This scene takes place in A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery – Book 1 – Death Comes to Town.
Jon watched Darcy Sweet for a few very long moments, sitting there in the hard plastic chair inside the police station. She’d just found out her ex-husband had died. She had every right to be a wreck.
The news had ruined a very close moment between them in her bookshop. There had been a real connection between them. Not just physical, either, although Darcy was more than pretty with that long dark brown hair and her slim body, and her liquid green eyes. Truthfully he really wasn’t sure what had been about to happen, or what he felt for Darcy. He’d only just met her.
And he still wasn’t convinced she wasn’t tangled up somehow in the death of her neighbor. Now, with her ex-husband being dead too? No good cop could ignore all that.
Still, he couldn’t just let her sit there, all alone.
He went over to her and sat down in the chair next to her. She spoke while he was still trying to decide what to say.
“I have to find the killer, Jon. You have the time of death wrong on Anna’s murder. All of your suspect’s alibies are incorrect. You need to redo the investigation.”
God save him from civilians who thought they could be cops, he sighed. The time of death was wrong? “How do you know that?”
“I can’t answer that,” she told him.
Of course she couldn’t.
She must have seen the expression on his face. “You’re just going to have to trust me. You said I could trust you. Now I need you to trust me.”
Jon really wished it was that easy. He lived in a world of facts and information. He knew the facts. They painted a pretty clear picture in this case. That wouldn’t change just because Darcy or anyone else wanted it to.
Sighing, Darcy set aside her cup of coffee aside and held her hands out to him. “Let me do this,” she said.
He had no idea what she meant. Do what? He stared at her hands, forehead creased in confusion. Finally he gave her his hands, and she held them loosely, closing her eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asked, although she didn’t seem to hear. He felt the same electric tingling he had felt when they first met spreading over his hands, from her to him.
Memories stirred in his mind, indistinct and quicksilver fast.
Darcy opened her eyes and said to him, “You lost your mother when you were young.”
Jon’s eyes widened with shock and then narrowed. What she said was true. His biological mom had died when he was only a few years old. His dad had remarried and although he came to call his stepmother “mom,” he often wondered what it would have been like to be raised by the woman who actually gave birth to him. Still… “You could have heard that anywhere,” he said to her. The way the gossip mill ran in this town, that part of his life could be common knowledge in Misty Hollow for all he knew. “I don’t really go in for this Ouija board stuff, Darcy. Let it go.”
Instead of dropping his hands, though, she closed her eyes again and pressed her lips together, and like a fool he let her do it. Maybe part of him really wanted to believe she could do what she said. Or maybe it was his growing attraction for her that was getting in the way. He didn’t know. Sitting there with his hands in hers, he just let the moment play out.
When she opened her eyes again, she said, “Your dad and you used to collect frogs. Every summer. You’d make little terrariums for them then let them go in the Fall. Your dad said it was so they wouldn’t die. He was the one who taught you that life is precious. That it needed to be protected.”
He felt like she’d hit him squarely between the eyes with something heavy. She couldn’t… There was no way for her to know that. No way at all. His mind spun and he held tighter to her hands, feeling like he might fall right off the edge of the Earth if he let go.
That was a private memory. A moment of happiness in an otherwise unhappy childhood. He hadn’t ever told anyone about that except his sister.
Darcy really was psychic. Now there was a fact that would take some getting used to. She was the real thing.
No way he could doubt her now.
In a way that he didn’t understand, seeing this part of her made his heart reach out for her. What must it be like, he wondered, to be her?
She was staring at him, waiting for him to say something. “How did you know that?” he blurted out, feeling stupid that something so cliché was the best he could come up with.
Darcy shrugged. “I just know some things. It’s something I’ve always been able to do. So, please, when I tell you that I know the time of death is off, believe me.”
Letting go of her hands, he stood up. This was a total leap of faith that he was taking here. Was Darcy worth risking his career and his reputation? Was she?
He had the feeling that the answer was simply, yes. She was. “Okay,” he said, after a deep breath. “I’ll trust you.”
Death Comes to Town is the first book in the Darcy Sweet Mysteries and is free on Amazon, iTunes, B&N and Kobo and several smaller retailers.
