Final Words

by Teri Thackston

  Still carrying the picture, Emma walked into the kitchen.

  “Find everything you need?” Still dressed in the white bathrobe but with the sleeves rolled back to reveal his muscular forearms, Jason looked up from the sizzling omelet. His gaze flickered down to the photograph in her hands. Curiosity curled his lips. “Apparently you found something.”

  “This is your sister.” She turned the picture toward him.

  “Yes.” His expression softened. “That’s Rose.”

  She placed the photo on a kitchen counter. Her stomach fluttered with nerves. “I’ve seen your sister before.”

  Jason lifted her gaze back to Emma’s eyes. “You met her?”

  “Not exactly. She…” Taking a deep breath, Emma finished before she lost her courage. “She was in Heaven and she wanted me to tell you that she’s all right.”

  Jason stared at her for several seconds, then that bemused smile flickered over his mouth again. “You saw her picture on the wall when you went into the bathroom last night. We’d been talking about her. She was hit by a car like you and Brian so you dreamed about her last night. I understand.”

  Emma shook her head. “I didn’t dream about her last night and I didn’t notice the picture until this morning.”

  His smile faltered. “But you said—”

  “That day in the emergency room. When I died. That’s when I saw her.”

  He stared at her. “When you died.”

  Emma wet her dry lips. “Jason, I had an experience that I haven’t told anyone about except my parents and my psychiatrist. When my heart stopped, I saw Brian’s spirit. And I saw the spirit of a young woman who wanted me to give someone a message. She was holding a rose but I didn’t realize until I saw her picture here this morning that the message was meant for you.”

  He frowned. “It must have been a dream.”

  Frustrated, Emma picked up the photograph. He wasn’t ready to understand.

  “Never mind,” she said quietly. “I’ll just put this back.”

  “Emma—”

  “Your eggs are burning.” When he glanced at the stove, she turned away. She hadn’t really expected him to believe her.

  But she had hoped he would try.

  Grabbing the skillet, Jason dumped the burned omelet into the sink and turned on the water. He flipped on the garbage disposal and then leaned against the counter and watched the eggs and water swirl down the drain.

  Death, dreams, messages. She’d confessed last night that she was getting counseling but he hadn’t suspected her problem went so deep. Suddenly, secrets that hadn’t mattered ten minutes earlier had taken on monumental importance.

  But why should he have suspected anything so complicated? He knew she had some kind of secret but never dreamed it was anything like this. Other than a skittish nature—and a tendency to put herself in dangerous situations—she’d simply been a beautiful, intriguing woman. A woman with a sparkle in her eyes that soothed and attracted him.

  A woman whose tears touched him.

  A woman whose laughter warmed his heart.

  He considered what she’d been through, dying on that emergency room table and being yanked back to life. Kind of like that kid on the beach last night. But Emma’s injuries had been severe. She might take some pretty powerful medications even now. She’d probably had all sorts of strange dreams that night and since, about death and the lucky break she’d caught. About Brian, who hadn’t been so lucky. Jason would have had trouble dealing with such a burden himself. Like the burden he felt for contributing to Rose’s death.

  But that didn’t explain why Emma thought she’d had a message from Rose, a woman she’d never met. Not in this life, anyway.

  He turned off the disposal and the water. Emma believed what she’d said and it hurt her that he didn’t believe her. He didn’t want to hurt her. But she had to face reality. And reality dictated that no one could communicate with the dead.

  Leaning back against the kitchen counter, Jason shoved a hand through his hair. Although he didn’t believe it, he confessed to himself that he wished Emma’s claim—and the message—was true. Because if it was, there were a lot of people that he’d like to talk to. It would make his life as a homicide detective a hell of a lot easier.

  * * * * *

  As Emma drove her SUV out of the Medical Examiner’s parking lot a short while later, she looked in her rearview mirror. Jason sat in his Mustang behind her, talking on his cell phone.

  “He’s probably telling his partner what a nutcase I am,” she muttered and then pulled into the light Saturday morning traffic along Bay Street.

  A phone call from Jason’s partner had caused him to cancel breakfast. Just as well, Emma thought. Neither she nor Jason seemed eager to address her claim again. Still, during the short drive back to her car, her words about his sister had hung between them. Emma hadn’t wanted to push the issue if he wasn’t ready to hear about the message from Rose. And he obviously was no more ready to hear it than she was to let him walk out of her life. They hadn’t wholly addressed that issue, either. After her confession this morning, she wondered if they would ever have the opportunity.

  Opportunity.

  The word echoed in her mind as she spied the Bay View Cemetery ahead. A line of cars waited behind a gate to pull out of the small graveyard that faced Trinity Bay. Through the oaks and willows that shaded the plots, she saw a green canopy near the rear of the cemetery.

  Opportunity.

  With that word still bouncing around inside her head, Emma turned into the cemetery. Last night that young man who’d nearly drowned on the beach had given her more questions. This could be her “opportunity” to answer some of them.

  Jason pulled his Mustang to the right shoulder of the road and shifted into park. He waited, watching Emma park near the back of the cemetery. He’d pulled out of the ME’s parking lot less than a minute behind her, on his way to meet Charlie and had spotted Emma driving through the cemetery’s main gate. Wondering why she’d come here, why she sat alone in her car, he looked around, taking in the vehicles lined up to leave the cemetery grounds. Was she paying her respects to someone? After living in Clear Harbor most of her life, she no doubt had known some of the people buried here. Her own parents were still alive and she’d had no siblings but maybe her grandparents or aunts and uncles…

  As the last car departed, Emma got out of her SUV and walked some distance back along the narrow lane. Stepping onto the grass, she approached the canopy that had shaded the recent funeral. The lid of the casket beneath that canopy stood open.

  A knot of fear formed in Jason’s gut. What the hell was she doing?

  Clasping her hands behind her, Emma approached the canopy. The sun blazed overhead, warming the grass and flowers on the graves so that their scents mingled and grew heavy on the air. Several funeral sprays stood around the area shaded by the canopy. Made mostly of carnations and stock flowers, they added to the heavy perfume as she stepped past them. She glanced around but no one approached her. The cemetery staff who waited several discreet yards away would, she knew, take her for a mourner who had arrived late. They would maintain their distance and give her whatever time she needed.

  But when she reached the open casket, she found two men sitting in folding chairs on the other side of it.

  “Oh.” Emma stopped as the men rose. “I’m sorry. I thought everyone had left.”

  The taller of the two men clasped a Bible against his chest. He nodded solemnly toward her and his gray eyes revealed his sympathy. “We didn’t realize anyone was still here.”

  “I…wanted to pay my respects,” Emma said. “Alone.”

  “I understand. Take your time.” The man touched his companion’s elbow and the two of them walked out of the shade of the canopy.

  Emma faced the coffin. The upper lid stood open and she could see the elderly man nestled inside. The mortician had applied just enough makeup to give the old man’s skin a natural hue. Considering his appa
rent age, Emma assumed that the man had died a peaceful, natural death. There would have been no question as to the cause, no need to call the Medical Examiner, no purpose in an autopsy.

  Emma lifted her hands but then hesitated. Her heart hurt. Spirits of the departed should appear to those who loved them, she thought. Not to strangers like me.

  Taking a deep breath, she placed her hands over those gnarled fingers that were clasped together in death, felt the lack of temperature in the flesh, felt the utter stillness. For a long moment, she held her breath and waited. Then she lifted her head and looked around.

  She was alone.

  Jason watched Emma from behind a small concrete mausoleum. Her body relaxed and even from that distance, he saw relief pooling in thick silver tears in her eyes. She’d either found something she’d wanted to find or had realized that something wasn’t here in the first place. Lifting her hands from those of the dead man, she turned away.

  Jason eased back behind one of the small stone buildings. He remembered what she’d said about Rose and the dream that she’d taken for some kind of near-death experience.

  Despair filled him and he looked around the cemetery. Both his parents and Rose had been cremated and their ashes scattered over the bay. Brian’s body had been shipped to his parents’ home near Austin while Tyrone had been buried in a small family plot near the Louisiana border. Jason had never had a reason to visit the Clear Harbor cemetery. It seemed a peaceful place. Was Emma merely enjoying a peaceful moment or had she known the deceased? Or was she so obsessed with death that she couldn’t pass a funeral without stopping? Had her accident affected her that deeply?

  That last question made him more determined than ever to find the driver who had run her down. She needed that closure.

  He needed that closure if he had any intention of moving forward with her.

  Emma closed the door of her SUV. Relief still clung to her. Now she was certain she knew the whole truth. She could not communicate with all the dead but only with those who came to her autopsy table. Away from the morgue she could find peace.

  A bead of sweat trickled down her ribs. Starting the SUV, she turned on the air conditioner and adjusted the vents to aim the chilling blast at her face and torso. What would Jason think if he’d seen her here? He hadn’t told her she was crazy when she’d delivered Rose’s message although he certainly hadn’t believed her story.

  For a moment she considered calling him and trying once more to explain. Maybe he would understand if she told the story just right. Now that the initial shock had passed, maybe he could listen. In spite of his alleged reputation, he appeared to be a man who could tune in to her emotions, a man who could be sensitive to her needs, a man who would go out of his way to avoid hurting her.

  Jason had told her he’d changed and she wanted to believe him. Then she thought of Alan. In spite of his insistence that he had, Alan had never changed.

  She sighed. Maybe Jason hadn’t really changed, either. Emma could not open herself to another man like her ex-husband. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to open herself to another man at all. Especially not until she learned more about her special gift.

  Not until she learned to trust herself a little more.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Heat wrapped sticky arms around him as Jason stepped out of his air-conditioned car onto the black-topped parking lot behind the Oasis Strip Center. Through the open door, the last trace of Emma’s perfume evaporated from the vehicle’s interior along with the cold air. For a second, he wondered what would have happened if Charlie hadn’t called and interrupted their morning. That strange conversation…

  Jason stood still for a moment. He wished his concerns over her state of mind could evaporate as quickly as the cool air from his car. She’d confessed to attending therapy sessions because of her accident. After hearing her claim of receiving a message from Rose during some kind of near-death experience—not to mention her trip to the cemetery—he wondered what deeper secrets she held.

  Closing the car door, he glanced around. Heat shimmered off the vehicles lining the back of the narrow lot. Two patrol cars, one CSI van and Charlie’s minivan hugged a fence that separated the strip center from one of Clear Harbor’s older neighborhoods.

  Amalia Campanero’s neighborhood, he realized as he looked over the old frame homes beyond the fence. They were also only five or six blocks from the Stripple Brothers warehouse, where Emma had been attacked by Craig Potter.

  Jason wondered again if something stronger than her job linked Emma and the two murder cases. She claimed to have received a dream message from Rose. Did she believe something like that had happened with Amalia Campanero and Dennis Turner?

  Shoving his hands into his jeans’ pockets, Jason ambled toward the crime-scene investigators working around a rusted trash dumpster that hugged the building’s back wall. Charlie had called earlier to tell him that a Smith and Wesson handgun had been found behind a butcher shop three blocks from the Campanero home. Its caliber matched the gun that had killed Amalia.

  Charlie stood apart from the investigators, talking to a man wearing a blood-stained butcher’s apron. That man, bald and sweating in the brutal heat trapped in the concrete lot behind the strip center, gestured with a clenched fist at the trash container and then turned and stalked through an open door into the building.

  “What’s his problem?” Jason asked when he reached Charlie.

  “This is the third gun dumped in his garbage this year.” Charlie drew a handkerchief from his hip pocket and mopped at his sweaty brow. “He’s tired of talking to cops.”

  “Maybe he should get a lock for his trash can.”

  “He’s had five.” Charlie gestured toward a tattered old mattress sticking out of the rusted container. “Apparently, many people consider this a community dumpster.”

  “Murderers included, huh?”

  “Murderers included.” Wiping his face again, Charlie turned toward the men and women working the scene. “There’s a footprint in that patch of dried mud in front of the dumpster.”

  “You think it might belong to Campanero?”

  “It might. The night of the Campanero murder, Mr. Blake, the butcher, hosed down the outside of the dumpster. It didn’t rain for several days before then and Blake hasn’t washed the dumpster since then. Any prints must be from that night.”

  Jason gestured toward the evidence bag resting on the hood of Charlie’s minivan. The gun inside it glinted dully through the plastic. “You may not need a footprint, if there are viable fingerprints on the gun.”

  “There’s a partial on the grip.”

  “That might be enough. Maybe the lab will find more.”

  Charlie narrowed his eyes and stared at Jason. “You seem edgy.”

  “I’m okay.” Jason wandered closer to the dumpster.

  Charlie followed him. “You were with Layne Simmons the last time I saw you.”

  The disapproval in Charlie’s tone brought Jason’s head around. “She left the bar right after you did.”

  Humor played at one corner of Charlie’s mouth. “I’m just expressing curiosity.”

  Turning his back on his partner, Jason hunkered down to study the footprint that scored the dried mud. “Keep your curiosity to yourself. I’m trying to work.” And trying not to think how I’d rather be with Emma in spite of her weird obsession.

  “We can’t do anything until the crime scene guys finish here.” Charlie nudged Jason in the back with his knee. “I heard something interesting. Seems you were a hero down on the beach last night.”

  “I thought you didn’t listen to station gossip.”

  “This was more than gossip. It was on the nightly report. Dr. St. Clair was involved.”

  “So?”

  “She was at your beach house.”

  “Again, so?”

  “At least tell me if you’ve broken your dry spell.”

  “You’ve spent years trying to turn me into a gentleman, Charli
e. You can’t have it both ways. I won’t kiss and tell.”

  “Kissing, eh?” Charlie nudged him with his knee again. “So something did happen last night?”

  Something happened all right. I think I’m falling for a woman with mental problems.

  Rising, he headed toward Charlie’s minivan. “Why don’t I take the weapon in so the ballistics guys can start on it?”

  Following, Charlie clapped Jason on the back. “I understand Dr. St. Clair will be attending Judge Daly’s retirement party tonight. You are going, aren’t you?”

  Something tickled his stomach. “Hadn’t planned on it.”

  “You should go. Dance with her.”

  “Lay off, Garcia.”

  “All right, all right.” Charlie winked. “Come to the house tomorrow afternoon. Veronica bought me a new gas grill. And if you want to bring a friend…”

  Rolling his eyes, Jason grabbed the bagged gun and headed for the Mustang.

  And tried not to think about how Emma would feel dancing in his arms.

  But then in mid-stride he thought, why not? He had questions that only she could answer. A social situation like Judge Daly’s retirement party might just help her relax enough to answer some of them.

  * * * * *

  Emma leaned against one of the Grecian columns that separated the ballroom from the terrace at the Clear Harbor Country Club. Her posture might not have been erect enough for her semi-formal attire but leaning took some of the weight off her left leg. Although it had been months since her accident, her ankle still bothered her when she stood for too long a time, especially in heels of any height. Tonight, despite the lowest dressy shoes she could find, her ankle ached as if she’d been standing for hours.

  Stress didn’t help either. She was wound as tightly as a spool of thread.

  Glancing inside, she saw that Edgar had gotten caught up in a conversation with a group of county commissioners. Despite his smile, he looked miserable and she immediately stopped her inner complaint about her own discomfort. She appreciated the fact that she didn’t have to court the local politicians as her boss had to do. She was simply welcome to tag along and enjoy the social activities that came with Edgar’s position. And getting invited to Judge Nora Daly’s retirement party was definitely a social activity.