Murder Down Under (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 17) (8 page)

He turned to Darcy, a “what now?” look on his face.

“Don’t look at me,” she told him.  “I didn’t invite her.”

Jon let her in, and she insisted that he close the door, and lock it, while she stood in the middle of the room, looking around.  “Nice room.  Honeymoon suite?”

“Yes,” Jon answered, eyes still full of questions.  “Ellie, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s been an impossibly long day.  Why are you here?”

For the briefest flicker, Ellie’s stoic expression broke and Darcy saw lines of pain etch across it.  Then with a breath she was collected and back to herself again.  “I overheard you talking to the officer,” she said.  “Heard every word.  He’s a good man.  We talked, some, when I first got here.  Thing is, he’s being hampered by his boss.  His hands are tied.  Cutter tells his men this is an accident, they follow along.  Like good little dingos.”

“That’s not the way police work is supposed to be done,” Jon muttered to himself.  “Look, I’m going to talk to Senior Sergeant Cutter myself.  Tomorrow.  Maybe I can get him on board with the fact this was intentional.”

Ellie was shaking her head.  “Cutter’s got rocks for brains.  Not quite the full deck, if you know what I mean.  Got the job off his father, who got it off his.  That’s the way of it sometimes, this far from civilization.  Cutter wouldn’t know a fact if it reared up from the bush and bit him on his bum.”

Jon’s face soured.  That was going to make getting any kind of cooperation from the Lakeshore PD a problem.

“So where does that leave us?” Darcy asked.  “We kind of need the police reports, or at least their help, if we expect to do anything more than ask questions.”

“Constable Powers wasn’t wrong,” Ellie pointed out.  “You are tourists.  You don’t have to do anything but go scuba diving and hike a mountain.  Whatever people do when they come here.  Why worry your heads over this?”

Those were all good points, Darcy thought to herself.  Still.  “Sometimes you have to help the people around you.  Even when no one wants your help.”

That was something else her Great Aunt Millie had taught her, once upon a time.

Darcy’s answer must have been the one Ellie was looking for.  She nodded to herself, like she’d made a decision.  “I came to say you can trust Kevin.  If you need help from the police, he’ll do the right thing.  Might take him a bit.  He doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers.”

“Good to know,” Jon said, “but I don’t know how much help that will be.  Honestly I don’t know what we can do here.  We don’t know the players.  We don’t know the people in town.  The killer could be walking around right under our noses and we wouldn’t know it.”

“I’m in the same boat,” Ellie told him, “and I haven’t given up.  Thing is, I can’t stay here any longer.  I’m going to lose my job if I don’t get back to it.  Won’t do my sis any good to stay here and look into her murder if I can’t even take care of myself.  I’m heading back tomorrow.  Work for a week, then take a few more days and come back.  Best I can do,” she added, with a little shrug.

Darcy knew that had to be a hard decision to make.  What would she do, if it had been Grace who got murdered, and no one believed her?

Everything she could.  That’s what.

Getting up off the bed she stepped close enough to rest her hand on Ellie’s arm, trying to give the other woman as much support as she could in a simple touch.  “We’ll keep looking into this,” she promised.  “Jon and I will be here for a few more days.  We’ll do everything we can.”

Ellie nodded, not quite able to meet Darcy’s eyes.  “Thank you.  Both of you.  You’re right brilliant folks and I thank the Almighty you came here when you did.”

“We seem to have a knack for it,” Jon said.

Ellie laughed, and seemed better for it.  “Let me tell you what I’ve found out.  Not much, I know.  That taxi driver.  The one what brought you here to the Inn?  There’s something not right about him.  Late at night, every night, I see him driving through town.  Stops here, stops there, then drives on.  Never picks up a fare.”  She thought about it, forehead furrowed, then shrugged.  “I was going to tell Kevin about it, but I’m out of time.  Have to leave for a bit.  But I’ll be back.”

She said it with such determination that Darcy could believe Ellie would never give up on proving what happened to her sister until the day she died herself.  She also couldn’t help but notice the way she had called Constable Powers by his first name, in a very familiar way.  There might be something going on between the two of them.  Or at the very least, Ellie might want there to be.

That was something she knew a little about.  She’d married a police officer herself, after all.

After they had said their goodbyes and Ellie had given both of them a quick hug, Darcy and Jon stood looking at the door to the room, waiting for someone else to knock on it.  For now, at least, there were no more visitors.  It was getting late.  The sun was setting outside the windows, and their second day in Australia was almost over.

“We’ve got a lot to think about,” Darcy said, feeling a yawn building up inside of her.  “What should we do now?”

He took her by her hand and twirled her around until she landed in his arms.  “This is our honeymoon, Mrs. Sweet.  I think we should get ready for bed.  We can sleep, and start with a fresh look at things in the morning.”

***

In their room all the lights were off.  Darcy had been trying to get to sleep for an hour now, at least, but it was hard to sleep when Jon was sitting up in bed, dissecting the finer points of Australian Rules football.

“How does this make any sense?” he said, not for the first time.  “There’s like, five hundred people on the field.  Which is oval, by the way.  How does that work?  Do they just run around in circles?  Wow!  Have you seen this thing they do where they hold the ball and then smack it with their fist?”

Darcy sighed.  After a quick dinner downstairs, and lots of water for her, they had come back up to the room where she had kept her promise to herself and massaged Jon’s back while both of them soaked in a tub full of steamy hot water.  They hadn’t gotten to bed for another two hours.

It had been nice to spend time alone with him but now all she wanted to do was sleep.

She rolled over until she was laying with her head across his lap.  “Jon.  It’s late.  Remember we said we were going to get some sleep and start again fresh in the morning?  Why don’t we let the Australians have their fun and—”

“I don’t get it.  Why is this goal worth one point when the last one was worth six?”

“Ahem.”

“Oh, sorry.  Sorry.  I know you’re tired.”

She shrugged, bunching a fistful of his pajama bottoms into her hand.  She was wearing his other pair, and one of his t-shirts.  They were very comfortable.  Big, and roomy, and warm.  “Turn the game off.  I’ll let you watch more tomorrow.”

Snuggling down with her, he turned off the television with the remote and kissed the top of her head.  “No.  Tomorrow we’ll find more time for us.  I promise.”

“Depending on where the mystery takes us,” she added.

“Right.”  His voice was already sleepy.  “What you said.”

Despite what she had said to him, sleep wouldn’t come.  She lay there feeling him drop off in stages, his breathing getting slower and even, his muscles relaxing.  It wasn’t fair that guys could do that so easily.  Her mind was still in overdrive with everything Ellie had said, and what they had learned from the fourth victim Alec Beaudoin, and with picking apart the communication with Lindsay.  Even her brief talk with Dell about the ghosts in the Inn kept creeping into her thoughts.

When the digital clock on the stand next to the bed flashed two-seventeen, she gave up pretending that sleep was right around the corner and slid out of bed.  Maybe if she splashed some water on her face and read a little, that would help.  She always brought books with her to read on long trips.  Sure, this was her honeymoon, and her thoughts had been more on her husband’s finely muscled body than on reading, but there had still been time to fit a couple of books between the clothes she’d packed, just in case.  One was a mystery.  One was a romance.

On top of the pile of their luggage was the book from Mabel’s store. 
Care and Wellness of the Psyche
.  She turned her nose up at it.  Maybe she could leave it here in one of the dresser drawers, like those Gideons left Bibles everywhere.  She set it aside and felt into her bag for her books, being as quiet as she could.

The chair was in front of the window.  Outside, a warm night was bedazzled with stars above the dark outlines of pine trees.  The constellations were strange here.  Nothing that she was used to.  She thought maybe she saw Orion but she wasn’t sure.  Should it be upside down like that?

Down below, the parking lot of the Inn was lit up by electric lamps on tall poles.  A few cars were parked in a line.  The night staff, probably.  There was another car, though, a black sedan with orange doors, and a blue light on top…

Roy’s taxi.  It took her a moment to be sure it was the same one.  There had to be hundreds of taxis in Tasmania, and a lot of them probably had the same paint job.  It was when she saw Roy himself standing next to it that she was sure.  Tall and dark and whistling, he looked all around him like he was expecting someone.

What was he up to?

Ellie’s words came back to her, about Roy making suspicious stops in his cab all around town.  Stopping at different places but never picking up a fare.  He had seemed really nice when they first met.  Could he be involved in the deaths and the mystery here, somehow?  Not that nice people didn’t do bad things, sometimes.  She and Jon had arrested plenty of those.  There was even a former hitwoman living in their house, because Ellen was a nice person and she deserved the chance to move past the bad things she’d done.

She was still staring at Roy, wondering which category he fit into.  Nice guy who deserved her consideration, or bad person who only seemed like a nice guy. 

For fifteen minutes or more she stood there, glad that the room was dark around her and there was no way for him to see her staring.  Was this normal behavior?  Did he do this all the time?  Jon and she had talked about how they didn’t know the town.  It could be completely innocent.

A man slinked from the shadows beyond the lights of the Inn’s parking lot.  He was wearing a hoodie pulled forward to hide his face.

No.  This was definitely not completely innocent.

Fascinated, Darcy watched as the man in the hoodie approached Roy slowly, turning this way and that way, making sure no one was watching.  Roy seemed to laugh and then he waved the other man over closer.

Darcy saw the man in the hoodie pass a flat paper envelope to Roy in exchange for a brown paper bag.  Now…that was interesting.  No way that was a legal transaction.  In the middle of the night, with no one around.  No way.

Was this what Ellie had seen Roy doing all over town?  What was he up to?

Nothing good, that was what.

So.  She and Jon might not know much about the town of Lakeshore, but she had just found out that Ellie’s suspicions about Roy were correct, at least.  Maybe more than she had realized.

Their deal done, the man in the hoodie skittered back to the shadows.  Roy opened the envelope and in the glow of the nearest lamp Darcy saw him count out green and yellow money.  Hundreds and fifties in Australian currency.

Money like that could buy almost anything.  Even someone’s death.  Could people be paying Roy to commit murder?  Was he the connection between the victims?

Murder for hire.  A cold chill went up Darcy’s spine.  Making sure the window was locked, and then the door as well, she climbed into bed next to Jon.  She needed his warmth and his comforting presence.

It was a long time before she got to sleep.

Waking up next to Jon was always the perfect way to start a day.

The rest of the night had gone by without any dreams.  Which was good, in a way, because her mind hadn’t visited her with images of dead people or murder most foul, but at the same time she hadn’t been visited by Great Aunt Millie or Smudge either.  She missed them both.

“Good morning,” he said to her with his face pressed against her back.  His arm was wrapped around her side. His toes were tickling the underside of her feet.  “How’d you sleep?”

“Fine, once I got to sleep,” she told him behind a yawn.  Turning herself around in his embrace and snuggling in close again, she kissed his chin.  “Let me tell you what I saw last night.”

He listened until she was done.  After, he asked her a few questions, about the man in the hoodie, about the bag she saw exchanged, about things she had never even thought of.  No, she didn’t see a gun on either of them.  Yes, the taxi had been running.  Yes, it had been a clear night, with a moon.

“I’ll tell the Sergeant about it,” he finally said, stroking his fingers in and out of her long hair, scratching her scalp gently and making her eyes roll back from the pleasure of it.

“You don’t think we should do it now?” she asked.  “He could be our killer, Jon.”

“I agree with you.  It’s a good theory.  But, Darcy, Roy might have been delivering a bag of donuts for all we know.”

“Pretty expensive donuts,” she grumbled sarcastically.  “This was something else, Jon.  I’m worried.  If he’s taking money from people to commit murder, who knows what he’s capable of?  And Alec isn’t dead yet.  He survived being poisoned.  What if Roy goes after him again?”

“What about Mabel?” he reminded her.

“One suspect at a time, okay?”

“Okay, tell you what.”  He shifted away from her to stretch the muscles of his back with his arms over his head.  “Let’s get dressed, then we can catch Ellie before she leaves and ask her what she thinks.  She’s been tailing Roy for a while, from what she said.  Maybe she saw something like this while she was watching him.”

“You mean, something like a donut delivery?”

“Okay, okay.  You got me on that one.  Shower first?”

“Yes, please.”  She stretched, and caught him watching her with that familiar heat in his eyes.  “As long as you promise to be a good boy.  We can’t wait too long or Ellie will be gone already.”

He promised, but she could tell he didn’t want to behave.  Well.  She’d make it up to him tonight.  And, every night for the rest of their lives.  For this morning they needed to hurry up.  It was only six in the morning, and no doubt Ellie was still asleep in bed, but she wouldn’t be for long.

Dressed and ready for another day of investigating mysteries, they left their room locked behind them and went down to Ellie’s door.  Jon knocked.

There was no answer.

He knocked again, louder, and when he got the same result he tried the door handle.  It opened, and he let it swing in until it banged against the wall.  “Ellie?  Are you here?”

Darcy looked past him.  The bed was made.  Whatever luggage Ellie had with her was gone.  So was Ellie.

“Gone already?” Jon asked out loud.

That was certainly how it looked to Darcy.  “But why?  She told us she wasn’t leaving until today.  Besides, how could she leave in the middle of the night?  What would she do, walk?”

“Maybe Dell knows something,” Jon suggested.  “Let’s go ask.”

An uneasy feeling was starting to slither its way around Darcy’s heart.  This wasn’t right.  Where was Ellie?  She had been looking into the mystery of her sister’s death, and now she was nowhere to be found.  Roy had been at the Inn last night.  That much, Darcy knew.

Roy had been the only suspect Ellie had.  Did he know she suspected him?  Would he have done something to her if he did?

Downstairs in the entryway of the Inn they saw Dell standing behind the registration desk, a smile on her face as she talked with someone else.  Darcy lost a step when she realized it was Roy, wearing the same green slacks and dark red shirt from last night, with the cut edges of the sleeves fraying.  Dell heard them coming down the stairs and turned to offer a little wave.

When Roy saw them, his smile broadened, and he spread his arms in greeting.  “There’s me friends.  America’s finest bookstore owner and cop.  How’s the vaca so far?”

Jon was better at hiding his feelings than Darcy was.  It came with being a police officer, she supposed.  He smiled back at Roy and even added a friendly nod.  “It’s been great so far.  We’ve seen a lot of Lakeshore.”

Dell’s eyes narrowed with a knowing look.  Her son Kevin would have told her everything, Darcy knew.  Everything about them going around the town asking questions.

“Really beautiful scenery here,” Jon continued.  “We were hoping to take a hike around the lakes today.  One of the other guests wanted to go with us.  Ellie Burlick?  Is she still here, Dell?”

It was Roy who answered.  “Sorry, Mates.  She’s gone.  Gave her a lift into Hobart early this morning.  Before I’d even had me brekkie.”

Darcy’s chest felt tight.  Ellie was gone and Roy had taken her, by his own admission.  There was no way Ellie would get into a cab with Roy.  Not voluntarily.  Not when she thought Roy had killed her sister.  Images sprang to her mind, none of them good, all of them involving Roy doing things to Ellie and leaving her for dead…

She flew past Jon and was suddenly pushing Roy hard in his chest, over and over, and she couldn’t control her anger.  “Where is she?  What did you do to her?  Where is Ellie!”

Roy threw his arms up in front of his face and turned away from her onslaught, stumbling back into a wall.  “Get off!  Don’t bail me up, ya crazy bag!  I don’t know what you’re yammering about!”

It was Jon’s hands that caught her wrists.  He pulled her back, wrapping her arms across her chest from behind, struggling to hold her still while she continued to hurl questions at Roy.  “What did you do to her!  I saw you!  I saw you here last night!”

Roy looked up through the shield of his arms, his eyes wide.  “Yer mad!  What’s got you so berko?”

From the corner of her eye Darcy saw Dell pick up the phone and dial a number.  She heard her say the name Kevin, and “come quickly.  She’s about ready to spit the dummy, I swear.”

Whatever that meant.

“Darcy,” Jon urged, “this isn’t helping.  Come on, now.  Let the Lakeshore Police handle this.”

His words finally sank through the haze of anger that had covered her better judgment.  She slumped against him, taking a deep breath.  If Roy had hurt Ellie, all because she and Jon hadn’t been fast enough to solve this mystery, she might never forgive herself.

In the distance, a tinny siren wailed, getting closer.

***

The inside of the Lakeshore Police Station was just as small as it looked from the outside.

This time Kevin Powers had escorted them inside, through a door that locked with a key instead of the electric lock that the Misty Hollow Police Department used for internal security.  Kevin had glared daggers at her the whole time, and Darcy steamed over being treated like a suspect or a crazy woman, but she couldn’t deny that she had given him every reason to think of her that way.

She felt bad for losing her temper.  At the same time, it had felt so good to pound her fists against Roy’s chest.  He was a killer.  She wasn’t going to apologize for what she’d done.

“Sit here,” Kevin told them, pointing to a green leather couch with a few tears covered in gray duct tape.  “The Senior Sergeant wants a word with ya.”

So they had sat, and watched as Kevin brought a smiling Roy into a nearby room and closed the door.  It occurred to her that she didn’t even know Roy’s last name.  It seemed like something she should know.  John Wayne Gacy.  Jeffrey Dahmer.  People knew serial killers by their full names.

It just seemed like something she should know.

“Are you feeling better?” Jon asked her.

“Yes.  No,” she said instead.  “I mean, yes, but I kind of wish I hadn’t done that.  I was just so worried about Ellie!  Where do you think she is?”

Do you think she’s still alive, was what she wanted to ask.  She didn’t.  It felt like if she did, then she’d be admitting Ellie was dead.  This way she might still be alive.  But where?

“I don’t know,” Jon admitted.  “We’ll find her.  I know Roy was our strongest suspect, Darcy, but you can’t let these things get to you.  Not like this.  You have to keep your calm when you’re dealing with the bad guys.”

Sticking her legs out straight in front of her, she tried to keep from pouting.  “Easy for you to say.  You’re trained in this sort of thing.  I can’t help the way I feel.  All the bad things we’ve seen together.  It bothers me, sometimes.  That’s all.”

He took her hand and held it softly between hers.  “I love you because of who you are, Darcy.  You never pretend to be anyone else.  No matter what happens between us, or back home, or here in Australia, you will always be Darcy Sweet.”

The simple truth in his words warmed her.  So did the gentle kiss he placed on her cheek.  “And I,” he said, “will always love Darcy Sweet.”

They were in the middle of a deeper kiss when Kevin cleared his throat, standing over them.

Darcy’s face heated.  Jon sat up, all business in a second’s time.  “Are you going to charge Darcy with anything?”

“What’s that?  Oh.  No.  Roy’s in no position to be pressing charges on anyone.  Don’t worry ‘bout that.  Thinks you’re a dill, he does, but that’s not something we can arrest you for.”

“What’s a dill?” she asked.

“Sorry.  A dill’s a crazy bloke.”  He scrunched up his face, translating for her in his head.  “Uh, you’re bonkers, maybe, but not under arrest.”

To hear him say that lifted a weight off of her shoulders.  It didn’t solve the bigger problem, though.  “Kevin, Roy says he drove Ellie to Hobart this morning.  I think he’s lying.  She suspected him of being involved in her sister’s death.  Why would she go anywhere with him?  I think he’s lying and if you press him—”

“He’s not lying, Miss Sweet.  Ellie hired him to drive her to Hobart.  This morning.”

She blinked at him, her argument running out of steam.  “What?  How do you know?”

From a plastic holder on his utility belt he took off a cell phone, an IPhone or something similar with a flat glass screen.  Swiping through a few menus, he settled the display on a string of text messages and then showed it to her.

There were several texts there with the name Ellie B on them.  Ellie Burlick, texting with Kevin Powers.  From a few of them, Darcy could see her guess had been right.  There was something going on between her and Kevin.  A budding romance, probably, all because Lindsay had died and Ellie had come to Lakeshore to find out why.

The text message he wanted Darcy to see was the one at the bottom of the screen.  The time stamp on it said it had just been sent fifteen minutes ago. 
Arrived at Hobart safe and sound.  Didn’t mean to upset Darcy.  Wanted to get Roy alone and ask my questions.  Only way was to hire his cab.  No answers.

That was followed by a frowny face.

Tell Darcy I’m sorry I worried her.  Give u a ring when I get home.

Yes.  Definitely something starting there.  Darcy read the text again.  “So she did go with him?  On purpose?”

“Yes, and it all came good.”  Kevin took his phone back, glancing at the texts briefly with a smile there and gone again.  “Fine lady, that Ellie is.  So.  Now ya know.  Ellie’s fine.”

“What about everything she saw Roy doing?” Darcy asked him.  “She told you.  Didn’t she?”

He nodded, looking back and forth from Jon to her.  “She did.  Last night when we…said goodbye.  She hadn’t told me yet ‘cause she didn’t want me getting in trouble with the boss.  Thing was, we already knew what Roy was doing.”

Jon stood up quickly.  “What?  You mean to tell us you already knew Roy was a killer?  When we were in here yesterday, Constable Powers, you told us there was nothing to any of that—”

“Relax, Chief,” Kevin interrupted.  “I told you truth yesterday.  The people that got poisoned, that was all accidental.  That’s not what Roy’s been doing in our fair town of Lakeshore.”

“Then what?  What did you bring Darcy and me down here for?”

Kevin shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable in the face of Jon’s anger.  Darcy wondered if maybe it would help to start beating her fists on his chest like she’d done with Roy.

Probably not.

“Look, Chief Tinker,” Kevin finally said.  “You understand how it goes.  We’ve got an ongoing investigation.  Can’t release information on it.”

“You aren’t holding me and Darcy on any charges,” Jon pointed out.  “If we aren’t here for that, then we’re here because of whatever you’ve got on Roy.  It must be important and it obviously involves us a little bit and I demand that you tell us what it is, right now.”

The door from the entryway opened again.  The three of them looked over to see a tall, muscular, and very tan man come in.  He wore mirrored sunglasses with his dark blue uniform.  Gold clusters sat on his shoulder lapels.  His badge shone.  His white hair was cut very close to his scalp.  A handlebar mustache framed his lips in white.