Family Secrets (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery #8) (9 page)

Darcy knew from
past experience where to sit across from the cells so that the cameras couldn't see her.

Sneaking around the corner t
o where the cells were located in a short dead-end hallway with a bare cement floor and a damp smell, she stayed close to the wall, until she could sit on a low wooden bench facing into the cell where Aimee was being kept.

Jon's sister was
laying on the single cot in the room, an arm up over her face, still in the jogging pants and t-shirt that she had been arrested in.  She hadn't noticed Darcy yet.

Darcy very much wanted to do another reading on Aimee, to confirm what she had seen before.  She wanted to see the old, dried blood on Aimee's hands to confirm her suspicions.  She couldn't do it without physical contact, though, and she doubted the officers would just gladly open the cell
up if she asked.

"Hi," she said instead.

Aimee jerked her head up, a quizzical look on her face.  "Oh.  It's you.  Um, Marcy, right?  You run the bookstore in town?"

"Darcy," Darcy corrected.  "And, yes, I run the bookstore.  I also live with your brother."

"So I heard," Aimee said as she sat up on the edge of the cot.  "I hope the two of you are happy.  God knows he and I never have been."

Darcy had come back here with questions.  Now she was sidetracked by that comment. 
"Never?  You two were always, uh, fighting with each other?"

Aimee nodded.  "I'm sure you've seen
it from living with him.  Jon is a very hard person to get along with.  Moody.  Self-righteous."  She frowned.  "A total jerk more often than not.  I can't believe I came here to ask for his help."

Wow.  Where
should Darcy even begin with all of that, she wondered.  "I love Jon.  And yes, we make each other happy."

Just not so much recently, she added to herself.

Sighing, Aimee stood up and began pacing.  "Well congratulations to you.  If you're happy with him then you've managed to do something me and our dad could never do.  I should have known he'd never listen to me if I came here."

"You did wait two weeks before
talking to him," Darcy pointed out.  "And even then it was only because you were being arrested for murder."

"Not like I planned it," Aimee shrugged.

"Murder kind of follows you around, doesn't it?" Darcy pointed out.

The look Aimee shot her could have made flowers wilt.  "I didn't kill
Vivica Chartrand."

"I know that.  I helped prove it to your brother just now."

The heat slid away from Aimee's voice.  "You…what?"

"Sure.  It wasn't you.  It was her son
Richard."

Understanding shone in Aimee's eyes. 
"Of course.  Vivica was always going on and on about having to cut the cord with someone.  Those were her words.  Somebody who should have grown up a long time ago, she said.  Now that all makes sense.  Her son, huh?  That's harsh."

Darcy had to agree with that.  "But it's not like he killed his boss, or anything."

Just like that, anger rose up in Aimee again.  "Careful.  That's an old wound you don't want to open up."

"Seems like you have to open up about it," Darcy pointed out.  "You're still wanted for that murder.  We've cleared you of this one, but that other one isn't going away."

Aimee turned her face away and stood with her arms crossed.  "Jon will help me out.  You just said you two are close, right?  And you don't think I did it, so he'll believe you.  Mario—that's my boss who was killed—was a good man.  I don't know who would have wanted to hurt him.  Besides, I wasn't even at Mario's office that night.  I went to the movies.  It was the late show, and it ran from nine-thirty to after midnight.  So there.  Couldn't have been me."

Darcy was quickly making mental notes in her head.  She hadn't wanted Aimee to see her writing anything down, but there were questions that needed answers.

She had enough to find those answers now.

"Well, Jon should be back soon," she said, standing up, cautiously looking over at the security camera just to be sure she was still out of its field of vision.  "He'll let you know more about what's going on."

Silence met her remark.  Aimee turned a little like she was sorry to see Darcy go, but then she went and sat back down on the bunk.

"Hey, Darcy?" she called out.  "Thank you. 
For believing in me."

Darcy nodded, but didn't say anything more as she crept back up the hall and back toward the front of the building.

It didn't take Darcy long to figure out her mistake in not using the back door out.

As she walked
into the officer's area of desks and computers and bulletin boards, Grace noticed her first.  "I thought you left," she said.

"I, uh, forgot something," Darcy tried to cover.  It might have worked, or it might not have, but just then Jon and the other two patrolmen came back in, a sulking Richard
Chartrand handcuffed and held by both elbows between the uniformed officers.

"We didn't even have to ask him a single question," Jon said with a big smile.  "We just showed up on his doorstep and he broke down crying and confessed the whole thing."

Even now, Richard was sniffing back tears.  Killing his own mother must have weighed heavily on his soul.  It probably wasn't intentional, Darcy figured.  Just one of those heat of anger moments that can't be taken back.  Ever.

"So," he added in a joking tone, "What did we miss?"

Darcy wanted to tell him about Aimee, and about what she had just found out.  She started to do it and then stopped.  Two things kept her from saying anything about it.  One, she wasn't positive yet that she was right, and she needed to do some research.  He'd already callously reminded her about wrongly accusing people in the past.

T
wo, he was so happy right now.  He'd been in a bad mood ever since his sister showed up and she just wanted them to have this singular moment when they weren't fighting and he was happy.

She didn't think that was too much to ask.

Darcy stepped over to him and kissed his cheek as Grace began helping the uniformed officers with the arrest paperwork on Richard Chartrand.  "I love you," she said to him.  "I'll see you at home."

He blinked at her kiss and his smile slipped a little.  "Darcy.  We'll talk about everything.  I promise."

"Sure we will," she said, although she wasn't sure at all.  "At home, okay?"

Darcy made her way out to her bicycle and headed for home.  It was nearing lunchtime and her stomach growled
again to remind her she hadn't even eaten breakfast.  She didn't have time to stop at Helen's café in town, although she did need to catch up with her friend and see how she was coping with Vivica's death.  She'd have to get something quick at home. 

She had a lot of work to do.

***

It was late
afternoon when Jon came home.  Darcy was on the couch, Jon's laptop computer set up on her folded legs, a plate with crumbs on it and an empty soda bottle on the coffee table.  Smudge had been perched on the back of the couch watching her with half-lidded eyes.  When he heard the front door open and close he perked his ears up.  When he heard Jon's voice, he turned and jumped down, pouncing his way upstairs.

"I'm in here, Jon," she called out to him.  She gathered the papers from
Vivica's house from all around her and set them neatly aside.  "Come and sit with me."

He kicked his shoes off at the door from the kitchen to the living room
, his jacket hooked by one finger over his shoulder.  "Hi there," he said.  "Thought I'd come home for some lunch.  A late lunch, anyway.  More like dinner."

Sitting down on the couch next to her, he put his jacket down across his lap.  He noticed the computer and the papers and then looked up at her quizzically.  "You look like you've been busy.  Is this why you were in such a rush to leave the station?"

Self-consciously, she twisted the antique silver ring on the finger of her right hand.  This was not going to be a comfortable conversation.  Then again, that was the only kind they'd been having for the past two days.

"I came home to check on something," she started.

"Uh-oh.  How come I don't like the sound of that?"

"Just, hear me out, okay?"  She waited to make sure he wouldn't interrupt, and then said, "I've been looking through old newspaper articles online for hours.  Articles about your sister and the man she was accused of murdering
six years ago."

Jon nodded, his tone guarded.  "Mario
Elustro, you mean.  Her boss.  There should have been lots of articles to find.  It was all over the news.  For months."

"Yes, it was," she agreed.  "And I found lots of them.  I read each one carefully."

"Darcy…"

"I found something, Jon.  Something you need to hear."

He sat back a little further from her, gesturing with an open hand.  "What?  What could you possibly have found, Darcy?  I know half a dozen police officers who have been over the whole case from every angle.  I went over it myself back when it first happened.  How do you think you could have found something that everyone else missed?"

"Because no one el
se had the chance to talk to Aimee directly about that night.  I did."

She waited for that to sink in.  Jon's eyes widened as his jaw dropped.  "You did what?"

"I had to know, Jon.  Just listen.  Okay?  Please?  You'll understand in a—"

"I can't believe you went and talked to my sister without talking to me first!" he interrupted, not bothering to hide his annoyance. 
"After I had already spoken to you about going into the Chartrand house without permission?  Darcy, what were you thinking?  She's still in our custody until we get Richard officially charged and arraigned!  Darcy, you could wreck this whole entire case!"

She tried to let his words wash over her, but they found their mark in her heart anyway.  She had to tell him what she had found out quickly, or he'd shut down and stop listening to her altogether.

"Aimee told me," she said in a rush, "that she had an alibi for the night of her boss's murder.  She said she was at a movie from nine-thirty til after midnight."

"Well," he said to her, a little more calmly, "that's a pretty good story, don't you think?  It doesn't mean anything, though.  Remember how I told you that people can make up really good stories about anything
, if you give them enough time to think about it?  And Aimee's had years to make up an alibi for herself."

Darcy nodded.  "Yes, I remember what you said.  That's why I had to chec
k on this.  See, running a bookstore I have a lot of time to read.  That's how I know that in a mystery, sometimes the best alibis are the ones that trip you up in the end."

"What do you mean?" he asked
sharply.  "Darcy, you're the one who said she wasn't a murderer."

"I said she didn't kill
Vivica Chartrand.  And," she couldn't help add, "I was right.  There was still blood on her hands, Jon, and we both wondered why.  It was old, and it was dried, but it was there.  The crime she committed is an old one, and a serious one.  She hasn't gotten rid of the guilt yet.  It's from this murder of her boss.  She killed him."

He jumped off the couch and began pacing, his hands waving animatedly.  "Darcy!  How can you know that?  Tell me that, will you?  When all of us actual
and for real police officers missed it, how did you find the one piece of evidence that proves her guilt?  What can possibly prove she did that murder beyond any doubt?"

"Because," Darcy told him as gently as she could over the pain in her heart.  "None of the articles or police reports mention what time Mario
Elustro was killed.  That was one of the details the police held back.  How could Aimee know that fact, unless she was the one who killed him?"

Jon sat in the interview room tapping the eraser end of his pencil against the metal table.  Darcy
sat in the same chair over in the corner that she had been in the first time they had interviewed Aimee.

This time was just as awkward and uncomfortable as the first time had been.

"So you believe me now, right?" Aimee asked Jon, although her eyes strayed over to Darcy several times for support.  "You believe I'm not a killer?"

"You should have come to see me when you first came to Misty Hollow," Jon said to her, not exactly answering her question. 
"Things might have gone very differently."

Aimee sneered at him.  "You would have arrested me as soon as you saw me."

He didn't argue the point.  Instead he opened up the beige manila folder at his left hand and took out a single sheet of paper.  Turning it around on the tabletop, he pushed it across to her.

"What's this?" she asked.

"It's the statement of your bank account.  Your off shore bank account, as Darcy pointed out to me.  I'm guessing you printed it off from Vivica Chartrand's computer once you settled in there?"  He took her surprised look for an answer.  "Right.  So. It says here that you have five thousand, three hundred and sixty-two dollars in your bank account."