Laid to Rest (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 18)

COPYRIGHT

First published in Australia by South Coast Publishing, September 2015.
Copyright K.J. Emrick (2015)

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and locations portrayed in this book and the names herein are fictitious.  Any similarity to or identification with the locations, names, characters or history of any person, product or entity is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

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jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations.

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Misty Hollow had changed so much. 

Darcy Sweet had moved here when she was a teenager, to live with her Great Aunt Millie, and start a new life.  Little did she know where that one decision would bring her.  Life moved on, after all, and the mysterious was always around.

The town was bigger now, of course, with the new Big Box store going in over on Coldspring Road and the new houses and the new faces.  The Town Hall was new as well, after a raging fire, and Darcy had to take at least part of the blame for that.  She grimaced as she walked past the recently finished brown brick building.  Those memories weren’t pleasant.  That was just the way things went, she knew.  Sometimes you had to take the bad with the good.

Other days there was no bad to be seen.  Only the good.

Like today.

Main Street was busy.  Walking up the sidewalk, snugging her jean jacket a little closer against the breeze that stirred through her long dark hair, Darcy smiled at the friendly faces of people she didn’t know.  Tourism in Misty Hollow had really taken off in the last few months.  There had been a lot of splashy headlines coming from her once sleepy little town, and those news reports had really stirred people’s curiosity.  Drug dealers being arrested.  Graves in the cemetery being dug up and robbed.  The Town Hall fire, of course.  That sort of thing always made headlines.

And, of course, the murders.

For a bookstore owner, Darcy Sweet had seen more than her fair share of murders, and dead people.  Women like her never got into this much trouble in the movies.  Thirty years old.  Heart-shaped face.  Slim and pretty, or so her husband kept telling her.  She should be living in a romantic comedy.  Something with Channing Tatum. 

Instead, she always seemed to be deep into one mystery or another.

It was something she would never get used to, even if it was becoming a recurring part of her life.  Partly, that was because her husband was a police officer here in town. Well, chief of police now, after his big promotion. 

That wasn’t the only reason she kept getting swept up into the mysteries that bubbled up through the cracks and crevices of Misty Hollow.

Darcy could see ghosts.

It was a family trait that got passed down to the women in the bloodline.  Not all of them.  Sometimes it skipped a generation.  Her Great Aunt Millie had the gift, but not Darcy’s mother.  Darcy’s sister didn’t have it either, but Darcy was sure that her niece had the gift. Darcy did for sure.  When someone died under mysterious circumstances, and needed help to make sense of their death, their ghosts often came to her for help.  In her kitchen.  In her dreams.  Even on her television during her favorite movie.

Ghosts were funny that way.

The thing was, in the past three days, she hadn’t seen a single ghost.  Not one spirit restlessly wandering the streets of Misty Hollow.  Except for her Great Aunt Millie’s ghost, of course.  She was always there to knock a book off the shelf in the Sweet Read bookstore or hover just out of sight when Darcy was relaxing at home.

They’d been back from a honeymoon in Australia, her and Jon, for just those three days, and not one ghost had come to visit her or trouble her dreams.

For Misty Hollow, that was unusual.  It was like all of the ghosts had just…gone.

Even Aunt Millie had been unusually quiet.  After letting on that there was something important she needed to tell Darcy, the dear old woman’s spirit had chosen to keep mostly to herself.  To disappear like, well, a ghost.  Maybe she was just giving Darcy and Jon time to ease back into things after their not-very-relaxing vacation in Australia.  Or, maybe she was too embarrassed by whatever was in the book she had been hiding all these years.

The journal that had been tucked away downstairs in the cellar in some unknown hidey-hole that had left the pages nearly ruined.  A journal with a faded picture on front and her aunt’s thoughts and reflections chronicled on the pages.

Darcy needed to know what was in that book.  But, as badly as she wanted to know, her need for a few days of rest before launching into another mystery was greater.

She made a promise to herself, though.  Today she was going to start finding out why this particular journal was so cryptically important.

As for the other ghosts and their unusual silence…well.  That was very odd.  Darcy had gotten used to solving mysteries.  She’d even grown to enjoy them.  Having to use her wits and her smarts and her paranormal gifts to help people and solve crimes had become part of who she was. Hers was definitely not an ordinary life.

Hopefully, this mystery of Aunt Millie’s book wouldn’t be her last one.

At any rate, she was ready to look into the book now.  It was old, and hadn’t been kept in very good shape.  Time and the elements had not been kind to it.  Keeping it in the cellar had been a really bad idea on Millie’s part.  That’s where Smudge had come up with a page from it, bringing it to Darcy like a secret treasure in his little feline teeth.  Her black and white tomcat was always getting into things.  He probably would have carried the whole book up to her if it had fit in his mouth.

The page was nearly ruined, and it had taken Darcy a long time to decipher just a little bit of it.

Millie had been furious at Smudge, at first, for revealing this secret to Darcy, but then with a change of heart her aunt had decided now was the time to let Darcy see whatever secrets were in that book.

Darcy was ready for them, too.  Tonight.  After she got home from work.  For now, she was just a simple bookstore owner living in a small town, getting coffee from the local café.

That suited her just fine.

Helen’s café had been an establishment in town for as long as Darcy could remember, even back when she’d been a little girl visiting her aunt, before she’d moved here permanently.  The outside had been repainted recently, brown with white trim, colors to put people in mind of coffee.  The inside hadn’t changed much at all, not in all that time.

The floor tiles were a white and black checker pattern.  The booths along the windows were dark brown to match the four round tables across the open area between the door and the glass counter.  It was the smells that always caught her attention.  Sugary sweet treats and cinnamon and baking bread.  Coffee and teas.  Chocolate.  Vanilla.  It always smelled so good in here.

Her stomach grumbled.

“Hi Darcy,” Helen called to her from behind the counter, where she was handing a customer a brown paper bag with the Bean There Bakery and Café logo on it.  Darcy recognized the customer, Blake Underwood was his name.  He was still in his mail carrier uniform, probably stopping for a break after delivering everyone’s mail in town.  He exchanged greetings with Darcy on his way out. 

Darcy turned to Helen at the counter.  “Can I get a cup of your coffee and a pretzel bun to go, Helen?  I need to get back to the bookstore for a few hours so I can go home early.”

  “Aw, that’s too bad,” Helen told her, genuinely meaning it.  “We haven’t had much time to catch up since you got back from Australia.  I was hoping to hear more about the big arrest you got tangled up in.”

Darcy hadn’t been able to escape the news of the unusual murder case her and Jon had gotten tangled up in—as Helen put it—even if it had happened all the way over on the other side of the world.  As soon as they’d gotten back in town their favorite reporter Brianna Watson had descended on them and grilled them endlessly about what had happened in Tasmania.  Darcy had sat through the interview with a forced smile, because she understood how a serial killer slipping people poison would make international headlines, even in this day and age.

She looked around her now, but the café was nearly empty for a change.  Usually there was always people in Helen’s shop, but sometimes the place emptied out, like now.  Roland Baskin sat at a far table, nursing a big ceramic cup of coffee as he read the newspaper.  Through the swinging doors that led from behind the glass counter case to the kitchen, she could see Elizabeth Archer and Alan Lansky, working away to make the treats and goodies the store would sell.

Even so, Darcy lowered her voice.

“It wasn’t as wonderful as Brianna made it sound on the evening news.  Jon and I were nearly poisoned ourselves, you know.”

Helen’s eyes got wider, and she took off her sanitary plastic gloves to run a hand through her graying hair, fussing with the pony tail at the back.  “You certainly get into the craziest of situations.”

“I don’t mean to,” Darcy said.  It almost sounded like an apology.

“No, no, Darcy please don’t misunderstand me.”  Helen turned around to pour the coffee, and then turned back to hand the Styrofoam cup to Darcy, along with a lid.  “I’ve always admired the way you get involved in other people’s troubles so you can make things better.  Even the bad stuff with my husband, when he went away to prison.  You were there to help find out what really happened.  You were there to help me through it all.”

Darcy was glad that her good friend didn’t hold that against her.  There was nearly thirty years between them, but Helen’s friendship meant so much to her it would have been hard to lose it over that whole mess.  Helen wasn’t that kind of person, though.  Thankfully.

Alan swept through the swinging kitchen doors just then, smiling and wearing the same type of green apron that Helen was, with the café’s logo on it.  He was a tall man, with an angular face and thick black hair that hadn’t yet been touched with gray.  He set down his tray of cinnamon rolls and swept his arm around Helen, head and shoulders taller than she was, giving her a big kiss on the cheek.

Besides, Darcy could see that Helen had moved on from her despicable husband.  She had dropped quite a bit of her previous stocky weight and she’d never looked younger, in Darcy’s opinion.  Alan treated her well, and the two of them had gotten very serious with each other.  He wasn’t hard to look at either, tall and handsome in his middle years.  Maybe there would be wedding bells for Helen again in the future.  Darcy would love to see that.

With a grin and an affectionate squeeze around Alan’s waist, Helen settled herself against her man’s chest.  “Hey, you.  I was just telling Darcy how proud of her I am.  Your aunt would be so proud of you, too, Darcy.  If she could only see you now.”

That meant a lot to Darcy.  She knew exactly how Aunt Millie felt about her, from all the times her spirit had popped round for a conversation or to give advice, but it was nice to know that other people felt that way about her, too.

“Thank you, Helen.”  She accepted the pretzel bun she’d ordered from Helen in a small paper bag.  “You know, we just found an old book of hers.  My aunt’s, I mean.  It was down in the cellar.  A purple journal with a picture of one of those old fashioned beehives embossed on the front.  At least it used to be there.  It’s almost completely faded now.  You know, the ones that almost look like a layer cake sitting on a small table?”

“Really?  How fascinating.  What’s in it?”

“I haven’t seen too much of it.  It seems really important, though.  I’m going to go read through more of it tonight.  That’s why I’m in such a rush to get everything done at work.”

Elizabeth Archer came out from the kitchen into the middle of their conversation, her gaze on Darcy for a long moment, her hair up in a baker’s net, exposing the burn scars on the left side of her face.  Darcy smiled.  Elizabeth didn’t. 

Turning aside she asked Alan if they had any currant jelly left.

“In the back of the storage…I’ll come show you.  Be easier.”  He gave Helen another peck and waved at Darcy before he and Elizabeth both disappeared back into the kitchen.

“Well I have to go,” Darcy said, holding her coffee and bag up.  “Thanks for this.  Add it to my tab?”

“Don’t worry about it this time.  It’s on the house.  Just promise we’ll make some time to get together again?  How about dinner tomorrow.  You should bring Jon over to my house.  I’ll have Alan cook.  The man can do amazing things to a roast.  He has magic hands.  Um.”

Her cheeks colored a pale red, and Darcy wondered if maybe Alan had amazing hands for something else than cooking roasts.

“Anyway,” Helen continued.  “You could bring Ellen and that wonderful son of hers, too.  How does that sound?”

Darcy didn’t have any plans.  She didn’t know about Jon, but she could always check with him at home tonight.  “That sounds perfect, Helen.  About six o’clock?  Will that be all right?”

“Let’s make it seven.  That will give everyone time to relax a bit after work.”

The idea of a home-cooked meal and a night with friends sounded great to Darcy.  Although, the last time she’d been to dinner at Helen’s house a ghost had murdered someone on the front lawn.

But what were the chances of that happening twice?

She waved at Roland Baskin on the way out.  The elderly man frowned at her, making his forehead furrow all the way up to his receding hairline.  Darcy hadn’t expected anything less.  The town grump rarely had a smile for anyone.  She had to wonder what he was always so sour about.  Maybe someday she’d ask him. 

For now, she had things to do, and no time to be nice to someone who wanted to be angry at the world.

Sipping her coffee, Darcy made her way back to the bookstore.  The paperwork she needed to complete should only take a few hours if she buckled down to it.  After that, she could get home and dive into this mystery of her aunt’s.