Body and Soul

by Susan Krinard

  So she was becoming possessive after a single night together. Gary gripped the phone so hard that his fingers hurt.

  “I had to leave on short notice. I’m busy right now, Marie—unless you have something important—”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. You know that bitch Jesse Copeland? Well, she’s been spreading all kinds of lies about you. She told me that I should stay away from you, that you’re no good.”

  The satisfaction in Marie’s words only fed into Gary’s rage. “Did she?”

  “Yes. I know she has it in for you, and I thought you ought to know what she’s doing. People heard about that thing at the party, and since you left so quickly—”

  “What are they saying about me?”

  “Oh, they aren’t going to believe her. But her friend Al Aguilar is spreading the same dirt. He was with Wayne and your other friends in the bar, and—”

  Al Aguilar. Gary vaguely remembered him as a passive, bookish sort seventeen years ago. He hadn’t even met the man on his recent visit, though he’d heard Aguilar was Jesse’s friend.

  “What did he tell them?”

  “Stuff about Jesse’s mother. Look, Gary, I think you should come back and set them straight. Put Copeland in her place once and for all. Don’t let her get away with—”

  But Gary had stopped listening. His hand had gone numb, and his stomach was knotted with unreasoning terror.

  He’d been wrong. Dead wrong. He shouldn’t have left Manzanita without being sure about Jesse. Sure that she didn’t know. Sure she’d stay quiet and afraid and crazy.

  He’d never listened to his dreams, but now he knew they’d been warning him. Telling him that it would never be over unless he took action.

  Marie was right. He had to go back.

  “Gary? Are you there?”

  He licked his lips. “Keep an eye on Jesse, Marie. Remember that she’s a lunatic. Nothing she claims is true. It’s like you said—she hates me, and she’d do anything to ruin everything I’ve worked for.”

  “I knew it.” Marie breathed heavily into the phone, as if she thought she could seduce him over the line. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Gary. Are you coming back?”

  “As soon as I can. But don’t tell anyone, Marie. It’s only going to make things worse if this gets more complicated than it already is.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. What did Marie think he’d do? Sit down and have a heart-to-heart with Jesse, convince her of the error of her ways? Or perhaps Marie was not averse to his applying a few direct threats to silence her. Marie would have made an excellent politician’s mistress.

  “I’ll deal with that when I get there. You just keep quiet about this, Marie. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” She sounded a bit chastened; maybe she was just perceptive enough to hear the warning in his voice. “I can’t wait to see you, baby. I’ll give you something to look forward to.”

  At any other time Gary would have anticipated getting between Marie’s legs again, but he couldn’t even picture her face. Jesse’s face was there instead—blond and hazel-eyed and tan, then wavering to pale and dark-haired as she was in the dream.

  He was going insane, and there was only one cure.

  He’d hung up before he realized that he hadn’t bothered with a goodbye. To hell with that. Marie would have to live without it. She’d crawl after him no matter what he did, like all the women he’d ever known.

  Except Jesse.

  He left the office and strode farther down the hall to the residential section of the mansion where his guest room was kept ready for him. The area was deserted, just as he wanted it. He made a beeline to the briefcase he kept in a locked desk beside his bed.

  He’d never had occasion to use the gun. It felt familiar in his hand, better than the ones he’d owned during his brief criminal career.

  That had ended with Manzanita. So he’d told himself. But Jesse wouldn’t let it end. She wouldn’t let him go.

  The gun slipped from his hand and clattered to the desktop. He raked his fingers through the hair at his temples and squeezed his eyes shut.

  He kept seeing himself in the dream, killing her. Over and over. And each time the guilt and hatred and fear got worse. Each time the grave at his feet got deeper. It filled up with old sins, and the chains wound tighter and tighter.

  Guilt ate at his heart like acid. Because he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t know how.

  It had to end. The guilt and terror had to end. He picked up the gun and gripped it in both hands until it was the only reality left in the world.

  Gradually his frantic pulse slowed, and a measure of sanity returned to his thoughts. He replaced the gun in the briefcase, shoved the briefcase into the desk, and locked the drawer.

  He had a party to wrap up. Heather would be looking for him. He’d come up with an excuse to go back to Manzanita tomorrow. Heather would believe him. She always did.

  His most practiced smile was back in place by the time he reached the ballroom.

  “Jesse?”

  She tossed on the bed, coming abruptly out of a dream about David. The room was utterly dark; no hint of moonlight filtered through the blinds.

  The covers bunched around her waist as she sat up. “David?”

  But she knew it wasn’t David who’d called her name. For an instant she thought it might be Megan, because the voice was female.

  “Jesse?”

  No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t make out the figure she felt standing beside her bed. But she knew. Dizzying shock lanced through her, and she could barely force her breath through her throat.

  “Mom?”

  Silence.

  “Mom?” She flung the sheets away and scooted to the edge of the bed. The darkness was unnatural, eerie. She reached out into the empty space in the middle of the room.

  Nothing. No one.

  “You’ve been looking so hard, honey,” her mother said. Her words were faintly slurred but distinct enough, as if she’d had just a little to drink, but not too much.

  “Where are you, Mom?” Jesse whispered. “I can’t see you.”

  “You’re trying to remember,” Joan Copeland said. She laughed, that husky chuckle Jesse had nearly forgotten. “It’s not easy, I know. But you’re so close.”

  Jesse’s legs almost gave out when her feet hit the floor. “Let me see you, Mom,” she begged. “I want to see you.”

  She could feel a draft of air swirl past, a current that might have been caused by someone shaking her head. “Remember the games we used to play? The messages we always left for one another? The special hiding place?”

  It was difficult to concentrate on what her mother was saying. She tried to stand up again, but an invisible force kept her pinned to the bed.

  “Think, Jesse.”

  She focused on the words. Games. Messages. Hiding place.

  And the image came back to her. She saw herself as a little girl, running into the kitchen.

  The kitchen. The cupboard in the corner, with the linoleum-covered shelf inside. The linoleum was peeling from the wood, leaving a flat pocket just the right size for secret messages. Messages a mother and daughter could leave for each other where no one else could find them.

  She’d been in that kitchen yesterday morning, opened the cupboards because she’d sensed they were important. Felt a strange frustration when she’d found only the dishes and a few old pots and pans.

  She shuddered as another memory took her. It was the dream-picture of Mom and Gary fighting. Only now Jesse moved back in time, watched from the window as Gary first came into the kitchen to confront his lover.

  Her mother was opening the corner cupboard. She had a folded piece of paper in her hand. She was pushing it under the linoleum on the shelf, looking up, slamming the door closed. Straightening to meet Gary’s ominous contempt.

  A message. Jesse swayed and braced herself with stiffened arms. Mom had le
ft her a message she’d never read.

  A message … with the answers.

  “I remember, Mom,” she said. “I know where to look.”

  The air current had stilled. A surge of panic gave Jesse the strength to break loose of the force that held her captive. She staggered to the middle of the room, spinning in a circle.

  Her mother was gone. Somewhere outside the window an owl hooted. Moonlight found its way through the blinds again.

  Sudden enervation overcame Jesse, and she felt her way back to the bed. She shivered as she lay down. Heaviness weighted her eyelids. Her tears seemed to belong to someone else.

  She woke before dawn. Her body was stiff and chilly; the sheets were pushed low around her ankles, and all at once she remembered what had happened in the middle of the night.

  “Mom,” she whispered.

  Someone appeared beside her bed, a blur of blue and white and glints of metal. Jesse scrambled up and flung herself into David’s arms.

  He was solid as her mother hadn’t been, and his embrace gave her all the comfort she could want. His palms stroked up and down her back as he rested his chin on the crown of her head.

  “Jesse? What’s wrong? I apologize for not returning earlier—”

  She stepped back, keeping a firm grip on his hands. “I saw her, David.”

  “Who?”

  “My mother. She came to me. Last night.”

  He cupped her face in his hands. “You saw your mother?”

  “I didn’t … actually see her. She told me what I’ve been trying so hard to remember. The clue I was looking for.” She wiped at her eyes. “Did you send her?”

  He sighed and pulled her close, into the warm circle of his arms. “I don’t have that power, Jesse. I wish I did.”

  “But you said you’ve seen others passing through your limbo—”

  “Soldiers. Men like myself. They all moved on.”

  Jesse broke away and turned to face the bed, arms across her chest. “She spoke to me.”

  “I don’t deny that, Jesse.” His voice was unusually soft and gentle. “Believe me, if I could have made such communication possible, I would have done it long since.”

  “But you don’t think it really was my mother, do you?”

  “How can I answer?” His hand came to rest on her shoulder, and his fingers worked into the taut muscles just below her neck. “I was able to come back.”

  Yes. He was able to come back—but how likely was it that Jesse would be haunted, however lovingly, by more than one ghost? And as much as she wanted to believe she’d spoken to Mom, the thought that her mother was—trapped, as David was trapped—was too grim and sad to contemplate.

  Better to conclude that it had been a dream, a trick her mind had played to release needed information from her subconscious memories. Better to hope that her mother was beyond human suffering. Somewhere.

  Jesse had begun to truly face her childhood loss when she’d remembered the funeral and her attack on Gary. Visiting the resort had been another phase in the process she’d so long deferred. This … visitation was one more step, and the message was clear.

  It was time to say goodbye and let her mother go.

  But it wouldn’t be finished until Gary was brought to justice. Jesse lifted her chin and let the tears dry. Whatever the source of the information, she knew it was what she’d been waiting for.

  A fresh sense of urgency propelled her across the room to her closet. She pulled a pair of jeans from her chest of drawers and tugged them on under her nightshirt.

  “Isn’t it a bit early to be dressing?” David asked. He was watching with interest and appreciation. Jesse struggled to set aside the distraction of his gaze and the effect it had on her.

  “I’ve been known to get up earlier than this. But I have something I need to do. It can’t wait.”

  “No?” David stepped up beside her and molded his hands to her waist, sliding the shirt up her ribs. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She almost lost her resolve. After an agonizing moment she trapped his hands in their upward progress just before they covered her breasts.

  “I have to get to my mom’s resort right away,” she said. She lifted his hands and kissed the tanned, roughened skin of his knuckles. “I’m sorry. But later—”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “A pity. I’d saved up all my strength for you.”

  Even such a prosaic sentence hid a wealth of erotic promise. She hadn’t known she had it in her to feel this way, to want to tumble right back into bed with him for an hour or two at the very least.

  If her mother’s message meant what she hoped, she’d be able to turn her full attention to David in the very near future. Put the rest behind her and think only of the present. Live to the fullest, free of the burdens of fear and anger. The past would truly become the past.

  “I want you to come with me,” she said. “I want you to be there when I find out the truth.”

  He frowned. “What truth?”

  “About Gary. I know what to look for now. My mother left me a message before she died.” Jesse moved away and skimmed off her nightshirt—she was still feeling modest enough to turn her back—and replaced it with a sturdy flannel shirt. “Will you come?”

  The grim expression remained on his face, but he nodded. His playfulness had vanished, and it seemed to her, as she finished dressing, that he was deeply preoccupied.

  “Only a little longer, David,” she said seriously, catching his gaze. “Then Gary will be out of our lives.”

  Our lives. An odd choice of words, given that David didn’t know the man. But it felt right. Hope was a wonderful thing.

  She gathered up her flashlight and backpack and went to the garage for the truck, David at her side. There were few vehicles on the road in this predawn hour, and the mountains made a dark wall around the valley, the eerie guardians of a thousand untold secrets.

  One of those secrets was about to see the light of day.

  They went through the fence as they had before, and Jesse lit their way to the cabin she and her mother had shared. She opened the cupboard with the peeling linoleum. The layers had stuck together over the years; she pried at them until the edges came apart. She peeled the linoleum back and felt between.

  Her fingers touched paper, brittle and stiffly folded. Her heart pounded as she pulled out the envelope. “Jesse” was written in her mother’s hand on the outside.

  “Oh God. She was right.” She stared at the envelope, feeling layers of paper inside. David was suddenly behind her, just when she needed the support of his hard, strong body.

  His presence enabled Jesse to steady her hands and open the envelope. She found another piece of folded paper and a second envelope, firmly sealed.

  The folded paper was a letter. She propped the flashlight up on the counter and tilted the paper so that the light shone on it. She began to read aloud.

  Dearest Jesse,

  When you find this note, there is something I want you to do right away. I’ve put another envelope inside. I want you to take the envelope to your friend Al Aguilar in town. Make sure he reads the letter.

  This is very important, Jesse. Please do exactly as I ask. And remember—no matter what happens, I love you. No matter what mistakes I’ve made, remember that, my darling. I love you and always will.

  I’m not strong, Jesse. But you are. I know you’ll make something wonderful of your life. Please never give up hope.

  Jesse closed her eyes and held the note to her heart. David’s fingers massaged her upper arms.

  “Is this what you came to find?” he asked.

  She shook her head, unable to speak, and pried open the flap of the second, smaller envelope.

  The wording of this message was terse and factual and thoroughly sober, with few emotional flourishes. The very coldness of the events laid out chilled Jesse beyond any warming.

  It started with a simple and terrible declaration: I know Gary Emerson killed someone.

&nb
sp; Killed someone. The unexpectedness of it made Jesse lose her mental bearings. She’d thought to find proof of his part in her mother’s death, but not an accusation that he’d been involved in others as well.

  She was right. He was evil.

  She didn’t realize she’d dropped the note until David bent to retrieve it and smoothed the crushed papers between his fingers. “Shall I read it for you, Jesse?” he asked.

  In her imagination, Jesse was strong enough to handle anything. Face anything. But she was ready to hand it over to David without a single protest.

  “Please,” she said hoarsely.

  He cleared his throat, and she noticed that his hands were not quite steady.

  “This is my account,” he read, “of what happened between March 28th and April 5th. We were preparing the resort for the spring season. It was vacant except for myself, my daughter Jesse, and Gary Emerson. Gary has been living and working on my property for two years. Until recently I trusted him, though I have never known much about his background. But on March 28th, while he was out of town on business for the resort, a man came by to see him.

  “This man was very insistent about seeing Gary and claimed that Gary owed him money. His manner was threatening, and I didn’t want to let him in. But when Gary returned, the man was still in town, and Gary invited him to stay at the resort.

  “They seemed to get along well, but I could tell there was something wrong. When they caught me listening to one of their discussions, about splitting money between them, it was obvious that they didn’t want me to overhear. Gary told me to mind my own business. But I didn’t think much of what was happening until I found the stash of money in a briefcase, tens of thousands of dollars in large bills, hidden under one of the floorboards in Guest Cabin #5. The cabin was in need of repair and hadn’t been occupied for years, and I was looking into renovating it when I found the money.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I kept watching Gary and his friend. One day they had a terrible argument. Gary was very angry for the rest of the day. Later I saw him speaking to his friend, but something was different.

  “By then I suspected that Gary and his friend had committed some crime and stole the money I’d found, but when I looked again it was gone.