Laid to Rest (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 18) Read Online Free Page A

again.  Darcy’s heart began to feel like a heavy rock in her chest.  “Ellen,” she asked, “what is it?  What’s wrong?”
    Jon appeared in the doorway behind Ellen, and the look on his face told her bad things were happening.  He gently took hold of Ellen and sat her down in a chair at the table.  She let him do it, and that proved something was wrong. 
    In his hand Jon had a yellow piece of paper inside a plastic bag.  A Ziploc freezer bag, one of the big ones.  “Darcy,” he said, “I don’t know how to say this.  There’s…been a kidnapping.”
    Her head was spinning now.  “A kidnapping?  Who…Ellen where’s Connor?”
    Ellen looked up at Darcy, shaking her head again, tears in her eyes.  “No, Darcy.  It’s not Connor.  He’s fine.  I sent him upstairs while me and Jon tried to figure this out.  We would’ve called you sooner but you never carry a cell phone.”
    “I can’t carry a cellphone,” she started to argue, then realized this wasn’t the time to bring up how ghosts kept getting her cell number and calling her at all hours of the day.  “Never mind that.  Who’s been kidnapped?”
    Jon pulled her into him, hugging her and holding onto her tightly.
    “For Pete’s sake, Jon,” she said to him, starting to get really worried.  “Just tell me.  Who was kidnapped?”
    She saw it in his eyes.
    She looked up into his face, and she knew.  She knew before he even handed her the note and said, “Kidnapping might not be the right word.”
    With trembling hands, Darcy took the note.  Fingerprints, she realized.  Jon was protecting the note so they could fingerprint it later.
    If you want your cat back alive you will leave the beehive journal in the library.  Put it in the historical research section next to the book on the State of Deseret.  You have until midnight.
    Darcy slumped down into a chair.  The room spun around her and the words stared back at her from the piece of paper in its protective plastic sleeve.  She couldn’t understand what she was reading.  She couldn’t breathe.  For a moment, she was certain that even her heart had stopped beating.
    “Darcy?” Jon said to her.
    She looked up and saw him kneeling beside her.  When had that happened?  The note was still in her hand, just a plain sheet of yellow paper with those few typed words on it.  Someone wanted her aunt’s journal.  This one.  The one right here on the table.  The one she had only just found.  If they didn’t get it, then she would…never see…
    “They have Smudge,” she said, weakly, passing the note back to Jon.  “Someone took my cat.”
    “I think so,” was his answer.  His hands were a gentle comfort on her shoulders.  “We’ll find him, Darcy.  We already looked all through the house.  Upstairs, downstairs in the cellar, everywhere.  He’s not here.  I think…yeah.  I think someone has him.”
    “Well that doesn’t mean anything,” Darcy decided, standing up, wiping away moist tears from the corners of her eyes.  “He always goes out when he wants to, Jon.  He’s always slipping out of this house and then slipping back in again.  He’s probably just out in the town somewhere.  Just out there, doing his own thing, until he’s ready to come home.”
    He didn’t say anything to that.  He just stood up with her, silently waiting for her to finish.
    “You know I’m right, Jon.  He’s always getting out.  That note doesn’t mean anything!”
    She wanted it to be true.  She hoped it was true.  She prayed with all her might that the ransom note with its demands and its threats was a lie.
    But she knew it wasn’t, and when Jon finally shook his head in answer to her pleading, she crumpled inside. 
    “We’ll find him,” he promised.  “We’ll get him back.”
    Darcy fell into his arms, angry and scared and sad all at the same time.
    Someone had taken Smudge, and midnight was the deadline to get him back.
    ***
    “Thanks, Grace.