21 Death Takes a Letter Read online

  Ordinarily she would get Colby up at this point to start getting her ready. This was part of a parent’s life, getting up before their children to get them to school, and then staying up later than them to take care of grown-up things.

  Darcy wouldn’t change it for the world but she really wished there were more hours in the night for sleep.

  While Jon finished his shower, Darcy hummed to herself on the way down the stairs. Everything she had to do today was running through her mind. Bookstore. Internet search for Leighton Reeves. Meet Jon at the police station to see if he could help with that… it just occurred to her that she’d meant to stop at the station yesterday and it had completely slipped her mind. “Well, chalk that up to the hormones messing with my brain. They’re making me forgetful.” She took a breath, and sighed. “Not to mention, now I’m talking to myself.”

  As she stepped into the kitchen she had to hide another yawn. “Good morning, Colby. What are we having for breakfast to—”

  She stopped midsentence.

  Colby sat at the kitchen table. The three letters of Erika Becht’s were slipped out of their envelopes and laid out in front of her across the table top. She turned to Darcy with a smile on her cherub face.

  “Good morning, Mom.”

  In her hands was a disposable lighter from one of the drawers.

  Darcy was at the table in three steps, her hands around her daughter’s. “Let me have that, Colby. We don’t play with stuff like this, remember? Okay, give it here.” She breathed easier when the lighter was in her hands. “Honey, what were you going to do with this? You weren’t going to burn these letters, were you? Colby please, talk to me.”

  She realized she was making her daughter upset pressing her like that. Colby’s eyes went wide, and she pulled her hands up into the long sleeves of her shirt the way she did sometimes when she was anxious. Under the table, her feet began swinging back and forth.

  “Colby?” Darcy tucked the lighter away in her pocket so she could reach over and put her hand on Colby’s knee. “It’s okay, I’m not mad. You just scared me. What were you doing?”

  “It was Millie’s idea,” the girl finally said. Then she shrugged, and hopped down from the chair. “I’m going to get some cereal. Do we still have the kind with the chocolate marshmallows?”

  Darcy didn’t answer. One by one she picked up the letters, and their envelopes. The scent of the old paper was acidic, and the blocky letters of Leighton Reeves’ handwriting tried to jump out at her as if they were taunting her with their hidden secrets.

  “You need to leave that alone,” Darcy remembered Millie saying. “The answers are worse than the question.”

  The sound of cereal clinking into a bowl drew her attention back to Colby. Had she really been trying to burn the letters so Darcy couldn’t investigate? Her daughter had seen Aunt Millie in dreams lots of times. Just like Darcy had. She’d been entertained by Millie’s ghost tossing books off shelves in the bookstore, among other hijinks. Colby loved her aunt in a way that most people without the gift would never understand. She’d do anything that Millie asked.

  Including, Darcy supposed, destroying the only leads in a decades old case.

  Well. Her and Millie were going to have to have a conversation about that.

  When Jon came in a moment later Darcy already had the letters folded back into their envelopes. The lighter was safely hidden in the pocket of her robe. Colby was happily munching on her cereal and chatting away about a math test she had today. She told Darcy that she was completely ready for it and not worried about at all but she wished they could use calculators because what’s the sense in having them if you can’t even use them?

  It was like the incident with the lighter never happened.

  Darcy nodded along with everything her daughter said and when Jon settled his hand on her shoulder and leaned down to kiss her cheek, she handed him the letters.

  “Why don’t you take these with you to work?” she suggested. “You never know. They might help you find Leighton more easily.”

  “Good idea,” he agreed. The letters went from Darcy’s hand to his, to the inside pocket of his suitcoat. Darcy knew they’d be safe with him. “So how are my two favorite women in the world today?”

  “We’re good,” Darcy told him. In her pocket, the lighter felt impossibly huge. She could tell Jon about what Colby had almost done, but she seemed to be over her desire to destroy the letters now that Darcy had explained why they needed them. Plus, the agreement between her and Jon was that she handled everything with Colby of a ghostly nature. Jon was Colby’s father in all things. Just like Darcy was her mother in all things.

  But in all things ghostly, Darcy took the lead.

  “Tell you what,” Jon said to Colby, blissfully unaware of the reason why Darcy kept staring at their daughter. “How about you finish your cereal up, Colby, and I’ll drive you next door to wait for the bus with Lilly.”

  “Yay!” Colby said in a falsetto voice full of real excitement. “She’s going to be done school this year and then she’s going off to college. Do I have to go to college when I graduate?”

  “Yes,” Jon said immediately.

  “No,” Darcy said at the same time, quickly adding, “unless you want to get a job that needs a college degree. Like… a doctor.”

  “Right,” Jon agreed. “Or a teacher.”

  “Or a lawyer,” Darcy added to the list.

  “Or an engineer.”

  “Or a scientist.”

  “Or,” Jon said, “a police officer.”

  Colby was twisting her head back and forth between her parents as they listed off one career after another. Finally she held a hand out to stop them. “I have made a decision,” she said. “I have decided that I will continue being seven for the rest of my life.”

  “Oh?” Darcy asked. She leaned her elbows up on the table and balanced her chin on tented fingers. “And what about your birthday? That’s coming up soon. Do we just cancel the party, and send back your presents? What about the cake? I suppose I could eat all the ice cream…”

  “Um. Well,” Colby said, chewing the last of her cereal in the bowl. “I suppose I can have one more birthday. I mean, I wouldn’t want all those presents to go to waste.”

  “Of course not,” Jon agreed. “I’ll catch breakfast at work. Come on, Starshine. Get your backpack together and I’ll bring you over to Lilly’s. Darcy, want me to drop you at the bookstore?”

  “No thanks.” Not that Darcy wouldn’t mind spending a few more minutes with Jon, but she and Izzy had their routine worked out. “I’ve got a ride. I need to feed our cats before I go anyway, and… I have to go to the bathroom again.”

  Colby giggled at that. Darcy pulled her into a hug while she was still lacing up her sneakers. “Oh, you just wait. One day you’ll grow up and want to be a mommy, too, and then you’ll be able to experience all the joy of spending quality time in the bathroom while your new baby does the cha cha on your bladder!”

  Colby caught her breath from laughing so hard and pushed out of her mother’s arms. “The cha cha is a dance, right?”

  “Yes, it is. Not that I actually know how to cha cha.”

  Colby looked at her mother very seriously. “You should learn. It’s all about the dance.”

  Jon gave her a hug, and whispered in her ear. “I think our daughter just told us we should dance more. Maybe tonight?”

  “Hm,” Darcy laughed. “You didn’t have enough dancing last night?”

  Colby opened the front door for her and her dad. “I can hear you guys. You know that, right?”

  With a final kiss, and a wink that said they could pick this up later, Jon scurried their daughter out the door and to his car. They honked on their way over to Izzy and Lilly’s house.

  Darcy knew she had a few minutes before the bus came to pick the girls up. Izzy wouldn’t come to pick her up until after that. She had time to use the bathroom upstairs and feed the cats.

  Where were
the cats?

  “Smudge?” she called out on her way up the stairs. “Tiptoe?”

  The house was silent around her. No cats. Huh. Well, Smudge had shown Tiptoe his super secret method for getting out of the house. The one that Darcy and Jon had never been able to find. They must have gone out during the night to prowl around the town. That was one of Smudge’s favorite things to do when the weather was nice like this. Tiptoe was just following in her father’s footsteps. So to speak.

  Her bathroom trip done, Darcy decided to take one more look through the house for the two little furballs in residence before leaving them some food and fresh water for the day. Hanging the towel back on the rack next to the sink, she stepped out into the upstairs hallway.

  Face to face with someone who shouldn’t be there.

  A woman, tall and slender, with cascading black curls that were tossed carelessly over one shoulder of a pretty blue dress. She was a middle-aged woman. Not old, but no longer young. Darcy had never met her before but there was no mistaking the family resemblance, or the fact that the woman was no longer alive.

  This was the ghost of Erika Becht.

  She smiled at Darcy, but it was a very sad sort of smile.

  Darcy stood very still. She wasn’t afraid. She hadn’t been afraid of a ghost for a long time. Not since the Pilgrim Ghost had tried to kill her and Jon. Her aunt’s ring on her right hand was a reminder of that time, and a reminder too that she should be careful when stepping where the dead walked.

  Erika stood there, waiting.

  It wasn’t every day that a ghost came to seek her out. Not anymore, at least. Once upon a time it had been an every-other-week sort of thing. Most of the time nowadays she had to call for one through a spirit communication if she wanted to talk to them. Maybe Millie’s spirit had found Erika’s ghost on the other side after all, and gave her Darcy’s address.

  Ordinarily, ghosts only appeared in places they held an attachment to. The house they lived or died in, their grave, the home of a loved one. Something like that. Whenever a ghost was in particular need, however, they had ways of finding living people who could help them. Like Darcy.

  “Erika,” she said quietly. “My name is Darcy Sweet. I want to help you. Can you tell me what happened to you? Your daughter needs to know for her peace of mind. Were you murdered?”

  The moment stretched and Darcy began to worry that Erika was going to remain silent, just standing there in her upstairs hall.

  That wouldn’t do at all.

  “Erika? Do you have a message? Do you know the answer to my question?” Calm down, Darcy, she warned herself. It’s going to be you scaring the ghost away, instead of the other way around! “Erika, I need your help. Please help me.”

  The ghost stared at her. Stared through her, really, and then held up a single finger.

  A tiny flame flared into life around her fingernail, and then spread to her hand, and then up her arm, and then her entire figure was in flames and Darcy stepped back, holding her arm up to protect her from the heat of the fire even though she knew it wasn’t real, stumbling backward into the bathroom and away from the horrible image of Erika Becht burning.

  Not dying. This wasn’t how she died. Darcy knew that from what Linda had told her but also from what she was seeing. This was a message. This was some clue that Darcy had to figure out. Flames. Erika, and flames.

  Reflexively, she put an arm across her belly to protect the baby inside of her.

  In the center of the conflagration Erika Becht’s eyes finally focused on Darcy. She wasn’t in pain. She wasn’t scared. She just smiled again.

  And then she vanished, like she had never been there at all.

  Darcy reached for the space where the spirit had stood. The air was warm still. There was a faintly acrid, acidic smell that disappeared even as Darcy tried to put a name to it.

  Then a car horn blared outside and she jumped, stumbling back against the wall and nearly falling. That would be Izzy, waiting to pick her up.

  She placed a hand on her stomach, and immediately the baby kicked against her touch. “Yeah,” Darcy whispered. “I didn’t like that either.”

  Flames. The lighter Colby had been holding this morning…

  What was Erika Becht trying to tell her?

  5

  In the bookstore, things were quiet by midmorning. There were no customers. Darcy and Izzy had stacked and organized and done all the work they could find to do. Darcy had shuffled the same shelf of self-help books three times now. Somehow, it always came out the same.

  “Are you all right?” Izzy asked her after standing and watching her alphabetize the books on meditation. Again. “You’ve been distracted all morning.”

  “Have I?” The book she was shelving was upside down. She pulled it out and turned it over before putting it back. “Yes. I guess I have. It’s the letters Linda gave me. The ones I told you about yesterday? I’m trying to piece together an ages old mystery with a pair of tweezers, is what it feels like. I need to talk to someone who was there.”

  “Like the book club members?”

  “Well, yeah, but someone else, too. I’m going to try to find her mother’s boyfriend, who may or may not have been engaged to her when she died, depending on who I’m talking to.”

  “That’s what happens when you listen to gossip.” Izzy leaned her back up against the row of cookbooks. “Especially stale gossip.”

  “Don’t we know it. That’s why I want to find the boyfriend. Leighton Reeves. He should know more than we do.”

  “If he’s willing to talk to you,” Izzy pointed out. “Or if you can even find him.”

  “Or, if he’s even still alive. Would you like to help me look? You were always good with internet searching.”

  “Actually, I sort of had a different idea.”

  “Really? What?”

  “Well, you won’t like it.”

  Considering she just had a ghost burst into flames in her own house, Darcy doubted that whatever Izzy had in mind could be any worse.

  “You know,” Izzy said, “that Erika Becht had a brother, right?”

  Darcy thought back over the things Linda had said. “Uh, no. Actually I don’t think that ever came up. I’ve never heard Linda talk about having an uncle.”

  “Neither have I, but I think I can guess why it never came up. Guess who Erika’s brother was?”

  “Who?”

  Izzy leaned in dramatically. “Roland Baskin.”

  Darcy groaned. Roland was the crazy old coot of Misty Hollow. Every small town in America had one, she supposed, and Roland was theirs. He was very, very old now, and basically housebound. Home health aides came in on a regular basis to take care of him. People from Pastor Phin’s church brought meals to him every day and sat with him for as long as they could stand his mean spirit.

  Izzy had been right. She didn’t like anything to do with that man.

  Roland was Erika Becht’s brother? That would make him Linda’s uncle and Darcy could definitely see why Linda hadn’t ever mentioned it. Who would want to claim the town grump as part of their family? Darcy had always gotten the sense from Roland that he’d pretty much cut all ties with the rest of his family, too. Kind of like Jon had, only in Jon’s case it had more to do with his father and sister both being in prison.

  With Roland, it was just that he hated the whole entire world.

  “So,” Darcy said, thinking out loud, “Roland might know some things about Erika that Linda was leaving out?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Izzy said. “That’s what I was thinking. Brothers know their sisters.”

  “I guess so.” Darcy liked the idea, but she knew it might not work. “It all depends on how close he was to Erika when she died.”

  “Sure. I know. It’s family, though. I’m willing to bet that close or not, Roland will remember something from the time that his sister died. Something about Leighton, maybe.”

  “That’s great,” Darcy said. “Only…I can’t go talk to him. He hates
me.”

  “He hates everyone. I’m pretty sure,” Izzy added, “that he hates himself.”

  “True, but still. He’s still mad at me for accusing him of stealing Smudge. He’s not likely to talk to me ever again.”

  “But he was Erika’s brother.” Izzy gestured helplessly with her hands. “If anyone is going to know what was really going on back then wouldn’t it be him?”

  “Him, or Erika’s boyfriend.”

  “Who we can’t find,” Izzy reminded her.

  “Not yet, but Jon’s going to help me look later.” Darcy shrugged. “Besides, I have someone else I can ask first.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Sergeant Sean Fitzwallis. He… has a way of knowing about these things.”

  Izzy thought about it, then shrugged. “I know he’s been around forever, but he can’t be as old as Roland Baskin. My money’s still on him. Plus, he’s always been kind of nice to me. I think he sees me as sort of the daughter he never had. So he doesn’t hate everyone, necessarily.”

  Darcy doubted that Roland was capable of thinking that fondly of anyone, but if Izzy thought she had a chance of talking to the old town grump then it was certainly worth a try. She was about to say so when she felt the baby kicking in her belly and it reminded her that once again she needed to head to the bathroom. She wasn’t in top mystery-solving condition, that was for sure. If she was going to solve this, especially if ghosts were going to start popping up in her house and randomly bursting into flames, then she was going to need help this time.

  Which gave her the perfect idea.

  “Hey Izzy, I know someone who Roland Baskin wouldn’t mind seeing.” She smiled at her friend. “You. Would you maybe want to go and see Roland after work? I’ve got to see Jon, too.”

  “Hmm. If that means quitting time can come early today, I’m all for it.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me. I’ll write up a sign for the window. It’s not like we’ve had a customer for two hours or more—”