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Something in his voice had my cheeks heating, my imagination running away with itself in conjuring up other ways besides monetary reward I might pay him back. “Can you read my mind over the phone?”

“No. I have to be close to the person.” A pause. “Why? What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” The amusement was back.

“How are you today, Baxter?”

A longer pause that said more than words could. “I’ve been thinking,” he said finally.

I lay back on the bed and made myself comfortable. “About?”

“Stuff I still need to face.” He exhaled. “My grave. My parents. I don’t suppose I can spend the rest of my life pretending neither of those things exist.”

“I don’t suppose you can.” I tried to imagine for a moment what it must be like to know there was a gravestone with your name on it. I couldn’t exactly blame him for avoiding it.

“I thought I might tackle one of those things today,” Baxter continued.

“Which one?”

“The grave,” he said with a short laugh. “Says a lot about my relationship with my parents, doesn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“Will you come with me?”

“Yes.”

“I appreciate that tramping around a cemetery is no one’s idea of fun, so if you really don’t want to, just say so.”

“I said yes.”

“Yeah… But it was missing you actually thinking about it, so I thought I’d give you some extra time. Plus, I know you said you were writing today. You might not have gotten enough done to take the afternoon off.”

“I got loads done,” I lied. “Besides, you bought me a bed.”

“See,” Baxter said, a smile present in his voice. “Beholden.”

“Strange things happened in a cemetery close to here,” I said as we stepped out of the cab. “The papers think it was a prank—teenage boys channeling Thriller about forty years too late. They made it look as though the ground had been disturbed.”

Baxter stopped short of the gate. “That wasn’t a prank. It was John.” He shook his head. “It’s a long story. Remind me to tell you sometime.”

“It sounds like something I might not want to hear.”

“Quite possibly.”

He moved forward, and I fell into step beside him, close enough that our elbows brushed. He didn’t pull away. “Do you know where your…?” I hesitated.

“Where my grave is?”

“Yeah.”

“You can say it.”

“It just sounds wrong when you’re standing here.”

He walked a few steps and then stopped. “Does it make me sound stupid if I admit I don’t have a clue? I only know it’s in this cemetery because Calisto looked it up years ago.”