“Hell, why should we know?” Manning said. “Seems to me you know someone who knows. You should be swimming upstream.”

“She says it was Bob’s idea.”

Vaullet let out a guffaw. “How old was the boy, when this happened?”

“A year or so when they bought it.”

“Then she knew,” Gaullet remarked.

“How do you know that, Shep?” Burton asked.

“Mickey, I was a banker for forty-seven years. I saw lots of couples come in through those doors. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. Sometimes the wife would be all quiet, just like the little woman. But if she’d just been a new mother, she’d ask questions, a tubful of questions. She knew exactly how much money they had and what they didn’t have.”

“Maybe you should ask Mumfries for the lowdown,” Manning snorted.

“Oh, shut up with that, Andy,” Irwin said.

“Why Mumfries?” Addis asked.

“His idea of a bad joke, right Andy?” Irwin said.

“Right. I’m a batty old man. That’s all.”

Addis didn’t understand. He turned to Burton. The young party chair was biting his lip.

Addis thanked the men for their time.

“And tell Margaret,” Irwin said, “that we’re all sorry.”

“Yeah, tell her,” Manning added, “we wish her well … and that we hope she and the boy come home soon.”

Addis and Burton were sitting at a table on the front porch of the hotel, eating the chicken sandwiches they had ordered and waiting for Rudd to return.

“What was all that,” Addis asked, “about me asking Mumfries?”

“I dunno. Geezer gibberish.”

You don’t bite your lip at gibberish.

“No, I don’t think so, Mickey.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Then we’ll talk about nothing for a while.”

“A stupid story.”

“About?”

“Just local bull.”

“All politics is local. Mickey. Tell me.”

Burton’s face looked like it was in a vice.

“Okay. I’m only guessing. But there’s this story my father told me about. He’s dead, but he was in with all those guys. He heard it from them. You know the accident, the one with Jack, when Bob was governor?”

“Of course.”

“Well, this rumor went around back then that the local paper up in Natchitoches Parish had a story it was going to run that said a state trooper smelled alcohol on Hanover’s breath when they pulled him out of the truck. But the paper was one of those weeklies owned by the Mumfries family. The story never came out. Some people thought, you know, since the Mumfries were close to the Masons, even if Chasie and Margaret weren’t speaking, that … well, you know. Then when he picked Mumfries, the old-timers said, ‘Hey, we know why.’ You never heard any of this?”

Addis said no.

“Well, it was only talk.”

“Only talk,” Addis repeated. He sucked in an ice cube from his glass and swirled it in his mouth.

One dead man can change a lot of history.