I took the saddle of flowers and bent the wires so that it perched securely on top of the headstone. I gave it a few tugs to test it, then stood back to admire my handiwork. The red silk roses, white camellias, and green fern fronds shuddered in the breeze. It was a subtle move, this cleaning of the grave, but it would definitely be noticed.
    “You look like her.”
    I screamed, jerked around, and stumbled backward over the duffel, landing hard on my butt. Gasping for air, I stared up at Roscoe Carver.
    He leaned heavily on his cane, his head tilted to one side, watching me. His slacks and dress shirt hung loose, as if he’d lost a lot of weight, but sweat stained his underarms, chest, and neck. “Am I that scary?”
    I found my voice. “I . . . I didn’t hear a car. Or footsteps.”
    He pointed back toward the church with his cane. “I was already here. Back side of the church. I saw you buy those flowers. Knew you’d come here before Decoration Sunday.”
    I swallowed hard and pushed up off the ground. “You’ve been waiting every day?”
    He braced on the cane again. “Not much else to do. I’m an old man. Waiting is easy. Done a lot of it in my life.”
    “Why?”
    He gestured at the grave. “Her. Took me a bit to figure it out. Your hair’s blond. Didn’t used to be, did it?”
    I shook my head.
    “I knew it. You can dye the hair, but I never forget a face. Especially when I see ’em die.”
    I brushed off the back of my pants. “You found her.”
    “I did.” His lips pursed. Something else was on his mind.
    “You knew her son. You’re the one Daddy found in Vietnam.”
    “Yep.”
    “Did you get to talk to him before . . . before he died?”
    Another nod. “He told me about you. Thought you hung the moon. Couldn’t wait to get this over with and get back to you and your mama. You were, what . . . five?”
    “Two, almost three.”
    “He told me a lot. We had a few good meetings before—” He sniffed, staring at the headstone. “My daddy did that. The headstone. Not right away. Too expensive. But eventually. He felt we owed her that much.”
    “Why?”
    His lips pursed again, and his shoulders hunched as he looked north over the ridge. “Because we didn’t stop it. Daddy thought we should have stopped it. We knew what was going on, what was happening up and down US 11, even then. Knew that she was about to step into a mess she didn’t know was there. If we’d stopped her, maybe it would have stopped everything. But we were too scared. We had to live here. Keep living with those demons.”
    Realization tightened my stomach. I took a step closer. “You saw it? You saw who killed her?”
    He held up a hand. “Not me. But Daddy knew who killed her.”
    “So you knew as well.”
    He grew still. “No proof.”
    “But you told my father. He tried to find the proof.”
    “And it got him killed. It’ll get you killed too.”
    “I’m not my father.”
    “The men what killed them won’t care. They won’t care about that cop you’re sweet on either, if they find out he’s helping you. They don’t care about nothing but green. You get in their business, they’ll kill you too.”