1 Death Comes to Town (2 page)

The melancholy mood refused to budge, though. She figured it was probably because she lived further away from the town than most people. The only neighbor she had was Anna and there was quite a big pasture between their two houses. It wasn’t like they could talk over the fence or anything.

As she rounded a bend in the path and could see her house she felt a little better. She loved this house. She loved how it sat among some tall pine trees that gave wonderful shade when it was hot. She loved the big porch and the big lawn. She sighed. It did feel like she was a little isolated sometimes. Though most of the time she enjoyed the solitude.

When Darcy reached her front porch she stopped short. Her front door was slightly ajar. That was odd. She could have sworn that she’d shut it properly when she’d left for the book shop that morning.

She pushed on the door carefully and stuck her head around to have a quick look inside. She could usually sense when something was off and she wasn’t getting anything right now. Only that squirmy feeling from earlier that she couldn’t shake. Deciding it had nothing to do with her home she entered the house. It was as she was taking off her coat that she heard a kind of rustling noise coming from the living room.

That feeling might have been trying to warn her after all.  There was definitely someone, or something, in her house.

Settling her coat on her shoulders again she grabbed the nearest heavy object, which happened to be an old umbrella of her aunt’s that had been hanging from one of the coat hooks in the entryway, the one with the heavy plastic end shaped like a diamond. Not much of a weapon, but it wasn’t like she kept a shotgun by the door.

Darcy carefully tiptoed along the passageway to the living room doorway. Craning her neck, she looked around the edge of the doorjamb. She could just make out the figure of a man riffling through the drawers of the computer desk that sat flush against the far wall.

She entered the room as quietly as possible and raised the umbrella with the heavy end up over her head in a defensive pose. Then she screamed as loudly as she could to hide her fear, “What do you think you are doing?!”

The man jumped back and dropped the papers he had been holding. He turned to face Darcy with his hands held in the air.

Then he saw what she was holding, and his eyes popped.  He started laughing loudly. “What were you going to do with that thing? You Mary Poppins or something?” He pointed to the makeshift weapon she was holding with a sneer on his lips.

Now that was an expression she’d seen him wear any number of times.

“Jeff! What on earth are you doing in my house?” She was shocked to see her ex-husband standing there in her living room.  They didn’t associate anymore. They really didn’t have anything to talk about. And he definitely didn’t have any right to be in her house going through her things.

He began laughing so hard at her that he was bent over double. Reluctantly she dropped the umbrella with a clatter to the floor. She would much rather have hit him over the head with it. Repeatedly.

“Oh for Pete’s sake!” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms under her breasts. “Will you stop laughing and tell me why you are skulking around inside my house?  My house, Jeff! And why are you going through my personal things?”

Jeff calmed himself down enough to be able to talk to her. “Stop assuming the worst, will you? I came here to get an old box of pictures that my mom wants.” He was wiping the tears away from his eyes as he spoke. “Not get hit in the head with a stupid umbrella.”

“So, what, you just decided to come on in and help yourself?” Darcy considered calling her sister at the police station. Maybe she could talk some sense into Jeff.

His laughter evaporating, Jeff set his face in a scowl. “Always hospitable, aren’t you?”

Darcy felt her blood start to boil. Jeff always brought out this reaction from her. No matter how she told herself she wouldn’t rise to his bait, rise she did. That was one of the reasons they were now divorced and had been for three years. Divorced that long, and still he thought he could come and go in her life just as he pleased.

Taking a deep breath she said, “I don’t want to argue with you Jeff. I want you gone. That’s why I divorced you.”

“Excuse me,” he said to her with that same sneer, “but I think you’ve got that backwards. I divorced you.”

Taking a deep breath to settle her nerves she said, “Whatever Jeff. You believe that if it makes you happy. Spin it however you want. I think those photos are in the basement. I’ll get them. Then you’ll leave. Okay?”

She didn’t wait for him to answer as she turned and headed for the door to the basement steps off the kitchen. He followed behind her, grumbling under his breath as he did. Served him right, she thought to herself.

She kept the basement of her aunt’s house clean and organized. The ceiling was low and most of one corner was taken up by the furnace, leaving little space for storage anyway.  There were metal shelves set up along one wall where she kept bits and pieces of her life that she didn’t have much use for anymore. It didn’t take long for them to locate the box of pictures from their marriage among everything else.

“There you go, Jeff,” she said to him in a stiff voice, shoving the box into his hands. “Now if you wouldn’t mind leaving? I want to get my dinner and relax a bit.”

“Aww Darcy. You’re always trying to get rid of me.” His smile was full of ideas she had no interest in. “I could stay and have dinner with you.”

Was he for real?

Darcy gave him a dark look. “Why on earth would you want to do that? You can’t stand me and I can’t stand you. Why don’t we just leave it that way?”

He grinned at her and winked. “Yeah, you do have a point there. Well, I’ll be going then.”

She followed him all the way to the front door to make sure he actually left. As he opened the door she said, “Oh and Jeff…”

He stopped and looked back at her. “What?”

“Don’t ever come in my house uninvited again. Got it!”

He screwed up his face as he slammed the door shut dramatically. She made sure to lock it and throw the deadbolt as well.

Darcy grinned as she went into the kitchen to start getting her dinner ready. Smudge startled her when he jumped up onto the counter to demand that she get his dinner first.

“Where have you been? You couldn’t have warned me about Jeff? Hm?” He looked at her with his big green kitty cat eyes and she smiled at him. “It’s okay, I don’t blame you for keeping a low profile while he was around. I should have done that myself instead of agreeing to marry him.”

She watched as Smudge seemed to nod his head at her words. His tail twitched as if he was in complete agreement with her.

Smart cat.

Chapter Two

Darcy could feel her heart pounding in her chest as the dark figure walked slowly towards her. She was standing on the sidewalk of Main Street as the apparition moved closer and closer to her. He was surrounded by mist, wearing a dark overcoat and a wide brimmed hat, making it impossible for her to see his face.  But there was something so familiar about him…

He approached her menacingly and she stepped back a few paces as he came closer. She tried to speak, to tell him to stop, but she found that no words would leave her mouth. Her heart nearly leapt from her chest as he reached into his coat with his right hand and…

Pain blossomed in her chest. She’d been shot. Wait. Disoriented, struggling to find reality, she realized that she wasn’t in the street. Hadn’t she just been there? No. She was in her bed. Smudge had jumped on her, landing on her chest. That was all it was. She tried to calm her breathing and pushed at the cat gently as she tried to relax her tense muscles. It had been a dream.  Just a bad dream. That was all it was.

Right?

Smudge mewled at her from where she had pushed him aside onto the mattress. Patting her cat she said, “I’m sorry, Smudge. Thank you for waking me up. I was having a very bad dream. You wouldn’t believe it. I wonder who that man was. I hope it was just a stupid dream and not some premonition. What do you think?”

She was in the habit of talking to Smudge as if he would answer her, as if he could understand her. He looked at her now with those wide eyes of his and shook his head, as if to say “how would I know?”

“Well you’re a big help.” She laughed at herself and rolled over into a comfortable position where Smudge could crawl in between her feet where they were tangled in the comforter. “Goodnight good boy, I’ll see you in the morning.”

It took a little while for her to fall asleep again. All she could see when she closed her eyes was the dark figure. She wondered who he was and what it all meant. She’d like nothing more than to just ignore it all as a fantasy of her tired mind. But she knew that her life didn’t work that way. When she saw things, when she had dreams, she knew she had to pay attention to them.

That thought rolled around in her tired brain before she finally drifted off to sleep again.

***

The next morning Darcy was feeling a little on edge from her dream. It had repeated itself just before she had woken this morning. The same dark figure, the same menace, the same gesture of reaching inside of his coat for…something. She couldn’t settle to anything so she decided to get ready and go to work early. Smudge just rolled over and yawned at her when she asked if he was ready to head into town with her. Apparently, he was still too tired to join her.

Usually she enjoyed the walk into town but this morning her mind was filled with the images from her dream. By the time she reached the town center she was totally out of sorts. Wondering what she could do to settle her nerves, she decided that maybe some coffee and perhaps something sweet would help. She headed towards the Bean There Bakery and Café, Misty Hollow’s one and only café-slash-bakery.

Thoughts of her strange dream buzzed in her head and kept her from paying attention as she made her way through the door of the bakery. She found herself bumping into someone on their way out.

“Oh, sorry! Sorry,” she tried to apologize.

“Darcy! Where is your head? You almost made me drop these coffees.” Darcy was embarrassed to hear the familiar female voice admonishing her. Her sister stood there now, scowling at her, the dark blue pantsuit she always wore for work pressed and perfect. Her long, dark hair pulled back in to a tidy pony tail.

“Grace, what on earth are you doing here?” Darcy cringed as the words left her mouth. She realized how stupid that sounded.

“Well, I don’t know Darcy. Maybe I was digging for gold or working on my car or something.” Grace tilted her head to one side. “What do you think I’m doing here? It’s a coffee shop. I’m getting coffee.” She lifted the styrofoam coffee cups she held in a cardboard tray up to Darcy’s eye level.

Darcy shrugged. What could she say? She bit her lip and wished she hadn’t decided to get breakfast this morning.

“What’s up with you today?” Grace leaned closer to Darcy and continued, “Has it got anything to do with…you know?” Grace wiggled the fingers of her free hand, indicating that she was talking about Darcy’s tendency to get mixed up in weird stuff.

Darcy looked at her sister for a beat, deciding whether or not to tell her about her strange dream. Grace knew more than anyone about the dark secrets of Darcy’s life, but not even her sister knew it all. And Darcy wanted to keep it that way.

“I just had a strange dream, that’s all. It’s probably nothing.” She left it at that. At least she hoped the dream had been nothing.

Grace looked at her watch. “Okay then. If you say so. Are you getting a coffee?” Darcy nodded.  “Go ahead. I’ll wait for you. You can come and meet my new partner. He just started at the police department a few days ago.”

Darcy knew that the police department had recently gotten a new detective. She didn’t know much about the man. Grace’s old partner had recently left Misty Hollow to marry a girl from another state.

Darcy knew she had no choice now. Not that she minded spending time with Grace. She just wanted to get to the book store and spend some time quietly thinking on that dream. She needed to figure it out or put it out of her mind. She went up to the counter and placed her order, chatting with Helen, the owner of the bakery, while she waited for her coffee and Danish. Helen was the Mayor’s wife, and always full of gossip.

As she and Grace walked toward the black and white patrol car that was parked just down the street, Darcy saw the tall, dark haired, very good looking man slouched against the driver’s door.

He had his arms folded across a muscular chest and he oozed indifference to the world around him. His suit was a similar color to Grace’s, and just as stiff-looking. As they moved closer to him he turned to them with a shadow of a smile and Darcy’s breath caught in her throat. She was mesmerized by the most gorgeous pair of blue eyes she’d ever seen.

Grace handed the coffees to him then held a hand out towards Darcy. “Jon, this is my sister, Darcy Sweet.” 

He inclined his head ever so slightly in her direction and she felt her face heat. It was an intense something that rose up in her with each breath as his eyes pinned her.  She hadn’t had a reaction like that to a man since she couldn’t remember when. For his part, he looked her up, and down, and if she’d been standing there naked in front of him she couldn’t have felt more exposed. She bit her lip and told herself to just breathe.

“Darcy,” Grace continued, “this is my new partner, Jon Tinker.”

She felt Grace nudge her as she stood there, still mute. Gathering herself she placed her cup and pastry bag onto the car roof and held out her hand to him. “Hi, um.. Jon. How are you?”

She figured it was her day to put her foot in her mouth.

He took hold of her offered hand and little electric currents ran along her fingers and then up her arm. The tingling settled in her spine, and she knew she was in trouble.

Then he dropped her hand like he’d lost interest and turned away from her to take a coffee from the tray where he’d set it on the roof of the car. He thanked Grace in single syllable words and then took a sip of the hot drink. Darcy was a bit let down by his curt attitude but decided to try again. Sometimes she couldn’t help being a woman.