“I think you’re interested in Dr. St. Clair.”
“I can’t help what you think, Garcia. But you’re wrong.” The lie tasted bitter and he tried to wash it down with a big swallow of beer. Since their meeting at the morgue he’d been very interested in Dr. Emma St. Clair. She consumed his thoughts, night and day. Meeting her had forced his heart back to life and he feared the pain that might come to life with it. He’d lost his parents, his sister and two friends within a span of three years. He didn’t think he could handle caring about someone else now. And Emma made him want to care.
Charlie watched Jason. “You’ve buried yourself in grief.”
Jason looked down at his beer, focusing on his distorted reflection in the side of the bottle. Taking a deep breath, he confessed, “I miss Rose, Charlie. I miss her so much it hurts.”
“You and she were close. But she’s gone, Jason and you can’t hide from life in the garden she planted.”
“I’m not hiding and she didn’t plant it. Mom planted it.” Jason stared at the blossom-heavy bushes rustling in the sea breeze. “Rose just took over from her.”
“And you took over from Rose.”
“After I killed her.” Jason took a long pull on his beer.
Charlie pushed out a patient breath. “You argued with her, Jason. You didn’t kill her.”
“She didn’t hear that car over the tears she was crying because of the things I said to her.”
“Things she needed to hear.”
“Maybe. But I could have gone easier on her.” He refused to forgive himself. “She was just doing what I did, going through men like I went through women, being stupid because she saw me being stupid. I set the example and she followed it.”
Charlie didn’t respond. He’d heard it before and was probably as sick of hearing it as Jason was of saying it. But it was the truth.
Charlie leaned down and placed his half-full beer bottle on the deck. “It was a freak accident. When will you accept that?”
Jason ran his thumb over the reflection in his bottle. “I doubt I ever will.”
“So you punish yourself. You bury yourself in work.” Charlie sat back with his feet propped up on the rail beside Jason’s. “I’ve heard that Emma St. Clair’s ex-husband was a philandering son of a bitch. I imagine she would be gun-shy about a man with your reputation, anyway.”
Jason frowned and his image in the bottle distorted further. “I don’t want her to be interested.”
“I wonder why I don’t believe you.”
Lifting his gaze, Jason stared out to sea and wondered why he didn’t believe it himself. Maybe, just maybe, he had punished himself enough. Or maybe caring about Emma was just a new, tougher form of punishment.
* * * * *
Emma stared out her office window but didn’t appreciate the spectacular gold and pink of the sky as the sun set over the rocking waves in the bay. Instead, her thoughts turned to the image of a dead man and the possibility that she was losing her mind. After all, Great-Aunt Victoria was spending the last years of her life in a nursing home, listening to voices that no one else could hear and seeing people long dead.
Emma had certainly seen something today. Something unbelievable. Something impossible. And yet it was something she wanted to believe because of the only other alternative.
Desperate to prove to herself that she hadn’t inherited some latent insanity gene, she’d hunted for any other explanation. A check of the Clear Harbor phone book had revealed seven listings for Robert Harris. Nearby Houston had more than twenty-five listings for that name. But did that prove anything? Without calling every one of those numbers and describing the deceased to whoever answered the phone, she couldn’t connect the dead man to a real person.
Emma nibbled at her lower lip. Had she really seen ghosts? In spite of the lack of physical or scientific evidence, could ghosts exist and had her accident somehow given her the ability to communicate with them? What had happened to Great-Aunt Victoria that had prompted her “communications”?
Pulling her cell phone out of her pocket, Emma pressed the speed dial number for her parents. After only one ring, her dad’s familiar voice boomed out, “Nick St. Clair.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Punkin! Hope, get on the extension! It’s Emma!”
Emma heard the clatter as her mother picked up another phone and said, “Hi, honey! What’s going on?”
“Nothing much.” Emma closed her eyes in guilt. “I just thought I’d check in.”
“We’ve missed you,” her father said. “I was just telling Hope that it’s too damn quiet around here.”
“Nick, don’t swear. We got so used to having you around,” her mother added, her cool voice full of love. “This cabin seems lonelier than ever now.”
Emma swallowed a lump of tears. “Thanks for letting me stay there after the accident.”
“What are parents for if not to take care of their child when she’s hurt?” her mother said. “Right, Nick?”
“That’s right. We had our little girl back for a while.”
Emotion lurked at the back of her father’s voice too, reminding Emma that he had always been a big softy. She wanted to tell them both everything that had happened to her. But they would worry so she hesitated to mention her fear that she was either losing her mind or communicating with the spirits of the dead.
“How are things?” She forced brightness into her voice. “Have you heard from anyone else in the family lately?”
“I talked to Aunt Gracie yesterday,” her mother replied. “She sends her love to you and promised to mail you a box of her famous chocolate chip cookies.”
“So expect a box of crumbs in a few days,” her father added with a chuckle. “Gracie’s cookies don’t travel well.”
“I’ll look for it,” Emma said. “How about Cousin Mitch? Wasn’t he planning a business trip to Texas soon?”
“I think he did that while you were up here, Punkin. But I haven’t talked to Mitch in several weeks,” her father admitted. “I should call him and find out how his mother is doing.”
“Oh, yeah.” Her heart thumped as her father gave her the opening she’d hoped for. “Aunt Victoria hasn’t been doing well, has she?”
“She’s getting on toward ninety so that’s no surprise. But she has her imaginary friends to keep her company.”
Emma took a deep breath and tried to keep her tone casual. “She’s been talking to invisible people for years, hasn’t she?”
“For as long as I can remember,” her mother said.
“Since I was a kid. For such a sharp woman, my aunt can be as nutty as a—oh, shoot,” her father interrupted himself. “There’s the other line. Can we call you back, Punkin? I’m expecting a call from one of my search-and-rescue buddies. We’re planning a training session for next weekend.”
“Sure, Dad.” Disappointed, Emma closed her eyes. “I’ll talk to you both later.”
“Love you,” they both said and then rang off.
Emma turned off her cell phone. She pressed her fingertips against her temple. She hadn’t learned anything reassuring. Everyone believed that Great-Aunt Victoria was crazy. Mental illness could be hereditary which meant that she could be crazy too.
“Headache?”
Leaping out of her chair, Emma whipped around.
Edgar Powell frowned from the doorway. “Emma?”
“Edgar.” She pressed a hand over her pounding heart. Her chest had gone tight again, making her ribs ache. “You startled me. I…guess I was lost in thought.”
“Deeply lost, I’d say. May I come in?”
“Of course.” Emma straightened her posture, taking the strain off her ribs. “You’re here late. I wasn’t expecting anyone to still be around.”
He studied her face as he lowered himself into the chair in front of her desk. “Mr. Reid was right.”
“Skitch?” Emma picked up a pencil and twiddled it through her fingers. “Right about what?”
�
��You’re edgy.”
“I’m fine.”
“The hell you are.” He flushed at his own words. “Sorry but you’re not fine, Emma. Skitch told me about this morning. He said you were clammy and shaking as if you had the flu.”
“I was lightheaded, that’s all. I haven’t been eating well lately.” She poked the pencil at the half-eaten protein bar lying on her desk. “I feel better now.”
“Dizziness, tremors, lack of appetite. I can look at you and see you’re not well. If there’s any blood in your body it must all be in your feet. There’s certainly none in your face.”
She didn’t doubt it. She’d felt the blood drain out of her as soon as she’d seen that dead fisherman standing in front of her in the autopsy suite. But she couldn’t tell Edgar about the incident. He would put her on immediate and indefinite medical leave. She didn’t want to stay at home alone, day after day, talking to people who didn’t exist. Talking to ghosts.
“I know you don’t believe this is psychological but I want you to see someone, Emma.” Sympathy tempered the determination in his face. “I don’t want you working on any patients until you’ve been cleared by a professional.”
Blood rushed back into her face, hot and fast. “Don’t do this to me, Edgar.”
“It’s done.” He rose. Lines around his mouth and eyes revealed how difficult this step was for him to take. “If you won’t take care of yourself, then I’ll see that someone else does. I need an Associate Medical Examiner who won’t faint every time she sees an autopsy patient on her table.”
Emma gripped the edge of her desk. “I never fainted.”
“Only because Skitch had enough sense to make you sit down.” He jabbed a blunt finger in her direction. “Find yourself a psychiatrist or I’ll find one for you.”
Before she could protest again, Edgar turned and walked out of the office. Emma heard a surprised warning in a familiar female voice and then Edgar muttered an apology and kept walking. Seconds later, Marta stepped through the doorway.
“Something’s going on,” she said, her dark eyes on guard, her hands rising to settle on her hips. “What’s up?”
“Oh, he’s just…” As tears pricked her own eyes, Emma dropped back into her chair. “He’s just being unreasonable.”
“Chief Medical Examiner Edgar Powell? Unreasonable? No way.” Marta took the chair Edgar had vacated and leaned both elbows on the desk. “What’s wrong, Emma?”
“Nothing is wrong. I just have a lot of reports to go through.” Picking up a file, Emma opened it and used it as a shield for her warm face. A second passed and then she heard her office door click shut. Hesitantly, she peered over the top of the folder.
Marta had risen to close the door. Wearing that patient expression that had worn down many criminals over the years, she sat back down, crossed her long legs and waited.
Shutting the folder, Emma slapped it down on her desk. “I am fine. I wish people would just take me at my word.”
Marta settled deeper into the chair. “That’s difficult to do when your face is the color of a vine-ripened tomato and your hands are shaking like a plucked guitar string.”
“Edgar said I was pale.”
“That must have been before he ticked you off. Come on. Tell me what else he said.”
“He thinks I came back to work too early.”
Marta smoothed the hem of her skirt. “Why would he think that?”
“Because I got a bit lightheaded during an autopsy.”
“What happened? Did you fall face first into someone’s open chest cavity?”
“Marta!”
“Sorry. A little grisly humor to lighten the situation.” Clasping her hands around one knee, Marta smiled encouragingly. “What happened, sweetie?”
Gazing into her friend’s sympathetic eyes, Emma nearly told her again what was happening. But the story sounded crazy enough inside her head. If Marta heard it, she would probably side with Edgar because she cared even more than he did.
“I told you.” Emma picked at a thread on her skirt. “I just got a little dizzy.”
“Were you alone?”
“No. Skitch was there. He sat me down until it passed and then we continued with the procedure.”
“Who were you working on?”
“That fisherman who was found in Trinity Bay.”
“Ah. Was it a homicide?”
Emma remembered the words uttered by what had to have been a hallucination and almost shook her head. The “hallucination’s” story had matched the evidence from the body. “I don’t know yet. It looks like he may have slipped and hit his head on the side of the boat and then fallen into the water.”
Doubt darkened Marta’s eyes. “We thought it might have been a robbery since he had no wallet on him.”
“Maybe his wallet fell overboard when he did,” Emma suggested, unable to explain what she’d heard. “Maybe it slipped out of his pants pocket and sank to the bottom of the bay.”
“Maybe.”
Not wanting to return to the topic of her emotional health, Emma said, “I heard Jaime Campanero recanted his confession.”
Marta frowned. “News travels fast.”
“Detective MacKenzie dropped by.” Emma ignored the curious lift of her friend’s eyebrows. “Does Campanero have an alibi for the time of the murder?”
“He does but the guys he claims he was with aren’t exactly upstanding citizens. Campanero insists that he’s innocent and hasn’t seen his sister in at least two years.”
“He’s lying.” Emma lowered her eyes when Marta’s gaze went sharp. Then, composing herself, she looked up again. “I mean, he must be lying, right?”
“I’m sure of it.” Uncrossing her legs, Marta leaned forward again and rested her clasped hands on top of Emma’s desk. “Let’s get back to our original subject. Edgar wants you to see someone. I agree with him, Emma.”
“Please don’t start.”
“I will start.” Marta’s worried eyes took any sting out of her words. “I know a good psychiatrist. I work with him a lot. He’s very perceptive and an excellent listener. I’ve even dumped my own troubles on him a few times.”
The thought of telling anyone about her recent incidents tied a knot in Emma’s stomach. But Edgar had been serious about her seeing a counselor. “I guess I could talk to him. Once.”
“I’ll call you with his number when I get back to my office. Now, why don’t we grab some dinner?” Marta gestured toward the protein bar on Emma’s desk. “Maybe you need some good old-fashioned carbs.”
Emma sighed. If only that was all it was.
Chapter Eight
Tuesday morning, Emma stepped into the office suite belonging to Dr. Paul Sanders. Immediately, scents of leather and magnolia enveloped her. Late morning sunlight winked off the mullioned glass doors of mahogany bookcases that lined the walls of the reception area. The glass also caught the reflection of a petite, middle-aged woman in a pale blue suit of Irish linen. The woman rose from behind a gleaming mahogany desk, welcome twinkling in her gray eyes.
“You must be Dr. St. Clair.” She approached Emma with her right hand extended. “I’m Pamela Ives, Dr. Sanders’ administrative assistant.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” Emma shook Pamela’s hand, her nerves soothed instantly by the woman’s cool fingers. She reminded Emma of Hailey, the administrative assistant at the ME’s office. The women shared a comforting and capable demeanor.
“Dr. Sanders is expecting you,” Pamela said, releasing Emma’s hand. “Come on in.”
As she followed Pamela to a door marked “Private”, Emma’s nerves kicked up again. She wondered if she would be brave enough to tell this man about her hallucinations. Deep down she knew that if she wanted help, she’d have to tell him everything. But even to a psychiatrist, she didn’t want to sound nuts.
“Dr. Sanders, this is Emma St. Clair.” Pamela stood aside at the open inner door and gestured for Emma to enter the office.
“Dr.
St. Clair, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” The man’s voice flowed smoothly through the air and his eyes gleamed with a warmth that struck Emma as trustworthy.
At least two dozen years Emma’s senior, Paul Sanders wore his middle-age well. He had straight, broad shoulders and his eyes were a pale shade of blue. He wore what she would have expected a psychiatrist to wear—dark trousers, a pale shirt with a tweed jacket and a modest tie. The man obviously knew how to dress for his role, offering a sense of familiarity and comfort to his patients.
“Marta Zamora has mentioned your name many times,” he said.
As Pamela left them alone, he drew Emma toward a pair of leather wingback chairs positioned at one end of the room. Floor-to-ceiling windows spanned the wall behind the chairs, overlooking a small garden. Ligustrums, thick with white flowers and honeybees, separated the azaleas and smaller shrubs from the parking lot beyond them but Emma could just see the hoods of cars glinting through the dark green leaves.
“I take it the two of you have been friends for a long time?” he asked, still referring to Marta.
“We grew up here together,” Emma explained. “I moved back to Clear Harbor after I left my husband.”
“She mentioned that you had recently divorced.” He gestured toward one of the chairs and then settled into the other. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you.” She wondered what else Marta had told him. “She said that you do evaluations of suspects for the courts. That’s how you know each other.”
“I provide a preliminary opinion upon occasion. If I find a suspect’s fitness to stand trial questionable, he or she may be referred to a hospital for a more studied evaluation.” Leaning back in his chair, he folded his hands together. His fingers were long and thick, comforting in their appearance of strength. “So what can I do for you, Dr. St. Clair?”
She took a moment to breathe. “I guess first I should thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“You’re more than welcome. Now, please, tell me how I can help you. And take your time.”
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