The Greatest Gift (A Darcy Sweet Mystery) Read online

  He nodded, checking his watch. "Clara's deli? Lunch?"

  "Sure." She couldn't help the sharp tone cutting through her voice.

  He looked up at her, his eyes searching her face. "I really am sorry, Darcy. I just can't…"

  "Be in two places at once?" she suggested. "Or keep a promise?"

  He held her gaze for a moment longer before turning around and walking out the door. He pulled his cell phone out again as he disappeared up the sidewalk.

  "That was a little harsh," Grace said to her, "don't you think?"

  Darcy shook her head. "It is what it is, sis. I just need to accept the fact that no matter what I do, he isn't coming back to me."

  Her heart wasn't into looking at bridesmaid dresses, but she did it anyway for her mother's sake. By the time they were ready to go her thoughts were so scattered that she wasn't even sure what color the dresses were that her mom had chosen. She hadn't really paid any attention to what was going on, just nodding along with whatever anyone else said.

  Taking a last look at the wedding dress she had modeled in the mirror, Darcy walked out of the shop behind her mother and sister. She couldn't wait to leave Oak Hollow behind her.

  Chapter Two

  It was Eight-thirty that night when Darcy got to Belinda's house. It was pretty much the way she remembered it, although it had been painted blue since the last time she had seen it. Even the shutters around the narrow upstairs windows were blue. Parts of the roof had been replaced with new architectural shingles while other spots were still an older style, like a renovation project had been started and then never finished.

  The front porch was new but the boards were bare and unfinished. They thudded hollowly beneath her feet. Standing there before she knocked, she took a moment to tilt her head back, her eyes closed, her senses extended out.

  She had always been sensitive to the world of the paranormal. Ghosts. Visions. Feelings that turned out to be messages from beyond. When she'd been a little girl she didn't understand what it all meant, and her abilities hadn't been very strong at any rate. It wasn't until she'd hit puberty that things really developed and she began to realize just how different she was from other people.

  Now, at the age of thirty, she'd had fifteen years to learn how to use her gift. Her Aunt Millie had shown her a lot of things. Other stuff she'd learned on her own. Reaching out to the other side was as easy as breathing now.

  Standing on Belinda Franco's porch, she didn't feel the presence of a single ghost.

  Sometimes the dead didn't want to be seen. Other times they jumped up into Darcy's face like those people selling perfume at a mall. When she needed to have a direct conversation with someone's spirit, Darcy would perform a communication. It was a little odd that she couldn't sense any ghostly activity here, if Belinda really was being haunted, but it didn't necessarily mean anything.

  The only way to find out for sure would be to go inside.

  Darcy knocked on the door after a few more minutes of listening and feeling nothing. Belinda answered quickly. She opened the door just a bit to peer out at Darcy before throwing it wide.

  "Oh, Darcy, thank you so much for coming over. I hope I didn't take you away from anything?"

  Darcy thought back to the sight of Jon walking out of the dress shop, all apologies and no explanations.

  "No," she assured Belinda. "You didn't interrupt anything."

  Inside, in her kitchen, Belinda put a teakettle to boil on the stove. "Some tea will make the story easier, I think," she said. She wrapped her blue shawl tighter around the shoulders of her dress and shuffled over to the table to sit with Darcy. Her gray hair was a frizzy cap around a round, kindly face. She was short and stooped and Darcy imagined that if she had looked up the definition of grandmother in the dictionary, Belinda's picture would be there.

  "Now," she said, folding her wrinkled hands together on the table. "I should start at the beginning."

  "You said you were being haunted," Darcy said. "That word has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. I'm assuming you've seen a ghost?"

  To Darcy's surprise, Belinda shook her head. "Well, not exactly. I don't have the gift like you and Millie. I can't see him."

  "See him?" she asked. "Him…who?"

  Belinda's smile was wistful. "Dominic. My Dominic."

  Dominic. Belinda's dead husband. Darcy began to feel certain that this was another false alarm. She hadn't felt anything in the house, even sitting here in the kitchen, and Belinda hadn't seen anything. She wouldn't be the first woman who wanted more time with their dearly departed family members so desperately that they imagined ghosts. "I'm sure you miss Dominic, but if you haven't seen him, then what made you come to the conclusion you were being haunted?"

  "Well. My Dominic is moving things around when I'm not looking. You know, like in that movie Poltergeist?" Belinda actually shuddered. "That movie always gave me nightmares. The way that little girl got sucked into the television. Spooky."

  Maybe she should just do a ritual cleansing to make Belinda feel better, Darcy thought. At least let Belinda think she had helped Dominic pass over even if he wasn't here. Not that there was any such thing as a ritual cleansing, but with the right Latin phrases and some salt thrown around, people tended to believe their houses were exorcised from spirits that had never been there in the first place. The same sort of thing could work here.

  The teakettle finally began to whistle and Belinda popped up to go to the stove. She poured the water out slowly into two yellow mugs with teabags hanging over their sides. While she was doing that, Darcy looked around the kitchen with its little corner dining area. There were photographs all along the walls, mostly black and white with a few color ones interspersed. Belinda was in many of them. A smiling, happy, younger version of herself.

  In some, she was standing next to a very handsome man with hair coiffed to the side like Darcy had seen movies stars do in old movies. They looked happy together, smiling for the camera or waving. In two they were sharing a kiss, captured for eternity.

  "Is that your husband?" Darcy asked as Belinda came back with their tea.

  The woman looked up at the wall where Darcy pointed, and a wistful smile came over her face. "Oh, yes. That's my Dominic. Such a handsome man, don't you think?"

  "Yes," Darcy agreed. "He certainly was. Millie always spoke very highly of the two of you. I'm sorry he's not here to help you with this. Now, let's talk about this ghost of yours."

  ***

  Some people were never able to let go of their loved ones. Darcy had seen that time and time again. For some it became an obsession, to a point where they imagined their friends and family were still around, guiding them and protecting them. For those people, what they took as ghostly guidance was nothing more than chance or luck and a healthy imagination.

  Of course there were those cases where it wasn’t their imagination and there really was a ghost of a loved one guiding and protecting them. Or in some cases just hanging around and causing mischief.

  Darcy could hope that Dominic really was watching over Belinda. But, more likely, Dominic's ghost had never been here at all.

  Darcy asked Belinda lots of questions, some that were important, and some that she made up on the spot. She wanted it to at least look like she believed Belinda. For now. After, they took a tour around the house, Belinda showing her through the downstairs pantry and the storage room and the immaculate living room with its white high-backed sofa set perfectly squared to the two matching easy chairs on either side. The small television in the living room was dark and silent standing on a low cabinet where more pictures sat neatly framed in a row. Other pictures hung silently on their frames around the walls. Memories were obviously very important to Belinda.

  Maybe too important to let go of.

  It took Belinda some time to get up the staircase to the second floor. Her joints were swollen, she explained with a laugh. Must mean rain was coming. Up here were three bedrooms and a full bathroom,
all of them just as neat and tidy as the living room and kitchen and other rooms downstairs had been.

  "I sweep and clean up the house every night before I go to bed," Belinda explained. "I have to. Every day, Dominic leaves such a mess for me."

  "Was your husband a messy man in life?" Darcy asked.

  "Oh, my, no," Belinda said with a little laugh. She closed the door on the last room she had shown Darcy, a spare bedroom with a bare mattress on the bed and threadbare curtains on the window. "He was more of a neat freak than I ever was. No. It's just his ghost that's making a mess of things."

  Darcy didn't say what she was thinking. None of this was adding up. Belinda had already told her how Dominic had died peacefully in his sleep. There were no unresolved issues that Belinda could think of. Her ghost—Dominic—hadn't left her any messages and didn't really seem to be trying to get in touch with her. As hauntings went, this one seemed to have no reason and no substance.

  Add in the fact that Darcy hadn't sensed any kind of presence in the house, and it became more and more obvious that Belinda was simply seeing things that weren't there—

  Darcy stopped. Belinda had led them down the stairs again, slowly and with some difficulty, and now they stood at the bottom where the steps led into the living room. She stared around them. It wasn't possible.

  The living room was completely rearranged. The furniture had all been pushed around, the photos that had sat so neatly along the television stand now lay on the floor turned upside down, a few of them taken apart so that the pictures were out of their frames. Books that had been set in place on shelves behind the one couch had been taken down and stacked up in three tall spires on the floor that leaned and threatened to spill over at any second. The pictures on one whole wall had been taken down and piled carelessly in a corner.

  A whirlwind couldn't have done all this. Not in the length of time they'd been upstairs.

  "How…?" Darcy started to ask.

  "I told you," Belinda said, looking around with a happy smile. "My Dominic is haunting me."

  ***

  "Well, I'm sure I don't know," Belinda said as they sat at the kitchen table again. "He needs help. He wouldn't be here otherwise, so many years after he passed on. I've tried to ask him what he needs but he just won't answer me. You know how husbands can be."

  Darcy had actually helped the ghost of her own late ex-husband pass over to the other side only just recently. That had been after he led her through a murder investigation that he had been a central part of. Yes. She knew what dead husbands could be like.

  "So, of course I had to call you." Belinda looked around her kitchen as though she could see Dominic everywhere she turned. "I tried to talk to him myself at first, but he's been doing this for more than a week now and he simply won't say anything to me. I was hoping that since we were married I could reach him, you know? Like in the movies." She sighed. "No such luck, I'm afraid."

  Darcy let her talk, listening to every word, but trying to piece things together in her mind at the same time. Now that she'd seen how Belinda's living room had been rearranged in just a few minutes, she understood why Belinda thought she was being haunted. It certainly looked like she was.

  Poltergeists were what most people thought of when they thought of hauntings. Like in that movie Belinda kept mentioning. The reality of the spiritual world was very different. For the most part, ghosts could only interact with people like Darcy who could see and hear them. A few stronger spirits could move small objects or make people feel cold or even scream across the barrier between the living and the dead. Darcy's Great Aunt Millie was one of those.

  That kind of ghost was very rare. Plus, even if Belinda's dead husband could do that, Darcy had trouble believing he had suddenly started rearranging her furniture for no reason.

  But if this ghost wasn't Dominic, then who was it?

  "So," Belinda asked her, "what do you think?"

  Darcy had completely lost track of the conversation. She pursed her lips and decided to just be honest. "Belinda, I don't know what to think. There's definitely something going on in your house. I'll do everything I can for you."

  Belinda smiled and clapped her hands together. "Oh, thank you Darcy. Where do we start?"

  "I can try to reach Dominic," Darcy told her. "I can do a communication."

  Chapter Three

  It was very dark when Darcy made it home. She kicked her shoes off as soon as she got through the door and went to get herself a drink of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator. Under a magnet next to the fridge handle was a note in her mother's straight, severe handwriting telling Darcy that she had gone to bed already. It ended with a comment about how Darcy needed her sleep, too.

  Darcy smiled. That was her mother's way of saying goodnight.

  Glass of water in hand, she went to flop down on her comfy overstuffed couch. Having been in Belinda's house with its old photographs of Dominic and other friends and family made Darcy think about how her Aunt Millie had left this house to her. On the walls here in the living room were plenty of pictures of her own family. Millie, Darcy's mother, Grace and Aaron, a few others. There were two right in the center of the wall behind the couch, next to the stairway, that showed Darcy's mother and father together.

  Happier times, she mused. Kind of like what the photos in Belinda's house showed.

  A heavy weight pounced down on Darcy's lap and she startled, slopping a little water out of the glass onto her wrist. A big black and white tomcat settled himself on her legs. Purring, he looked up at her with his sharp cat eyes, and meowed.

  "Smudge! You made me spill." She shifted her glass to her other hand and held her wet wrist up for him to see. Sniffing at it, he began licking the water away like it was what he had wanted all along.

  Darcy laughed. "You have your own water dish, you know." She propped her feet up on the edge of the coffee table, extending her lap, and Smudge gratefully stretched out along her legs. "I love you, too," she told him, interpreting his happy cat noises.

  Before leaving Belinda's house Darcy had explained everything that what went into doing a communication. From a spectator's viewpoint there wasn't much to it. All the preparation and effort was on Darcy. Belinda had happily given Darcy a man's wristwatch, a gold colored heavy thing with one of those expanding metal bands, explaining it had been Dominic's pride and joy. A personal item to help ease the connection the deceased. He'd kept it for years, even when it started to run slow. Apparently, Dominic had been quite the penny pincher.

  For Darcy, a communication was a lot more complicated than it appeared. She would have to put a great effort of her own will into the calling, an act almost as physically exhausting as running a marathon. She would need to call on the specific spirit she needed to talk to—in this case, Dominic Franco—and wait for the ghost to answer. Sometimes that took minutes, sometimes hours. And making a call to the other side wasn't as simple as picking up a telephone.

  A few years back she'd gotten rid of her cell phone and had never gotten a new one. Somehow spirits were able to connect to the land of the living through wireless cell signals. Darcy hadn't been able to block incoming calls quick enough as ghosts in need of help, tortured and frantic, had begun calling her at all hours. If she could ever figure out how they did it, maybe she could reverse the process. Maybe then calling to the other side really would be as easy as picking up the phone.

  Until then, she would have to depend on a communication.

  Just not tonight. Tonight, she was just too tired. It was warm and cozy here on the couch with Smudge in her lap. He was a good cat. She reached out and stroked his fur and closed her eyes for just a moment.

  ***

  "Darcy. Wake up, honey."

  She blinked away the sleep that had sealed her eyes shut. She was curled up on the couch. At some point during the night someone had put a blanket down over her. Was it morning already? It couldn't be. Could it? She stretched and yawned and tried to read the clock on the DVR. It felt
like she hadn't slept at all.

  Smudge was sitting on the arm of the couch, blinking at her. There was no one else in the room.

  "Mom?" she called out. The house was silent. She was sure she'd heard someone speaking to her. Someone had told her it was time to get up. "Smudge, did you wake me up?"

  He blinked and turned his head away, as if to remind her that he was not her personal alarm clock.

  "Okay, okay," she said to him. "No need to be testy."

  She threw the blanket off and looked down to find she wasn't wearing the clothes that she'd had on last night. Instead of her jeans and tank top, she was wearing a peach colored bridesmaid dress. It had a full length gown, and a white sash at the waist with a huge bow that sat at her left hip. It left her arms and shoulders bare. It was kind of cute, and it took her a moment to remember this was the dress design her mother had picked out for her and Grace to wear at the wedding.

  Why was she in it now?

  "You look beautiful," a man said to her.

  She turned her head to see Jon standing there, in a tuxedo of all things, all black except for the white shirt and the white cummerbund that matched her sash. His gorgeous face was smiling, and his deep blue eyes held her gaze in a magical way. She felt herself being drawn to him, pulled toward him, and she was suddenly standing up and he was welcoming her into his arms.

  "I like this," she said, the flow of everything sweeping her along and making her forget questions of why Jon was here, why she was with him, why they were dressed for a wedding and dancing across an open floor where lights sparkled and music played and the whole room sparkled.

  "I love you," she suddenly heard herself saying.

  "I love you, too," he answered, in that warm voice she missed so much. "I need you to do something for me, though."

  Her heart fluttered. "Hmm? What?"

  He stopped in the middle of their dance, twirled her, and then caught her so that they were very close, their lips almost touching, his breath caressing her cheeks.