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generic prayer as the
mechanical pulley slowly cranked the plain metal casket into the ground.
    Rhetta batted away a freezing
raindrop that mingled with the tear sliding down her cheek, then tugged her
leather coat tightly around her.
    Following the prayer, the
director added softly, “May you rest in peace, George Erickson,” and bowed his
head.
    Rhetta mumbled, “Amen,” and
stepped back. Randolph put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her to his
side. Alongside her, Woody battled with an umbrella, but gave up as a gust of
wind huffed it upward. He folded it and led the way back to her silver
Trailblazer, which she had named Streak. It didn’t streak anywhere, even with a
great deal of effort. The six-cylinder SUV was peppy, true, but streak it
didn’t.
    They piled in, with Randolph
behind the wheel. He cranked the heat controls on high, and they sat in silence,
letting the heater build warmth. The defroster quickly rid the windshield of
the thin veneer of sleet.
    “There won’t be a marker,
either, you know, unless we get him one,” Rhetta said softly.
    Randolph agreed. “It’s only
right that his grave be marked. Especially since he was a veteran.”
    “That’s a good thing to do,”
Woody said. “It’s for darn sure the government won’t do anything. I checked
into burying him at a veteran’s cemetery, and no way. Said they couldn’t assume
he was a veteran, and besides, this man died in 1973.”
    Randolph glanced at Rhetta,
who merely nodded. Then he slipped the SUV into drive. Woody seemed detached
and yet, at the same time, upset by this death. Rhetta wondered what was
bothering him. He had told her the VA wasn’t paying for his medicine anymore.
Was he having problems? Woody had been injured when an IED exploded under his
Humvee, and he sometimes suffered violent flashbacks. She only sensed a time or
two when she thought he might be heading toward a spell, but she’d never seen him
in a full-blown episode. Now, she regretted the “out of sight, out of mind”
attitude she was afraid she’d adopted. Just because she couldn’t see Woody
whenever he had problems, didn’t mean that he wasn’t suffering.
    The ground, not yet frozen,
was a slurry of mud and ice under the wheels. Rhetta had wheedled the cemetery
into donating a plot, but it was in the very back, in a seldom-traveled area.
Randolph shifted into four-wheel-drive, following the same ruts to leave as
they gouged into the ground on their way in. She wasn’t going to complain. At
least the cemetery recognized that a Vietnam veteran deserved a decent burial.
    Once they’d bounced onto the
gravel road behind the cemetery, Woody spoke up. “I still can’t figure out who that
dead guy was, and why he had your business card. And why would somebody have
run him down?”
    “Me neither. The police have
asked me that a dozen times.” She twisted around to talk to Woody.
    “You gotta admit it’s pretty
strange that you saw him get hit, and then the police find your card on him. Do
you think there’s any way that you could have dropped a card out of your purse
when you rushed over to see about him?” Woody rubbed his hands together. “My
hands are still cold,” he added.
    Rhetta sighed. “No. I left my
purse in the car when I jumped out and ran over to see what happened. I
remember grabbing my phone, nothing else.” She held up her cell phone, which
she had left on the console, to illustrate.
    As she held the phone aloft,
she noticed a missed call. She didn’t recognize the number.

    After dropping Woody off at his tidy bungalow on Whitener
Street near the Southeast Missouri State University campus in Cape, Randolph
deftly maneuvered Streak out of town and down the gravel county road toward
home. The weather hadn’t improved much, but the streets were clear.
    Their house was once a
turn-of-the-twentieth-century farmhouse that sat in the center of ten acres of
picturesque creek-side property out in Cape Girardeau County.
    After