Ghost of a Chance Read Free

shoes that had just a little bit of mud on them. He was smiling and cheerful, as he usually was, and he didn’t look like an undertaker, or a funeral director, as they were called these days. Or maybe that was out of fashion, too. For all Rhodes knew they were called “grief managers.”
    “Perfect,” Rhodes said. “It just doesn’t get any better than this.”
    A drop of cold rain got under his raincoat collar and rolled down his neck. Rhodes hated umbrellas, and he hated hats. He thought he was probably the only sheriff in all of Texas’ two hundred and fifty-four counties who didn’t own a Stetson. Usually he didn’t regret that fact. Today, he did.
    “Let’s go see what the trouble is,” he said.
    They walked across the wet grass to the dark green canopy. The bottoms of Rhodes’s pants legs got heavier with every step.
    The ground under the canopy had been spread with fake grass of an odd light green color more likely to be found on the floor of a domed stadium than anywhere outside. It was just as wet as the real thing, however.
    A nearby mound of dirt was also discreetly covered with the fake grass, but Rhodes could smell the rooty odor of newly dug earth. Folding chairs were lined up for the mourners to sit in. The wind flapped the edges of the canopy, but at least it was a little drier under there. The rain pounded on the canvas over their heads.
    “I came out here to check on things,” Ballinger said. He folded the umbrella and shook off some of the raindrops. “The way I always do. That’s when I found him.”
    “Who?” Rhodes asked.
    “Whoever’s in that grave. I couldn’t tell who it was, and I didn’t want to find out. I figure that’s what the county pays you the big bucks to do.”
    Rhodes stepped over to the grave and looked. There was a man lying face down at the bottom.
    Lightning ripped across the sky and thunder rolled.Rhodes felt for just a second as if he’d stumbled onto the set of an old Universal horror movie from the 1940s. He looked out through the rain, half expecting to see Lon Chaney, Jr., slink across the graveyard and skulk behind an obelisk to wait for the rising of the full moon.
    He didn’t see Chaney, but he did see someone.
    The cemetery was on a hill, and as Rhodes looked down toward the bottom, past all the tombstones, he saw someone, or some thing , run out of the trees. Because of the rain and the sooty darkness of the sky, he couldn’t be sure who or what it was. It flickered out of the trees and into a clearing, followed closely by another shadowy figure, and then the two of them disappeared into the trees again.
    “This is supposed to be Travis McCoy’s grave,” Ballinger said. “His wife requested a hand-dug grave, and that’s what she got. We did the job and got everything set up late yesterday because of the weather forecast.”
    “Do you see anything down there?” Rhodes asked, pointing toward the clearing.
    “Just the railroad tracks, and they’ve been there since long before I was born. Why?”
    “I thought I saw somebody run out of the trees on this side of the tracks.”
    “Not in this weather. Who’d be out on a day like this? Except us, and we have to be here, or at least you do. Anyway, I was telling you about this grave. It’s for Travis McCoy.”
    McCoy had been a retired schoolteacher. Rhodes hadn’t known him very well, though the newspaper had said he was very popular with his students. Rhodes looked at thestone at the head of the grave. The inscription on one side of it said:
    T RAVIS M C C OY
June 23, 1919
March 1, 1999
    The other side of the stone read:
    E LIZABETH G ATLIN M C C OY
January 5, 1920
    Second date pending, Rhodes thought, not certain what was making him so morbid. Maybe it was the ghost in the jail.
    Or maybe it was the dead man who was lying there in the wrong grave.
    Rhodes wondered how he was going to get down in the grave and have a look at the body. The weather had already played havoc with the crime