“Damn straight, fucknuts.” Lillie reached for the rack and tossed him a towel. “Don’t worry about covering up that Vienna sausage of yours, just show me your hands and come with me.”

“Christ Almighty,” he said. “What kind of woman talks like that? Where we going?”

“Someone wants to talk to you back in Tibbehah County.”

“The fucking Ranger?”

“You aren’t as dumb as you look, Wes.”

*   *   *

“You getting all this?” Mary asked. She lit her third cigarette in less than twenty minutes, sucking in the smoke with hollow cheeks and burning through nearly half of the fresh one.

Tashi didn’t answer, only shrugged. She just kept on listening to the woman talk about the Who’s Who of Tibbehah County, starting off with a man named Johnny Stagg—great name, by the way—who used to run the board of supervisors until some dumb-ass crooks broke into an associate’s house and robbed his safe full of cash and important papers. Those papers ended up landing Stagg in federal prison on corruption charges.

“Sheriff Colson sure hated that man.”

“You mean the sheriff who killed himself?”

“You don’t know much, do you?” Mary said. “Quinn Colson is the sheriff right now. At this very moment. His uncle was the man who killed himself. His name was Hamp Beckett. He was a fine man, a loving man, and lots of folks aren’t so sure he did himself in. I sure didn’t see it coming.”

“Were y’all close?”

“As close as can be,” she said. “He was what you young folks call a significant other.”

“Lots of secrets down here,” Tashi said. “Aren’t there? I heard a novelist once say Southerners don’t like to talk about unpleasant subjects. Is that true?”

“You want some more coffee?”

Tashi shook her head, not wanting the woman to quit talking. She was onto something, getting right to the heart of what she wanted Mary to say without being prodded.

“Y’all mind me asking why y’all are here,” Mary said, wiping a speck of tobacco from her lip.

Tashi swallowed and nodded. “Do you remember Brandon Taylor?”

“It’ll be twenty-one years to the day in November,” Mary said, spewing out smoke from the corner of her mouth. “The family has suffered every day since they found that boy.”

“What do you think, Miss Mary?” Tashi Coleman asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know Brandon. I can’t understand why any of God’s creatures would take their own life. Young boy, his whole life spread out before him.”

“Some people don’t believe it happened that way,” Tashi said. “Some folks believe he was killed.”

“I’ve heard the same kind of talk,” Mary said. “Oh, Lord. Twenty years. It was a long time ago. So much has changed. Sometimes I don’t even recognize this little ole town on the Square.”

*   *   *