Dan left Trixie in his dorm room as he went down to the quad to meet his uncle and let him in to the building. Regan’s expression revealed he was still not happy with his nephew and the drive to the city had done little to cool down his ire.
“What the hell were you thinking?" Regan demanded by way of a greeting.
“I was thinking I want to find that grave site. This is our family we’re talking about and it seems to me that if we don’t do this, someday we’ll wish we had.”
“And? If that someday ever came, it’s not like we couldn’t have gone looking then. Maybe after we’ve already dealt with all the other crap in our lives?”
“I’m sorry. Okay? But nothing really happened and we’re fine.”
“Nothing really happened?” Regan asked sharply. “But something did? What are you not telling me?"
“Well, like Trixie told you, we went to see this old friend of mine. A woman who lived across the hall from us and she sometimes babysat me. While we were there, we… uh, ran into Luke.”
“Luke?” Regan echoed in confusion. “You mean Luke from your old gang?”
“Yeah.”
“How did that happen?”
Dan winced before answering. “I guess he’s in some kinda trouble. Angela said something about letting him lie low in her apartment.”
“So he was in the apartment? Where you took Trixie?”
“Yeah. And, uh… I’m not sure you’re going to like this next part….”
“Because I’ve like any of it so far?” Regan asked coolly. “Go on.” His expression remained neutral but Dan detected the increased tension in his uncle’s posture.
“We were in Angela’s apartment and I was about to explain to her why we were there when Luke came strolling out of a back room. He said some crap about me having a lot of nerve turning up or something, and then he recognized Trixie.”
Dan watched as Regan’s jaw visibly clenched. “And?”
“I don’t know exactly how it happened, but, uh… they sorta got into a game of one-upmanship.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Trixie asked Luke where he got some scar under his eye, and he said he got into a fight and implied he killed the other guy and the next thing I know they’re comparing scars and Trixie eventually ‘won’ by rattling off a lot of stuff she’s been through in the past few years and asking him how much longer he wanted to keep it up because she could go on all night.”
“Seriously?” Regan followed Dan into his building, swearing softly to himself.
“Uncle Bill? I don’t mean to, uh, sound hyper-critical of her or anything, but hearing her lay it all out like that, and the way she said it, like, ‘So what? Big deal’… I don’t know. It was kinda disturbing, really. Is she still seeing that counselor?”
“Yeah. She is. But this is obviously something else that needs addressing.”
Dan nodded in silent agreement as he led his uncle to the back stairs to the dorm’s second floor.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Angela wasn’t kidding,” Dan muttered as he looked around. “This place is enormous. How are we gonna find one grave marker when we don’t even know for sure the name on it?”
“We could still find someone to ask,” Trixie pointed out. “If there is a grave site for a Neall Regan, someone might be able to point us in the right direction. Or they could recognize the picture. Are you sure you don’t remember? Does any of this look at all familiar to you?”
“Maybe? A little? I think I remember that row of flags, but I could be confusing it with something else. Trix, the last time I was here I was probably only about seven years old. If that.”
“Why don’t we split up, then? We can cover more ground that way.”
“I don’t think Uncle Bill has any intention of letting you out of his sight any time soon. Me? I could probably wander out into traffic and get hit by a bus, as far as he’s concerned.”
Regan rolled his eyes at that. “Go see if you can find some kind of caretaker or groundskeeper. Trixie and I will take a walk up the main road and you can call us if you find anything out.”
They’d only been walking for about five minutes when Trixie’s phone rang. She pulled it from her back pocket, expecting to see Dan’s name on the caller ID. “Oh. It’s blocked again.”
Regan took the phone from her hand and turned. He drew back his arm and sent it flying up over several rows of graves. It landed in a large pond with a fairly quiet splash.
“I can’t believe you just did that.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I bought you a new phone this morning. A Blackberry. I’ve been assured they’re excellent phones that can get service even when others can’t. Apparently they were the only things working on September 11th.”
“Okay…”
“And you have a new number.”
“Right. But as of this moment, I’m phone-free. You didn’t bring the new one with you?”
“It’s at home. Charging. And I still have my phone on me, so we’re fine.”
“I thought you had all sorts of meetings today and you weren’t gonna be free until late? What happened with that? How’d you have time to go shopping?”
“Everything got cut short. Some sort’ve delay in a lumber shipment or something and then Mrs. Wheeler wasn’t feeling good at all, so the family came back to the city to take her to see her oncologist.”
“Oh,” Trixie murmured with a frown. “I hope she’s all right. Honey said she’s been doing really well lately.”
“From what I understand, episodes like this are fairly normal. I won’t say ‘nothing to worry about,’ but I did get the impression that it’s not panic time. Honey promised to call us with an update once she hears something.”
“Well, hopefully she won’t be calling me personally, since my phone’s now at the bottom of a small body of water.”
“I told her to call me.”
“You know, not that I don’t want to sound unappreciative or anything, but you didn’t even give me the chance to make sure I’ve got all my contacts written down.”
Regan sent her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Will it be that hard to get everyone’s numbers again?”
“I guess not. I think I know most of them.” She stopped walking and pointed off into the distance. “There!”
“Huh?”
“See it? At the top of that hill. C’mon!”
Regan squinted in the direction she indicated. It wasn’t the first time he had cause to marvel at her excellent eyesight. He could just make out smudges of grey against the backdrop of the cloudy sky, but he certainly couldn’t identify anything beyond that.
Trixie set off at a brisk pace, heading up a narrow, sloping drive. She reached the crest with Regan only a few steps behind and stopped in front of a row of raised markers and crypts. Beyond were two more rows of grave sites and then a low cement wall shaded by a dense growth of trees. “This is it,” she said softly.
He nodded and swallowed hard. Neall Regan. Was this his father then, as his sister had claimed? Was there any way to know for sure?
Trixie examined the grave marker thoughtfully. “There're no dates,” she murmured, running one finger along the worn letters carved into the stone. “But judging by the location and weathering, I really don’t think this could be your father. Maybe a grandfather or even great-grandfather?”
Regan shrugged slightly. “It could be someone I’m only distantly related to. Or not at all.”
“True,” she conceded. “And it’s interesting that there aren’t any other Regans buried anywhere around here.” She straightened and stepped carefully to one side, scanning a few of the other grave sites. “It seems to be mostly members of the Kelly family. Do you remember that name at all? Maybe on your mother’s side somewhere?”
“I can barely even remember what my parents looked like,” he told her quietly. “I don’t remember anything they might have said about family. Kelly is a very common Irish name, though, so I could easily have Kellys somewhere in my family tree.”
Trixie walked around the marker, looking at the row of plain stones behind it. She turned to glance back at Regan and paused, frowning. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Take a look at this.”
“Eight, five, seventy-two,” he read aloud as he circled around Neall Regan’s elaborate grave marker to see the inscription on the back. “I guess this grave is more recent than we thought. But it proves it’s not my father. He didn’t die until seventy-nine.”
“I’m not sure this is supposed to indicate a date of death,” Trixie said slowly. “And besides, what kind of epitaph is that?”
“Find the box?”
“Yeah. What the heck does that mean?”
Regan regarded her blankly. “Search me. I can’t even begin to guess.”
“This must be what your dad wanted you to see, though, right? And there must be something he wanted you to find. Some… box.” She circled the grave again. “That’s it. Eight. Five. Seventy-two. And ‘find the box.’ I gotta say, this really isn’t terribly helpful.”
“Maybe it would’ve meant more to my sister? Something my dad told her that she’d’ve remembered?”
“That’s always possible,” Trixie conceded. She looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what this could mean or how we could figure it out without any other clues. We could try to locate the records that would tell us more about whoever’s buried here.”
“I’ll think about it. But right now? I say we call Dan and get out of here. Whatever I’m supposed to find, whatever this box is, it’s waited years. It can wait a bit longer. I’m still more concerned with these calls you’ve been getting.”
“Yeah… but you did get me a new phone and number, so probably that’s gonna stop now.”
“I hope so.” Regan reached out and placed one open palm to her cheek. “Okay. Now that we’ve seen it, can we say your rabid curiosity has been at least somewhat satisfied and go home?”
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Where’s that postcard?” Trixie asked suddenly, pushing herself up.
Regan used the remote to pause their movie. “What?”
“The postcard. From your dad. I just thought of something.”
“Uh… it’s in the tin. On the shelf in the bedroom closet.”
Trixie gently shifted Clyde to one side. He opened his eyes to blink sleepily at her before resettling himself. “Hang on.”
She quickly fetched the tin and returned to the den. Regan watched her silently as she removed the postcard and flipped it over. “I was right!” she declared. “Look at the date. August 5th, 1972. Eight. Five. Seventy-two. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Probably not,” Regan agreed. “But what does it mean?”
Trixie read the postcard again, even though she was sure she already had it memorized. “I’m starting to think your father was the sort of man to hide clues in the open,” she said thoughtfully. “Boot up the computer. I want to check something.”
Regan rose from the sofa and crossed to the antique writing desk Trixie bought to serve as her school desk once her classes resumed in the fall. He powered up her computer and waited for it to connect to the internet. “What are we looking for?”
“Put this address in. I want to know where it is.” She read off the return address Neall had written in tiny letters in the upper left-hand corner.
“It’s a cemetery,” Regan said after a moment. He turned to look at her.
“On Dobson Road? I’ve never even heard of it, and I thought I knew every single street in Sleepyside thanks to my job. Where is it?”
He stepped away from the monitor and beckoned her forward. “You don’t recognize it because apparently it’s now known as Gellar Road, named after-“
“Terence Gellar, former Sleepyside mayor. That makes sense. I guess I never thought about it before. Gellar died when I was a baby, but obviously the street had to have some name before that.” She shook her head as she spoke, her mind racing. “So if it’s Gellar Road now, that means it’s the cemetery with the other Neall Regan grave. The one Bobby found. Probably shoulda realized that. I know you said you’d get out to see it ‘sometime,’ but what if we turned that into ‘this evening?’”
“Didn’t you say it was just a simple marker with dates and nothing more?”
“Yeah. But I’d like another look, now that we know it must be significant. Think about it. Your dad left you some sort of wacky treasure map of some kind. First, there was the photo of the grave in New York. That gave you the date, which told you the postcard was important. That postcard is telling you to go to the cemetery on Dobson – now Gellar – Road. We know there’s a marker there also with Neall Regan’s name on it, because Bobby happened to find it. But that really was a coincidence. Your dad had no reason to ever think you’d visit Sleepyside, much less move here and happen to stumble across that grave site by pure chance. This has to all be important somehow and related to ‘find the box.’”
Regan regarded her soberly. “That all sounds reasonable,” he told her, “but I’m still not fully convinced this is something we should be actively pursuing.”
Trixie started to reply, but he held up one hand to stop her.
“I just had to say it. I’m betting you and Dan will keep poking around, with or without me, and I’d rather it be with me, in that case. Let’s go see this grave Bobby found.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“Well, that's certainly interesting,” Regan murmured as he studied the weathered stone. The worn lettering was faint and hard to discern in the dim twilight. “The birth year is wrong, but the day is correct.”
“February 29th?”
“My dad was born on a leap year day. He used to joke that he wasn’t old enough to have kids and that my mom was a cradle robber.”
“So the day is correct, but the year is wrong, and the death date is entirely wrong.”
“Yeah.”
Trixie knelt down and pulled at some weeds growing at the base of the marker. “As far as clues go, this one really isn’t helping me much.”
“Maybe the box is buried here?”
“If it was, then we’re probably out of luck,” she said with a sigh. “From what I understand, this was one of the first sites our grave robbers plundered. It’s how Bobby found it in the first place.”
“So someone might’ve stolen it.”
“Possibly. If it was here to begin with.” She tugged at another weed and leaned forward to read a small inscription. “Huh. Was your dad into any kind of militia or something?”
“Militia?” Regan echoed doubtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t really think so. Why?”
“Because this says, ‘Donated with appreciation from the Fleet Street Patriots, Philly, PA.’” She turned slightly to look up at him. “That’s a bit odd, don’t you think? Is that something that groups sometimes do? Donate gravestones?”
“Honestly? I have no idea. It does seem a bit strange… What’s wrong?”
Trixie waved one hand in a quick, silencing motion. Regan stilled, waiting and listening. After a long, tense moment, she jumped to her feet and sprinted off into the growing darkness.
“Wildcat!” He shook off his surprise, racing after her. In seconds, she was nothing but an indistinct blur. Almost a full minute passed by before he caught the distant revving of a car engine, but no other sound beyond the heavy slap of his feet against the ground broke the stillness of the early night. He found Trixie at the north entrance to the cemetery, holding her phone. “What – was – that-?” he gasped, drawing in deep gulps of air and noting, with no little amount of chagrin, that she wasn’t even winded.
“No, I don’t think so. I only saw that it was a black, four-door. I didn’t catch the plate.” She paused to listen, then blew out a frustrated breath. “Yeah. I figured you’d say something like that…. No. Thanks, though, Captain. I’ll call you if I see the car again.”
“Who were we chasing?” Regan asked her once she’d ended her call.
“I wish I knew. Whoever he was, he got away before I could get a really good look at him and the sad thing is, there are so many possibilities. Someone working for the BCC, maybe? Paul Trent looking for another scoop?”
“And you thought it would be a good idea to go tearing after this unknown person because why?”
“It wasn’t exactly a thought-out plan,” she replied, aware of the defensive tone that had crept into her voice. “But once he realized I’d spotted him and he took off, I really wanted to see if I could get close enough to identify him.”
It was with a great deal of effort that Regan controlled his temper. He clenched one fist tightly, reminding himself that yelling would accomplish nothing. “Wildcat,” he said as calmly as he could. “Please try to think before you react.”
She nodded, her gaze dropping away. With a small sigh, he pulled her close and wrapped both arms around her. “I love you, baby. But sometimes you really do scare me silly. Can we go home now?”
“Um… can we go back to the grave site first? I brought a disposable camera. I want to take some pictures.”
“All right,” he agreed quietly, “But after that, I say we call it a night.”
“What the hell were you thinking?" Regan demanded by way of a greeting.
“I was thinking I want to find that grave site. This is our family we’re talking about and it seems to me that if we don’t do this, someday we’ll wish we had.”
“And? If that someday ever came, it’s not like we couldn’t have gone looking then. Maybe after we’ve already dealt with all the other crap in our lives?”
“I’m sorry. Okay? But nothing really happened and we’re fine.”
“Nothing really happened?” Regan asked sharply. “But something did? What are you not telling me?"
“Well, like Trixie told you, we went to see this old friend of mine. A woman who lived across the hall from us and she sometimes babysat me. While we were there, we… uh, ran into Luke.”
“Luke?” Regan echoed in confusion. “You mean Luke from your old gang?”
“Yeah.”
“How did that happen?”
Dan winced before answering. “I guess he’s in some kinda trouble. Angela said something about letting him lie low in her apartment.”
“So he was in the apartment? Where you took Trixie?”
“Yeah. And, uh… I’m not sure you’re going to like this next part….”
“Because I’ve like any of it so far?” Regan asked coolly. “Go on.” His expression remained neutral but Dan detected the increased tension in his uncle’s posture.
“We were in Angela’s apartment and I was about to explain to her why we were there when Luke came strolling out of a back room. He said some crap about me having a lot of nerve turning up or something, and then he recognized Trixie.”
Dan watched as Regan’s jaw visibly clenched. “And?”
“I don’t know exactly how it happened, but, uh… they sorta got into a game of one-upmanship.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Trixie asked Luke where he got some scar under his eye, and he said he got into a fight and implied he killed the other guy and the next thing I know they’re comparing scars and Trixie eventually ‘won’ by rattling off a lot of stuff she’s been through in the past few years and asking him how much longer he wanted to keep it up because she could go on all night.”
“Seriously?” Regan followed Dan into his building, swearing softly to himself.
“Uncle Bill? I don’t mean to, uh, sound hyper-critical of her or anything, but hearing her lay it all out like that, and the way she said it, like, ‘So what? Big deal’… I don’t know. It was kinda disturbing, really. Is she still seeing that counselor?”
“Yeah. She is. But this is obviously something else that needs addressing.”
Dan nodded in silent agreement as he led his uncle to the back stairs to the dorm’s second floor.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Angela wasn’t kidding,” Dan muttered as he looked around. “This place is enormous. How are we gonna find one grave marker when we don’t even know for sure the name on it?”
“We could still find someone to ask,” Trixie pointed out. “If there is a grave site for a Neall Regan, someone might be able to point us in the right direction. Or they could recognize the picture. Are you sure you don’t remember? Does any of this look at all familiar to you?”
“Maybe? A little? I think I remember that row of flags, but I could be confusing it with something else. Trix, the last time I was here I was probably only about seven years old. If that.”
“Why don’t we split up, then? We can cover more ground that way.”
“I don’t think Uncle Bill has any intention of letting you out of his sight any time soon. Me? I could probably wander out into traffic and get hit by a bus, as far as he’s concerned.”
Regan rolled his eyes at that. “Go see if you can find some kind of caretaker or groundskeeper. Trixie and I will take a walk up the main road and you can call us if you find anything out.”
They’d only been walking for about five minutes when Trixie’s phone rang. She pulled it from her back pocket, expecting to see Dan’s name on the caller ID. “Oh. It’s blocked again.”
Regan took the phone from her hand and turned. He drew back his arm and sent it flying up over several rows of graves. It landed in a large pond with a fairly quiet splash.
“I can’t believe you just did that.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I bought you a new phone this morning. A Blackberry. I’ve been assured they’re excellent phones that can get service even when others can’t. Apparently they were the only things working on September 11th.”
“Okay…”
“And you have a new number.”
“Right. But as of this moment, I’m phone-free. You didn’t bring the new one with you?”
“It’s at home. Charging. And I still have my phone on me, so we’re fine.”
“I thought you had all sorts of meetings today and you weren’t gonna be free until late? What happened with that? How’d you have time to go shopping?”
“Everything got cut short. Some sort’ve delay in a lumber shipment or something and then Mrs. Wheeler wasn’t feeling good at all, so the family came back to the city to take her to see her oncologist.”
“Oh,” Trixie murmured with a frown. “I hope she’s all right. Honey said she’s been doing really well lately.”
“From what I understand, episodes like this are fairly normal. I won’t say ‘nothing to worry about,’ but I did get the impression that it’s not panic time. Honey promised to call us with an update once she hears something.”
“Well, hopefully she won’t be calling me personally, since my phone’s now at the bottom of a small body of water.”
“I told her to call me.”
“You know, not that I don’t want to sound unappreciative or anything, but you didn’t even give me the chance to make sure I’ve got all my contacts written down.”
Regan sent her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Will it be that hard to get everyone’s numbers again?”
“I guess not. I think I know most of them.” She stopped walking and pointed off into the distance. “There!”
“Huh?”
“See it? At the top of that hill. C’mon!”
Regan squinted in the direction she indicated. It wasn’t the first time he had cause to marvel at her excellent eyesight. He could just make out smudges of grey against the backdrop of the cloudy sky, but he certainly couldn’t identify anything beyond that.
Trixie set off at a brisk pace, heading up a narrow, sloping drive. She reached the crest with Regan only a few steps behind and stopped in front of a row of raised markers and crypts. Beyond were two more rows of grave sites and then a low cement wall shaded by a dense growth of trees. “This is it,” she said softly.
He nodded and swallowed hard. Neall Regan. Was this his father then, as his sister had claimed? Was there any way to know for sure?
Trixie examined the grave marker thoughtfully. “There're no dates,” she murmured, running one finger along the worn letters carved into the stone. “But judging by the location and weathering, I really don’t think this could be your father. Maybe a grandfather or even great-grandfather?”
Regan shrugged slightly. “It could be someone I’m only distantly related to. Or not at all.”
“True,” she conceded. “And it’s interesting that there aren’t any other Regans buried anywhere around here.” She straightened and stepped carefully to one side, scanning a few of the other grave sites. “It seems to be mostly members of the Kelly family. Do you remember that name at all? Maybe on your mother’s side somewhere?”
“I can barely even remember what my parents looked like,” he told her quietly. “I don’t remember anything they might have said about family. Kelly is a very common Irish name, though, so I could easily have Kellys somewhere in my family tree.”
Trixie walked around the marker, looking at the row of plain stones behind it. She turned to glance back at Regan and paused, frowning. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Take a look at this.”
“Eight, five, seventy-two,” he read aloud as he circled around Neall Regan’s elaborate grave marker to see the inscription on the back. “I guess this grave is more recent than we thought. But it proves it’s not my father. He didn’t die until seventy-nine.”
“I’m not sure this is supposed to indicate a date of death,” Trixie said slowly. “And besides, what kind of epitaph is that?”
“Find the box?”
“Yeah. What the heck does that mean?”
Regan regarded her blankly. “Search me. I can’t even begin to guess.”
“This must be what your dad wanted you to see, though, right? And there must be something he wanted you to find. Some… box.” She circled the grave again. “That’s it. Eight. Five. Seventy-two. And ‘find the box.’ I gotta say, this really isn’t terribly helpful.”
“Maybe it would’ve meant more to my sister? Something my dad told her that she’d’ve remembered?”
“That’s always possible,” Trixie conceded. She looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what this could mean or how we could figure it out without any other clues. We could try to locate the records that would tell us more about whoever’s buried here.”
“I’ll think about it. But right now? I say we call Dan and get out of here. Whatever I’m supposed to find, whatever this box is, it’s waited years. It can wait a bit longer. I’m still more concerned with these calls you’ve been getting.”
“Yeah… but you did get me a new phone and number, so probably that’s gonna stop now.”
“I hope so.” Regan reached out and placed one open palm to her cheek. “Okay. Now that we’ve seen it, can we say your rabid curiosity has been at least somewhat satisfied and go home?”
~~~~~~~~~~~
“Where’s that postcard?” Trixie asked suddenly, pushing herself up.
Regan used the remote to pause their movie. “What?”
“The postcard. From your dad. I just thought of something.”
“Uh… it’s in the tin. On the shelf in the bedroom closet.”
Trixie gently shifted Clyde to one side. He opened his eyes to blink sleepily at her before resettling himself. “Hang on.”
She quickly fetched the tin and returned to the den. Regan watched her silently as she removed the postcard and flipped it over. “I was right!” she declared. “Look at the date. August 5th, 1972. Eight. Five. Seventy-two. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Probably not,” Regan agreed. “But what does it mean?”
Trixie read the postcard again, even though she was sure she already had it memorized. “I’m starting to think your father was the sort of man to hide clues in the open,” she said thoughtfully. “Boot up the computer. I want to check something.”
Regan rose from the sofa and crossed to the antique writing desk Trixie bought to serve as her school desk once her classes resumed in the fall. He powered up her computer and waited for it to connect to the internet. “What are we looking for?”
“Put this address in. I want to know where it is.” She read off the return address Neall had written in tiny letters in the upper left-hand corner.
“It’s a cemetery,” Regan said after a moment. He turned to look at her.
“On Dobson Road? I’ve never even heard of it, and I thought I knew every single street in Sleepyside thanks to my job. Where is it?”
He stepped away from the monitor and beckoned her forward. “You don’t recognize it because apparently it’s now known as Gellar Road, named after-“
“Terence Gellar, former Sleepyside mayor. That makes sense. I guess I never thought about it before. Gellar died when I was a baby, but obviously the street had to have some name before that.” She shook her head as she spoke, her mind racing. “So if it’s Gellar Road now, that means it’s the cemetery with the other Neall Regan grave. The one Bobby found. Probably shoulda realized that. I know you said you’d get out to see it ‘sometime,’ but what if we turned that into ‘this evening?’”
“Didn’t you say it was just a simple marker with dates and nothing more?”
“Yeah. But I’d like another look, now that we know it must be significant. Think about it. Your dad left you some sort of wacky treasure map of some kind. First, there was the photo of the grave in New York. That gave you the date, which told you the postcard was important. That postcard is telling you to go to the cemetery on Dobson – now Gellar – Road. We know there’s a marker there also with Neall Regan’s name on it, because Bobby happened to find it. But that really was a coincidence. Your dad had no reason to ever think you’d visit Sleepyside, much less move here and happen to stumble across that grave site by pure chance. This has to all be important somehow and related to ‘find the box.’”
Regan regarded her soberly. “That all sounds reasonable,” he told her, “but I’m still not fully convinced this is something we should be actively pursuing.”
Trixie started to reply, but he held up one hand to stop her.
“I just had to say it. I’m betting you and Dan will keep poking around, with or without me, and I’d rather it be with me, in that case. Let’s go see this grave Bobby found.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“Well, that's certainly interesting,” Regan murmured as he studied the weathered stone. The worn lettering was faint and hard to discern in the dim twilight. “The birth year is wrong, but the day is correct.”
“February 29th?”
“My dad was born on a leap year day. He used to joke that he wasn’t old enough to have kids and that my mom was a cradle robber.”
“So the day is correct, but the year is wrong, and the death date is entirely wrong.”
“Yeah.”
Trixie knelt down and pulled at some weeds growing at the base of the marker. “As far as clues go, this one really isn’t helping me much.”
“Maybe the box is buried here?”
“If it was, then we’re probably out of luck,” she said with a sigh. “From what I understand, this was one of the first sites our grave robbers plundered. It’s how Bobby found it in the first place.”
“So someone might’ve stolen it.”
“Possibly. If it was here to begin with.” She tugged at another weed and leaned forward to read a small inscription. “Huh. Was your dad into any kind of militia or something?”
“Militia?” Regan echoed doubtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t really think so. Why?”
“Because this says, ‘Donated with appreciation from the Fleet Street Patriots, Philly, PA.’” She turned slightly to look up at him. “That’s a bit odd, don’t you think? Is that something that groups sometimes do? Donate gravestones?”
“Honestly? I have no idea. It does seem a bit strange… What’s wrong?”
Trixie waved one hand in a quick, silencing motion. Regan stilled, waiting and listening. After a long, tense moment, she jumped to her feet and sprinted off into the growing darkness.
“Wildcat!” He shook off his surprise, racing after her. In seconds, she was nothing but an indistinct blur. Almost a full minute passed by before he caught the distant revving of a car engine, but no other sound beyond the heavy slap of his feet against the ground broke the stillness of the early night. He found Trixie at the north entrance to the cemetery, holding her phone. “What – was – that-?” he gasped, drawing in deep gulps of air and noting, with no little amount of chagrin, that she wasn’t even winded.
“No, I don’t think so. I only saw that it was a black, four-door. I didn’t catch the plate.” She paused to listen, then blew out a frustrated breath. “Yeah. I figured you’d say something like that…. No. Thanks, though, Captain. I’ll call you if I see the car again.”
“Who were we chasing?” Regan asked her once she’d ended her call.
“I wish I knew. Whoever he was, he got away before I could get a really good look at him and the sad thing is, there are so many possibilities. Someone working for the BCC, maybe? Paul Trent looking for another scoop?”
“And you thought it would be a good idea to go tearing after this unknown person because why?”
“It wasn’t exactly a thought-out plan,” she replied, aware of the defensive tone that had crept into her voice. “But once he realized I’d spotted him and he took off, I really wanted to see if I could get close enough to identify him.”
It was with a great deal of effort that Regan controlled his temper. He clenched one fist tightly, reminding himself that yelling would accomplish nothing. “Wildcat,” he said as calmly as he could. “Please try to think before you react.”
She nodded, her gaze dropping away. With a small sigh, he pulled her close and wrapped both arms around her. “I love you, baby. But sometimes you really do scare me silly. Can we go home now?”
“Um… can we go back to the grave site first? I brought a disposable camera. I want to take some pictures.”
“All right,” he agreed quietly, “But after that, I say we call it a night.”