Fred Morris’s accomplice turned out to be a friend from the nearby city. He’d made the connection with the supplier. His name was Steven Young, and he had a cousin out in the rural area where he’d met and joined up with Fred.
Fred . . . who had known about the peace and beauty of the little chapel and graveyard—and known as well there was no one there at night.
And Fred was even holding out on his so-called partners in crime. There was another stash in the back of the church, shoved into the hollow of a wingless angel.
Carlson’s men searched and retrieved the drugs. It was when Jackson had followed the noise they’d heard he’d seen Fred Morris, changed into his black hoodie, running from a broken angel where he’d checked his stash. Jackson had seen him leave and rushed around the back of the church to come up on the Haverhill Mausoleum by the other side.
Returning just in time. But without the ghost of Ethan Aubrey, would it have been on time?
They would never know.
“I didn’t kill anyone!” Fred Morris protested as he was cuffed to be taken away. “I just hit the old geezer—not my fault he died! He was ninety, for God’s sake!”
“But life is precious; any life is precious,” Angela murmured.
The man gave her a deadly stare. If he was going to say something back, he didn’t. He suddenly turned pale.
She saw the ghost of Victoria Haverhill had stepped forward to slap him soundly in the face.
He didn’t see her or hear her . . .
But maybe he felt just a bit of the cold taste of death.
It was after midnight when the ambulance and the police cars were gone. Angela and Jackson stood with just Detective Carlson as he shook his head.
“Well, you—and Adam—have my sound apologies. There was something going on. And General Whitaker fought his fight for justice to the end. May the great gentleman rest in peace. He wanted to be buried here; I know his family will help me see to it that it happens.”
“That’s great, Detective, thank you,” Angela said.
“You people come to me with anything. Anything at all,” Carlson said.
“We will. And you’re free to call us with anything at all, too.”
Carlson nodded. “Well, son of a gun. Happy Memorial Day, people. It’s after midnight. And maybe we’ll get to really honor our military folk around here now. You have a place to stay? Are you heading back?”
“It’s late, but we’ll just drive home. It’s only about seventy miles and we have a very responsible young son at home, but we still want to get back to him. Thank you,” Jackson told him.
Carlson still waited. Then he seemed to realize they wanted a few minutes alone in the place.
“Don’t stay too late!” he warned. “Father Landry is going to be here bright and early, blessing his graveyard. He loves this place.” He was quiet for a minute. “I told him not to come out at midnight, though I had to tell him what was going on. He thanks you, too. Though how the hell you managed all this with them slipping around in black in the night—”
“Ah, the ghosts of the honored dead!” Angela told him, smiling.
Detective Carlson nodded to them and headed back to the road.
The moon was beautiful. It cast a strange and eerie glow across the landscape.
Angela thought she saw them, hordes of soldiers, marching . . .
Some would live. Some would die. All would leave a legacy for military men and women to come.
Jackson set an arm on her shoulder. He looked out into the night, at what they saw . . . the remnants of the past.
They turned back.
And there, in the moonlight, they saw the cousins had met again at last, after life, happiness, bitterness, war, and death.
They embraced.
Victoria Haverhill waved to Angela and Jackson. She stepped forward to join in the embrace with the men.
The moonlight shifted, and they were gone.
“Memorial Day, and we honor those who served. The Civil War was so brutal, but from it we learned—slowly and with bitter lessons still going on—to become a great country,” Angela murmured.
“Happy Memorial Day to us all.”
As accustomed as she was to the dead, Angela jumped.
There was a hand on her other shoulder—and it wasn’t Jackson’s.
“Happy Memorial Day!”
She turned. It was the ghost of General Whitaker.
He grinned at her. “Those two . . . well, they deserved to go on. As for me . . . I guess I’m sticking around to keep things tip top! You tell old Adam that I thank him, eh? And he can still come out and see me, and he told me once he can see Josh now . . . maybe he’ll see me. But from one old soldier to another, you make sure you tell him this—happy Memorial Day! And thank him, and you, for making it so!”
About The Author
Heather Graham
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Heather Graham, majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, back-up vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write. Her first book was with Dell, and since then, she has written over two hundred novels and novellas including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, sci-fi, young adult, and Christmas family fare.
She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty-five languages. She has written over 200 novels and has 60 million books in print. Heather has been honored with awards from booksellers and writers’ organizations for excellence in her work, and she is the proud to be a recipient of the Silver Bullet from Thriller Writers and was awarded the prestigious Thriller Master Award in 2016. She is also a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from RWA. Heather has had books selected for the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild, and
