“Sophie?” I look over my shoulder. “Oh, Sassypants!” I laugh. “No.”
“Then Theodore?” he asks, nodding at another grave.
I shake my head.
“Wayne?” And when I shake my head, he says, “Anna? Penelope?”
Now, Dusty Mike hasn’t looked at any of the gravestones while he’s been talking. He hasn’t had to. It’s like he’s got the whole place memorized.
“No. I … uh … Actually, I don’t have any relatives here. A friend told me about All Souls’ Day and I thought it would be nice to come out and sit with someone who didn’t have visitors.”
He tilts his head a little as he looks at me, kind of stooped over and sideways. It’s like he’s an old raven and I’m some strange object that he can’t quite figure out. “Well, that would be most any of the folks in this part of the graveyard.” He hoes at some tall grass behind a headstone. “I’m about the only one who bothers to come by.”
I watch him hack away for a minute, then ask, “Do you always work on Sundays?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t work here no more.”
I hesitate. “Since when?”
“Since a couple months ago.”
“But … why?”
He hacks a little harder. “They got new people.”
Casey asks, “So why are you working here if you don’t work here?”
Dusty shrugs and hobbles over to another grave, where he starts hoeing at a weed. “I’ve done it my whole life. I’m not gonna stop now.” He gives Casey that side-eyed raven look. “Someone’s gotta watch over them.”
“Them?” I ask.
He nods, real serious-like. “There’s been shenanigans.” Suddenly he stops hoeing and says, “I didn’t come out on Halloween and I shoulda.”
Casey and I give each other a quick look and then I ask Dusty Mike, “Uh … why’s that?”
He studies me for a minute. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
So we pack up quick, then hurry after Dusty Mike as he goes deeper and deeper into the old section.
Dusty Mike led us to an area with big trees that had thick, mossy bark that looked ready to crack right off the trunks. The paths were more like deer trails, and we couldn’t even see the new section anymore. For the first time since we’d come into the graveyard I started to get a little nervous.
“Where are we going?” I finally ask.
“Right here, missy,” he says, coming to a stop.
I don’t see any signs of shenanigans—no smashed angels or spray-painted grave markers or even evidence of eggings.
There is just dirt.
Fresh, smoothed-over dirt.
“Is this a new grave?” I ask, but even as it comes out I know it doesn’t make sense. For one thing, the headstone has moss on it. For another, all the new graves are down in the new section.
“No, missy,” he says. “It’s been here fifty years.”
Casey looks at him. “And you didn’t just hoe up weeds?”
Dusty Mike shakes his head. “Didn’t touch it.” He gives Casey that one-eyed look. “Someone dug it up.”
My eyebrows go flying. “Dug it up? Why?”
“Must’ve been something valuable inside.”
Casey shakes his head. “But after fifty years?”
Dusty Mike shrugs. “Relations can be strange that way.” Then he adds, “People’ll dig up graves for an old pocket watch.”
“Are you serious?” I ask him.
“Used to be common as all get-out. And that’s nothing. In the old days, folks would steal the whole body.”
“What? Why?”
“To do experiments on.” Then he adds, “But that was before modern medicine. Back when doctors had trouble findin’ bodies to practice on.”
I hold my head with both hands. “So they’d dig up graves?”
Mike nods. “They could pull the bodies out in no time. Especially if there was no coffin. That’s why people started puttin’ the heavy markers over graves. The bigger the marker, the harder it was to dig up the grave. Nowadays they’re buried under a heavy liner or inside a vault, which makes them hard to get to … and doctors have folks donatin’ their bodies to science so they don’t have to steal ’em.”
I let this soak in for a second, then ask him, “What’s a liner?” because in my mind it’s like the inside of a jacket and I can’t quite put that together with heavy.
“Oh. It’s a big cement box. Goes inside the grave, over the coffin. Keeps the dirt from settlin’ in.” Dusty Mike gives us the raven look. “But there’s no liners in a lot of the graves in this part. Some of ’em’s shallow, too. Don’t even have coffins. Just a burial cloth.”
I blink at him. “They were just wrapped in a cloth and put in the ground?”
He nods. “Some religions like to go that route. Could be a matter of cost, too. What the family could afford.”
I can’t help staring at the fresh dirt. “But … you don’t know someone dug up this grave, right?”
“Why else would it look this way?”
“Maybe a relative just cleaned off the weeds? I mean, if you were here to steal something, why close it up again and put the headstone back and make it look all even and neat and everything?”
He twists his head, first looking at me, then the grave, then me. Finally he says, “It was dug up. I can feel it.” He takes a deep breath and sort of hangs on his hoe. “I told Gordon, but he won’t even come up here and look. Told me I was trespassing.” He shakes his head. “Me. Trespassing.”
“Gordon?” I ask. “Who’s Gordon?”
“The manager. You must’ve seen him. Big man. Likes his ball caps. Suddenly’s got no use for me. But I don’t see him comin’ up here to tend to these graves.” He lets a cackle slip out. “Afraid of ghosts, if ya ask me.”
Casey nods. “That’d set you back if you worked in a graveyard.”
“What he ought to do is embrace ’em. The spirits are your friends, but only if you walk with ’em. The minute you start runnin’? They’ll chase you.”
“So … what are you going to do about the grave?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “What’s to do? It’s done. The grave robbers is gone. And nobody cares. I checked the records. There’s no next of kin.”
“But somebody arranged to have him buried, right?”
“It’s not a man,” he says. “It’s Ofelia Ortega. She was a nanny for the Roggazini family.”
“As in Roggazini Farms?” Casey asks.
Mike nods. “Adam Senior took care of the burial. He’s since passed. Him and the other Roggazinis are over in the new section.”
“But”—I kind of squint at him—“how could you check the records when you don’t work here anymore?”
He gives me a crooked smile as he pulls a classic-looking ring of keys out of his pocket. “Because nobody bothered to ask me for these.”
“Wow, those are cool,” Casey says, and he’s right. The ring is the size of a bracelet, black and smooth, and the keys are old and sort of brown. There’s even a skeleton key.
Dusty Mike slips them away. “Need to keep visitin’ the folks in the Sunset Crypt.”
“Does that place go underground?” Casey asks.
“Right,” Mike says with a nod. “Fifty-two people restin’ in peace down there.” Then he adds. “It’s got a real good feel inside. I take my lunch down there sometimes.”
Well, okay. Knowing Dusty Mike likes having lunch inside an underground crypt with a bunch of dead people is really kind of creeping me out. But Ofelia’s grave does look like it’s been more than just, you know, gardened, so I shift the conversation back to that. “If you think grave robbers dug up this grave and that Gordon guy won’t even come up here to look, why don’t you tell someone who can do something about it. Like maybe the police?”
“The police?” He puts some muscle into hoeing at a weed. “They don’t seem to put much stock in what I tell them. Probably best if I just keep doin’ what I’ve been
doin’.”
I eye him. “You mean coming over and hanging out with the … spirits?”
He nods, then twists his head like he’s tossed his nose toward the back of the cemetery. “I live ’cross the street. I unlock the side gate and slip right in. No one notices me.” He shakes his head. “Only wish I’d come over Halloween night.”
Now, while we were talking, I guess Casey had turned his phone back on, because all of a sudden it wah-wah-wahs, and when he checks the display, he gives me a nod and answers, “What’s up?” as he walks away.
Mike watches him go. “Nice of you two to visit with Sophie,” he says, and just like that he’s done talking and hobbles away.
A short minute later Casey’s hurrying back, telling me, “Gotta go. Danny’s outside Billy’s house ranting.” And I guess whatever’s going on is pretty intense because he doesn’t say a word about Dusty Mike or thank me for the picnic or say anything about calling me later. He just gives me a quick kiss and takes off.
So there I am, alone in a pretty scary part of the old cemetery, standing beside a grave that may have been dug up by someone looking for antique pocket watches.
Or whatever.
And since squeezing around the gate we’d snuck through to get inside the graveyard on Halloween would be a lot shorter than going out the way I’d come in, that’s what I decide to do.
Trouble is, Dusty Mike’s hoe is propped up against the wall, and I’m worried about him seeing me break my promise.
Again.
But I’m also getting really nervous being in the graveyard by myself.
Dusty Mike may have seemed nice when he helped me track down Elyssa, but he’s definitely strange.
And more than a little creepy.
I decided to stop in at Holly’s to talk to her about maybe keeping the whole Danny thing between us, at least for a while, but the instant I walk through the Pup Parlor door, I get attacked.
Not by a pit bull or a Rottweiler, or even a Doberman pinscher.
Nope.
By my best friend.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Marissa cries, flying at me. “I can’t believe you followed him! And that you called the cops!”
It was just Holly and Marissa downstairs, and obviously Holly had already spilled the beans.
“Sorry,” Holly tells me with a cringe. “She got it out of me.”
I turn to Marissa. “Look, he broke the guy’s ribs! And he stole his stuff! Danny’s turned into a full-on criminal!”
“And you’re what? His judge and jury?”
I squint at her. “What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you? You don’t know he did it. You weren’t there. And I don’t care what you heard, I don’t believe it! He was probably just bragging or … or … trying to act tough. Guys have to go through, you know, rites into manhood”—her head spazzes around like it’s got some jolt of current overloading it—“or whatever!”
“So you’re okay with a guy who brags about beating someone up, but not okay with someone who actually does it?”
“Quit twisting my words!”
“I’m not, Marissa. I just don’t get how you can stick up for him!”
“And I don’t get how you can go on a picnic when Danny’s incarcerated!’
I almost asked her how she knew about the picnic, but I figured she must’ve talked to Grams. So instead I cock an eyebrow at her and say, “Incarcerated? He’s not incarcerated. Right now he’s over at Billy’s house beating down the door.”
“At Billy’s? Why Billy?”
“Because he’s looking for Casey.”
“Casey? Why Casey?”
“Because he thinks Casey turned him in.”
“Why does he think that?”
“Because he saw Billy, Casey, and me coming down the police station steps.”
She throws her hands into the air. “Well! There you go! The whole world knows you narc’d on him.”
For all the things Marissa and I have gone through, there was never, ever a point where I couldn’t see us as being friends forever and ever. But right here, right now, I caught a glimpse. It was an awful feeling, too. Cold and shivery and scary.
Like walking on a grave.
I shake it off, grab her, and push her into a chair. “Listen, would you? Just listen.”
She crosses her arms and looks at me like there’s no way anything I have to say will make any difference.
I start talking anyway. “The reason we were coming down the police station steps is because El Zarape pulled a knife on Billy yesterday.”
“What!” Holly and Marissa say at the same time.
“Exactly! Holly and I figured out that those skulls were real—”
“They’re real?” She looks from me to Holly, and when both of us nod, her arms uncross and she says, “Wait—who said?”
“Never mind right now,” I tell her. “The point is they’re real and Casey and Billy were on their way over to Hudson’s with them when El Zarape jumped him.”
Marissa’s stony stare is gone. “Seriously?”
“Yes! So we decided to report everything to the police, because what kind of wacko is running around with two real skulls? Or holding up kids at knifepoint?”
She nods like, Yeah, makes sense.
“But as we’re coming out of the station, the Borschman and Danny are coming in.”
“Oooh, bad timing.”
“No kidding!”
“And Danny thought you were there because you’d turned him in.” Marissa’s forehead goes all wrinkly. “But you did turn him in!”
“But the only other person who knew that was Holly! Casey and Billy had no idea! And when Danny called me a narc at the police station, Casey practically shoved him down the steps. After that I really thought I had to keep it a secret from him, but it was making me crazy. So the reason I took Casey on a picnic was to tell him the truth.”
Marissa gasps. “You told him?”
“Yeah. And believe me, it wasn’t easy.”
“What did he say?”
So I tell them the whole brother-versus-random-stranger bit and what Casey said about if the Preacher Man had been his dad instead of some annoying evangelist, and when I’m all done, Marissa just blinks at me. “So he’s okay with it?”
I nod and look down. “He was amazing about it.”
She takes a deep breath, holds it for the longest time, then finally lets it out. “It’s so hard to believe Danny would do something like that.” Her voice is all quivery, and even though her words say one thing, I can tell she’s finally starting to understand that it’s true.
I squat down in front of her. “I’m really, really sorry, Marissa. He’s just not the guy you think he is.”
She heaves a sigh. “I have got to get over him.”
Holly shakes her head. “How can you not be over him after this?”
“I don’t know!” She covers her face with her hands and leans her elbows on her knees. “I’ve liked him for so long.” She sighs again. “And I thought he liked me, too!”
Very quietly I tell her, “He plays you, Marissa. Casey told me so.”
Her head snaps up. “He did?”
I nod. “Danny knows you’re nuts about him. Everyone knows. Casey says Danny uses it to his advantage.”
She covers her face again. “Oh, I feel like such an idiot!”
“Look. Try to forget the Danny you have a crush on. He’s a figment of your imagination. Picture him kicking a guy and stealing his stuff. Picture him bragging about it. See the real Danny and you’ll be over him.”
“I don’t know why I can’t just do that. What’s wrong with me?” She looks at me all buttery-faced. “I’m sorry I got so mad.”
“Yeah,” I tell her with a little laugh. “That was kinda scary.”
We’re all quiet a minute and then Holly says, “So what now? If this gets out, school’s going to be brutal.”
I rak
e my hand through my hair and sigh. “Yeah, well, Casey’s not telling anyone, and if you guys can please not tell anyone, I think we could contain it.”
“I have no problem with that,” Holly says.
Marissa takes a deep breath. “Me, either.”
I look Marissa in the eye and say, “One little slip and it’s all over.”
“I can do this.”
Holly nods. “Me too.”
I stand up and say, “I’m sure Heather’s going to be firing off about it. I just have to remember she doesn’t know and come up with a good defense.”
We all look at each other, and even though no one says it, I know we’re all thinking the same thing: Good luck with that.
My problem was that a rumor becomes the truth if you don’t deny it, and how could I deny it when it was the truth? I decided that my only defense was an even more brutal offense, and by the time I got to school Monday morning, I knew what I’d do if Heather caused me trouble.
Which of course she did.
“There she is!” Her Royal Snideness calls from across the way. “The narc!”
She’s with Monet, and there’s a bunch of other people around. So instead of ignoring her like I usually do, I go toward her, and start talking loud so everyone can hear, “Nice try, Heather, but I heard you’re the one who called the police on Danny!”
Everyone stops and stares. “Me?” she screeches, and it’s almost funny to see how shocked she is that I would be starting a rumor about her.
“Yeah, you! What do you think, we’re all idiots? Everyone knows what a backstabber you are! What better way to get back at Danny for dumping you?”
“What are you talking about?”
A crowd is forming and my heart is beating like mad, but there’s no backing out now. I look at her like she’s the world’s biggest idiot. “You versus that hot high school girl? Who do you think’s gonna win?”
“Shut up!”
I snort. “I’m not the one who needs to shut up! Apparently you’re the one going around flapping her lips.” I walk away and toss, “Narc,” over my shoulder.
All of a sudden Holly and Marissa are next to me and Marissa’s whispering, “Ohmygod! That was genius!”
Holly snickers, “She didn’t know what hit her!”