Family Secrets (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery #8) Read online

  He led her closer to the cars. Unit Two was running, it's red lights strobing, with the back window halfway down. There were metal bars on the inside of the glass, and behind them sat a blonde girl with high cheekbones in an oval face. She would have been pretty, except for how red her eyes were from crying.

  "This is your suspect?" Darcy asked. She certainly didn't look like a killer. "Who is she?"

  Jon's jaw clenched and he sighed out heavily through his nose. Then he turned his back to the patrol cars and folded his arms over his chest. "That," he said to Darcy, "is my sister."

  Chapter Three

  Jon stifled a yawn from where he sat behind his desk at the police station. It was just after eight o'clock, but it had been a very long day. "Well," he said. "I'm ready for bed."

  From the desk next to Jon's, Grace snorted a laugh. "There's no rest for the wicked, Jon." She rubbed at her eyes and pushed back strands of her dark hair that had fallen out of place. Resting a hand on the little bulge of her baby belly, she sighed. "I should know. Nobody told me how hard it would be to sleep when your body is still getting used to being pregnant."

  "Is that why you're here instead of at home?" Darcy asked her. "You need your rest, sis."

  "We can take care of this, Grace," Jon put in. "You don't have to be here."

  "Jon," Grace said, "your sister is under arrest for murder. You think I'm going to just go home and put my feet up? I've already called Aaron and let him know I'll be late." She looked at both of them, her voice defensive. "I'm fine. Stop worrying so much."

  "You're carrying my first ever niece, Grace," Darcy pointed out. "If I'm going to be an aunt, then it's my job to worry."

  "It might be your first ever nephew, you know."

  Darcy shrugged. "All the more reason to worry. Boys can be so much trouble."

  She looked over at Jon as she said it, and he had the good sense not to say anything back. Obviously he'd been right when he'd told Darcy that they needed to talk. How could there be so much about him that she didn't know? They needed to have a very long conversation about all of this. And, about his family.

  And, about his answer to her marriage proposal.

  Chief Daleson came into the room, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. "You know, Jon, I'm beginning to think stubbornness runs in your family. I've been in that interview room with her for over an hour now. She won't talk to me. She'll only talk to you.” He levelled a look towards Grace and frowned. “Grace, go home," he said.

  Grace growled and shook her head. "Why is everyone insisting I go home? I'm fine. It's not like I'm going to deliver this baby tomorrow or anything. Women have been carrying babies around since the beginning of time, you know."

  Jon sighed and stood up, grabbing a notepad and a pen from the corner of his desk. Darcy knew that to everyone else in the room he looked like he was putting on a steely game face, his expression determined and his jaw set. She knew him better. He wasn't looking forward to this at all.

  He turned to her, tapping the pen against his thigh. "Darcy, do you want to come in with me?"

  The Chief cleared his throat. Jon looked over with a shrug. "She's sat in on other interviews for us, Chief. It's unusual enough as it is to have me interview a member of my family. I'm invested in this. Darcy might pick up on something that I miss."

  Chief Daleson rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said in that gruff voice. "Just make sure the recorder stays on. And don't forget, Jon, that she's already in hot water."

  "Believe me, Chief, I remember."

  Darcy followed along behind Jon with a quick glance at Grace. Her sister shook her head. Whatever secrets Jon was keeping about his family, Grace obviously didn't know, either.

  On the walk down the hallway to the interview rooms, Jon kept his eyes straight ahead as he spoke to Darcy. "My sister's name is Aimee. Spelled with two e's. My parents thought they were being cute. She and I haven't spoken for years, except for maybe a letter or two that I've gotten from her."

  "Why?" Darcy asked. "And what did the chief mean about her already being in hot water?"

  He stopped, waiting for one of the uniformed officers to pass them, then he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Do you remember a couple of months back when Izzy and her daughter showed up?"

  Darcy scrunched her eyebrows, remembering. "Of course. She was hiding because there was a warrant for her arrest. Everyone thought she had murdered her husband."

  "Right. I think you know how I reacted to all that. I tried to be supportive of what you were doing for Izzy, trying to clear her name and all, but I was, uh, a little…"

  "Cranky?" Darcy offered. "Testy? Quick to snap at everyone around you? Myself included?"

  "Right, right. Okay, I think we both get the point." He twisted one side of his lip, not quite a smile, not quite a frown. "I told you that was because I'm a police officer and I have to uphold the law no matter what my personal opinions are about the person or what they've done."

  "I know, Jon. I agreed with you. I also appreciated how you let me do what I thought was right." She pushed up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "I love you for that."

  "I love you, too, Darcy. I didn't tell you all of it, though. The other reason that whole thing with Izzy was hard on me was because it reminded me of my own situation."

  "Your own…? What, you're on the run from the law because they think you killed someone?" she tried to joke.

  He didn't laugh. "No, not me. My sister."

  Chapter Four

  Jon set the pad squarely in front of him as he sat down on the one side of the metal interview table. Darcy sat in a chair off in the corner, still trying to absorb what he had told her. His sister, Aimee, had been accused of killing her boss six years ago and stealing thousands of dollars from the company. Tens of thousands of dollars. She had been arrested, and arraigned in front of a judge on the charge. A boyfriend of hers had posted bail for her. Once she was out, she had run away and disappeared.

  Jon had gotten a few letters from her since, telling him that she was okay, and not to worry. None of them had a return address. As far as Jon had known, Aimee was on the other side of the country.

  Instead, she had found her way to Misty Hollow. Right where her brother, the police detective, lived and worked.

  Darcy studied him now. He was a rock. Every muscle in his body was tight and rigid. His eyes were hard flecks of blue stone. This must be so hard on him, she thought to herself, sympathy pouring out of her heart for him.

  When he spoke, his voice was coiled steel.

  "I'd like to say it's good to see you again, Aimee." He didn't look up at her. Uncapping the pen, he started writing the date and time on the top sheet of the notebook.

  "You're angry," Aimee said to him.

  Jon snorted. "There's an understatement. I passed angry with you years ago. Sometime around when you ran away from home and broke mom's heart."

  Aimee nodded, looking down at her hands, cuffed together on top of the interview table.

  Her blonde hair had unraveled from its pony tail and now fell in unruly strands across her shoulders. She was wearing a tight white t-shirt with a picture of a kitten on it. It almost looked like a pajama shirt to Darcy. Her jogging pants could have been sleepwear as well. Pajamas.

  Darcy had to wonder at that.

  "Well?" Jon asked. "You said you wanted to talk to me. Let's talk. What were you doing in Vivica Chartrand's house?"

  There was no hesitation in the answer. "I was living there. I've been living there for about two weeks now."

  Jon's pen scratched to a halt. "Two weeks? You've been in town for two weeks?"

  Aimee nodded, her expression a little too smug for Darcy's liking. "I came here looking for you, big brother. I wanted your help to take care of…" She flicked her eyes over to Darcy and then away again. "With my troubles."

  "Darcy knows you're wanted for murder, Aimee." Jon started moving his pen across the paper again. "In fact, everyone here knows it. I'm be
tting that Vivica Chartrand knew it, too. So tell me how you expect me to believe that the town clerk was hiding a fugitive in her house? A fugitive who was the sister of one of the town's police officers?"

  Aimee's glance turned to Darcy again, cold as ice, before lowering to settle on her own hands. "Vivica saw me the first day I was here. I went to the Bean There Bakery and Café and sat there until I saw you come in, Jon. I was hiding in a corner. No way you would have noticed me. But Vivica did. She saw how hard I tried to get up and talk to you. She saw me fail. Then she came over, and asked me what was wrong, and we sat and talked for more than an hour. Then she put her hand over mine and told me she could give me a place to stay until I was ready to talk to you."

  Darcy saw the tears start to fall from Aimee's eyes. She had no doubt there had been a few tears at the café, too, when Vivica had opened up her heart and her home to a total stranger. Had that choice gotten her killed?

  "So you mean to tell me," Jon said slowly, "she was hiding a fugitive in her home for two weeks."

  Aimee sat back in her seat. "I'm your sister. I'm not just some fugitive."

  "You're both, actually."

  She wiped at her eyes angrily and awkwardly with the palm of her hands. "I should have known better. You never believe me. I came here for your help."

  "You never want my help, Aimee. You just want to do what suits you in the moment."

  "Whatever, Jon," Aimee snapped. "Like you're so perfect."

  "Did you kill Vivica Chartrand?" Jon asked her.

  She gaped at him. "How can you even ask me that?"

  "Because she's dead and you were in the house with her. Because I'm a police officer and you're a wanted fugitive. Because I am your brother." He tapped his pen on the pad, waiting. "Take your pick."

  Glaring at him through her tears, she slammed her hands down on the table between them. "I didn't kill her."

  "You were in the house when Helen got there," Jon pointed out.

  "I told you, I was living there."

  "That's not the point, and you know it."

  "You never believed in me!" she shouted, rising up in her chair, jabbing a finger at Jon that jingled the chain of her handcuffs. "You never lifted a finger to help me! You never helped Dad, either! He's in prison, and you don't even care!"

  Darcy felt her throat tighten. She couldn't catch her breath. Jon's father was in prison? He looked over at her, unspoken apologies in his eyes. The room spun around her as time ground to a standstill. It was like everything she thought she knew about him was changing. They needed to talk, he had said to her more than once today. What else was he waiting to tell her?

  "All right, let's try this," Jon said, clearing his throat and getting back to the interview. "How did she die? If you were in the house with her, and you didn't kill her, then who did?"

  Aimee sat back down, throwing her hands helplessly into the air. "I don't know. I went out for a walk in the woods. When I came back, that woman Helen was standing over Vivica's body and screaming at me that I killed her."

  Jon raised an eyebrow at her. "A walk in the woods? You're wearing pajamas."

  "Good enough to go for a walk in." Aimee shrugged. "I was going to take a shower and go to bed after."

  "Aimee, you don't like to walk to the store, let alone take a walk in the woods."

  She stared at him levelly. "People change, Jon."

  "No," he said to her. "No, they don't. You and Dad are proof of that."

  She jumped up again and Darcy thought Aimee might launch herself across the table at Jon. "You listen to me! I did not kill Vivica! I'm innocent! I didn't do it!"

  Darcy felt herself getting to her feet and holding her hands up to both of them like she could somehow hold back their rising anger. "Hold on, both of you," she said. Jon turned to her, an uncertain look on his face. He mouthed the words not now, but she pretended not to see it. "Jon. Maybe I can tell if she's lying. For certain."

  "Now how could you do…?" He stopped. Understanding made his eyes wider. "You mean like you did with Brad Finn to see if he killed Marla?"

  Darcy nodded.

  "Uh, excuse me," Aimee said to them, "what are you two talking about?"

  Jon thought it over and then finally stood up, motioning for Darcy to take his seat. "Go ahead. It's nothing that can stand up in a court of law, but I want to know."

  Darcy sat in the chair across from Jon's sister, holding her hands out across the cold metal surface of the table. She smiled and tried to look reassuring. "I know it sounds strange, Aimee, but I promise I know what I'm doing."

  "So you're what?" Aimee asked Darcy. "Some kind of psychic?"

  Darcy laughed. "Funny. That's just what the last person asked me."

  Hesitantly, Aimee reached out her hands, still held tight inside the handcuffs, and placed them in Darcy's. "Just don't try to read the lifeline in my palm or anything, okay?'

  Jon rolled his eyes. Darcy just smiled. "Don't worry. This is a little more advanced than that."

  Breathing in and out and in again, Darcy held her breath and focused on the feel of Aimee’s hands in hers. Wherever their skin touched, Darcy's nerves began to tingle. She could feel how slender Aimee's fingers were, how the fingernail of her left index was chipped, even the individual lines of her fingerprints. Then, taking a breath in, letting it out, taking it in again, she pushed out with her life force.

  Her Great Aunt Millie had been the one to show her this technique, sort of, by writing it down in a book Darcy had found just a few days ago. It was still a relatively new way of using her abilities, at least for Darcy, but she had used it once already, and she knew it was working now.

  The tingling hum spread out from her hands and across Aimee's. Darcy felt the other woman startle, but she didn't take her hands away. Four times Darcy repeated the process, then she opened her eyes on the exhale.

  She gasped, stifling a scream, and pushed back from the table abruptly enough that she knocked over the plastic chair she'd been sitting in. Jon caught her just before she tumbled over to the floor and she gripped the front of his shirt in her fist.

  Aimee's hands were covered in blood. It was dried into her skin, crusted under her fingernails. She saw where Darcy was looking and held her hands up in front of her face, turning them over as best she could in the handcuffs. "What?" she asked. "What is it?"

  Darcy looked at Aimee, unable to believe she wasn't screaming at the sight of all of that blood. But then she looked up into Jon's face, and she understood. Neither of them could see it. Just her. It wasn't real blood. It was a paranormal manifestation of what lay in Aimee's soul.

  Aimee had killed someone. She had blood on her hands.

  Chapter Five

  "Not like you can bring that up in court," Grace said after Darcy and Jon had come back out from the interview room and filled her in. "You can't go up to the judge and say you saw blood on the defendant's hands after reaching out to the other side and calling on the spirit of Justice."

  "Grace," Darcy complained, "you know that's not how it works."

  Her sister shrugged and rolled her eyes. "However you do what you do, it still amounts to the same thing. That's not proof."

  "We have enough proof," Jon growled, sitting down at his desk again, throwing his pen down hard enough to make it bounce and fall over the edge onto the floor.

  "Did she confess?" Grace asked.

  "No." Jon shook his head. "Even after I told her we had a witness, she kept denying it and saying she was innocent. Of course, I couldn't exactly tell her that our witness was Darcy and her psychic abilities because then she would have just laughed at us instead of sitting there, all smug, knowing she's a fugitive from one murder and we've got her dead to rights on this one!"

  Grace bit her lip and looked away from his rising anger. "I'm sorry, Jon. I know she's your sister. I shouldn't be treating her like just another perp."

  He began tapping furiously on his computer keyboard. "Why not? She killed someone. The Widow Chartran
d. An old woman who wouldn't hurt a fly, and my sister killed her."

  He put his hands up over his face then and ran them back through his hair. Then he looked over at Darcy. "I don't know. Maybe it's genetic. Maybe it does run in the family just like the chief said. My dad's in prison doing time for white collar fraud. He might make parole in five years. Now this with my sister. I'm sorry, Darcy, I was going to tell you."

  Darcy felt sympathy for him. This was a big burden he was carrying, this secret about his family and their criminal backgrounds. She didn't blame him for—

  No. Actually, she did kind of blame him for not telling her. "Why would you keep this a secret, Jon? You know everything about me. It didn't occur to you that I might want to know everything about you before we got married?"

  Grace sat up straighter at her desk. "Whoa. Married? When did that happen?"

  Darcy looked squarely at Jon. "It looks like it's not going to happen. Grace, can you drive me home? I'm really tired."

  "Darcy…" Jon said, motioning helplessly with his right hand.

  Biting back the sting of her wounded pride, Darcy went over to him and kissed him on his cheek. "Don't worry. I'll be waiting at home when you're done here. Hopefully, you'll want to tell me everything then."

  Grace got up from her chair, stifling a yawn as she did. "I'll take you, sis. Jon, I'm tired too. I'll be home with Aaron if you need a hand with any of this."

  "Thanks, Grace."

  Darcy walked out of the police station in a haze. Too many thoughts, too many feelings ran through her head. Jon's sister, his family, this job offer from Oak Hollow, all of it. Even his answer to her marriage proposal. This day, this single day, was possibly the worst she'd ever had in her life.

  All things considered, that was saying quite a bit.

  "Where is she?" a man was screaming, almost running across the parking lot at them. "Where's the woman who killed my mother?"

  Darcy recognized Richard Chartrand, Vivica's son. He was a skinny man who always wore suits and ties that hung off him in wrinkled folds, like a kid trying to play dressup. Today, the suit was gray and the tie was bright red. Odd mix of colors, Darcy thought to herself. Then again, Richard was an odd man. His light brown hair was slicked back with too much gel and his glasses kept sliding down his nose. His face was beet red and it was obvious he'd been crying.