The Language of Death (A Darcy Sweet Coy Mystery) (6 page)

Lorne turned to Darcy, asking her silently if she wanted to.  She nodded
, but her mind was on what Felicity had just said.  Veronica was here the night Chloe died.  As Lorne ordered and Felicity went off to pour out wine coolers for both of them, questions swirled through Darcy's mind.

"Did you see Veronica when she left here?" she blurted out as soon as
Felicity came back with the tall frosted glasses filled with pink liquid for her and blue for Lorne.

Felicity
looked at her oddly and raised an eyebrow.  "Oh," Lorne said, "sorry.  Felicity, this is Darcy Sweet.  She was a good friend of Chloe's from back in their college days."

"Co
me for the services tomorrow, did you?" Felicity asked in that rough voice of hers.  "Everybody here loved Chloe.  Should be a pretty packed church.  And, yeah, to answer that question I saw Veronica when she left.  She kept checking her watch and her phone.  I could tell something had screwed up girl's night for them.  Just wish it hadn't been anything that serious."

"Them?" Lorne asked, picking up on the same thing that Darcy had.

"Sure.  Veronica and that Sami Wilmer.  You know who I mean, right?  Mousy little girl.  Glasses.  Hangs out with Chloe and Veronica sometimes."

Darcy took a long sip of
her drink.  Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she was glad that Lorne had ordered them wine coolers and nothing stronger.  Sami Wilmer had been here with Veronica the night Chloe died.  Did that eliminate both of them as suspects?

She fished
for some way to ask her next question.  "Um.  I feel bad that I missed out on this girl's night tradition.  This seems like a nice place to hang out and have fun," she lied, ignoring the empty room behind her.  "Sami and Veronica must have gotten here early to enjoy themselves."

Felicity
shrugged.  "Not really.  Veronica got here first.  She was always here just after we open at six o'clock, same that night.  Sami didn't show up until, well, later.  A few hours, I think.  She hardly ever came, for that matter.  She was here that night, though.  Bless her soul but Chloe was always the one who held that group together.  Now that she's gone…"

Lorne nodded and
drained the rest of his glass.  Darcy could see how hard this was on him.  She thanked Felicity for the drinks and took Lorne's hand.  "Come on, let's get out of here.  I'll let you show me the town."

His face relaxed a little as he sighed. 
"Yeah.  There's not much to see, though.  It won't take us too long."

Darcy thanked
Felicity again and even though the wine coolers had been offered for free she took two dollar bills out of her wallet and stuffed them into the tip jar.  Felicity smiled at her.

Behind
Felicity, in the bar-length mirror, Chloe smiled at her too.

The sight of her friend standing behind her shoulder
, at least in the reflection, made goosebumps rise up on her arms.  She stared, unable to turn away.  Chloe was right there, and yet she was a world away.

"Darcy?" Lorne asked from beside her.  "What is it?"

"Uh, nothing.  Sorry.  I thought I saw something," she said sheepishly.  She had seen something all right, but now was definitely not the time or the place to try explaining to Lorne that she could see dead people.

But when she looked back up into the mirror, there was her friend.  Chloe, in her faded blue jeans and her top with its oversized arms.  Chloe waved and winked at Darcy, pointing a thumb at Lorne.  The look on her face was easy to read.  "Isn't he gorgeous?"

Darcy's embarrassment deepened.  How often had she and Chloe played this game in college?  Spot the cutest guy in the room.  Obviously, Chloe had mastered their little game, because she was right.  Lorne was everything a girl could want in a guy.  Handsome, caring, sensitive.  Darcy had known it back in college.  Chloe had been the one to follow through on it after graduation.

She rolled her eyes at Chloe's ghostly reflection and couldn't help but smile.  She wished Chloe could meet Jon.  Jon was very different from Lorne, in a lot of ways, but it would be game on if she and Chloe got together with their men.

Of course, Lorne was here.  Jon was off finding himself or whatever it was men did when they got scared of commitment.

Chloe's expression changed and she
stretched out her hands toward Darcy as if she could reach through the mirror for real.  It was like she could read Darcy's thoughts.  Or maybe what Darcy was thinking was just that easy to see on her face.  Even to a ghost.

"Come on," she said
abruptly to Lorne.  She needed to get out of here.  Seeing Chloe there, knowing that she couldn't touch her, couldn't speak to her, was too much.  "We should go.  You promised to show me the town, remember?"

She could talk to Chloe about Jon and other matters of the living some other time.  Right now, she wanted to concentrate on finding her friend's killer.

***

Smithsville
, as a tourist attraction, would definitely be a failure.

As a quaint little town tucked into the exact center of nowhere, though, it was worth a walking tour.  Lorne showed Darcy the Town Hall, and the library, and the little playground where kids usually played during the day and where teenagers had come to hang out now that the sun had gone down.  There were little dress shops and
hair salons and hobby shops, and a bridge in the center of town that crossed over a wide, rushing river.

Streetlights illuminated the sidewalk
ahead of them as they made a circle around the streets, not really going anywhere but knowing they eventually had to trace back to Lorne's car.  All the while Darcy's mind worked at puzzle pieces and clues.  From about six o'clock on the night of Chloe's death until Chloe was found, Veronica had been at the Hoot Owl bar.  Sami Wilmer, on the other hand, hadn't shown up there until a couple of hours later.  Not only that but Sami didn't usually go out with Veronica and Chloe.  Was It possible that it had been Sami who poisoned Chloe with the medication?  Coming to the bar after could be her way of giving herself an alibi.

Which would be a great theory,
except that Darcy was missing a key piece of evidence.

"Lorne," she asked, "what time did Chloe die?  Does the coroner know?"

He had respected her silence through most of their walk, trying to draw her into conversations and failing, then just walking quietly beside her.  Now he looked at her intently, eager to dive back into the investigation of Chloe's death.  "Officially, he listed the time of death at between six-thirty and seven-thirty."

"Officially?" she asked.

He nodded, stopping at a part of the sidewalk near the post office where no one was around.  "Unofficially, he told Chloe's mom that there could be a half hour leeway on that to either side.  Still, that's between six and eight.  So Veronica couldn't have done it, right?  Felicity said Veronica was there right after the Hoot Owl opened at six o'clock."

Darcy caught a strand of her hair and twisted it between her fingers.  "I don't know.  I guess so.  But Chloe was poisoned. 
She wasn't stabbed, or shot.  She was given an overdose of epilepsy medication.  I don't know how quickly something like that takes effect.  Veronica could have forced the pills into Chloe's system somehow, and then left immediately for the bar, and still been there by six.  I think all this does is put her lower down on the suspect list."

"Lower than Sami?" he asked.

"Um.  Yes.  Look, I'm sorry about this.  About Chloe dying, I mean, but also I'm sorry that I'm accusing all these people that you know.  I've never met any of them.  I don't know anything about them so I'm not letting personal feelings get in my way.  It must be hard for you, though."

He tilted his head back and forth, considering.  "I suppose.  I don't like to think that either of them could have killed my Chloe.  But at the same time, I can't let m
y emotions get in my way.  This is too important.  I have to say, Darcy, you're really good at this.  It's almost like you're a detective yourself or something."

Oh, if you only knew, she thought.  "I've helped the police before. 
On a few things."  She left it at that and when she didn't say any more he didn't pry.  Darcy could see why Chloe liked him so much.  He'd always been a good friend.  He'd grown into a good man.

"So where does that leave us?" Lorne asked.  "Or, where
does it lead us, I guess.  Do we know any more than we did a few hours ago?"

"I think we do," Darcy said.  "It's a star
t, anyway.  If Chloe didn't have any enemies that you know about, we have to concentrate on the people she did know.  The people who would be able to get close enough to poison her in the first place.

Lorne quickly shook his head.  "No one hated Chloe.  You heard
Felicity back at the bar.  Everyone loved her."

That was Darcy's memory of Chloe, too.  No matter who she met, everyone came to love her.  Suddenly, she felt very tired.  "Take me back to my m
otel, please?  I have something I need to do before I can get some sleep."

Darcy was going to use the start they'd made and build on it, but she couldn't let Lorne see what she was going to do.  She doubted that he was ready to see her raise up a spirit to talk to.

Especially when that spirit was going to be Chloe.

Back at her motel
, Darcy stifled a yawn.  It had been a long day.  A long couple of days, for that matter.  She really shouldn't do what she was contemplating when she was this tired.  There just wasn't a whole lot of choice.  Some answers could only come from the source.

She
had performed too many communications to count.  Some with greater success than others.  Ghosts could be very reluctant conversationalists.  A few had tried to hurt her rather than offer up the secrets they held.  Up to this point, she'd been careful, or blessed, or just plain lucky that nothing serious had ever happened to her.  That didn't mean it never would. 

The effort was exhausting even when the spirit participant was willing, like she was hoping Chloe was going to be.  A little bit of herself went into each effort.  If she had to put too much effort into the conjuring, there was a risk she might not recover.

Ever.

Sighing, taking a last drink from the soda bottle she had bought from the vending machine outside the motel's office
after Lorne had dropped her off, she settled cross-legged into the center of the ring of candles she'd laid out on the floor.  They were already lit.  The room smelled of hot wax and the incense stick she had burning on the dresser.  Everything was ready.

So why was she still hesitating?

Emotions weighed her down like a lead balloon tied around her.  She was getting in her own way, she realized.  Her feelings were just too heavy for her to ignore them and center herself.  Anger.  Sadness.

Guilt.

There it was.  There was the real reason it was so hard for her to call on her friend's ghost.  She felt guilty.  Guilty that she hadn't been here when Chloe died, that she hadn't stayed closer to her best friend, that all of the paranormal abilities at her fingertips couldn't bring Chloe back.

But they could do one thing to help ease her own emotional burden, and to help bring some peace to Chloe.  They could help Darcy find Chloe's killer.
  Catching hold of that thought she put it front and center in her thoughts like a burning torch.  It let her breathe a little easier.

"Okay," she said to
herself, "we're going to do this.  Now.  Right now."

Her pep talk
fired her up and she clenched her teeth and took a few more slow, deep breaths, and told herself it was now or never.

Never wasn't really an option.

Usually, in order to call to someone on the other side like this, she would need a personal item of theirs to help make the connection.  She'd used coins and photos and stuffed animals and live pets and just about anything else she could get her hands on when the need arose.  In this case, she didn't have anything of Chloe's.  She didn't need anything, either.  The connection they shared as friends would be more than enough to bridge any gap between this world and the next.

Clearing her mind out, imagining a rolling fog covering every thought and every concern and every…well, everything, she peered into those mists, and called upon the spirit of—

Chloe.

She was there instantly, the curling tendrils of fog twisting into each other
and rising up to create the shape and then the substance of her friend.  Just like that.  Usually she'd have to call on the spirit and guide it down a figurative pathway to where she waited, or pull it forward kicking and screaming.  Chloe practically leapt into her vision.  It was so sudden that Darcy felt herself rock backward where she sat, even though the sensations of her real body were a distant hum like a pestering insect.

"
Hiya Darcy," Chloe said to her.  "Long time, no see."

She was wearing a long, flowing white dress in Darcy's vision, a pair o
f matching shoes held in her hand by their straps.  Standing barefoot, she pushed the long tresses of her golden hair back behind an ear.  It was out of its usual braid now, loose and wispy.  She smiled at Darcy, and then winked.  "If it ain't true, don't fix it," she said.