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Dewey asked.
    â€œLet’s not talk any more about them flowers, okay?” Mr. Garner said.
    From here we could now see most of Mr. Garner’s ranch. There was a structure set off from his house in the process of being built. “Whatcha making?” I asked.
    â€œTool shed,” he said.
    â€œWhat for?” Dewey asked.
    â€œTools, likely,” I answered sarcastically.
    â€œActually, I just like doing things to keep me busy,” Mr. Garner said. “The devil finds work for idle hands to do. It’s important to remember things like that.”
    I glanced back at the willow with the ring of flowers on the other side of the river as we continued.
    â€œYou reckon it was one of them cougars that got Ruby Mae?” Dewey asked.
    Stopping, Mr. Garner once again inspected Dewey standing there in those giant boots. “Yeah, son,” he said, “I reckon it was some kinda cougar. Just not the kind you’s thinkin’. Somebody killed her and tossed her away afterward.”
    We continued in silence. I don’t think neither me nor Dewey could think of any proper response to something like that. This was likely the reason for everyone reacting the way they did when Mr. Garner mentioned Skeeter Swamp this morning.
    Once again, we entered a wooded area. We came to a rotted log in our path so big even Mr. Garner had to step up on it in order to get over it. Dewey and I struggled to climb across, the hollow wood breaking apart beneath our hands. Dewey had an especially hard time, being all clumsy in his father’s galoshes, but eventually we made it, just as the first heavy drops of rain fell through the thick ceiling of leaves and branches hanging above our heads.
    Dewey and I pulled up our hoods. Mr. Garner didn’t seem to even notice. Something else was on his mind.
    We were getting close to Painted Lake. I could hear Bullfrog Creek coming up along our right. Not only the water quietly rushing over the stones, but also the croaking of the animals that gave it its name.
    Mr. Garner spoke again, but I got the feeling this time he was talking more to himself than us. “I sure as hell hope this don’t turn out to be another Ruby Mae,” he said.
    That was all we heard of it for the rest of our wet walk through the trees and up to the lake.

C HAPTER 4
    N obody found Mary Ann Dailey even though they searched throughout that entire day and into the night. My mother brought me and Dewey home after our group finished up at Painted Lake, and made us a quick lunch before she went out again. I was glad she didn’t ask if we wanted to go with her. By then the rain was coming down something fierce, and I’d really had my fill of walking through the woods.
    My mother didn’t end up finally getting home until long after I was in bed. I was still awake though, on account of I couldn’t sleep, thinking about what Mr. Garner had told me and Dewey about Ruby Mae Vickers. About it being some kind of cougar that was responsible,just not the kind of cougar we was thinking about. He was talking about the human kind, I figured, and I couldn’t imagine what sort of person would take a girl away only to kill her a few months later. I wondered if Dewey was lying in his own bed thinking something the same, and I suspected he likely was. The rain pounded on my window and I thought about poor Ruby Mae out there by herself, dead beneath that willow tree. My stomach flipped and I near enough threw up right there in my bed. So I rolled over, pulled up my covers, and decided to try to think about something else, but I couldn’t. Just that poor girl out there, being “tossed away,” like Mr. Garner said. The more I tried to get her out of my head, the more she insisted on staying, the thought growing more horrible every time it came back.
    She finally drifted away after my mother returned home. After fixing herself something to eat, my mother came down the hall and opened