“I understand that while walking back, the boy, Kevin Tatum, got a lift from two people, Cass and her son, Gibby? Do you know them? Know where I could find them?”

“Those two?” Zeffie rolled her eyes. “They’re a pair of eccentrics, I’ll tell you. Well, most everyone around here is. First, Gibby is not her son.”

“No?” Wyatt’s eyebrows rose.

“Folks say that lately Gibby’s been calling Cass his wife. But Cass, she just calls him her son. Truth is, they’re not related in any way.”

“Why call each other wife and son?”

“Cass, poor thing, she’s sort of lost her mind, and Gibby, well, he’s a strange duck. He’s someone to be avoided.”

“Why’s that?”

“He just gives off this bad vibe. As for Cass, I don’t know why she calls him her son. Maybe ’cause after her boy, Joey, died— what, thirty years ago—she never got over it. Her husband shot himself over that, you know.”

“Sounds pretty tragic.”

“It is, and somewhere in the last couple of years, Cass got on with Gibby. I don’t know how they met. Some say through her church friends, some say the web. Who knows? Some say Cass got on with Gibby ’cause she thought he looked like Joey, had he lived. Don’t that sound odd?”

“A little, I suppose.”

“So ever since they got on, she started referring to him as her son. I think Gibby, and the Bible, filled a void for her. Rumor has it that Gibby liked to gamble. That led to Cass losing her trailer, the little money she had, and maybe her last shred of common sense. Anyway, that was a while back. Now Cass and Gibby survive together on their wits. Sometimes Gibby does odd jobs for people. They scavenge for junk and sell it at flea markets. They get money that way. They don’t really live anywhere.”

“What do you mean, they don’t live anywhere?”

“They’re kind of homeless. They spend winters in a shelter in Burlington. Rest of the time, they just squat on people’s property and live out of their truck. It’s so isolated up here, nobody bothers them.”

“I’d like to talk to them. Can you tell me where I can find them?”

Zeffie grunted, pushed herself from the rocker, and slapped the head of the flyswatter on the counter, killing two at once. Then she used the edge to sweep the dead away.

“They were in for gas and coffee a few days ago. Cass was telling me they were staying in a meadow several miles deep into Lucifer’s Notch, by Gallows Creek, along the old cemetery trail. I know the spot. At the end of some old cow paths. But you’ll never find it. It’s all overgrown. I better sketch you a map, or you’d miss it for sure. Give me your notebook.”