Easter, the Krewe and Another Large White Rabbit

by Heather Graham

  She smiled. “Angela. Angela Hawkins. And there are several in the population—worldwide, I’m assuming—who are able to see those of you who . . . remain.”

  “Wow!” Levi said.

  “That is so cool!” Greg said.

  “Listen to him. ‘That’s so cool!’” Darby teased.

  “Hey, I listen and learn,” Greg said.

  “And you’re all here, together,” Angela murmured.

  “We’ve been planning what we’d like to do for Easter,” Edgar said.

  “Passover for me,” Levi said. “But we figure that’s okay. We’re pretty sure all of us on earth—or once of this earth—just follow different paths to the same place. Well, those of us who are decent, and we like to think that we’re decent.”

  “We learned the hard way where being a jerk can take one,” Darby murmured.

  “You’re all friends,” Angela murmured.

  “We are,” Taron said. “Hey, our war is long over. People still fight to be fair and decent. It may always be a fight for all men—and women—to be truly equal. But men of good faith—whatever the faith—strive all the time to really make it true. Yes, we take a step backward now and then, but a surge forward will come.”

  “We’ve been blessed to see it,” Edgar told her.

  She smiled. “You’ve all forgiven each other. That’s—beautiful.”

  Taron and Darby looked at one another and shrugged. “Hey, we had to be around when this old boy here, Edgar, bit the dust. He needed help,” Darby said.

  “Well, we needed help,” Taron reminded him.

  “And you’re going to celebrate Easter together somewhere?”

  “And Passover!” Levi reminded her.

  “Of course, I’m so sorry. And I—I think that’s amazing and great. Are you—are you the only ones who have remained in the area?”

  “Oh, no, we have a few more friends. But it’s always been a small town.”

  “Come! See, walking among the gravestones, feel the death, the haunting mystic atmosphere—this town is one of the most haunted you will find anywhere!” Milton said dramatically. “Sorry—that’s what the tour directors are always saying. They bus the tourists up here. The stupid tour company even has a fog machine!”

  “Tacky,” Angela said.

  “Sometimes,” Darby said, “I admit, we do try to tease the tourists. Nothing evil. Just making a stone tipple here or there or sweeping by with all the cold we can muster. I mean, sometimes, they just make a fellow so angry! They invent things. No one meant to kill anyone that day, and they get on high-horses and talk about us being hateful and . . . it wasn’t that way. We were all just worn out. We wanted to go home. We were tired of killing.”

  “That’s what I read,” Angela said. “And I’m always sorry when someone prefers sensationalism to the truth, but . . .”

  She paused, frowning and staring sternly around at the group of them.

  “All right, I see you and hear you. And there are others who can do so, though usually people keep quiet about their abilities. They keep quiet because others can’t see or hear you, and these others don’t believe in what they can’t see, hear, or touch. But Eliza Andrews does not see the dead, not in this way. She may have a sense, a touch of something. And she’s seeing a face in the window, and it’s making her crazy. Which one of you is scaring poor Eliza half to death?” she demanded. “Staring into her windows constantly!” She turned to Edgar with purpose. “Lieutenant Andrews, the woman is your direct descendant. How can you allow her to be frightened so? You’re telling me about friendship and forgiveness and equality. How could any of you be so cruel?”

  Chapter 4

  “Okay, so the victim there is unidentified. He was found by a stream about a mile south of the Andrews home six days ago.”

  “Cause of death?” Jackson asked Brodie over the phone, aware of Corby sitting next to him. But his son—he could call him that now—was a most unusual boy. They’d met at Christmas when they’d discovered Corby continually escaped the orphanage to visit with a special ghost. He was a smart kid and a good kid, and Jackson and Angela had mutually wanted to adopt him without ever saying a word to one another at first.

  Corby understood what his adoptive parents did. And Jackson believed he was one of those kids who would grow up and want to be in law enforcement, too.

  “Drowned, but here’s the strange part. The stream where he was found was only a few feet deep.”

  “How old a man?”

  “Early fifties.”

  “No I.D. on him and no one in the area knew who he was?”

  “No.”

  “If he drowned, why are they calling it a murder?”

  “Because he drowned in only a few feet of water?”

  “Still . . .”

  “I didn’t write the report. You’re going to have to get the sheriff to talk to you.”

  “I will,” Jackson vowed.

  He glanced over at Corby. The boy was watching the road.

  “Thanks,” Jackson said.

  “I’m still digging,” Brodie promised. “I’ll call you with anything.”

  “Thanks.” Jackson ended the call and looked at Corby.

  Corby glanced at him and grimaced. “I did some research, too, Dad. The town we’re going to—it’s so sad. It changed hands a dozen times during the Civil War. Everyone there lived in fear. Some people were secret Unionists, and some were die-hard Rebels.”

  “The Civil War was a painful time,” Jackson said.

  Corby nodded. “It’s terrible to think of the lives lost. But of course, the African American part of me is grateful slaves were freed. The white part—hey, Angela isn’t even white, she’s kind of a pretty-pasty-pale. But anyway, that part wishes we could have done what Jefferson envisioned—freed people with plans for schools and jobs and all. I guess it doesn’t matter a lot now. No, wait, it still matters, because a hundred and fifty plus years later, we’re still trying to get all people to be colorblind. Then there are a lot of people like me. I can’t hate either race, right, or I’d have to hate myself.”

  “You know what, kid?”

  “What?”

  “Man, am I glad to be your dad!”

  Corby smiled at that. “Hey, we are almost there.”

  They were. The town wasn’t very big; houses were scattered throughout the hilly countryside. The downtown was a long strip with just a few intersecting streets. It was charming and picturesque.

  “Is this the place?” Corby asked.

  “It is.”

  About two miles out of the downtown area he found the driveway to Eliza’s old house.

  She apparently heard them coming. The door opened as they walked up the stone path to the house.

  Eliza spoke immediately and effusively.

  “I hugged Angela. I know we have to social distance, but I haven’t seen a soul. I used sanitizer on everything in this house,” Eliza said, opening the door. She didn’t wait for an answer; she had seen Corby, standing at Jackson’s side. “Oh, Corby! I am so delighted to meet you. I used to have so much fun with Angela, your mom, when she was your age! Okay, I’m backing in. Distance hugs. Jackson, thank you, thank you for being here!”

  Jackson smiled. He’d only meet Eliza once and he couldn’t even remember exactly when and where—probably a family function of some kind. But Angela loved her, and she always seemed to have a wonderful energy and enthusiasm for everything and everyone.

  “Eliza, we’re going to be staying here, and Corby hasn’t been out of the house since they closed the schools. And at Krewe headquarters, we have been lucky to have been equipped with proper masks and gloves. Still scary, but—”

  He didn’t finish. Corby stepped forward and Eliza gave him a big hug.

  It looked like love at first sight.

  “Corby, I have a great big-screen TV and we can download games. Hey, I’m old, but computer savvy!”

  “I’d just love to hear some stories, too, about my mom,” Cor
by said.

  Eliza beamed, looking at Jackson.

  “Let’s get in, shall we?” Jackson said, carrying their bags in and setting them by the stairs. “Where’s Angela?”

  “She wanted to take a walk down the road. I showed her the baskets and then she wanted to go out and see the area, figure something out,” Eliza said.

  Jackson frowned; they hadn’t seen her on the road.

  “All right, I’ll take a look and see if I can find her.”

  As they spoke, he heard a car drive up. The door was still opened; when he turned, he could see that a sheriff’s car had pulled into the driveway.

  A man got out.

  “Ely. Ely Carter, the sheriff,” Eliza murmured.

  “I’ll talk to him out there,” Jackson said.

  He stepped out of the house and walked back down the stone path—stopping about ten feet away from the man as Carter exited the police cruiser.

  “You’re Super Whatever Jackson Crow?” Carter asked. Then he winced. “Sorry. These are just hard days for everyone, I guess. Doesn’t help me being an ass.”

  Jackson had to smile. Carter did seem to be all right; he was stressed, but enough so that he didn’t apologize immediately.

  “I’m Jackson Crow, Sheriff Carter. And I fully understand your belief someone is trying to be a good Samaritan leaving the baskets. But someone has been looking into Eliza’s house.”

  “People alone too long imagine things—”

  “Not Eliza. But I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. Small town—smaller police force. We’re going to stay with Eliza, and we’ll figure out what is going on. I have a question for you. Why do you presume your drowning—unidentified—victim was murdered?”

  “How do you drown in a stream?” Carter asked. “A few inches of water to a few feet of water in the area. I mean, hell, that’s just not a way to commit suicide.”

  “But were there other factors involved?”

  “Doc found water in his lungs; he said it was a drowning. I can’t imagine anyone sticking their head in a few inches of water between rocks in a stream and forcing themselves to drown, can you? We’ve been trying all kinds of ways to get an I.D. and figure out—”

  “Marks?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Were there marks on him? Bruises? If someone was forcing him into the water—”

  “I go by what the medical examiner tells me.”

  “Drugs?”

  “What?”

  “Were there drugs in his system?”

  “No.”

  “Well, thanks. Mind if I talk to the medical examiner?”

  Carter tightened; yes, he was a little offended and Jackson understood.

  “Sheriff, please, you run a tight ship—that’s evident with the almost total lack of crime to be found in your town. But if the county wasn’t in on this, please understand you just don’t have the resources of bigger labs and testing facilities. I’m not trying to be offensive in any way; I’m trying to help.”

  Carter nodded after a minute. “Yeah,” he said. “We get worn out here, sometimes. Well, not now. Tourism stopped a while back, of course. But when you have a ‘haunted’ town, hell, you get crazies in here trying to dig up graves and sneak around and have seances in the old church. But in this case, we had an unknown dead man, and I sure as hell couldn’t see another way for him to get dead without being forced to breathe water. Hell. Feel free. I’ll give you Doc Berman’s number. Get your phone out, sir, if you will. Not going to touch you or hand you anything, and since you’re on it, I won’t go in Eliza’s house.”

  Jackson thanked him. Carter started back into his cruiser and then paused. “You find out anything—”

  “Sheriff, you will be the first to know anything I discover.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And thank you.”

  The sheriff drove away. Jackson put his call through to Doctor Berman.

  He introduced himself and explained his reasons for the call.

  “The fellow drowned—his lungs tell the clear story on that,” Berman told him.

  “But he had no defensive wounds, as if he was fighting off an attacker.”

  “No,” Berman admitted. “My findings are medical, of course. But other than heading off to the University and working in D.C. for my residency, I’ve been in this town my whole life. I know the area of the stream where he was found. Honestly, you couldn’t just fall in there and drown.”

  “Okay, what about a neuro event that might have caused him to collapse?”

  Berman was silent for a minute. Then he said, “My main practice is primary care, but I am the duly appointed medical examiner. I figure maybe you might have the county or the feds step in, if you want. I didn’t find anything, but I don’t have all that’s necessary for every kind of scan. It seemed that—well, a man was dead. You need to work hard to die in a few inches of water on your own. I didn’t call it a murder; I just gave my report.”

  “Thank you,” Jackson told him. “Would you mind if I have the body examined again?”

  “Uh, no, of course not. Let me know when there are plans.”

  Jackson thanked him and ended the call.

  He looked around. There was still no sign of Angela and he was growing worried. He looked at his phone, ready to call her again.

  But his phone rang. And it was Angela.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “In the woods. I’ve met a few friends, Jackson. From the Civil War. I’d like to keep up my discussion with them, but I’m also anxious about a car I saw just down from Eliza’s house. A blue sedan, the tags covered with muck or mud. I couldn’t read them. Dark blue. Downtown isn’t big.”

  “You want me to find the car. And whoever is in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And find out if he dresses up like a giant Easter bunny—to deliver baskets of goods to Eliza? All right; I’ll try. But . . .”

  “Jackson, they’re trying to help me.”

  “You met the two who were killed?”

  “Yes. Darby Walton and Taron Engel. And Eliza’s great-great-grandfather, Edgar. And three charming gentlemen who died years after the war, Levi Bergman, Beauregard Clinton, and Gregory Milton. We’re talking—”

  “Which one has been haunting Eliza?” Jackson demanded.

  “Well, that’s just it. They swear it was none of them; and Edgar is, of course, very upset. He intends to have a word with whomever—living or dead. We’re working on possibilities—”

  “You’re not in the graveyard?”

  “No, in a beautiful copse in the forest—a favorite place of theirs, now that everything is closed. Please, Jackson, if you could—”

  “Yes, I’ll get into town. And I’ll check out every blue car I find, especially those with the license plates mucked up.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey what?” she asked.

  “I love you.”

  He could almost see her slow smile.

  “I love you, too,” she returned softly.

  They ended the call and he headed in to tell Eliza what he was doing.

  He found her and Corby at the dining room table, a dozen palms before them.

  Eliza looked up at him. “Our church had a drive-thru for Palm Sunday. Every palm has been sanitized,” she said.

  “Eliza is teaching me how to make crosses. Look how pretty she has everything! On that side of the mantle there, a stuffed bunny and chocolates. And on that side, that beautiful cross and flowers. We’re going to add these when we’re done,” Corby told him.

  “That’s great. I have to head into town. Eliza, you have my number and Angela’s number; we’re going to be just minutes away.”

  “We’re good, right, Corby?”

  Corby nodded and grinned at Jackson. “Eliza was telling me about the time Mom fell into a fountain at Disney! Wish you’d grown up with her, too. I’ll bet you had a few weird times.”

  “Yeah. I’m
sure I did. See you soon,” Jackson said.

  Then he headed out. He was going to find a navy car and its owner, and find out just what the hell was going on.

  Chapter 5

  “I can’t imagine any of us trying to hurt Eliza in any way,” The ghost of Edgar Andrews said, shaking his head. “I could not be prouder of a descendant. She has spent her life being kind. She’s an incredible crafts-woman, and she’s always been there to help anyone in times of trouble.”

  “Great mother to her kids,” Levi noted.

  “What about your friends?” Angela asked. “You said there are others.”

  “Yes. But no one we know would want to hurt Eliza,” Darby said. “Taron will agree. Maybe we were all too worn out once we were . . . dead. No one wanted to hate anyone anymore. Hate is really exhausting, you know.”

  “Yes, it is,” Angela agreed.

  “But what about this Easter bunny—this person dressing up as an Easter bunny?”

  “It could be someone living, but not the way she describes the face to me. There is someone out there—oh! Apparently, someone was murdered here recently. Have you—”

  “We haven’t met anyone new in a good fifty years or so,” Milton told her. “Most people move on. And we’ve seen friends move on, too, after they’ve been here a while. Some a few years, some after many, many years.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen people move on,” Angela said. “Well, my husband is here and he’s searching for whoever our living person is. But . . .”

  They heard a crack in the bushes. Angela had been sitting on one of the tree stumps, carrying on her conversation with the ghosts as if she had run into friends while hiking.

  She jumped to her feet.

  “Someone is here,” she said.

  “Yes!” Edgar agreed. “Let’s fan out, men. Angela—”

  “Edgar, I’m an FBI agent. I’m fine,” she assured him.

  She headed off, aware that her spectral friends were arraying behind her and at her side, silent as they moved through the trees.

  She inched her way along, aware then that the day had been long.

  And darkness was coming.

  She knew how to move though; she knew how to get through the trees. She paused every few seconds, listening.