21 Death Takes a Letter Read online

  In her hands she held a paperback book, bouncing it from edge to edge, making it dance across the table on its edge as if it was alive. It was moving to music that only Colby could hear.

  It was the book that Linda had pulled out of her purse, Darcy realized. She must have forgotten it on the table when she left. As her daughter held it still for a moment, balanced on its edge. Darcy read the title. A Tangled Tale, by Lewis Carroll.

  “I like him,” Colby said, pointing to Carroll’s name on the front of the book. “He wrote Alice in Wonderland. We’ve never read this one, have we Mommy?”

  “Um, no. It’s not one of his more famous books.” Of course Colby would know who Lewis Carroll is. That was one of the benefits of being the daughter of a bookstore owner and a major bibliophile like Darcy was. She had done her best to expose Colby to the best children’s literature in the world at an early age. Everything from Carroll to Seuss, from Skippyjon Jones to Encyclopedia Brown. Sarra Finklestien had made a place for herself in their story time, as had as Charlotte’s Web.

  Never this book by Carroll, though.

  “Look, Mom. Mister Book wants to go to a dinner party.”

  Darcy blinked at her holding the book and dancing it around the table, bowing to the salt and pepper shakers. If she remembered correctly, one of the chapters in the book was about a problem at a dinner party. A party where the reader had to figure out how many people were actually at the party because the identity of each one was hidden in a riddle. There was no way for Colby to know that…

  It occurred to Darcy very suddenly that this must be what it was like for other people when they tried relating to her. When her gift let her know something that she couldn’t possibly know otherwise, and people were left to wonder what sort of other things she could do. It was a little humbling, to see so much of herself in this beautiful little girl.

  She looked at the book again. There was nothing for it but to bring it back to Linda as soon as she could. Later today, maybe, after she’d had a chance to read those letters.

  For now, it was time to have lunch. The letters had waited for decades. They could wait a little longer.

  Her hand felt over the curve of her belly again. She was pregnant, after all. How much sleuthing could she really be expected to do?

  “That’s okay, Mommy, I’ll help you.” Colby said as she hopped down from the kitchen table. She got out the stool again so she could reach up to a cabinet and get down drinking glasses.

  She smiled at Darcy. “I like to help.”

  2

  Jon didn’t get home until after sunset. Colby was in bed already, with Tiptoe curled up at her feet on the blanket, and Darcy finally had some quiet time to herself. Smudge was keeping her company for a little while but then he wandered off to do more important cat stuff. Jon had already called her twice to let her know he was going to be late. He’d temporarily died once, and it had terrified Darcy, and now he always made sure to keep in touch whenever he was out. Just so she would know he was all right. Death hadn’t been able to keep Darcy and Jon apart.

  She smiled at that thought as the front door opened and in came Jon Tinker himself, wearing an apologetic smile.

  He was Tinker, she was Sweet. It had been their agreement when they married that they each got to keep their own name. Any girls born to them would be named Sweet. Any boys, Tinker. There was already a two-to-one advantage of girls to boy—singular—in their household. Soon enough that balance would change, one way or the other.

  When she saw his car pulling into the driveway she was back at the kitchen table, sitting and reading the letters that Linda had found in her home. She waited patiently while she heard him close the car door, and beep the locks, and hop the front steps. Now, here he was. He smiled at her, and it made Darcy feel like her day had just gotten a thousand times better.

  Sometimes, she thought, it wasn’t fair how much she loved him.

  Her husband was a very handsome man, even now that gray had touched the temples of his black hair. His deep blue eyes shone with intelligence and humor. If her next child was a boy she hoped he took after Jon. Strong, masculine features and an athletic body. Jon could have modeled for GQ. Instead, he chose to be a police officer. It was his looks that Darcy had first been attracted to. It was Jon’s heart that had made her fall in love with him.

  “I know I wasted our Sunday,” he said, kicking off his shoes at the door. “I’m sorry. It’s this case… anyway. Did you end up going to church with Colby?”

  Darcy smiled at her man. “You know I wanted to. Something else came up.”

  “Oh, really? What?”

  “Sleep,” she said with a smile. “Anyway, Phin’s church is usually packed on Sundays. I don’t think we were missed. I’ve just been so tired in the mornings.”

  Stepping in close, Jon bent down and kissed the top of her head. “You’re creating new life. I think Pastor Phin will understand.”

  “Mmm, hope so.” Closing her eyes she leaned back into him, reaching up to take his hand in hers. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Me too. This case we’ve got going on, with this missing teenager… it’s really starting to get on my nerves.” His voice became distracted as he looked over her shoulder, at the letters on the table. “I’m sure the boyfriend isn’t telling us everything… but it’s a matter of catching him in the act… Hey, these look interesting. Old love letters?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Did they belong to Aunt Millie?”

  “Hold on, how do you know they aren’t love letters to me?”

  “Because,” he said confidently, “I didn’t write them.”

  “Fair point.” Darcy squeezed his hand and then let go. So much for private time at the end of their day. Now it was on to the mysteries. “These are letters that Linda Becht brought over for me to look at.”

  “Our town librarian?” He took the seat next to hers and picked up the letter Darcy had been perusing. “Wow, these are from 1977.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old was Linda back then?”

  “She was a teenager, I think. Old enough to have love letters of her own, but these aren’t addressed to her.” Darcy shifted in her seat. Her pregnancy was making it uncomfortable to stay in any position for too long. “They were sent to her mother.”

  “Ah. Yeah, I see that now.” He scanned the letter, reading it as he went. “My darling Erika, I had such a great time on our last date, can’t wait to do it again, out of town now but will be back, meet me in our favorite spot… doesn’t say where that is, though.”

  Darcy put the other two letters side by side on the table. “Don’t you feel kind of like a Peeping Tom reading these?”

  “Odd way of writing,” he said, lost in his analysis. “Why’s everything double spaced? What’s this Leighton guy saving room for?”

  “Jon, I’m serious. Doesn’t it feel kind of like a violation of Erika Becht’s privacy? These are so private, you know?”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose so. Nowadays everyone just posts their feelings on Facebook for everyone to see.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” It all went back to the lost art of letter writing. “I suppose texting has killed the idea of writing love notes. Did you ever send real paper letters to a girl?”

  “Sure,” he said, still reading. “There was this one girl in high school and she and I traded letters in our lockers. She used to wear this lavender sort of lipstick and she’d press her lips to the paper before she signed them… uh, yeah. That’s not important.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Darcy insisted. She leaned her elbows on the edge of the table and folded her hands under her chin. “You don’t get to bring something like that up and then just tell me to forget about it. Oh, no, Mister Tinker. I want to hear all about the girl with the lavender lipstick.”

  He actually blushed. Well, well, Darcy thought to herself. Here was a part of Jon’s past that he hadn’t ever shared before. Waving his hand as if the mem
ory of this girl from high school didn’t matter, he tried to change the subject.

  “So what are these letters for?” he said. “I’m sure Linda brought them to you for a reason.”

  “Uh-huh. What was her name?”

  He blinked at her. “Who?’

  “The girl with the lavender lipstick.” She smiled sweetly, having fun at her husband’s expense.

  “Her name was Janine, and we broke up long before high school ended. Now.” He held the letter up between them like a shield. “Why is Linda showing you her mother’s old love letters? I thought her mother was dead.”

  Darcy tucked Janine away in the back of her mind to bring up later. She knew there was a story there and she wanted to know about that part of her husband’s life. Not that she was jealous of a decades old juvenile crush. Jon was hers now. The past didn’t matter for either of them. Still, the teasing was fun.

  For now, the question of the letters was more important.

  “She brought them to me,” Darcy said, “because she thinks her mother might have been murdered.”

  Jon dropped his hand with the letter down to the table and stared at her. “Well. Maybe you should tell me about that.’

  Darcy did, starting from the beginning as she understood it and going through everything she’d been able to see for herself in the letters, which wasn’t much. Erika and this boyfriend of hers, Leighton Reeves, were very much in love. Their relationship had blossomed late in life and for all of that, Leighton still talked like a moon-struck teenager with a crush. One of them was full of nothing but expressions of love and Darcy had to believe that Erika had returned his sentiment in letters of her own, even if all she had was this one side of their correspondence.

  He was constantly travelling out of town for his work, which was the next tidbit Darcy had picked out. In the letter that Jon was holding, Leighton explained in detail how much it bothered him to be away from her for any length of time.

  But then, his job must’ve changed, because he was suddenly moving out of state for good. The last letter described the argument between them the day she died. If that was true then Erika was with Leighton, arguing over something when she died. Not at home dying peacefully in bed.

  Jon listened to everything Darcy said without comment until she was finished. They sat for a moment in silence, and then Jon picked up the letters to read through them again.

  “Solving a decades old mystery,” he muttered, smiling a special smile he kept just for his wife. “Sounds exactly like Darcy Sweet to me.”

  * * *

  After mulling over the letters for a whole day and deciding there was nothing they could do about them on a Sunday other than come up with some reasonable theories, Darcy and Jon had gone to bed. Darcy had let Jon massage her shoulders until she drifted off to sleep. After what felt like just a few minutes but had clearly been several hours, she’d woken up to Jon’s gentle kisses on her face as he told her he had to go into work. It was up to her to get Colby ready to meet the school bus on this Monday morning. Colby rode the bus with their next door neighbor’s teenage daughter, Lilly McIntosh. Colby idolized her older, teenage neighbor so getting her ready to go was never a problem.

  Once the bus had come and gone, Darcy had the house all to herself all day. She really should have gone into work at the bookstore but she had decided to let Lilly’s mother, Izzy McIntosh, take care of the store for the day. Izzy had proven to be a very capable partner and there were any number of days that she ran the place all by herself. Darcy returned the favor whenever she could. In fact, Izzy was taking Thursday and Friday off to have a long weekend. She more than deserved it.

  The bookstore had belonged to Darcy’s Great Aunt the same way this house once had. Darcy liked that she could continue taking care of these things for Aunt Millie. They were a legacy she was proud to carry on.

  Reading through the letters a dozen more times this morning didn’t allow her to extract any more information out of the words. They said what they said, and left a lot of information out. Where was Leighton Reeves now? Did he ever suspect something had happened to Erika Becht? What had their argument been about… was it just the fact that he was leaving town forever, and leaving Erika behind, despite his other letters professing his unending love?

  Some dark part of her mind had to wonder if Leighton might even be the one who had killed Erika. Writing a letter to someone after you murder them, making it sound like you think they’re still alive, would set up a pretty good alibi.

  The problem would be proving any of this. At this point she couldn’t even prove that Erika had been murdered. All she had was a forty-year-old letter and lots and lots of questions. It would be nice to talk to Leighton Reeves. It would be even better to talk to Erika Becht’s ghost.

  That brought up an interesting dilemma, however…

  Darcy grimaced and carefully set the letters aside in a corner cabinet of the kitchen. Yes, a spirit communication to talk to Erika’s ghost would be the most direct way of finding out if she was murdered. If the ghost wanted to talk, and if the ghost wanted to talk about her death and not her love of knitting needles or butterflies or anything else Erika had found important while she was alive. That was the way ghosts were. They gave you what they thought was important, and not necessarily an answer to the questions you asked them.

  The real issue right now, as Darcy saw it, had to do with how stressful a spirit communication could be. They could last for hours. They could drain a person both physically and emotionally. They could even be a little dangerous.

  Holding a hand over her belly, she waited to feel the baby growing inside of her give a little kick. Sure enough, there was a thump directed right against her palm. So, could she do a spirit communication with a baby on board? Sure. Should she? Maybe not. The question had never come up when she was pregnant with Colby. Now that she was pregnant again, did she dare risk it?

  Not unless she absolutely had to, she decided. Only then.

  Great Aunt Millie had kept journals where she wrote down stuff about her life and her experiences with the paranormal. She’d even written a few how-to books on the subject. Darcy thought back, but she didn’t remember seeing anything in them about doing a communication while pregnant. She’d have to check again.

  In the meantime, there was lots to do, because her sister Grace, her husband Aaron, and their daughter Addison would be over in six hours for dinner. For the rest of the afternoon she busied herself with slow cooking the pot roast and cutting up the vegetables and then setting up the extra folding table in the living room so Addison and Colby could sit out here while the adults took up the four chairs at the kitchen table.

  It wasn’t long before the kitchen had filled up with tantalizing aromas that made her stomach growl. She stirred the glaze for the lemon pound cake on the stove and smiled. “I have become quite the cook, haven’t I little…” She patted her belly and tried to imagine the perfect name for her new baby. “Little Debbie? No. Not Debbie, and certainly not Little Debbie. Lorelai. Er, no. She liked Gilmore Girls as much as the next red-blooded woman but no. Kelsi. Um, maybe. We’ll put that one on the maybe pile for later, okay baby?”

  A little kick from inside her midsection let her know the baby was listening, at least.

  So maybe she was a Kelsi.

  While she was thinking of baby names, the bus brought Colby back right on time. She came running inside with her purple Spring jacket flapping around her. She bounced right up into one of the kitchen chairs and began talking about her day in excited big girl words that painted a vivid picture for Darcy. It had been quite an exciting day, apparently. She wasn’t even done talking about it all when Jon came home.

  Darcy could tell from the look on his face that his day had not been as good to him as Colby’s had for her. This case he was working had gotten under his skin. Everyone else might have missed the subtle lines of tension around his eyes but Darcy knew him too well. He covered it quickly, and put on a big smile for Colby, l
ifting her up out of her chair and twirling her around in circles until she squealed for him to stop.

  She loved him for it but she wished they could have a few minutes for him to unload and talk to her about it. He hadn’t told her much of anything about this missing girl case, but she knew that sometimes he couldn’t tell her much. She respected that. Even if it did drive her wild with curiosity.

  The laughter and racket that father and daughter were making brought Tiptoe racing in from the living room, meowing and prancing from side to side, worried about what Jon was doing to her human friend Colby.

  “It’s all right,” Colby told Tiptoe. Jon flipped her upside down and held her there by her waist, swinging her back and forth. She giggled and waved to the cat. “See? This is fun!”

  Tiptoe sat back, blinking at the two of them, obviously not convinced.

  Darcy looked out into the living room. Smudge was out there, sitting on the couch cushions, keeping his distance while he watched the shenanigans. He traded a look with Darcy, and then sighed, and laid his head down on his paws. His whiskers twitched once.

  I’m too old for things like that anymore, he was saying. Wake me when it’s dinnertime.

  Old man, Darcy thought to herself. Well. He’d earned his rest.

  When the table was set and all the food ready to serve, Grace and Aaron came knocking on the door. Addison gave Jon and Darcy a quick hello, her pigtails bouncing off her shoulders as she ran past them to find Colby up in her room. Those two cousins were the best of friends. They shared secrets and played games together, and begged for sleepovers every other week.

  They both shared the family gift that let them tap into the paranormal, too.

  In Colby the gift was a strong river that ran deep and pushed against its boundaries, wanting to run free. In Addison the gift was much weaker. Darcy doubted that Addison would ever be able to see or speak to ghosts, for instance. She would still be able to do so much, if someone was able to teach her. Grace was still on the fence about having her daughter taught—as she put it—this ghost stuff. Darcy kept after her about it, but so far Grace had been a brick wall where her daughter Addison was concerned.