The Language of Death (A Darcy Sweet Coy Mystery) (5 page)

Add into that the emotional turmoil that a
communication brought her, and multiply it whenever the object of the communication was a friend or relative, and speaking to the ghosts of someone she knew was like trying to read a take-out menu for a Chinese restaurant written in German.  Confusing and frustrating and kind of painful.

She'd done a
communication with her ex-husband Jeff's ghost not that long ago.  Even then, she hadn't gotten the answers she'd wanted.  She'd gotten the answers Jeff thought she needed.  That had been hard enough.  She knew it would be harder this time.

But she was willing to do it anyway. 
For Chloe.

In the middle of her thoughts, her stomach growle
d.  She put a hand over her tummy, realizing she was hungry, and looked at the digital clock on the nightstand next to the bed.  Was it really that late?  She'd promised to call Lorne and go to dinner with him.  She looked down at the thick white candles from her kit in her hands, their smooth white surfaces lined with rows of melted wax.  She needed to talk to Lorne, but she needed to talk to Chloe.  What she really needed was to be in two places at once.  Something else her gift couldn't do for her.

Darcy sighed.  The services for Chloe were tomorrow.  If she didn't go to dinner with Lorne now, he might think she was standing him up and not offer her a second chance to find out what he knew. 
On the other hand, Chloe's ghost didn't have to worry about things like eating dinner.  Chloe would have to wait.  For now.

She put the emergency kit back together and stuffed it back into her travel bag next to the hastily packed shirts and jeans and shampoo.  Then she went to the room's phone, a blue plastic push-button thing with a long twisted cord, and took Lorne's phone number out of her pocket.

When she had dialed the number she held the phone to her ear and turned back to the bed to find her candles and incense sticks were unpacked again.  She startled, jumping back a step, her heart racing.

Apparently Chloe wanted to talk to Darcy pretty urgently.

"Hello?"

Lorne's voice in her ear made her jump again.  She ground her teeth together and stamped her foot and fisted her hand at her side.  She was used to ghosts coming out of walls to find her and even had a Great Aunt haunting the bookstore she ran back in Misty Hollow.  Why was she so jumpy
all of a sudden?

"Hello?" Lorne asked again.

"Hi, Lorne," Darcy said to him.  "Hi.  It's me.  Uh, Darcy.  Hi.  Ready for dinner?"

One of the candles rolled off the bed and fell to the floor with a thump.  Darcy tried to ignore it. 
Dinner first, communication second.

After making arrangements for Lorne to pick her up, Darcy collected her things and packed them away, again.  She took out a new shirt, something that showed just a little less skin than the tank top she was wearing.  Not a date, she reminded herself. 
Just going to meet Lorne to talk.  Maybe he could point her in the direction of the right suspect.

Halfway to the bathroom she stopped. 
Something she had forgotten suddenly rushed to the front of her mind, making her blood chill.

She'd forgotten a name on her suspect list.  She'd forgotten Lorne himself.

In Smithsville, just like in Misty Hollow, the selection of restaurants was limited.

The
Armadillo Café was a small place with a small dining room.  It was actually below street level on Main Street, concrete steps leading down to a black door that had a brightly painted sign on it.  In red and blue letters it read, "Roll On In, We're Open!"

Lorne had picked her up at the motel and driven them here.  The whole drive had taken maybe five minutes.  Darcy had offered to meet him here, but he told her that Smithsville was more complex than it looked.  He didn't want her getting lost.

Now they sat at a round table with a single candle unlit in a holder between salt and pepper shakers.  A long white tablecloth fell over the edge to the floor, and the napkins were cloth.  It might be small, but the owners of the Armadillo made every effort to give the place an upscale feel.  The menu was simple, fish and steak mostly, although Darcy selected a chicken Caesar salad that tasted better than it looked.

They had talked about what had happened for both of them after college already, how she had gone back to Misty Hollow and now owned the bookstore her Great Aunt had originally ran, how she had been married and divorced, although she left out any mention of Jon Tinker.  That, she felt, was getting a little too personal.  For his part, Lorne had returned from college to take over a family business also. 
Selling high-end mattresses.

He laughed when Darcy couldn't keep her expression in check.  "I know, I know, it sounds
ridiculous but my dad actually built the company up from nothing and now we have four outlet stores across this state, plus two warehouses.  I didn't realize growing up how much money there was to be made in mattresses."

"So Chloe was going to marry into money, was she?" Darcy said, as innocently as she could.  She'd been looking for some way to turn the conversation to Chloe ever since their dinner plates had arrived.  Now was her chance.

His face fell, and Darcy was sorry for the distress she was obviously causing him.  It kind of made him less of a suspect in her mind, to see how upset he got every time Chloe's name got mentioned.

"She knew how much my family is worth, sure," he said, fiddling with the edges of his napkin.  "That wasn't it, though.  She and I just clicked.  Haven't you ever spent time with someone and just, you know, clicked?"

Darcy looked across the table into his blue eyes and suddenly she was tongue-tied.  She had been thinking of Jon when Lorne asked that question.  Now?  She was thinking back to college and a night when she and Lorne had sat out under the stars and waited all night for a meteor shower that never came.

"Um, yeah, sure," she said.  She forked a bite of her salad into her mouth to give herself something else to do besides talking.  When she had collected her thoughts she swallowed and tried to work up
to the important questions she had to ask.  "Did Chloe have epilepsy?"

Subtle, she thought to herself. 
Real subtle.

Lorne didn't seem to mind her being blunt, though.  He shook his head,
steepling his hands together with his elbows on the edge of the table.  "No, she didn't.  No one we know has seizures.  I've asked myself about that, too.  Asked everyone I know.  Great minds think alike, I guess." 

He smiled at Darcy and she found herself smiling back.  "So the question becomes…"

"Where did she get the pills from?"  He finished her question for her, his eyes sharp.  "See, that's what I tried to get across to the police.  Epilepsy pills?  You don't just go out to your local pharmacy and buy those.  They didn't even take a look at them.  They just took the coroner's word for it and filed their reports.  They couldn’t care less where those pills came from…"

His smile faltered and then slipped altogether.  Staring down at his plate, he push
ed it away, his appetite gone.  Darcy knew how he felt.

"Lorne," she said, leaning over the table, her own food forgotten, "how well do you know Veronica?  Do you trust her?  Is she telling the truth about finding Chloe like that?"

His head popped back up.  "You don't think…?  No.  I know Veronica.  Not as well as I knew you back in college, maybe, but I know she and Chloe were very good friends.  They were always happy whenever they got together.  I know it doesn't look like it to see her now, but Veronica is usually a fun-loving girl.  Always smiling, always joking.  Chloe's death hit her hard.  That's why she was so distant today."

Darcy nodded slowly, taking that information in.  Lorne looked like he was on the verge of tears again.  Here she w
as, swallowed up by her own grief, digging at Lorne's misery.  Did she really think he was a suspect?  How could she, seeing how much he missed Chloe?  She'd known him pretty well in college, after all, and he wasn't the type who could kill someone.  People change, sure, but not to that extreme.  Or so she liked to believe.

For the moment, she decided to trust him and take him at his word.  She needed
the help of a friend, after all.  Who better than the man who was going to marry Chloe?

"
Lorne."  She hesitated.  He might not like what she was about to say.  "I was going to go down to the Hoot Owl myself and ask if anyone remembers Veronica being there the night Chloe died.  Do you maybe want to come with me?"

He blinked.  "
You're checking her alibi?  You don't honestly believe Veronica killed her, do you?"

"I'm not ruling anyone out.  I'm not from this town.  I don't know the people.  Anyone could be the killer, as far as I'm concerned."  How many times had she found out that someone in her own little sleepy town of Misty Hollow wasn't who they appeared to be?  Still, if she wanted Lorne's help she would probably have to soften her tone a bit.  "I want to eliminate her as a suspect. 
How about that?"

He wiped his mouth with his napkin, tossing it onto his half eaten steak sandwich.  "I want to get to the truth as much as you do.  No matter where it goes. 
All right.  Let's go find out if Veronica is telling the truth."

Darcy smiled.  In that moment, Lorne reminded her of everything she loved most about Jon Tinker.  She wished Jon was here, now, but the truth was that Lorne would probably be more help to her anyway.  He would know the people in town and how to talk to them.  They might open up to him a lot easier than they would to the little girl from out of town asking about people's alibis.  She was glad Lorne had agreed to come with her.

It was becoming harder not to think about him like she had in college.  They were falling into old, easy ways.  Darcy didn't think that was all bad.

Reminding herself that this wasn't a date, she followed him up to the cash register while he paid the check.

***

The Hoot Owl was an old and renovated train station, situated right next to a set of railroad tracks that skirted the edge of Smithsville.  Apparently, Lorne explained to Darcy, back in its heyday this little town had been a hub of commerce for the state.  Now, there really wasn't any reason for the railroad to stop here anymore.  So some enterprising businessman had made use of the building to run a bar.

Old railroad crossing signs decorated the walls on the outside, along with a few stop signs and a sign that read "Chicago, 30 Miles," even though they were nowhere near Chicago.  The lower half of the walls had been painted red, the upper part left as bare wood.  Neon signs advertising different brands of beer flashed in the windows.

Darcy didn't go out to bars very often.  Not anymore.  She and Chloe and Lorne and a few others had visited more than a few back in college but after that she'd lost interest.  Maybe if she and Chloe had stayed in touch, it would have been the two of them going out to bars for a drink instead of Chloe and Veronica.

Not that she was jealous.  She just was sad for missed opportunities.  Life was short, she reminded herself.  A girl who could see ghosts really should remember that.

Inside there was a
long, narrow room with a polished bar tucked along one wall, tall stools with leather seats lined up next to it.  A few booths were set up against the opposite wall next to the jukebox.  Country music played softly while neon signs buzzed on and off where they hung on the walls.  A mirror reflected the whole scene, giving the room the illusion of being bigger than it was.

A bartender, a middle-aged woman with raven black hair in a ponytail and a shirt that was cut dangerously low, laughed at something the lone customer
sitting at the bar had said.  The guy looked over his shoulder at Darcy and Lorne as they came inside, then turned back around to his beer.  Other than those two, the place was empty.

"Not a very popular place," Darcy remarked.

"It doesn't start getting people in until closer to eleven o'clock when the afternoon shift at the local paper mill gets out," Lorne explained.  "Bill there is the only regular who comes in this early."

Darcy went up to the bar.  When the bartender came over she debated whether she should order a drink to help ease into the conversation.  She wasn't much of a drinker. 
Wine, on occasion, or sometimes a good cold beer.  Thankfully Lorne took the matter out of her hands.

"Hi,
Felicity," he said to the dark haired woman.  "How's business?"

"How's it look?" she said
in a low, scratchy voice, waving her hand around the emptiness.  "Sometimes I wonder if I'll have a job tomorrow.  Hey.  I'm sorry about Chloe.  She was one of the good ones."

Darcy's throat constricted.  Lorne nodded, his fingers tapping along the edge of the bar
rail.  "Yes.  She was.  She liked coming here, you know.  She was supposed to come here the night she…the night they found her."

"Really?"
Felicity asked.  "No way.  Oh, yeah, I did see Veronica here that night, now that you say it.  Those two were always coming out here for girl's night.  You guys want something?  Let me get you a drink.  On the house."