The Greatest Gift (A Darcy Sweet Mystery) Read Free Page B

cleansing, but with the right Latin phrases and some salt thrown around, people tended to believe their houses were exorcised from spirits that had never been there in the first place.  The same sort of thing could work here.
    The teakettle finally began to whistle and Belinda popped up to go to the stove.  She poured the water out slowly into two yellow mugs with teabags hanging over their sides.  While she was doing that, Darcy looked around the kitchen with its little corner dining area.  There were photographs all along the walls, mostly black and white with a few color ones interspersed.  Belinda was in many of them.  A smiling, happy, younger version of herself.
    In some, she was standing next to a very handsome man with hair coiffed to the side like Darcy had seen movies stars do in old movies.  They looked happy together, smiling for the camera or waving.  In two they were sharing a kiss, captured for eternity.
    "Is that your husband?" Darcy asked as Belinda came back with their tea.
    The woman looked up at the wall where Darcy pointed, and a wistful smile came over her face.  "Oh, yes.  That's my Dominic.  Such a handsome man, don't you think?"
    "Yes," Darcy agreed.  "He certainly was.  Millie always spoke very highly of the two of you.  I'm sorry he's not here to help you with this.  Now, let's talk about this ghost of yours."
    ***
    Some people were never able to let go of their loved ones.  Darcy had seen that time and time again.  For some it became an obsession, to a point where they imagined their friends and family were still around, guiding them and protecting them.  For those people, what they took as ghostly guidance was nothing more than chance or luck and a healthy imagination.
    Of course there were those cases where it wasn’t their imagination and there really was a ghost of a loved one guiding and protecting them. Or in some cases just hanging around and causing mischief.
    Darcy could hope that Dominic really was watching over Belinda .  But, more likely, Dominic's ghost had never been here at all.
    Darcy asked Belinda lots of questions, some that were important, and some that she made up on the spot.  She wanted it to at least look like she believed Belinda.  For now.  After, they took a tour around the house, Belinda showing her through the downstairs pantry and the storage room and the immaculate living room with its white high-backed sofa set perfectly squared to the two matching easy chairs on either side.  The small television in the living room was dark and silent standing on a low cabinet where more pictures sat neatly framed in a row.  Other pictures hung silently on their frames around the walls.  Memories were obviously very important to Belinda.
    Maybe too important to let go of.
    It took Belinda some time to get up the staircase to the second floor.  Her joints were swollen, she explained with a laugh.  Must mean rain was coming.  Up here were three bedrooms and a full bathroom, all of them just as neat and tidy as the living room and kitchen and other rooms downstairs had been.
    "I sweep and clean up the house every night before I go to bed," Belinda explained.  "I have to.  Every day, Dominic leaves such a mess for me."
    "Was your husband a messy man in life?" Darcy asked.
    "Oh, my, no," Belinda said with a little laugh.  She closed the door on the last room she had shown Darcy, a spare bedroom with a bare mattress on the bed and threadbare curtains on the window.  "He was more of a neat freak than I ever was.  No.  It's just his ghost that's making a mess of things."
    Darcy didn't say what she was thinking.  None of this was adding up.  Belinda had already told her how Dominic had died peacefully in his sleep.  There were no unresolved issues that Belinda could think of.  Her ghost—Dominic—hadn't left her any messages and didn't really seem to be trying to get in touch with her.  As hauntings went, this one seemed to have no reason and no