Murder Down Under (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 17) (7 page)

“We—my husband and I, that is—went to see Maureen today.  To ask her about Lindsay.”

Quick as that, Ellie was standing nose to nose with Darcy, her eyes narrowed to hazel slits.  “Now why were ya doing that, if you aren’t reporters?”

She was taller than Darcy.  It was more than a little intimidating to be standing there like that and now she wished she’d waited for Jon.  Clearing her throat, she took a step back only to meet the wall behind her.  “We don’t think your sister’s death was an accident.”

That made Ellie’s thin eyebrows shoot up.  “Well, then.  You’d be the first.  Other than me and Maureen, that is.  So what?  You just decided to add this in to your holiday, did ya?  A little sightseeing, a little trek through the Outback, a little murder?  You’ve got no right intruding on my sister’s death.  You think you’re the cops, or something?”

A door opened, and Darcy was grateful to see Jon coming out of their room.  “No.  She doesn’t think she’s the police.  But I do.”

***

After a few awkward introductions, Ellie agreed to join them for lunch downstairs.  In words full of emotion and sharpened by her accent, she told them about her sister.

Lindsay had come to Lakeshore to be with her college sweetheart.  They had been madly, deeply, crazy in love.  Maureen had talked about running away to New Zealand so she and Lindsay could get married, where it was legal, but Lindsay wouldn’t hear of it.  Australia was her home.  It was enough for her that she and Maureen were together.

They had bought that house over on Humes Street and had started fixing it up just over a year ago.  That was the last time Ellie had heard from her sister.  Their lives went on, as lives will, and they lost touch.  Until Maureen had called her up three weeks ago to say Lindsay was deathly sick and in hospital.  Ellie had made plans to come out immediately.

The next day, before she could even get here, Ellie got a second call saying her sister was dead.

“I’m sorry,” Darcy said.  It seemed so inadequate.

“Not your fault, now was it?”  The woman sipped from her teacup, back stiff and straight, face set, the very picture of grace.

At least, on the surface.

Darcy could see the anger boiling in her eyes.  Her sister’s death was affecting her more than she wanted to admit.

They had finished the mutton stew, hot and tangy in a thick sauce.  Bowls placed aside, they sat and waited for their dessert to come, talking in low voices so Rosie wouldn’t hear them.  She’d been out to their table several times during the meal to ask how things were.  All three of them had agreed it was very good.  Rosie had smiled and thanked them each time, and managed not to knock over a single chair on her way out.  Although she did knock a glass off a table only just managing to catch it before it smashed on the floor.

“It’s nice that you believe me,” Ellie said.  “I couldn’t get the police here to listen to a word.  Bunch of yobbos, the lot of them.  You believing me doesn’t do a wit of good, though.  Might be you’re a cop back in your own home, but here you’re just a tourist.  Come to see the sights and snap pics of the roos.”

“You don’t need to be a police officer to help people,” Darcy pointed out.

“Yes, you do.  If you want to do more than annoy people.”

Jon leaned forward on his elbows.  “You’d be surprised what my wife can do.”

Darcy felt Jon’s gaze on her.  It felt nice.

“So what’re ya going to do?” Ellie asked them.  “What can ya do?  We’ve no idea how my sister was killed, or why any of them got poisoned.  Who would do that?  What sort of mongrel tries to kill four people?”

“We don’t know,” Jon told her.  “But you can bet we’re going to find out.”

Setting her teacup aside Ellie folded her hands in her lap and levelled the heat of her stare at both of them.  “You do that.  When ya find out who the ratbag is, I want my peace with him.”

“Pav all around!” Rosie exclaimed cheerfully, completely missing the hostility in Ellie’s voice.  She brought out a tray with three plates, each holding a round meringue base generously smothered with whipped cream and topped with a mixture of mixed fresh berries and pistachios.  The room was filled with a fruity aroma.

“That looks delicious.”  Darcy hoped it tasted as good as it looked.  And smelled!  “Um, just one question.  What exactly is pav?”

When they got back to the room Jon dropped down onto the bed, sitting on the edge, scrubbing his hands back through his hair.  “I guess trouble really can find you anywhere.”

“Ha.  I guess so.”  Darcy sat down next to him.  “So.  What are we going to do about all this?”

“Well, there’s no arguing that something is going on here.  Someone is poisoning people in this town.  On purpose.  If I wasn’t convinced before I am after today.  I think I’ll try to find Lakeshore’s police chief tomorrow.  Cutter, I think his name was.  Maybe he and I can figure out something together.  In the meantime…”  He brought out the letters again and put them in her hand.  “Maybe it’s time to get some information straight from the source.”

The pages felt stiff and dry between her fingers.  Not like love letters at all.  Love letters should be soft.  Personal.  They should be handwritten, too, not typed.  These were impersonal, like the man who sent them was afraid to put any of himself into them.  Still, they had belonged to Lindsay.  That would be enough to make a connection.

She kissed him on the cheek, then slid off the bed and onto the floor.  “I guess that’s my cue.”

Folding her legs up, holding the letters in her lap, Darcy closed her eyes.  She heard Jon walk softly across the floor to lock the door.  Privacy was important when she was doing a communication.  Not that she had to worry about a casual observer breaking the trance.  There had been times when she had reached out to the other side for hours on end, totally unaware of what was happening around her.  Still, if someone tried shaking her awake it could bring her out of the communication too quickly.  Doing that hurt.  A lot.

There had been this one time when she’d come out of a communication bleeding from both ears and throwing up for ten minutes straight because her friend Sue Fisher and former employee had thought something was wrong and tossed a cup of cold water in her face.

Yeah.  Not fun.

She really wished she had candles with her.  More than that, she wished Smudge was here.  Jon would watch over her while she was…out of it, but Smudge had a way of making the whole technique easier.  He helped her slip into the bridge between life and death faster, helped her focus, kept her grounded.  She imagined his warm, comforting weight in her lap as she took deep, slow breaths, and began.

In her mind there was an endless, blank space.

Into that space she imagined thick, rolling fog.  Nothing, in all directions, hidden behind the coiling and undulating tendrils of mist.  This technique had helped her since she was a teenager just learning to use her abilities.  Thanks to Aunt Millie, she had come to understand her powers.  To use them to help people.  Without her help, things might have gone differently.  The psychiatric hospital had been a real possibility for a while.  Millie had saved her from that.

Thank you, Millie.  Darcy smiled, and the mist began to fall away.

She was losing focus.  The mental image she had constructed fell apart into thick droplets of nothingness, and she had to start over.

Deep breaths.  In.  Out.  Feel the paper in her hands.  Concentrate.  Focus.

She imagined the fog again.  Everywhere.  Coiling, crawling out through the space between life and death.  Darcy was here, in the world of the living, but she was in the other place at the same time.

Into the mist she sent some of her own life energy, calling out to Lindsay Burlick.

Time meant nothing in this space, but Darcy had the feeling that an eternity passed before a form took shape within the mist.  Created by the mist, it twisted into sharp focus as a woman, short and slim, with the healthy glow that some girls are blessed with from birth and some work to attain with exercise and healthy diet.  Like Lindsay Burlick had.

Her dark blonde hair was the same color as her sister’s.  They shared a lot of the same features, too, from her high cheekbones to the purse of her lips.  Lindsay was much shorter than her sister, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance.

“Hello,” Darcy said to her, moving closer without moving at all.  This was a realm of thought, where things were often created by the mind, and where simple movements could have a thousand different meanings.  “My name is Darcy.  I want to ask you about, um, what happened to you.”

She was never sure how to approach this.  Some spirits knew they were dead.  Sometimes they hadn’t accepted that fact yet.  Sometimes they didn’t take it very well when you suggested they were nothing more than a ghost of their former selves.

Ha.

Lindsay looked at her, head tilted to one side, an uncertain smile on her face.  “I died.”

“Yes.  You did.  I’m so sorry, Lindsay.”

The spectral image shrugged her slender shoulders, her outline become fuzzy and indistinct.  “Flowers won’t grow in a desert.”

“Um.  I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”

Looking to her left, smiling, Lindsay waved her hand through the air, and a painted image of a sunflower came into being.  Just like that.

“Oh that’s right,” Darcy said, thinking she might understand.  “You like to paint sunflowers.  I saw some of your paintings in your house, didn’t I?”

Smile sliding away into a frown, Lindsay curled the fingers of her hand into a tight ball.  The sunflower painting wilted.

Behind Lindsay’s ethereal shape, two other forms floated into being.  They were shadowy and distant, never coming close enough for Darcy to address them directly.  More spirits.  People who were deceased and attracted to Darcy’s summons.  It happened sometimes.  She couldn’t worry about them now.

In the painting, the sunflower continued to turn brown and shrivel.  “You miss Maureen, don’t you?” Darcy guessed.

Lindsay didn’t answer.  She spread her fingers again, bringing the sunflower back to life in its pastel yellows and browns.  “They grow where there’s good ground to nourish them.  They need water.  Good water.  They need the right attention.”

She was talking in gibberish, but it was oddly familiar gibberish. 

Flowers. 

Water.

Then she remembered.

“Bad flowers bring bad rain.”  That was what Great Aunt Millie had said.

Lindsay’s face turned sad.  “Yes.  They do.”

“Can you help me understand that?  What does it mean?”

Tears streamed down Lindsay’s face.  She turned to Darcy.  “I died.”

The other two ghosts shimmered into firmer focus, for just a moment, reaching out to Lindsay, or to Darcy.  She wasn’t sure.  They were distracting her, whispering now in words that overlapped and garbled together.  Darcy wanted to tell them to shut up, to go away, that this wasn’t their time.  Before she could do anything Lindsay turned away, floating closer to the heavy fog.  Closer to the other ghosts.

“Lindsay, wait, please.  Do you know who killed you?”

With a wave of her hand, the sunflower disappeared, and Lindsay began to disappear into the fog.

“I died,” she repeated, her voice hollow, mixing in with the shushed words of the others.

“Do you know who killed you?”

Like the Cheshire Cat, Lindsay faded back into the mist until she was only a faint impression of eyes and a pouting mouth.  Her lines blurred and twisted together with the other two, mixing and swirling into a roiling shape that towered over Darcy on the endless plane. 

It was Lindsay’s gaze that pierced Darcy as she answered the question.

Do you know who killed you?

“Yes.”

Then she was gone.

Darcy came to herself with a long gasp, sitting cross legged on the floor, her backside throbbing and pinpricks dancing along her legs.  Jon was kneeling close by.  He reached out to steady her as she worked her legs out straight, trying to get the circulation going again.

“Did you find her?” he asked.  “Did she tell you anything?”

“Yes,” Darcy grumped.  “She likes flowers.”

With as much detail as she could remember, she told Jon everything she had just seen and heard.  Including the odd way Lindsay’s spirit had mixed together with those two others.  Very little of it made sense, but there it was.  Talking to ghosts meant taking whatever they chose to give you, and being happy about it.

“I don’t know which one of us has it harder.  Me, trying to get information out of a suspect I’m interviewing, or you trying to get information out of a ghost.”

Her head was beginning to pound, and her mouth was dry.  “I’ll take a living suspect over talking to a ghost any day.  Do we have any water left?”

“No, but I can go downstairs and see if Rosie has some bottled water in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, Jon.  That would be great.”

The knock on their door was loud, and not gentle.

Jon raised an eyebrow.  “Wow.  That’s pretty good room service.  I didn’t even get the chance to ask for water, and here they are.”

“I don’t think it’s room service,” Darcy guessed.

The knock came again, followed by a man’s voice.  “Mister Tinker, it’s Officer Powers.  Open up, please.”

“No,” Jon agreed to Darcy.  “I don’t think it’s room service either.”

On impulse she folded Lindsay’s letters up and slid them under the bed.  The dark stains along the sides of the paper caught her attention before she hid them.  Another clue she didn’t understand.

Jon opened the door to the same police officer they had met earlier down at the station.  It was easy to see he wasn’t here to be social.  His nostrils flared as he huffed in a breath.  His eyes were tight.  As soon as the door was open, he jabbed his finger in Jon’s face.

“I don’t care if you’re a police chief or an Indian chief in whatever back of Bourke town ya come from,” he snapped.  “Here, you’re a guest of my town, not some modern day Sherlock.  We do the investigating here.  We talk with the victims.  Not some tourist cop from America and his wife.”

Jon was staring at the tip of Kevin’s finger.  “I’ll thank you,” he said, slowly, “to take that out of my face.”

“Oh?  Would ya now?” Kevin said sarcastically.  “Anything else ya want to thank me for?  Tell ya what, Chief, why don’t you and the missus come down to the station tomorrow and explain to my Senior Sergeant why the two of you was talking to Alec Beaudoin today?  Eh?  Explain why yer butting into our investigation.”

Darcy watched as Jon stood there, not answering, waiting until Kevin lowered his hand away.  Then he smiled a pleasant smile and gave a nod of his head.  “Thank you, Officer Powers.  I would like to come down to the station tomorrow.  I think Chief… er… Senior Sergeant Cutter and I have a lot to talk about.  Was there anything else we could help you with?”

That made Kevin blink as he shifted his weight, hooking his thumbs into his belt.  He obviously hadn’t expected them to be calm and polite.  “Uh, fine.  Right.  Then I’ll tell the Sarge to expect ya.”  He looked over at Darcy sitting on the floor, and for just a moment she was sure he saw the letters shoved away behind her, but then he cleared his throat and went back to talking to Jon.  “Don’t know why you’re so interested in a little thing like this.  People get poisoned.  Happens all the time.  A couple of hundred people die every year in Australia from poison.  Looked the stats up myself.”

“Two of them right here in Lakeshore,” Jon pointed out.  You don’t think that’s strange?”

He shrugged, although he didn’t seem all that sure anymore.  “Three of them dead here in Lakeshore ain’t all that strange when ya think on it.”

“Three?”  Darcy was shocked.  “The third victim died, too?”

Kevin sighed out through his nose, realizing he’d said too much once again.  “Speak to the Sarge.  Tomorrow.  Till then, stay outta our business.”

Leaving their door open he turned and walked away down the hall, his boots thumping a rhythm on the wooden floor.

She looked up at Jon, her mouth open but unable to find the words.  Three.  That’s why there had been three people in her vision.  She hadn’t called up just Lindsay.  She’d called all three of the people who had fallen victim to the poison.

“We’d better figure this out soon,” he said to her, closing the door before coming over to reach for her hands and help her stand up.  “Alec Beaudoin survived.  When whoever did this realizes the attack on Alec failed, they might just try again.”

Darcy knew he was right.  Four victims, seemingly without any connection to each other, three of them dead.

If they didn’t do something, soon, there might just be four people showing up in her next communication.

A quiet knock at their door made her jump.  She latched on to Jon, then rolled her eyes at herself and sat down on the bed instead.  “If that’s Kevin Powers again, tell him the least he can do is bring me some water if he’s going to keep knocking on our door.”

Jon sighed, rolling his head around on his shoulders.  She knew he was tense.  Maybe later, after they had talked through what they were going to do next about the mystery, she could help him relax with a long back massage.  In the tub.

“Who is it?” Jon called out this time, rather than open the door.

“Mister Tinker, it’s me.”  Darcy recognized the voice right away.  “It’s Ellie Burlick.”