Fire and Ice: A Paranormal Romance

by Cindy Adkins

  “We can figure something out,” Billy assured her.

  “These are really good,” Sarah said as she bit into an egg roll.

  “All of their food is great,” said Billy. “I go over there after work and pick it up a lot of times.”

  “I sure am glad you are here,” she told him. “Once that dress shop closes downstairs, this building feels pretty empty.”

  “It’s lucky that you can hear the music from the street,” he said.

  “I know,” Sarah told him. “Sometimes, I leave the French doors open to the balcony and let the music fill this place.”

  “I want to tell you something in case I did not make it clear before,” Billy said looking at her seriously. “None of this has been your fault. It was all there and you helped me see it. If you didn’t, I could have been stuck in that space for a lifetime with no way out.”

  “I feel like I’ve brought you nothing but grief,” Sarah told him.

  “Not at all,” he reassured her. “You just opened my eyes.”

  “Well, I hope that this whole nightmare is going to get resolved soon so that we can move past it. Tomorrow we can try to see if Shaunessy owns one of the buildings,” said Sarah.

  “I’ll pick you up after you get off of work tomorrow and we can head over there,” Billy told her. “Honestly, I don’t even know what Jessie wants from me. Why would she even bother to make contact? I’m sure that she had plenty of other guys to bother.” Sarah could detect the sarcasm in Billy’s voice.

  “I don’t know. But, please stay over tonight. I don’t want to be here alone.”

  “I’ll stay,” Billy promised her. “I hope that those dreams disappear. Enough is enough.”

  “Well, at least I slept last night,” she smiled.

  “To be honest with you, I’m not exactly doing you a favor.”

  “What?” Sarah did not understand.

  “I dread the thought of going back to my place and being alone after having you there,” Billy admitted.

  “You know what? As soon as we’re done eating, I want to go up to my office and download those pictures so I can have them for class tomorrow. The kids will really love seeing them. Then, we’ll have plenty of time to spend together.”

  * * * * *

  After they finished dinner, Sarah opened the French doors so that Billy could listen to the jazz coming from the bar across the street. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she told him. Sarah grabbed the camera out of its case and headed up to the loft. She sat down at her desk and turned on her computer. She proceeded to check her email that had accumulated over the past few days.

  Sarah’s older sister, Lacey, had sent her a letter saying that all was going well with her shop, What Nots, in Texas. She was excited to hear that Lacey was coming to visit her in New Orleans in the next month. By then, school would be out, so Sarah would have lots of time to spend with her. Lacey had managed to turn the semi-vacation it into a buying trip. Sarah could imagine how fun it would be to help her scout out vintage items and hand-painted furniture locally. If there were any bargains to be found, Lacey would surely track them down. They would be perfect for her store and Lacey had already done some extensive Internet searches to find out what was available. She had a list of places to visit, including a warehouse that supplied props to the burgeoning movie industry there.

  Sarah deleted a few items of junk mail and shut down her email. She got the memory card out of the camera, and popped it into her computer. Within seconds, all of the pictures were uploaded. She stored them in a folder on her desktop and started to look at them. As they came up on her screen one by one, she noticed that they were not photos of Florida. They were Jessie’s. They had still been on the dead woman’s camera after all those years.

  “Billy, come here!” Sarah yelled downstairs. Billy couldn’t hear her. He was sitting on the loveseat listening to music. She went to the top of the stairs. “Billy, come here, please,” she called down to him again.

  Billy headed up the stairs toward her. “What’s going on?”

  “You won’t believe it,” Sarah told him as he got to the landing. “Some of Jessie’s pictures are still on her camera. Maybe there’s a picture of the building on there. I thought you told me that she had taken them off of it at Charla’s house.”

  “I thought she did,” said Billy.

  “If she didn’t delete them off of her memory card, they could still be here. Quick, let’s look!” Sarah hoped that they could find some answers at last. She sat back down at her desk and continued to look at all of the photos. Billy stood behind her and peered over her shoulder. Pictures of the bayou came up on her screen. There were several photos of the riverboat, one of which must have been the contest winner. Then, the pictures of the dolphins came onto the screen. Sarah went through each one. There were no photos of the French Quarter.

  “They’re not here.” Sarah was disappointed. “That could have solved everything.”

  “We were so close,” agreed Billy. “If only she had saved them.”

  “You were right,” said Sarah turning around and looking up at him. “Jessie did get rid of the pictures.”

  “Let’s hope that we can link Shaunessy’s name to one of those properties that we got pictures of last week,” said Billy.

  “Jessie’s photos could have solved the whole mystery,” answered Sarah. All of a sudden, she got up from her chair and headed toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Billy asked her.

  “To look inside her camera case,” Sarah replied. Then, she hurried down the stairs. Billy waited in the office. He wished that the whole matter were behind them. If only Jessie had saved the photos, then perhaps they would have had their answers. But, the pictures were at Charla’s and they had no way to access them. It felt as if they had hit a brick wall. He began to wonder if they would ever get to the bottom of things.

  Sarah returned a few minutes later holding something in her hand. “There was another memory card in the case,” she said. “Let me see what’s on here.” She sat down and uploaded the photos onto a new file on her desktop and started to look at them. Billy stood behind her to get a view of the screen. They saw pictures of the French Quarter. There were several photos of a beige building with an iron gate and a courtyard. Sarah kept going through them one by one. Then, all of a sudden, a photo of a burgundy building was on her computer screen. “This is it!” exclaimed Sarah. “This is the building in my dream. We found it, at last.”

  Billy looked at it for a moment and after noticing the address; he could barely believe his eyes. “Sarah, come on downstairs right now. Stop what you’re doing and come with me.”

  Sarah had never seen Billy be so take-charge in all the time she had known him. He walked down the stairs and she followed him. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Billy proceeded to the living room. “Have a seat. Sarah, please stay calm. Stay calm for me. I need you to,” he pleaded. She sat down and he took a seat next to her. He continued to talk. “Sarah, that building in the picture is yours.”

  “Yes, that’s what I told you. It is the building in my dream!”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Billy explained. “I mean it’s the building you live in.”

  “What?” she asked. “It can’t be. My building is gold.”

  “Sarah, it’s your building. Trust me. Didn’t you notice that it was your address?” he asked. “Even the dress shop downstairs was in the picture.”

  “I didn’t notice it. I didn’t have a chance. You told me to come down here before I could get a good look at it,” she told him.

  “Your address is four-sixty,” Billy reminded her. “It is the same as the address in the picture. It’s obvious that the building has been painted since the photo was taken. Did you ever speak to the owner of the building?”

  “Never. I got it through a rental agency. Remember I told you that before?” Sarah asked.

  “I guess you did mention that. I forgot,” Bill
y admitted. “Sarah, don’t you get it? The reason that Jessie came to you in your dreams had nothing to do with me. You said yourself that the man is in the burgundy building. Who lives upstairs?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone and I barely hear any footsteps because I’ve usually got the door open to the street. I hear the music most of the time when I’m home. It helps drown out the quiet,” she replied.

  “Sarah, if the man in your dreams is Eddie, then he lives upstairs. That’s why Jessie came to you—to have you help her father,” Billy explained.

  “Oh my God, you’re right! Are you sure it’s my building?”

  “I’m sure,” Billy told her. “Sarah, that’s why Jessie singled you out. That’s why she wanted to involve me so that we would piece it together. I’m going up there right now.”

  “Billy, you can’t,” Sarah pleaded.

  “I have to.” Billy grabbed his cell phone off the table.

  “Then, I’m coming with you,” Sarah said as she followed Billy to the door. They walked out to the hallway and took the elevator to the third floor. When they stepped out of the elevator, they saw the door to the apartment straight ahead of them. It appeared to be the only apartment on that floor and it was directly over Sarah’s.

  “This is the only unit here,” Billy told her. He knocked on the door. He knocked again, but still there was no answer. “Hello, hello, is anyone in there?” he called. Then, he repeated it even louder.

  Billy tried the door handle and it worked. He opened the door slowly. As he peered inside, he noticed someone lying on the sofa in the living room. “Hello,” he said, but there was no answer.

  Sarah stood at the entrance to the apartment while Billy walked up to the still figure. When he got closer, Billy recognized Eddie. He stopped and stared at him in disbelief. He was emaciated. Billy touched his arm and it was cold. It was clearly too late to help him. Eddie was already gone. Billy felt completely overwhelmed as he stared at the hollow shell of a man he once knew. Sarah called from the doorway and began walking toward him. “Billy, is everything okay?” Her voice jarred him back to reality.

  “Stay back! Don’t come in here,” Billy warned. He wanted to spare her the pain of seeing the dead body. Billy could not believe his eyes. He had known Eddie since he was a kid. He recalled days of sitting with Eddie on his back porch eating crawfish and hearing him tell stories that made everyone laugh. Since his disappearance, Billy had spent six years being on Eddie’s boat and almost a lifetime loving his daughter. Standing there in shock, his emotions overtook him and he did not know what to think or do. As tears welled up in his eyes, Billy took off Jessie’s St. Christopher medal from around his neck and laid it on Eddie’s chest. He wanted it to be with him. Billy was so shaken that he had to get out of there. He turned around, walked toward Sarah, and shut the apartment door. “It’s him,” Billy told her as his voice quivered.

  “It’s Eddie?”

  “Yes. He’s dead.” Billy could not even believe the words that were coming out of his own mouth. Nor could he fathom what he had just witnessed. It was a real-life nightmare for which Billy was unprepared. He was trembling so badly that he felt as if his knees would fail him.

  “Oh no,” cried Sarah. “Are you sure it’s him?”

  “I’ve known Eddie all my life. My God, he’s almost unrecognizable. It’s him all right, except his hair has silver in it now. It looks like he starved to death. Jesus Christ, how could such a thing happen?”

  “What should we do?” Sarah was shaking.

  “He’s gone. What the hell can we do? I’m calling the police.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gotcha

  -

  It was one o’clock in the morning before the police left the building. Billy and Sarah sat in her apartment reflecting on all that had just transpired. Eddie had been gravely sick for some time. It appeared to the officers that Eddie had been dead for a couple of days. There was no one there to help him and he had been left alone to die. He wrote a letter and left it on the table to explain everything before his death.

  The police were already on their way to Charla’s house to make an arrest. There was paperwork in Eddie’s apartment that proved that she had been in communication with him all that time.

  Sarah sat next to Billy on the loveseat just a floor below where the body was taken from four hours earlier. She felt numb. “That’s why Jessie came to me,” Sarah said. “She was trying to save her dad. If only we had looked at her camera sooner, we could have pieced this together.”

  “Eddie’s illness must have caused the weight loss because the detective said that there was plenty of food in his cupboards,” said Billy. “I wish we knew what was in that letter. From all the questions that the officers asked me, it was obvious that Eddie had revealed Charla’s involvement in this.”

  “Jessie must have been desperate. She knew that I was here right near him. She tried to reach out to me for nine months. That’s why she got so intense. That’s the reason she wouldn’t stop. No wonder I got the impression that Jessie didn’t want me to go to Florida. It makes sense now. She didn’t want me to leave him.” Sarah pointed up to her high ceiling. “To think that Eddie was just beyond those wooden beams that I’ve looked at so many times. I wish we could have saved him.”

  “I’m just sorry that Eddie had to be alone for all these years,” said Billy. “He had to suffer because Charla was so money hungry. She found a way to shut him up the whole time. He couldn’t come forward to let anyone know what had happened. She certainly saw to that. Then, when he got sick, she obviously wouldn’t even help him.” Billy just shook his head.

  “I’ve heard of greed, but this is beyond comprehension.” Sarah could not imagine such a contemptible person.

  “My daddy was right about Shaunessy,” Billy told her. “Can you imagine that this building is in his name? They’ll probably arrest him next.”

  “Honestly, the more I think about it, Eddie’s boat was aptly named. Gotcha sure says it all, doesn’t it? Charla is finally going to pay for this,” said Sarah.

  “I never thought of it before, but you are right. It may have taken Eddie years, but Charla is going to get her just rewards soon,” Billy added. “Now we know why you were dragged into this whole mess. Jessie knew that if she provided all those other clues to you, then the two of us could work together. It just wasn’t soon enough.”

  “It’s heartbreaking,” said Sarah.

  “Come on, we’re getting out of here,” Billy insisted. “Time to untie.”

  “What?” Sarah asked.

  “Sorry, just fisherman lingo…I meant it’s time to go,” Billy told her. “You need to call the school. There’s no way you can be at work so early. This has all been too much on you.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Sarah.

  “For beignets. The restaurant is open all night.” Billy got up and headed toward the door. “Grab your purse because when we’re done, we’re not coming back here tonight. We’re going to my place.”

  Sarah followed him. “But, why are we getting beignets?” she asked.

  “Because they’re covered in powdered sugar. You once told me that ‘sugar goes to sugar.’ I’m getting some for you. You’re the sweetest girl I’ve ever met. You’ve done nothing but look out for me. It’s time I take care of you. Things are going to change beginning right now.”

  Sarah grabbed her purse and started to leave the apartment with him, but stopped by the doorway. “What about the camera? Don’t you want to take it back home with you?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just go. We’ll get it later. Besides, since you love to swim, I want to get you a camera that takes photos under water.”

  “But, Billy, you don’t have to do that,” she told him.

  “I don’t have to. I want to. But, there’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Eddie’s boat belongs to me now and I’m hoping th
at its name will have special meaning in my own life,” he began to explain.

  “How?” Sarah asked him.

  “I hope that one day you’ll actually consider being with me and that ‘gotcha’ means you’re mine.” Billy brought Sarah toward him and held her tightly. Then, he kissed her.

  When it ended, Sarah whispered, “I think I’m already yours.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Baby Girl

  -

  Two Years Later

  “Come on, Alise, haven’t we shopped enough?” asked Harris.

  “I just need one more set of curtains for the baby’s room,” Alise answered as they walked through the boutique.

  “Well, we better hurry because Billy and Sarah are going to meet us at the restaurant in a few minutes,” he reminded her.

  “I know. This will be quick, I promise,” she told him.

  Alise paid for the pink curtains. Then, the two of them hurried to meet Billy and Sarah. They were standing outside of the quaint eatery. “How’s my favorite daughter-in-law?” Harris asked Sarah as he gave her a hug.

  “Fat,” Sarah laughed.

  “You’re not fat,” Alise assured her. You’re an expectant mother. There’s a difference.”

  “I can’t fit into my shoes, so I’m not feeling too thin right now,” Sarah admitted.

  “Are you two hungry?” asked Harris.

  “I’m always hungry, Dad,” Sarah said to him.

  “Sarah’s not kidding,” smiled Billy as they went inside.

  A cheerful young hostess seated them by the window and handed them some menus. When she walked away, Sarah said to Billy’s parents, “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you are both here in New Orleans.”

  “We wouldn’t miss this birth for anything.” Alise smiled at her.

  “The doctor said it could actually be any day now,” said Billy.

  “We’ve got all the patience in the world,” Alise assured him.

  “So are you going to tell them or should I?” Billy looked at Sarah.

  “Tell us what?” asked Harris.