Have Yourself a Merry Little Murder Read online

  “Have you heard from your mom yet?” he asked her, their lips still very close together.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Getting worried?”

  Actually, yes. She was.

  Darcy woke up early and wriggled her way out of Jon’s arms. She was hoping to take care of a few things. So far, it hadn’t worked out that way.

  Her mother’s phone went straight to voicemail. She didn’t have a number for James Bollinger, her stepfather, and now she saw how foolish she’d been not to get that when she’d had the chance. It had never occurred to her that she’d have any reason to call James rather than Eileen, her mother. They’d both been gone from Misty Hollow for years now and whenever Darcy needed to reach out to either of them, she had just always called her mom.

  But not now. Now, it was only four days until Christmas, and she needed to make sure her mother was still coming, or if the storm was going to keep her away. More than that, she needed to make sure her mother was all right. She was surprised at the disappointment she felt, thinking her mother might not make it here. When she was younger, she couldn’t stand her mother, and the feeling had been mutual. Since then they’d fixed their relationship, and Darcy actually looked forward to spending time with her mother again.

  Her mind slowly turned to other things as she skied down the snow-covered streets this morning. The murder of a father and his little boy pressed on her thoughts. She was going to see someone, and they might just be connected to those deaths. It was hard to think she might be right. It would be nice to just drop by a neighbor’s without having to suspect them of murder for a change.

  The streets were still buried under two feet of snow, and more than that in some places. It was getting exhausting just moving around. On the one hand, the world around her was beautiful. The world looked clean and fresh and sparkling in the early morning light. On the other hand, it had the makings of a natural disaster. What damage had the weight of the snow already caused, hidden under all those drifts? The town was going to be weeks recovering from this even after the snow was removed.

  The sky still wasn’t clear, but it was less dark and more gray this morning as the sun tried to peek through the clouds. She could hear runoff dripping everywhere as snow melted off the edges of roofs and from the trees above. She’d already been dumped on more than once skiing under overhanging branches. Cold wet slush had slipped under the collar of her jacket and sent chills down her spine. She could have stayed home, nice and warm. No doubt a couple of officers from the police department could have gone in her place to talk to this particular neighbor but she worried that they wouldn’t know what to ask. She was working on a hunch, and hunches were hard to explain to other people.

  She hadn’t even told Jon about this yet. He’d gotten home sometime around three this morning, she thought, and he’d fallen asleep just as soon as his arm had wrapped around her waist. He’d still been asleep when she left this morning. She hadn’t even been able to ask him what he’d found out about the names on the Christmas packages.

  Her skis turned onto Gordon Street, and then the house she wanted was just a few places up from this corner. The address was… huh. She knew this house.

  Once upon a time, a dear old man named Benson LaCroix had lived here. He had passed on years ago, of course, but Darcy still remembered his wit and his wisdom. Actually, Tiptoe’s mother had been Benson’s cat. Twistypaws had been beautiful, gray from nose to tail, with white-tipped ears, and Smudge had loved her very much.

  Remembering that actually brought a smile to Darcy’s face.

  Now, the house belonged to someone else. Mark Franks had told Darcy when he moved into town that he was looking at buying one of several vacant houses that were for sale here. This must be the one he decided on. Benson’s old house was three stories high, but very narrow front to back. Darcy had been inside several times but never once since Benson passed away. Now she would get the chance to see what Mark had done with the place.

  The awning roof over the porch had kept most of the snow away. Darcy took off her skis, leaving them stuck in a deep bank beside the steps, and then she had to carefully step down the slope of the snow to get to the door. Just for a moment, she hesitated. It was still early, and maybe he was sleeping, or maybe she was interrupting him or something…

  If she was wrong, she could always apologize to him later. Maybe give him a free book from the store. In her experience, good books made up for just about anything.

  She knocked with the back of her knuckles, and then waited. She was just about to knock again when she heard Mark’s voice from inside.

  “Uh, coming! Just a moment.”

  He probably wasn’t expecting company, she guessed, but this couldn’t wait. Even if Mark wasn’t directly involved in the murders it was entirely possible that he had seen something. After all, he’d been out on his skis the night the storm started, the night of the murders. He’d even said he was down on that side of town. She had to at least ask him the obvious questions. She had to know for herself if she was right about him before she went to Jon with her suspicions.

  When he opened his door, Mark Franks was wearing his winter coat, with mittens on his hands, and heavy wool socks on his feet. She could see his breath. Darcy was almost certain she felt a wave of cold air coming out of the house, as if it was actually colder inside than it was outside.

  He blinked in surprise to find it was her standing there. “Well, hello. I wasn’t sure who I was expecting to find at my door this morning, but I should have guessed it would be the resourceful Darcy Sweet. Come on in. I’d say take off your coat and get warm, but I seem to be having trouble with my furnace at the moment.”

  She looked past him, into the cold house, like she expected someone to spring out at her at any moment. She realized then how jumpy she was. Maybe she should have brought Jon with her after all. Or Izzy.

  No. Not Izzy. Not this time. Not considering how she felt about Mark.

  He moved aside to let her in. Things in here were pretty much exactly like she remembered them from the last time she was here. The living room and kitchen were one long area, with a dining room alcove under one of the windows. Dishes were stacked high in the sink. The kitchen table was a mess of magazines and junk mail envelopes. In the middle of a snowstorm Mark Franks should have had no lack of time to tidy up, but he obviously hadn’t bothered.

  Or he’d found other things to do with his time. Like kill people.

  “Um,” she said, not wanting to give away her thoughts. “So what happened to your furnace?”

  “Wish I knew,” he said, stuffing his hands in his coat and bouncing on the heels of his feet. “The darned thing keeps shutting off and turning back on again. It’s really inconvenient with how cold it is outside.”

  “Yes, I can imagine.”

  “Well, it’s an old house. The man who lived here before me had it for a long time, so… yeah. Old house, old furnace, and I have no idea if it can even be fixed.” He shrugged. “Like I said, it will come on again in a minute or two but until then, how about a cup of coffee? We can sit and talk, and you can tell me what brings you by so early.”

  She smiled at him, avoiding the question. “Some coffee would be great, thanks.”

  The room he motioned to, off to the side, was one she remembered well from when she used to visit Benson LaCroix. It used to be full of books, the floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with biographies and encyclopedias and novels. The books were gone. Most of the shelves were empty, and in fact the room kind of had a neglected feel. At least for Darcy, it did. There was a couch, and a low table, and a TV up on the wall that had a thin layer of dust across the screen. It felt like Mark might live here, but he didn’t spend a lot of time here.

  She wasn’t sure if that was her own trepidation speaking to her, influencing how she saw things, or if maybe that was her special gift telling her things that she should know.

  Sometimes it was hard to tell.

  There actual
ly were a few books on the shelves. She recognized a few of them as ones Mark had bought from her at the bookstore. She wouldn’t be surprised if the others were ones Izzy had sold him. They were all novels, but all of them still looked brand new. Mark must be the kind of guy who was really careful with his books. Either that, or he hadn’t opened up a single one of them…

  She looked closer and found that at least one of them had been read. It had a crack down the spine, almost near the middle, like it had been held open there for a long time. Well, it was good to know these books weren’t just being ignored, she supposed. Unread books were like abandoned thoughts, left to wither and fade away into obscurity. Darcy always thought that was sad.

  Across from the couch, on the low table, she saw an open laptop. Curious, Darcy sat in front of it, and touched the mousepad. The screen came to life. Mark was a freelance writer, and Darcy had always promised to come and read something of his, but she never seemed to find the time. But here were paragraphs of his writing. Pages, even. She began reading, wanting to see what kind of writer Mark might actually be.

  It was a sci-fi novel, she discovered quickly. Not her favorite genre by any means but there were always exceptions. Isaac Asimov was a brilliant writer, for instance, but that was because his stories were more about the human spirit than robots and spaceships, even if he had come up with the famous ‘three laws of robotics.’

  So she skimmed over a few paragraphs of what Mark had written, just to see.

  * * *

  “Era Rae,” Jadran called to me again, standing right beside me, sounding a million miles away. “Are you all right?”

  I turned to him, sweeping away strands of hair that were sticking to the perspiration beading on my face. I wanted to tell him I was fine, just some scratches, just my heart that wouldn’t stop pounding from the terrors I had just seen. I wanted to say a lot of things. I just couldn’t make my tongue work.

  When he saw my face, he gasped and shrank back from me. That’s when I realized I wasn’t all right at all. Something was definitely wrong. I wasn’t sweating from the physical exertion of this fight.

  I was sweating and achy and disoriented because I’d been poisoned. When that one creature had cut me across my face. With its tongue. Some kind of venom…or toxin…

  …or…

  Darkness took me before my mind could finish the long list of things that might be killing me.

  * * *

  And then I scrolled down a few pages and read more.

  * * *

  “So how do the Children of the Event fit into the Restored Society’s plans? Were they a mistake?”

  He shook his head. “This, I do not know. They were a result of the nuclear fire and the radiation afterward, but more than that I can not say. I only know they are dangerous, and we must avoid them. In the tunnels, we were trapped with them. Up here, we can hide and move when it is safe. They are a danger we can not stand against.”

  He didn’t have to tell me. Those things hadn’t just frightened me. They had scared me bad enough that my genetically imbedded reflex of calm had splintered apart into nothing. I’d come to accept that part of me as a good thing. As something that could save me whenever I felt threatened. Not this time. This threat had been too much. I’d given in to my panic and it was just dumb luck that I’d survived. That any of us had survived.

  What would happen the next time we encountered a Child of the Event?

  * * *

  This book on the screen… wasn’t bad, actually. It was certainly engaging enough that Darcy wanted to read more. Although, it actually sounded kind of familiar. Like maybe she’d read it before. It was right there at the edge of her mind, but she couldn’t quite drag it out.

  “Ah, I see you’ve found my new novel,” Mark said to her as he came in from the kitchen carrying two cups of coffee. “It’s not finished yet. I have another twenty thousand words to put into it, and then there’s going to be three to four days of editing to get it set before I send it to my publisher for their review, and then I’ll have to make any changes he suggests… yeah. It’s a long process.”

  He laughed as he passed her a cup of coffee. It sounded to Darcy like a lot of work. She’d considered writing a book before, maybe a ‘how to’ about conducting spirit communications like her Great Aunt Millie had written, but she’d never gone through with it. Was it really that hard? Mark sounded like he loved it.

  The cup of coffee was warm in Darcy’s hand and it smelled wonderful. She might have to drink a whole pot to stay warm while she was here. It was absolutely freezing in this house. If only the furnace hadn’t gone out, it would be a lot easier for Darcy to concentrate on why she was really here if she wasn’t starting to shiver.

  Someone had killed two people at the end of town. If it wasn’t the mother, Lana Harris, then it had to be someone who could move around in the storm. Sure, there were lots of people in town who might have ways of doing that, but Darcy had only seen a few of them actually out and about in the storm.

  Mark Franks had been one of them.

  He was holding his own coffee cup in between his gloved hands. He took several sips, and sighed. “There’s nothing like a good cup of coffee on a cold day. You should be home with those kids of yours, shouldn’t you? Such a nice family. You’re so lucky to have a family like that.”

  “Well, yeah I guess I am,” she started to say, but Mark kept talking like he hadn’t heard her.

  “Yes, family is really important to me. I hope to have one of my own someday. A couple of kids of my own, maybe. They say you get two chances at a family. The one you’re born with, and then the one you create yourself when you’re an adult.”

  Darcy knew the truth of that, but then again she had lucked into having a good, strong relationship with her mother after a long time of barely tolerating each other. She’d made the best of her second chances. At least, she was trying to. “You never told me if you had a family of your own, Mark.”

  “Hmm? Oh, I did. But you know how that goes. You grow up, you drift apart, some die, some live. It’s the way of things.” He shrugged and sipped at his cup again. “Ah, listen to me waxing poetic like a writer, when you came all this way to talk to me about something. Uh, you did come to talk to me about something, right? Is it Izzy? You’re not here about Izzy, are you?”

  That gave Darcy a moment’s pause. “What? No, why would you ask that?”

  Mark chuckled again. “Well, she and I have been getting close and you’re basically her best friend. This is about the stage in a relationship where the best friend steps in to lay down some ground rules, isn’t it?”

  Wow. That hadn’t even been a thought in her head. She wasn’t going to concern herself with who Izzy chose to date. That was Izzy’s choice. She was a grown woman and if the last guy had done her wrong, and Mark was willing to treat her well, then that was what mattered.

  Unless Mark was involved in a murder. That would make it Darcy’s concern.

  “Um. Actually, I was going to ask you about something else,” she told him. “There was… well, there was an accident at the far end of town two days ago. Jon is investigating it and he’s looking for witnesses. I remember you were out on your skis the next morning, like me and Izzy, and you said you went all the way down to Main Street the day before. So you were there when it happened. I was just wondering if you saw anything?”

  It was a loaded question, but she felt like she had done a good enough job of disguising her real interest in what he might have been doing that night. The words had come out in a rush, but she made sure to call it an “accident.”

  Still, he was looking at her awkwardly now, sitting there with his coffee in his gloved hands.

  “I don’t think so?” he said finally. “I remember all the snow, but I didn’t see anyone, and I don’t remember seeing any accident. Don’t you think I would have said something if I had?”

  Sure, Darcy thought to herself. Unless… he felt guilty about something.

  Sh
e needed to ask him more questions, like—

  A ratcheting, clanking noise trembled through the house and startled Darcy. Her untouched coffee slopped over the rim of the cup and onto her hands. Luckily, it was lukewarm already, thanks to this freezing house. She set it aside on the table, looking all around.

  Mark laughed.

  “That’s the furnace kicking on again, is all.” He tugged at the fingers of his gloves, anxious to get some heat to his cold hands again. “Ah. That’s better. I can feel it warming up already.”

  He slipped the gloves off. When he dropped them on the table, he saw Darcy’s cup, and the spilled coffee.

  “Uh, sorry,” Darcy said to him. “The furnace coming on had me a little jumpy, I guess. Now, like I was saying…”

  She stopped.

  Across the back of Mark’s hand was a long, narrow bruise. A purplish-yellow mark slanting at an angle like he’d been struck there with a stick. Or maybe, she thought, a metal bar.

  Like the bar they found in Lana Harris’s purse, covered in blood.

  As if… as if he was defending himself, with his hands up, when that bar came crashing down. What if Lana had been defending herself against the killer, and left a mark on him as she got away?

  It would look just like that bruise…

  “Let me get something to clean this coffee up before it stains something,” Mark suddenly said, still smiling at her like nothing was wrong. He stood up from the couch and went off to the kitchen. Darcy was left alone with her thoughts.

  She jumped up as soon as he was gone. She needed to leave. Right now. She needed to tell Jon what she had just seen, and she needed to go before Mark came back and got suspicious about why she was asking questions. Maybe he already was. Maybe he wasn’t going to get a towel to clean up her spill at all. Maybe he was going to get a weapon.

  This was bad.

  Darcy could remember when Mark Franks first moved into town. Back then, she had suspected him of being involved in a horrible crime, all because of an injury to his hand. She’d been wrong that time. Her instincts had been wrong. Mark had turned out to be a good guy… or so she thought.