Murder Down Under (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 17) (6 page)

The inside of the home was neat and clean.  Everything had a place, from the framed pictures on the shelves to the little plastic trophies on the entertainment center.  The rug on the floor was brown and plush, obviously new.  The walls still had painters tape up around the edges of windows and doors.  The fresh coat of paint was yellow, and after all the white buildings in the town Darcy was really getting to appreciate any splash of color.

In the living room, three paintings hung on one wall.  Sunflowers, tall and proud in the sun.

The furniture was still old and threadbare, but comfortable as Maureen had them sit down in one of the two loveseats and she took the other, kicking off her boots to curl her feet underneath her.  “Sorry about that.  I thought maybe you were more of them ratbags from the Lakeshore Times.  Had James Callahan out here three times so far, looking for a quote to run in that rag.  Told him to bugger off each time.  Isn’t getting the message.”

Darcy understood enough of that to know the local newspaper was hounding Maureen about Lindsay’s death.  “We have a reporter back home who’s pretty much the same way,” she said, thinking of Brianna Watson, always nearby whenever anything was going on.  “We’re not reporters, I promise.  We’re here on our honeymoon.”

Flinching, Maureen chewed her bottom lip and stared down at her hands.  “Me and Lindsay were hoping to say that.  Someday.  Oz doesn’t recognize same sex marriage, of course, but there are ways round that.”

Jon nudged Darcy with his elbow.  Lindsay and Maureen weren’t just sharing a house together.  They were lovers.  Serious lovers, if they were thinking about ways to get married while living in a country that legally prohibited it.

“I’m so, so sorry,” was all Darcy could think to say.  “We didn’t know.”

That brought out the barest shrug from Maureen.  “Nobody knew.  We had to keep it secret.  Or, least wise, Lindsay felt like we did.  I loved her deeply.  Would have done anything for her.  So, I kept it mum.  Because she asked me to.”

“Maureen,” Jon asked gently, “I’m a police officer where I come from, back in the United States.  Darcy is a consultant with my department.  We came to talk to you because, well, we don’t think these deaths were accidental.  We think maybe there was more to it.  What do you think?”

Her head came up.  There were tears in her eyes but a smile ghosted on her lips.  “I think yer two steps ahead of the police here, is what I think.  God, to have someone actually believe us!”

“So you don’t think this was an accident either?”

Shaking her head, Maureen shifted to the edge of her seat, her hands clenched into fists on her knees.  “No, I don’t.  Don’t think the town is cursed or any rubbish like that, neither.  Lindsay only ate prepackaged health foods.  She was a nut for the stuff.  Meal bars and drinks and shakes.  Iced tea was her only indulgence.  She didn’t even drink alcohol, she’d only ever order water on the nights we’d go out to the local pub. Drove me nuts. So how’s she supposed to get poisoned?  No way.  This was done to her deliberately, and I know who did it.”

All Darcy could do was stare.  Maureen knew who had poisoned Lindsay.  Everyone else thought it was an accident but Maureen knew who did it?  Seriously?

How?

“If you know who did this,” Jon was saying, “then how come the police haven’t arrested someone?  Why not tell the newspaper everything you know and have the killer brought to justice?”

Maureen flinched a little when Jon said ‘killer.’  Her hands trembled as she flattened them out, scrubbing her palms back and forth on her khakis.  “I guess I don’t know exactly who it was.  I know it was a man.  If the cops would do their work they could catch him easy.”

“How?” Jon asked, echoing Darcy’s own thoughts.  “How would they be able to find the guy?”

How does anyone even know the killer was a man, Darcy wanted to add, but before she could say anything Maureen was up out of the seat and flying down a short hallway to another room.  She was back nearly as quickly with a thin pile of folded paper.  She handed them to Jon and then stood there waiting for him to read them.

“I’ve already touched all of them.”  Maureen sounded upset with herself.  “Not going to get fingerprints from them.  Isn’t that what you cops do?  Take fingerprints and make them match the suspect?”

“Sort of,” Jon said, unfolding the papers. 

Darcy watched over his shoulder.  They were letters.  Typed rather than handwritten, addressed to Lindsay.  None of them were signed.  All of them talked about being deeply in love and waiting for the day when Lindsay realized they were soul mates.

“I take it these aren’t from you,” Jon stated.

“’Course not.  See the second one?  See what the bugger says?”

Jon shuffled the pages.

Darcy read the first two paragraphs.  She stopped when she felt her ears turning red.

The letter was very explicit.  Whoever wrote it was definitely male, and was very specific about what he wanted to do with his…male anatomy.  To Lindsay.

“See?” Maureen asked when she saw they were reading the juicy parts.  “That’s a man.  Writing to my Lindsay.  She wouldn’t tell me who it was but I’d wager good money she knew exactly who the bugger was.  She just didn’t want me to worry.  Whoever did this wrote those letters.  She turned him down flat so he poisoned her.”

“And three other people?” Jon had to ask.  “I don’t see how that tracks.”

“Don’t care about the other three.  Not the old biddy in the hospital, not that Alec Thingummy or whatever his name is.”  The teardrops spilled out of the corners of her eyes and left trails down her cheek.  “I only care about Lindsay.  She was all I ever cared about.”

Darcy looked away from the raw emotions on Maureen’s face.  Her ex-husband had been murdered.  Great Aunt Millie had died when she was still young.  If she ever lost Jon, her heart would break into pieces.  Just like Maureen’s had.

She understood how Lindsay felt.

Looking back over Jon’s shoulder, her gaze settled on the letters again.  Typed, no handwriting, no signature.  No letterhead.  Plain paper.  The only thing that seemed even the least bit interesting was an uneven black smudging around some of the edges.

Nothing to go on.

“Can I keep these?” Jon asked her.

“What for?” Maureen asked.  “You’re no cop here.  You’re like me.  A nobody.”

Jon folded the papers carefully and set them on the seat next to him.  Then he took Maureen’s hands in his and waited for her to meet his gaze.  “We don’t think you’re nobody, Maureen.  And neither was Lindsay.”

The room became very silent as Maureen closed her eyes and cried.

“I think it’s fair to say Maureen isn’t a suspect,” Jon said as they walked back to the Pine Lake Inn.

“That’s an understatement,” Darcy agreed.  “She’s devastated that Lindsay is dead.”

“At least she pointed us toward a suspect.  Those letters are definitely from an admirer.  Some guy had it bad for Lindsay.”  He shook his head in thought.  “It’s possible she was killed for spurning the writer’s advances.  That’s one of the oldest motives in the books.  Unfortunately it wouldn’t explain the other poisonings.  Four people.  Did they have anything in common?”

“Apparently not.  Alec said he didn’t know any of them.  Except Lindsay from around town.  Two of the victims were men, two of them were women.  So whoever did this isn’t going after just men or just women.  One of them wasn’t even from Lakeshore.  Did they maybe eat all in the same place?”

“I doubt that’s it,” Jon said.  “According to Maureen, Lindsay only ate health foods that were prepackaged.  I think the Milkbar owner said almost the same thing, too.  But, can you picture Alec Beaudoin being a health food nut?”

Darcy snorted at the idea.  With all of the pizza boxes and beer bottles on Alec’s floor, it was a safe bet he didn’t sneak in a protein shake on the weekends.  “So, no connection?”

“None that I can see, but I’m not from here.  There may be social clubs the four victims belonged to together, or church functions, or the same swimming hole for all I know.  It’s too bad we couldn’t talk to more of the victims.  Like, you know, Lindsay Burlick.”

Darcy knew that comment had been for her.  “I can try to do a communication, Jon, but I didn’t pack my travel kit.”

“Why not?  I thought you didn’t go anywhere without that?”

She gave him her best you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look.  Her Emergency Communication Kit was everything the modern girl needed to perform a ritual calling of a spirit.  Darcy had put it together herself and it had come in handy any number of times.  The problem was, the kit wasn’t exactly something she could pass through airport security without raising a lot of red flags.  Fat wax candles.  Metal jar lids to use as makeshift candle holders.  Matches.  Salt.  Incense.  Plus a few other little items bound to raise eyebrows with the TSA.

“Besides,” she added, “I don’t have any of Lindsay’s personal items.  I need some sort of connection with Lindsay to make a call to her.  Otherwise I’m just shouting into a windstorm and hoping the right person hears me.”

“I know.  You’ve explained it to me enough for me to get that much.  But we have something personal of Lindsay’s.”

“We do?”  Darcy was confused.  “What?”

He pulled the folded letters out of his back pocket.  “These.”

It took them another twenty minutes to find their way back to the gently sloping street where the Inn was located.  They still hadn’t gone back to talk with Mabel again.  It would have to wait now, because Jon was right.  Calling up Lindsay’s spirit was their best bet, as hard as it might be on Darcy with only unwanted love letters to make the connection.

On the way to the Inn Darcy thought over everything else they had heard today.  For a mystery that no one in town was supposedly giving much thought to, there was a lot that she and Jon had found out in just a short time.

It was when they got back, and the pleasant aroma of freshly baking bread reminded her of their nice breakfast this morning, that a few bits and pieces of information came together.

“Jon, I think there’s someone else we can talk to.  Besides Lindsay’s ghost, I mean.”

“Who?  We talked to half the town today.”

“Yes, we did.  Except for one very important person.”  She grabbed his arm and held him back in the driveway, just short of the front steps.  She lowered her voice, too.  “Lindsay’s sister.  We haven’t talked to Lindsay’s sister.”

“Well, sure, we can try to track her down but Australia’s a big country.  Lindsay’s sister could be anywhere.”

“That’s true, but I think she’s right here.  At this Inn.”  She gave him a second or two to let that sink in.  “Remember Maureen saying Lindsay’s sister was the only other person who cared that Lindsay was dead?  And how she was staying in town.  Well, there’s almost no visitors in town right now because people are scared they’ll be poisoned.  There’s just us, and the two other people staying in this Inn.”

Lights went on in Jon’s eyes.  “One of those people is a man.”

“And the other,” Darcy finished, “is a woman.  That’s Lindsay’s sister.  I’d bet on it.”

“There’s one way to find out.  Come on.”

He took her hand and led her up the steps into the Inn.  The hardwood floors echoed under their feet.  No one was at the registration desk and a little sign read “Out To Lunch.”

Jon went right up to the sign-in book.  Looking both ways down the hallways and seeing no one around, he opened it up to where the thin fabric place holder marked the last page used.  Darcy caught on to what he was doing and scanned the page with him.  There, just two lines above their own names, was what they were looking for.  A name.  Ellie Burlick’s.

Lindsay’s sister.

They heard the floorboards creak just before Dell asked them, “Can I help you two?”

Sheepishly, Darcy wished that she had been watching behind them instead of looking over Jon’s shoulder.  They’d been caught redhanded.

Jon didn’t miss a beat, however.  “Hi, Dell.  I was making sure we put down our contact information correctly when we signed in.  I couldn’t remember if I put our area code down.  Not much use to you without it.”

Dell regarded him closely, then looked down at the book, then back up at Jon.  “Well, thanks for that.  We always post a survey to our guests after your stay.  Like to know how we did.  We don’t usually call people—”

That beige phone on the registration desk rang again.  Dell frowned at it, then excused herself as she stepped past Jon to pick up the receiver.  “G’day, Pine Lake Inn.”

She listened for two seconds, then hung up without saying anything else.

“Problems with your phone again?” Darcy asked.  She thought maybe it was something else, and she was beginning to realize what that something was.

“The phones have always been a bit dodgy here.  Like someone’s trying to ring us up and can’t get through.”

She shrugged, but Darcy could see Dell thought there was more to it.  The phone calls to the Inn weren’t wrong numbers.

“Jon,” Darcy said, “can I meet you up in the room?”

He seemed surprised, but he didn’t ask why.  He trusted her hunches.  “Sure,” he said.  “We can talk about maybe getting some lunch.”

“Oh, Rosie’s fixing a mutton stew for lunch if you want to stay in,” Dell said enthusiastically.  “With a nice pav for dessert.  To tell you the truth, she’s been a bit down in the dumps.  She loves to cook.  When there’s not a lot of people staying here she doesn’t get to show off her skills.”

“That sounds nice.”  Jon leaned over to hug Darcy quickly.  “Meet me upstairs and we’ll come have some of that stew.”

“Thanks, Jon,” she whispered, not talking about lunch.

Dell was back around the registration desk, checking something on the computer.  “Got a few more check-ins coming end of the week,” she said to Darcy without looking up.  “You and your hubby are going to have some company after all.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Darcy said as she leaned her arms on the counter.

“Hm?”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

She didn’t look up, but Dell’s fingers stopped typing, hanging just above the keyboard.  “Do I believe in ghosts?  That’s a right strange thing to ask.”

“Is it?”  Darcy waited, knowing she was right.  The phones constantly ringing, the way the portrait of that man with the mustache would not stay on the wall no matter what the handyman did.  It was still on the floor now, leaning up against the wall and waiting for his next attempt.

There were ghosts in the Inn.  One, maybe more, and Dell knew about it.

With a few final taps on the keyboard she finally met Darcy’s gaze.  “Too right I believe in ghosts.  I think everyone does, least a little bit.”

“Have you ever seen any?  Here in the Inn, I mean.”

Dell laughed, just a little.  “I’ve seen things I can’t explain.  Shadows moving on their own.  That phone won’t stop its ringing and if I answer I swear somebody’s there, listening.  Do I believe in ghosts?  Why yes Mrs. Sweet, I do.  Thing is, I can’t say that to nobody because they’ll think I’ve gone round the bend.  Not that you’d know anything about that.”

“Oh, you might be surprised.”

Darcy had never been comfortable telling people about her gift.  She’d been laughed at, and stared at with pity, and even her friends back in Misty Hollow thought she was a little strange.  Not that it mattered to Darcy.  She would always be who she was.  She’d made her peace with that a long time ago, and nobody’s opinion was going to take away her confidence in herself, or her abilities.

There were always a few people she could open up to.  People who knew that ghosts were real.  Who knew that the spirits of the deceased didn’t always go straight on to the next plane of existence.  Sometimes spirits were trapped here with the living, and anyone who was sensitive enough could understand that.

Adelle Powers was one of those people.  Darcy became even more convinced of that as she told Dell about some of the ghosts she’d seen.  She deliberately didn’t mention the Pilgrim Ghost, or angry spirits showing up on her doorstep to scream bloody murder at her.  She talked about the ghosts who reached out for help.  Her friend, Chloe Marrin, leaving a ghostly message in a fogged bathroom mirror.  The ghost of a lost soul showing up on the television in the middle of
Meet Joe Black
.  And, of course, Great Aunt Millie with her antics around the bookstore back home.

“I know about ghosts,” Darcy finished.  “I’m glad you believe in them, because I think you have more than living guests staying at your Inn.”

Dell had listened to everything Darcy had to say without a word.  Now, she cleared her throat and shifted on her feet.  “I’m not sure what to think about all that.  You seem like a right nice woman, Darcy, and I believe…well, at least part of what you’re telling me.  I think I’m maybe just being foolish here, though.  I mean, why would there be ghosts here at the Inn?”

Any number of reasons, Darcy thought to herself, from murder to curiosity about what the living were up to.  She couldn’t be sure without doing a lot of investigating of her own and she was already looking at maybe doing one communication to talk to Lindsay’s ghost.  Communications were never as simple or as easy as they looked on television.  Every one that Darcy did required a little bit of her own life force added into the mix, and left her tired and drained.

“I’m sure your ghosts have a reason for being here,” was what she decided to say.  “Maybe try listening to them?  You never know.  If a ghost wants to communicate badly enough, they always find a way.”

The phone ringing made both of them startle.  Darcy looked at Dell, and they both laughed.  “Just the phone,” Dell muttered as she picked up the receiver.  “G’day, Pine Lake—  Oh, hey there Kevin.  I thought you were, uh, someone else.  How’s my boy?”

Darcy smiled again and waved to Dell before turning away.  She didn’t want to eavesdrop on the conversation.  Dell followed her with her eyes until she was out of the room.  Hopefully, Darcy had helped the woman, at least a little.  This was something her aunt used to do, educating people who had the gift for communicating with spirits, however small the talent.  Millie always believed that it was a responsibility to pass on her knowledge to whoever could use it.  She’d even written a few books on the paranormal and how to interact with spirits.  Darcy still referred to her aunt’s journal for inspiration, even this long after her death.

That thought sparked more speculation for Darcy on why her aunt’s spirit was still here among the living.  That strange book must have something to do with it.  Now she really did wish that she’d brought it with her.  She could already be reading through it for clues to what it meant.

In the hallway upstairs, on her way to her room, she saw Lindsay’s sister.  The woman from breakfast this morning.  Ellie Burlick.

Her long blonde ponytail was still neat as a pin and her dress still perfect and Darcy had to wonder what she’d been up to all day.  If she was here because her sister had died, what did she do with her time?  Had she given up trying to get the police to do anything?  Maybe she was grieving in silence in her room, wandering the streets aimlessly, paying the nightly fee just to have somewhere to cry.

Somehow, she doubted it.  Darcy knew what she and Jon were paying for the room they were staying in.

Ellie glanced at Darcy on her way by, then looked away again.  Her dangling earrings swung with the motion.  Soon she’d be on the stairs and out of sight.

Darcy took a chance.

“Excuse me, are you Ellie Burlick?”

The woman froze.  Absolutely froze, one hand on the stairway banister.  Her voice was tense.  “I don’t talk to reporters.”

Just like Maureen had said.  “I’m not a reporter,” Darcy assured her.  “I’m actually a visitor.  I’m not from around here.”

“I know.  I can hear it in your accent.”  She turned, clasping her hands down by her waist.  “Whad’ya want?”