Laid to Rest (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 18) by K.J. Emrick Read Free Book Online Page A

mean his daughter’s a police officer in my department now and she’s not like him.  She might be a little more serious about things than most people, but she’s certainly not a…a…”
    “Sour old man who wouldn’t think twice about hurting people to get what he wants?”
    Jon looked at her from the corner of his eye as he took the last turn onto Baskin’s street.  “Darcy, we’ll find Smudge.  We will.  Baskin may or may not be our man.  Right now he makes a great suspect but if you don’t think you can be objective in this interview then I’ll understand.  You can stay in the car until I’m done.”
    She shook her head, turning the ring on her finger over and over.  “I want to hear what he has to say.”
    They drove silently up the short, quiet street in the northernmost tip of Misty Hollow.  There were just the two houses here, Roland Baskin’s and another that had been empty for years.  The trees were gnarled and untrimmed and the grass hadn’t been mown in a while.  Baskin didn’t even come outside to work in his yard much anymore.
    She could tell Jon had more to say but he held his tongue until he parked out in front of Mister Baskin’s house.  A little white square of a house with old, brown roofing tiles and painted trim to match.  Nothing special.  Darcy would have liked it better if it resembled Dracula’s castle or even that motel from Psycho.  Then it would be easy to tell if the man inside was as evil as she suspected he was.
    Bad guys were never considerate like that.
    Turning the engine off, Jon turned to her, hooking an elbow over the top of the steering wheel.  “Do you think you could do that thing where you hold someone’s hands and see if they’re telling the truth?  Would that work with Baskin?”
    “Jon, I’m not a fortune teller.  I can’t tell if someone’s lying or not.  Besides that technique only tells me if someone has guilt on their hands.  We’ve learned that people carry lots of guilt around with them.  For lots of different reasons.  A guy like Baskin…you don’t think he’ll have a ton of things he feels guilty about?”
    Jon snorted.  “I’m not sure that Roland Baskin knows the meaning of the word guilt.”
    “Well, yeah, you could look at it that way, too.  No guilty conscience would mean nothing for me to see.  Either way, I have to hold someone’s hands and sit with them while I concentrate in order to make that work.  You think Mister Baskin’s going to let me hold hands with him for that long?”
    “No, I don’t.  It might be nice, though.”
    “What?” she asked.
    “If you could tell when someone was lying.”  He shrugged.  “Sure would make my job easier.”
    “Come on, Jon, be serious.  I might be able to touch Baskin’s hand and get a flash of a vision, maybe, but even that’s a long shot.  It works sometimes, and not others.  I can’t control that part of my ability.  I might get a great insight into where Smudge is, or I might get every detail of what he had for breakfast.  Or I might get nothing at all.  I’ll try, but we might just have to go on what he says.”
    “Then let’s go see what our old friend Roland has to say for himself.”
    He got out of the car and she followed him.  It was after seven o’clock now and the sun was already going down below the tops of the trees.  True sunset probably wouldn’t happen for another half hour but darkness was already coming.  Darcy tried not to find too much literal meaning in that simple event.
    It was Jon who knocked on the door.  Darcy waited for the sound of the doorknob turning and the hinges squeaking as the door opened, and then she rushed in past a surprised Roland Baskin and Jon, who was muttering something about Darcy and her impulsive nature.
    “Smudge!” she called out as she went from room to room.  “Smudge!”
    “Hey, what are you—”
    Jon cut off Mister Baskin’s objections with a rapid fire string of questions that he