Have Yourself a Merry Little Murder Read online

  They hadn’t been able to get in, because Brian and Joel were dead.

  He trailed off, and Darcy could hear the sadness in his voice. It was obvious that whoever Brian Harris had been to his family, he’d been more than just a good friend.

  Jon looked up at Darcy, one eyebrow raised, silently conveying to her that he didn’t really have anything to tell her about. Just lots and lots of people to interview.

  “Excuse me,” Darcy said to the man. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. My name is Darcy Sweet.”

  “She’s a consultant for our agency,” Jon pointed out. “And my wife, too.”

  The man looked up over his shoulder and gave Darcy a nod. “I know who you are, Darcy. You can’t live in this town and not know one of its most famous residents.”

  That surprised Darcy. “So, we have met before?”

  He chuckled softly. “I wouldn’t think so. One of my brothers lives out of town, and Lloyd—that’s my other brother—lives next to me here in Misty Hollow but we both work up north in Vermont. We’re hardly ever here. I think we’ve passed each other in the deli a few times. Not surprised you didn’t recognize me.”

  Well, that explained that at least. Darcy had been surprised when she hadn’t known either the victims, or the family they were coming to see. “I’m sorry for your loss… um… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  “Casey,” he told her. “Casey Levison. It’s a terrible thing, Darcy. I’m real appreciative of the way Jon has been treating our family. This is going to be a sad Christmas for all of us.”

  Darcy could certainly understand that. Losing someone you cared about was terrible at any time of year. Losing them at Christmas was twice as hard on everyone.

  She came around the desk to stand next to Jon, giving the pathetic little plastic Christmas tree on the filing cabinet a pat on her way by. This way, Casey didn’t have to crane his neck to look at her. “Had Brian and Lana ever come to visit with your family before? Maybe with Joel?”

  A frown deepened on Casey’s face. “Yes. I knew Brian from college. He came to see us several times in the past. Less often after he married Lana. She… changed Brian.”

  Jon didn’t look up at Darcy, but she could sense him shift in his chair. This was information he didn’t have from Casey’s official statement. Sometimes it took someone who wasn’t a police officer to ask the right questions, the ones no one else would ever think to ask. Casey had just alluded to problems in Lana and Brian’s marriage. Trouble in a marriage was often a root cause of murder. Money, love, and anger. Those were the causes of most murders. Bad money, bad love, and bad anger…

  She took a chance at which one it might be this time. “You know Lana is okay, right? Jon told you she’s here, at the station? I’m sure if you wanted to talk to her he could arrange it for you.”

  There was that frown again. “I’d just as soon not, if you don’t mind. I loved Brian like a brother… well, like a fourth brother, I guess you’d say. All of us brothers did. His son Joel was a great kid, always joking, always smiling, bouncing that ball of his. He loved that ball. They were great to be around. His wife, Lana… well, I’d just as soon never see her again in my life.”

  Now Jon sat up straighter. “Casey, I want you to be very careful about what you’re saying. I don’t want to cause trouble for you, but it sounds like you’re saying there was bad blood between your family and Lana Harris?”

  Casey shifted in his seat. He slapped his ski cap against his thigh. “Yeah, you could say that. Listen, this is my good friend who died and I’m not going to pull any punches. You know Lana was running around on Brian, right?”

  Jon stopped twisting the pen in his hands. Darcy felt just as surprised. “No,” she told him, “we didn’t know that. We didn’t know much about Brian and Lana at all, really.”

  She knew a little about Joel, actually, but only what she’d heard from his ghost so far, and even that wasn’t much.

  Jon pointed his pen off in the direction of the other room, where they all knew his officers were still busy taking statements. “Was the affair with someone in your family? One of your brothers, maybe?”

  Casey sneered. “No way. None of us wanted anything to do with Lana once we heard about the affair. We’re family men, Jon. None of us would risk what we have with our wives for a one-night stand. We’re just not cut that way.”

  “You’re sure?” Jon pressed. “I don’t mean to harp on a sore subject but you said you and one brother work up in Vermont, and the Harris’s lived in Vermont… so…?”

  “No, sir,” Casey insisted strongly, shaking his head as Jon started asking the question. “It’s not any of us three, I can tell you that. From what I could gather it was some guy from up in Vermont where we’re all from. I don’t want anything to do with that, myself. I’m not saying Lana isn’t pretty, because she is, it’s just that she rubs me the wrong way… although I guess, under the circumstances, that’s the wrong turn of phrase.”

  Darcy tried not to smile at that, but she couldn’t help it. He really did not like Lana at all. His view of the woman sitting back in the holding cell really painted a different picture of the whole Harris family.

  “Any idea who it was, then?” Jon asked him. “Someone the family knew? I think it’s pretty odd that all of you have ties to Vermont, but nobody knew who Lana was fooling around with outside of her marriage.”

  Casey shrugged. “Honestly I have no idea. Brian told me he was starting to suspect someone, but he wouldn’t tell me who. He’s known about the affair for years, but he wouldn’t leave Lana. I tried to tell him it would be for the best, but he was dedicated to his family, even if that evil wife of his wasn’t. And yes, me and Lloyd work in Vermont, not far from where Brian and Lana lived. There’s a whole group of us who go back and forth for the work from this area to that one. It’s just the nature of the economy. You know, they talk about how the jobless rate is at an all-time low but what they don’t tell you is you gotta go where the jobs are. It’s not like you can just roll out of bed and get a job in your own neighborhood. You ask me, there’s not so many jobs out there as they want you to think.”

  Darcy was only listening to him with half an ear now. She was thinking about the possibility of this affair and how it affected Jon’s investigation. Bad love, just like she thought. That was a strong motive for murder.

  “You know,” Casey said. “I mean, whoever Lana was having her affair with could be someone in our circle, the guys going back and forth to Vermont, but I really wouldn’t know who. I try not to think of her any more than I need to. For all I care you can let her rot back in that cell of yours.”

  After another few questions led them around in circles, Jon stood up and offered his hand to Casey. “Well, thanks for coming in. I better let you and your family get home before the snow starts falling again. According to the weatherman that’s going to be any minute now.”

  “I appreciate that, Jon. I want to try to salvage what I can of this holiday, maybe even cook our dinner up and spend a meal around the same table. Toast a beer to Brian, and maybe a cream soda to Joel.” He heaved in a deep breath and let it go with a sigh. “Thankfully we stocked up on the food we need before the storm came. Even the turkey. We’re going to bring some of it to Pastor Phin at his church for that shelter he’s got going. Akers Pennington was asking around for donations. You guys know Akers? Good guy. He’s been over there all day helping people who got no place to go. What about you guys? Do you have family in town?”

  This time Jon did look up, giving Darcy a quick glance of concern. “We were expecting Darcy’s mother and step-father. We’re still hoping they make it but like you said, with the storm and all.”

  “Well, I hope they make it. If you need anything else from me or my family, just give us a call, okay?”

  “We will. You’ve been very helpful, Casey. You and the whole family. You want one of my guys to walk you all home?”

  “Nah, we can make it. Me and my
brothers used to play football. We’d do drills in the snow to increase our leg strength. Kind of takes me back to my college days, tell you the truth.” He sighed again. “Brian would have loved this weather. I mean, really loved it. I hope you catch whoever did this, Jon. And if it’s Lana… don’t just keep her in jail. Drop her in a hole and then drop the jail on top of her after.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to see her?” Darcy asked him. “She hasn’t been very talkative and maybe seeing someone she knows—”

  “No. Absolutely not. Jon, I’m sorry, I know I said I’d help you any way I could, but I do not want to see that woman. I just can’t.”

  Darcy understood but she also knew that getting Lana to talk at this point might be the only way for them to know for sure what had happened in that car. Seeing Casey, or Lloyd, or someone else from this family she knew so well might be exactly the push she needed to find her voice again. She started to tell Casey exactly that when Jon reached out and took her hand with his.

  “It’s okay, Casey” he said. “We’ve got everything we need for now. You just take care of your family. Let us worry about the rest of it.”

  “Thanks, Jon.” He pushed himself up from the chair and put his hat back on his head, pulling it down over his ears. “Merry Christmas, I guess.”

  “Same to you.”

  When he was gone, and the door was shut again, Jon grabbed Darcy by the waist and pulled her down into his lap.

  “Jon!” she laughed, “you’re going to break your office chair!”

  “This chair? No way. This chair has been in this office for years and it isn’t going to ever fail me. Now come here.”

  He kissed her, slow and tenderly, and Darcy felt it all the way to her toes. It warmed her in a way that her winter coat never could. When it was over, she sighed with pure contentment and nestled into his chest. She fisted his shirt into her hand, and imagined them both at home, snuggled up under the blankets of their bed.

  “That was nice,” she told him. “We haven’t had much time together in the past couple of days. With the kids, either. First it was the storm, and now this murder.”

  “That’s life in Misty Hollow,” he joked.

  “Yeah. Murder and mayhem are kind of our thing, aren’t they? At least the snowstorm is new. I can’t remember the last time it snowed this bad all winter, let alone in just a few days.”

  “It’s going to get worse before it gets better, I’m afraid. I mean, it was bad enough already to bury a car and trap the Harris family. I wonder if they’d still be alive if their car hadn’t gotten stuck?”

  That reminded Darcy of some of the things she wanted to tell him. “Actually, it turns out their car was stopped before the snowstorm got bad. It wasn’t the storm that stopped them there. They could have kept driving. It was something else that stopped them.”

  He shifted in the chair, sitting her up on his legs, a quizzical expression on his face. “How do you know… oh, I get it. You were talking to the ghost of the Harris boy again?”

  “Uh, well, actually our daughter was talking to him.” She patted her hand on his chest. “Now, don’t give me that look. You know our daughter has the Sweet family gift in spades. If I could give her a normal life I would, but our family doesn’t do normal.”

  “Aw, normal is boring.” He hugged her, and then set her up on her feet and stood up with her. “Well, that does fit with what we know so far. There wasn’t anything wrong with the Harris’s car. No damage on it anywhere that we can find and believe me, we shoveled all the way around it. This certainly reads like it just stopped in the middle of the road.”

  “Just like Joel Harris’s ghost said. Something, or someone, made Brian Harris stop the car there.”

  “Meaning, Lana could have told him to stop the car before she killed him, and Joel too.”

  “Yes, I guess so. Joel said there was a lot of shouting going on when it happened. Did you get anything from the Levison’s statements?”

  He shook his head. “So far, a whole lot of nothing. They really take family togetherness seriously. Not one of them has been alone for longer than it took to go to the bathroom for the last three days. Two of them were always together, or five, or all of them, or whatever. They basically alibi each other.”

  “You’re kidding,” Darcy said flatly.

  “Nope. They might as well have been glued at the hip.”

  “So not them. Not Mark Franks, either, by the way.” She laid out the explanations Mark had given her, and even told him about the image she had gotten from her flash of the possible future Izzy and Mark might have.

  He raised an eyebrow when she got to that part. “Well. Isn’t that interesting.”

  “Yes, it is. So not the Levisons. Not Mark Franks. Where does that leave us?”

  “With fewer and fewer suspects, that’s where.” Jon looked thoughtful for a moment. “It’s looking more and more like Lana might have done this herself. If nothing else, it seems to me we’re looking for someone who was coming into town just when the snowstorm hit, like Lana did, or we’re looking for someone who was leaving town just as the storm hit, someone who stopped their car right where the snow buried it. That could be anyone. Did our little ghost say anything else to our little Starshine?”

  “Actually, yes. He told Colby there was lots and lots of shouting.”

  “So you said. Did he mean like an argument? Something between Lana and Brian?”

  “That I don’t know. Joel didn’t tell her and when I came in the room to check on her, he spooked and disappeared.”

  Jon cocked his head to one side. “You’re telling me that you scared away a ghost?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said with a goofy little smile. She understood the irony.

  “You,” Jon said slowly, “scared a ghost.”

  “Hey, mister. I can be a very scary girl when I want to be.”

  He leaned in and kissed her nose. “Not to me. You are a lot of things to me, Darcy Sweet, but scary isn’t one of them.”

  She pressed herself against him again, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Jon, can I tell you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “I’m worried about my mother.”

  He held her tight. “From what I’ve seen in the weather report, the storm is pretty much hovering over us. The snow is going to start again soon.”

  “Yes, I know. It’s already getting colder again.”

  “Right, but that’s just here. The rest of the Eastern seaboard is snowy, but not snowed-in like we are. I’m sure she’s okay.”

  “Then why haven’t I heard from her?”

  “I don’t know. This is your mother we’re talking about. Eileen doesn’t always think about doing little things like letting other people know what’s up with her life.”

  That was true enough. Still, with the number of texts Darcy had sent, her mother should have responded to at least one of them. She should ask Grace again if she’d heard anything. Maybe talk to Great Aunt Millie, too, because a ghost might know something that the living didn’t.

  Maybe Millie could help them unravel this mystery as well. Because Darcy had listened to everything Casey Levison had just told her and Jon. She’d listened very closely, in fact, but she hadn’t heard anything that pointed to any other suspects besides Lana. The affair gave Lana a very good motive to kill Brian… but her son? Darcy couldn’t picture that. A mother killing her son because she was running around on her husband? That didn’t make sense. Unless her mind had completely snapped. Considering the state Lana Harris had been in when they found her at Pastor Phin’s church, that was a very strong possibility.

  Darcy frowned. Everything she found out, everything she heard, certainly made it look like Lana was the killer.

  Or maybe, she thought to herself, she just hadn’t been listening hard enough.

  Chapter 10

  At the end of the day all Darcy felt was tired.

  Izzy and the kids were playing Mouse Trap at the kitchen table whe
n Darcy got back. Cha Cha had been sitting on the floor next to Zane’s chair, looking up at him expectantly like he was waiting for his turn to play. Tiptoe had been on the counter again, looking over with practiced disinterest. She wasn’t fooling anyone. The mice in the game might be plastic and cartoonish, but she was still on her guard.

  For the rest of the evening, all she could think about was this mystery, and if Lana really was their only suspect. By the time she was putting the kids to bed it had started snowing again. Just a few flakes meandering their way down from the sky to land on top of the piles already covering the world below. Hardly enough to notice.

  They stayed up late, watching Frosty the Snowman and talking and laughing before heading to their rooms. Izzy hardly looked at her. She was friendly and smiling for the kids, but still cold as ice toward Darcy.

  With a heavy heart, she waited for Jon up in bed with the pillows propped up behind her and a paperback novel open in her hands. Three more texts to her mother had gotten the same answer as before, which was to say no answer at all. She was worried, and perplexed, and a little drained emotionally from everything that had happened in the past few days. The words on the page began to swim and slip out from under her gaze as her eyelids drooped.

  “Perhaps,” she heard someone saying, “you should put the book away before you lose your place.”

  She did close the book, and laid it down on her chest, and then smiled over at the ghost of Great Aunt Millie. She was sitting over by the window in a rocking chair that Darcy didn’t really have in her bedroom, dressed in her usual black dress and floppy black hat. The shawl wrapped around her shoulders was a new addition to her outfit, purple with white flowers, fluffy and warm.

  “Do ghosts even get cold?” Darcy asked her. “I mean, this is a dream you’re using to talk to me. Can’t you just wish yourself to be warm?”