“Oh boy, that takes me back.” He sniffed in reflection, then seemed to remember something. “Please have a seat. Can I offer you folks a soda?”

“No thanks,” Olive said, sitting, Sharkey pulling another chair next to her. “And we don’t want to waste your time.”

“This is Floristan,” Rickards said. “All we got is time.”

“Max Mulgrave,” Olive said, prompting him.

“Very smart—supersmart. Very quiet, grew up real poor. Clothes all tore up. Got teased at school.”

“For being poor?”

“For being smart,” Rickards said. “Got whupped by his pa.” He tugged at his ball cap again, leveling his visor, the visor stained from his tuggings. “One thing I recall is he was restless—set on leaving Floristan. And he did. Joined the army out of high school. I believe he served in ’Nam, like some others in our class. Never came back.”

“We heard from Mr. Baggett that he might have returned to see his mother.”

“That could be so. But old Widder Mulgrave, she’s long gone.”

“Where did she live?”

“Off Seven South. One of them roads that crosses the creek. That’d be Indian Creek. I don’t get over there unless I have to tow someone or light up a battery.”

“Do you remember anything else about Max Mulgrave?”

“Math whiz. A brain—imagine that, a brain in Floristan. Real quiet type. Could have gone to Fayetteville, but he didn’t have the money. And look at me. I had the money, but I took over my daddy’s business instead.”

Sharkey cleared his throat to get Rickards’s attention. He had been staring at the man’s head as though trying to locate a thought inside it. He said, “He was teased at school?”

“You know how kids are,” Rickards said.

“I sure do,” Sharkey said.

“Had to fight his battles.”

“I know all about that.”

“What about other friends like you?” Olive asked. “Are there any of them in town?”

Rickards’s half-smile drooped on his loose lips, rueful in reflection. He said, “I can’t rightly recall if he had a girlfriend. Smoked a lot of weed after school, but that was no big deal. All of us was stoners then.” He tapped the ragged blotter on his steel desk as though indicating that he was struggling to think hard. “It was so long ago. I wish I could tell you more, but darned if I can remember.” Then he glanced up but looked severe, narrowing his eyes. “One interesting thing. I went over to his house once. It was to bring him a book—it was a little old book of logarithm tables, like we used before computers. Max was sick in bed, and we had a test coming up. This was his old house, shotgun shack, not the one his mother moved into later.”

“You took him a book,” Olive said. “What was interesting?”