Grave Echoes: A Kate Waters Mystery (32 page)

Keith spit overboard. He sat on the backbench seat, kicking his feet up on the side of the boat. “I’ve already explained to my department that we had a diving accident, which was all it was.”

Nick took another drink from his beer. “Pretty sure there’s a fine line between accident and involuntary manslaughter.”

Barry puffed out a cloud of smoke. “Nobody killed anybody. Jim drowned, simple as that.”

“We’re talking about a man losing his life,” Nick said. “That’s not a simple matter.”

Keith sat up. “Well, you keep acting like we killed him and you’re right, it won’t be a simple matter.” Keith hit Nick with a glare, challenging him. “Besides, I am on the force. You keep forgetting that.”

Keith had been a longtime friend, but Nick believed his position as a homicide officer for the Beaverton Police Department had further inflated his mammoth of an ego and worked as a convenient tool to manipulate others.

“I don’t need to remember,” Nick said. “You’ll always remind me.” He guzzled half of his beer, his unease storming inside him now like the dark clouds on the horizon.

Keith stood and walked over to Nick. His muscled frame caused his arms to bow out. “He found the statue,” he said in low voice.

“You don’t know that,” Nick said. The statue was practically a legend and probably didn’t even exist, but if it did, Nick thought again, then why not the curse too?

“I read the report,” Keith said. “They speculated whether Jim had had a GPS tracker on him because his hand was frozen in a grip, as if he’d been holding something.”

“Even if he did find the statue,” Nick said, “it’s gone anyway, buried once again at the bottom of the ocean. We’ll never find it.”

“Or someone stole it,” Barry said. His right brow crooked up. “Whoever reported his body might have taken the statue.”

Nick rolled his eyes, not believing that Jim could have found the statue of Rán and held it in his dead hand all the way to shore. “His hand probably froze in a fuck-you gesture.”

Keith laughed. “Glad you still have your sense of humor, Nick.” He smacked him on the shoulder.

Nick peered across the Pacific’s turbulent waves, imagining what Jim’s last moments must have been like. It filled him with a stomach-clenching terror knowing his friend had been left alone and helpless in those huge ocean waves. The deep cold of regret and guilt washed into him. He finished his beer and tossed it into a nearby bucket.

“If he did find the statue,” Barry said, exhaling a spicy, sweet cloud of smoke, "just think what else is down there.”

“Riches beyond our comprehension,” Keith added. He glanced over at Nick like a hungry wolf.

Nick shook his head. “No way. I’m done.”

Keith propped his foot up on the side of the bow and leaned over on one knee. “Is that what you’re going to tell Matt when he asks if you can afford another operation?”

Nick jammed a finger toward Keith. “Fuck you.” 

Barry stood up, as if to back up Keith, who for obvious reasons didn’t need any help.

“I’ve done everything I can to help my son,” Nick said. He stepped over to the other side of the boat, his back turned to them. “All of this, it’s always been about him,” but another wave of guilt plummeted inside Nick and threatened to pull him under, into the cold ocean of regret.

Keith held his hands up, feigning surrender. “All right, all right. I’m just saying, with a few hundred-grand, you could do so much more for him. Maybe even make it look like he’d never played with fireworks at all.”

The hurricane brewing in Nick’s mind touched ground and blasted him in the chest. The remorse was more than he could bear. He hated himself for not being there, for not watching over Matt and his friends last year on the 4th
of July. He shouldn’t have given him the money to buy the fireworks in the first place.

Nick turned around, anger clenched tight in his jaw. “One more time,” he said. “If we don’t find anything, that’s it. You’ll have to find your own boat.”

Little pit marks dented into the sides of Barry’s cheeks as he smiled. “Keith and I will be able to buy our own boat once we find that statue.”

***

Streetlights outside Brooke’s house blinked and flickered on. Kate leaned over the porch railing with a heavy breath, working to subdue the stir of emotions thickening in her mind. The sight of Brooke’s dead body had brought forth too many painful memories of Jev. Memories that still brought tears to her eyes and an ache in her heart. She missed her terribly, and now, someone else was about to confront a similar loss.

Somehow, Thea knew. Kate questioned her reasoning for Brooke’s safety. While Thea may have helped Kate deal with her sister’s death and investigation, she couldn’t forget her involvement in the occult. Thea wasn’t just a witch, she was the priestess of the Blue Moon Coven, the one Jev had secretly belonged to. Jev had never told Kate about her witchcraft, for whatever reasons, so consequently, every now and then, the teeth of jealousy bit down on her, and they did so again today. At times, it seemed Thea knew more about Jev than anyone had, even her own sister.

Kate also recalled what others in the coven had told her regarding Thea’s dark side, which presently, Kate wasn’t so sure it excluded murder. Brooke’s death and Thea’s dreams were too coincidental, almost alibi-ish, she thought. She couldn’t trust her, not alone with Brooke, so reluctantly, she went back inside. Thea was busy searching through Brooke’s things, opening dressers, drawers, and checking under furniture and cushions.

“What are you doing?” Kate avoided looking into the kitchen so she didn’t have to see the ghostly, vacant stare in Brooke’s eyes again. The image of her twisted legs was difficult enough.

“I know what you’re thinking, but I had nothing to do with this, Kate.”

“‘I’d curse the little bitch if I could get away with it.’ Isn’t that what you said?”

Thea blinked her eyes. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“I don’t think it’s complicated at all. Either it’s an accident or it’s not.”

“Or it’s a curse.”

“A curse.” Kate shook her head, not wanting another one of Thea’s odd dilemmas to disrupt her attempts at a peaceful, normal life. “Aren’t you the least bit upset that Brooke is dead?”

“Of course I am. She was a coven sister.”

“Then what happened? If you knew she was going to die, I would think you’d also know how.”

Thea stepped over to the living room window and stared out at a darkening sky that deepened the shadows inside the house. Kate thought about turning some of the lights on but didn’t want to touch anything.  

Thea turned around, her eyes reflecting the same gloom as the weather. “In my dream, I saw Brooke, screaming here in her house. A bright light flashed in the sky, and then I saw Brooke run from her bedroom, trip, and fall to the ground. She was trying to get away from something.” Thea glanced down the hall. “Something was after her.”

“Something? You mean someone.”

Thea shook her head. “No. Something.”

Kate studied Thea, not liking the graveness in her voice or the ambiguity that hinted of the supernatural. “I think your
dream
makes a great alibi.”  

Thea scowled at her. “Don’t make this look like something it’s not. My reasons for disliking Brooke are irrelevant, but the dream is not. It came to me as a warning, and after everything you saw with your sister’s death, everything you experienced in that house out in the country, I’m surprised you’re not taking this more seriously.”

At one point last year, Kate had thought she had seen ghosts in the house where she and David had first lived, but after incorporating logic and reason back into her rationale, she realized it was all a result of her medical condition, narcolepsy, which commonly produced vivid hallucinations. That is all they were, she had convinced herself, despite Thea’s opinions and even those of David (little did she know he also believed in the supernatural, though thankfully not to the extremes Thea did).

“Oh, I am taking this seriously,” Kate said. “Just not the same way as you.”

“Good.” Thea stepped into the kitchen. “Because this was no accident.” She pointed at the refrigerator where shards of glass refracted off the canister lighting. “It looks like there was a struggle.”

Kate’s heart kicked against her ribs as she considered the possibility that they themselves might be in danger.