A Murder of Crows (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery #7) (9 page)

“Well,” Darcy put in.  “I’m actually here for a conference so I’ll be in town for a few more days, just in case you need me for something.”

“Sounds good,” Phillips said
.  “Thanks for understanding.”  Standing up he put his hand out to Jon.  The crow was dark against his skin.

J
eff crossed his arms and gloated with a told-you-so smirk.

***

“What does it mean?”

Jon and Darcy were back in the hotel room.  She held the coin in h
er hand, turning it over from clover to crow and back again.  “I’m not sure.  Officer Phillips is definitely involved somehow.”

“Have you asked Jeff?”

She frowned and rolled her eyes.  “Now he doesn’t want to be chatty.  Apparently he thinks he’s gotten his message across.  He told us to beware he crow, and now we have a crow on a coin, and a crow on Mark Phillips’ arm.  It’s got to be connected.”

“Yeah, but
the only reason we know so is because Jeff said.”  Jon looked around the room, as if he was trying to see Jeff.  “We can’t exactly call your dead ex-husband in to testify on the stand.”

In the corner, Jeff sulked.

“So we have to do more legwork,” Darcy said, ignoring Jeff.  She knew better than to feed into his moods.  “How often do you end up doing that anyway?  My gift can point us in the right direction but I know we need the proof…”

They needed more guidance, she realized.

“What?” Jon asked her when she trailed off.  “What is it?”

A thought had occurred to Darcy.  She didn’t like it, but it might be the only way.

“I need to do another communication,” she told Jon.  “I need to call up Marla again.  I’m just not looking forward to what I might see this time.”

Jon took her hands.  “I’ll be right here with you.  And remember.  Whatever she can show you is in the past. 
You can’t let it hurt you.  It can’t change what you and I have now.”

She leaned into him and let him hold her close.  “I know,” she said.

Knowing didn’t change the way she felt, though.

The fan in th
e bathroom whirred as it worked to clear out the smoke from the candles circled around Darcy once more.  Jon had hopped up to sit on the sinktop.  Jeff moped in the bathtub again.  She had drawn the curtain closed across it before she started, but she could still sense him back there, being annoying.  Annoying and silent.

Calling up the images of the fog in her mind she reached out to Marla.  She was
even more reluctant to come forth this time, and it took Darcy some effort to make the contact.  When she did appear, she turned and crossed her arms, not looking right at Darcy.

Ha, Darcy thought to herself.  Not calling me names now, are you?

“Marla.  Did Riley Mason kill you?”

Marla’s specter shifted from foot to foot
.  There was a tugging sensation like an invisible rope between them.  Marla wanted to leave, but Darcy’s will kept her here in this place between life and death. 

Finally, Marla shook her head.  No.
  Riley Mason wasn’t the killer.

Okay.  That was what Darcy and
Jon had already figured.  None of the pieces fit with Riley as the murderer.  Too many holes and questions.

Like this next one.

“Can you tell me who killed you?”

Marla nodded, her smoky form drifting away and then pulling back into sharp focus.  Wherever this was leading, Marla did not want to admit to it.

She looked at Darcy finally, her eyes darkening with menace.  “The crow.”

That was as indirect an answer as she had expected. 
Darcy had faced angry spirits before.  For the most part, there was little they could do to the living.  Strong ones could throw objects at your head.  Angry ones could make you feel uncomfortable or prickly or cold or hot.  She’d been through that, and worse sometimes, and she wasn’t fearing it from Marla.

The answer Marla had given her, though, surprised
her.  The crow had killed her.  Jeff had confirmed already that Officer Mark Phillips, with the tattoo on his arm, was the crow that he and Marla kept talking about.  Beware the crow, Jeff had said before Darcy and Marla had gone out to that bar.  Somehow, he had known Marla would run into Mark Phillips here in Ryansburg.

So how had he known that?
  And, why would Phillips, a police officer, want to kill Marla?

Marla’s spirit rushed forward
at her, right up close to Darcy’s face, angry and screaming and terrifying.  “You don’t get to know!  I had him when you didn’t want him!  Jeff was mine!  MINE!”

Darcy nearly fled the vision.  Spectral image or not, what Marla had just done sent cold chills up Darcy’s spine even as her heart began racing.  She had to calm herself down before she lost the connection between them altogether.

Suddenly, she realized that was what Marla wanted.

There was a deeper mystery here, something that even in death Marla didn’t want to admit to. 
Something involving her and Jeff together, obviously.  Something that had gotten Marla killed.

Darcy locked her gaze on Marla’s and held it, forcing the spirit back, making Marla bend to her will.  “Show me,” Darcy said.  “Show me what you and Jeff did.”

Marla shook her head so hard she started to wisp into streaks of color and light.  Darcy leaned forward, sending more of her will into the conjuring.  “Show me, Marla.”

The swirling clouds of mists around her snapped into clear focus so violently that Darcy knew her real body had jerked in surprise.  She hoped she wasn’t scaring Jon.  She also hoped he didn’t try to wake her from this.

She needed to see this.

Marla, younger by a few years but still the red headed beauty showing off for the world around her, was talking to an old gentleman with thin, s
now white hair.  They sat at a small kitchen table, and even though the old man was dressed in a checkered shirt and khaki slacks, Marla was dressed in a prim black dress and a white shirt and a black suit jacket.  Not her usual style, Darcy reflected.  This outfit was more appropriate for a business woman.

“As you can see, Robert
,” Marla said to the man, pushing a piece of paper across the table to him, “your assets will be well taken care of.  We will hold them in trust for you, and guarantee you a five percent return on them.  That’s better than any banking institution in the state can give you.”

Darcy didn’t understand.  Marla had never been a banker or anything like that.  At least, not that she knew.  So what was going on here?

Robert lifted the sheet of paper with shaky hands.  “Well,” he said.  “It all looks good to me, but I’m still not sure.  I have more than enough to live on the rest of my life.  I’m comfortable.  I’m really not sure I should take the risk.”

Marla smiled thinly.  Darcy recognized the venom behind it.  She didn’t think the man saw it.  From the pocket of her suit jacket she produced a cell phone.  Holding it below the table so that Robert couldn’t see it, she deftly typed out a text message without looking
down and then sent it out.  She continued talking for a few minutes about monetary funds and how secure her company was from electronic fraud and so on and on.

Then someone else rushed into the home, into the field of the vision.  The man’s back was to Darcy
, but she recognized him even without being able to see his face.

“I just heard,” Jeff said.  “The First National Bank had a computer hacker break into their records.  More than half of their clients lost everything.”

Robert’s bushy eyebrows flew up.  “Really?  That bank’s just down the street from mine.”

Marla nodded, pursing her lips sadly.  “Unfortunately this is the world we live in.  Your bank could be next.  If you aren’t willing to take a risk with us, I wish you the best, but…”

“No, wait.”  Robert held his hand up as Marla started to stand up.  “Wait, please.  I can’t lose my money.  I’ve saved or so long so that I’ll have something to pass on to my son.  I can’t lose his inheritance.  Please.  I’ll sign the forms.”

Marla smiled like a cat
who had just eaten a canary, and slid her way back into the kitchen chair.  She passed Robert a pen.  “Very good.  I’m so happy you changed your mind.  You won’t be disappointed.”

Jeff picked something up
from a dish on the table and held it up to the light.  It was a coin, as big as his palm, with a clover on one side and a crow on the other.  “This is nice.  Yours?”

“Yes,” Robert said, looking over the papers again.  “My family crest is the crow.  From back in the
middle ages.  I had dozens of them made up.  Why don’t you keep that one?  For good luck.”

The old man smiled at Jeff, and he put the coin in his pocket.

“All right,” Marla said.  “Just sign here, and here, and we’ll take care of transferring the money over, Mister Phillips.”

Phillips!  Darcy looked at the old man, and could see the resemblance now.  It was in the cheekbones, and the set of the jaw.  This was Officer Mark Phillips’ dad.

***

Darcy gasped for air and fell back against the toilet before she caught herself.  Her legs were numb, and her head throbbed.  Jon was
with her immediately, holding her, trying to get her up.

“No, not yet,” Darcy said,
tasting the gummy inside of her mouth.  “I can’t stand up yet.  Oh, Jon.  This is awful.”

She fell against his chest, waiting for the feeling to come back into her legs.  Jeff peeked out through the shower curtain at them but with one
glare from Darcy, he fled so far away that she couldn’t feel his presence any more.

“Yeah, you’d better run,” she whispered.

Jon pulled back to look at her.  She sighed.  “My ex-husband, as it turns out, was a total jerk.  Apparently, he took up with Marla for more than just her, you know, company.”  Her face heated and she hated herself for even caring.  It was long in the past, like Jon had said, and both Jeff and Marla were dead.

She sucked a deep breath and finally levered herself up enough to sit on the lid
of the toilet seat.  In halting words, she quickly told Jon what she had seen.  “So that’s why Mark Phillips killed Marla.  It all makes sense now.  He recognized her.  He must have seen Marla back when she was scamming his dad.  Seeing her again, now, he wanted revenge for what had happened to his father.”

“We don’t know that,” Jon pointed out.

Turning her face up to him, she tilted her head and glared.

“Okay, okay, understand me,” he said.  “I know what you saw is the truth.  Jeff and Marla scammed Phillips’ dad.  They used the man’s fear of banks and technology to get him to turn over all of his money, and then probably disappeared the next day. 
Fine.  I get that.  But you didn’t see the murder.  It would have been nice if Marla had done that for us.”

She made a noise in her throat.  “Marla isn’t exactly being helpful.”

“Well, with everything we know, we can see that Phillips had good reason to kill Marla.  But, my point is that we don’t know if it was an accident or intentional.”

“Jon, he’s arresting the wrong man to cover his tracks!  That’s intentional.”

He nodded, chewing on the inside of his cheek.  “You’re right.  So I guess the only thing to do is go and ask him why he did it.”

***

The desk sergeant at the Ryansburg Police Department wasn’t as nice as Sergeant Fitzwallis back in Misty Hollow.  He was gruff and sour and barked at them that Mark Phillips had gone home and they should, too.

“Wonderful,” Darcy said as they walked down the front steps of the police station. 
The sun was still warm on the city streets, but it didn’t make her feel any better.  “Now what?”

Jon looked around them.  “Wait here,” he said.

She didn’t know what he was up to.  He rushed up to a knot of officers standing over on the sidewalk, laughing and talking.  She watched him slap a hand on the back of one of them and insert himself in the conversation.  He was there for several long minutes before coming back to her.

“Okay, let’s go.  We’re going to need Marla’s car.  It’s outside the city.”

“Wait,” she said, but letting him tug her along by the hand.  “What’s outside the city?”

“Mark Phillips’ house.”
  He winked at her surprised expression.  “Cops have their own language.  Lucky for you, I speak it.”

Marla’s car smelled like Marla.  At least, Darcy thought it did.  It was probably all in her mind, but it still bothered her.

She had asked him why they couldn’t just use his car.  A little sheepishly, he’d explained that after getting here to Ryansburg he’d forgotten to gas up.  He was almost on empty.  So, Marla’s car was the best choice.  Under the circumstances, they both agreed Marla probably wouldn’t mind.

Jon drove them through the city streets and out towards the suburbs.  Tall buildings that crowded next to each other slowly thinned out and then were gone altogether in favor of small, cookie cutter houses of pale red brick or
white siding.  Manicured lawns were boxed in by low fences.  Dogs barked from a few of them as they passed by.