Page 46 of Promise Keeper

Nothing like a little hooch to motivate an old coot.

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The minuscule cemeterywas behind a one-room brick church that was condemned and falling in on itself. I drove Roy, and Johnna was meeting us.

"Where do we start?" Roy asked.

"We're looking for Jason Lee Adkins, Will's great-uncle."

"There's about a dozen graves in here. Shouldn't be too hard to find."

A car pulled in, its tires crunching the gravel parking lot. Johnna pulled as close as she could get to the graveyard, parking outside of an actual parking space in the grass. Elaina Nelson--Grandma Diggity--popped out of the passenger side of the car. "Hello, Cam! Hi, Roy!" she waved a hand high over her head. "Johnna didn't give me time to change into something more somber."

Her hot pink and yellow polka dotted dress was a little cheery and very bright. "That's okay. We don't mind."

"I came to visit my old friends," she said in her high, sing-song voice.

"I came to get an apology," Johnna said. "From both of you."

Roy scowled. "I'm not apologizing. You snatched my flask."

Johnna pulled his flask from her tote bag and tossed it to him. "There, you old goat."

Roy tried to catch the flask and fumbled it. It fell and bounced off of a crumbled headstone, cracking the worn aluminum case and sloshing his booze all over the ground.

He bent to look at the headstone. "I don't know who you are down there, but I hope you like whiskey."

"That's Winston O'Leary," Elaina said. He was very particular about his whiskey. I hope that was a good Irish brand or you'll end up with your house haunted." She cackled a laugh and clapped her knee.

I took a quick survey of the other headstones finding them all to be in terrible shape. I could make out some letters on a few, but I didn't see one I could actually read. "Elaina," I said, "how many of these graves are you familiar with? Do you know who's buried in most of them?" Being the second oldest person in Metamora, there was a chance she did know if she could remember.

"Oh, most of them," she said. "Mrs. Hutchins is over there beside that juniper." She pointed to the far corner. "Growing up, she was my best friend's grandma. She baked us iced molasses cookies on Sundays after church."

"Who else is here?" Johnna asked. "What about that grave over there with the marble angel?"

"That's Sarabell McGuire. She died when she was only eighteen. I went to school with her. She was a few years ahead of me though." She took a few steps toward the grave. "Her parents are there on her left, and her grandparents in the two graves to her right."

"Is Jason Adkins buried in here?" I asked.

"Why would he be here?" Elaina asked. "He was buried in Indianapolis where he lived most of his life."

"Indianapolis? Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. He was the only Adkins to ever leave town. Nobody has since."

Jason Adkins being buried in Indianapolis didn't completely blow my theory, but it made it a million times harder to prove or disprove.

"That was cheap whiskey, but it got the job done," Roy said, still grieving his loss.

"Put salt in front of your door tonight," Elaina told him. "Ghosts won't cross salt."

"Eh, I don't believe in spooks." Roy waved the idea away.

"Suit yourself. O'Leary was a mean one."

"And now he's a dead one who don't give a hoot about spilt whiskey."

Elaina made the sign of the cross even though she wasn't Catholic.

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