A Holiness church, I thought. The raw exuberance of the services always attract a young audience, in addition to the old true believers who grew up in these, the most fundamental of all the Christian sects.

“So Sandy was Tonya’s best friend. Do you know if she had contact with Tonya, after she left home?”

“I don’t know,” Joree replied, shaking her head and appearing to slip back again into a state of mental lethargy. “She might have, but I just don’t know. I ain’t talked to Sandy in a long time. But I hear tell she still works at the convenience store out on the highway.”

“Well, I can speak to Sandy and see if she has anything to tell that may be helpful.” I rose to go. “And do you think you can find those phone bills for me?”

Joree looked at me with puzzlement on her face and then started with a sort of recognition.

“Oh yeah. The phone bills,” she said as she stood quickly and glanced around the room. “They ought to be...”

She walked to the part of the room that was the kitchen and began opening and closing cabinet drawers.

“I think I put them in—yeah, here they are.”

She reached into a drawer and plucked out a disordered ream of papers. Waving them aloft as though she had just won a prize, she turned and placed them triumphantly in my hand.

“Here ye go,” she said. “They’re in that stack—somewhere.”

A quick glance told me that the jumbled mess of papers I held were just that: a mess. But maybe one of them would turn out to be the phone bill that could help pinpoint Tonya Causey’s location, at a given time, on a certain night. At least it was something. I folded the papers as best I could and put them inside the front of my shirt. Crossing the room I retrieved my jacket and put it on.

“Joree,” I said as she handed me my hat. “I’ll call. And if you think of anything else—maybe one of Tonya’s friends who might have seen her in recent months—call me immediately, okay?”

“I will,” she said, looking me in the eye, a sad expression on her face. “And I hope you don’t think too badly of Junior. He really is a good boy. It’s just that, well—he’s just been mighty tore up about Tonya. And he don’t know what to do.”

“I understand,” I replied as I pulled my hat down low over my eyes. “You just call me—with anything at all—no matter what the time.”

“I will,” she said.

I leaned over to exchange a quick hug, and as she gave me a kiss on the cheek, she breathed, “Thank you.”