All Good People Here(45)

Suddenly, a twig snapped behind her. She spun around, half expecting to see the woman with the auburn hair, but instead, standing twenty feet away at the edge of the cemetery was a man.

“Hi there,” he said. He looked to be in his sixties, with thinning hair and long limbs.

She cleared her throat. “Hi.”

“What brings you to our neck of the woods?” His voice was steady, calm.

“To Wakarusa?”

“To our cemetery.”

Margot blinked. He was wearing cargo shorts and Velcro sandals, his arms full of stuffed animals. Her heartbeat slowed. If he was there to follow or threaten her, he wasn’t exactly dressing the part. “Just visiting. Do you work here? At the church?” She didn’t recognize him from yesterday’s sermon, so she knew he wasn’t the pastor.

He smiled. “More like a full-time volunteer. I sort mail, help organize bingo. That sort of thing…Are you here to visit January?” He inclined his head to the stone behind her. “She’s gotten a lot of love this past week.”

“Because of the message on the barn?” Those words flashed through Margot’s brain. She will not be the last.

“Maybe. But what with that Natalie Clark case, it didn’t make much of a splash on the news.” He stepped through the little gate as he continued. “No, I think it’s because the anniversary’s coming up. Of her death. The twenty-fifth year. The same happened for year five and ten and so on, people sending things. Although there’s less each time.” He walked over and bent down to deposit his armful of stuffed animals, taking his time arranging them.

“Who are all those from?” Margot asked, watching as he swapped a teddy bear for a pink dolphin. Her gaze flicked over all the bouquets of flowers, wondering if any of them were from Jace.

He shrugged. “People across the country.”

“Do you always take care of the cemetery?”

The man stood, wiping his hands on his shorts. “Well, there’s usually not much to do. But I mow occasionally, water the flowers that are growing on some of the graves, that sort of thing.”

“What about January’s grave? Other than every five years, do you get any regular visitors or deliveries?”

The man shook his head. “No visitors, ’cept the odd tourist. And no deliveries, ’cept those.” He nodded toward the bric-a-brac surrounding the headstone, then stuffed his hands into his shorts pockets. “Though there is the ghost that visits every year.”

Margot snapped her head to look at him.

“Yep,” he said with a little chuckle. “Every year, around this time, a bouquet of flowers appears overnight on the grave. I never see who delivers it, so I call them ‘the ghost.’?”

Margot’s heart pounded. An annual flower delivery in the dead of night? That was Jace; it fit Eli’s anecdote to a tee. But what did the tradition mean to Jace, she wondered. Eli clearly thought his old friend had done it out of love, but Margot knew there were more possible explanations than that.

“Have the flowers come this year?” she asked. “The ones from…‘the ghost’?”

“Sure have.” The man shot a glance toward the headstone. “Those ones there.”

Margot followed his line of sight, but there was so much surrounding the stone she couldn’t tell which bouquet he was looking at. She bent down, touched a hand to a plastic-wrapped bouquet of lilies. “These?”

“The ones to the right.”

To the right was a glass vase, its flowers buried beneath the lilies and a leaning teddy bear. “Do you mind if I—?” Margot looked to the man, who shrugged. She gently moved the other objects to the side to reveal a dense bouquet of white roses, their petals already yellowing with death. “Do they ever come with a note?”

The man shook his head.

“And do you remember when they came this year? What day?”

“Well, now, lemme think.” He sucked his teeth. “I should remember because they showed up a bit earlier than usual and before all the rest of the stuff did. Oh, I remember! They were wet when I found them, so they must’ve showed up the night of the storm. You remember the storm from a few days back?”

“Of course.” The summer had been hot and dry, so the recent storm stuck in Margot’s mind. Though what day it had passed through their little town, she couldn’t remember. She stared at the roses for another long moment, then stood. “Well, thanks for talking with me. I appreciate your help.”

“Sure thing. Not every day someone takes an interest in this little plot of land.” He inclined his head. “You have a good day now.” He was across the grassy knoll and almost at the church’s back door when he turned to look at Margot over his shoulder. “And, hey,” he called, “you ever find out who the ghost is, you let me know, okay? I’ve been wondering ’bout them for years.” With that, he turned and disappeared into the little white building.

Margot spun back around, knelt at January’s grave, and gently lifted the vase of roses from the ground, the slew of stuffed animals surrounding it falling away. On her knees, she inspected the vase and flowers, looking for anything that could indicate where they’d come from. But there was no note, no ribbon, nothing. Then, just before she was about to give up, something caught her eye. On the clear glass bottom, she spotted something white and opaque: a little oval sticker that read “Kay’s Blooms.”