Murder Down Under (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 17) (4 page)

Outside, the bookstore had been white, like the rest of the town.  On the inside Mabel had painted everything in light purple hues.  She had painted whimsical yellow stars along the tops of the walls near the ceiling.

“Are you looking for anything specific?” Mabel asked them, settling her glasses further up her nose.  “I’ve got several best sellers in stock but I’ll bet you’re looking for something more special than that, now aren’t you?”

“Did the spirits tell her that?” Jon muttered quietly.

Darcy ignored him.  “We’re from the United States,” she explained.  “I really wanted to see what a bookstore in Australia would look like.  Especially in such a nice town like Lakeshore.  I run a bookstore myself and I know that the smaller shops like this always have hidden treasures to find.”

“How spiffy!” Mabel exclaimed.  She threw her arms out and nearly knocked Jon over getting to Darcy to wrap her in a close hug.  “We’re like long lost mates already.  So much in common!  You simply must check out the selection of books I have on knowing your true inner self.  So important to be who you are, don’t you agree?”

Mabel led them over to the wall under the New Age sign, and took a moment searching over the different spines of the books there.  She tapped a finger against her chin as she looked through them.  Jon stayed over at the mystery fiction section, pulling a few books out to read the descriptions on the back cover.  Darcy made sure he was occupied and then leaned closer to Mabel.

“Do you mind if I ask you about the people who were poisoned here in town?”

Mabel waved a hand at her without turning away from her search of the books.  “Folks are dumb.  Bunch of dipsticks.  They’ll believe anything.  The town, cursed?  Pshaw.  Hardly.  Let me fossick through the books a bit more.  Looking for one special one.”

“So there’s no truth to it?”  Darcy was surprised at how disappointed she felt.  “No one was poisoned?”

“No.  They were.  Four of them.  Two dead.”

Dead?  “I’m sorry, did you say—”

“Ah, here it is!”  Mabel didn’t even seem to notice she was interrupting Darcy.  “This is the one.  Care and Wellness of the Psyche.  Sold nearly all of them.  Only two left.”

She took down one of two identically tall books with blue dustcovers.  There was a picture on the front of a pyramid with a shining, hovering eye.  Very mystical.  Very…Illuminati.  At the same time, it seemed overly done and fake, kind of like how Mabel’s accent sounded.  She was using all the right words, all the right inflections, but somehow it sounded forced

Darcy could tell right away that the spiritualism the book presented was going to be just as forced.  All the right words, just none of the real heart and soul that it should have.  This wasn’t her kind of spiritualism.  There were plenty of real spirits in her life.  The real thing would never be found in a book like this.

“Lot of good oil in that one,” Mabel insisted.  “You read that book and you come back and tell me if you don’t feel better for it.”

“I’ll definitely do that.”  Darcy smiled and tucked the book under her arm, sure she would never even crack the spine once, let alone read it cover to cover.  “Did you say two people died?  They were poisoned and they died?”

“Eh?  Oh.  Fair dinkum, they did.  Knew one of them, too.  My neighbor.  Nice old biddy.  I’m told she held on for two whole days before she passed.”

“I’m sorry, ‘fair dinkum’?” Darcy asked.

“Oh sorry dear, I meant yes, they did.”

“Okay, and no one knows how they’re getting poisoned?”

“Police are on the case,” Mabel said, as if it didn’t much matter.  “Sure they’ll figure it one way or the other.  Now tell me everything there is to tell about being a book merchant in the States.”

What Darcy wanted to talk about was how four people in one town could be poisoned yet no one knew how it had happened.  She could tell she wasn’t going to get anywhere by asking Mabel the question directly.  So she chatted about books and sales and little things.  She mentioned selling e-readers and having a loaner library of virtual books.  That seemed to really catch Mabel’s interest, and they talked some more back and forth while Jon kept pretending to look at books.

“So let me ask you,” Darcy said.  “About the poisonings?”

“Oh that’s nothing should concern you.”  Mabel waved her hand again.  This time she added a shrug.  “No visitors have been hurt.  Only that first bloke.  He wasn’t from here.  Just passing through, though.  Got into some bad beer, or drank some stagnant water, or Lord alone knows what.  Nothing for you to worry that fair little noggin over.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“About what?”

Darcy blinked at her.  “About getting poisoned.”

With a wide grin, Mabel tapped the necklace she wore at her throat.  “Not in the least.  The Spirits protect me, you know.”

The necklace had a silver colored pentagram hanging from it, situated upside down on the chain.  Darcy felt down to her Great Aunt’s ring on the finger of her right hand.  Talismans came in all shapes, she supposed.  Even upside-down pentagrams.  No matter how silly she thought Mabel was for depending on things like psychic visions and pentagram necklaces to protect her from poison, it wasn’t her place to question the woman’s faith.

If that’s what it was.  Darcy set the book down on the counter, letting Mabel ring up the sale whether she planned on reading it or not.  Her mind was thinking something through.  People in town were being poisoned, but Mabel wasn’t worried about meeting the same fate.  Maybe she felt safe because the Spirits were protecting her.

Maybe it was something else.

There was one person who would never have to worry about being the next victim.

The person doing the poisoning.

Mabel wasn’t worried in the least about getting poisoned.  Maybe she was relying on Spirits.  But what if…?

Suddenly Darcy wanted to be far away from this little bookshop and its eccentric owner.  She needed to talk this over with Jon and see what he thought.  It made a lot of sense in her mind.  If she was right, she might have put both of them in danger just by asking about the attacks.

“Well, thank you, Mabel.”  She turned and caught Jon’s eye, letting him know with a look that they were leaving.  “You’ve been a big help.  I’m sure I’ve found exactly what I need here.”

“Too right!”  Mabel clapped her hands together and followed them to the door.  “See?  I told you the Spirits had brought me back here to help you.”

Darcy wondered if that might be truer than Mabel realized.

They did rent a video to watch in their room, some comedy with Adam Sandler, but neither of them were watching it.  The volume was turned down low and they had talked through half of the flick already.

“You can’t think we solved the whole mystery in just a few hours,” Jon said to her.

Which was the same thing that Darcy had been thinking.  Still, the people here in town might be too close to the situation.  A fresh pair of eyes could see things more clearly.  Sometimes.

They were in bed together, barely clothed, his skin against hers.  His body heat felt good.  All she wanted him for right now was his companionship.  That was how she knew this was love.  Both of them were comfortable with each other, in ways only two people who loved each other could be.

Darcy shifted under the blankets more, onto her back, propping the pillow up under her arm.  “I know it would be weird if we just walked into town and said, hey there’s your killer.  I get that.  I’m just saying it’s weird, the way Mabel reacted to the poisonings.  Two people dead and she didn’t even bat an eye.  I mean, even Dell and Rosie are worried about it.  Mabel wasn’t.  Not even the least littlest bit.”

“In my experience,” he told her, his eyelids drooping sleepily, “that’s exactly how religious kooks act.  They believe something will protect them so firmly that they play with poisonous snakes or stand in front of bullets, or worse.  Mabel believes the spooky Spirits from beyond are going to protect her from getting poisoned.  When you believe something strongly enough it becomes a fact, no matter how crazy it sounds.”

Rolling onto her side, she stared at him until he cleared his throat and added, “Present company excluded.  You aren’t a kook, Darcy.  The spirits you deal with are real.  I know that.”

“You didn’t used to.  Remember when we first met?”

“Sure, but you convinced me quickly enough.  Because what you do is real.  What Mabel believes in might not be real, but she believes it just the same.  That makes it real in her head.  That’s all I’m saying.”

“Maybe,” Darcy admitted.  “Still, I think there might be something there.”

“Well.  Far be it from me to ignore your hunches.”

She touched him in that spot where he was the most ticklish, making him squirm.  “You better not ignore my hunches.  I’m an official consultant with the Misty Hollow Police Department, you know.”

He caught her hands and held them tight, and she thought maybe sleep could wait a while.  “I know you’re a consultant, Mrs. Sweet.  I’m the one who made you a consultant, if you’ll remember.  Okay.  I tell you what.  I’ll see if the local police will talk to me in the morning.  Maybe being a visiting police chief from America will get them to open up to me.  Us cops speak the same language, even if I don’t sound like Paul Hogan.”

That made her laugh as she tried to pull her hands away, only to get more tangled up in him.  Which, she realized, was his plan all along.

The credits on the Sandler flick were almost done when they finally drifted off to sleep together.  Darcy couldn’t remember a single thing that happened in the whole movie.

***

Thankfully, Darcy and Jon had dressed for walking this morning in jeans and sneakers, a light gray shirt for Jon, and for Darcy a breezy purple top.  For a small town everything here was a good distance away from everything else.  They found the Lakeshore Police Department at the far end of Main Street, where it became Kookaburra Road again, where most of the houses ended and the town seemed to simply stop.

“Maybe this is the end of Tasmania,” Jon suggested, looking west as far as he could before the road turned a sweeping corner and was lost behind the pines.

“I’m pretty sure it keeps going until it reaches the sea.”  Darcy knew he was joking, but still.  Tasmania had more land mass than Florida.  “Want me to come in with you?”

“Of course.  You are an official consultant, after all.”

The building was one story tall, made of stucco and brick, painted white like nearly everything else.  Before she went back home Darcy promised herself she would ask someone what was with all of the white paint.  A large round sign facing the street displayed an emblem with a scraggly pine tree in the middle and three blue lakes around it, water flowing from one to the other.  “Lakeshore Police Station” was painted around the top rim of the circle.

They had started out early to be here, after a breakfast of pancakes at the Inn.  Incredibly amazing pancakes that Rosie had called pikelets, topped with sugar and a mix of berries.

One of the other two guests in the Inn had been down to breakfast already, too.  Rosie had mentioned a woman as a guest, and there she was.  Darcy had memorized her face with several quick glances.  Strikingly beautiful, with dark blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail that exposed dangling earrings with blue stones in them.  Even though it was early she was dressed in a long blue dress and looked ready to go out on the town.

Before she and Jon had finished their pikelets, Darcy watched the woman stand up gracefully from her table, and then walk out to the lobby to leave.

That was a mystery in itself but since it had nothing to do with the poisonings here in town Darcy had pushed it to the back of her mind.  It had been a fair walk across town, but now they could dig into the real mystery here in Lakeshore.

How were people being poisoned?

The front door of the station squealed on its hinges as Jon opened it.  Inside was a small lobby with three plastic orange chairs lined up against one wall.  A sliding glass window partition in the opposite wall was closed tight, and on a counter below it a little metal bell sat waiting for someone to ring for service.  Posters covered the drab walls, talking about the dangers of an illegal drug called Ice, giving emergency numbers for different agencies, listing people wanted for various crimes, and so on.

“Police stations are pretty much the same all over the place,” Darcy said, “aren’t they?”

“Cold and functional?”

She gave him a kiss on his cheek, then reached over without looking and slapped her palm down on the bell.

Ding.

Almost immediately an officer came to the window, stepping out from behind a row of filing cabinets that made a false wall blocking the rest of the office from Darcy’s view.  He slid the window open with an uncertain smile.

“Help ya folks?” he asked them. 

He was in his twenties, Darcy judged, and his auburn hair was cut short and emphasized his tanned complexion.  The dark blue uniform he wore fit his solid frame snugly.  There was something familiar about the strong cast of his jaw, the close set of his eyes, the freckles across the bridge of his nose.  She couldn’t quite place it.

“Hi,” Jon said to him, extending a hand for the officer to shake.  “We’re tourists in town from America.  I’m Jon Tinker, and this is my wife, Darcy.”

“That so?  Well, put her there, friends.”  He shook Jon’s hand through the open partition, and then Darcy’s, his grip firm.  “Something I can help ya with?”

“I was actually hoping you might give me a tour of your station.  Back where we’re from I’m the Chief of Police.  I like to reach out to the departments in the towns where we’re visiting.”

“Well, nice to know ya, Chief.  My name’s Kevin Powers.  I’m one of the officers here.  Got four others.  Our Senior Sergeant won’t be in today, sorry to say.  Sure he’d like to meet ya.  Maybe we can arrange a time for tomorrow?  Still be here then, will ya?”

“Yes, we will.  We have a few days to spend in Lakeshore.  Beautiful country you have here.”

“She ain’t mine, so to speak, I just live here.” 

Officer Powers smiled and when he did his face crinkled just so, and Darcy realized why he looked familiar.

“You said your name is Powers?” she asked.  “Dell is your mother?”

He nodded.  “Sure enough.  Ah.  She runs the Pine Lake Inn.  You folks must be staying there.”

Darcy remembered Roy the taxi driver saying that Dell’s son was a police officer and then asking her how her “Kevin” was.  This was Kevin, her son.

“Sure,” he said to them, leaning his heavy arms on his side of the counter.  “People think of Tasmania as a big desert where that nutter devil lives.  Ya know, from the Bugs Bunny toons?  But there’s lots of beautiful places here.  Like Lakeshore.  Three lakes, lots of Monterey Pines and other trees to give us shade.  Wildlife up the…excuse me, Miss.  Wildlife everywhere.”

Darcy smiled at his manners, letting Jon continue to lead the conversation.

“I can see why this is such a tourist spot,” he said, reaching out to take Darcy’s hand.  “We are worried about one thing, though.  We heard people had been poisoned?  That two of them died?”

Kevin’s face went blank.  Darcy had seen Jon do that same thing when he was working.  Whenever he had to talk to people but hold information back at the same time.  She had to wonder if it was something police officers learned in their academy.  The ability to hide their emotions.

“A few people have took ill,” Kevin confirmed, not exactly answering Jon’s questions.  “Just four.  Nothing to worry your heads over.  We’ve looked into each one.  Done a thorough investigation.  Nothing sinister here.  Just accidents.”

“Four of them?  All at once?”  Jon didn’t bother to hide his skepticism.

“Coincidence, is all.”  Kevin shrugged.  “Crazy to think otherwise.  You must’ve seen the like of it back in the good old U.S. of A, right Chief?  What with crime being as bad as we see on the tele.”

Jon chuckled.  “Not every town in America is Los Angeles or New York City.  We’re from a place a lot like Lakeshore.  Peaceful and quiet.”

“Bonza.  Then ya know what it’s like to be in a small town.  Nothing ever happens.  Don’t worry your heads over it.”

Darcy bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from saying anything.  Peaceful?  Quiet?  Misty Hollow was a great place to live, but it certainly had more than its fair share of excitement!

Of course, Kevin wouldn’t know about all that.  Lakeshore probably was that quiet.  Usually. 

“So all four were accidentally poisoned.”  Jon nodded, squeezing Darcy’s hand harder.  “Good.  That makes me feel better.”

“Me too.  Got a chat planned with the fourth victim this afternoon, actually.   Alec Beaudoin.  Over on Evangeline Circle.  Just back from hospital.  Calvary Health Care in South Hobart.  Great doctors there…”

He trailed off, maybe realizing he’d said more than he’d meant to.  “Ya know, my mum can do that, too.  Gets me to talking and next thing I know I’ve spilled the whole carton of milk.  I’ll let Senior Sergeant Cutter know to ring ya over at the Pine Lake Inn.  I’m sure he’d love to give a tour of the station, such as it is.”

He slid the window shut, and that was the end of their interview.

“Well,” Jon said once they were outside again.  “There you go.  The police here aren’t even investigating this.  They’ve chalked it up to accidental poisoning.”

Darcy was far from convinced.  She knew she should let it be.  They were on their honeymoon, after all, and here she was sticking herself in the middle of a mystery.  One that the police didn’t even think was worth looking into.

Her sixth sense was telling her the police were wrong.

“Jon, do you think we can find a map of the town somewhere?”

“Oh, no.  I know that look.”

“What look?” she asked innocently.  Then she gave up trying to fool him.  “All right, you got me.  I want to go over to wherever this Evangeline Circle is and talk to this Alec, uh, whatever his last name was.”

“Beaudoin,” Jon provided for her, then grimaced like he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.  “Darcy, you heard what Kevin said.  The police aren’t investigating this.”

“But they should be, Jon.  Four people get poisoned, two of them die, and the police don’t think there’s a reason to be suspicious?  Come on.  What does your gut tell you?  You’ve always trusted your gut.”

She patted his flat stomach when she said it, walking close beside him.  It had the effect on him she figured it would.

With a heavy sigh he put his arm around her shoulders.  “All right, fine.  My gut says this is more than coincidence, no matter what the PD says.  I trust my gut.  I trust your instincts, too, and if you think we need to go talk to this Alec Beaudoin, then we will, but if it doesn’t go anywhere I want you to promise me you’ll drop it.  Okay?”

“That’s fair,” she admitted, even though she didn’t want to.  Trouble always had a way of finding her.  She wouldn’t feel right turning her back on it now, knowing that more people might get hurt if she didn’t at least try to do something.  Not to mention, Great Aunt Millie had given her a warning.  She still had no idea what it meant, but there had to be a reason for it.

They retraced their steps of last night back toward Mabel’s bookstore.  Darcy reasoned that there would be a map of the town there to be found.  Maybe they could pump her for more information than she was willing to give last night, too.

Not to mention, she was still a strong suspect in Darcy’s mind.

There was probably a map to be had back at the police station, too, but asking Kevin Powers to give them a map of the town right after asking him about the poisoning victims might raise a few questions they wouldn’t be able to answer.