I thanked Julie for the coffee and headed that way. Bailey Darsey was just exiting her car.
I waved. “Mrs. Darsey.”
She looked around until her gaze pinned on me. When she saw me, her features sagged.
“Mrs. Darsey, you don’t know me, but I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what happened to your daughter.”
She lifted her chin and sniffed. “Thank you. You’re Clementine Cooke, is that right? The woman who saw my daughter get killed?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right.”
She stared me down. Bailey Darsey was not only tall, up close she proved to be a bit intimidating. Her stare seared into me, and I suddenly felt very hot. I tugged on my collar.
“It seems funny to me that you saw my daughter get killed since I heard that the two of you had an argument at the apple-picking contest.”
“I’m so sorry. I feel awful about the fight we had, and I know it looks strange—us arguing and then me seeing her death—but someone killed your daughter, Mrs. Darsey, and I want to find that person.”
She slipped her clutch under one arm. “If you want to find her killer, why don’t you use those premonition skills that you have?”
Dang this town and their stupid rumor mill! Mrs. Darsey walked away, but I wasn’t giving up that easily.
“I know you’re angry. I would be, too.”
“Angry doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings,” she said with a scoff. “No one ever gave Darsey a chance. She went the wrong way in high school, I know that. No matter what I did to reel her back in, it didn’t work. How do you think that I, as her mother, felt, hearing the awful things that people said about her? No, my daughter was no saint, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her.”
“Let me help.”
Mrs. Darsey stopped and faced me. “I have to go into the funeral home now and make arrangements for my daughter, someone that I should never have had to bury.”
I squeezed her arm. “I am sorry.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and she palmed it away. “If you really want to help, then try to remember the good in Crystal.”
What good? “Of course. But…do you know of anyone who may have wanted to hurt her? Someone? Anyone?”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “Honey, everyone in this town hated my daughter. I don’t know of anyone specific, but she had an old boyfriend, Pete Swensen. I think they may have talked since she returned to town.”
Pete Swensen? I’d never heard of him. “What about Sykes Laffoon?”
“Her uncle?”
Okay, so wow, Sykes really was her uncle. I had assumed that Sykes had been her “uncle”—you know, the kind you say with a wink and a nod. But apparently I was wrong.
“Yes, her uncle.”
“They had spent some time together. He might know something. You can ask him.” She pointed to the door of the funeral home. “Now, I have to go. Good day, young lady, and be thankful for every moment you have on this planet. You never know when it’ll be your last.”
Bailey Darsey vanished into the building. I hadn’t, at any point, thought that she might have hurt her daughter, and I still didn’t think so. She was a mother, wounded that her child had been murdered, and rightly so.
But who was Pete Swensen? Surely Malene would know. Malene knew just about everyone in town. As I pondered calling her, I thought about what Mrs. Darsey had said about being thankful for every moment. She was right—you never knew when it would be your last. You had to take advantage of each and every tick of the clock that you were given on this planet.
I had grabbed my phone to call Malene when a dark shadow slid out in front of me. Sykes Laffoon’s limousine crawled to a stop. The passenger door flung open, and Georgie’s voice came from the interior.
“Clementine Cooke, my boss wants to talk to you.”
“And if I say no?”
“You shouldn’t say no.” Georgie’s head of brown curls appeared. “Even I wouldn’t say no.”
