, from the very first day that they’d met.
It was fitting, in a lot of ways, that she and Jon had come together over a murder mystery. That first one had been very personal. Her life would be so different without Jon in it. She couldn’t even imagine. Or perhaps it would be better to say that she didn’t want to imagine. After all, she’d had a little taste of what that might be like when, years ago, Jon had gone missing and had died on that river bank just for a few moments. She didn’t want to repeat that experience anytime soon.
Her little cartoon watch ticked away the seconds. It had been a gift, years ago, from her neighbor’s daughter. She didn’t usually wear it because it was such a childish thing, but the one she usually wore had decided to quit on her. This one had been at the back of a drawer and it was working just fine. Besides. It was cute.
The ring on Darcy’s right hand was a pretty thing, too. She spun it around her finger, like she did sometimes, feeling the detail in the intricate designs running all the way around it. It was an antique, and it used to belong to Great Aunt Millie just like this bookstore had. She rarely took it off. The pattern along its otherwise smooth surface reminded her of… better times, and worse times too.
Giving the shelves one last critical look, Darcy hurried around to the checkout counter. Izzy McIntosh was ringing up three paperback novels for a couple of twenty-something women in shorts and t-shirts that were just a bit too tight, in Darcy’s opinion. Maybe if they were still teenagers, but at their age… well, you just had to grow up sometime.
Darcy had come to that realization late in life herself. She used to be totally at home in jeans and tank tops, maybe a flirty choker or some clunky bracelets. Now that she was in her—ahem—early forties, she’d learned to dress her age. At work it was black slacks and cute tops like this nice purple one with the puffy sleeves. She might still wear jeans at home, but her days of short tops and shorter skirts were over. So were the days of wearing her raven’s-black hair down past her shoulders. These days she kept it short around her heart-shaped face. A ten-year-old daughter and a one-and-a-half-year-old son had made that change necessary. G
rasping hands and long hair were two things that did not go together.
Darcy loved being a mother. Grasping hands and all. She liked her life just the way it was, and she wouldn’t change a thing.
Bringing herself back to the present moment, she watched as Izzy finished ringing up the sale. She had taken to the work at the bookstore right away. Making her a business partner was one of the best decisions Darcy could have made. She smiled back at Darcy and pushed her feathered honey-blonde hair back over her ear on one side. She was in work clothes herself, a pair of khakis and a short-sleeved white blouse with an open neck, because of how warm it was outside. Izzy didn’t like the heat, and today was one of the warmest they’d had in a while. Eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit, and tomorrow was scheduled to be even hotter.
The two women left, and a man came up in a rush with a cookbook, money already in his hand. Izzy couldn’t stop to talk to Darcy. The customers came first, and Darcy understood that. She pantomimed to her watch, and then to the door, to tell Izzy she was leaving.
Izzy was used to it by now. It wasn’t the first time Darcy had left her on her own to mind the store, and no doubt it wouldn’t be the last.
Darcy stopped outside for a moment to breathe in the fresh air and take a glance around this town that she loved so much. Misty Hollow had grown bigger over the years. The big box store had been doing good business out on Coldspring Road. There were new houses being built on Washington, and the street had been expanded to accommodate the proposed apartment building. Hard to believe there were enough people living here now to justify another apartment complex, but there were. It was kind of nice to have so many new neighbors in town. There were still all the old faces, too, but new people meant that Misty Hollow would continue forever.
Even so, most things were within walking distance here in the downtown section. From her bookstore she could just walk home. Of course, that took longer than biking, and thanks to her wonderful husband Jon Tinker, she had a great ten-speed bicycle to ride.
