“Shit like that usually happens at the state level. Chafee’s work was federal all the way, dealing with the Treasury, HUD, Department of the Interior.” She paused here, thinking, hmming under her breath. “That could be it, where you would go to protect a federal site. But I don’t know about a firm like Chafee, Humboldt working for a nonprofit. You’re talking about Texas?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know, Darren, but really, I have to go.”

“Thanks, Lisa,” he said.

She stayed on the phone long enough to say, with what he took for soft sincerity, “You’re welcome,” adding with a lilt of uncertainty, “We’ll talk later, right?”

“Lisa,” he started, wanting to reassure her or himself of something.

But by then she had already hung up.

Since he had nothing else to go on, he tried to find a phone number or an address for the Marion County Texas Historical Society, but nothing came up on either Google or Bing, which for a small-town nonprofit didn’t surprise him much. He slid his phone into the pocket of his slacks and walked back through the hospital’s sliding doors, feeling the rush of disinfectant-scented air-conditioning as he went hunting for a county phone book. He’d found them to be more accurate than anything online. For small-town business folks, it was still a point of pride to be listed in print; it made you legitimate in a way that a computer—which not everyone had access to—just couldn’t.

Beyond the reception area was a row of pay phones, each partitioned by finger-smudged panels and each with a small cubby underneath that was filled with various items: gum wrappers, smashed paper cups that were flaking curls of wax, and, in one, a tiny plastic doll the size of Darren’s pinkie. Only the last phone “booth” held a Marion County phone directory. Darren opened the business listings starting with the letter M. He ran his long fingers down the names, searching through the businesses twice before accepting that it wasn’t there. No listing for the historical society. But his finger stopped on the spot just above where Marion County Texas Historical Society should have been. He actually smiled at the familiar name, at the jaunty moniker the man had chosen for his enterprise: MARCUS ALDRICH’S TRUTH AND TREASURES. His uncle Clayton’s old college friend with a PhD in history was still, as Clayton would say, messing around in an old, dead town, wasting his talent and time.

Maybe not, Darren thought.