Greedy Bones by Carolyn Haines

before, they're watchin' over you. Have been since the day they died."
    "What did the dream mean?"
    "I'm only a ghost. I don't have answers like that."
    I freed a leg from the sheets and sat up. It was three-thirty, and there wasn't any point in going back to bed: I wouldn't sleep. I couldn't call Graf, because it was 1:30 in the land of celluloid. While working as a P.I., I could get by looking like a run-over sack of suet, but Graf had to look great.
    I stood up and stretched.
    "Where you think you're goin'?" Jitty asked.
    "Maybe for a moonlight horse back ride." It was the best idea I'd had in ages. I thought of the rides I'd shared with Graf in Costa Rica. "I wish Graf was here. I miss him a lot." More than I'd anticipated.
    "Call that man and tell him to hop the next plane home. He needs to be with you."
    I laughed. "That's provincial. I'm a full-grown woman. To have a relationship with Graf and still help my friends, I can't call him every time I have a bad dream."
    "Don't you dare go ridin' off into those cotton fields."
    Jitty was seriously troubled, and I found it hard to accept. "I've ridden at night for the past year. What's the problem?"
    "Folks weren't keelin' over from some strange sickness until just a week ago. You don't know what's in those fields."
    "If it's something bad, Jitty, it can walk right in the front door. In case you haven't noticed, cotton is growing not a hundred yards from Dahlia House."
    She turned away. "I noticed. And for the first time I can remember, I'm hopin' the crop fails. I don't want that stuff near you, Sarah Booth."
    "Jitty!" I was appalled. No Mississippian would ever wish a cotton failure. Never more than an adequate student of history and economics, even I knew the devastation ofsuch a thing. Jitty had lived through the Civil War and the boll weevil--she should know better.
    "You've got to take care of yourself, Sarah Booth."
    "I do, Jitty, but I have to live."
    She kept her back to me. "The stakes are higher than you know."
    I found a pair of jeans and slipped into them, along with socks and my boots. "It's a good thing I don't know how high these stakes are, because I almost can't hold up to the burden I'm carrying now."
    I whistled up my hound and clattered down the stairs into the soft glow of a nearly full moon. Reveler and Miss Scrapiron were at the fence. Both whickered softly when they saw me. Again I felt the pain of missing Graf, but I refused to let it ruin what promised to be a wonderful ride. If I'd learned anything in the thirty-four years of my life, it was that happiness came from living each moment to the fullest. If I could manage that difficult task, I could be the partner for a dynamic man like Graf.
    It took only a few moments to saddle Reveler. Miss Scrapiron trotted beside us until we reached the end of the pasture fence. She returned to her grazing while Reveler and I set out across the moonlit fields at a trot.
    The night was cool, and the tiny cotton plants shivered silver in a light breeze. The moon gave plenty of light, and I knew the land, each dip and contour. This was Delaney land, much of it cleared by mules and sweat.
    I'd seen the ghosts of slaves in these fields on foggy nights, heard the singing and the row calls that were so much a part of the tradition of the blues songs that I loved.
    On hot days I'd watched the huge machines crawl across the acres harvesting the cotton. While my father had earned his living as a lawyer, he'd also farmed.Sometimes he'd let me ride in the cab of the pickers with him. Sometimes he'd even let me steer.
    The rows, loaded with white bolls, would fall to the picker. Behind us we left brown stalks and a few tufts of white that the machine had missed. Cotton was the lifeblood of the Delta. What would happen if an infestation of boll weevils destroyed the crop? With a country already teetering on economic crisis, such a catastrophe could put Mississippi back into a time warp of poverty and hunger.
    When I finally