A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Six

by K. J. Emrick

This was the part of her that made her Helen Turner. She may have left her body behind, but her spirit lived on. In this place, she looked just the same as she had before her death. The same compassionate, soft brown eyes. The same short and feathered white hair. She was wearing a blue pleated dress with flowers stitched along the shoulders. One of her favorites that she had worn quite often. Or at least, it was a representation of that same dress.

  Ghosts didn’t actually wear clothes. Their spirit dressed in whatever suited them at the moment. Darcy had seen ghosts wearing heavy black robes and carrying scythes in their hands before as if they were the specter of death themselves. Those ghosts had lost their minds, figuratively speaking. Those ghosts were very, very dangerous, because they saw themselves not as the person they used to be, but as the specter of Death itself.

  Most ghosts were just like Helen’s spirit over there, floating in front of Darcy in the heavy curtains of the mists. They only wanted to be seen, and heard, and then move on when it was the right time.

  “Helen. Hey. I, um, need your help.”

  Helen spread her hands wide, her expression never changing even though her clothes did. The dress was replaced with a simple gray pantsuit like she used to wear whenever she was doing her official town duties. The mayor was in, and she was here to help. Just like she always had been for the people of Misty Hollow, back when she was alive.

  “Okay, good. Um. So, first of all, you know that you’re dead, right?”

  Helen nodded.

  Darcy sighed. She wasn’t happy that her friend had died, but she was relieved that Helen’s spirit understood what had happened to her. Sometimes she had to waste a lot of precious time explaining to people that they weren’t alive anymore. It wasn’t always as obvious to people as it ought to be. It was hard to convince someone of something when they didn’t want to believe it. That was true of the living, and it was true of the dead as well.

  The question was, why was Helen so at peace with it?

  Darcy realized in that moment that the answer was simple. This was who Helen had always been. Take things in stride and move on. Her first husband had gone to prison. The man who she dated after that had been using her. The bakery she had built up from nothing to be the heart and soul of Misty Hollow had burned to the ground. Pick up the pieces, Helen would say, and move on.

  It would be the worst of the Universe’s ironies if her current husband turned out to be the man who murdered her. Then again, would that really be the worst thing she’d ever seen in Misty Hollow?

  Now she was dead. Pick it all up. Move on.

  “Helen, you didn’t just die, right?” Darcy had to force the question out of her. Whether Helen was at peace with it or not, this had to be followed to the bitter end. “You were murdered. Someone killed you, didn’t they?”

  Helen nodded.

  There. That was the confirmation of what Darcy had already figured out. Not the kind of proof that she could ever take to a court, of course. A spirit communication had never been given legal standing.

  She just needed Helen to point her in the right direction.

  “Can you tell me who did this to you?”

  Darcy swallowed, bracing herself for whatever answer was coming.

  Helen seemed to consider it for a long moment, while the white foggy mists roiled and stirred. Then she nodded again.

  Darcy clenched her hands into fists. “Who did it, Helen? Who killed you?”

  For an answer, Helen gestured down at herself, in her business attire.

  Ghosts were rarely ever straightforward. Darcy was used to it by now. She knew that getting an answer from a ghost was part patience, part pantomime, and part dumb luck. They might tell you what you needed to know, and on the other hand they might tell you what they thought was important instead.

  Or they might gesture at their clothes as if that made the most logical sense in the world.

  “Helen, please. I know there was someone else with you in your house the night you died. Cha-Cha saw them but um, well… he’s a dog. Hard to get a real answer from a dog.”

  Helen motioned down at her clothing again.

  Darcy frowned. Just as hard as getting a real answer from a ghost, for that matter. “Helen, I don’t understand you. Please, tell me who did this to you. Just tell me. Jon is bringing Carson Everly into the police station today to talk to him. Was it Carson? Did he kill you?”

  She tugged at the sleeves of her coat. Her business suit. Her mayor suit.

  “That’s right,” Darcy said to her. “Carson wanted to take your job. He wanted to be the mayor, but to do that he needed you out of the way. Did he kill you for your job?”

  Helen patted her breast pocket, where three blue pens had suddenly appeared. She slipped one of them out, turning it between her fingers, and then held it out to Darcy.

  She recognized that pen. She and Jon had more than a dozen of them at the house. Helen’s name was spelled out in block letters along the bottom half. Under that were two smaller words: “for mayor.” They were the pens she had given out for her campaign. Nothing big or fancy. People already knew who she was. People already loved and respected her.

  Except for the person who killed her, of course.

  These were Helen’s election pens, or at least a representation of them here in the in between place. Helen was telling her that her killer had something to do with the mayor’s job.

  Like Carson Everly, her opponent in the election.

  Or like Bruce, she had to admit. Helen’s mayor award was in his trash.

  “I need something more from you,” Darcy told her. “This is important. You might not have to worry about it, but I don’t think you understand. Carson’s not our only suspect anymore. For Pete’s sake, can you give me the name? Who killed you?”

  Helen blinked, and for the first time since Darcy had called up her ghost, her expression slipped. The smile became a frown, and her eyes glazed over, becoming blank and white.

  She raised a hand to the back of her head, where the coroner had found the bump to her skull. She was remembering her death, and who killed her.

  “Helen, it’s all right,” Darcy promised her. “I’m going to help. We’ll put the person who killed you behind bars. Everyone will know what happened.”

  The light returned to Helen’s eyes, and she focused a ghostly stare on Darcy.

  Words floated across the void, in Helen’s voice, even though her lips didn’t move. “What if I don’t want everyone to know?”

  Now what did that mean?

  “I don’t understand…”

  Darcy tried to ask Helen what she meant but suddenly the entire space around her was filled with a blinding light. She felt something pushing her away. Some force was shoving her away from the in between space, and back into the world of the living.

  It was Helen, she realized a second later. Helen didn’t want to talk to her anymore.

  She didn’t want to reveal the name of her killer.

  Darcy’s eyes flew open.

  She sucked in a deep breath and gave herself a moment to acclimate to being back in her own living room again. What had just happened? Helen pushed her away, that’s what happened. For whatever reason, she didn’t want Darcy asking questions. That was why she hadn’t seen her ghost around. Helen didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to her.

  But why? What reason could she have for not wanting her killer to be found?

  Unless she knew who the killer was, and didn’t want anyone else to know.

  Then the killer had to be someone Helen knew, and someone she really cared about.

  Did that cross Carson off the list? And did it mean… could the killer really be Bruce?

  A tear fell from the corner of her eye. She felt sick. More than just the usual weakness from the spirit communication. She felt like she was being twisted inside out.

  She had to be wrong. It couldn’t be Bruce.

  Only, what other explanation was there?

  In her lap, Tipt
oe stood up and stretched before jumping down to the floor. She walked away with her tail in the air and didn’t look back. She couldn’t care less about the questions Darcy was facing. She’d done her part, and now she was going to take a nap.

  Well, at least she’d helped out when Darcy needed her, even if she hadn’t been very enthusiastic about it.

  Cha-Cha barked at her from the kitchen side of the safety gate. He’d apparently been watching the whole thing, wondering why he wasn’t involved.

  Darcy craned her neck and rubbed at her shoulder where it had started to go stiff. What time was it? She was surprised when she looked at her watch to find that only five minutes had passed since she started. Time in the world of the living didn’t move like it did in the afterlife. Hours here weren’t hours there, and vice versa. She still had lots of time before Colby got home from school.

  Time to think about what Helen had said, and what it might mean.

  She felt a hand to her face and wiped away a tear. It was the same one she’d felt on her face in the spirit communication.

  Blowing out the candles one by one she set them on the coffee table. When they cooled down, she would package them back into the box for when she needed them again. There wasn’t going to be any sense in calling on Helen again. She knew that for sure. Helen didn’t want to talk to Darcy about this. Somehow she’d made her peace with it. When ghosts didn’t want to talk, there was very little anyone could do to make them. Nothing that she wanted to put Helen’s spirit through, certainly.

  So, what was she going to do now?

  Right on cue, the house phone rang.

  Darcy startled, and then laughed at herself. They had to keep the home phone active because of her aversion to cellphones, but hardly anyone knew the number. The thing hardly rang anymore. Except was for the telemarketers, they always seemed to know the number. Once in a while Jon would try to get ahold of her this way, too. She rushed to check the caller ID.

  It was the police department’s number.

  She picked up the receiver but before she could say anything, Jon was talking to her.

  “Darcy, we were just talking to Carson Everly. I think you need to hear what he said.”

  Chapter 8

  “So where does that leave us?”

  Darcy didn’t want to think about the answer to that question. It was the same one she asked herself after the spirit communication, with the same answer. She had two suspects in mind for Helen’s murder. Carson Everly, and Bruce Turner.

  If Carson was off the list like Jon was saying, then that left one person.

  Bruce.

  Supper was going to be delivery pizza. There’d been way too much talking for either of them to do any cooking. What Jon had told her over the phone had actually made Darcy lose her appetite, but the kids needed to eat.

  Jon and Darcy talked quietly in the kitchen. Colby was doing her homework up in her room, while Zane played with his toys in the living room. Cha-Cha was playing with him, grabbing toy cars in his mouth and running away with them, and batting around Zane’s big inflatable ball. It gave the grownups time to talk.

  “Where it leaves us,” Jon said in answer to her question, “is pretty much nowhere. We had a suspect in Carson Everly. A good suspect. I agreed with you on that. It was easy to see how he could have done this. And that’s saying something Darcy, because this is Helen Turner we’re talking about. It’s hard to picture anyone wanting to kill her.”

  Darcy sat back in her chair at the small table. Yeah. Hard to picture anyone at all. Certainly not her husband… “Oh, for Pete’s sake. You still aren’t convinced she was murdered, are you? Jon, I thought we had that settled.”

  He just shrugged. “Until I get the coroner’s full report, I still have to believe what my eyes are telling me. I trust you, Darcy, and I believe that you believe this. I’m letting that be enough for now. The thing of it is, we’re out of suspects.”

  “Just because Everly says he didn’t see Helen the night she died?” Darcy shook her head. “He marked the appointment down in his day calendar. He actually wrote in his own handwriting that he was going to see Helen.”

  “I know, Darcy, but he says Helen didn’t keep the appointment with him. He says she passed it off to her assistant, and they met at the Town Hall, and that was that.” Drumming his fingers on the tabletop, he scowled up at the clock. “How long does it take to deliver a pizza?”

  Food was actually one of the last things on Darcy’s mind right now. “You can’t just let Carson off the hook because he said he wasn’t there. Did you confirm it? Did you talk to Lauren Long?”

  “Helen’s assistant? No we haven’t,” Jon said. “We went to the Town Hall to talk to her as soon as we let Carson go but she wasn’t there. Or at home, either. She’s probably out with friends. I’m going out to her place again in the morning and I’ll ask her then.”

  “But, Jon…”

  “You know, the opposite is also true. We can’t cross Carson off our suspect list just because he said he didn’t do it, but we can’t put him on the list just because he had an appointment scheduled with Helen. There’s no proof he did it, and no proof he didn’t.”

  “It has to be him.”

  “Darcy, we barely have enough to show Helen might have been killed. We need more information from the coroner.”

  “Jon, it has to be Carson.”

  “Why does it have to be him?” He reached over and put his hand over hers. “I don’t understand why you’re pushing this so hard. Why does it have to be Carson Everly?”

  “Because it does.”

  “But, why?”

  “Because if it’s not him then it’s Bruce!” she said in a loud whisper, mindful that there were little ears around who might hear her.

  She took her hand back and folded her arms over herself. There. She’d said it. This horrible secret she’d been keeping to herself was out in the open now.

  Jon gaped at her. “Helen’s husband? That Bruce? Darcy, you can’t… how can you even say...” He took a deep breath while he collected himself. What she had said had really rattled him. “Let’s back up a few steps. What could possibly make you say something like that?”

  Darcy slowly stood up and went over to the cabinet under the sink where she’d hidden the plastic bag wrapped around the mayor award. She handed it to him, telling him where she found it, and then telling him what she had seen in her communication with Helen.

  He accepted it from her, and listened to everything, and more than once he shook his head in disbelief.

  “You should have told me about this right away,” Jon scolded her gently. “Like, as soon as you found it. You should have called me out there to collect it as evidence.”

  “I know, but I needed it to call on Helen’s spirit and besides that, let’s face it. Both of us are so busy in or lives that sometimes things slip through the cracks for a while until we reconnect again.”

  “True enough,” he admitted, with a little smile playing over his lips. “Life used to be a lot simpler. Ever want to go back to the way things were when we were first dating?”

  “No. Not even once. I like our family the way it is.”

  “So do I. Now. What did you learn from Helen’s ghost?”

  “Not much,” Darcy admitted. “She was pretty tight lipped and then she kind of threw me out.”

  “Really? Have you ever had that happen before?”

  “Um. A few times. It happens. Anyway, her death has something to do with her position as mayor. I’m sure of it. So, if her rival in the election isn’t her killer then everything is going to point right at Bruce because that award was in his trash and I just don’t know if I can take that. Helen went through so much…”

  “I know. You’re right, she did. We both know that. Come here, sit back down with me and let’s figure this out.”

  She slumped back in her chair while Jon very carefully pulled back some of the plastic bag to examine the award. He was careful not to put his fingertip
s anywhere on it as he rotated it around, examining each edge of the acrylic octagon, and then the base. He never questioned whether anything she was saying was true, about the spirit communication or what she’d heard there. Jon knew more about her gift than anyone else in the world. He knew it was a part of her, and never once thought it was evil or bad or strange. It was one of the ways she knew they were meant for each other.

  “There’s no marks on this anywhere,” Jon pointed out, putting his eye up close to the award. “I don’t see anything at all that could be blood. If this is the murder weapon, it’s a remarkably clean one.”

  “Her killer might have wiped it down,” Darcy suggested. “Or there might not have been any blood at all. The coroner found a lump on the back of Helen’s head. That might have been enough to kill her or knock her unconscious so that the murderer could put her back in bed and kill her some other way. It might not have broken the skin.”

  Jon nodded, figuring it out along with her. “Another way to kill her, like suffocation, maybe. I’m willing to bet the coroner didn’t look for petechial hemorrhaging or teeth impressions on the inside of her gums.”

  Being the wife of a cop was a weird thing sometimes, Darcy thought to herself. She understood exactly what he meant without him having to explain it. Petechial hemorrhaging was fancy talk for burst blood vessels in the eyes. That, and the impression of teeth being smushed against a victim’s lips, were tell-tale signs that someone had been smothered to death with a pillow. It was just one of the tricks of the trade that Jon had taught her over the years.

  “So you should call the coroner, right?” she asked him. “Tell him to look for signs of suffocation on top of everything else?”

  “Yes. I’ll do that right now, but we have to verify a couple of alibis, too.”

  “A couple? Why a couple? We need to confirm or disprove Carson’s alibi, is what we need to do.”

  “His, yes, but Bruce too.” Jon wrapped the award in its bag again. “With what you’ve told me, and where you found this award, I have to prove Bruce didn’t do this. He said he was with a friend, but we didn’t follow up on it. We didn’t have a reason to before. Now, we have to. I still hope he didn’t do it… no, I know he didn’t do it. I still have to do my job. One way or the other, now I need to check off where Bruce was that night.”