Til Death Do Us Part (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 16) (11 page)

“I was sitting on that park bench looking for my mother’s killer!” she yelled at Grace.  “All right?  That’s what I was doing on the bench!  That’s why I didn’t come to you people, and that’s why I’m still here!”

Grace took a moment for that to sink in.  They all did.  “You were there…for what, now?”

Phoebe crossed her arms and turned her face away, but there was no taking back what she had said now.  “I was contacted two weeks ago by a woman named Maven Sirles.  She said she had information about my mother’s death.”

“Maven Sirles,” Grace repeated.  “The county coroner.”

“I guess.”  Phoebe shrugged and wiped at her tears angrily.  “She said she had examined my mother’s remains and found evidence that she had been murdered.”

Now Phoebe did turn back to glare at Grace, her eyes sharp, her lip twisted.  “As far as I knew, Detective, my mother died from a fall at home.  She broke her neck on her own stairs.  As far as I knew.  Her husband, my step-father, had been there when it happened.  He gave a statement to the police and they closed the case up all nice and neat and then we all moved on.  I was all of eleven years old at the time.  So I grieved, and I cried, and I got over it.”

Uncrossing her legs, she leaned in to jab her finger against the desk between her and Grace.  “But now I get this phone call, and this woman Maven Sirles tells me it wasn’t an accident.  It wasn’t a fall.  She was killed.  So what does that do to my step-father’s story?  Hm?  Kind of puts the lie to it, don’t you think?  So I did the only thing I could think of.  I packed my bags and I got in my car, and I raced back here to a town I had left in my dust.”

Grace was quickly jotting down notes as Phoebe talked.  Jon and Darcy, and Vic, listened intently.

“Only,” Phoebe continued, “before I get to talk to Maven Sirles, before I even get to town, Maven dies.  Is that a thing here in Misty Hollow?  People dying at the most inconvenient times?”

You have no idea, Darcy thought to herself.

“You were saying that you came to talk to Maven Sirles,” Grace prompted, unfazed by Phoebe’s anger.

“Sure I did.  I came here to talk to the woman who promised she could prove my mother was murdered.  When I found out this Maven woman was dead, I did the only thing I could think of.”

“And what was that?”

“I sat in that park, and I waited.  I’ve been gone from town for so long and I don’t know where he lives anymore, so I waited for him to come walking down that street with his head held up high and without a care in the world.”

Grace’s pen paused over the page.  “You were waiting for…him?  For who?”

Phoebe’s hands clenched into fists.  “For the man who murdered my mother.  I was waiting for my step-father.”
 

***

“Well, that changes things, now doesn’t it?”

Jon practically slammed the drawers of his desk, one at a time, looking for something that he apparently couldn’t find.  With one final shove he closed the center drawer and sat down in his chair.  Darcy knew how he felt.  It wasn’t like him to show his temper like this, was the thing.  It upset her to see it.

Maybe the chief’s position was putting more stress on him than she realized.

“I’ll have Grace take her statement,” he said, “but then we’re turning her loose.”

“You believe her?” Vic asked, incredulous.

The three of them had come back to Jon’s office to talk over what they’d just heard.  The whole story seemed incredible, and yet here they were, asking whether the chief of police believed her or not.

“Actually, I do believe her,” Jon said in answer to Vic’s question.  “I know, I know.  It’s all a bit too coincidental, and I don’t like coincidence, but sometimes it happens.  I think Maven was trying to solve a mystery of her own before she died.”

“And now we have to solve that one, too,” Darcy said.

Jon nodded wearily.  “Yup.  Mysteries within mysteries.  Sounds exactly like our luck, doesn’t it?”

“You people are all crazy in this town,” Vic grumbled.  “Phoebe Stewart is as guilty as sin.”

“Weren’t you sure Maven was guilty as sin not two hours ago?” Jon asked.

“Whatever.  Phoebe’s the guilty party.  She’s this woman in the hat your friend was talking about.  She dug up those graves and now she’s spinning some wild tale to shift blame off herself and onto this idiot step-father of hers.”

“By herself?”

Vic stared at Jon like he didn’t understand the question.  “What?”

“Do you think,” Jon said, “that the woman in our interview room dug up all of those graves and broke open all of those caskets by herself?”

“Fine.  No.  I don’t think she did it by herself.  She’s too…dainty.  So she had help.  Whatever.  But that woman is in on this and when you’re done with her I’ll be taking her into custody.”

For a long moment, Jon didn’t say anything at all.  Then he stood up, leaning his hands against the desk.  “I don’t think so, Sergeant.  See, that cemetery is in my town.  Whoever dug up those graves committed those crimes in my town.  This is now my jurisdiction, and my case.  I’m happy to have the help of the State Police, but I will not have my town run by the State Police.  You don’t give the orders here.  I do.  Am I clear?”

Vic stood up, too.  His duty belt got caught on the arm of the chair and he had to unhook himself and he swore under his breath and basically managed to look foolish.  His normally pale face was beet red by the time he was up, and instead of making it worse by arguing with Jon he simply pushed the chair aside and stormed out of the office.

Darcy watched him go.  “Sean says he thinks Vic’s bark is worse than his bite.”

Jon pushed a hand back through his hair as he blew out a breath.  “To tell you the truth, I don’t think that man has any bite.  I think he’s happy being a little cog in the bigger machine.  He likes to be told what to do and he doesn’t like to think.  Someone like that is dangerous in law enforcement.”

“Thank God we have men like you to make up for it,” she said, sitting down in the chair that had given Vic so much trouble.  “Did it feel good to tell him off?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So.  What do we do now?”

“Well, I was kind of hoping you could check Phoebe’s hands for…you know.”

She did.  One of the techniques she had learned from her Aunt Millie was how to see a person’s guilt painted on their hands in blood.  Not real blood, of course, just a sort of ghostly blood that only she could see when she performed the technique.  If someone felt guilty about some crime or sin or wrongdoing they’d committed, the blood would appear for her to see.  It wasn’t a perfect system, as they’d recently found out, but it was a good indicator.

“I can do that,” Darcy agreed.  “I’ll have to get close enough to hold her hands.”

“I’ll let Grace know you need a moment with Phoebe when the statement is done.  In the meantime—”

“Chief?” Wilson said, knocking on the open office door.  “Someone’s here to see you.”

Jon threw his hands up in the air.  “Of course there is.  Because I don’t have enough going on.  Who is it?”

“It’s Judge Jayne Phillips.”

“Hmph.  Probably here to see how the case is going.”

“What are you going to tell her?” Wilson asked.

“I’m going to tell her that it’s going great, if she doesn’t mind the fact that we can’t seem to figure out who did it.  Is she out in the lobby?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then show her in.”

Wilson stepped out again.

“Do you want me to wait outside?” Darcy asked.

“No, you might as well be here, too.  You’re right in the thick of this.”

“You just want me here in case she starts yelling.”

“Isn’t that what a wife is for?” Jon asked her in a sweet voice.

Jayne came in as Darcy was trying to think of an appropriate answer to that.  She was in a gray jogging suit, her silver hair done up in a bun, her thick glasses making her eyes seem wider than they already were.  “Where is this woman?” she asked right away.  “I heard you had a suspect in custody.”

Jon looked over at Darcy.  “It’s all over town,” she told him.

“Of course it’s all over town,” the judge said in a huff.  “You can’t have your officers pick someone up off the street and expect no one to notice.  Not with all the excitement and media attention this is getting.  I was at the gym when I heard it, for crying out loud.  So.  What charges are you pressing?”

“None,” Jon told her.

Jayne shook her head and stared harder at him.  “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t think she did this, Jayne.  It was a good lead, and it’s brought something else to our attention, but I’m not charging her with the grave robbing.”

“I see.  You have good reason not to charge her, I suppose?”

“I do.”

“Well, then I leave it to your judgment.  I’m telling you though, the public is out for blood on this one.  It’s one of those crimes that shocks the conscience, as they say.  If you don’t find someone to arrest for it, soon, that might spell the end of your career.”

Darcy saw the way Jon clenched his jaw.  “If I lose my career over doing the right thing, then it isn’t much of a career to begin with.”

Jayne pondered that for a moment before turning to Darcy.  “I see why you love him so much.”

“Yeah,” Darcy agreed, sharing a smile with Jon.

“Ah, young love.”  Jayne sighed, a happy smile reflecting some inner memory.  “Well I’ll leave you two alone, then.  You must have so much paperwork to do already.  Not to mention I need to pick up my son from his community service.”

Jon opened his mouth to ask but then shut it again.  Jayne noticed anyway.  She frowned and picked at a piece of fuzz on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.  “Don’t worry, Jon.  It’s not like it isn’t public knowledge.  My son can be a hooligan at times.  I take a hard love stance with him.  When he messes up, he pays the price.  And this time the price was fifty hours of community service.  He’s almost done, but he still needs his mother to pick him up.  So, I’m off.  Keep me posted and let me know if anything else happens, won’t you?”

After she left, Darcy came around the desk to Jon’s side.  He stood, and she let him hold her in his embrace.  “So,” she asked, “where does this leave us with the case?”

“I wish I knew,” was his answer.  “I wish I knew.”

After Phoebe had finished with her statement, Darcy came into the interview room with a message for Grace from Jon.  The message was completely made up, but it gave her a reason to come in and tell Phoebe how sorry they all were that she had to go through this.  Darcy knelt down next to her, taking her hands in hers, breathing out and in and out again, and stirring just a little bit of her own life force into the last exhale.

When she looked, there was no blood on Phoebe’s hands.

The woman shook herself loose of Darcy’s touch quickly, flexing her fingers like they were tingling, but it had been enough.  Darcy was sure.  Whatever Phoebe might have done in her life, she certainly didn’t feel guilty about it.

With everything else they had seen and heard, Darcy had to agree with Jon.  Phoebe wasn’t their best suspect.  Or any kind of suspect for that matter.

After a few more pieces of paperwork were signed, Phoebe Stewart walked out of the Misty Hollow police station with her head held high, past a dozen or more officers, and into a crowd of reporters without saying a single word.  Darcy followed her and watched them all peppering her with questions, including several from Brianna Watson.  Phoebe ignored them all, walking away like she was all by herself, and not the central subject of a horrible crime.

“Good for you,” Darcy whispered.

“I said get in the car!”

Behind her, in the police department parking lot, that voice raised itself above the retreating squabble of the reporters.  Darcy turned to look.  She was sure that she recognized it. 

Sure enough, there was Judge Jayne Phillips.  She was angry, gesturing with her hand and suddenly lowering her voice when she realized she was drawing attention. 

It took Darcy a moment to take the whole scene in.  There was the judge’s son, that same annoying teenager she had seen at the house where Jon had gotten the exhumation order signed.  Leo.  That was his name.  The fancy boy who thought he was a lady’s man.  He wasn’t wearing fine clothes today.  Now he had on a yellow jumpsuit kind of like what Darcy had seen garage mechanics wearing.  The knees and chest were smeared with dirt.  His shock of red hair was all out of place, too.

Beside him stood a girl wearing shorts that were far too tight.  Her jean jacket was buttoned up to her neck and she wore one of those expressions that said she hated the world.  She was blonde and pretty but the scowl on her face told anyone who was looking that her beauty was only skin deep.  Her baseball cap was on backward, her hair in a ponytail at the back.

Her hand was nestled tightly into Leo’s hand.

Jayne opened the back door of her black Mercedes, glaring at the both of them.  “I told you to wait there for me.  I did not want anyone to see you like this!”

Leo smirked and said something to his mother that Darcy couldn’t hear from this far away.  The girl with him laughed like Jayne being angry was the most hilarious thing in the world.  With a few last words exchanged, Leo and she got into the back of Jayne’s car.

As they did, Leo’s necklace sparked in the late morning sunlight.  The same one he’d been wearing at his mother’s house when Darcy had seen him there.

A man’s gold necklace with a ruby chip in the setting.

Darcy gasped.  She remembered the list of things taken from the graves.  All the expensive items, heirlooms, and jewelry.  Including a gold necklace with a ruby chip.

She stood there, not sure what to do, as Jayne slammed the back door of the car shut and turned to get behind the wheel.

When she saw Darcy staring, she put on a big smile, and waved like nothing had ever happened.

Then she drove away.

Darcy went back inside to find Jon.
 

***

“No.”

That was the single word that Jon used to sum up everything Darcy had just told him.  In his office, with the door closed and no one else to hear them, she had told him everything she had seen in the parking lot, up to and including the description of the necklace Leo was wearing.

The photocopy of the church records sat open on his desk to the page listing the details of Gary Allsteader’s burial.  Including the description of the watch and necklace he’d been buried with.  The same sort of man’s necklace that Leo was wearing.

“Why not?” Darcy asked.

He thumped both elbows against his desk and dropped his head in his hands.  Sitting across from him, Darcy had the sudden insight again that the chief’s spot had him stressed out.  Far more than usual.

“We can not,” he said to her again, “grab a judge’s son off the street for questioning.  It doesn’t work that way.”

“I’m not saying we drag him off the street but we at least need to search his room at his parent’s house.”

“Based on what?”  He sat up again and pointed to the page in the report.  “There’s no picture here.  Just a description.  There must be a million or more necklaces in the world that fit into the category of ‘gold chain with ruby chip in the setting.’  It isn’t enough to get a search warrant, let alone bring him in for questioning without his consent!  Even if we do, he’ll just call on the family lawyer and then we won’t get to talk to him anyway.”

“Jon,” she said gently, “are you all right?”

“Yes.  No.”  He scrubbed his hands over his face and then worked up a ghost of a smile.  “I’m sorry, Darcy.  I didn’t mean to raise my voice.  Not to you.  There’s a lot of pressure on me and the department right now.  Mayor Helen’s been breathing down my neck and the press is all over this…which reminds me.  I got a call from Brianna Watson.  Apparently you promised her an exclusive with me?”

“Um, no.  That’s not what I told her at all.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.  I’ll deal with her.  And the town.  And the State Police.  I’ll even deal with the governor’s office.  That’s right,” he said, seeing the surprise in her eyes, “the governor’s office called.  Seems the State Police and the Coroner’s Association both asked him to take the case away from me.”

He paused for a moment, blinking, and then laughed out loud.  “I’ll bet if they got wind that a judge’s son just made it onto our suspect list they wouldn’t be so hot to take the case away from me, now would they?”

Still laughing, he got up from his seat and took Darcy by the hand and pulled her up onto her feet.  Without music, they began dancing together.  “I can’t wait for our wedding, and our honeymoon in Australia.  I think we both need a vacation from the weird and bizarre things that always pop up in our sleepy little town.”

She laid her head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat.  “I’m looking forward to having you all to myself for two weeks.  I don’t care if we stay at home in bed for our honeymoon, as long as I have you with me.”

“I was thinking about taking a little trip right now, actually.”

Her pulse beat faster in her chest to hear him say exactly what she was thinking.  “Oh, yeah?  Where were you thinking of taking me?”

“Out to Jayne Phillip’s house,” he said.

Darcy’s eyes popped open.  That was so not what she had expected to hear at all.
 

***

They caught a quick lunch on the way out of town.  When they got to the judge’s house, Jon went straight up to front door.  Darcy reached past him to knock first.

“You owe me a foot rub when we get home,” she told him.

“I don’t understand why.  I’m here with you to question Leo.  You’re getting what you want.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes.  “Men.”

Jon was saved from trying to figure out the mysteries of the female mind when the door opened.  Jayne stood there, looking at them both, already changed out of her gym clothes into slacks and a blouse.  “Jon.  Darcy.  My, what a surprise.  Is there something new in the case?”

“Possibly,” Jon hedged.  “Can we come in?”

“Of course, of course.  Please.  My son is upstairs with his girlfriend.  Stephanie.  I simply cannot stand that girl, but he insists on keeping her around.  He’s of age, I suppose, and what’s a mother to do?”

They followed her inside, into the living room, while she continued going on and on about why Leo was too good for his girlfriend.  “Actually, Jayne,” Jon interrupted as they took seats on the couch.  “I was hoping to talk to you about Leo.”

Darcy saw Jayne’s protective walls going up.  She sat stiffly in her chair, crossing her legs, narrowing her eyes.  “What about my Leo?”

“It’s nothing, I’m sure,” Jon said, trying to put Jayne a little more at ease.  “He’s got this necklace that he wears.  The gold one with the ruby?”

Jayne made a noise of disgust.  “Yes.  He won’t take the dreadful thing off.  Everywhere he goes he has it on.  What about it?”

“I was wondering if you could tell me where he got it?”

“Whatever for?”

This was the tricky part.  Darcy and Jon had discussed at length on the way over how best to approach Jayne.  They’d decided on just being honest and letting the chips fall where they would.

“I wanted to know,” Jon explained, “because the necklace matches the description of an item taken from one of the graves.”

From the neckline of her blouse to the tips of her ears, Jayne slowly turned a bright crimson shade of red.  Then she jumped up from her chair and stalked to the far end of the living room where a hallway led to a set of stairs.  “Leo!” she bellowed up to him.  “Leo you come down here this very instant!”

Darcy caught Jon’s eye.  Not quite the reaction they’d been expecting.

A moment later Leo came down, one step at a time, making it obvious that he was going slower than he needed to.  In jeans and a long sleeved, loose-fitting green shirt, he somehow managed to look even more like a spoiled rich kid than ever.  His girlfriend skipped down the stairs behind him, her jean jacket unbuttoned to show off a shirt that left little to anyone’s imagination.  And her baseball cap—

“Young woman,” Jayne snapped, “I told you to take that hat off in my house.”

With a sarcastic little smirk, the girlfriend pulled the cap down tighter on her head.

“What’s up mom?” Leo asked into the heavy silence.

Jayne reached up and grabbed the necklace from under his shirt.  “Where did you get this?  Hm?  Tell me.  Right now.”

Leo’s face froze like a deer caught in headlights.  His mouth opened and closed and he cleared his throat before very deliberately pulling the necklace back.  “This is mine.”

“Don’t talk back to me!  Where did you get it?”

He clamped his mouth shut, and crossed his arms.

“It’s stolen, isn’t it?  Did you steal this?  Did you steal it from those graves?  Tell me!”

In a flash, Leo brought his arm up at his mother, screaming “No!” at the top of his lungs.

The slap was loud.  Darcy shrank back reflexively even as Jon was rushing forward, catching Leo’s arm and twisting it behind his back and holding him down on the floor.

Jayne held her face in her hands.  It was obvious she was hurt.  Probably more on the inside than anywhere else.

Everything had happened so fast, and then it was over.

“Take him away,” Jayne told Jon miserably.  “Get him and that tramp girlfriend of his out of my home.”

Jon always carried a handcuff case on his belt, next to the holster with his little automatic.  With practiced moves he took the cuffs out and settled them around Leo’s wrists, binding his arms behind him.  “Leo Phillips, you’re under arrest for assault.”

He pulled Leo closer.  “That, and for the desecration of the Misty Hollow cemetery.”

Leo struggled, and swore, but Jon moved him steadily out the door and down to their car.  “I’ll sit with him in the back,” he said to Darcy.  “You drive us back to town, all right?”

Darcy nodded, looking back over her shoulder at Jayne, standing there in her doorway, watching her son being dragged away in handcuffs.  There was no expression on her face.  None at all.  It was almost like she’d expected something like this to happen.

As Jon was reading Leo his Miranda warnings in preparation for asking him more questions, Darcy went back to the front porch of the mansion that Judge Phillips called her home.  A lot of wealth was on display here.  It occurred to Darcy that having money was no assurance that bad things wouldn’t happen in your family.

“Jayne, I’m so sorry,” she said.  It sounded so inadequate.  The clues had led them here, and now they had the person responsible for desecrating all of those graves under arrest.  No words could change that.

“He wasn’t always like this, you know.”  Jayne shook her head, her fingertips touching the red mark on her cheek where she’d been slapped.  “Not this bad.  Not until he took up with that girl.  I’ve managed to keep him out of jail all this time.  Gotten him community service and probation and such whenever he did something stupid.  Hmph.  That’s where he met Stephanie in the first place, you know.  His community service.  Her, and those other hooligan friends of his.  I don’t know.  Maybe I didn’t do him any favors by helping him avoid responsibility.  Maybe a few days in jail will be just what he needs.”

She looked at Darcy now, her eyes watery.  “I can’t believe this.  I just can’t believe my son did this terrible thing.  Why?  For what?  It’s not like he needed money!  Oh, and the funniest part?  That community service I got him?  Fifty hours.  He was doing them in the cemetery.  He was helping the church take care of the graves.  Isn’t that just the funniest thing…you’ve ever…”