All at once I needed to hear his voice.

And, I realized, I could.

It was a creepy thing to do (especially at two in the morning), and it was morbid, I knew that, but I also knew that if I did it, I could get back to sleep. So I called, and broke out in gooseflesh when I realized the simple truth of cell phone technology: somewhere under the ground in Elm Cemetery, in a dead man’s pocket, Tammy Wynette was singing two lines of “Stand By Your Man.”

Then his voice was in my ear, calm and clear, just a bit scratchy with old age: “I’m not answering my phone now. I will call you back if it seems appropriate.”

And what if he did call back? What if he did?

I ended the call even before the beep came and climbed back into bed. As I was pulling the covers up, I changed my mind, got up, and called again. I don’t know why. This time I waited for the beep, then said, “I miss you, Mr. Harrigan. I appreciate the money you left me, but I’d give it up to have you still alive.” I paused. “Maybe that sounds like a lie, but it isn’t. It really isn’t.”

Then I went back to bed and was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. There were no dreams.

* * *

It was my habit to turn on my phone even before I got dressed and check the Newsy news app to make sure no one had started World War III and there hadn’t been any terrorist attacks. Before I could go there on the morning after Mr. Harrigan’s funeral, I saw a little red circle on the SMS icon, which meant I had a text message. I assumed it was either from Billy Bogan, a friend and classmate who had a Motorola Ming, or Margie Washburn, who had a Samsung . . . although I’d gotten fewer texts from Margie lately. I suppose Regina had blabbed about me kissing her.

You know that old saying, “so-and-so’s blood ran cold”? That can actually happen. I know, because mine did. I sat on my bed, staring at the screen of my phone. The text was from pirateking1.

Down in the kitchen, I could hear rattling as Dad pulled the skillet out of the cabinet beside the stove. He was apparently planning to make us a hot breakfast, something he tried to do once or twice a week.

“Dad?” I said, but the rattling continued, and I heard him say something that might have been Come out of there, you damn thing.

He didn’t hear me, and not just because my bedroom door was closed. I could hardly hear myself. The text had made my blood run cold, and it had stolen my voice.

The message above the most recent one had been sent four days before Mr. Harrigan died. It read No need to water the houseplants today, Mrs. G did it. Below it was this: C C C aa.

It had been sent at 2:40 A.M.

“Dad!” This time it was a little louder, but still not loud enough. I don’t know if I was crying then, or if the tears started when I was going downstairs, still wearing nothing but my underpants and a Gates Falls Tigers tee-shirt.

Dad’s back was to me. He had managed to get the skillet out and was melting butter in it. He heard me and said, “I hope you’re hungry. I know I am.”

“Daddy,” I said. “Daddy.”

He turned when he heard what I’d stopped calling him when I was eight or nine. Saw I wasn’t dressed. Saw I was crying. Saw I was holding out my phone. Forgot all about the skillet.

“Craig, what is it? What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare about the funeral?”

It was a nightmare, all right, and probably it was too late—he was old, after all—but maybe it wasn’t.

“Oh, Daddy,” I said. Blubbering now. “He’s not dead. At least he wasn’t at two-thirty this morning. We’ve got to dig him up. We have to, because we buried him alive.”

* * *

I told him everything. About how I’d taken Mr. Harrigan’s phone and put it in the pocket of his suit coat. Because it came to mean a lot to him, I said. And because it was something I gave him. I told him about calling that phone in the middle of the night, hanging up the first time, then calling back and leaving a message on his voicemail. I didn’t need to show Dad the text I got in return, because he’d already looked at it. Studied it, actually.

The butter in the skillet had begun to scorch. Dad got up and moved the skillet off the burner. “Don’t suppose you’ll be wanting any eggs,” he said. Then he came back to the table, but instead of sitting on the other side, in his usual place, he sat next to me and put one of his hands over one of mine. “Listen up now.”

“I know it was a creepy thing to do,” I said, “but if I hadn’t, we never would have known. We have to—”

“Son—”

“No, Dad, listen! We have to get somebody out there right away! A bulldozer, a payloader, even guys with shovels! He could still be—”

“Craig, stop. You were spoofed.”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. I knew what spoofing was, but the possibility that it had happened to me—and in the middle of the night—had never crossed my mind.

“There’s more and more of it going around,” he said. “We even had a staff meeting about it at work. Someone got access to Harrigan’s cell phone. Cloned it. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, sure, but Daddy—”

He squeezed my hand. “Someone hoping to steal business secrets, maybe.”

“He was retired!”

“But he kept his hand in, he told you that. Or it could have been access to his credit card info they were after. Whoever it was got your voicemail on the cloned phone, and decided to play a practical joke.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. “Daddy, we have to check!”

“We don’t, and I’m going to tell you why. Mr. Harrigan was a rich man who died unattended. In addition to that, he hadn’t visited a physician in years, although I bet Rafferty gave him hell on that score, if only because he couldn’t update the old guy’s insurance to cover more of the death duties. For those reasons, there was an autopsy. That’s how they found out he died of advanced heart disease.”

“They cut him open?” I thought of how my knuckles had brushed his chest when I put his phone in his pocket. Had there been stitched-up incisions under his crisp white shirt and knotted tie? If my dad was right, then yes. Stitched-up incisions in the shape of a Y. I had seen that on TV. On CSI.

“Yes,” Dad said. “I don’t like telling you that, don’t want it preying on your mind, but it’s better that than letting you think he was buried alive. He wasn’t. Couldn’t have been. He’s dead. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like me to stay home today? I will if you want.”

“No, that’s okay. You’re right. I got spoofed.” And spooked. That too.

“What are you going to do with yourself? Because if you’re going to brood and be all morbid, I should take the day off. We could go fishing.”

“I’m not going to brood and be all morbid. But I should go up to his house and water the plants.”

“Is going there a good idea?” He was watching me closely.

“I owe it to him. And I want to talk to Mrs. Grogan. Find out if he made a whatchacallit for her, too.”

“A provision. That’s very thoughtful. Of course she may tell you to mind your beeswax. She’s an old-time Yankee, that one.”