Hubie Phillips shook his head. “I don’t even know,” he said. “After two days, the sheriff let me go. I thought that was the end of it. I took part in nearly every search party they put together. But I heard the rumors, saw the looks when I’d go out to eat. I hate to break it to you, but a confirmed old bachelor like me is something of an anomaly in Jericho. People called me witty and eccentric to my face and just a crazy old queer behind my back.”

“And when they found Brandon?”

“It only got worse.”

“That’s why you left?”

Phillips started to cry and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He took a few moments to compose himself, let go of the shakiness in his voice. He cleared his voice a few times and nodded. “Not much else you can do when the sheriff drives you way out in the county to have a heart-to-heart and gives you twenty-four hours to get out of town.”

“What did you do?”

“I drove straight up to Memphis and stayed with a friend,” he said. “I sold my place in Jericho through a realtor and had my friends collect all my belongings. I left town with nothing but my car and the clothes on my back. Hamp Beckett wasn’t any different from all that crew. Tim Taylor, Johnny Stagg . . . Do you know about Stagg?”

“Oh, yes,” Tashi said. “His shadow looms large.”

“That town,” he said. “That whole county tries to act like it’s all Mayberry. Main Street USA. But there is a streak of mean that’s been there since the town was settled. Did you know they lynched a black man in 1977 and no one said a damn thing? It’s not a civilized place. And I doubt anything has changed.”

Tashi swallowed, feeling for the man, wondering what else he’d been up to. Wanting to know about his life now, where he worked, how he escaped the rumors. But there were more pressing questions and she always centered back to the focus. “Do you believe Brandon killed himself?”

“Not at all,” he said. “At first, I believed it could’ve been his father who drove him away. Or even killed Brandon himself. But when Tim came for me that day with the gun, it changed my mind. The look in his eyes as he stuck the barrel down my throat, he wasn’t playacting. He believed I’d done it.”

“Why do you think he believed that?”

“Besides me being gay?”

Tashi nodded.

“Nothing,” he said. “They just needed someone to blame for that boy never coming back and I was one hell of a target.”

*   *   *