“And it doesn’t give you pause? A spoiled little shithead like him singing hymns at some busted-ass church in Tibbehah County? Men like that don’t change their ways. They don’t have a fucking calling. You might ask yourself, who the fuck is this son of a bitch sniffing around my sister? And what the hell does he need up in Tibbehah County?”

“I know he’s connected,” Quinn said. “And I know he’s rich. My father used to shoe horses for his family.”

“Goddamn you, Quinn Colson,” Fannie said, standing up. “You don’t know the fucking half of it. Why don’t you check up on Vandeven’s daddy and see whose golden apple he’s been polishing for a while. I wouldn’t want my sister within a thousand goddamn feet of those people.”

*   *   *

“Wow,” Tashi Coleman said. “Just wow.”

Tashi and Caddy were now at a dive bar on Madison Avenue in midtown Memphis called the Lamplighter. They’d spent more than two hours at the strip club. All that smoke and cherry-scented perfume had been a little much for Tashi. She needed a drink in a bad way. They sat at a tattered booth across from the old jukebox playing some classic soul. Syl Johnson, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay. Above the jukebox was a velvet painting of Elvis Presley as a toreador fighting a bull.

Caddy sipped on a Coca-Cola while Tashi downed a Pabst Blue Ribbon. They’d gotten a tip at Dixie Belles that Ansley Cuthbert used to tend bar here and still hung out on occasion. So far no one seemed to know her. Caddy and Tashi decided to stick around for a few more songs, Tashi ordering a second beer and a shot, asking Caddy if she wouldn’t mind driving them back to Tibbehah County. The jukebox now playing “Take Me to the River.”

“Haven’t you ever been in a strip club before?” Caddy Colson asked, which might sound like a strange question coming from a woman known for her rural outreach ministry. Caddy wore her hair in a short pixie cut, dressed in a neat little cowboy shirt and with a simple silver cross around her neck. She looked like she should be teaching Sunday school and probably did.

“Of course I’ve seen strippers,” Tashi said, turning up the bottle of Pabst, feeling more at home and safe here than at the club. This place reminded her of plenty of dive bars she frequented back in Brooklyn with Jessica and their friends. A place where you kept quarters handy for the old jukebox and kicked back with a game of darts or foosball. The light was dim from a few vintage lamps and beer signs. There were shabby chairs and a threadbare sofa, a short little bar toward the back where they sold bottles of cheap beer and made burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches.