“So if you think I’m in this just for grins and giggles, why don’t you get your narrow little fanny out of my car and carry it back to Effingham where it belongs.”

I leaned across the car and threw open the passenger door. “’Sides, your boss wants to know when you’ll be back to work. They need your help, Sandy—apparently there’s been a run on lottery tickets, Beanee Weenees, and chewing tobacco,” I concluded.

Sandy compressed her lips into an almost invisible line, her face turned a dark color, and her look hardened even more. Then a grin suddenly split her face, a hand flew to her mouth, and throwing back her head, she let loose with a guffaw.

“Oh hell!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn’t that. Beanee Weenees? And chewing tobacco? Lord, Mr. Tanner, that’s just crazy.”

“The name is Kennesaw,” I reminded her.

“Yes. Kennesaw. I remember,” she said, a more open look now on her face.

“But my question remains, Sandy. What is everyone so frightened of? Even Joree talked in circles the other day. And no one seems to know where Tonya was during that last year.”

Sandy became serious again.

“There is someone who knows about Tonya. Her name is Amber, and that’s where we’re going now. I told her about you, and she’s willing to meet with you. But you’ve got to promise me you’ll go easy with her. She can’t take a lot, and if it gets to be too much on her, you’ll have to leave.”

I lifted my right hand. “Agreed.”

“I don’t know this girl real well myself, but Tonya thought a lot of her, and she told me if anything was to ever happen I was to get ahold of her.”

Sandy looked me closely in the eye. “But I didn’t. I didn’t have the courage to until I saw you the other day. That’s when I called and came down to see her.”

Sandy nodded her head toward the street. “Pull out and turn right. It ain’t but a few blocks from here.”

“Put your seat belt on, Sandy,” I directed as I switched on the engine.

We maneuvered a few blocks south and then west until we arrived in an older neighborhood. Not an “old” neighborhood as in “colonial” or “antebellum,” but older, as in the Depression. The houses were only one step up from shotgun shacks and looked to have been built during the thirties to house railroad workers. At least that was my suspicion, as the main rail lines into town and a large freight yard were within sight. As we parked in the muddy yard of the house Sandy indicated, I realized that here was a neighborhood where the Depression had never really gone away.