“Isn’t that what we all want?” Betty Jo said, pulling on her cigarette, burning it back down to a more normal size. “A real, solid, twisty tale. Since y’all have gotten here, the sheriff has found a dead body buried out on the Pennington land and E. J. Royce finally went and got himself shot. Although, to be clear and honest with both of y’all, I’m shocked that didn’t happen sooner. E. J. Royce would’ve tried the patience of Job.”

Tashi nodded, smiling back at the woman but wanting to get back to work, filling in those last little bits about Quinn Colson’s time in the woods. She’d already started to really doubt everything she’d heard about the man. The massive search party in 1990, the big press conferences with his uncle, the idea that Quinn would never be found, and then the boy emerging from the woods a week later without a scratch. Quinn already great media fodder even as a kid, talking about how he hunted and fished his way through being lost, making shelters in the fashion of Choctaw Indians with tree branches.

“Did y’all ever think maybe the Taylor boy just got lost in those woods and got so confused and turned around that he killed himself?” Betty Jo said. “Sometimes things like that happen. Not everything can be explained. Nicest fella I ever knew in my life was a man named Barney Ellard. He was the pharmacist here for more than twenty years. Married, three kids. Never saw the man without a smile on his face. Collected these little Peanuts figurines—you know, Snoopy and Charlie Brown and all. They’d say things like ‘Psychiatric Help 5¢’ with Lucy sitting in the little booth. Well, one morning he didn’t come to work. His wife found him back at home running a garden hose into the windows of his Buick Riviera. Of course we didn’t write about what he did. You don’t write anything about suicide, such an awful personal matter.”

Tashi figured she wouldn’t get any more done with Betty Jo hanging out and pushed the clips to the side. She was hungry anyway, and figured she would walk across the Square to the Fillin’ Station diner for two of those premade biscuits and a cup of coffee. For all the jokes back in New York about biscuits and grits, she was actually starting to really like them both.