by K. J. Emrick
They shared a quick hug before he walked out to his car and drove away. She had no doubt that he’d hold true to his promise to come back later, but for right now it would just be her, and Bruce.
She looked down the entrance hall and listened to the silence in the house. Where was Bruce, anyway?
Kicking off her sneakers at the door to this house had always been habit for Darcy. There was carpeting on most of the floors, and Helen had always been so strict about keeping it clean. In her sock feet, she went down toward the living room. The stairs to the upper level were down that way, too, and it was possible that Bruce was up in their bedroom, going through boxes of memories. She felt weird just walking around in here.
“Bruce?” she called out to him. “It’s Darcy. Where are you?”
There was a muffled response from the living room, and then a thud like a heavy load of laundry had been dropped all in a heap. Bruce stuck his head out into the hall, a sad look on his face.
Bruce was a big man with leathery skin that was lined with deep wrinkles from a lifetime of smiling. He wasn’t smiling today. The white in his wavy hair and in his beard seemed more pronounced than Darcy had ever seen it. He looked old, and tired. His flannel shirt looked like he’d been wearing it for days. His eyes were bleary, like he hadn’t slept at all.
He waved one big hand to her, though, and found the courage to at least give her a welcoming nod, if he wasn’t exactly up for smiling. “Hi, Darcy. Thank you so much for coming over. You didn’t have to. I know you’ve probably got things to do. Oh, what about the bookstore? Who’s minding your store?”
“I have Izzy taking care of things,” Darcy explained. “It isn’t the first time she’s taken care of our bookstore by herself. She’s been a great business partner, I can tell you that.”
“Sure, but I know how hard this must be for you.”
“For me?” She was so surprised by his honest concern that she almost laughed at him. He was the one who just lost his wife. She went over to him and gave him a big hug that he had to lean down to accept. “We’re all here for you, Bruce. You need to know that.”
“I do, I do.” He heaved a breath and pushed back from her to wipe at his eyes. “Pastor Phin said the same thing. So did Jon. Everyone’s been so nice it’s just… it’s just so hard. Helen and I only had a few short years together and we were both planning on so much more than that. We were going to travel. We were going to tour the country and sit on warm beaches and all the rest of it. Oh, we’re old, I know we’re old, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have life left in us. Helen is the most vibrant woman that I know.”
Darcy noticed he was talking about Helen and him in the present tense. Like she wasn’t gone, but still here instead. She could understand that. Helen would forever be in his heart, but it would be a long time before he found it easy to say she was gone. If ever.
“How’s Cha-Cha?” he asked her. “Helen loves that dog. I was so relieved when Jon offered to take him for me. I’m just not in the mood to take care of a pet right now.”
“He’s… fine,” Darcy hedged. “I wasn’t really expecting to take in a new pet.”
“Neither was I, when Helen brought him home.” He lifted a hand helplessly at the memory. “He’s a good dog. I think. Helen does all the feeding and taking care of him. I just sort of… well. I just sort of told the dog to stay off our bed. Thanks for taking him in.”
He led her into the living room. He went to the couch and sat down, pulling over a cardboard box he had set down on the floor. No doubt that was what she had heard from out in the hall, a loud whump as he plopped this box of precious mementos onto the floor.
“So what I’m doing,” he said, obviously needing to talk to fill the silence, “is trying to sort through which of Helen’s things I should donate, and which I want to keep. I mean, she would want her things to go to help people however they could. She always did have a big heart.”
Darcy sat down next to him. “Yes, she did. And you’re right. Helen would have always given anything she owned to someone who needed it. So, how far have you gotten?”
The corner of Bruce’s lip curled. He gave the big box at the corner of the couch a kick. “This is half full of her shirts, and some of her books, and a few stuffed animals that she’s had since she was a girl.”
“That sounds like a good start. Are you going to give the box to Pastor Phin when it’s full so he can donate the stuff?”
Bruce shook his head. “See, that’s the problem. This is the box I’m keeping.” He reached behind it and picked up a box less than half as big. “This is what I’m ready to give away.”
They shared a melancholy laugh together, realizing that this was going to be a very long process. Bruce wanted to keep everything of Helen’s. He wasn’t ready to give any of it up.
“You don’t have to do this now,” Darcy told him. “No one would blame you if you left everything just the way it is and took some time for yourself first. Helen wouldn’t want you to be sad.”
“I’m not sad,” he said with a shrug, looking over at the folded pile of clothes that was still waiting for him to go through it, sitting beside him on the couch. “I’m just tired. There’s just so much to do. And yes, I could leave the house the way it is and pretend that she hasn’t gone on without me, but that’s just not who I am. It’s not who Helen is, either. We were always looking forward to the next stage in life. What we would do Thursday nights, or where we should go next weekend. Now, I have no one to fill the hours with. All I can do is wait until the funeral. Wait until there’s nothing left of the two of us, except me. I need to do something to fill that time up or I’m afraid I’ll go insane. I feel like if I stop to take in what happened, I’ll never be able to move again. Do you know what I mean?”
Darcy was sure that she did. His voice was full of the emotions he was trying to hold back. Bruce Turner’s whole entire world had come crashing down around him, and now all he could do was box up the pieces and put them away before they buried him in memories.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
That ghost of a smile came back, the one that only touched one side of his mouth. “Thank you, Darcy. Um. Helen’s office is down the hall on the right.”
“I remember,” Darcy said wistfully. Helen had always brought her work home with her. Whether it was the business of being a mayor, or her long-time bakery, she was always busy taking care of something business related. “I remember sitting in there and talking with her for hours.”
“Yes. She liked it when you visited. She liked having friends.” He heaved a sigh. “So, if you would just go through that room for me? There’s plenty of empty boxes in there. Put her personal stuff in one box, her mayor stuff in another. Her personal assistant wants all of that, I know. Papers, files, whatever. What’s her name… Lauren. Yes. Lauren Long. I find myself so forgetful without Helen here. Anyway, Lauren called earlier. Or was it last night? I don’t even remember now. Either way, it all needs to go back to the mayor’s office. That woman kept Helen on her toes, I can tell you that. Helen absolutely adored her.”
“What are they doing about the mayor position? Jon didn’t seem to know.”
Bruce scratched at one gray temple. “Not sure. I think Lauren said something about the town council appointing someone for the next month until the election. No doubt that blowhard Carson Everly’s going to win now. He didn’t have a chance, before…”
He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence that ended in the death of the woman he loved.
“Well, he’s the only one on the ballot now,” Darcy said, trying to make the mood a little lighter. “The only way he could have better odds would be if he was running against a rock.”
“Or a department store mannequin,” Bruce said, with a real smile this time. “Oh, I’m going to miss you and Helen having your talks. I suppose there’s a lot of things I’m going to miss. If you could just take care of her inner sanctum in there? That would be a big help to m
e.”
Darcy got up and came over to him, holding his hands in hers. “She loved you very much. I’ll go and take care of that room. Will you be okay in here?”
“Yes, I think I will. Won’t take me much longer to go through these clothes here, and then I’ll come in and help you in there. I trust you to go through it all but call me if you run into any questions. You know, if only I’d come home Saturday night like I planned. If only I hadn’t stayed over at my friend’s place helping him out with his problems, maybe I would have been here for Helen. We almost always spend Saturday night together and this time I failed her…”
“Bruce, you can’t think like that. It was Helen’s time to go. Nothing you did or didn’t do was going to change that.”
“You can’t know that,” he argued. “Neither can I. All I can do is stay here and sort through what’s left of our lives.”
Darcy had nothing to say to that. Just like when she’d been talking to Pastor Phin, the words that would make everything okay eluded her. So she talked with him about Helen, and her life, and their time together, and then went down the hall to the door that opened on Helen’s personal office.
Bruce wasn’t far off in calling this Helen’s ‘inner sanctum.’ This was where she kept all of the things she wanted to keep separated from her personal life. This was where she finished paperwork that she needed to bring home. This was where she brought the town’s contracts that needed to be reviewed before signing. This room was where everything that didn’t fit in her office downtown came to find a final resting place, including that plexiglass award for having the longest term in office of any mayor in Misty Hollow’s history. It was over there on a shelf somewhere. Darcy remembered it because it was practically the only thing in the room that Helen dusted on a regular basis.
She had been proud of it for sure, and Darcy thought she had every right to be. Not that being a mayor for more than just a few years was any kind of accomplishment here in Misty Hollow. After all, the mayor before her had been her first husband, and he got sent away to prison for murder. Over the years, a few mayors had been victims of murder themselves. That was the way things went in nice, quiet Misty Hollow. The last that Darcy knew, their town was still somewhere near the top of the list of places in America with the highest murder rate. Right up there next to cities like Baltimore and Detroit.
So keeping the mayor’s spot longer than anyone ever had wasn’t that much of an accomplishment. The real reason Helen should be proud of that award was that she had earned it through public service and dedication. Darcy had always poked fun at it for being shaped like a stop sign of clear plastic, but the truth was that she was the one who urged the town to buy it for Helen. Above the wooden base, the octagon of clear acrylic had been etched with the year it was bestowed, and a simple inscription that read, “In Honor of Your Years of Service.” Nothing poetic. Nothing flowery. Just a lot of meaning.
Helen had smiled every time she looked at it.
Darcy sat in the swivel leather chair at the desk, ignoring for a moment the neat stacks of papers and the brimming wooden In Box full of colored file folders. She spun herself around, feet tucked up under her, taking in the small space full of old metal filing cabinets and its shelves that had been screwed into the drywall and the small fern in the corner. Helen had put that there years ago trying to liven up the room. She’d managed to keep it alive, but it was impossible for it to thrive where there was no sunlight and no windows. Darcy smiled at it anyway. Helen was always doing the impossible.
The chair came to a slow stop as it spun her around to face the shelves again. Books on town law and books on writing proper charters stood side by side with old phone books and catalogues. A space on the bottom shelf, down at the end, was reserved for the town’s award.
Which wasn’t there.
Darcy planted her feet on the floor and stared. It should be right there. Pushing herself partway out of the chair, she craned her neck to see the faint oval in the dust that outlined where the award had sat. Darcy frowned. Helen must have moved it. There was no way she’d get rid of it.
A quick search of the office proved that it wasn’t in this room. Not anywhere.
Now that was odd.
With a shrug, she decided to worry about it later. It would turn up somewhere. She started picking up folders and placing them into a box. It would probably fit everything on Helen’s desk if she packed it carefully. Lauren—Helen’s personal assistant and acting secretary since Julie Smith, her previous secretary, had been dismissed a few months ago for being Nash Fullerton’s accomplice in the attempt to steal Merlon Nelson’s Will—could always sort through it all later and decide what was important. None of it meant anything to Darcy. She’d glanced at a few of the tabs, and they all seemed to do with the administration of the town. Previous years’ tally sheets for expenses and salaries. A few folders on the election containing polls and numbers that made no sense to Darcy. All of it went into the box, one on top of the other.
In the top drawer she found letters of a different kind. Personal correspondence from Bruce to Helen. Birthday cards. Anniversary notices clipped from newspapers. Letters probably written for Valentine’s Day that made Darcy blush three lines in. After that, she made sure to turn her eyes away.
Those went in the other box.
She was still emptying out the desk when Bruce came in, knocking gently on the door and then shuffling inside. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“This might take a little longer than either of us thought,” Darcy laughed. “Your wife was quite the packrat.”
Bruce joined her with a chuckle. “Yes. She likes to hang on to everything that might be useful again someday. Like those old phonebooks up there. Might be useful someday. I used to tell her that was why she stuck with me for so long.”
“There were lots of reasons why she loved you, Bruce. You were the first man in her life who truly made her happy. I hope you know that.”
“I do. At least, I believe Helen when she tells me that same thing. My wife doesn’t like to lie.”
With a heavy sigh, he began taking books down from the shelves and setting them aside to be boxed up. When he came to that space on the bottom shelf, where the award should have been, his hand hesitated.
“Did you already pack this?” he asked.
Darcy didn’t need to ask him what he meant. “I figured Helen put it somewhere else. In the house, maybe?”
Bruce shook his head. “No. She keeps it in here. Sometimes I swear she came in here just so she could look at it up there on that shelf. It should be right here.”
Darcy came over to stand next to him. The empty space on the shelf suddenly took on a completely different, ominous meaning. When she asked Jon about Helen he told her there were no signs of foul play. There were no signs of a break in. No signs of violence.
And, nothing taken.
Except… if the award was gone, didn’t that mean someone took it?
So if it wasn’t true that nothing had been stolen, what about the rest of what Jon had said? Was any of it still true?
Was it possible…
Her mind went around and around in circles, trying to avoid the impossible thought that had crept in there so unpleasantly. The more she tried to tell herself that she was wrong, that she was just being her usual paranoid self, the stronger the idea got. It grew until she couldn’t ignore it anymore.
The award was missing, and Bruce didn’t know where it was. Someone had obviously taken it.
Was it possible that Helen didn’t die of natural causes?
Or did someone kill Helen Turner?
Chapter 4
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
That was the advice Darcy was giving herself in the mirror. It was the end of the day, and she was getting ready for bed, and still her thoughts were churning over the same hateful idea.
She told herself to slow down again and again until it started to sink in. A missing award still didn’t mean Helen�
��s death was anything other than a sad tragedy.
Then where was it?
After spending most of the day with Bruce, putting memories in boxes and sharing stories about Helen, Darcy had given Bruce a big hug on her way out. Pastor Phin had dropped by again by that point, and Bruce promised them both that he had plans to have dinner with friends. He wasn’t going to be alone. She still felt a little guilty about not staying longer, but she had wanted to get to the Town Hall before it closed for the day.
The mayor’s office was one of the first doors off the entrance to the Town Hall. Darcy had an excuse ready for why she was stopping by, in the form of the brimming box of documents from Helen’s home office. She balanced it in her arms as she swept through the open door with the stick-on letters across the frosted glass spelling out Mayor – Misty Hollow. No one would suspect she had an ulterior motive.
As it turned out, she didn’t need to explain herself. The desk where Lauren Long had sat for the last five years, assisting Helen in everything from making copies of important documents to setting up business meetings and everything else a personal assistant does, was empty. Helen’s assistant-slash-secretary was elsewhere for the moment.
Hastily setting the box down on the desk she tried the handle on the door that led from the outer part of the office to the private room set aside for the mayor. It wasn’t locked, and she pushed it open wide, quickly looking around.
It only took a few seconds to confirm what Darcy had already suspected. The award that Helen loved so much wasn’t here.
Not in her home office, not in her house, and not here, either.
Closing the door again, she made sure to scratch out a quick note for Lauren and set it on the box to explain why she had been here just in case someone had seen her coming in. Looking for the award was completely innocent, unless anyone guessed what she was thinking. She didn’t want to let that little thought out of her head until she knew for sure. After that, she had made her way home just like it was any other day.
