I smiled, agreeing that it was, indeed, a lovely day. Unbeknownst to him, I had observed his little group of veterans at that rainy funeral—though at a distance and from the warmth of my rental car. In fact, I had been in town now for three days and had spent the majority of the time discreetly examining his organization. As an investigator for a charitable foundation, it was my job to scrutinize the finances and activities of certain nonprofits, awarding grants to them if they passed our rigorous screening process. This gentleman’s application had struck me as particularly charming, and I was glad that after a little digging around I had been able to determine that his group was, indeed, a legit bunch doing good work and that a grant would be a big help for them. The handing over of the money, like now, was the fun part that always came at the end of a successful investigation.

For me, however, an even more fun event awaited at the conclusion of this particular investigation: After a lot of frustration and much anticipation, I was finally going to meet—face-to-face, for the first time—my enigmatic boss, Tom. I couldn’t wait. Though we had spent countless hours on the phone and on the internet, we had never actually met in person. Today, however, we were finally going to get together—albeit briefly, and only in an airport.

Our meeting was just about all I could think of. All morning, I had been trying to put it out of my mind and attend to the task at hand.

Focus, Callie, I told myself. Focus.

“I would imagine you have a lot of expenses associated with something like this,” I said, giving my attention back to Commander Davis.

“Well, the government provides the blanks for the M-1s,” he replied. “Other than that, it’s just your basic stuff, transportation to the funerals, maintenance on the rifles, things like that.”

I nodded, thinking back over the information he had supplied in his grant request. I especially liked the section he had written under “Additional Needs:” I guess we could use a few bugles and some bugle lessons, the application had said, ’cause right now the only one in our group who plays the bugle is Charlie Goodall, but he wants to move to Memphis to be closer to his daughter, not to mention that his emphysema keeps acting up, and when it does he can’t really get enough breath to play good. I smiled now remembering it, thinking that Charlie had sounded a little breathless when he tooted out Taps today.

“I suppose I should tell you,” I said, “that I’m from the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation.”

“The grant people? Yes, ma’am, I sent in an application a while back.”