A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Seven Read online

  Darcy helped Colby shrug out of her jacket before carefully opening the door to the back office. She was expecting Cha Cha to burst out and go tearing through the shop like he did the last time. Puppy dogs were a force of nature unto themselves. Instead, she found him asleep on the couch inside the cramped space, curled up nose to tail. His tan fur twitched in some dream he was having.

  He was just about the cutest puppy she had ever seen, with long floppy ears that he was always stepping on and a little tail that never stopped wagging. His brown fur rippled as he took in deep breaths and huffed them out again. Darcy put her finger up to her lips to tell the kids to be quiet. She set Colby’s coat down on top of Zane’s that laying on the boxes of copier paper just inside the door, and then backed out again. If they were really lucky, the dog would sleep until it was time for them to go home.

  Zane pouted as they closed the office door. He wanted to play with Cha Cha. Darcy promised him that there would be plenty of time for that when they got home. He pouted some more, crossing his little arms and only managing to look completely adorable.

  “Guess I’ll go sit down at one of the tables,” Colby said, shrugging off the idea of resting on the office’s couch. “Get a start on my homework.”

  “Thanks, honey,” Darcy told her. She was already thinking about work stuff she needed to do when Zane tugged on her pants leg.

  “Cha Cha and me were talkin’,” he said. “I wanna keep talkin’ about stuff.”

  Darcy smiled indulgently. “Not right now, honey.” He huffed at her as he turned to wander off. Her son was always going on about how he was talking to Cha Cha, or Tiptoe, or some random bird in the front yard. Last week it was a squirrel chittering at them from a tree in the park. She knew that little kids liked to pretend, and she encouraged it in her two. She was sure he’d grow out of it eventually but until then, she wanted him to be free to be a little boy.

  In the meantime, the members of the book club had started feeding him hot chocolate from the little courtesy station near their table, where customers could get coffee or tea or—yes—cocoa, and on a cold day like today there would be nothing better. Zane chattered nonstop to them about whatever boys his age found interesting. One of the club members, Eleanor Daby, was a gray-haired grandmother whose children were all grown and moved on and truth be told, Darcy thought maybe she liked coming here to see Zane more than she liked discussing literature. She was honestly disappointed on the days that Darcy didn’t bring Zane with her to work.

  “He’s a very special boy, isn’t he?” Izzy asked, leaning her upper body over the sales counter to see Zane soaking in the attention from his impromptu audience. She shook her head in amusement, making her styled, honey-blonde hair bounce. “I loved it when my Lilly was that age. Um. Before we went on the run from her father, I guess. But still, it was wonderful to see her learning something new every time she turned around.”

  Darcy had been looking through books that needed to be returned to the stacks. She set them aside now and put her hand over Izzy’s. She remembered the way Izzy and Lilly had come to Misty Hollow, moving into the house next to Darcy’s in disguise and using fake names, terrified that her abusive husband was going to find her. That had been a scary time. Darcy was glad it had worked out for the best. She couldn’t imagine her life without Izzy as a friend.

  “I know,” Darcy told her. “You miss your daughter. I’ll be the same way when those two move out and start their own lives.”

  “Oh, I’m all right,” Izzy insisted with a forced laugh. She wiped at the corner of her eye, trying to disguise a tear. “I guess I’m just sad that Lilly couldn’t come home for New Year’s like we’d planned. It was hard enough not having her here for Christmas. Oh. I’m sorry, Darcy… I know Christmas was hard this year for a lot of other reasons.”

  Darcy’s smile mirrored Izzy’s. It was true that last Christmas had been one of the saddest for Darcy in a long time. It was the first time she had celebrated the day without her best cat friend Smudge and her human friend Helen, whose passing had been so close to the holiday. It had been difficult but at least she had tried to celebrate for her children's sake.

  Last Christmas, as part of the yearly pageant, the town had held a memorial service for Helen Turner, the longest active mayor Misty Hollow had ever known. Everyone had loved Helen. In a strange way, so had the person who killed her. It had been harder on Darcy because of the friendship she had shared with Helen, but also because she had been the one to find Helen’s killer. Cha Cha had actually been Helen’s dog before they took the little puppy in, so in a way Darcy still had a part of her friend with her. That was the way things went in Misty Hollow. The bad with the good, and you never knew what surprises were waiting for you from one moment to the next.

  The shopkeeper’s bell over the front door jingled, and a deliveryman in a brown winter jacket and padded snow pants came in, carrying a white cardboard box. The package was stamped with the words “careful” and “fragile.” The address label was handwritten.

  Like she was saying… surprises.

  “Hi ladies,” he said to Darcy and Izzy. “Got a package here for a Miss Sweet. Which one of you would that be?”

  “Me,” Darcy said, “but it’s Mrs. Sweet. See, my husband’s last name is Tinker, but I kept my name when we married, so our last names are different but we’re still… um. You probably don’t need to know the details.”

  “Not really,” he shrugged. He set the box down next to the cash register and tapped his pen against the form on his clipboard. “Sign here, initial here, and you have a nice day.”

  “Nice guy,” Izzy said when he was gone. “Very friendly.”

  Darcy chuckled as she pulled the box closer to her across the counter. “Maybe if he worked for tips he’d be more chatty. So what do you think this is?”

  They weren’t expecting an order for the store. It was too light and too small to be filled with a run of books. Only a foot long on each side and only half as tall. When she looked at the return address, she was surprised again.

  “This is from my mother.” She had to say it out loud just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

  Izzy leaned over Darcy’s shoulder to look. “Wow. How long’s it been since you talked to your mother?”

  “We got a card at Christmas. I think there was a phone call around Halloween.” She shrugged. “My mom’s been off in her own world again. Things aren’t bad between us, they’re just… neutral, I guess. Neutral bordering on good. Let’s call it that. I can’t imagine what she’d be sending me now.”

  There was a letter opener in the drawer of odds and ends under the sales counter. It made quick work of the packing tape. Darcy folded back the flaps and removed crumpled up pieces of newspaper used for packing material to reveal what was inside.

  A silver box with a hinged lid.

  Darcy gasped. It wasn’t just any box. This was something special, and something she hadn’t seen this since she was a teenager.

  “What is it?” Izzy asked, full of curiosity. “It looks old.”

  It was, in fact. Very old. “This is a family heirloom,” Darcy explained. “It’s a jewelry box that’s been passed down in my family for I don’t even know how long, but supposedly it was made by some famous jeweler in like the sixteenth century in Europe, or something. It’s real silver and I guess that makes it even more valuable. My mom got it from her mother, and she always promised it would go to me someday, but I’d given up on ever seeing it again.”

  “How come?”

  Darcy grimaced. “Because my dad basically stole it from me when I was younger. He was going to sell it for the money. I mean, this much silver, crafted by someone famous? I can only imagine what it’s worth. That was shortly after I first came here to live with my Great Aunt Millie, actually.”

  “He stole it from you? Wow, what a jerk. Oh, sorry,” Izzy added quickly. “He’s still your dad, I guess.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I felt the same way. Sti
ll do, sort of. Anyway he stole it from me but then he died before he could do anything with it and I just figured it was long gone. Mom must’ve gotten it with Dad’s belongings. She must’ve had it all this time.”

  Nearby, a circular rack display of multi-colored shirts squeaked as it made a quarter turn, seemingly all on its own. The book club members paused in their conversation to look up. Zane laughed and clapped his hands. The adults shrugged it off as just one of those things and went back to their conversation.

  Darcy and Izzy shared a knowing smile. That would be Great Aunt Millie herself making her presence known. She’d died years ago but her ghost had stayed to watch over Darcy and her family. This used to be her bookstore before it was Darcy’s, and she liked being here. When no one else was around she liked to play a game with the Colby and Zane where she dropped books off the shelves, and the kids would run back and forth, picking them up and putting them back as Millie dropped another, and another.

  Izzy was aware of Great Aunt Millie. Darcy had explained a little bit of the ghostly world to her, and she’d seen the little things that Millie would do. A rotating rack of t-shirts and sweaters didn’t bother her in the least.

  Darcy’s life would never be normal, but she liked being just the way she was.

  She lifted the box out of the package and set it on the counter to have a better look. It was just like she remembered it. The silver had tarnished in places, and gone dull, but it was still beautiful. There were stubby, curving legs at the four corners and a twisting rope design all around the edge of the lid. A name had been carefully and artistically etched into the top long before Darcy had been born, worn by time and the gentle caress of countless hands until only three letters were still visible. It was her mother’s name, of course. Eileen. She didn’t know when she’d added her own name to this treasure, but it was so like her to do exactly that.

  She remembered her mother sitting in her bedroom and opening this box to take out a necklace or a set of earrings. She’d always looked so elegant to the little girl Darcy had been back then. To her younger self, this had been just about one of the prettiest things in the world.

  Seeing it today, she still felt that way.

  Under the box, nearly hidden by the crumpled newspaper, was a folded-up note. It was from her mother, but it was so… impersonal.

  Found this in some stuff I had packed away. Forgot all about it. Enjoy.

  Even when her mother was being nice, she was short and trite about it.

  Darcy touched her hand along the edges of the box, feeling the tarnished scrollwork and patterned leaves with her fingers. When she opened it, the hinge along the back of the lid squeaked. It smelled old, in that way that metal did when it had seen decades of use. Inside were differently sized compartments lined with red velvet. She felt around a few of them, remembering how they used to be full of trinkets and coins and other things that looked like treasure to a little girl. Her treasure box. That was what she used to call it.

  The velvet had worn thin in places. Just as time had smoothed out the name across the lid and tarnished the silver to black in places, time had taken its toll on the inside as well. How many generations of her family had owned this, she wondered?

  She knew someone she could ask.

  Looking around the bookstore, she caught a flash of Great Aunt Millie in the corner, wearing her long black dress and floppy-brimmed hat. She was there and gone again, faded away into the shadows. A spirit unseen by everyone except Darcy.

  She and Aunt Millie could talk at home, when there wouldn’t be people around. She didn’t need her friends seeing her talking to the empty air. Aunt Millie knew everything about their history. Darcy was pretty sure that most of the secrets had been shaken out of the family tree by now so there shouldn’t be any surprises there. Just a few good anecdotes about Darcy’s ancestors.

  Because frankly, she’d had enough surprises for one day.

  “It’s pretty,” Colby said, appearing at her elbow. Darcy had been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed. “Seriously cool. Is it yours?”

  “Ours,” Darcy told her. “It was my mother’s, and her mother’s before that, and it will be yours one day.”

  “That’s nice,” her daughter said in a near-whisper. Then she wiped at her brow with the back of her wrist.

  Darcy frowned. Reaching over, she placed her hand on top of Colby’s head. “Oh, honey, you’re burning up. Do you feel okay?”

  “Um. I don’t think so.” Colby blinked up at her. “I feel… I feel funny.”

  Then she closed her eyes and fell.

  Chapter 2

  “Really, Mom. I’m fine.”

  Colby was lying on the living room couch with a cool, damp washcloth on her forehead. Darcy had wanted to take her back to the doctor, and she would have too, but Colby argued that all she needed was some sleep. This was the compromise, along with a promise that if she started feeling faint again Darcy was going to bring her straight to the hospital over in Meadowood.

  She fussed with the cloth on her daughter’s forehead. “You’re not fine. There’s something wrong.”

  “I know that, Mom. I’m the one with the headaches.”

  “Uh-huh. Maybe don’t try to be funny when your mother’s worried. We need to figure out what’s going on. It could be diabetes, maybe, or you could be dehydrated, or you could have an undiagnosed heart condition.”

  Colby rolled her eyes. “You’ve been looking things up on the internet again, haven’t you? I’ve told you not to do that. All you get is all kinds of weird stuff that makes you… makes you worry.”

  She ran out of breath at the end of her sentence. Closing her eyes, she sank back hard into the cushions.

  “Uh-huh. Somehow I don’t think I’m worrying too much.”

  Colby was already asleep, but Darcy stayed where she was, watching her breathing. Her daughter was definitely not okay. Doctor Malik hadn’t found anything when he examined her, but what did that mean, really? Darcy had no idea what was going on. It was hard for her to admit that, because she was Colby’s mother, and a mother was supposed to take care of her children. She was supposed to keep Colby and Zane safe. If they were hurt, she was supposed to make them better.

  But she had absolutely no idea what to do.

  When the front door opened, she gave Colby a quick kiss on the cheek before dashing out to the kitchen. Jon was home, and she didn’t want him making noise and waking their daughter up.

  This house, just like the bookstore, had belonged to her Great Aunt Millie before Darcy came to town. After Millie passed away, it had become hers. Back then it had felt huge. So large, it seemed, that she would never be able to fill it up herself. Now that she and Jon had kids, and a cat and a dog too, it was oh so very cozy. The front door opened onto the small kitchen and dining room, which was just off the entryway from the living room. Jon was hanging up his coat when she came in and threw her arms around him in a tight hug.

  “Jon, thanks for coming home. It wasn’t a problem getting out early, was it?”

  He shook his head, slipping off his tie and undoing the top button of his shirt. “That’s one of the privileges of being chief. I get to make my own schedule. How’s she doing? It sounded serious when you called.”

  “She fainted, Jon. She fainted, and just now she passed out on the couch. She has a touch of a fever, too.” Darcy crossed her arms over her stomach. Her worry was becoming a physical thing. “Then the headaches… I mean, she’s resting now, and she said she was fine but I think she’s just being brave. We were at the doctor’s today, and he couldn’t find anything either so I guess it might just be some bug, or something? I don’t know. It feels serious.”

  Leaning in, Jon kissed her on her forehead. “I trust your instincts. If the mother in you is telling you that something is wrong, then I believe you. But, if she’s okay for now, let’s wait until tomorrow and see what happens. If it’s the flu or something, she might be better then. If not, then we’ll
take her to the hospital. Okay?”

  Darcy shifted from foot to foot. “That sounds okay, I guess. She has a follow up appointment there on Tuesday, too, for some tests. Maybe that will tell us something. I just wish I could make her all better right now, you know?”

  “Yes, I do. I want the same thing. Sucks when your kids are sick, doesn’t it?”

  “You aren’t kidding. I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Me too. So where’s Zane?”

  “He’s upstairs taking a nap of his own with Cha Cha. Poor guy got himself all tuckered out at the bookstore playing with Great Aunt Millie and the book club.”

  Jon frowned. Not because of the mention of Aunt Millie. He knew about Darcy’s gift, and about the ghosts in her life. “He’s sleeping with Cha Cha? On his bed, I take it?”

  Darcy patted him on the chest. “Yes, dear, the dog is on his bed.”

  He ran a hand through his short dark hair and blew out a breath. “We’ve talked about this. I don’t like the idea of letting the dog sleep on his bed.”

  “Tiptoe sleeps in our bed,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah, and I’ve never been really fond of that either, but cats and dogs are different.” He kicked off his shoes and went to the refrigerator to get himself a bottle of water. “Dogs are always rolling around in the dirt and once he gets older, he’ll be bringing God knows what in with him. We don’t want that on our beds.”

  “For Pete’s sake, Jon, you should have seen the places Smudge got himself in and out of. You never kicked him out of bed.”

  “Your old cat was a special case. Me and him had a special understanding.”

  “Oh, really? And what was that?”

  “As long as he didn’t try to get under the covers with us, I wouldn’t steal any of his cat food. See? Worked out good for both of us.”

  She gave him a look, because they both knew he was making that up. “I don’t think Cha Cha being on his bed is going to hurt anything. If he’s ever really dirty we’ll make sure that Zane gives him a bath. He’s going to have to learn how to do that anyway.” He was ready to argue the point further, so she quickly changed the subject on him. “Hey, look what came for me in the mail today.”