The Greatest Gift (A Darcy Sweet Mystery) (6 page)

That whole thing about Dominic
building up a big nest egg to leave Belinda when he died nagged at Darcy.  Belinda certainly didn't live like a rich woman.  Maybe, she thought, Belinda could be running out of money.  Dominic might be haunting her now to make sure his wife was taken care of.

Or he might want to protect her from someone.

It all made sense, and at the same time, it didn't.  Darcy knew there was something more to all of this.  She just didn't know what.

Jon was watching her again with that same look in his blue eyes.

Darcy fidgeted and stared down at her sandwich.  "Stop it," she said, but with a smile playing across her lips.

"You think she has something to do with what's going on at Belinda Franco's, don't you?"  It wasn't really a question the way he said it.

She chewed a bite of food and thought it over.  "I think she might.  She's very interested in getting back into Belinda's house again.  I can't imagine what connection she would have to Belinda other than being an ex-employee, though."

"She would have had
access to Belinda's house when she worked there.  Right?" Jon asked her.

"Right.
  So if there was anything in the house, like say a hidden stash of money, Rita would know about it."

"Hidden stash of money?"  He raised an eyebrow at that.  Darcy explained to him what she h
ad figured out so far, about Dominic's spirit telling her he had saved all of his money to buy Belinda the house of her dreams, and about Belinda's poltergeist ransacking her house.  Yet, Rita had just said Belinda claimed to be broke.  Darcy had to wonder if the rumored money was the key to this whole thing.

"Couldn't Belinda have spent any money that Dominic left her?" Jon asked.

"Maybe.  But wouldn't Rita know that?  Wouldn't the whole town have known it?  You know, my mother actually said she remembered Dominic came from money but never acted like he did.  So then the real question becomes, where is this money?"

"If there ever was any," Jon added.

"Right."

Darcy was enjoying this give and take between them as they worked together on another mystery.  They had always clicked, complementing each other in every imaginable way. 
Now here they were again, like no time had passed at all.

She realized, in that moment
, how very much in love she still was with Jon Tinker.

"So what should we do?" he asked.

The question took her off guard.  With her thoughts on the two of them she wanted to answer that they should get back together, throw caution to the wind, make everything like it was before.  "What do you mean?" she asked instead.

"I mean, what
should we do about Belinda?" he clarified.  When he saw the look on her face he added, "I know.  It's not my place to say or do anything.  This is your friend you're helping out, and it's completely your decision, but I'd like to help.  If that's okay?"

He h
ad completely misread the disappointment in her eyes.  His mind had been on the mystery in front of them, and not on her.  She sighed.  "I do want your help, Jon.  I do.  But we were talking about something else, if you remember."

He reached out and took her hand again.  "I won't forget.  Not ever again.  I missed you, Darcy."

Those weren't the words Darcy was hoping to hear, but they still sounded sweet.

***

Belinda greeted them with a smile and an offer to make some tea.  She was in a dark blue dress today, wearing a string of pearls with matching earrings that dangled and swung with her every move.  She practically gushed over Jon.  "I was wondering where our handsome detective had gone," she said to him with a wink.  "In a town this small someone as handsome as you doesn't just leave without people noticing."

Darcy thought it was cute the way Jon
looked embarrassed by Belinda's compliments.  He sat down at the small kitchen table with Darcy and folded his hands together in front of him.  "I came over with Darcy to help out with your problem," he said.  "I hope you don't mind."

"G
oodness, of course I don't mind."  Belinda set the teakettle to boil on the burner and came to join them, lowering herself gingerly into a chair.  "Oh, my old bones are getting more and more tired.  Take my advice, the both of you.  Don't ever get old.  You shouldn't call this a problem, though.  I'm so happy my Dominic is here.  I just need to know why."

"
That's why we're here," Darcy said. "Do you mind if I ask what Dominic left you in his will?"

Belinda blinked at her
.  "My husband's will?"

"I realize it's a very personal question.  Is it all right if you tell us?"

"Why wouldn't it be all right?" Belinda asked, clearly confused.  "There wasn't anything much for him to leave me.  This house, our old car, and some bills he hadn't paid yet.  Dominic and I didn't have very much.  We lived very simple lives.  His father cut him off when he married me, you know.  Oh, that family had more money than God, but they never shared a cent of it with my Dominic when he chose me."

Darcy exchanged a glance with Jon. 
That confirmed at least part of what they had found out.  "Belinda," she said, "I heard that Dominic was saving all of his money for you.  Did he maybe have a bank account that you didn't know about?"

Belinda was shaking her head emphatically before Darcy even finished asking the question.  "No.  Nothing like that.  My Dominic didn't trust banks.  He kept all of his money here in
our house.  I know where every penny of it was, and believe me, I spent all of that in the first year after he passed.  If it wasn't for my retirement check I would have lost this place a long time ago."  She looked around the room, obviously seeing more than just the house.  "That would have been such a shame."

The look on Jon's face was a mirror of Darcy's own.  So much for that lead.  If money was the motive behind the strange occurrences in Belinda's house, Belinda didn't know anything about it.

That didn't mean Dominic's spirit didn't know about it.  Darcy decided to try again.  "Do you think your husband is trying to tell you there's money here for you?  Somewhere in the house you didn't know about?"

"Now where would my Dominic get money like that?" Belinda laughed.  "We never had any money to begin with."

The teakettle whistled, and Belinda pushed herself back up out of the chair to go tend to it.  Jon took the opportunity to lean over and whisper to Darcy.  "Maybe they didn't have any money because Dominic was saving every extra dollar and hiding it from his wife."

"I thought of that, too," Darcy said.

"Maybe," Jon added quickly, "he was hiding money because he was using it for things he didn't want Belinda to know about.  Gambling?  Women?"

Darcy looked at him sharply.  "
Put away your suspicious mind, Senior Investigator.  Dominic told me that he loved Belinda.  He wanted to save up to buy Belinda a house.  That's a nice gesture, don't you think?"

"You've never had a ghost lie to you?"

Darcy frowned.  Ghosts usually told only the truth, or the truth as they saw it.  Apparently in the afterlife there wasn't any reason to lie.  Especially during a communication, where Darcy was basically compelling the spirit to communicate.  But that fact aside, there had been a few ghosts who had told Darcy a lie.  It wasn't impossible.  She remembered the look he had given Belinda in the vision, though, and she knew it had been the real thing.  Love.

Just like how Jon used to look at her.

She studied Jon, wishing that instead of discussing another mystery in the sleepy town of Misty Hollow, they could go back to talking about them.  Where did they stand with each other?  What happened next?  She knew that something was happening between them, a rekindling of a spark that maybe hadn't ever gone out, strong emotions coming to the surface again.  That was what they should be talking about instead of how to help Belinda.

But, helping out her neighbors was part of who Darcy was.  She'd been like that long before she'd met Jon.  That would never change.

Belinda came back with matching blue ceramic cups for Darcy and Jon.  When she set them down Darcy asked the next question on her list.

"Do you think you could show us the door that leads downstairs?"

Belinda had picked up the living room since Darcy had been here yesterday.  Everything was back in its place, the picture frames back in order, the furniture arranged perfectly again.  The poltergeist had not struck today.

They went to where the stairs leading up to the second floor started. 
This was where the door had been in her vision.  Instead, it was a wall.  Darcy looked but saw no seam, no joint, no hinges.  Nothing that would let anyone know there had ever even been a door here.  Belinda smiled at her confusion and put a finger up to her lips.  "This is a secret, you know.  I had this built just two years ago now.  I wanted to keep my real treasure safe and hidden."

Aha, Jon's expression said.  Darcy knew what he meant.  They had been asking about money, and Belinda had said there was none, but that didn't mean there wasn't something of value in the house.

Belinda reached out to the paneled wall beside the stairs leading up to the second story.  It looked just like any other part of the wall, but Belinda put her hand against a certain spot and pressed here and there with her ring finger and thumb.  Darcy blinked.  Those two points had blended into the pattern on the wall panel but Belinda had found them with practiced ease.  When she pushed and held them the panel released with a soft snick and a narrow rectangular door opened toward them.  It was right where Dominic had shown Darcy the door in her vision.  The door that led downstairs.

Reaching into the exposed space behi
nd the hidden door, Belinda flicked a switch and lights came on, revealing a finished stairway with hand railings on both sides, leading down.  The walls were painted blue.  Light brown carpeting softened their footsteps.  Obviously, someone had spent a lot of time on this.

Belinda smiled and waved them on. 
"Come on down.  Let me show you the only treasure my Dominic left me when he died."

The stairs were steep and narrow but they opened up at the bottom to a wide space that must have
run half the length of the house over their heads.  It was cozy, with narrow horizontal windows along the top of the cinder block walls peeking out over ground level to let sunlight in, wall to wall carpeting, and a short set of steps at the other end leading up to metal hatchway doors like cellars sometimes had.

And along the walls were dozens of framed newspaper
articles.

Belinda looked at several of them in turn, her face taking on the
look of a woman viewing masterpiece paintings in a museum.  "Dominic made this space for me, so that I would never forget him.  He loved me so.  I loved him, too."  A tear ran down her cheek.  "I miss him.  So much."

Darcy and Jon read some of the clippings, all of them from different newspapers, with dates carefully written in a strong hand in the lower right corner of their colored paper backings.
  They were reviews of different Broadway musicals.  Some of the titles Darcy recognized, and some of them she didn't.  But all of them had to do with the same Broadway actor.  Dominic Franco.

Belinda's treasures.

"Did you know he was a Broadway star?" Jon asked in a hushed whisper.

"I had no idea."  Darcy noticed that the reviews were all positive,
some of them comparing Dominic to Walter Matthau and Laurence Oliver.  His turn as the lead in Phantom of the Opera was referred to as the "standard by which all other performances would be forever judged" in one.  It was a very impressive trip down someone else's memory lane.  Who knew they'd had a celebrity living right here with them in Misty Hollow?

"How much do Broadway actors get paid?" Jon asked, a little too loudly.

"Oh, enough to get by," Belinda answered, turning from a full page ad for Les Miserables.  "We met when he was just coming to the attention of the right people.  His
Bella Linda
.  That's what he called me back then.  I loved him for who he was, of course, not for his paychecks.  After he retired he had some royalties coming in, for a while.  Those have mostly dried up by now.  No, my Dominic was an extremely talented man but he was never going to be rich." 

Darcy had to wonder.  Movie actors lived in luxury, at least the most famous ones did, but what about Broadway actors?  Maybe there really was more money than Belinda knew about.

"Have you felt anything?" Jon asked.  There was no need for him to explain what he was talking about.

"No," she answered.  She had tried again today, but if there was a ghostly presence in this house she couldn't sense it.  "I don't know—"

"Oh, my," Belinda said now, her voice dismayed.  "However did this happen?"

She was looking at one particular article, the yellowed paper ripped in the middle, nearly from side to side.
  "This doesn't even belong in this frame.  It belongs in that one, and that one belongs in here."