Cold Case Witness

by Sarah Varland

  “I was never told any of this.” The chief shook his head. “Generally on cases like this, one officer has the lead and the chief receives updates. Your story must have seemed insignificant to whoever was briefing me at the time.”

  “It doesn’t seem insignificant now, though. Essentially Gemma knew this murder took place a decade ago. And that one of the men from the crime ring was still walking free.”

  The chief’s frown deepened. “And you knew this?”

  “Not until she told me last week.” Matt shook his head.

  “This is the first I’m hearing of any of it. Go to Savannah today, St. Simons, too, if you have time. Make a whole reunion kind of trip out of it and see if you turn up any leads. We need something on this, O’Dell. Fast.”

  As though he didn’t know it. “I’m working on it, sir.”

  The chief glanced at Gemma. Opened his mouth. Closed it and shook his head.

  Matt knew all the things the chief wanted to stay, statistics about how time was against them, how they could only avoid Gemma falling victim to one of these attacks for so long. He knew, and he was helpless to do anything about it. He couldn’t solve the case until he had the pieces necessary to do so and right now he didn’t.

  Matt needed them. Yesterday. “I know, sir,” he said to the chief as Gemma looked back and forth between the two of them, the look on her face perplexed and curious.

  “All right. Go see what you can get. I’d like a report tomorrow. I want to stay on top of the case this time—not to micromanage you, O’Dell. You’ve done a good job so far. A real good job. But...”

  “I get that, too.” The chief couldn’t afford to let anything go without his notice this time. Because last time it had cost them ten years of a killer roaming free, close to their safe little town or even in it.

  If anyone else died, Matt realized then, the chief and Matt were both going to blame themselves.

  No one could die. No one else. This ended now.

  “Ready, Gemma?” Matt stood. It would take less than an hour to get where they needed to go, and it was going to take all the self-restraint in him not to burn up the road at a faster speed than was safe.

  “I’m ready.”

  They left the office together, said nothing on the walk to the car and climbed in.

  As soon as the doors had shut, Gemma turned to him. “The chief is afraid he’s going to get me, isn’t he?”

  Matt clenched and unclenched his jaw. He wasn’t ready to have this conversation. Wouldn’t ever be ready. “We don’t need to talk about this now.”

  “But we do. If we don’t find something...” She brushed a tear from her cheek. Sighed heavily as if she was irritated that it would dare fall, ruin the mask of indifference she usually liked to keep on her face to cover the range of emotions hidden there. “The idea of losing my life, of these twenty-eight years being all I get, that’s hard enough. If I die before we finish this case? Then this Gemma is all people will ever know. They’ll never separate me from this case. And I won’t be around to deal with that, but my family will. My parents, my sister, will know that not only did I always remain the odd one out, the one who was ‘adopted,’ not the real Phillips, but I also had to live my adult years completely defined by someone else’s crime. I never became the person they wanted me to be—someone they could be proud of.”

  Matt had been about to put the car in Drive, get out of the parking lot and out of town. But this needed to be dealt with first.

  He faced her. Full on. She still looked down at her lap. Embarrassed about the words she’d just said? “Look at me, Gemma.”

  She wouldn’t. Didn’t.

  “Please.”

  Still no response. Matt reached over, slowly placed his hand underneath her chin, moved it ever so slightly up and toward him. “Is that what this is about? Why you feel like you have to try so hard to prove that you are more than this case? To make your family proud?”

  He hadn’t been adopted. Didn’t know what that was like, although some days he wondered if it would have been better if he had been. But he knew when one more tear slipped down her cheek, followed by a nod, that he’d finally understood.

  They both just wanted to be known for who they had been. They wanted the opportunity to be able to be proud of who they were.

  And maybe that was why he’d always felt connected to her.

  “Maybe that is it. Even if it is, is that so bad?”

  Matt didn’t know.

  The drive to St. Simons went by quickly. The two of them spent the next hour chasing down people on the island that Gemma had known the summer she worked there, pretending to be visiting for the fun of it. None of their voices sounded to Gemma like the man who was after her. They did the same thing in Savannah.

  Still nothing.

  * * *

  “I know you were hoping to find something.” Matt’s voice had just the right amount of empathy. Somehow it helped ease Gemma’s disappointment, at least a little.

  Gemma exhaled. “Somehow I thought it would break tonight. Silly, right? Why today?”

  “Hey, but why not? It could have. And soon, it will.”

  She wished she could be that sure.

  “Let’s head back to Treasure Point,” she said at the same time that he said, “We might as well find somewhere here to have a late dinner.”

  Gemma looked over at him. “You need to rest. You can’t work this case every hour of the day or you’ll burn out before it’s over.”

  His expression admitted that she was right, even if his words didn’t. And somehow she’d thought that would be the end of it, that they’d climb into the car and head back to their little town, get some sleep and try harder tomorrow.

  “I do need rest,” Matt said slowly. “Both of us do. So I think dinner in Savannah is a great idea. We’ll take an hour or two to eat and try to give our minds a rest, then go home, sleep and get at the case tomorrow.”

  “But...” She didn’t know why she was protesting. They both had to eat, she was hungry and everything he said made sense.

  Except...an hour or two in Savannah with him, without the case as a buffer? Walking down River Street at night with the city lights reflecting off the water, mystery and romance dancing in the air in every dangling strand of Spanish moss? How was she supposed to handle something like that?

  Gemma was about to protest again when Matt took her hand. Funny, it felt like friendship when he held it tight like that. Even though so much of what passed between them felt like more, felt deeper than anything she’d shared with anyone, holding his hand didn’t give her butterflies, per se. It just felt...

  Right.

  They walked away from the parking lot, across a square and underneath the towering oak trees whose branches arched over the sidewalks, until they reached a stone staircase that would take them down to River Street and dinner.

  “What’s your favorite shop down here?” he asked when they’d reached the bottom.

  No hesitation on her part. “The candy store.”

  “River Street Sweets?”

  Gemma nodded. “That’s the one. You go in and just smell. I’m pretty sure the mere act of sniffing in there can make a person gain five or ten pounds, but it’s worth it.”

  “Let’s go there first, then.”

  “Matt. Dinner?” She gave him a scolding look, but inside she was smiling.

  “We’ll get there eventually. Don’t rush, just enjoy it.”

  Was it just dinner he was talking about? Or the way their friendship seemed slowly to be turning into something more, something deeper?

  They made their way down the sidewalk, passing one man who was playing the saxophone and another who was selling roses made out of palm fronds. “I always thought those were so cool,” Gemma commented once they’d passed the man with the flowers. The words were halfway out of her mouth before it occurred to her that they sounded like a hint, and she corrected herself as soon as she caught it. “No, I didn’t—”

/>   But Matt was already paying the man and reaching for a rose. “I wanted to.”

  He smiled as he handed it to her, and she took it from him. “Thank you.”

  They came to the candy store then, stepped up the stone step that led them inside the brightly lit shop, and Gemma stopped just inside the door as she always did, took a deep breath. “Smells like my childhood.”

  “You came here often?”

  Gemma nodded. “My parents would bring us here, oh, every few months. They love the city and they wanted us to experience it. My grandparents live here, and a lot of my extended family, too.”

  “Nice. So where should we eat? Your choice.”

  “Let’s go to The Pirates’ House.” You couldn’t go wrong with the classic River Street restaurant.

  They picked out a few pieces of candy, paid for them and walked toward the restaurant. Dinner was perfect as far as Gemma was concerned. They talked, laughed, and Gemma wondered how she’d gone so many years without Matt in her life. He seemed like such a natural part of it now.

  When dinner was over they started walking again, deciding without talking about it to head down as close to the water as they could get. The night grew darker, the city sounds were joined by a cadence of crickets at the water’s edge, and the two of them just stood there. Listening.

  Time kept going. Minutes? Hours? Gemma didn’t know. All she knew was that they were there, together without saying a word, without anything touching except their hands, and everything felt like it should.

  “What time is it? We should head back before it’s too late.” After all that had happened, Claire would be sure to rally the cavalry if Gemma was home a second after midnight—the curfew they’d agreed on.

  “It’s ten.”

  Not nearly as late as she would have guessed. Funny how long you could stand in silence with someone and find it to be one of the best parts of your day, when it was the right person.

  “So...back to town?”

  “If you want to.”

  Gemma wasn’t sure, didn’t know what she wanted. Standing there with Matt...yes, she wanted that. But what about her family? All she wanted was for them to be proud, for them to be happy they’d picked her to add to their family. She wanted them to approve of the choices she’d made—including who she chose to spend her life with.

  Well, that was not all she wanted. She wanted a family of her own one day, little kids to raise with a husband she loved.

  “We can stay a little while longer.” She said the words with her heart pounding, every emotion within her questioning the decisions she was making right now.

  “Then, let’s walk some more.” He took her hand and they wandered River Street until they’d seen everything. “Want to see one of my favorite spots in the city?” he asked her in a voice that sent chills to her toes with its softness. Gemma nodded.

  Matt led her back up the stone steps to downtown and they walked for several blocks. “This is it,” he said when they were standing in the middle of a square. He looked down at her, eyes searching hers as if he was looking for some sort of reaction. Gemma looked around. At first glance nothing made this square—Oglethorpe Square—any different from many of the others. But when she looked closer, she saw many things she liked...the shell of an old theater over on one side, a cute coffee shop on another, and the whole thing overhung by thick branches of live oak trees that tangled overtop of them, draped by Spanish moss that reflected the orange glow of the streetlights on its edges.

  She looked back at him.

  And knew that square, in a way, was like Matt. An everyday guy, maybe not as obviously romantic as some...but special, if you took the time to notice.

  She looked up to tell him she loved it, that she saw the square like he did, but when she moved her face toward him, he moved his down, put his hands on either side of her face and pressed his lips to hers.

  And what a kiss.

  Seconds passed slowly. Gemma forgot about the case, forgot about her mixed feelings about returning to Treasure Point, forgot about everything except the feeling of their lips together, the slight roughness of his five-o’clock shadow brushing her cheek.

  Matt pulled away first. “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “Gemma...” Matt ran a hand through his hair, walked a few feet away, then back. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Me, neither.”

  More silence. More pacing.

  “We don’t have to decide anything yet,” Gemma said, feeling as if she needed the reminder as much as he did. “We can just...be whatever we are. Who we are.”

  He didn’t kiss her this time. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in for a hug that made her feel safe.

  Loved?

  And then they drove back to Treasure Point in the darkness, Gemma alternating between nodding off in the passenger seat and wondering how this relationship was going to work. She wanted to believe they’d both be happy, but with the nightmare dinner with her parents still in the forefront of her mind, she couldn’t help but wonder if the two of them being together was doomed from the start. And which of them would be hurt more if it all imploded.

  FOURTEEN

  Gemma leaned back in her chair the next morning at work and smiled—not just because of her date with Matt the night before, but because of the work she’d gotten done so far today. Finally, she was making some progress. Her initial list of ideas for the museum was a good one, but she’d been able to expand it even further. They actually had a chance to make this work; Gemma could feel it.

  Jim Howard sat across from her in the portable office building, reading over her list of ideas to get the townspeople themselves invested in the museum. She bit her lip—a tick she hated on other people and rarely resorted to—as she waited. It was important to her that this worked, not just because she wanted the town and her parents to be proud of the job she’d done, but because she cared. About the museum, about this little town, about all of them being able to move on from the danger hanging over them and be brought back together helping the town they all loved.

  Jim looked up at her. Smiled for the first time she could remember. “It looks perfect, Gemma. These are workable ideas and I think...I think maybe this place has a chance after all.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you think so.”

  “Good work. You should be very proud. We certainly are. The historical society has decided—unanimously—to drop the trial period. The job is yours, Gemma.”

  “Unanimously?”

  Jim chuckled. “Even Cindy Anne liked your new plans. Though she probably won’t admit it.” He nodded his approval, picked up the papers she’d given him and walked out.

  Half an hour later Gemma decided to duck out a little early. Maybe she’d call Matt, tell him about what the head of the historical society had said, see if he wanted to celebrate with her. She felt a little bit of blush rise to her cheeks at the thought of Matt. Calling him? Dating him?

  Who would have thought?

  Yet it was perfect, just like her ideas for the museum had turned out to be. Surprisingly simple, the two of them being reunited and pursuing what had started out as a hint of high school attraction. Simple but beautiful.

  Gemma was most of the way to her car when she spotted something...odd. Something was on the windshield, and while her first thought was to wonder whether Matt had left something for her, her second thought was more defensive.

  She moved closer cautiously, unable to decide if she should leave whatever it was alone entirely and wait for Matt or another officer to check it out, or if she should give in to curiosity and see for herself.

  Gemma moved closer. Within five feet of the car she finally identified the dark shape as black roses. She squinted. Not just black roses. Black palm roses, a painted version of the ones sold in Savannah. Beside them was a note, typed in nondescript large type.

  HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD LAST TRIP TO RIVER STREET. DID YOU SEE ME THERE, WATCHING YOU?

&
nbsp; Gemma wanted to throw up. The idea that he’d been so close last night...he must have been waiting for an opportunity to snatch her, but something had told her not to leave Matt’s side, so she hadn’t, not for the whole time they’d been out of Treasure Point.

  That instinct had saved her life. At least for now.

  She dialed Matt’s number, backed away from the car.

  It didn’t take long for Matt to make it to the scene—he’d been on the other side of the Hamilton Estate, investigating a tip one of the construction workers had given him. Gemma frowned. Had it been a legitimate tip? Or were the construction workers—who she’d pretty much overlooked on the suspect list—more of a threat than she had thought?

  Shiloh was with Matt, dressed in her crime scene uniform. She slid gloves into place, then approached the flowers.

  “You found them just like this? You didn’t touch them, right?” Shiloh directed the question to Gemma.

  Gemma shook her head. “No. I didn’t touch any of it.”

  “Good.” Shiloh picked the arrangement up carefully, slowly examining all sides of it as she lifted it off the hood of the car.

  Then she dropped it back down. “There’s something in that.”

  “You want me to get gloves and pick it up?”

  Shiloh glared at him. “If I thought someone should pick it up, I would do it myself.”

  Gemma almost snickered. This woman was something else.

  They all waited, crowding closer around—and watched as a scorpion crawled from somewhere in the middle of the tight bunch of palm flowers. Gemma was used to scorpions found in Georgia, a darker brown variety that wasn’t terribly poisonous. This one was light tan, almost translucent, and the sight of it sent shivers up her spine.

  “We have to catch him.” Matt looked around, the options for catching a scorpion limited at a construction site with only a few cars and a portable office building to go to for materials.