LITMIR.BIZ

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of you guys got shots, there wouldn’t be nobody for me to catch it from.”

      Carson shook his head. “Tell me something, man—how’d you ever pass the physical? When they X-rayed your skull, didn’t it register empty?”

      “Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I sneezed on you. All I’ve got is a cold. It’s those other jokers you got to watch out for. I mean, Eddie, he’s been out since last Thursday, running a fever, coughing his head off.” The redheaded policeman forked back his hair, replaced his hat and reached for the door.

      “Sounds like I’m needed.”

      “No way. Some of the first guys to go down are already starting to come back. Chief says your immunity system’s probably compromised or something.”

      “Or something,” Carson Beckett said dryly, watching his friend dash out to the unmarked car.

      Glancing at the relentlessly gray skies, he shut the door and turned toward the kitchen to see if he had any canned chicken soup on hand. Just in case. The pizza, when and if it was delivered, would do for breakfast.

      As guilty as he might feel about being out on disability for so long, the chief was probably right. Whatever bug was going around, Carson couldn’t afford to risk it. He didn’t know about his immune system, but tangling with a drug dealer armed with a two-ton truck, followed a few months later by having his unmarked car creamed by a kid riding a chemical high was about all he could handle at one time. He was beginning to feel like that old Li’l Abner character—the guy with his own personal black cloud hanging over his head.

      He missed work. Missed the boredom of routine calls and paperwork, the adrenaline rush of closing in on a tough case, and most of all, missed the camaraderie of guys he’d worked with for years, even those he didn’t particularly like.

      It was his life, dammit. It was what he did—who he was.

      He found a can of chicken noodle soup, opened it and dumped it into a pan. Adding garlic salt and black pepper, he debated his options. He could report in tomorrow and catch up on some of the paperwork that was part of being a cop these days.

      Or he could use the rest of his downtime constructively. He had some pressing personal business he’d put off for too long, starting with Margaret.

      It had always been more or less understood in both families—hers had lived next door for at least a generation—that unless something better came along for either of them, they would end up together. The Becketts were big on family. Strong ties, deep roots. Margaret was his mother’s goddaughter, and Kate, his mother, was increasingly fragile, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Both he and Margaret had agreed that they owed it to her to marry while she could still be a part of the festivities.

      Carson had a habit that had developed into a policy over the years. On any to-do list of more than three items, he always tried to shorten the list by first tackling the one that could be finished the quickest.

      Which meant that before he got caught up in wedding prep—in his family, marriage was a big deal—he needed to fulfill a promise he’d made to his grandfather before he died. A promise to clear up a generations-old debt owed by the Becketts to a family named Chandler.

      Ever since a cowboy from Oklahoma named Chandler had handed over an undisclosed sum of money to an earlier Beckett, asked him to invest it, and then disappeared, the debt had gone unpaid. The Becketts had thrived. No one knew what had happened to the original Chandler, but a bundle of stock had been handed down through the Beckett family, with each subsequent generation intending to track down the Chandler heirs to make restitution.

      Three days, tops, and the deed would be done. One more item he could mark off his list. Next would come formally popping the question and keeping his mother supplied with bridal magazines, fresh photo albums and blunt-tipped scissors. She was totally focused on weddings.

      Barefooted, dressed in jeans and an open flannel shirt, Carson ate the soup from the pan. Table manners had been instilled in him from the time he was allowed to eat in the dining room with the family, but as a bachelor living alone, he allowed himself a certain amount of leeway.

      He would have to clean up his act—one more thing on his to-do list—but not yet. It could wait until he was back on duty. Meanwhile, he would plan on one day to drive up to Nags Head, a day to locate the address and hand over the money, and another day to get back home. He could have made it in two days, but unless he got out and walked around every couple of hours, his knee and God knows what else would freeze up on him.

      But the deed would be done. Finally. Unfortunately, the stock was now worthless, as the Becketts were inclined to procrastinate. The only record of the original debt was word-of-mouth, and PawPaw, who might have remembered hearing a few details from his own father, had died in January at age one hundred and two after suffering a series of strokes. For various reasons, neither of his sons was able to take on the task, and so it had been left to Carson and his cousin, Lance Beckett.

      It was Lance who had come up with the idea of hiring a genealogist to track down the Chandler descendants. They’d shared the cost and each agreed to chip in ten grand of their own, intending to locate the heirs, hand over the money and mark the debt paid in full. It might not be enough; on the other hand, it might be a terrific return on what could easily have been the loan of fifty bucks, if you didn’t figure in compound interest. Back in the late 1800s when the debt had initially been incurred, fifty bucks might have been considered respectable money.

      Lance had already fulfilled his part of the promise by tracking down one of the two heirs and repaying his portion of the debt. He’d gone further than that—he’d married the woman.

      Now it was Carson’s turn. Unlike Lance’s heiress, who had moved east from Texas, Carson’s heiress had originated in Virginia, daughter of a high profile trial lawyer named Christopher Dixon and one Elizabeth Chandler Dixon, both deceased; granddaughter of a retired judge known as old Cast Iron Dixon and a wealthy socialite with the unusual name of Flavia. Both maternal grandparents deceased.

      The Chandlers were thinning out, it seemed.

      “Well, thank the Lord for small mercies,” Kit Dixon muttered under her breath, screwing the cap back on her India Ink drawing pen. The two jerks who’d been arguing so loudly on the other side of the church had evidently decided to make peace—or at least to move their argument to more appropriate surroundings.

      One of the reasons she liked this old cemetery so much was the peacefulness. It was little more than a wooded knoll in a sea of marsh grass, home only to countless birds and small animals.

      Kit hated anger, hated arguments. Always had. Even after all these years, loud, angry voices still made her stomach ache.

      As quiet once again descended over the surroundings, she leaned against a mossy tombstone and gazed out over the cypress trees, the wind-twisted scrub oaks and a cluster of cedars. Chalky white marble gravestones of all shapes and sizes stood out against the dark foliage. Small ones with lambs on top—tall ones with angels. The lambs were her favorites.

      It was perfect. She could easily visualize ghosts rising like smoke from the ancient graves. Now that the last sketch was done, she was ready to bring her watercolors. Atmosphere was far more important than getting a perfect drawing. During that fleeting time before nightfall she could sweep in the values and the muted colors—fifteen or twenty minutes for each illustration, and she’d be finished. After that she’d give the manuscript one last polish, hand it over to be typed, and Gretchen’s Ghost would be finished. It wasn’t even due at her publisher until the first of April.

      Brushing the leaves and dried grass from her seat, Kit paused to touch a leaning marker, worn far too smooth to read. “Who are you?” she wondered aloud. “If I knew your name, I’d use it in my next story.”

      She often used names she found on tombstones or on mailboxes, mixing first names and last. It gave her a sense of being connected to the past. And although she hated to admit it, she desperately needed to feel connected to someone—to something solid. She wondered sometimes if everyone felt that way, especially as

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