The Greatest Gift (A Darcy Sweet Mystery) (9 page)

When he came through the door and saw them staring at him, he stopped, looking from Darcy to her mom and back again.  "What?" he said.

Darcy's mother stood up and made a show of taking out pots and pans to cook dinner.  "Nothing, young man.  I think you and my daughter have a lot to talk about.  Why don't you take her for a walk?  Don't come back for at least an hour.  I have a lot of work to do in here."

"Subtle, mom," Darcy muttered.  She got up from the
table, squeezing her mom's shoulder as she passed.  She took Jon by the hand and led him back out through the door again.

"Do I want to know what that was all about?" he asked once they were outside.

"Mom is just being overprotective."

He sighed through his nose.  "She hates me?"

Darcy kept them walking towards town.  It wasn't far, really, just twenty minutes or so, and the afternoon was still warm and the wind rustled in the trees and she soaked it all in like medicine for her soul.  "Actually, no she doesn't hate you.  She knows we love each other.  She's just not happy that we can't make it work."

He nodded, but didn't offer anything.  If he had
thought anymore about their situation he didn't say so.  Instead, he rubbed his forehead and loosened his tie to undo the top button of his white button up shirt.  "I talked to the Whedons."

Darcy held onto her good mood.  She would make him talk about them, even if she had to duct tape him to a chair and employ slow water torture.  Now wasn't the time, though.  "Okay.  Did the
Whedons have anything important to say?"

"I'll say they did."  He took Darcy's hands and gently
pulled her to a stop in the middle of the path that ran along the street to town.  "We have another suspect to interview."

Like any town where people lived and made a home
, Misty Hollow employed a code enforcement officer.  His job was to make sure people who were putting up buildings or making renovations to ones already in the town didn't build in a reckless or dangerous manner.  All structural changes of any significance had to be approved through the code enforcement office.

In M
isty Hollow the code enforcement officer was Giattano Franco.  When Jon told Darcy what he had learned from the owners of Handyman Express, her jaw dropped.

Giattano
was the nephew or cousin of Dominic Franco.  Cassidy and Angela Whedon hadn't been clear on the family relationship between the two.  What they had said, was that Giattano the code enforcement officer had come around to the Whedon's home just three weeks ago.  They ran their business from their house, and Giattano had wanted to see all the information the Whedons had on a certain building project from two years back.

The concealed door in Belinda Franco's living room
.

It was the next day, Tuesday, just five minutes before eight in the morning when Jon parked at the curb outside the Misty Hollow Town Hall.  It was a two story
brick building with ribbed white pillars out front supporting a triangular overhang with a large round clock that hadn't moved a second forward in decades.  It was permanently stuck at three minutes before noon.  Or midnight.  Darcy had never been sure which.

"So the
Whedons didn't say why Giattano wanted to know about their door?" she asked Jon.  She looked up at the clock and wondered why no one on the town council had ever set aside funds to have it fixed.

"No.  They didn't
know.  I only spoke with Cassidy but I got the impression that he found it really strange for a code enforcement officer to be that concerned over an improvement to the inside of a house."

They sat in silence after that, watching the town come awake.  People hurried down the sidewalk and the traffic increased until it became what passed for rush
hour in Misty Hollow.  Cars rolling slowly down the streets, drivers graciously giving the right of way to everyone else.  Just another sleepy morning in a small town.

Another morning with a mystery to solve.

Who was trying to steal from Belinda?  The poor old woman didn't even seem to have anything to steal in the first place, but it was obvious that someone thought she did.  Darcy was still betting on Rita Casey.  Something about that woman just set warning bells ringing in her mind.

That didn't mean she couldn't be wrong, though.  She rolled her eyes.  Not that she hadn't been wrong more than a few times in the past.  They needed to follow up on this new bit of information that Jon had brought them.
  Which was why they were waiting at the Town Hall for Giattano to come into work.

"Do you know him?" Jon
asked Darcy.  "Giattano, I mean?"

"Sort of.
  You know how it is in a town like this.  I know who he is.  Enough to wave to him, I guess.  How about you?  Did you ever meet him when you were living here?"

"I don't think so."  He watched an old Vo
lkswagon Beetle roll by, then turned his concentration back to the main entrance of the Hall.  It was just being opened for the day's business by a woman in white shirt and blue vest.  "I, uh, appreciate the loan of your couch last night."

Darcy turned her face away to stare out the passenger side window.  Jon and she had talked late into the night, about Belinda, about the two of them, about everything,
until it had become obvious there was no sense to his driving all the way back to Oak Hollow just to drive back here this morning.  She had quickly offered him the couch and a spare blanket so she wouldn't have to think about  how not all that long ago they slept in the same bed…

A cat walked by them on the sidewalk, distracting her.  She was a pretty cat, with silky gray fur and a long tail.  She turned her blue eyes up to Darcy for just a moment before hurrying on to whatever sort of appointment cats keep in the early morning hours.

At any rate, Jon hadn't said very much last night about the most important subject on Darcy's mind.  Even though he'd told her that he still loved her, how were they going to reconstruct their relationship with the distance he had put between them?  Every time she tried to pin him down for an answer he got them off topic, onto something else, until finally Darcy had just given up and told him goodnight with a kiss on the cheek.

She'd half expected
him to sneak up to their room in the middle of the night.  He didn't, no matter how much she would have welcomed it, and eventually she fell into a dreamless sleep that lasted until dawn.

"It's been a while since we
were on stakeout together," he said to her now. 

That, at least, brought a smile to her face.  "It's not much of a stakeout.  We're just waiting for someone to come to work—hey, there he is."

Giattano Franco, a flimsy looking man carrying a brown suitcase in one hand, kept his eyes straight ahead as he went up the front cement steps to the door of the Town Hall.  He was tall and thin and the sleeves of his suitcoat hung down past his wrists.  Thick glasses and a perfectly round head topped with frizzy brown hair made him look sort of like a bobble head figure, in Darcy's mind.

"Let's go," Jon said, already getting out of the car.

They caught up to Giattano just inside the heavy wooden entrance doors.  The hallway inside was dimly lit, dark wood fixtures and trim lending an air of importance, giving the impression of weighty matters being decided here.

Darcy felt
cold prickles crawl up the back of her neck as soon as she stepped inside.  Almost like she was being watched.  She looked up and down the hallway but besides her and Jon, Giattano was the only person in view. 

S
he could feel another presence.  One that made her feel uneasy.

"Mister Franco?" Jon called out, stopping the man with his hand on the
knob of a door leading to an office on the left, a polished and shiny code enforcement nameplate attached to it.  "Can we have a moment of your time, sir?"

"Of course," he
answered, his voice remarkably deep and full considering how little there was to the rest of him.  "Um, it's Tinker, isn't it?  You were a cop here in town, right?"

Jon nodded.  "I was.  I'm actually looking into something that you might help me with.  You're related to Dominic and Belinda Franco, aren't you?"

Giattano's face paled.  "I…I was.  To Dom, I mean.  He, um, he died.  Still related to Belinda."  He tried for a smile and failed.  "Right.  Well.  Is something wrong?"

Darcy could tell Jon was waiting for her to pick up the conversation but the cold
sensation that gripped her was getting stronger, and it was making her uncomfortable.  There was definitely something here in the Town Hall, and it's attention was on her.  A presence, a ghost…something.  She'd been in the Town Hall only a few times before but she'd never felt anything like this.  She knew there was a story about it being haunted.  It wasn't unusual for an old building to have its share of ghosts.

This was something more than that.

Jon noticed Darcy's discomfort and without missing a beat began asking the questions they had worked out last night.  "You're aware of a secret door that Belinda had installed two years ago?"

Darcy thought the man would faint.  H
e somehow managed to keep his voice even and smooth, even as his eyes darted around as if looking for escape.  "Sure do.  I had to give her the building permit.  Nice work, too.  Some company out of Oak Hollow.  I have the forms inside.  All in order.  Why, are you looking to have something done like that in your house?  Oh, I always liked your Great Aunt's house, Darcy.  So much character."

The man was talking a mile a minute and his eyes twitched all over, looking everywhere but at them. 
Giattano was definitely hiding something.  Darcy could see why the Whedons had immediately pointed to him as a good suspect.  Maybe that was the cold feeling Darcy was feeling.  Maybe her sixth sense was trying to tell her they were two steps closer to finding who was invading Belinda's home.

She heard laughter from further in the building.  Or had she imagined it?

Jon's phone rang from his pocket.  "Hold on a minute.  I have to take this."

Jon's eyebrows knitted and he stepped back down the hall the way they
had come in with a meaningful glance at Darcy.  The call was important, but he couldn't tell her why in front of Giattano.  She'd just have to stall.

"So, Mister Franco," she said.

"Uh, please, call me Giattano."  He held his hand out, making no move to invite her into the office.  "You're Darcy, right?  Darcy Sweet?  You own the bookstore in town."

"That's right," she said
with a smile as they shook hands.  "Belinda and Dominic were good friends of my Great Aunt Millie.  We're helping Belinda out with a problem, Jon and I.  That's why we wanted to know what was so special about the door to Belinda's basement?"

"Special?"
Giattano parroted.  "Nothing special.  It's just a door."  He laughed, but it didn't sound convincing.

"Oh?  Hmm," she said, pretending to consider something.  "
That's odd.  Why would you track down the company that installed that door if it wasn't important?"

"You m
ean those Handyman Express people?"  He seemed to relax, his eyes finally turning to look directly at her.  It was like now that Darcy had told him why they were here, he knew what to say.  "Well, you know, I take my job as code enforcement officer very seriously.  Those people didn't apply for a permit before installing that new door on my aunt's home.  Can't have that."

Darcy wasn't convinced. 
"See, that's what I thought at first, but then the people who own Handyman Express told Jon how odd it was for you to ask them about it at all.  Something about how a code enforcement officer, such as yourself, is normally only concerned with major structural changes or new construction.  Not about what someone's door looks like."

Giattano
swallowed.  He went back to sputtering and his eyes looked away again.  "Well.  You know.  I don't know how the code enforcement officer over in Oak Hollow does things, but here in Misty Hollow we do things right.  Yes.  That's it."

A
fresh chill went up her spine when Giattano mentioned the two Hollows.  The similarity had always struck her as funny, Oak Hollow and Misty Hollow, but in an area with so many hills and low-laying stretches of land, it wasn't outside the realm of possibility.  She ignored the cold prickly feeling of someone staring at her and instead listened to what Giattano was saying, promising to investigate the Town Hall some other day.  When she had more time.

"I don't trust those people at Handyman Express anyway,"
Giattano said.  "I checked up on them.  Both of the Whedons have records, you know.  Criminals.  I just can't abide them.  You know?"

"What kind of record?" Darcy asked, immediately interested.

"Breaking and entering, mostly."  Giattano seemed very sure of himself again as he gave up this gossip, turning the attention from him to someone else.  "I suppose that's why they're so good with repairing and installing locks, hm?"

Jon put his cell phone away and
said, "I'm sorry, Darcy, we need to go.  Thank you for your help, Mister Franco."