4 The Ghost of Christmas (8 page)

“Could it be something else entirely?” Jon asked her.

Darcy appreciated the way he was making an effort to understand this part of her. With a smile she couldn’t quite supress she leaned across the table to kiss his cheek. “I’ll know more when we talk to Roland Baskin.”

“You’re sure it was him you saw in the vision?”

“Very sure.” Darcy shuddered as she remembered. “I saw a younger version of Mister Baskin in the background, standing behind Roger August just as Roger got hurt somehow. It must have been him.”

Jon nodded. “We should go and talk to him in the morning. Right now I think we both need sleep.”

“I wish that you could take my visions as evidence and arrest him or at least bring him in for questioning,” Darcy said, putting a hand over a yawn she hadn’t felt coming until he mentioned sleep.

“You’ve done your part,” Jon said to her. “Now it’s time for old fashioned police work to do the rest.”

***

“Police station first,” Jon told her. “I’m all for confronting Baskin, but I want to look up a few things first.”

As they drove into town the next morning, Darcy noticed the fog being burned away by the bright winter sun. Most of the snow still clung to the ground, and the mists were quickly receding back into the white ground cover. She didn’t think Jon had seen them.

He let her out in front of the bakery and then told her he’d meet her over at the station. “Make mine black,” he told her, holding her hand briefly before letting her go. She knew he’d never admit it, but he was still shook up over last night.

When Darcy entered the café she could see that Elizabeth Archer, Helen’s assistant, was working behind the counter. Helen was nowhere to be seen. “Helen not working today?” Darcy asked Elizabeth.

“No. What can I get you?” Darcy had always found the middle aged woman to be rather abrupt. With those scars on her face that she kept hidden behind her long auburn hair, Darcy didn’t doubt that she’d had a rough life. Even after Elizabeth had been in town now for several months, Darcy knew little about her.

With the coffees in hand Darcy made her way back to the police station. She’d remembered to bring one for the desk sergeant and he smiled at her in appreciation as he waved her through to the offices where Jon worked. Sergeant Fitzwallis was an older man that Darcy had gotten to know pretty well after so many trips here to visit with Jon and Grace. “Come back when you can bring me a sandwich, too, you hear?”

Darcy laughed and promised she’d bring him some of Jon’s apple pie next time she came through. He acted surprised that Jon would be able to cook anything past boiling water.

That was Jon, she thought. In his own way he had as many layers to his life as she did to her own.

As she came through the door she could see Jon tapping away at his computer, looking thoughtfully at whatever he was reading. He looked up and smiled at her when she set his coffee down in front of him.

“Have you found anything yet?” Darcy asked him.

“Noise complaints. Baskin has literally filed hundreds of noise complaints. All around Christmas, most of them related to the pageant.” He shrugged. “Other than that, there’s nothing on him. Either in our database or anywhere online that I can think to look.”

Darcy thought about that. “Well maybe he just wasn’t caught for anything before.”

Jon made a noncommittal face, then took a big slurp of his coffee. “Won’t know until we ask, I guess. Ready to go and have a chat with him?”

***

Jon knocked on the front door of the small, well-kept cottage. It had been a short walk to Baskin’s house, here on a quiet street just off the main town center.

Baskin answered with a grumpy expression, shoulders hunched, eyes narrowed. “What do the two of you want?”

Jon kept his voice calm and even managed a smile. “We would like to speak to you about the Christmas pageant.”

He looked from Jon to Darcy and back to Jon again. He made no attempt to invite them in. “What do you want to know?”

“Why don’t you like the Christmas pageant, Mister Baskin?” Darcy asked him. If he wasn’t going to let them in, they needed to get to the heart of their questions quickly.

Baskin scowled at her. “It’s too noisy, that’s why. I’m old and I just want a peaceful life but every time there is something to celebrate Misty Hollow makes the biggest racket. And that stupid Christmas pageant is the worst.” He waved his hands animatedly, his voice growing angry. “I thought I could get enough signatures to stop the damned thing, but I should have known better. This town never listens to reason. I’ve been trying to stop that stupid pageant for years but it never works. You should know,” he said to Jon, “you nearly died in it yesterday, didn’t ya?”

“Now how did you know that, Mister Baskin?” Jon asked him with deceptive politeness. “I figured a man like you who was so dead set against the pageant wouldn’t have been there at all.”

Baskin scratched at his balding head. “I wasn’t there. I was out of town, just like every year. Can’t stand to be here. It’s just all around town this morning, is all.”

“Oh? And where exactly were you when you were out of town?”

Baskin sighed loudly. “I was in Meadowood with my daughter, if you need to know. What’s this all about?”

“Do you have any proof of that?” Jon pressed.

Baskin glared at Jon. “What is this, an interrogation?” Baskin snapped. “I do have proof actually.” He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers and showed them a receipt from a dinner with his daughter. “There. If you need to know so badly, there it is. I always pay.”

Jon and Darcy looked at the receipt carefully. It was time stamped for a half hour after the pageant began. Assuming the credit card number on the receipt matched Baskin’s then this gave him an alibi. They thanked him for his time and left him grumbling in his doorway.

In the car on the way back into town Jon said, “So much for that. Wouldn’t we have seen him around the stage, anyway? Someone would have. You can’t cause that kind of trouble without someone seeing it.”

“You’re probably right,” Darcy agreed. “Now what?”

“We need to talk to everyone else who was behind the stage last night to see if they know anything or saw anyone acting suspiciously. I will get a couple of officers to do that. Right now I am going back to the station and do some more digging into Rose Abbington. The female police officer in that photograph. I was working on that angle when this thing with the suit and the pageant came up.”

He pulled into the parking lot in front of the police station and shut the engine off. “I don’t know, Darcy. Maybe this Roger guy, er, ghost is barking up the wrong tree. Maybe there’s a simple explanation and his spirit is just refusing to believe it?”

How did she explain this to him, she wondered. “It doesn’t actually work that way,” she said at last. “The spirits of the dead are aware of certain information that they can’t necessarily pass on to us. If Roger says he needs me to find out who murdered him, you can bet that it wasn’t an accident or a simple mugging or something like that.”

He looked at her skeptically, but didn’t say anything. Instead he leaned across and kissed her. It was the best answer she could have hoped for.

“Okay. I have a couple of things to do so I’ll see you later?” she said. He nodded and she jumped out of the car to head over to the bookstore. She knew what she needed to do now. Although it was dangerous she didn’t feel like she had another option. She needed to try and communicate with Roger again. Otherwise they were at a dead end.

But before she could go home and do that she had a special book club Christmas meeting to attend to. Life went on even if the dead needed her attention. The mystery of the Santa suit would have to wait for a couple of hours.

***

The book club group were in high spirits as they took turns reading passages from Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol.’ Darcy thought that the book was fitting with what she had been going through with her own Christmas ghost, plus it suited everyone’s holiday mood so well. She could just imagine Roland Baskin as Scrooge, humbugging his way through life. What had happened in his life, she wondered, to make him hate Christmas so much.

She was anxious to get home and begin her preparations to summon Roger August’s ghost again. All through the book meeting she fidgeted and tried to apply herself to the reading of the book. Afterward, everyone stayed to try some of the delectable treats that Cora Morton and Evelyn Casey had brought in.

Preston Morgan had brought in a huge batch of his special recipe eggnog and Darcy was sure that the group would be tipsy before they started filing out. Maybe she should just have one of the group lock up for her, when they left. She wished that Sue had been able to attend this meeting but she’d had a family gathering to get to so it was left to Darcy to handle it alone today. Which was fair enough, as Sue had worked most of the day covering for Darcy while she had been out with Jon investigating the mystery.

She stayed longer than she wanted to, checking her watch when no one was looking. She had to admit everything was tasty, though. Maybe just one more fruitcake cookie.

She was about to make her escape when she realized that the group before her presented an opportunity she shouldn’t pass up. At least half of the book club members had lived in Misty Hollow for more than twenty years so she figured that any of them could have known Roger. Maybe they would have information about his murder. She just needed to find the perfect opening in the conversation to bring it up casually.

In the end it was easier to do than she had thought it would be. Tommie Sullivan, who was on about his fifth glass of spiked eggnog by then, started to reminisce about Christmases past. Something in The Christmas Carol story had set him off and he started rambling about lost friends. Darcy was surprised to hear him say Roger’s name.

“You knew Roger August?” she asked Tommie.

He looked at her with slightly unfocussed eyes and hiccupped behind the sleeve of his blue knitted sweater. “He was my best friend at school and the friendship lasted after we finished school. It wasn’t right how he was cut down like that. And they never did find the culprit who did it.”

Several of the group were listening now, and Tommie began eating up the attention. “He was shot in the back in his own home on Christmas Eve. Twenty years back now. A Christmas never goes past without me thinking about him. It was such a waste. He was such a good person at heart. Grump of a man toward the end of his life, though. Give old Scrooge a run for his money.”

“Or Roland Baskin,” Cora said, and the whole group laughed with her.

“He was still my friend though,” Tommie lamented. “Wasn’t right what happened to him.”

Darcy asked Tommie for more details and got several stories about stuff they had done in school. None of that helped her, though, and no one else seemed to know him at all. As the group split up for the night and said their goodbyes, Darcy came back to the realization that she would have to call on Roger’s spirit again.

***

Darcy went back to her house quickly. No sense wasting time on this. Sitting cross legged in the living room, the candles arranged, the Santa suit that would allow her to forge a connection to Roger in her lap. Then she took some time to think about her family and Jon, grounding herself in the good things in her life. She had a lot of blessings to be thankful for, and she called upon them all now.

She reached out, putting her energy into the calling, merging with the mists that acted as a conduit between life and death. She felt the resistance, the same force as before acting against her, but she was able to slide through it easier now, and when she was past it she was transported into a new vision.

She was at the police station here in town, but it was years ago, old style furniture and a square metal clock on the wall like she’d seen in movies set twenty or thirty years ago. In the vision she moved, walking through the station, gliding around a corner inside the building until she saw Roger kissing a woman. In the vision she stopped, the scene before her coming into crisp focus. She could clearly make out Roger’s features, and those of the police woman, Rose Abbington.

They turned to look at Darcy, shock on Rose’s face, anger on Roger’s. She went to take a step toward them—

Darcy was thrown out of the vision in a cold blast of air. She looked all around the room and found that once again her home was a mess with objects scattered all over. One of the candles had toppled over with its flames till burning, hot wax dripping onto the hardwood floor. She quickly dove for it and righted it before it could cause a fire. Maybe she should invest in some bases for the candles if this was going to keep happening.

Then she remembered the vision. Roger and Rose were lovers. She needed to tell Jon. Now.

Chapter Ten

Darcy rode her bike hard through the crunching snow and was out of breath by the time she reached the police station. It was after noon now, but she knew Jon would have waited for her here. She was surprised to find Grace there as well.

“I need to find Jon,” Darcy said to her sister, still trying to catch her breath from the ride.

“Well. Glad you two are still made up,” Grace said with a smile. “He’s in the back room, sis. He’s pouring through old boxes of case files. I’m guessing he’s doing that on a Sunday for you?”

“Yes. That’s true love, isn’t it?” They laughed at her little joke, then Darcy raced into the back to find Jon sitting at an old wooden table with cardboard boxes piled in front of him. He looked up when she entered and smiled at her.

She smiled back at him and said, “How’s it going? Have you found anything yet?”

“Well, Rose wasn’t romantically involved with Roger. She had a fiancé. She took time off after Roger died, though, which as far as I can tell was unusual for her. They must have been close friends.” Darcy opened her mouth again to tell him what she had seen in her vision just as he flipped a page. “Oh, it says here that she never married. At least while she worked here. I wonder what happened with the fiancé.”