Laid to Rest (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 18) (10 page)

“I just hope it’s in time to help Smudge,” she said, holding her arms around herself and walking close to Jon’s side.  “If we don’t catch this guy…if he doesn’t let Smudge go…”

Jon put his arm around her shoulders.  “This will work, Darcy.  You have to trust me.”  She was surprised when she felt him chuckle.  “I can’t believe that cat of yours hasn’t escaped from wherever he is already.  Nothing can hold him down for long.  He always seems to be in the middle of everything, doesn’t he?”

“That’s my Smudge.”  She smiled in spite of herself, remembering all the times Smudge had led her into trouble, or gotten out of the house without her knowing about it, and how he always seemed to know as much as the people around him did.  If he had been running up the sidewalk to jump into her arms right now, she wouldn’t have been a bit…

…surprised.

A white tomcat with large black patches like smudged charcoal was racing up the sidewalk, ears pricked back, tail straight out, eyes shining brightly in that way that a cat’s always did in the moonlight.

Smudge.

It was Smudge.

Running up the sidewalk to jump into her arms.

Darcy was wrong.  She thought she wouldn’t be surprised.

“Smudge!”  He was real.  He was here in her arms and he was real.  Not a vision, not a dream.  Real.  “How did you get out?  How did you get here?”

She squeezed him and held him and felt him licking her face.  Jon was asking questions, Linda was asking questions, and Darcy couldn’t have cared less what either of them were saying.

She had Smudge back.

Jon reached in and felt all over Smudge.  Back, chest, tail, all around his head.  “He seems fine.  No injuries or cuts.”

Darcy held Smudge tight.  He purred and clung to her.  She was never going to let him go.  Ever again.

But then a thought pounded its way into her head.

“Hey, Jon…”

“I’ll bet he’s hungry, but he seems fine.”

“Jon.”

“Wait, look at his claws.  Do you see that?”

“Jon, if we have Smudge,” Darcy said, louder, “then we don’t need to give up the journal, right?”

His eyes snapped up to meet hers.  They didn’t need to give the journal to the kidnapper.  Smudge was safe.

“Linda, I need to get back into the library,” Jon said in a rush.  Not waiting for her, he started back up the walk to the library steps.  As he went he took out the portable radio.  “All units report in.  Any sign of movement?”

Darcy ran after them, keeping Smudge wrapped tightly in her arms.  She heard all the replies, five in all.  All of them were negative.  No sign of movement.

Linda fumbled the key at first, but then got the door open and they all rushed inside.  “Wait,” Jon said.  “Linda, turn on the lights.”

Fluorescent bulbs came on overhead with a faint humming, and the main floor of the library was once again revealed around them, empty and silent.  Jon’s hand had been on his gun, but he relaxed now and the three of them went directly to the history section.

Darcy reached for the journal.

Only, it was gone.

“There’s no way.”

Jon was the first one to say what they were all thinking.  The building had been locked.  There were police officers outside, watching.  Darcy held Smudge tighter, afraid that he would disappear any moment, too.  She had only just gotten him back.  She wasn’t going to lose him again.

“There’s no way!” Jon repeated, walking behind the shelf, feeling his arm into the thin space between the tall stack of books and the wall.  “There’s nothing back here.  It’s just a wall.  There’s no way in here, there’s no way out.  Nothing.”

He brought his radio up again.  “All units move in on the library.  Be observant, suspect is on scene.  Grace, I want you and Wilson in here with me.  We’re going to search this place again, top to bottom.  Copy?”

Wilson’s voice came back immediately.  “Copy, Chief.”

Jon’s eyes found Darcy’s as they waited for Grace to respond.

She didn’t.

“Grace, respond.”

Still nothing.

“Does anyone have eyes on Detective Grace Wentworth?”

The silence was becoming terrifying.  In her arms, Smudge mewled for her attention.  Darcy stared at the radio in Jon’s hand.

Where was her sister?

Banging the back of his fist against his forehead a few times Jon clipped the radio back on his belt.  “Darcy, stay here with Linda.”

“Jon, if something happened—”

“If something’s happened then you can’t do anything about it anyway.  I want you safe.  I’ll find out where Grace is.”

“Promise?” she asked.

He scratched Smudge between the ears.  “I promised we’d get this big mug back, didn’t I?  Stay here, okay?”

He gave her a quick kiss on her cheek and he was gone.

Smudge wriggled in her arms and then dropped to the floor.  He walked a short distance away to lay down on his side, a cat smile on his face.  He was walking strangely, though.  Almost like there was something wrong with his feet.  Maybe he was injured, after all.

Her cat looked up at her with his eyes narrowed, an expression that spoke to her as clearly as if he’d said the words.  She needed a closer look…

“Look at this,” Linda said from right beside her.

Darcy let Smudge be for a moment.  Linda was leaning over, pointing at where Millie’s beehive journal had been.  “What is it?  What did you find?”

“There’s more than just your aunt’s journal gone,” Linda explained, tapping a finger back and forth between the books to either side of the empty space.  “See?  That other book is gone, too.  That book on Deseret.”

The guy who had kidnapped Smudge, and set this whole thing up just to get his hands on Millie’s journal, had taken the other book as well. 
The Forgotten Land of Deseret.

Why?

Behind her she heard footsteps and turned to find Detective Wilson Barton.  He was in jean shorts and a t-shirt, an uncharacteristic look for him, and Darcy realized he must have been in one of the cars outside watching the library.  He’d been wearing plain clothes that wouldn’t mark him as a police officer.  “Darcy, Linda,” he greeted them.  “Is that the spot?  Where the journal was?”

Smudge meowed his own greeting at Wilson, flicking his tail.

“Yes,” Darcy answered Wilson’s question, pointing to the blank spot on the shelf that had held the two books.  “He took the journal and another book, too.  Have they found Grace?”

His expression became very carefully set.  “Yes, Darcy.  She’s all right, but maybe you should go out and see her.  Linda, can you stay in here with me and show me around?  We’re going to search the building again.  I’ve already got two guys downstairs looking through everything.”

“Sure,” Linda said to him, “anything to help.”

Darcy’s heart beat hard in her chest and she didn’t know how much more of this she could take.  What did he mean, she had better go see her sister?  If she was okay, then why did he seem so worried?

And why wasn’t Jon back?

She looked down at Smudge, unsure of what to do.  She did not want to let this cat out of her sight, but she needed to go see what was going on with Grace.  She couldn’t be in two places at once. 

Smudge blinked at her and flicked his tail.  She had always been able to understand him, at least a little, and she saw what he was trying to tell her now.

I’ll be fine.  Grace is your sister.  Go.

Smudge was such a smart cat.

“Don’t worry,” Wilson said to her.  “I’ll keep an eye on Smudge.”

She nodded, bending down to stroke Smudge’s fur one more time, letting him nuzzle his face into her hand.  “I’m glad you’re back, too.  Next time claw the guy’s eyes out, okay?”

Smudge sneezed, and his front paws twitched.

Outside in the night there were vehicles parked sideways in the street, their headlights shining across the front lawn of the library.  Sitting on the grass in the light from one of those cars, Grace held a folded white cloth to the side of her head.  Jon knelt with her, his cell phone to his ear, talking with someone.

The harsh light clearly showed dark splotches on the cloth in Grace’s hand.

Other people moved around her in the darkness, police officers searching the night with flashlights.  She didn’t pay them much attention as she rushed over to Grace.

“I’m fine,” her sister said when she saw Darcy coming.  “It’s just a bump.”

“A bump that’s bleeding,” Jon corrected her, one knee up and his arm resting across it.  He was just ending his phone call.  “I’ve got the ambulance coming, and you’re going to get checked out.”

“Jon, they’ll have to take me to the hospital over in Meadowood,” Grace complained, turning her head and wincing as the motion shot a spike of pain through her.  “They don’t fool around with head injuries.  We don’t have that kind of time.”

Darcy understood.  If the ambulance crew took Grace to the hospital she’d be a few hours being checked out, and then she’d still have to find a way back.  “We can manage here without you, Grace, if you’re hurt.  What happened?”

Her sister’s eyes narrowed.  “The guy got the drop on me.  I was watching the back door and I heard a noise behind me.  I turned around to see what it was.  I don’t know.  Something hit me.  Hard.  I passed out.”  She looked up at Darcy, wincing when the motion caused her a twinge of pain.  “I’m sorry.  He got away.  At least you have Smudge back.”

“Now we just need to catch the man responsible,” Jon growled.  “Burglary, taking Smudge, now assault on an officer.  I want this guy.”

“Not to mention,” Darcy added, “that he’s probably a murderer.”

“A murderer?” Grace asked.  “Who died?”

Darcy and Jon shared a look.  Grace didn’t know yet.  They hadn’t had the time to tell her.  Or their mom either, Darcy realized.  Great.  That was going to be a hard conversation to have.

For right now, she had to tell her sister that their great aunt had been murdered.

It took a few minutes, and when Darcy was done explaining everything they’d found out from Helen and Sean Fitzwallis and everything else, Grace asked her to go over it all again.

“I can’t believe it.”  She moved the cloth against her skull with a sharp intake of breath, and Darcy knew it was worse than she was letting on.  “You’re sure about all this?  You need to be sure, Darcy.  This is Millie we’re talking about.”

All Darcy could do was nod her head.  She was sure about everything, as much as she could be.  Millie had been murdered ten years ago and now her killer needed that journal to keep his identity secret.  “We don’t know who the guy is.  I’ve looked through that journal of Millie’s. I’ve talked to…”  She almost said she’d talked to Millie, but even though Grace knew about her ability to see and talk to ghosts, Darcy wasn’t comfortable telling her about some things. 

Admitting that you talked to your dead aunt was one of those things that just might encourage your family to sign you up for basket weaving classes in the looney bin.

Jon knew it all.  He was the only person she’d ever allowed to see that far into her soul.

“We’ve talked to everyone we can think of,” Darcy decided it was better to say.  “There’s just no leads.  No hints.  I don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” Jon said.

Darcy was about to ask him what he meant when the ambulance rolled up, lights flashing but with the siren off.  Darcy hadn’t heard the siren go off at the fire station, either.  Jon must have asked them to keep this one quiet when he called in.  One of the perks of being the police chief.

They waited while Grace griped and argued with the three guys from the rescue squad about how she didn’t need to go for something that was just a scratch.  Jon insisted, and then had to pull rank on her, and Darcy just smiled as her sister was put into a neck brace and told to lay down on a gurney.  Grace was still complaining as she got loaded into the back of the ambulance.

“I’ll call Aaron for you,” Jon told her just before the doors closed.

“Gee, thanks boss,” Grace said, the sarcasm in her voice laid on thick.

Jon took Darcy’s hand after the ambulance was gone and led her back to the library.  “Come on,” he told her.

“Where are we going?”

“Back inside.”

“And why are we going back inside?”

“To catch our bad guy.”

“Wait, what?”  Darcy followed him through the front doors and up to the top floor.  “You think he’s still in here?”

“If he is,” Wilson Barton said to them from the fantasy section, “then he’s a ghost.”

He was looking through the stacks of books even though there was nothing there to see.  His words were probably meant to be funny but Darcy felt a shiver run up her spine just the same.  They’d encountered poltergeists before, ghosts who could move objects, leave messages written on mirrors, that sort of thing.  This didn’t feel like that, but just the thought of a ghost coming to seek vengeance on Darcy’s family—again—gave her the chills.

“Not a ghost, Will.”  Jon squeezed Darcy’s hand, to reassure her.  “This guy was flesh and blood.  He took those books, made it out of the library, and knocked out Grace during his escape.  A ghost wouldn’t need to do that last bit.”

Wilson stopped pushing through the shelved books and came over to them.  “Is Grace okay?”

“I sent her to get checked out.  Just a precaution.  I’m sure she’ll be fine, with that hard head of hers.  It runs in their family.”

“Very funny,” Darcy told him.  Smudge was still in the same spot where she’d left him.  He was holding his paws crossed, which was odd for him.  She remembered how he’d been walking earlier.  “Smudge, are you okay?”

“I think he’s fine.”  Jon actually sat down on the floor next to the cat, reaching out to pick up one of Smudge’s paws.  “I noticed this earlier when Smudge first came running up to us.  Look at this.”

Darcy knelt down with him, looking over Smudge’s claws.  They were dark, like they were covered in mud…

No.  Not mud.  Blood.  Dark red blood.

“He is hurt!” she blurted out.

“It’s all right, Darcy.  The blood isn’t his.”

“What?  If it isn’t his then who—”

She stopped herself in midsentence.  Smudge had scratched the guy.

Smudge had the bad guy’s blood on his claws.

“That’s why he was walking so funny,” she exclaimed.  “He knew what he had on his toes and he didn’t want it to rub off before we could get it!  He was preserving it for us!”

“Sure,” Jon said, not convinced.  “Or it just felt funny to him so he was favoring that foot.  Whichever it was, this is the evidence we needed.”

“So the kidnapper probably didn’t just let him go.”

“Looks to me like he fought his way out.  He’s a brave cat.”

Thinking of Smudge clawing at his kidnapper was a satisfying image for Darcy.  “I hope the guy lost an eye.  Or an ear.”

Jon nodded, agreeing with her.  “We can collect the blood off his claws and send it to the State Police lab.  They can analyze it there.  If we’re really lucky, our guy has a police record to match it to.”

“But we thought this man was someone we knew,” Darcy pointed out.  “Remember?  One of our neighbors who knew where we keep our spare key?”

He looked at her, his expression serious.  “Yes.  That’s exactly what I think.”

“So one of our friends…?”

“Right.”

Darcy let that sink in, scratching her cat under his chin.  It wasn’t every day you found yourself hoping a neighbor would have a police record so you could prove they were a murderer.

Unless, of course, you lived in Misty Hollow.

“Well,” she said.  “At least we have a chance to catch our guy now.  Good work, Smudge.”

“I’ll say.  Our cat’s going to solve the whole case for us.”

Darcy heard how Jon had called Smudge ‘our cat.’  His and hers.  Those two had come a long way from when Jon had first moved into her life.  From hating each other, to this moment right here.  The two men in her life, friends at last.

“What’s the call, Chief?” Wilson asked.

“Go out to one of the cars and get me an evidence bag and a swab kit.”