14 Christmas Spirit (5 page)

"Wait," Darcy said, ignoring most of Nielson's idiotic rambling.  "Why did she come to you with this?  Why not go to her girlfriend?"

The scraggly man's lips turned up in a sneer at the word girlfriend.  "Yeah.  That's what I asked her, too.  She wants to share the sheets with a girl that's on her, not me.  But Megan said she couldn't trust that Blair chick.  They'd had a fight or something and she was going to move out for a while."

Jon and Darcy traded a look.

"Hey, man," Nielson insisted, "it's true.  That's what she said.  Figured it was my chance to get her back, but she said she didn't want to stay here.  She just wanted my help."

"Help with what, Mister Daye?" Jon asked.  "No offense, but you don't look like you can take care of yourself, let alone anyone else.  What did she need your help for?"

Pressing his lips tightly together, Nielson looked straight at Jon, refusing to answer.

"Look, Mister Daye, I can't charge you for something if there's no complainant.  If you gave her money or even drugs, I can't charge you for that.  You've got nothing to lose by telling me what she wanted your help for, and like I said, maybe you'll gain some help for yourself with the DA's office."

Nielson chewed that over, then finally nodded his head.  "Yeah, sure.  Sure.  See, I have access to certain things that Megan felt she might need.  Things that could help her solve her problem."

"Things?"  Jon sounded skeptical.  "What sort of things?"

"Guns, man," Nielson explained.  "Megan said she needed a gun.  So I gave her one of mine."

***

When Nielson said he gave Megan one of his guns, Darcy knew that meant there were others in the apartment.  She'd been right.  After a judge signed a search warrant to make everything legal and proper, Shane and Blake reported finding packaged drugs in the bedroom closet, along with three handguns and a pump action shotgun.

"Good to know the kind of people living in our neighborhood," Jon said, scrubbing a hand back through his hair, leaving it mussed.  It was a gesture he did sometimes when he was getting frustrated.  Like now.

Booking Nielson Daye on charges of drug and weapons possession had taken the rest of the morning.  Nielson swore that Megan promised to pay him for the gun when she got back.  He didn't know when she would be back, or where she might have gone, or who might be after her.  For now, Nielson represented a dead end.

He didn't know Megan was dead.  That was the thing Darcy kept coming back to.

While they were tidying up the paperwork on Nielson they hadn't been able to do anything else on Megan's case, and now it was noon.  They still needed to talk to Megan's girlfriend Blair.  Darcy had hoped to make it out to talk to Megan's parents today, too, or at least speak to them by phone, but it looked like that might have to wait until tomorrow.

For now, she and Jon had both agreed it was time for lunch.

They could have stopped for a quick sandwich at Helen Nelson's café in town, or ordered a pizza at the station, but Darcy was really in the mood for some more of the chicken and dumpling soup that she had made from scratch on Thursday.  She'd doubled the recipe thinking it wasn't going to make very much, and because of that there were two containers of leftovers in the fridge.  Jon had rolled his eyes when she told him what she wanted but had driven her back home with a smile on his face.

"Maybe a break is what we need," he said, thinking out loud.  "You can tell me more about that vision you had, too, while we're away from everyone."

"There's really nothing else to tell," she said apologetically.  They were pulling into the driveway now, and her mouth was already watering for the soup.  "It's like I told you.  There was just the one quick flash.  I mean, I can try to get more from him if you want, but it's going to mean putting me in the interview room with him and getting him to be okay with me holding his hands for a while."

"Yeah, not sure I like that plan," he agreed, closing the driver's door and walking with her up the steps to their front door.  "I think he gave me everything he could anyway.  He really wants that deal from the District Attorney's office."

"Think he'll get it?" she asked, unlocking the front door and then stepping through into their kitchen.  "The deal, I mean?"

"I don't know.  Probably.  The DA will offer him a plea to a lesser charge and then—"

It happened so suddenly that it took Darcy's mind a moment to catch up.  Jon pushed past her, throwing his arm up across her chest as he did, pushing her down to the floor as he pulled his gun out of its holster in one smooth movement and pointed it at the person sitting at their kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee from Darcy's own blue ceramic mug.  One of the mugs from her shop with her new logo on it, "The Mysterious Is All Around Us."

Jon kept his gun pointed levelly, three feet away from the woman in her blue denim top and khaki cargo pants.  Her hiking boots were up on the chair across from her, under the table.  Blue eyes the color of a summer sky watched Jon with amusement and absolutely no hint of concern.  Tight blonde curls framed a face that Darcy recognized immediately. 

Setting the coffee cup down on the table, she ignored Jon's gun and shook her head.

"Is this the welcome I get?"  Running a fingertip across her lips, wiping away a drop or two of coffee, she sucked her finger clean with a quiet popping sound.

"JoEllen," Jon growled.  "You better have a good reason for being in my house."

JoEllen Meyers, retired contract killer, shifted in her seat to look around Jon to where Darcy was still hunched down on the floor.  "Hiya Darcy."

Shaking her head, feeling foolish, Darcy stood up again, gently pushing aside Jon's protective arm.  "Hi, JoEllen.  How'd you get in here?  The door was locked."

She quirked an eyebrow, as if to ask how something as simple as a lock was supposed to stop her.  Then she turned back to Jon.  "Do me a favor, will you?"

"I don't think you're in a position to ask for favors," he told her.

"Well, do me one anyway.  Put the gun away before my son sees you?  It took me a long time just to get him to sleep through the night without waking up screaming.  Nightmares."  She waited for several seconds while Jon stayed where he was.  "Please?"

Finally Jon nodded, pursing his lips as he put the gun back into its holster.  "Doesn't mean we're friends," he told her.

"'Kay."  She smiled, apparently more sure of their friendship than Jon was.

Connor, JoEllen's son, had every reason to have nightmares in Darcy's opinion.  Kidnapped by a psychopath, held as leverage against his mother, kept in a dark pit for days on end.  She'd have nightmares too.

"Where is Connor?" she asked JoEllen.

"Asleep on your couch, for now.  I hope that's all right?" 

"Well," Jon said, sarcasm curling his lip, "if you're going to go to all the trouble of breaking into our house I guess you should at least get to use our couch."

Darcy barely kept herself from rolling her eyes.  She'd forgotten how easily these two baited each other.

JoEllen stood up, bringing her empty coffee cup to the sink.  "We had a long drive to get here.  Connor needed a nap.  I could use a solid eight hours myself, I just wanted to get us here as fast as I could."

"I'm betting you had a good reason, right?" Jon asked.

"What?" JoEllen said with a smile.  "You don't think I'd come here just to see you?"

"All right, you two," Darcy interrupted them.  "Enough playful banter.  Jon, you know she wouldn't be here if it wasn't serious.  JoEllen, why don't you tell us what's going on?"

JoEllen leaned back against the counter in front of the sink and folded her arms across her chest.  "I always liked you, Darcy Sweet.  You look like a Barbie doll but you have this direct way of dealing with things.  You face them head on."

"Um," was all Darcy could think to say right away.  She twisted a strand of her hair and wondered what parts of her exactly compared to a Barbie doll.  "Thank you, I guess.  So what brings you to Misty Hollow?"

"Considering there's warrants out for your arrest," Jon muttered.

Darcy shot him a look, and he shrugged and fell silent.

"I know about the warrants," JoEllen said shortly.  "There's exactly two of them.  Everything else is just police agencies listing me as a person of interest.  I've been dodging the State Police and the FBI ever since Bear Ridge.  Here's the thing.  When you live the life I have you don't make a lot of friends.  When I was with Connor's dad, when I was trying to change my life and become someone new, I took on a new identity.  Ellen Gless.  That cover ID is still intact.  It's not hard to do, when you know how.  Connor knows me as Ellen Gless, too.  I can avoid the authorities for the rest of my life if I want to.  Me and Connor both."

"So what do you need us for?"  Jon took the seat at the kitchen table that JoEllen had vacated and spread his arms dramatically.  "It sounds like you've got everything figured out.  We're actually kind of busy at the moment with a case, so if all you need is a place to stay for the night then Darcy and I will make up the guest bedroom for you and Connor and I'll make pancakes in the morning.  How does that sound?"

Darcy wished that Jon would stop being so abrasive with JoEllen.  They really did owe their lives to her.  Even if she was a wanted fugitive.  From the little bit of time she had spent getting to know JoEllen, Darcy was convinced she was a good person who had made bad choices in her life.  She was working to fix those mistakes.  That was good enough for her.

Still, Jon had a point.  As nice as it was to see JoEllen again, given all the circumstances between the three of them, she and Jon really were on a schedule.  They still had to interview Megan's girlfriend, and somehow find the time to drive out to Cider Hill and interview her parents, too.  They didn't have time to just—

"Someone is trying to kill me," JoEllen said suddenly, cutting off Darcy's inner dialog and bringing down a silence so complete that Darcy could hear the beating of her own heart.

***

"See, here's the thing," JoEllen explained to Darcy and Jon after going to check on Connor.  "A cover ID is a great thing, unless someone figures yours out.  Then your hiding place sort of begins to feel like a trap you can't get out of."

They were all sitting at the kitchen table now.  Jon had made sandwiches from deli turkey and cheese on rye bread.  Darcy took a bite of hers as she considered what JoEllen had told them.

One of her previous employers had found her hiding under her current identity as Ellen Gless.  Darcy didn't bother asking why she didn't just ditch the cover ID and go back to being JoEllen Meyers.  That name belonged to a hired killer.  A hired killer with warrants for her arrest.  Besides.  Connor knew Ellen Gless as his mother.  She couldn't just give that up and take her and Connor into hiding.  It wouldn't be fair to him, especially in light of what he'd already suffered.

She was stuck between her current persona, Ellen Gless, and her real identity, JoEllen Meyers.  Trapped in the middle with trouble on both sides.  Either way she stepped, she was facing a world of hurt that could wreck both her life and Connor's.

Between a rock, and a hard place.

She needed help, and the first people she had thought of was a smart-guy police officer and his slightly psychic girlfriend.

Jon swirled the coffee in his cup and mumbled something about how they really didn't need this right now.  Darcy kicked his foot under the table.

"So you just need some place to lay low?" he asked JoEllen, leaning down to rub at his ankle.

"Wow, Jon, look at you," JoEllen mocked.  "Lay low?  You're talking just like a real criminal."

"Well?" he said.  "Isn't that what you're trying to do?"

She snorted and leaned back in her chair, her sandwich forgotten.  "No, it is not.  I'm not trying to hide.  I'm trying to make a better life for my son.  The life that we should have had with his father, together.  I don't want to run from this guy whether he's trying to kill me or not."

"Is he coming after you himself?" Jon asked.  "Who is he?"

"Doesn't matter who he is.  He won't come after me himself.  He'll hire someone.  I won't know who's coming for me until it's too late.  And I'm done running."

"Then what…?"  He let his question trail off, setting his sandwich back down on its plate.  "Oh.  I see."

"That's right.  I want to catch this guy, and put him away in prison."

Jon slowly brushed his palms together, his gaze level with JoEllen's.  "So, let me get this straight.  You want me to find the person who will be coming to kill you, stop them before they get to you, and arrest them."

"That's right," she said, her expression set in place.

"And," he went on, waving a hand to show he wasn't done, "at the same time you don't want me to actually go after the guy who is hiring the killer."

"Uh, right.  No.  I don't."

"Why?"

She looked down at the table, then shrugged.  "I'm hoping if we show him I can't be reached, he'll back off and forget about me.  I just need to stay hidden until whatever hired gun is coming for me gets arrested and put away."

"While you," he continued, "the hired gun who has worked God alone knows how many contracts to kill people for money—"

"Eleven," she told him.

"—walk away again.  Is that it?  JoEllen Meyers, or whatever your real name is, goes free?  What did you do to make this guy so mad at you, anyway?  You were a killer.  What was so bad about this one job?"

There was silence in the kitchen for the longest time.  The three of them had kept their voices down as it was, making sure not to wake Connor or let him hear what they were talking about, but when JoEllen spoke again her voice was quieter yet, and icy.

"I didn't take this man's job," she stated in answer to what Jon had said.  "He wanted me to kill two little kids.  I told him no."

That made Jon blink.  Darcy stared at JoEllen, a little less certain than she had been that she knew her friend.  She knew what JoEllen used to do.  At least, she knew it as a fact, in a strictly intellectual way.  The specifics, the ins and outs of what a contract killer might be asked to do, wasn't something she had spent much time thinking about.

Killing little kids?  Who did that?

Not JoEllen, Darcy reminded herself.  That was a line she would not cross.  Apparently, for someone in her profession, that created a problem.

"He was having trouble with his ex-wife," JoEllen continued, apparently feeling the need to unburden her soul of this terrible mess.  "She wanted child support from him.  She was going to get it, too.  So this guy figures, hey, if there's no kids, there's no child support."

Jon leaned forward, folding his hands on the table, and clearing his throat.  "That's truly despicable.  So you told him no?"

"Of course I told him no," JoEllen snapped.  "I told you before, up in Bear Ridge, that I've turned down plenty of good paying jobs.  That was one of them.  Now, the guy's hired someone to come after me.  Kind of a quid pro quo thing."

"Whatever happened to honor among thieves?" was Jon's comment.

"We don't have honor," she sneered.  "For that, we come to cops like you."

Darcy expected Jon to be offended.  Instead, he nodded slowly, like he and JoEllen had come to some kind of understanding.  Then he cleared his throat again and stared down at his hands.  "I have to say.  That, uh, kind of builds up my respect for you."

JoEllen actually laughed.  "I didn't know you had any for me to begin with."

Jon shrugged.

"You're our friend," Darcy put in quickly, reaching over to rest her hand on top of Jon's.  "We've got different ways of looking at the world, to be sure, but we've been through too much together to just turn you away."

"I know you don't want me here, Darcy.  I get that.  No, no it's all right.  I'm trying to turn my life around but I'm not there yet.  I want to be.  I do.  But for now, I need your help.  Connor needs your help.  Yours and Jon's both."

There was a hint of pleading in her voice which was so unlike her that Darcy felt her heart being tugged.  Jon was having an argument with himself, every thought written on his face.  Finally he drew in a breath.  "Of course you can stay here, JoEllen."

Darcy's jaw dropped.  She had been ready to argue with him, to convince him they needed to do exactly what he had just said, to tell him that she'd take full responsibility for JoEllen and Connor if need be.  Sometimes, he really could surprise her.

"Wow, Jon," JoEllen said.  "Big, tough cop has a heart of gold after all.  It really is the season of miracles, ain't it?"

"Don't push it," he said, the barest hint of a smile playing across his lips.  "It's just that your timing couldn't be worse.  We've got a mur—  I mean, a missing person investigation going on.  In fact, we're right in the middle of it now.  This was supposed to be a quick lunch before we went to our next interview."

"A mur-missing person case?" she teased.  "Wow.  You know, for a small town cop you get involved in a lot of serious stuff."

"Maybe you did it?"

"Jon!" Darcy blurted out, shocked.

"What?  I thought it was a legitimate question."

"Whatever, Mister Police Officer," JoEllen said to him.  "You two were getting into trouble long before you met me."

He nodded his head in Darcy's direction.  "I blame her."

"Hey!" Darcy said.  "It's not all my fault."

He winked at her, but then shook his head.  "It's a missing person case, officially speaking, but the victim is definitely dead."

"Wait, what?" JoEllen asked.  "How do you know the vic is dead if she's only listed as missing?"

Darcy looked at JoEllen meaningfully.

"Oh," the woman said.  "That's how.  Darcy and her mystical, magical gifts.  So now you're looking for suspects, and naturally you thought of me.  Is that it, Jon?"

"You do fit my profile."

"Dangerously smart and cute as a button?"

"Will you two stop?" Darcy sighed.

JoEllen waited until Jon looked away from her first.  "Okay, okay.  Well, why don't I help?  I can maybe give you a different viewpoint on the case.  You know," she said bitterly, "as someone who used to kill people from time to time."

"Oh, no," Jon was quick to say.  "First, I don't need your help.  Second, no one can know it's anything more than a missing person case.  Third, you're going to stay here, in this house, and not go outside, and not go near the windows, and not make any phonecalls, and—"