A Knight in the Ville: Grave Concerns

By Steven E. Winters

They say that no matter how rich you become in life, you cant take that wealth with you when you die. But it seems that a group of Sistersvilles oil tycoons did just that, and now a criminal element has descended upon the Ville to unearth those treasures. Sergeant Curtis Knight soon discovers that oil and gas arent the only things people will dig for . . . especially when there is big money involved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496953131

Steven E. Winters

Born and raised in Tyler County, West Virginia, Steven E. Winters was fascinated with the folklore and legends of the Ohio Valley region. With those legends in mind, he wrote A Knight in the Ville, a five-book series based in and around Tyler County. Mixing historical facts with fictional characters, he focused on making his stories short and easy to read. Encouraged by the success of that series, he is now releasing his first short-story collection. Winters served as a law enforcement officer in West Virginia and North Carolina for twenty-three years before retiring in 2003. He now works as a private contractor for a large utility company, which gives him more time to focus on his writing. He currently resides near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

P erry Davis grabbed his thermos from the kitchen table inside the small camper he called home and set out on his tractor to tend to the graves. He was in his fifteenth year as the caretaker for Greenwood Cemetery. He used to live at the campground south of town but had convinced his employers that moving his camper onto the cemetery property would be beneficial to both sides. He would provide round-the-clock security, and they would pay for his electric and gas. Since that didn’t add up to much, his employers had agreed.

The camper was small and offered little in terms of comfort and décor. But it suited Perry just fine. Always a loner, he enjoyed the solitude of the graveyard. None of his neighbors bothered him, seeing as they were all deceased. During his initial months of living there, he had been awakened on several occasions by teenagers driving onto the property, seeking a place in which to park. He would grab his big flashlight and shine it in the direction of their cars; this always scared them off. Now that he’d been on site for so many years, those late-night excursions had become infrequent.

It was late November, and soon he would be closing the camper up for the winter and heading south to Charleston, SC to spend the next four months with his brother and family. Although he would prefer to work year round, there just wasn’t enough for him to do in the wintertime. By early December, the ground would be frozen, and snow would blanket the graves until spring. So Perry busied himself with clearing as many of the fallen autumn leaves from the property as he could. Today, there were plenty, as a cold front had moved into the valley last night, causing high winds to strip the oak and elm trees of their last golden and amber leaves.

After working nonstop for three hours, Perry decided to take a break. Hopping off the tractor, he pulled his thermos out from under the seat, unscrewed the top, and poured himself a cup of hot coffee. As he leaned against the tractor and sipped the strong brew, he noticed the new grave marker that had recently been placed nearby. It marked the grave of the little redheaded orphan whose body had been found in the deep freeze in Joe Thames’s basement more than one year ago. Her story had created quite a stir in the area, and there had been a steady flow of curiosity seekers visiting her unmarked grave. Perry smiled as he bent down and straightened the plastic red roses that had been placed in the ground beside the marker. Curtis Knight had ordered the grave marker and paid for it with his own money. The little girl didn’t have a name, and no one had ever been able to discover her true identity. Now, thanks to Curtis, she had a name. On her grave marker was one simple word: SUMMER.

Perry finished his coffee and got back to work. There were dozens of plastic flowers scattered all over the cemetery from last night’s windstorm, and he spent the next four hours busily gathering them. He knew exactly where each one went. But rather than hastily plunging them into the ground at each grave, he gently arranged them as closely as his memory allowed to where they had originally been. He took his job seriously, and as the caretaker, he understood that he alone protected these resting places. Each grave was as important as the next, and he gave them all the respect he felt they deserved.

As the afternoon sun began to dip low in the western sky, Perry parked the tractor in the shed and went inside his camper for some dinner. Two hotdogs heated in the microwave and a can of chicken noodle soup were more than enough to fill his stomach. Kicking back on his tiny bed, he closed his eyes for a moment and contemplated taking a nap. But he knew there was no time for that. He had promised a group of ladies that he would help them with their efforts to clean up the Oakwood Cemetery at the north end of town. The graveyard was much older than Greenwood and had fallen into disrepair over the past decade. Since he had only a few days left before he headed south for the winter, Perry decided to head over and do his part. Although fatigued, he figured that he would have all winter to rest.

He arrived at the old cemetery twenty minutes later. Oakwood sat on a hillside overlooking Sistersville and the Ohio River. Perry trudged up the steep embankment to the highest point, where he paused and gazed down at the beautiful view. The graves sloped below him for several hundred yards, casting odd shadows as the sunlight quickly disappeared to the west. Using a rake, he soon filled three large trash bags with leaves and made several small piles from fallen twigs and branches. As darkness enveloped him at a faster rate, he grabbed an old flashlight from his pickup and began collecting the plastic flowers that had been blown out of the ground overnight. Since he had no idea which ones went where, he placed them all in a plastic bag. It was pitch-black by the time he collected the last