Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (24 page)

But the grave right next to him has a flat marker in the same stone as the
FATHER
shrine, but all it says is
MOTHER
.

There isn’t even a
name
.

“Nice,” I say with a snort.

Casey compares the two. “Yeah, that’s a little skewed, huh?”

“Unbelievable.”

We walk along some more and then Casey asks, “So what would you want on your tombstone?”

I laugh. “Oh, you’re asking the hard questions now.” And I’m thinking about it as we make our way around a big cement angel, but then I see something on the ground ahead of us and stop short. “Is that … ?”

My eyes are kind of bugged out and Casey laughs and says, “Yes, Sherlock, that’s a hoe.”

We move toward it, but before I can say anything about how Dusty Mike would not just leave his hoe lying on the ground like that, Casey yanks me behind a big granite grave marker and puts a finger against his lips. “Shhhh!”

And that’s when I hear it, too.

Voices.

Dusty Mike’s hoe is ahead of us and on the left. The voices are coming from in front of us and to the right. And even though I can’t see anyone yet, I recognize one of the voices.

“The Borschman,” Casey whispers with a grin.

We see him come into view about fifty feet to the right of the Sunset Crypt, and even though he’s avoiding the hill the crypt is on, he’s huffing and puffing like mad. “That’s Gordon the Shovel Man with him, but I have no idea who that third guy is,” I whisper back.

“Ricky the Rake Man?” Casey teases.

I grin at him. “Very funny.”

But as they keep walking up the rise, I start to get worried because they’re getting closer and closer to us. “Where are they going?”

I tuck farther behind the tombstone so I’ve barely got an eyeball wrapped around the right side of it, and Casey does the same with an eyeball wrapped around the left. But we have our backpacks and our skateboards and keeping all of it hidden is making things really
crowded
.

And then the third guy points and says, “There it is,”
and
that’s
when I finally notice that in front of us and a little to our right is a pushed-over tombstone.

It’s not lying flat like a fallen domino.

It’s more half over, like an uprooted tree.

In a flash things go from a kind of fun Hide-and-Spy to a heart-pounding Get-Found-and-Die because I know that if we’re spotted this close to that pushed-over tombstone we’ll never be able to convince them we didn’t do it.

“This may not look like much to you,” Gordon’s telling Officer Borsch, but we’ve got to take the whole thing out, level the location, get cement up here, and reset it.”

“It’s a
ton
of work,” the third guy says.

Gordon nods. “Teddy knows. He reset the ones from the first round and they weren’t nearly this size.”

It flashes through my mind that Teddy’s a good name for the guy, because with his short brown beard and bushy hair he looks kind of like a bear.

Plus he’s wearing hiking boots and jeans like he belongs in the great outdoors.

Anyway, Teddy says, “I’m dreading this one.”

Officer Borsch walks around it, taking pictures and kind of analyzing the situation as he asks, “You say the first tombstones were pushed over a week ago Thursday?”

Gordon hesitates, then shakes his head. “It wasn’t last Thursday—that was the day before Halloween. And it wasn’t the Thursday before that. It was the Thursday before
that
.”

“So two weeks ago Thursday?”

“Whatever you want to call it.” He thinks a minute. “It was the sixteenth.”

“And which direction did the kids come through that first time? Was the gate open, do you know? Or did they climb the fence?”

“Again, Courtney’s the one to ask. I only got here at the tail end of things.”

“Both times?”

He nods. “I didn’t see the kids the first time, but I sure saw the headstones the next morning. And I sure saw them on Halloween.”

“Could this one have been done at the same time and you just didn’t notice it until now?”

Gordon shakes his head. “Look at the dirt. Dark and fresh.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“In my experience, it’s better to keep these things quiet. Reporting it, having it in the paper or on the TV, just makes the situation worse. It gives kids ideas. Pretty soon I’ve got copycats causing me more work.”

Teddy chimes in with, “But now they’ve been through
twice
, and it’d be nice to stop them from coming again.”

Gordon nods. “Exactly.”

Officer Borsch puts his camera in a pocket and makes some quick notes on a pad, then asks, “When will Courtney be back?”

“Not until tomorrow. We give her flexible hours because she’s got a kid, and being a single mom’s not easy.”

“Right,” the Borschman grunts. He turns to Teddy. “Did you witness any of this?”

“I wasn’t here those nights. Just found the tombstones knocked over.”

Officer Borsch nods, then asks Gordon, “So what can you tell me about Ofelia Ortega’s grave?”

“Who?”

“Ofelia Ortega. It was reported that her grave was dug up.”

There’s a moment of silence and then Gordon says, “Your source on this must be Michael Poe and I’m sorry, but Mike Poe is a nutcase.” Then he adds, “A
disgruntled
nutcase now that we’ve let him go.”

“Why was he fired?”

Gordon shakes his head. “He was scaring off visitors. He worked here a long time, and
I
was used to him, but the newer staff?”

Teddy Bear kind of huffs and says, “He weirded me out big-time.”

“But it was Courtney, especially. He would appear out of nowhere and scare the hell out of her. I had several talks with him because she’s organizing our records and I can’t afford to lose her, but he lives in a different dimension.”

“How long has she worked here?”

“Six months. Maybe it was having a woman around, I don’t know. She said he would talk in riddles around her. Almost like incantations.”

“Like spells?”

“Well, I never heard them, but he wouldn’t dare pull that stuff with me around. Teddy heard, though.”

Teddy Bear nods. “Yeah. It was weird stuff. Didn’t make any sense but was majorly creepy. The guy’s definitely not right.”

“He’s a Luddite, too,” Gordon says, “so it’s not like I was getting a lot of help out of him, anyway.”

“A Luddite?” Officer Borsch asks.

“You know—a guy who doesn’t believe in progress? He wouldn’t touch any of the equipment. He wouldn’t use the backhoe to dig graves, couldn’t even get him to use a Weedwacker. Said he could do it all with a hoe and a shovel.”

Now, while Officer Borsch is soaking this in, I hear
grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff, grrrrr-ruff-ruff-ruff
way off in the distance.

Just like I had on Halloween.

“Did you hear that?” I mouth to Casey.

He looks at me like, Hear what? but I drop it because Officer Borsch is talking again. “Do you mind showing me the grave, anyway?” he asks Gordon. “I promised I’d at least take a look.”

Gordon scuffs at the ground with his shoe. “I’d have to go through the records and see where it is. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and ask Courtney to look it up for you.” Then he adds, “But when it comes to wild tales about graves being robbed, you might want to consider the source … and the motive. We do know how to run this place without Mike Poe, regardless of what he may like to think.”

“Uh, it’s getting kind of late,” Teddy says. “Do you want me to start on that grave, or wait for tomorrow?”

“Burial’s not until Thursday so tomorrow morning’s fine,” Gordon tells him. “Why don’t you just call it a day?” Then he says to Officer Borsch, “Hey, I appreciate your coming out. I hope you track down those kids. Courtney thinks it’s the same bunch. They were in costume on Halloween so all I can tell you is that there were five or six of ’em and they looked like they were somewhere between thirteen and sixteen. But Courtney’ll be able to do better than that.”

So the three of them go back in the direction of the office, and the second they’re far enough away, Casey says, “What time is it?”

Not having a cell phone, I do wear a watch. “Quarter to five,” I tell him.

“I’ve got to get home!”

“You want to go out the back gate?”

“The one we came through on Halloween?”

I nod. “It’ll be a lot faster, and there’s no way I want to risk Officer Borsch seeing us.”

He’s all for that, but when we get to the gate I can tell he’s worrying about us being spotted together. “You go first,” he says.

“You’re the one in a hurry. It’s fine. I’ll just wait right here for a few minutes before I leave.”

“There’s no way.” He nudges his nose across the street. “You remember how Hoe Man Mike said he lived right across the street? Well, I’m not leaving you in here or anywhere near here alone.” He grabs my skateboard and backpack. “Go through and I’ll hand you your stuff.”

I grin at him as I squeeze through. “Hoe Man Mike?”

He grins back. “Guess you’re rubbing off on me.” Then he kisses me through the gate and says, “Meet me tomorrow at Sassypants Station?”

I laugh. “Sassypants Station?”

He grins and passes me my things. “Yeah.”

“I’ll be there!”

So I hurry across Stowell, and I’m trucking along through neighborhoods, trying to get home as quick as possible, when I spot a little girl with her mother coming toward me on the sidewalk. They’re about half a block away, but what gives them away is the mountain of fur walking beside them.

“Elyssa!” I call with a wave.

“Sammy!” she squeals, and starts running.

It’s a good thing her mother’s holding the leash, because their sheepdog, Winnie, is yanking hard to chase after Elyssa.

When we meet up, I give Elyssa a hug and say, “Hi, Mrs. Keltner!” then sink my hands into the woolly monster’s fur and give her a tousle. “Wow,” I laugh. “She’s gotten so big!”

Mrs. Keltner groans. “Don’t I know! And she’s not even a year.” She gives me a one-armed hug, too, and says, “How have you been? It’s been a while.”

I nod. “Fine.” Then I tell her, “I’ve actually thought about you guys a lot lately.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve … I’ve run into Mike Poe a couple of times.”

Mrs. Keltner’s eyes light up. “How is he? The last few times we’ve been there he hasn’t come out to see us.”

I look down. “He doesn’t work there anymore.” “What? Why not? Is he all right?”

I shrug. “From what I understand, he got fired.”

“Fired?” She blinks like mad. “Why?”

“Apparently he was making people uncomfortable.”

“Mike was?” Elyssa asks. “But he’s the graveyard’s guardian angel.” She looks up at her mother. “Right, Mom?”

Mrs. Keltner strokes her daughter’s hair. “That’s right, sweetheart.”

Elyssa looks at her all wide-eyed. “You can’t fire a guardian angel … can you, Mom?”

Mrs. Keltner and I both just stare at her a second, and then Mrs. Keltner wraps an arm around her and says, “No. No, you can’t.”

I smile at Elyssa and tell her, “When I saw him, he said he still goes there to watch over things, even though he’s not officially working there.”

Mrs. Keltner drops her voice and asks me, “Do you know anything more? The cemetery is that man’s life. It’s his
family
. I feel horrible that he’s been fired.”

I sort of shrug and shake my head and bite my tongue, because it seems like anything extra I have to say will only make her feel worse.

“Well, anyway,” she says brightly. “It was great seeing
you
. Come by the house anytime.”

“Okay!” I tell her, then give Elyssa another hug. “See ya!”

Now, I was kinda late getting home, so I pushed extra hard to make up some time. But the whole way home what Elyssa and her mom had said about Dusty Mike was wrestling around with what everyone else seemed to think about him.

Who was right?

Was he the cemetery’s guardian angel?

Or a nutcase who should be avoided.

I also kept picturing his hoe. Something about seeing it just lying there in the graveyard bothered me.

It was like
he
was just lying there in the graveyard.

I tried to shake off that thought and forget about him. I mean, maybe it was lying there because he’d gotten sick of being unappreciated and had thrown in the towel.

Or, you know, the
hoe
.

Anyway, as much as I hurried, I was still definitely late getting home. So instead of making excuses, I just came in and said, “I know I’m late and I’m sorry and it won’t happen again.”

Grams smiles at me from inside the open bathroom. “I hope that’s the first lie you’ve told today.”

Well, I’m more than a little surprised by
that
, but then I notice something else. “Lipstick?” I ask her. “Where are you going?”

“To dinner and a movie,” she says all prim and proper like. “If that’s all right with you.”

“With Hudson?”

“That’s right.”

“Then it’s
fine
with me.”

“You’ll have to fend for yourself for dinner.”

“Ramen does sound good.”