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

her.” 
    It wasn’t a no.  It just wasn’t a yes.
    Jon had come a long way from being a staunch disbeliever in ghosts when they first met.  Saying he was comfortable around them would be a stretch, but he had accepted them as a part of her life and, by extension, part of his.
    “Come on,” she said to him.  “The book is in the office.  With everything that happened I forgot all about it.”
    “I don’t suppose it’s underlined or highlighted or something?  Are we going to have to look through the entire book?”
    She almost smiled at the way he echoed her own complaints.  “No.  Millie dropped it open to a specific section on purpose.”
    “Well that narrows it down, I guess.  I just wish that one day I could get a ghost to walk up to me and say, hey, that guy over there murdered me.”
    “Be careful what you wish for.”
    Inside the office her desk was exactly how she’d left it this afternoon.  The Misty Hollow census was there, lists of names and families photocopied from the original handwritten source.  The writing was blocky and thick, definitely a man’s hand.  Which made sense, because nearly everything of consequence in those days was done by men.
    Darcy was glad she hadn’t lived back then.  No way would she let a man do all the hard work for her.  Just some of it.  When she wanted him to.
    She sat down, and began looking over the long list.
    “Hey look,” Jon pointed to the pages from over her shoulder.  “There’s a couple of Sweets listed here.”
    “My family goes way back in Misty Hollow.  There’s always been Sweets here.”
    “Well, you’re actually a Tinker now,” he pointed out.
    Which was true, Darcy had to admit, at least on their marriage certificate.  In her heart, she’d always be Darcy Sweet.
    Jon opened one of the side drawers on the desk and took out a pen and a little notepad with butterflies on it.  He’d been in this office enough times to know where she kept everything.  “The names really don’t change much, do they?  Look, there’s the Nelson family name.  Chamberlain.  Underwood.  Becht.  Fitzwallis.  LaCroix.  That’s Benson’s family name.  What do we write down?  What are we looking for?”
    “I wish I knew.  I want to believe the name of Smudge’s kidnapper is right here in this book.”  She thought back to her dream.  “Millie kept saying that she’d already told me.”
    “Told you what.”
    “The name of the killer, I hope.”
    “And she showed you this book?”
    “Yes.  This particular page.”
    He nodded, starting to write names down.  “Then let’s see what we can find in here.  When you get to one marked ‘killer,’ let me know.”
    Darcy read along with him, making sure he wrote down every one, and pointing out names that she didn’t recognize.  Farrell.  Morvan.  Taylor. Those all got a little asterisk written next to them.  They’d start with the names of families still living in town, they decided, because those were the most likely suspects.  The others could wait until they’d exhausted the list of their current friends and neighbors.
    Since whoever had done this was a friend of theirs.
    The list wasn’t a long one.  The population of the town hadn’t been nearly as big back then as it was now.  There were current family names that weren’t in the book, families who had moved into town after this census, but for each name that was here she could picture friends and acquaintances.  Dianne Chamberlain.  Blake and Pete Underwood.  Sean Fitzwallis…
    Wait.
    Other parts of her dream came back to her.  Millie had said a lot of things that hadn’t seemed important.  Darcy had been concentrating on trying to get the answers she needed for her own questions and the rest of it hadn’t registered with her.
    Or maybe she’d just been too angry to pay attention.
    She remembered something important now.
    Sean Fitzwallis.  Night sergeant at the police department.  Millie had mentioned