Hold The Dark: A Markhat story Read Free Page B

she’s losing her touch.”
    I shook my head. “Not at all,” I said. “Tell her that my priestly vows forbade me to view her in other than a pure and sisterly light.”
    She halted at a door, turned, put her hand on the plain brass knob. “Do come in, Father. Don’t mind the clutter.”
    She went, and I followed.
    Darla’s office was small—about, in fact, the size of mine. She had a battered oak desk that showed scorch marks on one side, a rolling leather-backed chair that squeaked when she moved it, a cracked crystal flower vase for holding pencils and a dented brass spittoon set to the right of the desk for a wastebasket. A magelamp hung from the ceiling on a plain steel chain, the walls were lined with bookshelves and the bookshelves were lined with ledgers. Each ledger bore a neat handwritten label—a string of nonsense numbers and a date, written out in a neat, precise hand that I knew immediately was Darla’s.
    Her desk was covered with ledger sheets and a pile of ragged-edged store receipts and one of those newfangled adding dinguses that the Army introduced a few years back—colored beads on wires in a square wood frame.
    A second chair faced Darla’s desk. Like the one in my office, it lacked wheels, and was probably intended to provide a seat without making its occupant so comfortable that they overstayed their welcome.
    Other than a new black coat on a hook on the back of her door, that was it.
    Darla smiled, moved behind her desk, sat and motioned for me to do the same. “I’ll help however I can. Ask away.”
    I sat. “You know Martha Hoobin.” I knew she did. She’d even pronounced her name correctly—Mart-ha, not Martha—out in the foyer.
    “She’s our best seamstress,” replied Darla.
    “Seamstress,” I said, with no particular emphasis. Darla laughed. The magelamp’s warm gold light flashed in her eyes.
    “Martha had a gift for sewing, and an eye for clothes. The outfit Wendy was wearing—that was one of Martha’s. An early one, in fact. She’s improved since then.”
    “How long has she been with the Velvet?”
    “Six years. We were friends,” she added. “I’ll miss her.”
    I nodded. “So you don’t think she’s coming back?”
    “Would you be here, if she were just away on holiday? Would she have left her brothers without a word if she ever meant to return?”
    “I don’t know her, but from what I’ve heard, probably not.”
    Darla shrugged, and the twinkle went out of her eyes. “She left without collecting her pay. Do you find that unusual?”
    “I do.” I meant it. The Hoobins hadn’t mentioned that. And while I have seen people walk away from money, I’ve only seen them do it when they’re terrified. Finding that terror. That’s the tricky part.
    I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “You’re her friend. So tell me. Who is she? Who is Martha Hoobin?”
    Darla leaned forward. She took the pencil from behind her ear and began to doodle on a scrap of green ledger-paper, and I doubt she even realized she was doing it.
    “Martha.” She frowned as she scribbled. “Martha, well, Martha is a Hoobin.”
    I laughed.
    “You’ve met her brothers?”
    “All ten tons of them,” I replied. “Stalwart lads, each one. You could cut the air of their rural stability with a knife.”
    Darla nodded. “That’s a big part of Martha. Work hard, never complain, be polite—”
    “Whoa,” I said, gently. “I got all that from the brothers. What I want to know from you are the things they didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell.”
    “The deep dark secrets all us girls share you mean?”
    “The very ones.”
    Darla frowned. “Damn.”
    “Oh no. Surely you don’t mean there aren’t any.”
    She shrugged. “Martha was a saint.” She noticed the pencil for the first time, and put it down on the desk, neatly aligned beside the ledger. “She didn’t drink. She didn’t carouse. She sewed, she fed birds in the Park at lunch, she loved violin music and all the girls