Final Call (8 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Mary turned to see Jeannine sitting in
the passenger seat of her car. “Where have you been?” she asked.

“What? Are you my mother?” Jeannine
replied.

Torn between relief and anger, Mary
took a moment before she spoke. “No, I’m the person whose life has been on hold
while you take some kind of extraterrestrial vacation.”

Jeannine shrugged and absently looked
out the window. “I had to visit someone.”

She started to respond when she saw the
tear trail down Jeannine’s translucent cheek.

Well,
good going Mary
, she thought.
Pick
on the murdered wife. I bet her life right now isn’t a piece of cake, either.

“I’m sorry,” Mary said. “You’re right.
I’m not your mother...”

“I visited her and my dad too,”
Jeannine interrupted, turning and looking at Mary. “I decided, you know, since
it was the holidays, I’d like to see them.”

She looked out the window again.
“They’ve gotten so old. They don’t smile, they don’t talk to each other,” she
whispered. “Mom vacuums and dusts my old bedroom every day. And every time the
phone rings...”

Her voice cracked and she inhaled a
deep shuddering breath.

“Every time the phone rings, they jump
up and run for it. They want it to be me.”

She turned to Mary, tears running
freely down her face now. “And it will never be me,” she said. “I’ll never see them
again.”

“Jeannine, you know as well as I do
that you will see them again. It’s just not going to be in this life. You’re
going to have to wait a little while, but you’ll all be together some day.”

She nodded and wiped the tears from her
face. “But what about...”

“They do need closure, though,” Mary
interrupted. “They need to know you won’t be calling them and you won’t be
walking through the door. They need to be able to grieve for you and then move
on.”

“How do we do that?”

“We solve your murder. We find your
body.”

“I can’t remember what happened
anymore,” she said anxiously. “I don’t know if I can help. And it’s been eight
years.”

“That’s okay,” Mary insisted. “We
already know more than we did when Bradley was searching for you.”

“You know I’m dead.”

Mary nodded. “And we know the neighbors
thought you ran away with another man, so they didn’t tell the truth.”

“There was no other man, Mary,” she
said. “I was never unfaithful to Bradley.”

She lifted her hands to her mouth. “Bradley,”
she whispered. “You’re going to have to tell him about me.”

“I think we both should tell him about
you,” Mary said. “I think he has a right to see you.”

“I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,”
she agreed. “And he does need to know.”

She looked at Mary and saw the regret.
“You think he’s going to hate you for not telling him.”

Yes,
that’s exactly what I think
, Mary thought.

“Well, I can’t worry about that,” she
said. “If our relationship isn’t strong enough to last through this, then we
really didn’t have much of a relationship in the first place.”

Jeannine looked into Mary’s eyes and
spoke carefully. “He chose you, you know,” she said. “When he had the chance to
come with me or stay with you, he chose you.”

Mary gave Jeannine a half-hearted
smile. “He was fighting for his life,” she said. “He’s a warrior.”

Shaking her head, Jeannine gently
smiled at Mary. “No, he didn’t realize his life was at stake,” she said. “He
wanted to get back to you.”

Sighing, Mary turned on the ignition.
“Well, that’s something at least.”

“No, Mary, that’s everything.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Well, crap!” Mary exclaimed as,
white-knuckled, she slowly plowed through the snow-covered intersection at
Winnebago Corners and pulled into the gas station on the corner.

Since leaving Highway 39, the snow had
continued to fall in record amounts and, once again, the Roadster reaffirmed it
was not made for winter driving. The normal drive time between the Highway and
the gas station was less than fifteen minutes; it had taken Mary more than
forty-five to travel the distance. She slid across the lot and stopped near
enough to the convenience store that Mary decided to not even try for a closer
parking spot. She put the car into “park” and rested her head on the steering
wheel. “I am not going to drive again until June.”

She took a deep shuddering breath,
reached for her cell phone and called Bradley’s number. “If he says one thing
about my driving,” she muttered, “so help me...”

“Mary, where are you?” he asked before
she could speak. “I’ve been worried sick.”

A warm glow replaced some of the
tension. “Bradley, I’m at Winnebago Corners and I just can’t drive anymore,”
she admitted. “The roads are just too slick.”

“Mary, there are semis up and down
Highway 20 that have slid off the road because of these conditions,” he said.
“The storm has been upgraded to a blizzard. I’m amazed you made it as far as
you did.”

Okay,
that felt a little better
, Mary thought.

“Well, it’s been a white-knuckler,” she
said. “I should have listened to Andy’s mom.”

“What?”

“Berry-merry pressure,” she replied.
“The berry-merry pressure must have dropped.”

“Mary, were you in an accident?” he
asked. “Did you hit your head?”

She giggled, relief making her giddy.
“No, I’m fine,” she replied. “Bradley, am I going to have to spend the night in
my car?”

“No, I’ll get you home tonight,” he
promised. “Just let me make a couple of calls.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it,” she
said.

“Can I just ask? What in the world was
so important that you had to go out in a snowstorm?”

“Well, it wasn’t a snowstorm when I
left,” she replied. “But it was important, very important. And I want to talk
to you about it tonight, if you’re not too busy with the storm.”

“Mary, I’ll make time to see you if
it’s important.”

“Thanks. That would be great.”

After saying goodbye, she put her cell
phone in her purse and hiked through the snow to the store. Her first stop was
the woman’s restroom. She tried the door
–
it was in use.

Good
grief, it’s the middle of a snowstorm
, she thought,
why is it that the woman’s restroom is never empty?

Once she was able to use the
facilities, she felt much better. Needing a little reinforcement from the
storm, she bought an extra-large hot chocolate, a dark chocolate candy bar and
then she added a Diet Pepsi, just in case. You just never know when you’ll need
a diet caffeinated beverage.

She fought through the blizzard to get
back to her car, which had become covered in snow during the short time she had
been in the store. She yanked open the door and crawled inside.

No sooner had she pulled the keys from
her purse, she heard a knock on the window. She looked up to see a burly man,
dressed like an Eskimo, standing outside her door. Cracking the door open, she
yelled, “Can I help you?”

“You Mary O’Reilly?” was his muffled
reply.

She nodded in the affirmative.

“I’m your ride, Joe Jasper, my friends
call me J.J. and that there’s the Ice Queen,” he said as he motioned over his
shoulder.

She looked past him to the mammoth
snowplow parked at the edge of the lot. “A snowplow?” she asked in wonder.

He chuckled. “Yeah, the Chief called me
up and told me you
was
stranded. I just happened to be
going in your direction. You ready to go?”

Grabbing her things, she locked up the
car and followed him to the snowplow. Climbing into the cab she looked down at
the ground. “You’re pretty high up in these things,” she said.

Unwrapping
the scarf from his neck and pulling off his cap, he agreed with a laugh. “Yeah,
it keeps us from running over little foreign cars,” he said, giving the
Roadster a cursory glance.

“It’s not foreign if you speak the same
language,” Mary protested.

“It’s foreign if it
ain’t
made in the U.S. of A,” he replied.

“Yeah, I know,” she admitted. “But I
just love it.”

He grinned.
“Except
when you’re driving in the snow.”

She nodded.
“Exactly.”

They pulled out of the gas station and
waited at the intersection for the left turn arrow. From her new vantage point,
Mary could see a number of vehicles had slid off the road into the ditch. She
shivered.

J.J. glanced in her direction. “Yeah,
it’s a bad day to be driving,” he said. “This storm caught us pretty much
unawares.”

Everyone
but Mrs. Brennan
, Mary thought.

“So, how many inches are they
expecting?” she asked.

“One of the guys was saying ten or
twelve inches,” he said, driving forward at the signal change. “Looks like a
snow day tomorrow.”

J.J. maneuvered the large vehicle into
the right lane and lowered the plow. The snow skimmed the steel surface and
flew into the ditch.

“This is really nice,” she said in awe.

“Yeah,” he agreed with a smile. “It
gets you where you need to go.”

“So, how’d you meet the Chief?” she
asked.

“Actually, my son met the
Chief
first,” he chuckled, “and put the fear of God into him.
Did our family a big favor and put Joey Junior back on track. He’s a good guy.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“So, how’d you and the chief meet?” he
asked.

“I was working on a case and I needed
to involve the local authorities. So, we worked together, solved the case and
became friends.”

“Hey, yeah, that was the case about the
mayor, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Pretty tricky business when your boss
is the bad guy.”

“Yeah, it was,” she agreed. “And he was
a real bad guy.”

“I never liked him.
Didn’t
vote for him once.”

She laughed. “You’ve got good
instincts, J.J.”

“So, I heard that you do some weird
paranormal stuff, like those guys on T.V.,” he said, glancing sideways towards
her. “That the truth?”

“Well,” she paused, trying to decide
what to say. “I’m not exactly like those guys, my experiences are more
personal, more one on one, a ghost talking to me or appearing to me, so I can
help them.”

He drove for a few moments before
saying anything. “My dad came to me after he died,” he finally said softly.
“
Damndest
thing.
I was only
fourteen when he died and I was pretty devastated by it. Drunk driver blew a
red light and plowed into Dad’s car. I was mad at God, I was mad at my dad,
hell, I was even mad at my mom.”

He efficiently pulled around a car
sticking out of the ditch with a red sticker on it, displaying the State Patrol
had already checked it out for stranded occupants.

“So, I was lying in bed,” he continued.
“Tired, but not sleeping yet, when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck go
up. I sat up slowly and looked. There was Dad, sitting on the edge of my bed.”

“Were you frightened?”

“You know, I should have been. I mean,
damn, there’s a ghost in my room. But it was my dad and...I really missed him,”
his voice cracked and he swallowed before he continued. “So, I waited for him
to say something deep, you know, something an angel would say to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He looked at me, straight in the eye,
and said, ‘J.J.
get
over yourself. Your mom needs you
and I need you to look after her. I’m in a good place here. Don’t worry about
me. Worry about being the best son a man could ever ask for.’”

Tears slipped down his face and he
briskly wiped them away.

“It’s what I needed to hear,” he
whispered, “exactly what I needed to hear. It changed my life.”

“Sounds to me like your dad knew he
could count on you.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I
did okay.”

He pulled the plow into the parking lot
of the Stephenson County Visitor’s Center and plowed a path from the drive to
the front of the building where Bradley’s vehicle was waiting.

He turned to her. “I never told
no one
about my dad visiting me.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” she
replied.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “You ever find
yourself in a fix, you call J.J.,
capiche
?”
 

She grinned. “Thanks J.J., I’ll
remember that. Thanks for the ride,” she said, climbing down from the cab.

“Hey, no problem, sweetie,” he replied.
“Take care of yourself.”

Bradley was standing next to the door
of the cab to help her down. He put his arm around her shoulder to shelter her
from the blowing snow and peered into the cab. “Thanks, J.J., I appreciate it,”
he called.

J.J. grinned. “You got yourself a fine
lady there, Chief,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” Bradley agreed.

“Be safe,” Mary called as Bradley
pushed the plow’s door closed against the buffeting winds.

He turned her to face him. “Welcome
home,” he yelled into the wind, snow pelting his face.

She smiled, lifted up on her toes and
pressed a brief kiss against his lips. “It’s good to be home,” she replied.

The force of the wind nearly had them
doubled over as they made their way back to the cruiser. Mary couldn’t see more
than four feet ahead of her. Bradley yanked the passenger door open and Mary
crawled inside, immediately grateful to be out of the wind and cold. A moment
later, Bradley was getting in on the other side and putting the vehicle into
drive.

“Ready to
go?”

“More than
ready!”

Even the four-wheel drive vehicle had
to work to get through the snow. Bradley was grateful for the path J.J. had
plowed for them. They turned onto Highway 20 and headed into Freeport. The
wipers were moving at their highest rate, and still the windshield became
obstructed with snow. Mary sat silently as Bradley maneuvered carefully down
the road, avoiding vehicles that were stuck in drifts or had slipped into the
ditches along the side of the road.

She breathed a sigh of relief as the
exit sign for Freeport appeared and Bradley drove the cruiser off the highway
and onto South Street. The roads in Freeport weren’t much better than those on
the highway, but the buildings in town blocked some of the wind, so you were
able to see further down the road.

“How bad is it?” she finally asked.

“The Weather Channel is sending Jim
Cantore
out here tomorrow,” he teased.

Mary knew
Cantore
was the forecaster generally sent out to cover the worst weather situations. If
Jim
Cantore
was coming to your town, you’d better
batten down the hatches.

She laughed. “Wow. Freeport is finally
going to make it on the map,” she said.
“Even if it’s only a
weather map.
So, how bad, really?”

“We’re setting up a bunch of shelters
in the schools,” he said. “Power’s been out in some places since early
afternoon and it’s too cold for most people to be safe. The
ComEd
guys are doing their best, but it’s not safe for them to be up on poles in
weather like this. We’ve got Red Cross and Salvation Army working on a soup
kitchen and we’re keeping the library open all night so the homeless don’t have
to go out tonight. Highways 20, 26 and 75 are pretty much impassible and the
snow isn’t supposed to let up until sometime tomorrow.”

“I’m really sorry I added to your worry,”
she said. “I didn’t mean to add an additional problem to your list.”

He turned to her and smiled with
a warmth
that made her insides melt. “You are never a
problem,” he said firmly. “I actually like being able to help you out. It feeds
my knight-in-shining-armor complex.”

“Thanks, anytime that complex needs
nourishment, you let me know,” she said. “Speaking of nourishment, I do have
food at my place. Are you hungry?”

She paused for a moment. “Well, I guess
I should see if I have power before I make that offer,” she added. “But we
could always cook hot dogs around the fireplace.”

Laughing, he nodded. “That’s the best
offer I’ve had all day,” he said. “I’ve been surviving on granola bars and Diet
Pepsi.”