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everywhere.”
    â€œDon’t touch it.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt ain’t ours. It belongs to that poor lady and Frank Clay.” I didn’t know her, but I’d seen him a time or two up at the store after I came to live with Miss Becky and Grandpa Ned. He was a nice guy, the kind who always winked and grinned at a kid, whether he knew them or not. He had three kids of his own, but they were all younger than me.
    Pepper was holding a lipstick that she dropped back on the ground. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
    A car slowed as it passed high overhead. I was sure the driver was looking at the rail, but he couldn’t see us from his side.
    We were trespassing where we shouldn’t have been and I felt bad for the folks who’d died there. It was suddenly personal. It reminded me of Mama and Daddy’s wreck, even though I hadn’t seen it and all of a sudden I felt like crying. “We need to go.”
    My eyes stung and I turned so Pepper couldn’t see. She bit her lip and I could tell she was watching me, but she wouldn’t let it go. “Do you think they suffered?”
    â€œProbably not.” I hoped my parents hadn’t suffered, either.
    Quiet for once, Pepper took one more glance around us.
    The lady’s shiny high-heeled shoe looked so out of place in the dirt that I felt swimmy-headed. I dropped to my knees thinking that it might help. “Should we get their shoes for them?”
    â€œNo. What we do with them? They don’t have any use for shoes anymore.”
    â€œThey’re good shoes.”
    â€œThere’s only one of each.” She drew a deep breath and headed for the fence.
    I started to leave and noticed a tissue that looked like a big white Hershey Kiss. It was sitting up, with a rubber band around the top. Wanting to get my mind off the shoes, I picked it up. There was something hard inside and I started to tear it open when we heard a branch break on the other side of the spillway. Something grunted.
    You couldn’t tell if it was some one or some thing , but it was enough to spook us. I stuck the Kleenex in my pocket and we skinned on out of there so we wouldn’t get caught.

Chapter Six
    The scruffy man once heard a story about something called a wraith. He looked it up in a dictionary. “A ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death” sounded exactly like him. He liked the dark sound of the word so much he memorized the definition , and The Wraith came alive. It was time for a reckoning.
    ***
    Harriet Clay, now a widow, sent word to Ned that she needed to see him at her house, if that was possible. It was the least he could do for her, and in his opinion, it was his job to give her the bad news in person.
    Ned drove to the Clay house half an hour after the ambulances took Frank and Maggie away. Set half a mile off Highway 79 toward Hopewell, the Queen-Anne style farmhouse was barely inside the Chisum City limits and surrounded by tall burr oak trees. Folks up on the river tended not to move into new houses if they could stay where they were raised, but in order to run for mayor, Frank Clay had to live in town.
    Shade was thick and solid around the house built back in the late 1800s. Ned parked under a tree with a hitch ring grown into the trunk. Sheriff Cody Parker pulled up and killed his engine. They met at the house.
    Cody rubbed his chin. “They live in town, so I guess I’ll tell her.”
    â€œNope.” Ned absently touched his small constable’s bade with one finger. “They’re really Center Springs folks. I’ll do the telling.”
    Cody’s response was cut off when Wes Clay stepped outside. Tough and strapped with corded muscle, Wes had packed a lot of life into fifty years, spending more than a few of them in prison down in Huntsville. Most people said Wes would fight a buzzsaw.
    He scratched his flat