J.M.J.

Author's note: Thanks for continuing to read! Thank you especially to MargaretA66 and max2013 for your reviews on the previous chapter! I know I didn't give anyone else much of a chance to review that one before posting this, but I wanted to post this one today because it's exactly two months to the day that I started posting this story. It's been an adventure, like it always is. I hope you enjoy this final chapter!

Chapter XIV

It wasn't raining that day. The conventional wisdom of movies dictated that it should always rain at a funeral, especially the funeral of someone who had died young and tragically, leaving behind a young widow in a black dress and veil and an unborn child. Yet it didn't rain on Tom Collig's funeral. The sun shone warm and hot, much too hot for Marissa Collig to wear the traditional widow's weeds. She did wear black, but the sleeves were short and the skirt only went to her knees and she didn't have a veil.

The congregation of mourners wasn't exactly up to movie standards, either. It would have been a small gathering, except that every off-duty police officer in the Bayport PD was present with their families, as were some from the police force that Tom had been part of before coming back to Bayport. The Collig family was small enough. Besides Tom's parents and two brothers, it was just Chief Collig and his wife and their two daughters with their husbands. None of Tom's grandparents were still alive, and his mother's only brother was unmarried. Marissa's family was likewise small. As for people who weren't police officers or family, there was only a smattering of the citizens of Bayport: several who were Tom and Marissa's friends and then the Hardys, the Radleys, and the Pritos, as well as Callie, Iola, Chet, Phil, Biff, and Jerry. It wasn't much of a gathering to pay their last respects to a man who had given his life in service to the community, but then, if Tom had wanted to have the accolades and admiration of the general population, he had made a mistake in becoming a police officer.

Everyone stood in reverent silence as the priest read the prayers for the rite of burial, and there were few dry eyes amongst them. The words were familiar, but they took on a new poignancy now, as everything always does when death has given a new significance to life.

After that, Chief Collig stepped forward to say a few words. He had written them down, but he had to wipe his eyes with his handkerchief several times before he could even pretend to read what he had written.

"I want to thank you all for being here," he started, most of his usual poise gone in his grief. "There really isn't much a person can say at a time like this, so I'm not going to try to make this too long. I remember the day that Tom called me up to tell me that he'd been accepted into the police academy. I wasn't really surprised. I knew that he had applied and he was certainly qualified, but it was a very proud day for me, knowing that my nephew was going to be following in my footsteps. Looking back now, though, it's easy to see that if that day hadn't happened, then this one wouldn't be happening now. A part of me wants to say that I wish that day hadn't happened, to wish away everything that led to this moment right now. But that would be the same as saying that Tom died in vain, that his sacrifices—all the sacrifices he made as an officer—were for nothing, and that isn't true. Tom served with honor and courage as an officer. He made a difference in so many lives, whether it was saving those lives or helping them to get justice. We're here today to honor his memory and legacy, but we can't leave that just for today. For those of you who are fellow officers, the only way we can truly honor Tom and all the others who have given their lives before this is to follow their example: to be honorable, courageous, just, and true to the responsibilities and duties with which we have been entrusted. It's not something to be taken lightly. It's not something to be done in exchange for admiration or gratitude or power. It's a calling to self-sacrifice in the service of others, and all throughout his career, Tom demonstrated that better than just about any other police officer I've ever known. He never shirked it, even when the greatest sacrifice was demanded of him. It will always be one of the greatest honors of my life to have been a part of his family and to have served with him. He was truly a great man."

After that, there was a twenty-one gun salute. The echo of those shots reverberated through the usually-silent cemetery, telling those already sleeping there that another hero who had served with honor had come to rest amongst them. Then Captain Olaf and Con Riley folded the flag that was draped over Tom's coffin and presented it to Marissa with a salute and a husky but brief thank-you.

Then it was over and those gathered there began to stir and disperse. The adults went to speak with Marissa and Chief Collig and other members of the family, but Frank and Joe and their friends felt suddenly rather shy and out of place, so they kept close together, a little distance away from the others.

"I'm glad we could make it in time," Iola said after a little while, looking up at the others from her wheelchair.

"Barely," Chet added, thinking of how they had just arrived in Bayport scarcely an hour before the funeral had started.

"I'm glad you could make it, too," Joe said, and though that was genuinely true of Chet, he was looking at Iola when he said it. "Didn't it mess up your camp thing to come?"

"Kind of," Iola admitted. "My coach is just going to have to deal with it. I didn't know Tom well, but I wouldn't have wanted to miss this." She looked around at the people gathered. "This is a pathetic showing on the part of the good citizens of Bayport," she added with a touch of sarcasm.

Frank shrugged and sighed. "It's not that unusual. A lot of people only care about cops when one does something wrong, and O'Rourke's given them plenty there. I guess they don't understand that they can be angry with O'Rourke and still give credit where credit is due to the rest of the police force."

"I don't get O'Rourke." Biff wrinkled his brow as he said it. "I mean, I guess I kind of do. He was trying to protect his dad and I guess I can even see how he didn't think what his dad did was all that wrong, but how could he think that he could help that Rudger guy out and that would be the end of it?"

No one had an answer for that, so Callie asked the Hardys, "Do you know what's going to happen to O'Rourke and his dad?"

"It's too early to know for sure," Frank said. "There are so many factors to consider. I'd hate to be the judge or jury for this one."

Iola shuddered and glanced down at her feelingless legs, recalling how Rudger was to thank for that. "What his dad did was one thing. From the sounds of it, Denny Curso was a horrible person, and the older O'Rourke probably saved lives in the long run. But helping Rudger escape is totally different."

"They were both wrong," Joe disagreed. "The older O'Rourke murdered a guy. There are no extenuating circumstances that can make that okay."

"But the justice system was failing to do its job," Iola argued. "Innocent people were paying the price. The older O'Rourke at least put a stop to it."

"I'm not going to pretend that the justice system is perfect, because it's not," Joe maintained. "There's always tweaking that could be done to make things better, fairer, whatever, but every reform is a double-edged sword. You make it easier to convict people like Curso, and you're going to wind up causing some innocent people to be convicted because of how much easier it is. You make it harder to convict innocent people by mistake, and you're going to wind up causing guilty people to get off free. We're not perfect, and so it's probably impossible to come up with a perfect justice system. Even if we could have the system itself perfect, we'd still need people running it as judges and attorneys and juries, and so there would still be miscarriages of justice. So it's a lot more complicated than just saying, 'We're pretty sure this guy's a bad guy. Let's put him in jail.' You've got to prove the guy's guilty."

"But everyone knew he was," Iola insisted. "It was just technicalities that got him off. What would have you done if you'd been in O'Rourke Sr.'s place?"

"Well, I wouldn't have killed the guy and hidden his body in a cave." Joe rubbed his chin. "I…don't really know what I would have done."

"It doesn't really matter, anyway," Tony interjected. "Taking a guy out to a lonely place and strangling him is murder, and murder is wrong in every circumstance, so it might not be easy to figure out exactly what the right thing would have been, but it is easy to say that what O'Rourke, Sr. did wasn't it. Still, I'm with Frank. I'm glad I don't have to figure out what to do about this."

Callie was eager to steer the conversation into a less controversial vein. "So, Iola, how long will you be home?"

"Only a few days," Iola admitted. "That's all the more I could beg for to get off."

"Aw," Joe complained. "I was hoping it would be longer than that."

"Sorry," Iola told him. "But the whole program will be over at the end of July, so we'll have most of August before college starts up again."

"That's something to look forward to," Joe said. "And you'll be coming to Clairmont like Frank and Callie and me, so we'll have still have lots of time together."

"Well…" Iola drew the word out. "Actually, I've sort of changed my plans about that. You see, the coach thinks that I can really make some progress if I keep up all the work I've been doing. Otherwise, this whole summer will kind of be for nothing, so he talked me into applying for a college close to there, in Texas."

"Oh." Joe tried to hide the disappointment from his expression. After all, if this could help Iola, it was for the best. "That's great. You're really making that much progress?"

Iola nodded eagerly. "I am. My balance on horseback is almost as good as it was before, and the coach has been doing some exercises that he says could possibly get me back to a point where I could maybe get a little bit of feeling back in my legs. It's too early to know for sure, but we're cautiously hopeful about it."

"And the best news is that she doesn't need me there for morale support anymore, so I'll be around for the rest of the summer," Chet added.

Iola shrugged. "Well, you've got your life to live, and I can't hold you back from it forever. I am grateful for everything you've done, Chet."

"Eh, what are brothers for?" Chet replied.

"Speaking of living your own life and all that," Jerry spoke up. "What's this I heard about you quitting your job, Tony?"

Tony blinked in surprise. "Who's spreading that rumor?"

"I stopped in there yesterday afternoon for some coffee and that cute waitress told me," Jerry replied. "You know, Darcy."

Both Joe and Phil turned away slightly at the mention of her name.

"Oh, great," Tony complained. "I wonder how she found out. I didn't want the managers to know until I had some plans in place and actually meant to put in my two weeks' notice."

"So it's true?" Jerry asked.

"I'm thinking really heavily about it, let's say that much," Tony said.

"How come?" Biff asked. "If it's because I don't come in often enough…"

"It's because waiting on you that one time was more than anyone could take," Tony teased him before becoming more serious again. "No, actually, it's because I could have died out there with Sean. It got me thinking, what if I don't have that much time left? Do I really want to spend it working that crummy job at Charlie's?"

"That's morbid," Callie commented.

"I didn't mean it to be," Tony replied. "What I meant was that maybe it's time to stop thinking about doing something worthwhile at some vague point in the future, and start doing something worthwhile now. I don't have anything definite in mind, though. I need to do some more thinking about it."

"If you don't like working at Charlie's, then you should figure something else out," Phil said, a bit quietly.

"I wouldn't blame you a bit," Joe added.

"Are you and Darcy still going out, Phil?" Callie asked.

Phil shook his head. "We had a, uh, difference of opinion." He took out his phone and checked the screen. He barely even looked at what time it was before he said, "Oh, hey, I've got to be going. I'll talk to all you guys later."

He started walking away. Joe hesitated a few seconds and then followed him.

"Hey, Phil, wait up," he said, once they were far enough from the others that they could talk without being overheard. Phil stopped and turned. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about," Joe said. "But I guess if you and Darcy are broken up, it doesn't really matter anymore, and the truth is, I didn't really want to talk about it."

Phil held up a hand to stop him. "I talked to Darcy the other day one more time. Like I said, we had a difference of opinion, but was hoping that maybe there was a chance of talking things. She told me what she did. That made up my mind for me. Obviously, we've got very different ideas about relationships. I'm really sorry, though. I don't really know what to say. It was partly my fault."

"It was just a dumb thing that happened." Joe put his hands in his pockets. "I'm just glad I don't have to explain it to you. I just thought you should know, but like I said, it doesn't really matter now."

"Yeah, well, it's just as well, I guess, if that's the sort of person she is. I would have had to find out sooner or later, and it would have been worse later. Although I still wish you hadn't been dragged into it. She was trying to make me jealous. Can you believe that? I don't know what kind of guys she's dated before, but I don't find that kind of thing attractive in any way."

"She obviously doesn't have any issues about using other people, which is always a bad sign," Joe said.

Phil nodded. "I hope she realizes that that isn't the way all this works sometime, but I'm not going to hang around and wait for it. I'm sorry again."

"Don't worry about it, again."

The two young men parted ways, as Phil walked toward his car and Joe went back to join his other friends once more. They were beginning to disperse as well, though, as several of them were deciding they would head for home themselves. Chet and Iola were among these, since they were tired after their race to reach Bayport on time. Joe offered to help push Iola back to their SUV. Iola didn't really need help, but she accepted the offer, anyway.

After a few minutes, Frank and Callie were standing by themselves. Their hands had somehow almost unconsciously joined each other, and they stood and watched the crowd of mourners for several minutes. In particular, they were watching Marissa as she spoke another police officer's wife.

"I hope she'll be all right," Callie said finally. "It would be so hard losing your spouse, the person you care about most in the whole world, at any time, but it would be even harder for her, I would think. She's so young and with the baby. They must have thought they had their whole lives ahead of them."

Frank bit his lip. "Maybe, but they probably knew that something like this was a possibility. I guess maybe Tony's right. No matter what job you have, you're not guaranteed to live to a ripe, old age. It's just more likely for a police officer than for a lot of other jobs."

"Or a private detective." Callie turned her head to look at Frank and he looked back at her.

"What are you getting at?" Frank asked.

"I don't know what the future holds, and I was thinking that if we ever got married…" Callie blushed and she spoke faster, hoping Frank wouldn't take any of this wrong. "I mean, if we did, then maybe this is what would be in store for us someday. I was wondering if I'd be able to stand it. For a second, I thought I couldn't, but I thought of the alternative, that we'd part ways somehow, and that was even worse."

Frank felt his heart beating faster. "Wouldn't it be easier on you if I went into a different line of work?" he asked slowly.

"Would you?"

"I…Maybe."

Callie considered that for a moment or two, trying to picture Frank doing some office job or maybe being a doctor or a teacher, but she couldn't picture that. "No," she said finally. "I don't want to hold you back from anything you want or need to do. I know you'd never do that to me."

Frank smiled, although he felt a bit choked up. "I don't know how I got lucky enough to meet you. As for…As for getting married, let's talk about that another time. This really isn't the time or the place, and besides, I don't think either one of us are really ready for that yet, anyway."

"You're probably right. But we will talk about it sometime, right?"

"Right."

"Talk about what sometime?"

Both Frank and Callie jumped to find Joe standing right behind them.

"Uh, taking the Sleuth out for a ride," Frank said, seizing on the first thing that came to mind. He hoped that Joe hadn't been standing there long enough to hear what they were really talking about.

"Uh-huh." Joe nodded a little too knowingly for Frank to be confident that he hadn't really overheard more the conversation than he was admitting. "Sounds like a fun idea. We should do it while Iola's still here."

"That would be fun," Callie said. "It's been ages since the four of us went out to do something like that. I was hoping we'd get the chance to when college started next fall. I'm sorry she changed her mind about coming to Clairmont."

"Yeah." Joe stuck his jaw out. "I'm sorry, too, but if it's what's best for her, I'm not going to stand in her way. Anyway, we'll have several weeks later this summer, and we can always talk on the phone."

Frank nodded and then looked at the time on his phone. "It's probably getting time to be heading home ourselves, but we should say something to Marissa first. Anyway, I want to."

Joe and Callie agreed, and so they went to speak to the young widow. They had to wait a few moments as she finished talking to someone else, but then she turned to the three young people.

"Oh, I was hoping to talk to you," she said. "You were with Tom when it happened, weren't you?"

"We were," Frank confirmed. "We're terribly sorry."

"Thank you. Please, could you tell me what he was thinking about there at the end?"

Frank floundered for a moment and glanced at Joe for help. "I don't know, exactly. He was telling me some stories about his work and giving me some advice. Then we stopped to help what looked like a disabled car."

Marissa nodded. "That sounds like Tom."

"I know there probably isn't much, but if there's anything we can do to help, just let us know," Joe offered.

"Thanks. You already did by being here, and you helped stop the guy who did this, so I'm already indebted to you." Marissa paused and then she added, "Tom was always the one who liked giving unsolicited advice, but if I may, please, don't let what happened to him scare you out of your detective work. He would have hated to see that. He always said that he was more afraid of growing old and not doing everything he could to serve others than he was of dying young." Her voice cracked. "Just don't take a single day for granted."

Frank and Joe nodded, and Callie promised, "We won't."

Author's note: The End. Once again, thank you so very, very much for reading this story. I so appreciate and I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you also to those who favorited and/or followed the story. That's an extra piece of support that really helps my motivation to write. And finally, the biggest thanks of all to everyone who left a review or two or one on every chapter: angelicalkiss, BMSH, Candylou, caseykam, Dais, drogorath, Drumboy100, ErinJordan, Guest, MargaretA66, max2013, Penlew, superobes, and every future reviewer who might find this story! Your comments and feedback are the most rewarding part of writing fanfiction.

So, I know I ended the story on a little bit of a downer note and that there are still a lot of unanswered questions concerning Black Rose. But that's just because we're only in the middle of this series. In fact, this marks the halfway point. Things will be more cleared up before we reach the end. The next part of the series will be coming very soon. It will be within the next couple weeks, for sure, and the title will be…drumroll…Traitor's Game. It's also going to see a couple of characters from earlier in the series return, but that's all the more I'm going to say right now. I'm looking forward to writing it and sharing another adventure with all of you.

God bless you all!

Elizabeth Joan